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Last month, Afghanistan faced another major natural disaster with severe flooding in the northern provinces of Badakhshan, Baghlan, and Takhar. It is estimated that hundreds of people lost their lives and thousands were forced to leave their homes. This recent disaster follows a series of earthquakes in the western parts of Afghanistan late last year, which resulted in at least 2,000 deaths and left 150,000 people in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

The news that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, has been invited to address joint session of US Congress has come at a time when the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking warrants against Netanyahu and other Israeli and Hamas leaders for "war crimes." This invitation gives him the status of an honoured guest for which he is very excited as per the reports. As head of the government of Israel he is responsible for the death and misery of thousands of hapless children and women. Inviting him to address the Congress session has exposed the hypocrisy of the US administration that has been talking of humanitarian assistance to the war affected people on one side and supplying huge cache of arms to Israel in the name of self-defence from Hamas.

PARIS: It seems almost a lifetime ago. France’s elections in spring 2022 saw the rise of a united-left slate, the New Ecological and Social Popular Union (NUPES), which not only repeatedly topped polls but denied Emmanuel Macron a majority in the National Assembly. Last year, his government seemed to be on the ropes, faced with a mass movement against a rise in the pension age. But as France again heads to the polls for the European elections this June 9, the Left is in a precarious condition.

India witnessed rising contractualisation, privatization and wage deceleration in the public and private sectors during the last ten years from 2014 to 2024. In 2014, during the last year of the UPA government, the top one percent of Indians had 21.4 percent income share, which went up to 22.6 percent in 2022 and their wealth share increased from 30.4 percent to 40.1 percent over the ten years of RSS Pariwar union government. The greater rise in the wealth, compared with the income share of the top one percent reflects acceleration of accumulation of capital under the current fascist dispensation.

It may be time for an Anna Hazare-type agitation to reclaim the integrity and independence of the Election Commission, completely compromised by the incumbent commission like never before.

Apprehensions and expectations of India’s Central Trade Unions (CTUs) have reached their climax at the completion of the Lok Sabha elections on June 1, 2024. Since the fate of trade unionism and the workers’ rights amidst the rising working poverty in the country much depends on the outcome of the election result on June 4, CTUs have reiterated their demands, especially withdrawal of the four controversial labour codes, and asked the workers to be ready to continue their struggle, if the newly constituted government does not meet their demands.

India’s latest GDP figures could not have come at a better time for the ruling party BJP.. As the final phase of parliamentary voting draws to an end, the GDP figures for 2023-24 at 8.2 per cent show a hefty growth rate of the Indian economy. If the BJP led NDA wins in the polls, which is the most probable event, the financial market could be predicted to soar high.

Narendra Modi attempting to sully the dignity of Mahatma Gandhi by saying that nobody knew Gandhi in post-colonial India until British film maker Richard Attenborough's Academy Award-winning 1982 ‘Gandhi’ was released, is undoubtedly the worst nature of conduct to demean him. It’s a matter of shame for Gujarat that Modi was unaware of the global stature of Gandhi, a fellow Gujarati. However, distortion of historical facts is second nature to the RSS of thought.

So the Congress goes ahead and boycotts the exit polls in the TV studios post the last vote cast in seven states and Chandigarh in the 7th phase of the 2024 elections and the main opposition party is missed. The fact of the matter was, the Congress just couldn’t trust the harbingers of glad tidings to the man meditating on the Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanyakumari. The Congress saw not defeat but deceit awaiting the INDIA bloc in the exit polls on the evening of June 1.

This correspondent has covered Lok Sabha elections right from 1962. Polls in 1962 were not delinked. The big news then was Dr K N Katju, who was chief minister of newly formed state—Madhya Pradesh— was defeated by an unknown Vadiya from Jaora constituency. Though Dr. Katju was a Kashmiri he always claimed he originally came from Jaora, a town in Madhya Pradesh.