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Until fairly recently, Chinese President Xi Jinping touted his zero-COVID policy as proof that authoritarian one-party states like China are better equipped to deal with pandemics (or any other crisis) than messy democracies hampered by selfish politicians and fickle electorates. This might have seemed plausible...

In a chilling replication of the violence in the US Capitol in Washington DC by supporters of former US President Donald Trump two years back, hundreds of supporters of Brazil’s recently ousted President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s seats of power – the Congress, the...

At a time when autocratic regimes and Far-Right outfits across the globe have been making a mockery of the democratic process, Myanmar’s ruling military leader Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing has announced elections will be held in the country later this year and called for...

Republican Kevin McCarthy’s election as the Speaker of the US House of Representatives after five days of chaotic voting marks the beginning of a new phase of confrontation between the Republicans and Democrats thereby casting a shadow on the functioning of President Joe Biden’s administration....

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said this week that the government and the RBI are in discussions with South Asian countries to have cross-border trade in the rupee. There was no other detail given, such as which countries India was in discussion with and at what...

Prabodh Saxena has emerged as Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu’s choice as the state’s new chief secretary, following the retirement of Ram Dass Dhiman, who has been named as the state Chief Information Commissioner. Saxena, a 1990-cadre HP cadre IAS officer, will have...

Recall the story about the explorer who encounters an aboriginal tribe for the first time. “Are there cannibals among you?” he asks. “No,” they reply, “We ate the last one yesterday.” To constitute a civilised community by eating the last cannibal, the final act must...

Israel’s missile attack 2 January on the Damascus International Airport of Syria, the second in seven months, is in a sense a continuation of hostilities between the two countries. Yet, the timing is significant. It occurred four days after Benjamin Netanyahu had been sworn in...

The Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr’s three-day visit to China from 3 January when he will meet China’s President Xi Jinping and other top leaders will be a test of his policy of “friend to all and enemy to none.” The exchanges will influence...

The world is faced with new challenges to tackle as the New Year begins. The dying days of 2022 gave ample indications of the shape of things to come. Now, the contours are being clearly drawn. Things the world thought had been safely buried during...