IN the United States of America, Trump administration has given a 90-day deadline to ByteDance, its Chinese owner, to sell its assets to a US company or shut shop. Microsoft, Oracle and a group including Twitter, are in negotiations with ByteDance for buying TikTok’s US business that also includes Canada, Australia and New Zealand.  ByteDance is valued between $100-200 billion, with its US business alone estimated to be in the range of $20-50 billion.

AIR India Express ‘Vande Bharat’ Flight IX 1134 evacuating stranded Indians from Dubai to India, tragically crashed in rainy conditions on August 7, 2020 evening at Calicut International Airport in Karipur near Kozhikode, Kerala. The Boeing 737 NG aircraft overshot what is termed a ‘tabletop’ runway, went through the airport boundary wall, tipped over the edge to drop over 35 feet, and broke into three pieces, two large and one smaller, with the front portion damaged the most and having most of the deaths.

THIS August 6, 80 years after the first use of the atom bomb against a section of humanity, reminds us all of the inhumanity of nuclear weapons and the threat to all human lives. But this year, we have to address two new questions. Does the dominant section of the US strategic establishment under President Trump believe that the nuclear weapons are usable and a nuclear war can be won? Is that the reason they want to abandon all the nuclear arms treaties?

IN four years, Reliance Jio used its oil and gas revenues to finance its entry into telecom and become the leading Indian player. It bled the others with its initial low cost, predatory pricing till they surrendered, letting Jio emerge as the undisputed market leader.  Jio has also made claims that its network is free from any Chinese equipment, and of an in-house, ‘indigenous’ 5G technology, positioning itself as a major player in the US-China 5G trade war.

IN his latest Mann-ki-baat address on June 28, 2020, the prime minister expressed some extraordinary views on defence manufacturing and self-reliance before independence, since then, and he took office in 2014. His own words, as per the official transcript in English, were:  “Before independence, in the realm of the defence sector, our country was ahead of many countries in the world. There used to be a multitude of ordnance factories. Many countries that lagged behind us then, are ahead of us now.