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The rainbow-emblazoned corporate swag has been ordered, the gay and lesbian employees dispatched to New York. The floats are all designed and constructed, ready to roll down Fifth Avenue—colorful billboards advertising just how LGBT friendly T-Mobile, MasterCard, TD Bank, Delta Air Lines, and other sponsors are these days.

It rarely happens in ordinary bail matters that within 72 hours of a court order, numerous aspects related to it get extensively argued at every level of the judiciary. In the recent instance of three students arrested in connection with the violence that broke out in northeast Delhi in February 2020, after a nudge from the High Court, the trial court prepared their release warrants and soon completed all other legal bail-related formalities in quick time.

Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in India have been dying for a long time even before the outbreak of COVID-19 resulting in large number of job losses. The lockdown announced on March 24, 2020 and the containment measures aggravated the situation further. Announcement of government support by Modi government failed to stem the rot. The second wave of COVID-19 beginning from February 2021 peaking up in May brought further deterioration. About 15 lakh jobs were lost in a single month of May chiefly due to shutting down of MSMEs or scaling down of their operation. We have yet again some further announcement of support by the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), while last years’ announcements are yet hardly half-implemented, and the fate of the present announcements are buried in future.

On June 26, the dayafter Indira Gandhi had imposed emergency 46 years ago, the farmers’ movement entered into its 8th month of survival. Though yesterday Narendra Modi took to twits to recollect the tyrannies “he had to face” during the Emergency days, he did not mention about his resolve to destroy democracy and smash the democratic institutions in the country. His recurrent reference to imposition of emergency however forcefully threw open a question that why he was averse to respect the democratic aspirations of the crores of farmers and sit across with them to listen to their arguments for scraping of the three black farm laws. Indira Gandhi used emergency not to listen to the democratic voices, while Modi in a shrewd manner used the state machinery to deny the farmers of their rights.

The BJP’s “walk back” on Kashmir – to use a polite term for “retreat – must have made it appreciate the difficulty of implementing a religion-based agenda in a democracy.

There is little business or commercial reason behind the government’s move to dismantle the age-old Kolkata-based raw materials division (RMD) of public sector Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL). The move appears to be totally political and engineered by the national government. The division has done very well over the last three decades. In fact, it needs to be strengthened by linking to SAIL’s coking coal import. The country imports about 56 million tonnes of metallurgical (coking) coal, worth around Rs. 72,000 crore. SAIL is the largest single importer. Surprisingly, this is handled by SAIL’s commercial office in Delhi and not its RMD in Kolkata. Like Tata Steel, SAIL should also have its commercial office in Kolkata and not in Delhi. The SAIL board is unlikely to take such a crucial decision as shutting down the decades old RMD in Kolkata and distribute its function to its two steel plants, Rourkela and Bokaro, without the government support and provocation.

New Delhi: Sajan Prakash became the first Indian swimmer to make the 'A' qualifying time for the Tokyo Olympics recording the fastest time ever clocked by an Indian in 200m butterfly as he touched pads at 1:56.38 in Sette Colli, Rome - a FINA accredited meet. The 'qualifying standard was 1:56.48.

New Delhi: Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary lost to the Russian pair of Vitalina Batsarashkina and Artem Chernousov 12-16 to settle for a silver in the in 10M Air Pistol Mixed Team event at the Shooting World Cup medal in Osijek, Croatia.

New Delhi: Former captain Gurbux Singh feels that the current Indian hockey team is a potential podium finisher at the Tokyo Olympics.

The United Nations General Assembly on June 23 overwhelmingly approved a Cuban resolution condemning the U.S. economic, commercial, and financial blockade of Cuba, in place for 60 years. The Assembly has done precisely that every year since 1992, except for 2020, when the vote was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The vote this time was: 184 nations approving; two opposing, Israel and the United States; and three abstaining, Colombia, Ukraine, and Brazil.