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KOLKATA: Ground realities in Manipur do suggest that the Union home ministry and the state ministry headed by Yumnam Khemchand Singh, which is in office since February 4, are yet to succeed in identifying a clear roadmap for reconciling inter-community political differences and restoring normalcy. Union home minister Amit Shah has held two security situation review meetings, first on March 20 and the second on July 4, after a popular ministry assumed office after 356 days of President’s rule. Shah appears to be counting heavily on the role of the security establishment in restoring law and order. Which in the given situation means he wants the state government to take care of the complex political issues.

The alleged theft of donations from the Ayodhya Ram Temple has pushed a long-simmering question into the national foreground: who should guard the wealth of religious institutions when faith, money and power converge without adequate public accountability?

Notwithstanding its best efforts in projecting its Baudhik Pramukhs (intellectual chiefs),Vicharaks and Prajna Pravah (overarching "intellectual wing" of the RSS that acts as a think-tank for scholars, academics, and intellectuals), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is unhappy with the number of Hindus in its formal membership umbrella. The RSS has decided to focus on the youths to secure long-term ideological continuity, and build a dedicated volunteer base, to counteract perceived cultural disconnects in an increasingly digital era.

NEW YORK: In 1965, a new law scrapped America's whites-only immigration quota system, and the trickle of Indians into the United States began the slow climb toward becoming a flood.

The three day visit of the Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to India from July 1 to 3 has drawn big attention in Chinese media with experts analyzing whether India is joining Japan led move for an Indo-Pacific security bloc as a part of Japan’s anti-China strategy.

NEW YORK: Two hundred and fifty years ago this July 4th, a group of colonial merchants, lawyers, and planters put their names to a piece of parchment that shook the world. They declared, in the most radical language their age could imagine, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed—and that when any government becomes destructive of that end, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.

NEW YORK: An inflatable frog has been pepper-sprayed, spawning (sorry) an army of affinity frogs and other creatures real and fictional, protesting at the often violent arrests of immigrants. A clarinettist in a brass band has been assaulted and arrested, abbreviations have been outlawed and naked bicycle riders are swarming our streets. If it looks like the United States has gone mad, that’s because it probably has.

Every war leaves behind shattered cities, broken societies and grieving families. But some wars destroy something less visible yet infinitely more consequential: faith in the institutions created to prevent humanity from repeating history's darkest chapters. The latest report of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is therefore more than another meticulous chronicle of atrocities. It is a stark reminder that the international system is steadily losing either the ability—or the political will—to enforce the principles upon which it claims to rest.

There is a photograph that has, by now, become a genre unto itself: Narendra Modi, garlanded or embracing, disembarking from an Air India One flight onto a red carpet somewhere between Washington and Abu Dhabi, Tokyo and Rio. Multiply that image by 102 and you have the defining visual record of India's most travelled prime minister — a leader who, as of June 2026, has undertaken 102 international trips to 81 countries since 2014, eclipsing even Indira Gandhi's well-worn passport.

KOLKATA: West Bengal Public Safety and Control of Anti-Socials Bill has been passed and enacted into law It permits the state to detain individuals deemed to be a threat to public safety without trial. Under its provisions, habitual offenders can be barred from entering specific districts for a year. The state is empowered to confiscate property related to organised crime. Scams and extortion rackets are being unearthed daily in West Bengal. Together with it, the focus is also on such property built from these ill gotten gains.