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Through the “Church House Declaration” around 165 British MPs from across the parties have pledged to form alternative parliament in case the Prime Minister Boris Johnson goes ahead with his plan to prorogue the parliament in the event of Boris failing to make a no-deal Brexit happen.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Senior Congress leader from Kerala, Shashi Tharoor, finds himself in the eye of a raging political storm.

The Congress party has been reduced to being a confederation of leaders ever since president Rahul Gandhi announced he was stepping down following a near rout in the elections, with lack of homogeneity becoming a least common denominator. There is a palpable loss of the sense of balance, with each one pulling in a different direction.

China has had a chance to learn all the details of the West’s reaction to Iran’s proposal to lift the oil embargo in exchange for maintaining the nuclear deal. After making a stop in Biarritz, France, where, on the sidelines of the G7 summit, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif spoke to the president and foreign minister of France and met with senior British and German diplomats and advisers, he went to Beijing.

Jeremy Corbyn is rallying all available forces in Westminster to bring down Boris Johnson as he heads for crunch talks with other opposition party leaders at noon and demands a general election. The Labour leader will re-emphasise the need for an election as “the simplest and most democratic way” to stop a no-deal Brexit.

Global investors hailed China’s new Foreign Investment Law (FIL) a breakthrough to resuscitate the Chinese sagging foreign investment, even though many commentators are dubious on actual implementation. Foreign investment has been an important boost for Chinese economy.

Despite the fact that senior citizens have contributed through their life to the nation’s building, healthcare for them remains a big challenge. The National Health Policy recognizes growing need for palliative and rehabilitative care for all geriatric illnesses and advocates the continuity of care across all levels. The question however is how all this is going to be met with. The Ayushman Bharat has serious limitations. It provides healthcare coverage to only 40 per cent of the population, that too for indoor care only. This means 60 per cent of the population is left out of this insurance scheme of five lakh rupees for a family. It is also a well-known fact that 70 per cent of the out of pocket expenditure on health is on outpatient care. This is applicable more to the geriatric group because a person in this age group is faced with the diseases of chronic nature, for which he/she has to pay frequent visits to the outpatient clinics.

India needs to manage water for 17 per cent population of the world but has only 4 per cent of world’s freshwater resources. Though annual utilizable water is 690 BCM from surface water sources and 447 BCM from groundwater, water supply is so mismanaged that about two lakh people die every year due to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene. The burden of unsafe water on individual is 40 times higher than in China, and 12 times higher than even Sri Lanka. With huge amount of waste water generated annually, mismanagement of waste water contaminating both surface and ground water, lack of liquid waste management, the poor sanitation conditions and habits contributed a significant portion of population suffering from water-borne diseases.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s comeback as the party chief recently might have shut up the young and old in the party about who should replace Rahul Gandhi, but she has her task cut out. It is more than a fortnight since she took over. It is not as if Sonia does not know the problems and challenges ahead as she has been the president of the party for almost two decades and has seen its highs and lows. In 1998, she took over the party when it was at its lowest ebb with many Congress leaders leaving the party, but she was able to arrest the tendency. She even brought the party back to power in 2004 and also in 2009. Once again Sonia has taken the leadership when the party is totally demoralized after its humiliating defeat in the 2019 polls and once again there is erosion of party workers and leaders. But 2019 is not 1998.

NEW DELHI: New Delhi and Moscow are negotiating the organisation of the India-based production of semi-cryogenic rocket engines using Russian technology for the South Asian country’s space programme, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan said in an interview.