In Focus by The Hindu

X (formerly known as Twitter) has gone offline in Brazil. The country’s Supreme Court issued an order to block X in Brazil after Elon Musk refused to appoint a legal representative for the company in the country. This defiance came on the heels of repeated flouting of the court’s orders to block certain far-right accounts that were allegedly spreading disinformation. X has more than 22 million use...

For nearly a month now, the country has been rocked by protests by medical professionals – services at many hospitals stalled, at many others, healthcare staff wore black badges while working and in Kolkata, the epicenter of the protests, doctors have now begun telemedicine services to help patients while they continue their protest. The agitations began after the horrific rape and murder of a tra...

Israel and Hezbollah exchanged heightened military strikes over the August 25 weekend. While Israel carried out large scale ‘pre-emptive’ air strikes on southern Lebanon in response to what it claimed were preparations by Hezbollah to strike Israel, Hezbollah still went ahead and launched a barrage of rockets into northern Israel.  The attacks left one dead in Israel and three dead in Lebanon, and...

The K. Hema Committee report has shaken up the Malayalam film industry, bringing into the public domain all kinds of horrors. Based on direct testimonies, it has documented rampant sexual exploitation, illegal bans, discrimination, wage disparity, and inhuman working conditions, with women not having access to even basic amenities such as toilets and changing rooms. Significantly, it notes that th...

The Central government, a few days ago, banned 156 fixed dose combination drugs, or FDCs. An FDC is a drug that has more than one active ingredient – two or more drugs together, in a single pill, capsule or shot. This is the latest in a series of bans brought in by the Centre – last year 14 FDCs were banned, and a total of 499 have been banned since 2014.  Why is this happening? Expert committees...

Bangladesh is in the midst of tumultuous change. After former prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge as ‘Chief Adviser’ to an interim government. Meanwhile, with Hasina out, the future of the Awami League looks uncertain. The Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is back in the reckoning, and so is the Jamaat-e-Islami. What do the people of...

The last Grand Slam of the year, the US Open kicks off on Monday, with all the top players in attendance on both the men’s and women’s section. The draw is out, and interestingly for Novak Djokovic, who will be seeking a 25th Slam, his three biggest challengers – Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev and Jannik Sinner – are all on the opposite side of the draw, which means he won’t meet them before the...

Another public health emergency has hit the world, and this time it’s mpox, previously known as monkeypox. The outbreak is sweeping through west, central and east African countries, and in the past few days cases have also been reported closer home, in Pakistan and Thailand.  While mpox has been around for decades, this time around, a deadlier and far more transmissible strain—known as Clade 1b—ha...

A few weeks ago, Donald Trump told Black journalists in Chicago, USA, that Kamala Harris had identified herself as Indian, not Black. He was trying to suggest to Black journalists and voters that Kamala Harris was not "Black enough." While that criticism has been made against Kamala as well as Obama, for that matter, it also threw into focus Indian-Americans who form a small part of the overall po...

In 2020, the Indian government issued a directive that made changes to its FDI policy. The Directive, called Press Note 3, made it mandatory for companies that are based in countries that India shares a land border with to get the government's approval before investing in India. Experts saw this as a move to curtail Chinese investments into India and protect Indian companies from hostile takeovers...

The fifth of August changed the course of history in Bangladesh. The images of a once-powerful Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fleeing the country in a helicopter will remain etched in memory for the momentous change it marked. A government led by the high-profile Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, once the target of Sheikh Hasina’s high-handed actions, has taken charge of the country. It has, significan...

How did the rapid decline in the population of vultures in India affect human beings? A new study, published in the American Economic Review, says that because these birds went nearly extinct, India had about 500,000 additional deaths from the year 2000 to 2005 and the economic damages to the country amounted to about 69.4 billion dollars annually. How did this happen? Up until the early 1990s, vu...

The devastating landslides in Wayanad that left over 400 dead and over 100 still missing shocked not just Kerala but the entire country. Almost immediately, a blame game began – Union Home Minister Amit Shah said adequate warning had been given to Kerala, but the government of Kerala disputes this – it said the warning came after the landslide had occurred. Experts in the meantime have pointed to...

The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee announced on Thursday (August 8) to keep the repo rate unchanged at 6.5% in its August 2024 meeting for the ninth consecutive time. It maintained its inflation projection for FY25 at 4.5 per cent. While announcing the MPC policy, Governor Shaktikanta Das noted that headline inflation reached 5.1 per cent in June 2024, driven by unexpected facto...

Kamala Harris’s late entry in the Presidential race leaves her with just three months to roll out her campaign. What kind of campaign strategy will work best for Harris given her vulnerabilities, especially on the immigration issue, and her record as attorney general in California? As for the Republicans, their entire Presidential campaign had been designed keeping in mind a race against Biden. Ac...

Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer, is now at the centre of a gender row at the Paris Olympics 2024. This controversy began after Angela Carini from Italy withdrew from her Round-16 bout with Khelif just after 46 seconds. After the decision was announced, Carini didn't shake Khelif's hand but cried in the ring on her knees. Later Carini said she hurt her nose after the opening punches. This led to a...

The national capital was rocked by student protests last month after three IAS aspirants tragically drowned when the basement library of their coaching centre flooded, following torrential rains. While a police case has been registered and arrests made, the students pointed out that safety norms are routinely violated at coaching centres and stormwater drains in the area were clogged, leading to w...

The Union Budget has announced several changes to the tax regime for Long-term Capital Gains. The most controversial of them is the removal of indexation benefit for the calculation of long-term capital gains (LTCGs), which could have implications for tax obligations in real estate transactions. Many now fear that the tax obligations of ordinary investors will shoot up, that black money will flood...

As the dust settles on the proposals that the Finance Minister made in the Budget earlier this month, some aspects have become clearer while questions remain on others. Budget 2024-25 saw several initiatives around employment and skilling being proposed. Do these form a good first step in addressing the jobs challenge the country faces? Or should the government have begun addressing the problem at...

As the dust settles on the proposals that the Finance Minister made in the Budget earlier this month, some aspects have become clearer while questions remain on others. We will dwell on topics such as: Why did the Minister choose to be less aggressive on the fiscal deficit front than she could have? Why were Andhra Pradesh and Bihar given special consideration when such action was within the purvi...

The case of a probationary IAS officer Puja Khedkar has exploded in the news recently. While a lot has been said and written with regard to Ms. Khedkar’s alleged demand for privileges and her use of a red-blue beacon on her private car made headlines, what has also come under the scanner is the disability quota in the All India Services – Ms. Khedkar has been accused of falsely claiming to have di...

More than 170 people have been killed in violent clashes following massive protests by student groups seeking a reform of the country’s quota system for government jobs. While this is not the first time students have protested against reservations, the main bone of contention is the 30% reservation for freedom fighters and their descendants – a quota that the Sheikh Hasina government has always wa...

The BJP-led coalition government has lifted the ban on government employees taking part in activities of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, an organisation which has been banned three times since India attained independence. The RSS was banned days after Gandhiji’s assassination by Nathuram Godse in 1948, during the Emergency by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and under civil society pressure a...

The Olympics are back in Paris, exactly 100 years after the city last hosted it. The opening ceremony will take place on July 26, but competitions will begin two days earlier, from July 24, and go on till August 11. About 10,500 athletes from more than 200 countries will be participating. India, which came back with its best ever haul of one gold, two silver and four bronze medals in the Tokyo Oly...

The assassination attempt on Republican nominee Donald Trump has queered the American Presidential race, and in a manner that wouldn’t please the Democrats. In his speech at the Republican National Convention that got over yesterday, Trump struck a new note by stressing on unity, though not at the expense of his white nativist platform. He also announced that Ohio Senator J.D. Vance would be his r...