A number of high-level exchanges between India and Russia is set to take place including the annual bilateral summit in October with President Vladmir Putin expected to make a visit. The recent exchanges between the two sides included the discussion of regional and international issues.During the lockdown period, Modi and Putin have also spoken a couple of times.

Misreported deaths are the cause behind suspiciously low number of fatalities in India, hindering epidemiologists’ efforts to study the spread of the virus in the country. India ranks fourth in the list of countries worst hit by the pandemic with more than 5 lakh confirmed cases and 16,124 deaths. But the real number may be much higher. According to sources, the number of deaths reported by private and government hospitals due to COVID-19 and those reported by mortuaries, burial and cremation grounds differ drastically.

At first glance, EIA 2020 is not very different from EIA 2006 but a glance is not enough when this draft has the power to change the future of this planet. Upon further analysis of the document, one will notice the reduced role or the watered-down version of one of the chief principles of this document, one that makes it democratic, that is Public Participation. In EIA 2020, the government has removed public hearings from the procedure of obtaining an EC (Environmental Clearance) for many categories. Their reason is that this reform will make it easier for businesses to grind through paperwork and begin operations for the benefit of the country. Thus, reproducing their age-old debate of environment vs development.

On 2nd July, this year, President Putin of Russia announced the results of a referendum. About 76% votes approved the referendum, passing it without a hitch. This referendum among other things allows Putin to run for election for the presidency for 2 more terms. To understand how this works, let us take a look at the russian constitution. According to the russian constitution, presidents’ are restricted to three terms and only allow for one consecutive reelection. Meaning that after two terms, Putin would have to wait for 4 years before running for president again. Which is exactly what happened in 2008, when Putin became the prime minister, allowing his handpicked successor Dmytri Medvedev to be elected to the presidency.

The COVID pandemic saw most affected nations impose lockdowns as a precautionary measure, ensuring that there was a flattening of the curve. This was for two reasons. Firstly and most importantly, to make sure that more people did not catch this highly communicable disease, and secondly, to help reduce the burden on hospitals such that cases were more spread out over time and hence, easier to treat. The sole purpose of requiring a compulsory quarantine was to help people refrain from large gatherings, all the more because this deadly virus is at a high state of contagion.

US President Donald Trump said on July 31 that, as soon as August 1st, he will sign an executive order to ban TikTok in the United States, raising the pressure on the Chinese owner of the famous short-video app to sell it. The move will be the culmination of US national security concerns about the protection of TikTok's handling of personal data. This would represent a huge blow to the owner of TikTok, Beijing-based ByteDance, who was one of only a handful of genuinely multinational Chinese conglomerates due to the commercial success of the device.