RECENT months have witnessed a steady deterioration in relations between Washington and Beijing. The acceleration in the process started with the visit of President Barack Obama to Tokyo, where he re-emphasised his political support for Japan’s claim to the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea. The American president had also explicitly stated that if hostilities broke out between China and Japan, the US is bound by treaty to come to the defense of its long time ally.

IN yet another gruesome attack, a woman was brutally gang-raped and murdered on August 17, 2014, in village Sunia, Kanthi in Purba Medinipur district of West Bengal. The state has been a victim of innumerable atrocities on women as well as internally displaced families due to the political vengeance resorted to by the Trinamool Congress. Thousands and thousands of families are forced to stay out of their homes, displaced due to their affiliation to the CPI(M). With the aid of the police and the administration, the TMC has been continuously targeting these families and unleashing terror.

‘CLEAN India’, this is one of the slogans given by Prime Minister Modi in his much acclaimed speech on Independence Day. Modi announced that by 2019 all habitations will have safe drinking water and each school will have a toilet and all villages will have latrines for women. The basic infrastructure of 500 small towns will be upgraded. While the repeated announcement of a sanitation drive is always welcome, the launching of a total sanitation and Clean India Campaign is not unique to ‘Modi’s vision’.

ON August 8, the World Health Organisation declared the West African Ebola outbreak a 'public health emergency of international concern'. The declaration came four months after the WHO reported a major Ebola outbreak in Guinea in Western Africa. Researchers traced the outbreak to a two-year old child who died on December 6, 2013. The epidemic, which broke in Guinea and spread to 3 of its neighbours – Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria – is known to have already affected 2,240 people and killed 1,229.

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement on August 18.

THE Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) expresses its strong opposition to the various statements being made by the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat on `Hindutva’ which militates against the secular concept of Indian citizenship. Hindutva is a majoritarian concept which is part of the narrow and divisive agenda of the RSS.