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BRICS nations concluded their annual summit in the Russian city of Kazan on October 24 resolving to deepen economic ties. Plans to deepen financial cooperation and develop alternatives to Western-dominated payment systems were also discussed, besides offering African nations a bigger say in the changing global order.

KOLKATA: A development in the ultra-Left politics that happened on September 9 this year in Jharkhand, to be more specific in the Dhanbad coalfields, gets cemented as elections for the sixth state Assembly knock at the door and revive memories of the role that the Marxist Coordination Committee’s veteran leader A K Roy (Arun Kumar Roy) had played in the area’s trade union movement for many years. [Not many people were aware of his full name; he was well-known and always addressed as A K Roy].

Indian judiciary faces a significant backlog of civil cases, with around 11.1 million cases pending, of which 22 percent are older than five years. These prolonged delays erode public trust in the legal system and leave many in a prolonged state of uncertainty while awaiting justice.

The desperation shown by BJP members of the parliamentary accounts committee to shield SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch from criticism for her failure to appear before the panel shows how her acts of commission and omission were not just a reflection of certain deficit in personal integrity, but how a sinister plot to use the market regulatory mechanism to safeguard the interests of corporates dear to the ruling party was brought into play.

Although ice has apparently been broken between India and China over conflicts and confrontations in Demchok and Depsang areas in eastern Ladakh, tensions have not been eliminated fully.

Due to declining scope of job opportunity in the organised and formal sector, women workers in India have been increasingly trying hard even to find a place in the unorganised and informal sectors sans social security. Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2023-24 for the period of July 2023 – June 2024 shows that their participation in the non-agriculture informal sector has been rising and stood at 61.2 per cent as against 58.4 per cent in 2021-22 on the usual status basis.

The Congress has left the Uttar Pradesh bypolls, leaving the field open for the Samajwadi Party Supremo Akhilesh Yadav against the state-BJP led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who has sole responsibility of redeeming BJP after Akhilesh Yadav took the saffron party to the cleaners in the Lok Sabha elections with his 'Pichada Dalit Alpsankyak (PDA)' axis of resistance. The Samajwadi Party head has sworn to repeat his 2024 success in the 2027 assembly elections with the bypolls, set to take place on November 13, a stepping stone for the assembly polls.

Austrian President Alexander van Der Bellen has decided to sidestep the far right Freedom Party (FPO) in government formation sending an unambiguous signal about the future. At the heart of the decision lies the question that should a party having won the largest share of votes but remaining politically isolated be entitled to lead the government?

BERLIN: “There is hope.” This was one of the most repeated sentences when talking to delegates at Germany’s Die Linke’s national congress last weekend, as the left-wing party convened in Halle, in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. This hope clearly isn’t inspired by polling data, which has turned from bad to worse over the last year. Right now, Die Linke is languishing between 3 and 4 percent in national polling, well below the 5 percent threshold required to reenter parliament in the 2025 elections to the Bundestag. The last nationwide contest, the elections to the European Parliament this past June, pointed in the same direction, as Die Linke received only 2.7 percent of votes — half of its 2019 score.

With announcement of NDA and INDIA bloc’s candidates for byelections of all the 9 Vidhan Sabha Constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, one can now see the chief contestants arrayed in the electoral battlefield, and also make an assessment of their respective strengths and weaknesses, the success or failure of which may decide the fate of Yogi Adityanath – as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, and also as the future prime ministerial candidate of the BJP.