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Daily spikes in incidents of COVID-19 infections, caseloads on health facilities, active cases, and deaths have been worsening every day since the first week of February 2021, and so the more and more stringent containment measures are being put in place to control the outbreak day after day. Within four weeks from now, the present trajectory suggests, the daily infection could be 2.5 times and death around three times, which are now around 2.17 lakhs and 1185 a day respectively. To defeat this assessment India will have to implement even stricter measures sooner than one may expect. The urban poor and the migrants, who are already between the two grinding stones – the disease and the poverty – may find themselves between the devil and the deep sea.

US president Joe Biden has announced that his country’s full troop withdrawal from Afghanistan will be completed by September 11 this year, bringing to an end a 20-year long war which has cost the American taxpayer $2 trillion and taken a toll of 2,312 US soldiers. What will this mean for India? It is common knowledge that without US troop support, the Government of Ashraf Ghani cannot hold out against the Taliban for long. During the last year, the Taliban launched several attacks against government troops, bringing more and more territory under its control. Once the remaining 2300 US troops leave, the Taliban will overrun the whole of the country with lightning speed. A Taliban-controlled Afghanistan will also give Pakistan the strategic depth against India that it desperately needs.

A war that never should have happened is finally coming to an end. By Sept. 11, 2021—twenty years to the day since the 9/11 terrorist attacks—the final U.S. troops will supposedly be leaving Afghanistan, according to an announcement coming from the Biden administration. It is the longest war in U.S. history.

A recent poll suggesting Labour could lose Hartlepool byelection has sent tremors through the party. A major section of the labour leaders, who played key role in installing Keir Starmer as the leader of the party feel that he has not been able to lead it from the front and deliver the result. This has also led to murmuring inside the party that he does not possess the political acumen and foresight which Jeremy Corbyn has.

Solar energy costs, which have been consistently coming down over the past several years, are suddenly reversing the trend, with the result that the cost of setting up solar farms is again going up. This is attributed to an increase in the cost of modules, shipping as well as the higher labour costs.

An accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, Professor Dr. Shoma Sen, has petitioned the Bombay High Court challenging her prosecution under the stringent anti-terrorism Unlawful Activities (Prevention) (UAPA) Act.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In politics, as in life, if you repeat mistakes ad nauseam, you end up paying a heavy price. It is once again a case of timing gone terribly wrong in the case of the CPI(M) and the Left Democratic Front (LDF) Government. The latest lapse relates to the resignation of Higher Education and Minorities Welfare Minister K T Jaleel after the Lok Ayukta found him guilty of nepotism.

It is again Rafale at our door steps as the controversy lands in Supreme Court for the third time. Apart from other issues, question involves also the fact that the deal was made at 41.47 percent higher a rate than the one made earlier. Dassault claimed a1.4 billion euro cost for the ‘design and development’ of 13 India Specific Enhancements, that is, additional capabilities in the form of hardware as well as software that had been specified by the Indian Air Force all along, and this cost was negotiated down to 1.3 billion euro. What it meant was that the design and development cost, now distributed over 36 Rafale fighter jets, shot up from 11.11 million euro per aircraft in 2007 to 36.11 million euro when the deal was struck in 2016.

The subversion of constitutional bodies under the Narendra Modi regime is proceeding apace. Nothing exemplifies this more than what has happened to the Election Commission of India (EC).

Buenos Aires: India ended their tour of Argentina on a memorable note, winning the fourth and final practice match 4-2 here in Buenos Aires on Wednesday.