Lunch with Shinzo Abe: PM Narendra Modi to visit Japan on October 28-29

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Japan on October 28 and 29. On Thursday, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said the PM was the first global leader to be invited to Japanese PM Shinzo Abe's second home in Yamanashi province. Modi and Abe will have lunch together while enjoying a view of Mount Fuji, and would also have their dinner together on Sunday.

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National Security Advisor Ajit Kumar Doval (pictured) delivered the annual Sardar Patel memorial lecture on Thursday in New Delhi. In his lecture, Doval said India needed a strong and decisive government, and not a coalition, for the next 10 years if it had to become the third-biggest economy in the world by 2030. Doval is a former director of the Intelligence Bureau. After the lecture, Doval was asked what he thought of an episode from the same morning when four Intelligence Bureau personnel were detained from outside the residence of Alok Kumar Verma, the Central Bureau of Investigation chief who was sent on indefinite leave. Doval, who had been firefighting at the infighting-ridden investigative agency, grinned and walked away.

The muffler is back

Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal has hit the campaign trail in Delhi. The party hopes to put up a good fight to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in all of Delhi's seven Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP had won all the seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. At a rally in Delhi on Wednesday, Kejriwal tried to explain to the crowd the Rafale "scam" and the reasons for the ousting of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chief Alok Kumar Verma. In the process, he also showed why he is rated as one of the better communicators among the current crop of younger politicians. Kejriwal said the PM might be scared of the ousted CBI chief, but he (Kejriwal) wasn't and had welcomed the CBI team that had been sent by the government to raid his home with food, tea and cold drinks. "You know what the CBI team found in Kejriwal's house? They found four mufflers," Kejriwal said to peals of laughter. Kejriwal is often called "muffler man", thanks to his penchant for tying a muffler over his head, ears and neck during winters.