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The sensational case of Kerala gold smuggling through diplomatic channel takes one half a century back in the history of trade ties between India and Dubai.

The news about Oxford COVID-19 vaccine trials moving to the third phase of a clinical trial is making everyone ecstatic. The stock market in particular is rewarding the shareholders of all the major pharmaceutical companies conducting the clinical trials. Price data from the US stock market show in a matter of four months, starting mid- March, stock prices of these companies went up between 27 per cent and 400 per cent. Moderna Inc. up by 400 per cent, BioNTech by 228 per cent, Emergent Biosolutions Inc. by 100 per cent, Astra Zeneca by 46 per cent, Johnson & Johnson by 37 per cent, and Pfizer by 27 per cent. However, vaccines are not going to be available for the general public any time before next year.

Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal’s tweet on July 12: “Worried for our party. Will we wake up only after the horses have bolted from our stables?” depicts the mood in the Congress. Indeed this is the question many senior Congress leaders are asking themselves, as they helplessly watch the unfolding drama in Rajasthan. It looks as if Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot might manage to survive the present crisis, but the question of survival remains for the Congress. With such fragile majority, Gehlot will not find it easy to keep the flock together even if he manages to win the trust vote.

By sending federal militarized units in fascist-like fashion into major cities to attack peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrators, President Donald Trump is assaulting democracy and setting a dangerous precedent less than 100 days before the November elections.

This is for the first time during the 6 years of Narendra Modi rule, the BJP has been put on defensive. While triggering split in the Rajasthan Congress the top leadership of BJP was sure that like its earlier coups this time too it would succeed with a worthless Congress raising its hand in despair.

Departing from usual diplomatic norms, the Chinese envoy in Nepal, Hou Yanqi, is openly intervening in the domestic politics of Nepal. She has been tasked by her bosses in Beijing to bring about somehow, anyhow, a rapprochement between the two squabbling factions of the ruling Nepal Communist Party(NCP), one led by Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli and the other by Pushpa Kumar Dahal “Prachanda”, a former prime minister and now a co-chairperson of the NCP along with Oli. The two are now at daggers drawn, each trying to oust the other. China is desperately trying to keep the NCP united and avert a split in the party. Oli has publicly threatened to split the party.

Another round of disquiet on the Himalayan borders might just as well break out, going by indications at present. As perceived, the immediate threat is that China is not sticking to the understanding reached on disengagement and moving troops back from respective positions to status quo ante the May 5 clashes. The troops were to be moved back create a sort of buffer zone.

New Delhi: World champion PV Sindhu says that beating 2012 Olympic champion Li Xuerui was the turning point of her career.

In July 2020, the popular streaming platform, Netflix, released the reality-documentary show, Indian Matchmaking, to a global audience. The show follows the journey of a Mumbai-based matchmaker who arranges marriage alliances between wealthy families in India and the US. In one scene, Akshay, a Bombay boy, talks about a prospective wife: “If she’s busy with her work, who’s going to take care of the kids and all?”

The same lackadaisical approach of the rulers over spending on health continues. COVID-19 infection and related deaths have ever been increasing. In absence of health facilities, governments resorted to lockdowns, which crippled the world economy and created an unprecedented humanitarian crisis of survival and hunger. This cost is too high to bear compared to a world without lockdown which will need only an average ten-fold increase in the present meager spending on health sector to respond to COVID-19 crisis, and also any other future crisis. Not to increase spending and resorting to only lockdowns due to capacity constraints will not be tenable in the long run.