It's yet another cozy Sunday afternoon during quarantine, and Serena Williams is lounging in her newly decorated home office on Zoom with her big sister Venus. It’s just two months after the tennis titans went toe to toe at the Top Seed Open in Kentucky, which was their first time back on the court since the forced hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The world-famous pair, who have played many roles in each other’s lives in the 23 years since their first match against each other—best friends, former teammates, competitors, and longtime roommates—are giggling as they reflect on the five-year journey of collaborating on their greatest joint effort yet: designing Serena’s dream home. After co-owning a Palm Beach Gardens property where the Grand Slam duo lived together on and off since…

IF YOU CARE about the climate a crucial question is how emerging economies, which accounted for 67% of carbon-dioxide emissions from energy last year, can shift to a cleaner approach. They derive a third of their primary energy from coal, and must meet the aspirations of poor citizens who lack cheap electricity. China offers one template: its energy industry is shifting towards renewables. Yet it is still moving far too slowly to reduce its emissions and many countries may be wary of replicating its state-led approach. An alternative model is now visible in the other Asian giant, India, which is in the early stages of a green boom led by the private sector (see Briefing). Although it has obvious flaws, it provides hope that India can make the green leap. India has…

THE WEEKEND after Queen Elizabeth II died, the continental European press was much taken with the arrangements for the royal transition. But readers of the Diari de Girona—which explained in Catalan the change in titles of the former Prince of Wales and his wife—might have been a bit baffled. They would have encountered a few familiar people: Elisabet II was the late queen, and the former Príncep Carles is her son. But who is this Llitera of which the paper spoke? Readers on Twitter figured it out: a llitera is a stretcher or a bunk-bed in Catalan, or a translation of the Spanish camilla, little bed. The paper quickly restored the new queen consort’s name to Camilla. Countries have differed on whether and when to translate the names of the royal…

ON THE SURFACE it was a huge mismatch—David versus an army of Goliaths. Yet in a matter of days a report by Hindenburg Research, a fledgling short-selling firm, resulted in a fall of over $50bn in the wealth of Gautam Adani, hitherto one of the world’s richest men and a close associate of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister. Along the way, a $2.5bn share offering by Adani Enterprises, flagship of the Adani Group’s listed companies, was derailed. Hindenburg alleged that Adani is a giant con. Adani countered that the charges are baseless and, moreover, count as an attack on India itself. Mr Adani is a big target. His empire has expanded rapidly in recent years, and now includes everything from ports to power plants. Its share offer initially closed on January…

FOR THE better part of three years—1,016 days to be exact—China will have been closed to the world. Most foreign students left the country at the start of the pandemic. Tourists have stopped visiting. Chinese scientists have stopped attending foreign conferences. Expat executives were barred from returning to their businesses in China. So when the country opens its borders on January 8th, abandoning the last remnants of its “zerocovid” policy, the renewal of commercial, intellectual and cultural contact will have huge consequences, mostly benign. First, however, there will be horror. Inside China, the virus is raging. Tens of millions of people are catching it every day (see China section). Hospitals are overwhelmed. Although the zerocovid policy saved many lives when it was introduced (at great cost to individual liberties), the government…

“MUKHTAR HAS BEEN A CANNY OPERATOR, ALMOST NEVER IMPLICATING HIMSELF IN ANY OF THE MURDERS HE HAS COMMITTED”Brijlal Former DGP, Uttar Pradesh The Banda district jail on Police Line Road has seen a flurry of activity in the past few days. Even DIG (Jails), Prayagraj range, P.N. Pandey, was camping here, ostensibly to strengthen the jail’s security system. The preparations were for mafia don-turned-neta Mukhtar Ansari, 63, who arrived here in the wee hours of April 7, after travelling 900 km from Ropar Jail in Punjab escorted by a 150-strong police patrol. His relocation followed a Supreme Court order on March 26, which backed the Uttar Pradesh government’s plea that he be brought back to the state. Ansari should be familiar with the place—he was in Banda jail for 21 months…

13 YEARS AFTER INDEPENDENCE The Indian Army entered Goa, then ruled by the Portuguese, on December 17, 1961—13 years after India had won freedom from British rule. The army cornered the 5,000-odd remaining Portuguese soldiers and made them surrender in two days. Goa, spread over 3,702 sq. km, became a part of India on December 19, 1961 SEVEN ALLIES Under Lohia’s leadership, the residents of at least seven villages close to the Maharashtra and Karnataka borders began uniting against the Portuguese. The villagers imposed a ban on Portuguese products and helped Goan farmers sell their rice in the market FIRST MOVER Socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia was among the first to voice a national call for Goa’s liberation, on June 18, 1946, at a rally attended by close to 10,000 people in Margao. He became…

Long before the US withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, Taliban insurgents were using this guerrilla tactic to subvert its ground strength and set off bursts of violent mayhem. That too with a simple device: small sticky bombs planted on vehicles carting the enemy. Inspired by its success, Kashmir is now witnessing the entry of this new weapon of offence alongside a shift in the tactical armoury of militancy itself. Security forces woke up to the threat after a drone consignment was recovered in Samba along the LoC on February 14. Cheap and portable, a sticky bomb packs RDX or TNT into a small box, has a magnet to fix it to the target metal surface, and is detonated remotely with a timer. The security establishment is a bit…

In October 2001, when US Special Forces and CIA operatives went into Afghanistan with the express objective of removing the Taliban and dismantling Al Qaeda, could anyone have predicted that 20 years later the US would still be militarily engaged and debating its choices? It is this stark realisation that made President Joe Biden announce on April 14 that “it is time to end the forever war in Afghanistan”, and that all US soldiers would leave before September 11 this year. Yet, the harsh reality is that this may wind up US’s war in Afghanistan, but for the Afghans, their endless war shows no signs of ending. Initially, Biden was critical of the arbitrary deadline of May 1 negotiated in the Doha Agreement by US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad, saying “it was…

Prima di fake news, sorveglianza di massa, dittatura dei like e profilazione selvaggia, la retorica che circolava sulla rete era tutta sotto il segno di un ottimismo quasi insolente. Per i tecnoutopisti californiani, internet ci avrebbe portato per mano in un mondo nuovo, radicalmente libero. Ora si sa che non è andata proprio così. Ma esplorando le piattaforme delle community di cryptoarte si percepisce subito una vibrazione familiare. È l’eco dell’entusiasmo e delle speranze che un tempo si associavano a internet in quanto tale, e che qui si riferiscono, più prosaicamente, a un suo strumento: l’NFT. Il “Non-Fungible Token” è una tecnologia in grado di trasformare jpg, video o anche semplici tweet in entità digitali uniche, verificate, tracciabili. Tutto questo grazie all’utilizzo del blockchain, una sorta di registro digitale cronologico non…

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist former president, won Brazil’s election, beating Jair Bolsonaro, the populist right-wing incumbent. Lula, as he is known, won 50.9% of the votes to Mr Bolsonaro’s 49.1%, the narrowest winning margin since Brazil’s return to democracy in the 1980s. After the result was declared, Mr Bolsonaro refused to speak publicly for 45 hours. He eventually gave a two-minute speech and said he would comply with the constitution. He also asked supporters who had taken to the streets to stop blocking roads with lorries. Although Mr Bolsonaro did not explicitly concede, his chief of staff said that the transition of power would proceed smoothly. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, seemed to be on track to return to office after a parliamentary election. His bloc of…

Politics The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the first part of its latest assessment report. The Earth is warming. Even with a drastic reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions temperatures will probably be 1.5o C above their late-19th century levels by 2050. Climate change is under way, the report laments, with all the environmental consequences that brings. The extent of the damage depends on the cumulative build-up of emissions and can be limited if the world strives for net-zero carbon emissions. Andrew Cuomo said he would resign as governor of New York, after his Democratic colleagues in the state assembly prepared to impeach him over allegations from 11 women of sexual harassment. Mr Cuomo insists his actions did not amount to misconduct and said he was forced out by a political system “driven…

HUÎTRES REINES Voici une histoire hors du commun: fils d’un petit ostréiculteur, Florent Tarbouriech, à la mort de son père, développe son négoce, passant de quatre tables installées sur l’étang à cinquante en dix ans. Pour s’ouvrir la porte des cuisines étoilées, il invente un système manuel permettant d’imiter l’effet des marées en sortant les huîtres de l’eau tous les jours, comme en Atlantique. Succès immédiat: l’huître, plus sportive, plus musclée, gagne en saveur, en croquant, et séduit des chefs comme Guy Savoy ou Gilles Goujon. Florent investit alors dans la recherche et développement pour automatiser le processus. En 2008, le système est breveté dans 26 pays. En 2011, Florie et Romain, les aînés de Florent et Sabine Tarbouriech, créent Le St Barth’, un lieu de dégustation de coquillages sur le…

DURING an icy April in 1626, Francis Bacon, philosopher and a pioneer of the scientific method, was riding through the snowy streets of London when a curious question popped into his mind: would the cold help preserve a dead chicken? After acquiring one from a nearby household, he set about stuffing the bird with snow. In the process, he caught a chill, quickly followed by pneumonia and death. This possibly apocryphal story, spread by philosopher Thomas Hobbes, points to two faces of curiosity: one a virtue, the other a vice. Curiosity is the driving force behind science, exploration and discovery, in which form it has been as important in our species’ success as our intelligence. Curiosity can also be a boon to us individually, guiding us into passionate, purpose-filled lives –…

Politics Sudan suffered its second coup in two years. Abdel­Fattah al-Burhan, a former general and the country’s de facto president, seized control just months before he was supposed to step down. He also had the civilian prime minister arrested. Mr Burhan said he had acted to prevent a civil war. Thousands of protesters said no, it was a blatant power grab. Soldiers opened fire on them. At least seven people were killed and 140 wounded. Donors such as America suspended aid, but Mr Burhan hopes for backing from undemocratic foreign powers. BioNTech, the company that developed the covid-19 vaccine marketed by Pfizer, said it would build factories in Senegal and Rwanda next year. It hopes to produce more doses for Africa, which has 17.5% of the world’s population but has so far…

Her parents named her Sheela Ambalal Patel. After she married for the second time, her name in official records appeared as Sheela Birnstiel. Most of us, however, know her by the name Osho had once given her, Ma Anand Sheela. In the early 1980s, Sheela was indomitable, feisty. She had spunk. Back then, Osho was known to the world as Bhagwan Rajneesh. Sheela, his secretary, had his ear. She brought him what he wanted—cars, diamonds, fame, his own city in the US. She made real his utopia. The Netflix documentary, Wild Wild Country (2018), told the story of how Osho’s American dream of sex and samadhi soured. It made Sheela the protagonist of a tragedy, one that ended in scandal and a jail term. Osho accused Sheela of arson, wiretapping, attempted…

It could have been a scene from a fairytale, in which the beautiful bride marries a handsome aristocrat in the landscaped gardens of his family’s historic ancestral palace. But this real-life love story took place in Madrid’s 18th-century Liria Palace, where last week around 300 guests gathered to witness Carlos Fitz-James Stuart y Solís, Count of Osorno, marry Belén Corsini de Lacalle. While hundreds of onlookers gathered outside to catch a glimpse of Europe’s first high-society wedding in 18 months, the bride arrived at her future husband’s family home dressed in an empire-line georgette silk gown by Cristina Martínez-Pardo Cobián for Navascués. SOMETHING BORROWED Holding her hair in place was a silver and diamond decoration shaped into two interlocking circles to symbolise eternal love, created from a piece belonging to her mother. Following family tradition,…

Dominating the arid landscape on the edges of the Judaean Desert stands a hill that was once the pinnacle of territory controlled by Herod the Great. Identified in the mid 1800s as the site of the palace-fortress built by the king, Herodium housed a luxurious oasis in the lands southeast of Bethlehem. Even before its identification, historians had a clear vision of what this landmark once looked like, thanks to the Judeo-Roman historian Flavius Josephus. In his History of the Jewish War, written in the late first century a.d., Josephus described it as“a hill, raised by the hand of man, to be the shape of a woman’s breast.” Comprising palaces, forts, gardens, and a theater, the complex has provided rich insights into a king whose rule shaped the early life of Jesus.…

OF ALL CHINA’S achievements in the past two decades, one of the most impressive is the rise of its technology industry. Alibaba hosts twice as much e-commerce activity as Amazon does. Tencent runs the world’s most popular super-app, with 1.2bn users. China’s tech revolution has also helped transform its long-run economic prospects at home, by allowing it to leap beyond manufacturing into new fields such as digital health care and artificial intelligence (AI). As well as propelling China’s prosperity, a dazzling tech industry could also be the foundation for a challenge to American supremacy. That is why President Xi Jinping’s assault on his country’s $4trn tech industry is so startling. There have been over 50 regulatory actions against scores of firms for a dizzying array of alleged offences, from antitrust abuses…

Politics An 18-year-old gunman murdered 19 young children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas. After a stand-off with law-enforcement officers he was shot dead by a borderpatrol agent. Parents were asked to provide DNA samples to help identify the children’s bodies. The perpetrator had a semi-automatic rifle and wore body armour, as did the gunman who shot and killed ten black people at a supermarket in Buffalo on May 14th. It was the worst school shooting in America since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012. The FBI reported this week that the number of “active shooter” incidents, not counting episodes of gang violence or domestic disputes, rose by more than 50% last year to 61. Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, came under pressure to improve safety on…

Following a tip-off on the night of October 2, a team of the Mumbai unit of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), posing as passenders, boarded Cordelia Cruises’ ship Empress, where a Delhi-based events company had organised a two-day musical voyage. Among the guests was superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan, 23. Led by zonal director Sameer Wankhede, the NCB team began a search and claimed to have seized 13 gm of cocaine, 5 gm of MD, 21 gm of charas, 22 pills of MDMA (Ecstasy) and Rs 1.33 lakh cash. The next day, the NCB arrested Khan, his friend Arbaaz Merchant and 18 others for the alleged consumption, sale and purchase” of contraband substances. Khan was charged under sections 8(c) r/w 20(b), 27, 28, 29 and 35 of the Narcotic Drugs…

For the past few months, Sreelekha Nambiar, a 38-year-old homemaker in Vashi, Navi Mumbai, has been wondering if seasonal shortages are driving up the prices of vegetables and groceries. The Rs 25,000 she sets aside for monthly household expenses has been getting her two-thirds of what she could buy a year ago. Vegetable prices are ruling at Rs 100-120 a kg in April compared to Rs 80-100 a year ago; cooking gas has become costlier by Rs 150, touching Rs 950 for a cylinder; and edible oil prices have jumped to Rs 200-220 a litre from Rs 80-100 a year ago. The Rs 22 a litre rise in petrol prices has made costlier her husband Satheesh’s daily commute to the internet services firm where he works as a technician. There…

‘It was an honour to see her, let alone speak to her. The highlight of my career’ Resplendent in a military-style, brick-red cashmere coat, the Queen cut an elegant figure making her first solo engagement since the death of the Duke of Edinburgh. But as she arrived at Portsmouth Naval Base to visit the flagship she named in 2014, the monarch was paying a tender tribute to her husband by teaming her outfit with the striking ruby, diamond and gold Scarab brooch he gave her in 1966. Smiling brightly, Her Majesty stepped on board HMS Queen Elizabeth as the crew prepared for the huge aircraft carrier’s maiden operational voyage – a seven-month deployment to the Far East. She was greeted by Captain Angus Essenhigh and Commodore Steve Moorhouse, commander of the UK Carrier Strike…

IT GETS ALMOST three-quarters of its electricity from coal, and has 39 new coal-fired power plants under construction. It digs up and burns more of the stuff than any other country except China. And it is coal’s loudest advocate internationally: at last year’s climate conference in Glasgow, it was the skunk at the garden party, blocking efforts to phase out the fuel most responsible for global warming. This soot-smeared intransigence, however, distracts from a dramatic countervailing trend. While his underlings defended coal, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, made a series of pledges in Glasgow that, if kept, will make his country a green-energy powerhouse. The most eye-catching was the promise that India would achieve “net-zero” emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by 2070—meaning that any emissions that had not been eliminated by…

We must know what we are up against—how immense the challenge before us is—as we look at India’s ban on single-use plastic that kicked in on July 1. Anyone who has been to a beach and has received a message in a bottle knows it’s a stark one. The bottle is made of plastic. So is the water—almost. That’s the message. The bottle may seem tiny compared to the vast sea, but have you heard of trash vortexes? The largest one, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is estimated to have an area of 1.6 million sq. km—a floating bridge of semi-dissolved trash between California and Japan. We have one of our own, in the Indian Ocean, toxifying the blue waters between South Africa and Australia. Scientists have called it a…

Our nation is at war,” General V.P. Malik tweeted on April 18. As the last Indian army chief to have led troops in war, he should know. Each day, over 2,000 Indians are succumbing to Covid-19, nearly four times the number of soldiers killed in the 11-week Kargil War in 1999. But there’s an important difference—this pandemic is not a distant border conflict fought by generals and professional soldiers. The tsunami of the second wave has crashed into our towns and cities, affecting our friends, neighbours and relatives, overwhelming our health infrastructure, leaving people scrambling around for hospital beds, oxygen cylinders and even slots in crematoriums to dispose of the dead. Over 200,000 persons have been infected every single day since April 15—the world’s largest number of new cases since…

WHEN WILL it end? For a year and a half, covid-19 has gripped one country after another. Just when you think the virus is beaten, a new variant comes storming back, more infectious than the last. And yet, as the number of vaccinations passes 3bn, glimpses of post-covid life are emerging. Already, two things are clear: that the last phase of the pandemic will be drawn-out and painful; and that covid-19 will leave behind a different world. This week The Economist publishes a normalcy index, which reflects both these realities. Taking the pre-pandemic average as 100, it tracks such things as flights, traffic and retailing across 50 countries comprising 76% of Earth’s population. Today it stands at 66, almost double the level in April 2020 (see Graphic detail). Yet the ravages of…

EVER SINCE its first antitrust law passed in 1890, America has argued over what trustbusting is for. One school, named after Louis Brandeis, a judge, holds that big companies must be tamed because they corrupt politics and damage customers, competitors and staff. The other says the goal of antitrust is to protect the welfare of consumers, which can be enhanced by big, efficient firms. For decades the consumer approach has been ascendant, but now the consensus has frayed and trustbusters are heading in a Brandeisian direction. This is a mistake. Competition policy needs reforms, to correct past failings and to adapt to the digital economy. Yet it should continue to be based on the principle that consumers are what count. A shift towards more politicised and expansive antitrust is taking place…

However much we deny it, India remains a caste-ridden society even after 75 years of Independence and considerable economic progress. It is em-bedded in our society and most definitely in our politics. Indians, it is often said, don’t cast their vote so much as vote their caste. This convergence of caste and politics makes most self-serving politicians want this state of play to continue. Caste politics assumed national centre stage when the then prime minister V.P. Singh’s decision to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations triggered nationwide protests in 1989-1990. His action did not come out of any love of social justice but was a cynical calculation to ensure the survival of his coalition government. The decision earmarked 27 per cent of government jobs for OBCs or the Other Backward Classes.…

PURUSHOTTAM AGRAWAL The author is a historian of ideas and scholar of Hinduism. His latest book is Kabir-Kabir. He is currently working on a book about Hinduism The most interesting, rather instructive, aspect of the Udupi ‘hijab controversy’ has been the way young Hindus chose to register their protest by underlining their own religious identity. “If you are allowed to don the hijab, then we must be allowed our saffron,” they said, through word or action. This way, they—rather, their instructors and mentors—managed to direct public imagination to the larger issue of perceived ‘Muslim appeasement’. The hijab would be seen as yet another ‘undeserved concession’ to Muslims, which must be nipped in the bud. The controversy became a timely vehicle for the BJP to put across its ‘anti-appeasement’ message in the ongoing…

As soon as they were inaugurated, U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris started making good on their campaign promises. They reentered the Paris climate accord, renewed U.S. support for the World Health Organization, and ended the Trump administration’s travel bans targeting nationals of select Muslim-majority and African nations. Racial justice was also high on the list of issues that they identified as most pressing and requiring action in their first 100 days. On Jan. 26, Biden rolled out his administration’s first steps to advance racial equity and promote national unity and reconciliation. He issued four executive orders spanning issues that affect multiple racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States, namely Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian, and Pacific Islander Americans. The first executive order directed the Department of Housing…

ONE OF THE most extraordinary growth records over the past two decades was to be found, perhaps surprisingly, in the horn of Africa. Real GDP per person in Ethiopia, the second-most-populous country in Africa, rose by an average annual rate of 9.3% from 1999 to 2019, just 0.4 percentage points less than China’s pace of growth. Now a year-long war between Ethiopia’s government and forces led by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) threatens to spill into the capital city, wreak humanitarian disaster and wipe away those economic gains. From the late 1990s, a roaring Chinese economy provided the impetus for a boom in the rest of the developing world. As China became richer, some of its industry moved abroad, allowing poorer countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam to follow in its…

In India, controversies sometimes emerge out of the unlikeliest places and when you least expect them. Last month, it erupted in coastal Karnataka when a group of schoolgirls in a government-run pre-university school said they were being prevented from entering their classrooms because they were wearing hijabs (headscarves). The issue snowballed into a larger conflagration. Several such incidents were reported across the state, the state government ordered an unprecedented three-day closure of all schools, and the schoolgirls petitioned the high court. Whether or not hijabs can be worn to school is now a question that the courts will have to answer. Although the controversy arose in the intensely polarised landscape of coastal Karnataka, it soon spread to other educational institutions in the state. The issue now boils down to an individual’s…

A pochi metri in linea d’aria dalle Gallerie dell’Accademia, affacciata sul Canal Grande, c’è una casa che – anche per gli standard di Venezia – è unica. L’aveva voluta la discendente di una famiglia di antiquari, la gallerista e collezionista Loredana Balboni, al piano terra e al primo della palazzina ottocentesca di famiglia. Per ripensare questo spazio e portarlo nella modernità chiama Carlo Scarpa: è il 1964, lui ha già firmato progetti importantissimi come palazzo Abatellis a Palermo, la Gipsoteca Canoviana a Possagno, la Fondazione Querini Stampalia nella sua Venezia. Scarpa entra in questo volume e lo reinventa. Da maestro, seguendo sia la razionalità sia l’emozione. Per proteggere gli interni dall’acqua alta rialza il livello del piano terra e riduce in conseguenza le altezze dei soffitti; ma nel punto centrale della…

What are the chances that five women artists, with studios in the same Los Angeles complex, would all be rooting for one another? Just such an unlikely arrangement exists right now in Frogtown, a sleepy, mostly residential neighborhood on the Los Angeles River, minutes from downtown. Ruby Neri, a sculptor of bright, bumptious, large-scale female clay nudes, had her eye on the magic warehouse for some time before she officially obtained it in 2020. “It was a little bit beyond my price range, but I signed the lease two months before COVID shut things down.” Lily Stockman, an abstract painter, heard about it from a friend, and got in touch with Neri. “It was truly right in my backyard,” she says. Neri then called Hilary Pecis, a realist painter of interiors…

COLOUR DIRECTION Combining a variety of prints but all in greens and whites ensures this room feels calm and not overwhelming. SUNNY DISPOSITION Pink and yellow is a winning combination for a fresh, summery feel at the breakfast table. Mixing and matching designs creates a cheery gathering of colour and pattern. ARTISTIC INSPIRATION A much-loved piece of art is an ideal starting point for a scheme. Pulling out key tones from the artwork for curtains, upholstery and accessories offers a joyful cocktail of yellows, pinks and browns. BEAUTIFUL BOTANICALS Three diverse patterns – a perky floral, a modern African print and a classic trellis design – have been cleverly layered to work together harmoniously. PATTERN PLAY An exuberant headboard is the focal point here, with diagonal striped curtains complementing the happy scheme.…

IN THE PAST few centuries physics has transformed both daily life and world history with novelties ranging from electricity to nuclear bombs. Physicists have also broadened humanity’s horizons, literally and metaphorically. Time and again, they have overturned notions of reality previously held—often by the self same physicists—to be fundamental. They could be about to do so once more. On a cosmic scale, a universe that was once thought to be a few thousand years old, and to consist of a handful of orbs circling Earth against a fixed backdrop of stars, has been shown to have an age of 13.77bn years—a value believed to be known to within a precision of three parts in a thousand. That universe may also be infinite in size. Certainly it stretches at least as far…

THE CLIMATE law that the German government passed in 2019 required a cut in greenhouse-gas emissions of 55%, from levels in 1990, by 2030. Climate activists saw this as insufficient. They took the government to court on the basis that, by not treating climate action seriously enough, it was denying basic rights to citizens of the future. The court has now rejected the more ambitious aspects of that complaint. But its ruling at the end of last month did nevertheless find fault with the law. Although the target for 2030 was not in itself deemed to be inadequate, the court decided that it does pose a problem in the context of the law’s longer-term aspiration to “net zero” emissions in 2050. The combination of the two pledges seemed to allow governments…

Bangalored. Coined sometime in the early years of the 21st century, the word used to mark out a unique Indian success. At the height of the outsourcing boom, an American would use the word to convey defeat in a long-distance economic competition. Bangalore, to take the old and familiar anglicised form of the name, was our own Silicon Valley. It was our sunrise city, our El Dorado. The world was its oyster. What possibly could go wrong with this script? Well, trust India to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. That American word has been turned inside out. Now it just as likely conveys an instrument of self-torture. The city may have renamed itself as Bengaluru in 2005 to suit rising nativist sentiments, but it has been ‘Bangalored’—and has…

AFTER ‘ROCKET LAKE,’ 5 THINGS INTEL MUST DO ON DESKTOP TO GET ITS CPU MAGIC BACK Intel must replicate what Apple has done. The Apple M1 is the first ARM-based system on a chip designed by Apple Inc. as a central processing unit for its line of Macintosh computers. It was inspired by their ARM A14 chip. It is deployed in the MacBook Air, Mac mini, and the MacBook Pro. It is the first personal computer chip built using a 5nm process. Apple claims that it has the world’s fastest CPU core.—Richard Keyes It is past time for Intel to move its chip design to at least 10nm, achieving all of its economies in circuit density and power consumption, especially when TSMC and Samsung are already at 7nm. It boggles the mind…

MARVEL AT THE heroism and resilience of Ukraine. In the first days of war, the armoured might of Vladimir Putin shrivelled before the courage of the nation he had attacked. In the face of Mr Putin’s invasion, the Ukrainian people have discovered they are ready to die for the idea that they should choose their own destiny. To a cynical dictator that must be incomprehensible. To the rest of humanity it is an inspiration. If only this week’s bravery were enough to bring the fighting to an end. Alas, Russia’s president will not withdraw so easily. From the start, Mr Putin has made clear that this is a war of escalation—a hygienic word for a dirty and potentially catastrophic reality. At its most brutal, escalation means that, whatever the world does,…

We entered 2022 with a sense of déjà vu because the new year seems a lot like the year gone by. Covid-19 cases are rising again and a far more contagious strain of the novel corona-virus is spreading across the globe. The good thing, though, is that two years on, Covid-19 is no longer an unknown unknown. We know the nature of the beast and experienced the worst of it last year when the Delta variant tore across India, triggering the second wave of infections, aggravated by an acute medical oxygen crisis and black fungus cases, all of which collectively killed over 200,000 people in the country. We are now far better prepared with vaccine stocks and the government’s booster dose programme. Covid-19 has claimed 5.4 million lives globally, just…

The Aam Aadmi Party’s euphoric arrival to dominance made it the cynosure of all eyes in Punjab, but it also diverted attention from a curious void the election results had left in their wake. The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has been at the very fulcrum of Punjab’s polity for all of its century-plus existence, and its wipeout is more than just a loss. It managed just three MLAs in the 117-seat assembly—its worst-ever electoral performance since 1967, the first polls after modern-day Punjab was carved out on linguistic lines. In a way, it’s a tectonic shift, bestowing an unpredictable set of dynamics for all of Punjab—not the least for, and not only for, the Akalis. That this has happened under Sukhbir Badal’s helmsmanship brings the most urgent questions for SAD. Sukhbir…

MEJINDARPAL KAUR The writer is International Legal Director, UNITED SIKHS The ongoing hijab row has left us shocked. The hijab is worn globally by Muslim women in public places, including schools. It is even more shocking that the debate is unfolding in India, a land where many religions were founded and where religious freedom has existed for aeons, since well before the Indian Constitution provided for it. It is for this religious freedom that the sixth Sikh guru, Sri Guru Teg Bahadurji, gave his life 347 years ago, so Kashmiri Pandits may wear their janeyu. He did it without questioning if the janeyu is an essential requirement of sanatan dharma, let alone if it is discriminatory. And his father, Guru Hargobind Sahibji, built the Guru Ki Maseet for Muslims in Hargobindpur, during…

On April 13, when former district judge Ramesh Chandra, a resident of Lucknow’s Gomti Nagar, and his wife Madhu had a bout of fever and a sore throat, they got themselves tested for Covid-19. The report found both of them positive. As Madhu’s condition deteriorated over the next two days, the former judge made frantic calls to city hospitals for ambulances and, when none came, called up and pleaded with the district magistrate and even officials in the chief minister’s office—to no avail. His wife died on the morning of April 15. But the ordeal was not over yet. Chandra spent a harrowing time trying to get a hearse to take her body to the crematorium. A weeping Chandra says he spent four hours calling friends in high places before…

GET BEHIND the wheel of an electric vehicle made in Detroit and drive south. The outline of a city that was once a byword for industrial decline fades in the rear-view mirror. Head into Ohio, where the battery under your feet was made. The semiconductors that regulate its charging speed were made there too, in a vast new factory that counts the Pentagon among its biggest customers. Recharge with electricity transmitted from one of West Virginia’s new nuclear plants, then start the long journey into the heartlands. After the endless wind farms of Kansas, you drive through Oklahoma’s vast solar fields, then loop back to the gulf coast. The trip ends by the water, the bright sun glinting off a spanking-new green-hydrogen plant. This is America in 2033, if the Biden…

THIS WEEK’S G20 meeting took place in Indonesia, the most important country that people routinely overlook. The last time its economy and politics were in the global spotlight was during the mayhem of the 1990s when a crony-capitalist system collapsed amid the Asian financial crisis, causing the fall of the 32-year-long dictatorship of Suharto. A quarter of a century on, Indonesia matters once again. It is the world’s largest Muslim-majority state, its third-biggest democracy and its fourth-most-populous country. With 276m people spread across thousands of islands that stretch from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, it is caught up in the strategic contest between America and China. And like India and other emerging markets, it is adapting to a new world order in which globalisation and Western supremacy are in retreat. Over…

Inside the historic St George’s Chapel, the setting for so many joyful royal family moments in recent years, the nave had been stripped of furniture but was bathed in bright sunlight from the windows high overhead. Before the service, chapel organist Luke Bond played JS Bach’s Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele, Adagio Espressivo by Sir William Harris, Salix by Percy Whitlock, Berceuse by Louis Vierne and Rhosymedre by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The last piece was also played at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales and at the weddings of both Prince William and Prince Harry. Rhosymedre was also played at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales The pallbearers approached the organ screen and, as the coffin entered the quire, a choir conducted by James Vivian sang The Sentences by William Croft…

On October 14, while on a tour of Goa, Union home minister Amit Shah got a glimpse of how factionalised the BJP’s state unit has become. At a meeting of the party’s core committee in Panaji, attended by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, two ministers—Mauvin Godinho and Vishwajeet Rane—openly complained to Shah about how Sawant ignores their advice on governance matters. The state unit is also divided on whether the BJP should go solo in the upcoming assembly election, scheduled for February 2022. Sources say the home minister’s advice on the day boiled down to one line—ensure, at all costs, that Goa’s opposition parties do not come together. In its bid to win a third term, the BJP’s Goa unit faces its biggest challenge in a decade, with the dissidence in its…

It’s not easy to frame a generational conflict that bears no clear, fixed ties of affiliation. But the Congress can be said to be loosely split between two halves with a distinct difference of approach—call it the gap between those eager for change and those content to let things hum along with minimum fuss. The assorted members of both sides exhibit this gap even beyond the specific pulls of groupism. The letter that senior party leader Ajay Maken wrote to new party president Mallikarjun Kharge on November 8 is a case in point. Leaked to the media a week later, the letter had a miffed Maken expressing unwillingness to continue as AICC in-charge of Rajasthan. He did not have any moral authority to stay on in that role, he wrote,…

You don’t need acres of INTRICATELY GATHERED fabric to create a CANOPY. A simple flat length of LINED FABRIC, with a channel for a pole, looks BOLD and APPEALING…

“A NEGATIVE OUTCOME, a Taliban automatic military takeover, is not a foregone conclusion,” Mark Milley, America’s most senior soldier, intoned last month while reiterating America’s support for the embattled Afghan government. General Milley is right: such a takeover is not quite inevitable, despite the departure of American troops. But it is growing more likely by the day—in large part because America, whatever its generals say, is doing too little to help. Ideally, America would not be withdrawing its forces at all. For several years, with only a few thousand troops who sustained few casualties, it had managed to maintain a stalemate between the Afghan government and the Taliban, thanks largely to air power. Yet last year, when Donald Trump was president, America struck a deal with the Taliban. In exchange for…

HASINA KHAN The author is a feminist activist and founder member of the Bebaak Collective The Karnataka school’s sudden decision to ban girls wearing hijab from entering its premises reeks of a conspiracy directed at Muslims. In the name of gender empowerment, they are out to build a narrative in which the entire fault lies with the Muslim community, all other communities are fine. They want to demonstrate that schools should have discipline, they should have a uniform. I do think that schools should have a uniform, and that every student, whatever his or her religion, should adhere to it. But what was the school management doing till now with students who were turning up wearing their religious identity? How can they be stopped suddenly? Was there any disciplinary action? Was there a…