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Pakistan’s leading industrialist Mian Mohammed Mansha of the Nishant conglomerate which has $30 billion in assets has said that trade relations between India and Pakistan should resume. “I feel very passionately that we need to get our things sorted out with India. Now whatever the issues that are impeding, let them be there. But once they come to one another’s country, through trade, tourism – religious tourism or normal tourism — I think the doors will start opening,” Mansha was reported as saying by The Indian Express on April 17.

The consolidation of the Hindus is at breakneck speed. The Hindutva forces at play have no competition. There is nothing to match the right wing’s polarization strategy. And the tactics employed are striking a chord with the Hindus. It’s being driven home that time is fast running out for the Hindu way of life unless he pulls up his socks.

KOLKATA: For West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, her party’s by-election win announced last Saturday in the Asansol (Lok Sabha) and Ballygunge (Assembly) seats was the best news in some time. Of late the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) had been facing some truly torrid times over repeated administrative failures in maintaining law and order. Group murders and a slew of never ending rapes rekindled a nation-wide infamy for the state.

The RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, has spelt out the geographical contours of the proposed Hindu rashtra along with the warning that those opposing the Akhand Bharat concept will either be pushed aside or eliminated.

There is virtually a scramble for coal from non-Russian sources following a self-imposed ban by the European Union on coal imports from Putin’s sanctions-hit country. But as far as New Delhi is concerned, the opportunity will go abegging as India is by itself struggling to tie up enough supplies.

The international financial system governed by western powers no longer offers safety to foreign currency deposits in their chests from other parts of the world. Even foreign private deposits and investments in assets are being frozen. The latest financial sanction imposed on Russia and its oligarchs freezing their accounts may appear to be the severest, but the United States has always been happy to pull financial trigger whenever its strategic interest is challenged by any government in the world. This time, the US, European Union and Japan barred Russia’s central bank from tapping into billions of foreign reserves Moscow had been saving up in their banks. Last year, the US impounded the Afghanistan central bank’s foreign reserves in order to prevent the Taliban from accessing the funds after it seized the power in the country. Earlier, the US froze foreign exchange reserves of Iran, Syria and Venezuela. In fact, US Dollar assets have become very political.

Charges and counter-charges about war crimes and genocide are being used by those on both sides of the war in Ukraine who are intent on minimizing diplomacy and emphasizing warfare.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine spotlights seemingly widening differences between the United States and its closest Middle Eastern allies, sparking eulogies for an era of bygone American regional dominance.

Eminent journalist P Sainath deserves praise for reminding all via Twitter of the 200th anniversary of Mirat-ul-Akhbar, the Persian newspaper founded and edited by Raja Rammohun Roy, on 12 April, 1822. Rammohun, Sainath rightly noted, wrote a “brilliant editorial protesting the death of Pratap Narayan Das who died from a whipping ordered by the Judge of what is now Comilla in Bangladesh”. It was translated and carried in English papers. For that, John Hayes was tried by the Supreme Court of India. The weekly had to be shut down. He brought out Sangbad Kaumudi later.

The sinking of the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea flotilla MOSKVA is a significant turning point in the Ukraine war and also a lesson for military planners across the world.