The players may or may not be allowed to skip the quarantine rules. But keep in mind that this is the first major tournament since a long time. 8 teams are taking part. If you add the players, net bowlers, support staff.etc, the total contingent from each team would amount to at least 50-60 individuals. It is upto the team, whether they want to take the risk by skipping the quarantine rules for one or two players.

This is not right. Why teams should split the points in case of rain interruption? Ideally the team that will win the series should get the maximum points. Else rain interruption may prove beneficial for the weaker teams and very much disadvantageous for the stronger teams. It may also give an incentive to the weaker teams, to stage test matches during the rainy season.

Such an unbelievable finish. Kevin O'Brien once again proves to be a thorn in the flesh for England. Harry Tector was really struggling out there, but O'Brien removed the pressure by hitting a few big shots. Without him, the match would have gone England's way. Now Ireland has their first points in the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup Super League. The two waist-high full tosses bowled by England proved to be very costly.

It's going to be such an exciting finish. 45 more runs needed from just 5 overs, with 7 wickets remaining. It is still 50/50 and can swing either way. Just a single wicket, or a six can change the course of the match. For Ireland, the advantage is that the big hitter Kevin O'Brien is still there. But both Paul Stirling and Andrew Balbirnie are back in the pavillion.

The situation in Japan is different from those in other countries. There are two main reasons.

1. The interest rates are extremely low (usually in the 0.00%-0.25% range). This allows the government to borrow more and more money, unlike the case in other countries.

2. Most of the Japanese national debt is being held by its citizens. The Japanese citizens are also some of the largest holders of national debt from other nations, especially the United States.

And Japanese Yen is one of the very few currencies to have increased its value against the USD. 4-5 decades ago, the exchange rate was like ~350 JPY to 1 USD. Now this is 107 JPY to 1 USD. There is no other currency in the world, which has appreciated by this much against the USD.

This is never going to happen. The GOP will never approve online voting (including email voting), because it may increase the turnout among the younger voters. The youth mostly favor the Democrats (due to a combination of demographic and ideological factors), while the elderly are more supportive of the GOP. Under such circumstances, it will be disastrous for the GOP to approve online voting, instead of the usual absentee voting through post. ama

Being a regular visitor to India, I can confirm this. It's not just about coding and programming. Even in the manufacturing sector, the overall productivity is very low. The productivity of an Indian laborer or a factory worker is much lower when compared to someone in the same profession in China. They take much more time, and in the end the overall quality is not satisfactory. On top of that, every now and then they have the tendency to go on strike and destroy the factory infrastructure in the name of protests. An example here:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/5-years-on-deadly-riots-still-haunt-Maruti-Suzuki

And this is the main reason why so few companies are moving their manufacturing units to India, despite the government going all out attracting them.

Pakistan's record in England is better than the other Asian teams. No doubt with that. But at the same time, the current Pakistani team is perhaps the weakest and the least experienced squad ever to tour England. On the other hand, the English players are on top form. Pakistani batsmen are going to struggle against English pacers such as Stuart Broad and Chris Woakes. Their bowlers may perform well, but unless they get some support from the batsmen (Babar Azam alone may not be able to do much) we can expect a complete whitewash.

The world has got smaller, with cheap air travel and internet connectivity and the governments are yet to realize it. They can no longer tax the super-rich at insane levels. Because they will just migrate to another country. Remember what happened in France, after François Hollande came up with the 75% super-tax? It was a gigantic failure.

As the situation stands now, the governments can tax the middle-class and the lower-class, until blood comes out from their rear side. But the same strategy is not practical with the super-rich. Nowadays, passports are on sale for as little as $100,000 to $250,000 (I am talking about Dominica, Vanuatu, Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts, Portugal, Malta.etc). Rather than paying a few millions in tax, these super-rich individuals may just purchase a passport for a fraction of that amount.

In countries such as England, they are allowing limited number of spectators (for the domestic matches). But 50% looks a bit high for me. There are practical issues. For example, what will happen if some of the batsmen hit the ball for a six and it lands among the spectators? Is it practical to disinfect the ball every time? It is going to be a time consuming process (or they can replace the ball), as we can expect a lot of boundaries to be hit in a tournament such as the IPL.

Ireland doesn't have any future in international cricket. Whenever they produce some international quality cricketer, he will be poached by England. Examples are Eoin Morgan, Boyd Rankin and Ed Joyce. Even emerging players such as Stuart Poynter have been barred from playing for Ireland by their county sides.

Eoin Morgan for example, was born in Dublin (capital of the Republic of Ireland) and played for the Irish national team till 2009. In 2009, he was included in the England squad, despite being an Irish citizen. Similarly, Boyd Rankin was the best bowler Ireland ever produced. He was playing for the countryside Warwickshire and the county coach asked him to stop playing for Ireland. He returned to Ireland in 2016, but by then his pace and venom was gone. The same happened to Ed Joyce as well.

What is the point in having an Irish cricket team, when they are always forced to play with their second-string players?

Just another addition to the huge list of black-on-black murders. Out of all the homicides occurring in the United States, less than 1% may be white-on-black. But these incidents receive so much media attention and the left-liberals go ballistic over them. But what about the remaining 99%, of which the majority is black-on-black murders? Should I believe that such incidents are OK, as both the perpetrator and the victim belonged to the same race? Why no rioting or protest march to condemn these killings?

For a moment, please stop fighting each other and check this encouraging piece of news coming from Russia:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53621708



So it looks as if the first COVID 19 vaccine would be out in the market, within the next two months. But the most worrying thing is that the Russians may be selling the vaccine without completing all the necessary clinical trials. I have checked the status of their vaccine here:

https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

IMO, it looks like the Chinese vaccine (CanSino Biologics, which was approved for limited use last week) would be more safe.

This is crazy. How they are supposed to follow social distancing norms in airplanes? In a medium-sized aircraft, there may be 180 or so seats, divided into 30 rows. If you want social distancing, then only 2 people can be placed per row, instead of the usual 6. That would mean that the airlines would operate with <33% occupancy, which is not viable in economic terms.

At the airport, they usually follow social distancing norms more strictly, because thousands of people would be present at any given point of time. Inside an aircraft, the number of people is low, but then if you want to travel you need to take a certain amount of risk.

Do I need to remind you about the 2018 United States Senate elections? The GOP lost a large number of states, because the suburban voters deserted them. And a large number of these voters were either middle-aged, or elderly. On top of that, the COVID 19 pandemic has disproportionately affected voters from these groups. I guess that will make them even more anti-GOP. But I would say one thing. Not everyone among the elderly are pro-GOP and not all of those youth are pro-Democrat.

Not just the race, but also it's about the age. Biden is a few weeks away from 78. Bernie is almost 79. Do you really want a 78-year old presidential candidate, with a 79-year old VP pick? IMO, race is secondary concern. And age is one of the advantages Kamala Harris is having, as she's just 55 years old. But from what I have heard, some of the top Biden allies and donors are not happy with her, and want to prevent her being named as the VP candidate at any cost. It looks to me that Biden can't ignore their stand. In the end, he may come up with another compromise candidate. May be African American and female, but not Kamala Harris.

England would have been in a much better position, if they had won the series 3-0. But they were complacent and lost the first match as a result of it. Now it is going to be an uphill task for them, to overtake Australia and get to the no.2 position. The test series against India is going to be very crucial for England. If they manage a couple of victories, then it is going to benefit them tremendously. All that said, I don't feel much excitement with this ICC World Test Championship format. Without a promotion/relegation system, it looks meaningless.

It can happen to anyone and in my opinion, Broad should not lose his sleep over something that occurred many years ago. This incident occurred when Broad was relatively new to the international scene, during the 2007 ICC World T20. He was in his early 20s and back then Yuvraj was one of the superstars of T20 cricket. Broad has come a long way from there.

I always believe in the saying: "prevention is better than cure".

I don't believe in all these scare stories being said about the COVID 19 pandemic. But that said, there is nothing wrong in taking adequate precautions. What is wrong in wearing a mask or maintaining social distancing? We should be doing these, even if there is no pandemic. Anyway, a vaccine will be available in 3-4 months from now, and after that we can choose to either continue with these precautionary measures, or to ignore them.

I am not that knowledgeable about this, but as far as I know both ultraviolet and ozone are harmful to the human body. I have heard about ultraviolet rays being used to sterilize rooms or even entire buildings, but usually that is done when no one is inside. And I don't know whether sunshine is having any detrimental effect on COVID 19. If that was the case, then the situation in Florida could have been much better.