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The government decision to disband the Ordnance Factories Board (OFB), under the department of defence production, to convert and regroup its 41 units into seven wholly-owned corporate enterprises may or may not change the business fortune of these factories, but it will certainly reshape the more-than-three centuries old history of new-age armament manufacturing in India pioneered by a Dutch firm, Ostend Company, in 1712 with the setting up of a gun powder factory at Ichhapur, near Kolkata.

New Delhi: Former captain Zafar Iqbal has cautioned the Indian Hockey team against being complacent because he feels that Olympics is totally different than other tournaments.

Countries around the world have again demanded at the United Nations that the United States lift the blockade of Cuba that it has been imposing since 1962. On June 23 2021 in the 29th vote at the UN general assembly on the issue of the US blockade, 184 countries supported the Cuban resolution calling for its end. Only the US and Israel voted against, while three other countries — Brazil, Colombia and Ukraine — abstained. All of Israel, Brazil, Colombia and the Ukraine can best be described as US “puppet” states when it comes to international affairs.

Recognising that migrant workers are often excluded from the ambit of the food security net under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), the Supreme Court on Tuesday directed all state governments to formulate schemes to provide rations to migrant workers who do not possess ration cards. The court has directed the Centre to allocate dry food grains to states for the schemes. The apex court also directed that provisions of dry grains and cooked food through community kitchens must continue as long as the COVID-19 pandemic lasts.

Mission “remove Mamata Banerjee from office” launched by the union home minister Amit Shah has reached to the flash point and to give the final thrust to the operation the BJP leadership today sacrificed its Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat. Today he handed over his resignation to his party bosses in Delhi four months after taking charge and ahead of polls next year in the state.

Handwashing have been one of the most effective recommendations to prevent infection and spread of COVID-19. However, 3 in 10 people worldwide could not follow this recommendation during the pandemic because they did not have water in their homes to do that. They remained safe only because the pandemic could not reach them while their governments failed them in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programmes. The situation is now changing fast. COVID-19 is spreading and knocking at their doors, while the governments are still not willing to inject sufficient funds to provide even safe and sufficient quantity of water putting them at greatest risk not only from COVID-19, but also from several other infectious diseases.

In the government’s initiatives to counter the economic and social impacts of Covid pandemic, education seems to have received the least priority, as this sector has been considered as most expendable because the impact of such neglect is not immediately discernible. The response of the government, educational institutions as well as educators to the crisis appeared to be totally confused, and the continued disruption of academic activity due to the pandemic has meant that there has been little improvement in the situation. The most vulnerable segment is school education.

The relentless search for a modern-day Chanakya has seen union home minister Amit Shah being projected as his contemporary avatar, even though there is much more to the Arthashastra than a “power at all costs” mantra. Now, after his role in the Bengal triumph, Prashant Kishor, the Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s prime election strategist, has been portrayed as a political Chanakya. Which might partly explain the buzz around Kishor’s three meetings with Maharashtra leader Sharad Pawar. Is there a plan to craft a new political alternative that could challenge the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2024?

Chilean Communist Party candidate Daniel Jadue has emerged as the front-runner ahead of November’s presidential elections, with a number of opinion polls predicting he could sweep to power. If that happens, that will be the beginning a new chapter in the polity of the region after the victory of the self styled Marxist Castillo in the presidential elections last month.

Over 60 per cent of the world’s adult population have been facing a threat to their survival. They are about two billions in number. They are informal workers, working chiefly in informal sector. Informal workers working in formal sectors may add millions to this figure. COVID-19 had hit them hard, particularly in developing countries, being not covered by existing social protection schemes. The urgent need is to provide a lifeline to them, bringing them under social security cover, temporarily providing minimum basic income guarantee during the continuing pandemic, and reducing informality in the long run.