In Focus by The Hindu

According to the ‘Tek Fog’ expose by the news portal The Wire, the BJP has access to a secret app called ‘Tek Fog’ that can hijack social media, automate hate, and targets thousands of accounts with just a click. The report, when it came out, created a sensation. While A TMC MP has said Tek Fog “has serious ramifications and could jeopardise national security,” a parliamentary panel headed by a Co...

On January 17, two Indians and a Pakistani were killed in a massive explosion in Abu Dhabi. The blast is believed to have been the result of a ‘drone attack’ by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. This attack on the capital of UAE has once again drawn the spotlight to a conflict that has been going on in the region for seven years – the war in Yemen. This war, which broke out in late 2014 during a period of po...

Kazakhstan, the largest and richest of the Central Asian republics, is in turmoil. The country has been rocked by massive protests since the start of the New Year. The protests have also been marked by violence and looting. While the immediate trigger seems to be a hike in LPG prices, they protesters did not relent even after the government announced that it will roll back the price hike. As viole...

The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, or the FCRA, has been in the news once again. India’s NGO sector had an unpleasant start to the new year as it emerged that around 6,000 of them had lost their FCRA licence. NGOs and other institutions that do charitable work have to register under the FCRA to be able to receive foreign donations. Hence, cancellation or loss of an FCRA licence could mean...

On January 3, India began vaccinating a section of its teenagers, with Covaxin. About 7.4 crore children, between the ages of 15 and 18, are eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. As of Saturday, over 2 crore children had received the first dose of their vaccine. Only Covaxin was approved for use in this age group, even though, last October, India's first DNA vaccine, ZyCoV-D, had been granted...

The first big event of the Badminton calendar in this year is happening in New Delhi – with the 2022 India Open set to take place from January 11 to 16. There is a great deal of anticipation around the event as it could see a potential rematch of the two finalists of the World championships last month – Kidambi Srikanth and Singapore’s Loh Kean Yew. There is also a lot of excitement as India sudde...

The top-ranked tennis player in the world and arguably one of the all-time greats Novak Djokovic was held for four days in a detention centre in Australia, apparently because his unvaccinated status rendered his entry visa invalid. The showdown between the Australian federal agencies and Novak Djokovic was today settled in court, with a Federal Circuit Court judge ruling in Djokovic’s favour. It q...

Sudan, a country ravaged by repression and instability for a long time, is again in turmoil. Civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok announced his resignation in a televised address on January 2. Since 2019, Hamdok had been leading a transitional government in which power was shared between the military and the civilian leadership. But the military overthrew the government in a coup in October, and...

The Department of Posts under the Ministry of Communications has released a Draft Approach Paper for creating a Digital Address Code or DAC for each and every address in the entire country. The DAC is to do for addresses for Aadhaar has done for identity – create a unique ID, using geo-spatial coordinates. The idea of a digital address code is a very ambitious one. While it can potentially transfo...

Schools began opening across the country in September this year, following the devastating second wave of COVID-19. By then, most of India's 24 crore students, had been out of schools for close to 18 months -- most children in kindergarten and first standard had never set foot in a classroom. The Annual Status of Education Report 2021, released last month, throws up some important facts about how...

The ghastly killing of six innocent coalminers and another nine civilians and a soldier on December 4 in the Mon district of Nagaland has sent shockwaves through the Northeast and the rest of the country. The clamour for the withdrawal of the draconian Armed Forces (Special) Powers Act has grown, with the chief ministers of Nagaland and Meghalaya, both allied to the BJP, demanding that the Act be...

Tensions have been rising at the Ukraine-Russia border. There has been a massive troop build-up on the Russian side, within 300 km of the Donbas region in Ukraine. This is a live conflict zone where the Ukrainian government has been battling Russia-backed separatists. While the West has accused Russia of trying to intimidate Ukraine, the Kremlin has, in turn, accused the West of manufacturing ‘ant...

There is much that is still unknown about Omicron, the newest Sars-CoV-2 variant, that has been designated as a 'variant of concern' by the World Health Organisation. The variant was first reported in South Africa on November 24, and has since, spread to over 15 countries or regions, as of now. In response, several countries have begun imposing travel restrictions and closing borders, similar to w...

Over the last decade, India has seen the emergence, or re-emergence, of a number of infectious diseases. Not only have seen an alarming surge in the number of dengue and chikungunya cases, we've had Zika and Nipah virus cases, and even an Ebola scare. This is in addition to existing diseases that we are still battling -- such as tuberculosis, malaria, Kala Azar and others, and all while India batt...

The sudden televised withdrawal of the three contentious farm laws by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 19 was as dramatic as pushing through the three Bills by voice vote in the Rajya Sabha in September last year. Gripped by a still-to-be explained urgency, these three laws were issued as Presidential Ordinances in June 2020.  There is little doubt that Mr. Modi’s hand was forced by the re...

The welfare of convicts who have been sentenced to death is probably the last, if at all it figures, in anyone’s list of welfare priorities. Since their entire identity gets reduced to one act -- the crime they are accused of – they are generally dehumanised, and people find it difficult to understand why we should care about the mental health of someone convicted of, say, gang-rape or a brutal mu...

Every year in November and December, the residents of Delhi and the National Capital Region, find it hard to breathe. Toxic air chokes the lungs, doctors advise people to avoid outdoor walks and runs, hospital outpatient services overflow with people facing respiratory problems, and there is a call for emergency measures to bring the air quality index down from severe to satisfactory. Meteorologic...

These days, if you turn on the TV, there is no escaping the flood of advertisements urging you to invest in cryptocurrencies. Everyone seems to be busy getting rich from bitcoin and other cryptos. A host of crypto-exchanges have attracted funding from global investors and are promising the moon to retail investors. But these crypto-exchanges themselves are not comparable to a conventional stock ex...

On November 2, Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai shared a post on micro-blogging site Weibo accusing a senior Communist party leader, Zhang Gaoli, of sexual assault. The post was immediately censored, and there has been no news about Peng Shuai since then. Peng, who was ranked world number 1 in doubles in 2014, is a big star in China. The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and several tennis stalwart...

The issue of prohibition has always been a contentious one in India. Five years ago, the state of Bihar imposed total prohibition – a policy that reportedly got Chief Minister Nitish Kumar votes from women electors. Reports of illicit liquor deaths have been coming in regularly from Bihar since the prohibition policy was imposed. Around Diwali, as many as 40 persons died from drinking illicit liqu...

The rise of China is a global reality that has upset many international calculations. To understand the growing Chinese footprint, it’s important to understand the internal dynamics of the Chinese Communist Party.  The Hindu’s China Correspondent Ananth Krishnan has been reporting on the passage of what has been called “Resolution on the Major Achievements of the Party over the Past Century” by th...

After the Taliban took over Afghanistan by force earlier this year, India, like many other countries, was forced to deal with the new realities in the country. The change was emphasized by India hosting as many as seven regional national security officials from around Afghanistan on November 10. Pakistan and China were conspicuous by their absence.  India’s influence in Afghanistan has clearly wan...

Ethiopia is in the middle of a civil war. In November 2020, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, ordered what seemed like a limited military operation in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. It was expected to be a quick, low-key war. But the rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an ethno-nationalist paramilitary group-cum-political party, managed to turn the ta...

Even as India is recovering from its battering by COVID-19, there has been a significant rise in cases of another viral disease: dengue. States across the country are seeing a spurt in cases of the disease, transmitted by the bite of an infected Aedes aegypti mosquito, and several are witnessing multiple deaths, even as hospitals fill up rapidly. As per government statistics, there have been 60,11...

Facebook has had its share of problems over the years, from privacy issues to data leaks to fake news. Now, internal documents made public by former Facebook employee Francis Haugen show that these problems may have been more systematic. They suggest that Facebook may have been aware of the problems that it was causing while doing little about it. Reporting on these internal documents, the New Yor...