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Two decades back Lalu Prasad Yadav had stopped the Rath Yatra of L K Advani and now, once the protégé of Advani, the Bihar chief Minister Nitish Kumar is contemplating to stop the victory chariot of Narendra Modi. But there is vast difference between the two. While Lalu showed his political strength and determination, Nitish is resorting to cunning politicking. Like Lalu he does not possess the political courage of calling a spade a spade and face his enemy head on.

BHOPAL: Barely nine hour visit of Union Home Minister Amit Shah has helped to boost Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's prestige in his party and also in the politics of the state. In the course of his speeches at various programmes in Bhopal Shah paid rich tributes to Chouhan. Amit Shah said "Chouhan has made a special contribution in transforming the state into a developing one from a BIMARU state".

Harassment is the name of the game, pure and unalloyed harassment. It is a dangerous game, driven by a vindictive streak. Arrest a person and slap charges on him/her, from the nasty to the draconian, and let life behind bars teach him/her a harsh lesson. Doesn’t matter how humiliating, only the odd prisoner will get a megaphone. And if it’s a woman, it's hardly likely.

Tesla owner and currently world’s richest man, Elon Musk has finally had his way with the Twitter board and bought the publicly-listed company in one of the most expensive buy-outs in recent years. He is reportedly paying a staggering $44 billion in cash to make the “town square” of the world that its founder Jack Dorsey would like to call a collective “consciousness” of our times.

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has taken a conciliatory step by not confronting the rebels in the party (G 23) by postponing her decision on poll strategist Prashant Kishor's entry into the party. It, however, does not mean that it will not happen, as she is biding time and preparing the ground for the admission of controversial Kishor. In politics, timing is crucial, and Sonia knows better than others when and how Kishor should be brought in.

For the third time in 20 years, the anti-immigrant far right has been blocked from winning the French presidency at the last minute, leaving many breathing a sigh of relief. But with Marine Le Pen scoring the highest total ever for the extreme right—41.5% against incumbent President Emmanuel Macron’s 58.5%—the French Communist Party is warning that “the noose is tightening” on democracy in the country.

Police and Public Order are State subjects in keeping with the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India making the States and Union Territories primarily responsible for deployment of adequate infrastructural facilities, state-of-the-art technology gadgets, manpower and training of police to combat the menace of growing cyber crimes. However, the Central Government supplements the initiatives of the States/Union Territories (UTs) through advisories and schemes for the capacity building of their law enforcing agencies. According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 50,033 cyber crime cases were reported in 2020 over 44,735 such cases in 2019, showing increase of 11.8 per cent. SonicWalls 2022 Cyber Threat Report has come to some alarming conclusions for cyber crimes in 2021. Pretty much every category of cyber attack increased in volume over the course of 2021. Number encrypted threat spiked by 167 per cent (97.1 million attacks), ransom ware rose by 105 per cent to 623.3 million attacks, cyber jacking rose 19 per cent (97.1 million attacks), intrusion attempts by 11 per cent (a whopping 5.3 trillion and LoT malware rose by 6 per cent to 61 million attacks.

China was eager to introduce Yuan as reference currency for Rupee-Rouble rate. According to Global Times, official media of China, “India was reportedly considering Chinese Yuan a reference currency to settle the Rupee-Rouble trade”. Owing to sharp depreciation of Russian Rouble due to Ukraine invasion by Russia, the authorities were grappling for new Rupee-Rouble rate. The urgency for new Rupee-Rouble, rate emanated from the global sanctions against import of oil as well as military hardware from Russia. The sanctions are not applicable to India’s import of crude oil and military hardware from Russia as they are not exchanged in US Dollar. They are transacted in Indian Rupee.

Indian consumers are reeling under high inflationary pressures. The costs of food, clothes, housing, transportation, medicine and healthcare have all gone up by 50 to 60 percent or even more since the middle of last year. The high fuel prices are impacting the prices of almost all commodities and services. The trend is global. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, global food prices rose by 27.3 percent in the 12 months to November, last. Prices have jumped further in the last three months, more so after the Russia-Ukraine war. Prices of essential items such as food, transport and utilities have soared. Over two-thirds of the people around the world are feeling the pinch.

Rather than push for an immediate improvement of strained relations with the United States, Saudi Arabia appears to be looking forward to a time when US President Joe Biden's wings may be clipped.