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French President Emmanuel Macron’s gamble of a snap parliamentary poll has miserably failed to pay off in the first round of voting. Instead of helping him consolidate his position, it has created a situation in which the Far Right – National Rally party (RN) led...

There could be a debate on whether it was politically correct for the newly-elected Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Om Birla, to move a resolution on the first day of the new session to condemn an event that had happened half a century ago –...

J ulian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks has, after a 14-year-long tortuous legal journey, walked free. The trade-off between him and the US administration for his release, however, does not bring good news for freedom of speech and expression. As part of the deal the 52-year-old...

US President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate with former president Donald Trump in Atlanta has created doubts, even among his supporters, whether the 81-year-old would be able to put a tough fight in the November presidential election. Biden, seeking a second term in the White House,...

On 28 June, India’s foreign ministry put out a strong statement against a report from the United States State Department on religious freedom in India. Our statement said that “as in the past, the report is deeply biased, lacks understanding of India’s social fabric and...

The presence of women in the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) increased by 6.6% to the current 37.8% in the period 2014–2022. Remarkably, between 2018 and 2020, the percentage of female recruits in the IFS surpassed 40%. Observers note that the IFS generally has a higher...

Now that the hurly-burly is done and the battle fought – time will tell whether it was lost or won - it is time to rivet the nation’s attention on Manipur, the traumatised state in the north-east. That Manipur is clamouring for an end to...

It is an ominous sign of the times that religious affiliations of the electorate are being used by political parties to lure voters and capture power. Not only in India, this is frighteningly and obnoxiously becoming a global phenomenon. But, its manifestation in the most...

A court in Switzerland has done something that would put our entire justice system to shame – it sentenced four members of the billionaire Hinduja family, the wealthiest in the UK, to upto four and a half years of imprisonment after finding them guilty of...

The country’s youth aspiring for coveted professional careers are being traumatised by a corrupt examination system about which the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre appears to have been blissfully uncaring. It would be an understatement to say the government has played with the lives...