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Something always is happening with West Bengal Governors. There was Jagdeep Dhankar who is now Vice President and whose mimicry by a Trinamool Congress leader has immortalized Dhankar whether he likes it or not. Now, there’s Governor CV Ananda Bose. And, by gosh, Ananda Bose can be as chillingly fiery like the Bose whose surname he sports. Governor Bose Friday gave a dressing down to — of all the VVIPs in Kolkata — Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and he continues to inhale and exhale.

A 16-month-old boy was playing in a splash pad at a country club in Little Rock, Arkansas, this summer when water containing a very rare and deadly brain-eating amoeba went up his nose. He died a few days later in the hospital. The toddler wasn’t the first person in the United States to contract the freshwater amoeba, Naegleriafowleri, this year. In February, a man in Florida died after rinsing his sinuses with unboiled water — the first Naegleriafowleri-linked death to occur in winter in the U.S.

The Enforcement Directorate’s report alleging police ‘failure’ to rescue its sleuths at Sarberia in North 24-Parganas, from the murderous attack of the angry mob on Friday morning and Governor C V Anand Bose’s threat – “I reserve all my constitutional options for appropriate action at appropriate moment”–are quite ominous and certainly do not resonate the real nature of the incident.

Every court judgment is supposed to be delivered without ‘fear or favour’ and ‘affection or ill-will’, but insights provided by Chief Justice of India Justice D Y Chandrachud on the Ayodhya Ram Mandir land judgment reveal how some of the disapproved tendencies did creep into the making of the final verdict. With the consecration of the Ram Temple only days away, every political party except the BJP is having to deal with the same dilemma.

The RSS leadership is happy that its electoral strategy has paid rich dividend in three states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in just concluded assembly elections Now the RSS chief is concentrating on Bihar, Bengal and Odisha taking in view the coming Lok Sabha polls. Apart it is the threat perception of Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra that will traverse through 110 districts, about 100 Lok Sabha seats and 337 assembly segments, starting on January 14, that has compelled RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat to knock at the doors of prominent personalities, intellectuals and academics in the three states.

The expansion of civilian nuclear cooperation between India and Russia was decided upon during External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s visit to Moscow in December 2023. Moscow is prepared to offer India its technological knowhow to develop a compact modular reactor that can generate power in capacities ranging from 75 MW to 300 MW.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s sister Y S Sharmila is not what her name suggests—shy, placid… She has been a rebel after a cause, and so has done what she had set out to do, become a part of the Congress—which was her father Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s party—with Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Gandhi family scion Rahul Gandhi welcoming her into the fold.

Argentina’s new president Javier Milei proposes to use US dollars as the currency of his country, while abolishing its central bank altogether. What is involved in this proposal is not just maintaining a fixed exchange rate between the dollar and the domestic currency, but an abolition of the domestic currency altogether. The maintenance of a fixed exchange rate does not preclude the central bank of the country printing more of the domestic currency whenever there is a demand for more domestic currency, while using an array of instruments to ensure that there is no shift to dollars from the domestic currency so that its exchange rate remains fixed; but “dollarisation” means a complete shift to dollars by abolishing both the domestic currency and the central bank that is normally entrusted with the responsibility of printing it.

On January 7, 2024, Bangladesh will hold general elections. These elections are of great importance for Bangladesh, both domestically and internationally. In the run-up to the election, Nobel Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus, a critic of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was sentenced to six months in prison on charges of violating labor laws. Most people believe that this sentence was politically motivated.

It is unfortunate that the climate change and global warming are not getting the attention it deserves. Global conferences set long term goals, which are too little too late. UN convention on climate change comes out with targets year after year and latest global conference, CoP28 held in December last has again come out with some targets to achieve near net zero emission of methane and drastic reduction in use of fossil fuel by 2050. All these are fine but the question is whether the world will be liveable by then in view of massive destruction floods and droughts cause to humanity. Is global administration really serious or is it that these conferences end up as mere talking shop.