THE third most important set of revelations from Snowden's treasure trove of NSA documents took place last week. Der Spiegel, a leading German newspaper, published a set of reports that show how networks and computers have been compromised by the NSA. This was complemented by Jacob Appelbaum's address in the 30th Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg, which brought out the range of methods that NSA uses to take over and eavesdrop on networks and systems. What also stands out is the number of American companies that have such “backdoors” in their systems and equipment.

EVERY call for the observance of the birth centenary of pioneers and veterans of the Indian communist movement by our party's Central Committee has never been intended to be either a formality or a ritualistic remembrance. Such observations are meant to arm the party as a whole to carry forward the struggles to achieve the strategic objective in a more resolute manner. It is with such spirit that the central committee has called upon the entire party to observe the birth centenary of Comrade Makineni Basavapunnaiah, or MB as he was fondly and universally referred to.

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) issued the following statement on January 2, 2014.

THE price hike of Rs 220 on an unsubsidised gas cylinder by the oil companies is totally unjustified and will be an intolerable burden on people already suffering from price rise. Since there is a ceiling on subsidised cylinders at nine, people have to now buy gas cylinders at exorbitant prices.

IT was a murder most foul.It was a protest most heart rending.Kolkata erupted in protest on the first day of the New Year after a girl,twice gangraped and then burnt to death, breathed her last in a city hospital.The episode, as if taken from a horror film, exposed the cruelty of a regime that is ruling West Bengal now.

THE states of Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, which are home to a majority of the adivasis outside the northeast, have been categorised as ‘least developed states’ by an official report of the central government. At least three of these four states (excluding Jharkhand) have been governed for the last one decade by non-Congress regimes that have been marketing them as promoting an inclusive model of development. These regimes are also well known for promoting export led agriculture as well as corporate capital in natural resource based industries, especially mining.