Wars Fuel Epidemics and Pandemics

WARS often create conditions ripe for the spread of epidemics and pandemics. These conflicts benefit the arms industry and uphold power structures in capitalist economies. But they also cause immense collateral damage to civilian populations, extending suffering beyond the battlefield. The relationship between warfare and the spread of infectious diseases is complex and historically significant, with many conflicts facilitating disease transmission and leading to widespread health crises.

Leftover Biosamples: ICMR Guidelines Fall Short

THE Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has unveiled the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) guidelines for the ethical use of leftover de-identified/anonymous biosamples for commercial purposes.

What We Can Learn from the Global Microsoft Outage?

A GLOBAL IT outage on July 19th, 2024, affected more than 8.5 Million Microsoft computers worldwide, disrupting airlines, hospitals, banks, train services, and even government agencies. The outage was caused by a faulty update from the cybersecurity provider, CrowdStrike, which caused Microsoft Windows machines to crash and get stuck in the infamous “blue screen of death” booting loop.

US Strykes Another Arms Deal with India

AFTER months of whispers and selective leaks, mainly by the US side, it is now clear that a deal has been reached by the US and India for the acquisition by the latter of a large number of Stryker wheeled infantry combat vehicle (ICV).

Boeing Pleads Guilty to Criminal Fraud: The Continuing 737 Max Saga

BOEING has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge regarding the two crashes of 737 Max aeroplanes that caused the death of 346 passengers on two flights: a Lions Air flight out of Indonesia in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight in March 2019.

The Importance of Being Julian Assange

ON June 25th, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange walked out of Belmarsh high-security prison in London, where he had spent the last five years fighting extradition to the US on charges under the Espionage Act which if convicted could have sent him to prison for more than 170 years. Before that, he was confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 where he had taken asylum.The hounding of Assange had started even before that. He was first arrested in London in 2010 based on an arrest warrant issued by Swedish police for rape allegations by two women.

Victory over Doloo Airport

DOLOO is a nearly 200-year-old tea garden near Silchar city in Cachar district of lower Assam. A substantial part of the plantation area had been sold by the Doloo Tea Company to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for building a new airport. Tea plantation in this estate is spread over more than 1200 hectares and has four divisions namely Doloo, Moinagarh, Lalbagh and Murlidha. The Barak valley in Assam houses many such large tea gardens contributing a sizable quantity to tea exports from India.

Heat Wave: India Burning, a New Normal

THE year 2023 has officially been declared the hottest year ever since global temperature records were kept in 1850, breaking the previous highest set in 2016. This was not a flash in the pan. Ten of the hottest years ever have been in the decade 2014-23. Average global temperature in 2023 was 1.18 deg C (degrees Celsius) higher than the 20th century average, and about 1.4 deg C higher than the late 19th century average, almost touching the dreaded 1.5 deg C limit set by the Paris Agreement and beyond which several changes in climate may become irreversible.

Remembering Joseph Thomas, The Founding President of FSMI

COMRADE Joseph Thomas, who passed away last year, was the first president of the Free Software Movement of India (FSMI). Joseph Thomas and I go back a long way: we were almost the same age, and relatively old among the FSMI activists.Joseph Thomas was clear that in the free software movement, we cannot focus only on software; we also need to address issues of hardware on which free software can run. It was a welcome corrective. What he was telling us at that time is what many of us know today: free software cannot work unless we look at the hardware as well.

A Cautionary Tale for Open Science: AlphaFold3

A NEW AI (Artificial Intelligence) model, AlphaFold3, has excited the scientific community. Developed by Google's DeepMind Anglo-US subsidiary with Isomorphic Labs (a subsidiary of Google group’s parent company, Alphabet), AlphaFold3 made headlines in the journal Nature on May 9, 2024 for its ability to predict interaction of protein structures with other molecules like DNA and RNA. This holds immense promise for drug discovery and medical treatments.However, a cloud hangs over this excitement: limited access to the technology.

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