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The Loot of the huge funds and jewelleries from the coffers of Ram Mandir Trust has led to intensification of factional battles between the VHP and the RSS on the one hand and the RSS-BJP on the other. Interestingly, insiders say that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken his position supporting the VHP as against the RSS in this tussle within the Hindutva eco-system.

Monsoon flooded large part of the country during the first eight days of July with 42 per cent above-normal rainfall causing heavy loss of lives and property. Rain deficit in June was 40 per cent. Northwest, central and western India suffered from the excess rains. The eastern, northeastern and central regions suffered the most from deficit rainfall. The deficient rainfall in June and heavy rainfall in the first week of July have thus created multiple challenges and put the country’s preparedness to test.

History has an uncanny habit of mocking long-term predictions. Thirty years ago, in the mid-1990s, few economists imagined that China would become the world's manufacturing powerhouse, accounting for nearly a third of global industrial output. Equally, few believed India, then still wrestling with the after-effects of its 1991 balance-of-payments crisis, would emerge as one of the world's fastest-growing major economies and the fourth largest by GDP.

KOLKATA: Prabhas Mondal's death in police firing in Baruipur in West Bengal on early Wednesday after he allegedly tried to escape snatching fire arm from a policeman is a major police administration lapse. The deceased was an accused in the rape and murder of a minor. His killing signals the adoption of the first BJP led state government in Bengal of the encounter policy of the Uttar Pradesh government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Donald Trump turned NATO's Ankara summit into a one-man show - reviving Iran hostilities, threatening Spain, demanding Greenland, and needling allies - while Secretary-General Mark Rutte's flattery-and-spending strategy kept the alliance intact. The summit exposed a NATO that survives not through unity, but through the careful, anxious management of one man's moods.

The process of decolonisation in India was initiated, and the Constitution was drawn up, to ensure an equilibrium based on the principle of checks and balances between the three organs of the state – legislature, executive and judiciary.

The impact of natural disasters, climate crises and environmental changes is never experienced equally across society. Children, women and economically vulnerable communities often bear the greatest burden of such crises. For children, rising temperatures are not merely a matter of seasonal discomfort; they directly affect their health, education, mental development and future. Climate change and extreme heat, therefore, can no longer be viewed only through an environmental lens. They must also be understood as critical child rights and child development concerns.

LONDON: NATO leaders abasing themselves before Donald Trump in Ankara undermine claims that the military spending splurge makes us more independent of Washington.

The Narendra Modi government’s position on fuel prices now looks less like prudent caution and more like an overly defensive reading of a market that has already absorbed much of the Iran-US risk. The more calibrated question, therefore, is not whether New Delhi is right to watch the West Asian security situation, but whether a two-month wait before reassessing retail fuel prices is justified when crude has failed to sustain a meaningful geopolitical premium.

North India's demographic size and Hindi-Hindu majority have long helped propel RSS’s ideological mission and the electoral dominance of the BJP since 2014, such as unifying the Hindu majority and advancing a unified cultural identity of “Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan”. While the RSS aims to deform the secular and socialist foundations of the Indian constitution, it intends to use ‘delimitation’ as the first constitutional step to change the basic character and identity of India to Hindu Rashtra.