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Gurugram: Veer Ahlawat, Angad Cheema and Honey Baisoya kept home challenge alive even as Germany’s Yannik Paul remained in the lead at the end of the third and penultimate round of the $2 million Hero Indian Open at the DLF Golf and Country club here on Saturday.

It’s an exciting and frustrating time to be a socialist in the United States of America. On the one hand, the two presidential bids launched by Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 helped precipitate a resurgence of anti-capitalist political organization and labour militancy, with organizations like Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Starbucks Workers United racking up electoral and unionization wins across the nation. On the other hand, economic inequality still plagues us, and there’s no sign of meaningful change coming from Congress anytime soon.

A year into the brutal war in Ukraine, we face a choice. We can continue to flood armaments into a deadlocked yet bloody conflict while prices soar and our governments claim there is no money for pay or public services. Or we can recognise that battlefield victory is a chimaera and that negotiations are the only way to prevent Ukraine being the first battlefield of a third world war.

In Bangladesh, unfortunately, journalism is becoming increasingly risky while a section of the state machinery has started seeing journalists as criminals and journalism as crime. Working journalists in Bangladesh are already in a state of extreme fear following introduction of ‘Digital Security Act’ which has been used as a key tool of suffocating freedom of expression and freedom of press, while now there is newer concern as the government is set to promulgate newer laws – even amending the Press Council Act – which surely will make the profession of journalism – the most difficult task in the world.

Though the Calcutta High Court direction on February 10 to Coal India to allow Indian National Mineworkers’ Federation (INMF) to participate in the meetings of the Joint Bipartite Committee on Coal Industry (JBCCI) is a victory to the trade union, this humiliating order does not seem to have any moral impact on the Narendra Modi government, as the sources have indicated further delay in wage negotiations.

A bumper potato crop and a surplus from the previous year have led to a sharp fall in prices. And, it’s driving millions of Indian potato farmers to desperation in the main potato-growing states — Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. India is the world’s second-largest potato producer, with an annual production of 50 million tons. China leads the chart with 78 million tons. Ukraine and Russia take the third and fourth slots with 21 million tons and 20 million tons respectively. The total global potato production was 376 million tons in 2021.

The central leadership of the BJP has been focusing its attention on the north eastern states of the country since then coming into power of the Party in 2014 and in its expansionist efforts, the main vehicle has been the RSS. In the present phase of the assembly polls to the three states Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland, all senior leaders of the BJP have campaigned including the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Home Minister Amit Shah. The polls in Tripura took place on February 16, the polling in the other two states is scheduled on February 27.

Only the best for the best. And as far as marquee political interviews go, that would be India-born Canadian Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar’s interview of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. At No.2 is ANI editor-in-chief Smitha Prakash, whose interview with EAM S. Jaishankar was the talk of the airwaves for all of last week.

The Supreme Court this week pronounced a few home truths about the state of our nation. The ‘confession’ came by way of oral remarks in a petition seeking to debar persons against whom charges have been framed in serious offences from contesting elections. But the court’s observations, though making distressing reading, cannot be more candid.

For past 25 years, Rajasthan has oscillated between Ashok Gehlot and Vasundhara Raje. They are the most recognizable faces of their respective parties Congress and the BJP in the state, and are known to guard their turf zealously, even at the cost of defying their central leaderships. And now, both have rivals—younger leaders within their parties.