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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.

BOSTON: America is having a midterm election for the Congress in November this year which will be very important for the future course of politics in this country and its impact worldwide. In this upcoming election, the Republicans, as it appears, under the present circumstances, have all the ingredients of winning- a not so popular president, economic issues like inflation (record high at 8%), a discouraged Democratic base and also the historical precedent that the party in Govt. almost always loses the midterm election.

Despite flickering signs of a revival of lost support for the CPI(M) in West Bengal , observers are not yet sure that the party is about to turn the corner in the short term. By no means unsympathetic to the CPI(M) or the Left in general, they refuse to view the party’s recent impressive recovery in the Ballygunge Assembly by-poll as the clinching evidence of a long-awaited upturn.

MSMEs which formed the backbone of India’s industrial development, exports and job creation, may soon get credit card similar to Kisan credit cards to deal with their credit woes that is presently stunting the economic growth. This follows repeated recommendation of the Parliamentary Standing committee on Finance in a bid to not only ensure credit access but also bring them into a formal financing system. The idea behind this move is to help the small businesses with working capital, trade financing and provide capital loans at affordable rates including necessary guarantees.

The last one week has triggered a range of speculations regarding the direction in which Bihar politics is moving which included the claim that chief minister Nitish Kumar will be moving to play a greater political role in New Delhi and the counter claim that he will remain CM of Bihar until 2025. However, despite the claims and counter claims, the political picture is still hazy, but the continuance of the speculation indicates a political underflow in the state which may be heading towards a new era of politics.

Sharad Pawar was not revealing a state secret when he accused the BJP of creating a communal situation in the country. Ever since the hijab-halal-azaan row in Karnataka and elsewhere, the BJP’s intention of raising the communal temperature has been obvious.