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AI is making phones and computers more expensive This is a strange time for smartphones. For almost 20 years, phones kept getting better every year. They became faster, took better photos, had bigger batteries, and offered more storage. Even though they became more expensive, you got much more for your money. Today, even a cheap…

Prashant Kishor’s first election win is a big moment for his new party. The Bankipur bypoll could send an important message to Bihar’s leaders. By-elections, or bypolls, don’t always follow a fixed pattern. But often, the party that runs the state wins these smaller elections, especially if the same party is also in power at…

Smartphones are getting pricier thanks to AI-driven jump in dynamic RAM prices. But there’s a way out  This is a strange time in smartphone history. For almost 20 years, we’ve expected more bang for our buck year after year. Yes, phones got costlier, but their capabilities – processor, camera, battery, storage, etc – improved faster….

Welcome back to another edition of My Take 5. This week we are covering the expanding scope of the US-Iran war before Trump’s sudden halt to the strikes, again; Ukraine’s targeting of Russian e-commerce company Wildberries and why this matters; Kazakh President Tokayev’s plain-speak to Putin; migrant rush at Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla;…

The country is passing through a historic phase of transformation. A network of expressways, modern infrastructure, the digital revolution, and startup culture have established new benchmarks of development, placing India among the leading nations of the world. From a vast state like Uttar Pradesh to every corner of the country, a new story of development…

In 1961, Dr Frank Drake proposed a probabilistic, though highly speculative, equation to determine the number of intelligent communicating civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. It was also a quantified response to the thought process started in 1950 with the Nobel laureate physicist Enrico Fermi (one of the lead scientists in the Manhattan Project building…

While the CJP protests look to have ended with Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, their real political impact may become visible only at the ballot box. After all, this agitation has brought into play a large constituency of young voters, who are impatient with authority. The question now is, how will they vote? Read…

War attracts attention because destruction is dramatic. A city can be bombed in minutes, a bridge demolished in seconds, and years of development erased overnight. Peace works quietly, building schools, hospitals, roads, businesses, institutions and stable societies. Peace’s value is often underestimated. It does more than prevent destruction: it releases human and material energies for development. Violence…

Over a dozen foreign universities are now racing to plant their flags in India, enabled by National Education Policy (NEP), which allows foreign universities to compete with Indian universities at home. India has flirted with this idea before. In 2010, UPA govt introduced Foreign Educational Institutions Bill, which aimed to regulate and permit foreign universities to operate independently. Read full story…

The Commonwealth is a relic, but the Games are a decent sporting barometer  The Commonwealth Games have a long history. They began in 1930 and were originally called the British Empire Games, when Britain ruled many countries around the world. Today, Britain is no longer the powerful empire it once was, and many people wonder…