View Articles

WASHINGTON: Attempting to deflect attention from his criminal indictment on charges of violating the Espionage Act, former President Donald Trump is escalating his use of anti-communist and anti-Semitic red-baiting rhetoric to smear opponents and investigators.

If Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee's detractors have often labelled her political actions to be sans rhyme or reason, she always had the last laugh. Kicking off TMC's panchayat poll campaign from north Bengal is a case in point.

On September 6, 2019, the aspirations of more than a billion individuals were reliant on a mission that was on its way to the dark side of the Moon—an area that is perpetually shrouded in darkness. Chandrayaan-2’s Vikram lander was travelling to its destination more than 384,400 km away from Earth. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) mission control experienced a change in atmosphere to one of gloom when the spacecraft went missing. Now, close to four years later, India is about to make another attempt.

If cars and sports utility vehicles can win general elections, then Bharat Rashtra Samithi President K Chandrasekhar Rao is already the Prime Minister! KCR, as he is called, led a convoy of 600 cars & SUVs into Maharashtra on Monday and made jittery a clutch of top Maharashtra politicians. Why, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned KCR in his UCC-Pasmanda speech in Bhopal! Fact is, KCR is out in the open mounting his own challenge to the Prime Minister and the BJP, and to hell with opposition parties' conclaves!

Even the fragrance of the pleasant words that were bestowed upon Narendra Modi before his departure from the United States had faded, the Indian prime minister had to taste the bitter bite of American anger at some of his cabinet ministers and senior BJP leaders unleashing online harassment of journalist Sabrina Siddiqui, who at the press meet at White House had dared to ask Modi an uncomfortable question. Siddiqui had asked: “Mr. Prime Minister, India has long prided itself as the world’s largest democracy, but there are many human rights groups who say that your government has discriminated against religious minorities and sought to silence its critics… What steps are you and your government willing to take to improve the rights of Muslims and other religious minorities in your country and uphold free speech?”

A recent poll of Arab public opinion suggests US credibility has taken a hit, but all is not lost. That is if the United States realizes that Middle Easterners judge the US on glaring inconsistencies in its domestic and foreign policies rather than on its cultural, technological, and economic attributes.

There is jubilation all over in BJP circles and the Indian media after the recent visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to United States, where he got a rousing welcome. This is no doubt a landmark bilateral visit which has laid the foundation for taking Indo-US relations to a new high. India is looking for technology and United States is looking for a large market in a slowing global economy and strained Sino-US relations. It is therefore interesting to note how China sees this Indo-US relations that has been put on high pedestal now in the emerging geo-politics.

The standard definition of crony capitalism is the existence of an economic system characterised by mutually advantageous relationships between business leaders and government officials. Going by this, at least two major decisions this week are India-centric, though with linkages to domestic as well as international. The International Cricket Council ICC), over which the Indian Board of Cricket Control (BCCI) has virtual tutelage, thanks to the latter’s clout over the game on account of its status as the body controlling the sport in the world’s biggest cricket playing nation, has selected Ahmedabad as the venue for the inaugural as well as the final matches along with the event’s most sought after match between India and Pakistan.

New Delhi: Defending champion India thrashed Japan 62-17 for its third straight emphatic win at the Asian Kabaddi Championship in Busan, Korea on Wednesday.

From its outset, Toronto’s mayoral election has been full of surprises — the first of them being that it happened at all. Last October, as turnout plummeted to a record low, incumbent mayor John Tory was reelected with a whopping 62 percent of the vote. An ally of conservative premier Doug Ford, who had just gifted him with tailor-made strong mayor powers, Tory looked poised to govern the city for as long as he wanted, effectively consolidating a right-wing stranglehold on Canada’s largest city for the foreseeable future.