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With its validation on April 14 by the Constitutional Council, Emmanuel Macron’s government has finally passed its legislation to raise the pension age to sixty-four. Its controversial passage into law has prompted vast opposition: refinery workers have held petrol shipments hostage, dockers have blocked deliveries, and a sustained strike by garbage collectors left uncollected bags piling up on the streets of Paris for weeks. So what are the government’s next steps?

Recently, OPEC and some non-OPEC countries, including Russia, announced oil output cut of around 1.16 million barrels per day. This move will bring the total volume of oil cut by OPEC + to 3.66 million bpd, according to Reuter’s estimation. Eventually, the output reduction could lift oil prices by US $ 10 per barrel, according to Pickering Energy Partners. The voluntary cut will start from May and continue till the end of the year.

In 1938, there were public bonfires of forbidden books in Italy. Militia was always present in such events to help keeping alive the flames and restrain any interruption. In fact, Mussolini had contended that “fascism requires military journalism”. In fascist Italy, the role of Mussolini as the prime censor was visible quite openly. Usually whenever there was the order to impose total blackout on a topic, or to pull out a story from the press, it was immediately organized and it happened almost every day.

There are around 5 million stray cattle roaming the streets of India. The cow is a sacred—and revered—animal in Hinduism. But stray cattle, primarily abandoned males, cause havoc in the country. Cattle have been reported to attack people, cause traffic accidents and spread diseases.

The Hakki-Pikki!, who are they? The 2011 census put the Hakki-Pikki population at 11,892. The last decade must have seen the number rise. Suffice to say that the Hakki-Pikki are in the news because 31 Hakki-Pikki are stranded in strife-torn Sudan amid allegations that India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar isn’t turning the world upside-down to bring them back to what was once the happy hunting grounds of the Hakki-Pikki tribe.

Few will now remember there was a time when family planning and population control were highly visible policy platforms. Of all people, highly respected industrialist, JRD Tata, then heading the Tata group, was one of the leading figures to talk about the need for population control.

Recently, numerous articles have been written on the demise of the dollar. The argument is that China, the second largest economy after the US, is increasingly convincing the world’s largest suppliers of energy, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela to trade in Chinese Yuan. This, according to the commentators, will usher in the demise of the ‘petrodollar’; it would then be a matter of time before the US economy crumbles, they argue.

There is much talk about opposition unity these days. Such talk has gathered momentum after a series of meetings of various leaders of opposition parties. This comes in the background of the united stand of eighteen opposition parties in parliament during the second half of the budget session, where they all demanded a joint parliamentary committee on the Hindenburg report on the Adani group and also unitedly opposed the ED-CBI targeting of leaders of the opposition.

The United States of America is steadily losing its diplomatic battle in the Middle East against China as more and more warring nations in the region are looking to China for acting as the facilitator for establishing peace in the region. After the big success of brokering a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, China has shown interest in helping the two warring states Israel and Palestine to hold peace talks again.

New Delhi: Defending champions ONGC retained the Men’s Team Title beating IOCL 3-1 while IOCL kept the Women’s team title piping OIL 3-2 in the 41st PSPB Inter Unit Table Tennis Tournament hosted by EIL at the Indira Gandhi Stadium Complex here on Wednesday. ONGC also wrapped up the Veterans Team Title beating HPCL 3-0.