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Union Government in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has issued extraordinary and unprecedentedly bizarre orders allocating directly departmental publicity portfolios to the Indian Information Service (IIS) personnel in the rank and pay of Additional Secretary (Director General) and Joint Secretary (Additional Director General) in the Press Information Bureau (PIB), bypassing its head since bombastically redesignated as Principal Director General (Media & Communication) PDG (M &C) from earlier professional designation as Principal Information Officer (PIO).

The determination of the United States’ labor movement to come out on the winning side of this year’s election battles was strongly reflected at Houston at discussions during last weekend’s AFL-CIO Martin Luther King conference.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A desperate Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) unit in Kerala has hit upon a new strategy to destabilize the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front(LDF) in the State.

What is the Congress getting into by seemingly joining hands with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s rabidly Hindutva leader Pravinbhai Togadia? Does Congress president and Shiv bhakt Rahul Gandhi even know which of the 36 million Hindu gods Togadia prays to? Maybe it is a god who might be in the crosshair of Lord Shiva’s trident and Hindu gods do keep their rivalry alive.

For television news channels to brand the entire Rajput community ‘fringe’ is nothing short of despicable. Tags such as ‘Fringe Singed’ and ‘Apex Court Slaps Fringe’ after the Supreme Court lifted the ban on Padmavaat on Thursday in BJP-ruled states only provoke the agitating Rajputs further. And at the India Today Conclave in Hyderabad the same day, actor Prakash Raj used the ‘fringe’ tag to hit out at those opposed to Padmavaat, produced by a MukeshAmbani-owned company.

The central committee of the CPI(M) is currently in session in Kolkata to finalise its draft political resolution for the coming Party Congress at Hyderabad from April 18 to 22 this year.The 91 wise members of the CC are supposed to assess the latest political developments including the outcome of the recent assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal and also the taking over of the Congress Presidency officially by Rahul Gandhi. The CPI(M) has now to deal with this 47 year old fifth generation Nehru dynasty representative and the CC members have to decide whether they could deal with Rahul and his policies and work out a sort of collaboration to fight the BJP and the saffron forces unitedly in the2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Last month news website Politico published an extraordinary leaked US government document concerning US foreign policy.Written for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by his senior policy adviser Brian Hook, the confidential May 2017 memo advises that “the US should use human rights as a club against its adversaries, like Iran, China and North Korea, while giving a pass to repressive allies like the Philippines, Egypt and Saudi Arabia,” Politico summarised.

The ambitious 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — adopted by world leaders in September 2015 at a historic UN Summit — has hit the road block due to the nationwide energy crisis in land-locked Afghanistan, caused by the decision to cut off of power supply by its northern neighbour Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan demands a cent per cent increase in the export price of energy. Afghan federal authorities contest the claim as a breach of inked agreement, meaning that the war-ravaged country being blackmailed by a neighbour.

DUBAI: Indians bought property worth Rs42,000 crore in Dubai from January 2016 to June 2017, making them yet again the top foreign property investors in the emirate, statistics released by the Dubai Land Department revealed.

The word “appropriate” is in the eye of speculation after an order passed by a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra on the PIL seeking an independent probe into the death of special CBI judge B H Loya said documents be “put up before an appropriate bench”.