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People on both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border have lot in common likings including sporting events in which players of the two countries pit their playing skills against each other together with tucking into a plate of fragrant basmati rice. Giving a leg up to Basmati rice produced in India, it's Minimum Export Price (MEP) has recently been removed.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Left Democratic Front (LDF)-backed Independent MLA P V Anvar seems to have lost his balance and sense of proportion.

BERLIN: A day before last Sunday’s vote for a new parliament in the east German state of Brandenburg, opinion polls had the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the far-right AfD neck and neck. The SPD finished up on 30.9 per cent, with the AfD on 29.2 per cent. The Christian Democrats slumped to 12.1 per cent, while the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance — Reason and Justice (BSW), on its first outing, won 13.5 per cent.

Election campaigns for all participating political parties in the ongoing Jammu and Kashmir Vidhan Sabha election has unquestionably centred round the chief issue – restoration of the abrogated Article 370 of the Constitution of India and the lost statehood of this Union Territory. The electoral battle has been turning into a struggle for re-establishing political relevance in Jammu and Kashmir for two national parties – BJP and Congress, two regional parties National Conference (NC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and a new entrant Engineer Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) that vowed to defeat BJP’s ‘New Kashmir’ Agenda. Among them there are large number of allegedly proxy candidates of the BJP, and independents supported by Jamaat-e-Islami.

BJP's Mandi MP, actor Kangana Ranaut, is a raw nerve in the BJP's thick skin and a bundle of apprehension for party president JP Nadda, who cannot seem to decide whether she is in-disciplinable or indispensable? Is Kangana Ranaut a "Congressi" at heart? For, she sounds like she is batting for the Congress with statements that the BJP cannot defend, comments that are harmful to the party and its top brass.

LUCKNOW: Even though, the dates for the by polls to the Uttar Pradesh assembly are not out, but all major political parties are gearing up for elections to 10 assembly seats. Since the outcome of these by-elections will decide the mood of the political parties and leaders for 2027 assembly elections, BJP, Samajwadi Party, BSP and Congress are mobilising all resources to ensure the victory of their candidates.

How has China become an awe-inspiring manufacturing powerhouse backed by crude steel capacity of 1.078 billion tonnes and aluminium smelting capacity of 45.19 million tonnes? Any number of dissertations on the subject analysing the economic and political factors propelling the country’s rapid industrialization since the late 20th century are available. All scholarly inquiries into the subject will credit the “economic miracle” to Deng Xiaoping, the unquestioned leader of the People’s Republic of China for over a decade up to November 1989. The architect of modern China created favourable condition for foreign investment through an “open door policy.” China’s ascendance to being the world’s second largest economy is largely due to Deng era reforms.

As Terence McKenna said that culture is a mass hallucination, likewise the annual festival of Durga Puja is typically an immersive carnival of food, music, community get-togethers and cultural programmes that holds West Bengal in its thrall for five hedonistic days and nights. With Kolkata as its epicentre, the jamboree is celebrated all over the globe – from Lucknow to London, and from Bahrain to the Bahamas. Bengalis everywhere revel in gaiety during these days. This year, the festival spans from October 9 to 12.

Ministerial utterances on policy matters are pointers to a profound shift but sometimes drops more than a broad hint about an impending change in the socio-political landscape if utterance of France' s interior minister, Bruno Retailleau on immigration is anything to go by.

LONDON: Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is not Tony Blair’s. The lessons from its troubled conference last week demonstrate this in multiple ways. Some mark positive differences from the last Labour government. Then TUC leader John Monks said unions were treated as “embarrassing elderly relatives” by Blair; now they are clearly influential actors within Labour, helping to shape legislation — most obviously in the case of the New Deal for Workers employment rights package.