FOR some time now, shock waves have been raging across the country. The issue at hand concerns the large number of Bengali-speaking migrant workers being labelled as Bangladeshis. The combination of being Bengali-speaking and Muslim is perceived as a “lethal” marker, almost automatically branding one as “illegal Bangladeshi infiltrator.”This is, of course, a false narrative. It is the same premise that underpinned the drafting of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has been at the forefront of this campaign.

CRORES of working people hit the streets in the historic strike on July 9. Originally scheduled earlier, the strike had to be postponed by nearly a month and a half following the dastardly attack on innocent civilian tourists in Pahalgam. Yet, the spirit of resistance against the anti-worker policies forced upon the people remained undeterred.This fightback gained momentum when the government pushed through and enacted three key labour codes — the Industrial Relations (IR) Code, the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSH) Code, and the Social Security Code.

THE events of the last fortnight have been dramatic – some might even call them cataclysmic.The sequence began with Israel’s surprise attacks on Iranian targets, particularly the nuclear enrichment and production sites at Natanz and Isfahan. The third and most crucial site, Fordow, remained untouched. Fordow lies deep within a mountain – approximately 80 meters underground – making it impenetrable to conventional weapons. It is here that experts began suggesting that only the US military’s heavy-duty bunker-buster bombs could penetrate such depth.

THE CEO of NITI Aayog has asserted that India has emerged as the fourth-largest economy. He was at least truthful enough to concede that this was based on the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) projections for 2025-26 in its World Economic Outlook. Through further elaborations, we precisely come to know that India’s nominal GDP is projected to increase to USD 4,187.017 billion ahead of Japan’s USD 4,186,431 billion by a whisker.

YAQEEN Hammad, a 12-year-old Palestinian girl, was shredded into pieces by an Israeli missile attack on her residence. Yaqeen has been aptly called the Anne Frank of Gaza. Like Anne, who kept a diary in an attic in a Holocaust-ravaged, Nazi-occupied neighbourhood, Yaqeen documented the horrors around her.