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The left wing candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula, is firmly on his path to big victory in the coming presidential elections in Brazil scheduled for October 2 this year. A recent opinion survey run by Instituto FSB found that in the first round Lula will be getting 46 per cent as against the incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro’s 32 per cent but in the second round, Lula will go up to 54 percent as against the conservative candidate’s 35 per cent.

I very vividly remember when 30 years back in the year 1992 we wanted to hold a public function as a part of campaign for the promotion of healthy environment and preservation of ecology, not many people took it seriously. However we carried out with our activities and soon our actions drew attention of the public as well as the administration. We organized school education programmes, formed Eco Clubs in schools and conducted several other outreach events.

The remark by two judges of a Supreme Court vacation bench on the need for senior advocates to enrol and train at least 15 juniors is set to breathe new life into the long-drawn controversy about the abuse of the system of designating senior advocates.

Thirteen weeks long, the war in Ukraine has reached a state of paradox. To a greater extent than at any previous point since Russian president Vladimir Putin invaded, the political establishment is acknowledging that a negotiated settlement is the only way the war can end safely. Yet the prospect of anything of the sort happening also seems more and more remote.

Narendra Modi is so smitten with the eulogy showered on him by his sycophants and bhakts of his being the strongest and most powerful politician India ever had in its 75 years of political freedom that he prefers to roam around in his make believe world taking inspiration from the political support and guideline of the RSS ignoring the basic ground realities.

The Congress is 137 and in a hurry to turn fossil, led by the nose into old age. Some liquefied high fliers in the party, sensing atrophy in the bones, have already flown the coop. Others haven’t, out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to the party, if not for the family, which in turn couldn’t be playing a more potent role in the disintegration. The grapevine is tingling with talk that siblings Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra Gandhi will be the pallbearers for the Congress.

THIRUVANTHAPURAM: Deft handling by the Left Democratic front (LDF) Government of Kerala has prevented a sensitive issue from snowballing into a major controversy. The Government did this by deferring a decision on whether the Government should leave appointments in State-funded educational institutions to the Kerala Public Service Commission (PSC). In the process, the Government has outsmarted the Opposition which would otherwise have cottoned on to the issue to put the Government on the mat.

Twists in Bihar politics has now become perceivable with re-emergence of caste based clamoring among leaders of both national and regional political parties. The complexities and contrasts in the three decades of politics, beginning around 1889 with the well known Mandal vs Kamandal issue, now seems set to undergo a new churning.

Why are the Indians curious about the British Royal family even after India's Independence? Even the present generation of Indians know of Queen Elizabeth 11. We have listened to the nursery rhyme in our childhood, "Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been? I have been to London to look at the Queen." Then TV series like 'Crown" and "Jewel in the Crown" also revived the memories of the colonial past. English is still the lingua franca of the Indian elite.

A two-day international river conference was organized in Guwahati, Assam, on May 27-28 by a Shillong-based think tank Asian Confluence. It was the third edition of the Natural Allies in Development and Interdependence (NADI) conference. Organized in partnership with the Union External Affairs Ministry, Act East Policy Affairs Department of the Assam government, North Eastern Council, and other partners, the annual event was an attempt to deliberate and develop a “collective vision of cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and the Southeast Asian region.”