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New Delhi: India squandered a penalty stroke and went down 0-2 to Germany, for their second successive defeat in the Olympic Women's tournament at the Oi Hockey Stadium in Tokyo.

New Delhi: India will have to put behind the 1-7 Australian thrashing and put their acts together as they face Spain in their third match of the Tokyo Olympics at Oi Hockey Stadium on Tuesday.

July 26 happened to be the second anniversary of Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa’s rule in Karnataka. But instead of a celebratory function, it turned out to be an occasion for an emotional farewell speech after announcing his resignation. Though BSY, as he is known in the state, resisted pressures, the high command had decided that it was time for a younger leader to take over.

From the moment we are born there are certain immutable truths we cannot escape. And the one which drives an entire entertainment industry genre and is a constant and gnawing anxiety as we age is death.

The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) has just come out giving a shot in the arm to Modi government. Ever since it was released last week, the government and their supporters have been gunning around the critics and are telling the country that both the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) and the unemployment rate had been improving for the last three years when the COVID-19 pandemic struck the country. Government has obviously resorted to political jugglery without considering the worsening reality on the ground on the one hand, and without understanding the statistics on the other that conceals more than it reveals. The data must not be allowed to cover-up the crisis of joblessness the country is reeling under.

Political intervention and participating in the political process are two distinct different narrations. After eight months of farmers’ satyagrah, some people have started strongly advocating that the farmers must actively take to electoral politics and assert their physical might. Though they do not openly object to the farmers holding Kisan Sansad, they nurse the view that it at some level symbolised diminishing support.

The French are quick on their feet. Within 24 hours of ‘Forbidden Stories’ piercing the cover on Pegasus spyware, with French President Emmanuel Macron’s personal telephone numbers also among the infected, France ordered an investigation. And on July 25, Macron called new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and requested him to get to the bottom of the affair, ASAP. Earlier, Macron had spoken of a “series of investigations”.

Even as the Congress managed to repair its broken house in Punjab, the BJP found itself in trouble in Karnataka. How the two parties will fare in the coming weeks will be a test of their resilience on the eve of assembly elections which will pose a challenge to both. Of the two, the BJP will be particularly concerned about its government’s fate in the southern state lest a setback there should have a demoralizing effect on its cadres in U.P., Goa, Gujarat and several other states which will go to the polls.

The growing concern in India among politicians, bureaucrats, journalists, social activists and dissidents, business community and prominent individuals about the increasing use of highly invasive surveillance technologies to spy on individuals in blatant abuse of human rights is very valid. Unfortunately, they are able to do little to prevent and punish those using the spyware to curtail their individual freedom. Digital surveillance is openly abusing human rights in the absence of strong regulatory frameworks. The United Nations, the global body, itself has little answer to growing attacks on individual freedom. It merely condemns the ‘unlawful and arbitrary surveillance’ as an infringement of fundamental human rights and acknowledges that the practice continues unabated, not least because it is shrouded in secrecy.

Union Ministry of Railways has planned investment of Rs.11.43 lakh crore in railways by 2024-25 in which Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA), a regulator set up to develop unutilized, surplus railwayland and air space for commercial utilisation keeping in view the futuristic use for the railways own requirements on Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model to garner additional resources for modernization, up gradation and expansion of railways to meet futuristic challenges of increasing faster freight and passenger traffic. Currently, Indian Railways (IR) is on mission mode to deliver 126 critical projects worth 1,15,000 crore. PPP in IR is key to infrastructural development, which forms bedrock of the economic development of the nation. IR, therefore, is integral part of infrastructural development of India.