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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala has forcefully rejected the false claims being made by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the Centre’s financial assistance to the State Government.

It would be presumptuous to say that the elections to the five-state assemblies are a semi-final clatter for Prime Minister Narendra Modi; but one thing is certain that the peoples’ verdict for these elections will outline the political future of Rahul Gandhi.

Telangana votes on November 30. Two days later votes cast will be counted and by afternoon of the same day, which party will be ruling Telangana would be known. If it is the Bharatiya Janata Party, the party has promised an Other Backward Caste Chief Minister. The party will also end “Muslim Reservation”. This requiem to Muslim quota was an election promise of the BJP. It certainly led to communal polarization.

Nearly three million workers die every year due to work-related accidents and diseases, an increase of more than 5 per cent compared to 2015, according to new ILO estimates. The toll underscores the persistent challenges in safeguarding the health and safety of workers, globally.

In 2015, the late Union external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj placed two telephone calls to the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia on March 27 and 29 seeking a safe passage for Indians stuck in war-torn Yemen. Following the Arab Spring in 2011, Yemen was grappling with instability. Armed raids led by Houthi rebels, reportedly backed by Iran, were trying to gain control over the country and dislodge the government backed by a Saudi Arabia-led coalition of countries.

Crypto exchange Binance's co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao resigned on November 22 after the federal judges found his company guilty of violating U.S. anti-money laundering and sanction laws. The world's largest crypto exchange was charged with not reporting over 100,000 suspicious transactions involving terror organizations, including Hamas, al Qaeda, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Changpeng Zhao, who is popularly known as C.Z. and has been practically the face of the cryptocurrency industry over the past five years, has agreed to a whopping $4 billion in fines.

It is a morning knock but is no less sinister than a midnight one as Dublin microbiologist Eilish Stack comes face to face with state's totalitarianism as powers that seek to interrogate her trade unionist husband Larry. It is in this way Paul Lynch, an Irish author begins the book ’Prophet Song’ in the backdrop of Dublin's descent into dystopia. The book just got the Booker Prize for this year.

“If the people are mobilized, this government will not be overthrown. The reforms will go ahead. The strategy is to mobilize, we want people to organize themselves.” This was Gustavo Petro’s explicit vow to the crowd gathered in Bogotá’s Plaza Bolívar last month.

One may not have heard of the area of international law known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), through which private corporations are able to sue governments that implement legislation that constrains their profits. But this private parallel legal infrastructure is one of the greatest threats to progressive governments all over the world.

The announcement of a prisoner swap deal between warring Hamas and Israel mediated by Qatar and Egypt and agreed by Israel, Hamas and the United States may have led to a temporary armistice in the region and selective exchange of captives from both the sides , the issue of a viable state of Palestine and the status of the so-called Palestinian Authority, however, continue to remain opaque. The fight between Palestinian terror groups and Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is far from being over.