IT is a fair question to ask: how does a ruling class that controls more money ($45 trillion), nearly twice the annual gross domestic product of its country, produce two men who should not be leading a country, let alone a country with the most powerful military in the world? When Joe Biden, the incumbent president of the United States, and Donald Trump, the former president, met to debate each other in late June, they confounded anyone who watched them.

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.

CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on July 3FOLLOWING the meeting of the Central Committee, a section of the Malayalam media has manufactured totally concocted reports about the meeting. The latest is a report that puts words in the mouth of a member who it claims criticised the political line of the Party and made allegations against the general secretary when in fact the member did not participate in the discussion at all.

THE first session of the 18th Lok Sabha has highlighted the confrontation between the government and the energised and obviously much stronger opposition. The major focus of this confrontation centered around the big scam that exploded with the publication of the results for NEET UG Entrance Examination for medical colleges in the country. Starting with the outright denial by the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, of any wrongdoing, the facts were out in the open. Large scale manipulation in the examination results was out in the open and went beyond the scope of denial.

THE Delhi unit of Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch (DSMM) organised a welcome meeting for K Radhakrishnan, DSMM national president, after his election to the Lok Sabha from Alathur, Kerala, in the recently concluded national elections.Coming from a Scheduled Caste family, Radhakrishnan is CPI (M)’s sole member of parliament from Kerala. He has been a minister twice and was the minister of SC/ST welfare, parliamentary affairs, and Devaswoms in the current Left Front government. He previously served as speaker of the state assembly between 2006 and 2011.