PSU Oil India Limited’s (OIL) natural gas Well No.5 in its Baghjan Oil Fields in Assam’s Tinsukhia district in Eastern Assam, less than a kilometre from the ecologically rich and fragile Dibru-Saikhova National Park and Biosphere Reserve with several other ecological hotspots in close proximity, suffered a blowout ie, an uncontrolled release of natural gas, on May 27, 2020, throwing up huge quantities of gas at high pressure into the air.
SOMETHING very odd is happening in the United States. The coronavirus toll keeps rising with no end in sight. The economy has virtually collapsed with more than 40 million people filing for unemployment. Thousands are out on the streets protesting against the rampant racism that marks that society. Relations with China have reached a nadir. Altogether, as philosopher Cornel West put it, the US is showing every sign of being a “failed social experiment”. And yet there is a veritable boom in the US stock market.
IT is extraordinary that the current pandemic has not brought forth a wave of support for enhancing India's public health infrastructure. While a section (only a section, mind you) of the intellectual class, and some leading figures of industry and commerce, have expressed their support for the idea, the extent to which the idea has not caught the public imagination is truly surprising. Surprising because everywhere else in the world, public health has become a real demand, echoed widely by many sections of public opinion.
THE American strategic community is worried about China but it is more worried about the Sino-Russia combine. The American realists are pursuing two different strategies to deal with the two Eurasian powers. They are proposing an offensive-realist paradigm to confront China and realist restraint theories to appease Russia.
IT is estimated that more than 6000 NRIs had come to attend the ‘Namaste Trump’ event. Nobody has gauged. Only on March 5, the screening at the airport started. The large number of private health facilities was refusing to cooperate with the government. While the state health secretary informed the media that there is no epidemic and the Epidemic Act has only been invoked for legally empowering the administration, this was not invoked to address this problem. The testing was low; the frontline health workers were denied PPE and other necessary gear to insulate them from infection.
THE tropical region can grow a variety of crops which either cannot be grown at all, or for much of the year, in the cold temperate regions of the world where metropolitan capitalism is located. These include beverages, fibres, vegetables and fruit, and a variety of cereals and oil-crops.
GEORGE Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis (Minnesota) police officer on May 25. He was unarmed and had been accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill. The officer – Derek Chauvin – knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes. Eleven times Floyd said, ‘I can’t breathe’. The entire brutal episode was captured on a cell phone camera. Three other police officers either restrained Floyd or prevented bystanders from intervening.
THE All India Road Transport Workers’ Federation (AIRTWF) condemned the union government’s decision to hike the prices of petrol and diesel. “This is for the third time the union government has hiked the prices of petroleum since March. On May 5, the government enhanced the Excise Duty at Rs 10 per litre on petrol and Rs 13 per litre on diesel. Now, again the enhancement is almost Rs 1 per litre. This is nothing but looting the people,” the AIRTWF said in a statement released on June 9 and demanded the government to rollback the hike forthwith.
THE Union government launched ‘police action’ on September 13, 1948, on Hyderabad State to force the Nizam to accede to the Indian Union and to suppress the spreading Telangana peasant movement. Except in a few pockets, the Nizam’s army did not resist the Union forces and surrendered themselves. The Nizam himself, surrendered within five days – on September 18, 1948.
AS union home minister Amit Shah was busy delivering his ‘election special’ speech for West Bengal, Left activists came out into the streets to protest against the incompetence of both the central and state governments in dealing with the situation arising out of Covid-19, as well as safeguarding peoples’ livelihood.