Thiruvananthapuram: BJP leaders led by its state president Kummanom Rajasekharan Wednesday staged a dharna in front of the secretariat here in protest against the alleged \\\'political violence\\\' unleashed by CPI(M) in Kerala in the run up to the May 16 Assembly polls.\\\"CPI-M is unleashing violence in the state in the run up to the May 16 Assembly polls,\\\" BJP national general secretary in-charge of Kerala, H Raja said launching the stir.Rajasekharan demanded arrest of CPI-M workers responsible for the attack on the BJP rally at nearby Kattayikonam on Monday last, in which at least 30 people were injured.He also said that a new front under the leadership of BJP was gaining strength in Kerala as an alternative to the Congress-led UDF government and \\\'politics of violence\\\' followed by CPI-M.

Senior party leaders, including former Union minister O Rajagopal, were among those who participated in the dharna.Later, both Rajasekharan and Raja visited the hospital where a seriously injured BJP worker was admitted.

Meanwhile, eight CPI-M workers have been arrested in connection with the attack on BJP activists at Kattayikonam.Recently, an RSS worker was hacked to death in Pappinesseri and a BJP worker escaped with serious injuries in Panur, both in Kannur district, after they were attacked allegedly by CPI-M workers.

Suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff vowed on Thursday she would fight to prove her innocence after the Senate voted to put her on trial for breaking budget laws, a historic decision fueled by deep recession and a sprawling corruption scandal.Rousseff, a leftist in office since 2011, was replaced by her vice president, centrist Michel Temer, who took over as interim president for the duration of a Senate trial that could take up to six months.Speaking shortly before she left Brasilia’s Planalto presidential palace, Rousseff told supporters she was notified of her suspension on Thursday morning. She reiterated what she has maintained since impeachment proceedings were launched against her last December by the lower house of Congress.

“I may have made mistakes but I did not commit any crime,” Rousseff said in an angry address, calling the impeachment “fraudulent” and “a coup.”Rousseff, 68, was flanked by dozens of ministers who were leaving with her administration. Even as many of them wept, Rousseff remained stolid.“I never imagined that it would be necessary to fight once again against a coup in this country,” Rousseff said, in a reference to her youth fighting Brazil’s military dictatorship.Shortly afterward, she addressed hundreds of supporters outside, many of them dressed in the red of her Workers Party, and already shouting “Temer out!”

“This is a tragic hour for our country,” Rousseff said, calling her suspension an effort by conservatives to roll back the social and economic gains made by the Workers Party during its 13 years in power.The party rose from Brazil’s labor movement and helped pull millions of people out of poverty before running into recession and scandal, with many of its leaders tainted by corruption investigations.

The Senate deliberated for 20 hours before voting 55-22 early on Thursday to put Rousseff on trial over charges that she disguised the size of the budget deficit to make the economy look healthier in the runup to her 2014 re-election.Rousseff, an economist and former member of a Marxist guerrilla group who became Brazil’s first woman president, has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing and has called the charges politically motivated.Despite her vows to fight, she is unlikely to be acquitted in her trial.

The size of the vote to try her showed the opposition already has the support it will need to reach the two-thirds majority required to convict Rousseff and remove her definitively from office.“It is a bitter though necessary medicine,” opposition Senator Jose Serra, named on Thursday as the new foreign minister under Temer, said during the marathon Senate debate. “Having the Rousseff government continue would be a bigger tragedy.”With Brazil’s economy mired in its deepest recession in decades, the incoming Temer administration sought to show it would act rapidly.

Temer aides said the incoming government would announce a series of austerity measures to help reduce a massive budget deficit. An immediate effort would seek to reform Brazil’s costly pension system, possibly setting a minimum age for retirement, said one advisor.Temer appointed Henrique Mereilles, a former central bank president and banking executive who is popular with foreign investors, as finance minister, a press officer said.

Rousseff earlier dismissed her cabinet, including the sports minister, who is in final preparations for the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in August, Brazil’s Official Gazette showed. The central bank governor, who has ministerial rank, was not included in the decree.As suspended head of state, Rousseff can continue to live in her official residence, and is entitled to a staff and use of an Air Force plane.Fireworks erupted in cities across Brazil after the Senate vote. Police briefly clashed with pro-Rousseff demonstrators in Brasilia during the vote, but the country was calm early Thursday, with scattered celebrants in São Paulo and other cities draping themselves in Brazil’s green, yellow and blue flag.

Temer, 75, a constitutional scholar who spent decades in Brazil’s Congress, now faces the challenge of restoring economic growth and calm at a time when Brazilians, increasingly polarized, are questioning whether their institutions can deliver on his promise of stability.In addition to the gaping deficit, equal to more than 10 percent of its annual economic output, Brazil is suffering from rising unemployment, plummeting investment and a projected economic contraction of more than 3 percent this year.“Only major reforms can keep Brazil from moving from crisis to crisis,” says Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, an economist and author in São Paulo who has written extensively about the country’s socioeconomic problems.But those changes, including an overhaul of pension, tax and labor laws and a political reform to streamline fragmented parties in a mercenary Congress, could remain elusive at a time of turmoil.

In a statement on Thursday, Moody’s Investors Service said continued political tension was likely to make reforms difficult. “Brazil still faces significant credit challenges including the need to reverse the ongoing economic contraction and to achieve meaningful fiscal consolidation,” the ratings agency said.Wild cards remain for Temer himself, including still-pending investigations by an electoral court into financing for his and Rousseff’s 2014 campaign.Then there is the far-reaching kickback probe around state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PETR4.SA), which has ensnared dozens of corporate and political chieftains, and helped set the scene for the discontent that hobbled Rousseff.

Frequently predicted but never reached, \\\"peak oil\\\" — maximum possible production — has been postponed yet again, this time because of fracking. 

\\\"Peak Sanders\\\" was prematurely announced because of persistent underestimations of how underwhelming Hillary Clinton is as a candidate. The Vermont senator\\\'s peak might not arrive soon because his fundraising prowess will allow him to continue campaigning to outlaw fracking.

\\\"Peak Trump\\\" — the apogee before the dwindling — might be approaching for the perhaps bogus billionaire (would a real one bother with fleecing those who matriculate at Trump University?) who purports to prove his business wizardry, colossal wealth, and stupendous generosity not by releasing his tax returns but by displaying a pile of steaks. 

The eventual end of our long national embarrassment might be foreshadowed by Donald Trump\\\'s pattern of doing better among early voters than among \\\"late deciders\\\": He firmly has those he entranced early; others are more elusive.

If Trump does become acquainted with gravity — no, not intellectual sobriety; nature\\\'s downward tug — it will be for two reasons: The Republican Party, which together with the Democratic Party has framed the nation\\\'s political debate since first running a presidential candidate 160 years ago, is not a flimsy dinghy to be effortlessly commandeered by pirates hostile to its purposes. And the lavish media exposure that has fertilized the growth of the weed of Trumpism in the garden of conservatism might still stunt its growth by causing his supporters to have second, or perhaps first, thoughts. A steady diet of his self-adulation can be cloying; even an entertaining boor can become a bore.

Mitt Romney\\\'s denunciations and ridicules, reciprocating Trump\\\'s, are not designed to dissuade Trump voters. It is axiomatic that you cannot reason a person out of a position that the person has not been reasoned into. The adhesive that binds Trumpkins to their messiah can be dissolved by neither facts nor eloquence. 
Romney and other defenders of Republican traditions are trying to prevent a stampede to Trump of \\\"Vichy Republicans,\\\" collaborationists coming to terms with the occupation of their party.

If Trump, who thinks the most recent Republican president should have been impeached, is the 2016 nominee, the party\\\'s most recent nominee will not support him. But this through-the-looking-glass scenario need not happen. Ohio\\\'s John Kasich has demonstrated an appeal to people susceptible to the Trump temptation — blue-collar voters in an important manufacturing (and swing) state buffeted by globalization. Ted Cruz offers what many Trumpkins say they want: conservatism with a serrated edge. Trump, however, is all edge and no conservatism, although his shambolic syntax disguises his vacuity.

Trump, who fancies himself the blue-collar billionaire, promises a 45 percent increase in the price of the imports from China that help draw more than 100 million weekly shoppers to Walmart, America\\\'s largest private-sector employer. 

Sanders, another aspiring savior of the proletariat, promises \\\"socialism,\\\" which he defines as a \\\"revolution\\\" that resembles the status quo — meddlesome economic regulation by a federal government whose budget is 66 percent income redistribution through transfer payments. 

Sanders is conducting a self-refuting campaign, the premise of which is that \\\"the billionaire class\\\" of (according to Forbes) 536 people buys elections. In February, Sanders raised $42.7 million, Hillary Clinton raised $30 million and the most prolific Republican fundraiser of this presidential cycle (Jeb Bush, $157.6 million) went home.In last week\\\'s Fox News town hall, when asked about Michael Bloomberg, an actual billionaire, deciding not to run for president, Sanders said: Bloomberg is a billionaire, and it is \\\"a bad idea\\\" that \\\"the only people who feel in many ways that they can run for president are people who have so much money.\\\" Which is why Citizens United must be overturned \\\"so all people can run for office, not just people who have a lot of money.\\\" 

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump would try to force Mexico to pay for his proposed wall along the U.S. border by blocking remittances from immigrants in the United States in a move that could cripple the Mexican economy, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.Citing a two-page memo from Trump’s campaign, the Post said Trump vowed to change a rule under a U.S. anti-terrorism law that would cut off money transfers to Mexico unless it made a one-time payment of $5 billion to $10 billion for the wall, if he is elected in the November U.S. presidential election.

Trump’s pledge to build the wall along the southern U.S. border has been a cornerstone of his campaign as part of his larger platform targeting illegal immigration in the United States. While his plan has drawn cheers from his supporters, his harsh rhetoric on the issue, including calling some Mexican immigrants criminals, has drawn fierce criticism.Mexico has flatly rejected paying for the wall.

In the memo to the Post, Trump’s campaign said it could also target visas, either by cancelling them or charging higher fees for Mexicans to visit the United States.“It’s an easy decision for Mexico,” the memo, dated March 31, said.

 A Dallas County grand jury has indicted former NFL quarterback Johnny Manziel on a charge of misdemeanor assault with bodily injury after he allegedly struck his ex-girlfriend, media reported.A grand jury examined in the case against Manziel last week and a decision on an indictment was expected on Monday. If tried and convicted, he could face up to a year in jail.KRLD radio, a CBS affiliate, reported late on Sunday that Manziel, 23, had been indicted on a class A misdemeanor domestic violence assault charge, citing a Dallas County District Attorney’s office source. Other media also reported the indictment.

Neither the Dallas County district attorney’s office, nor Manziel or his attorney, could immediately be reached for comment.However, Manziel’s attorney told a CBS affiliate on Sunday that he expected an indictment, the station reported.

The charge against the former Heisman Trophy winner stems from an incident in which Manziel is accused of hitting, kidnapping and threatening to kill Colleen Crowley, 23. Crowley accused Manziel of hitting her so hard that she temporarily lost her hearing, court papers show.Crowley told police she was assaulted at a Dallas hotel and then again while driving to her home in Fort Worth, according to a police report.

The case was referred to the grand jury, which hears evidence behind closed doors.Manziel, known as “Johnny Football”, was a standout at Texas A&M University before playing two seasons with the Cleveland Browns and then being dropped in March.Known for his partying lifestyle, Manziel has been dropped by two agents this year and media reported he was accused of causing more than $30,000 worth of damage at a Los Angeles home during a party.