Narcotics biggest threat, schools and colleges targeted by drug peddlers: FM

Gold smuggling may figure higher up in anti-smuggling conversations, but it is the pilferage and smuggling of narcotics that poses the biggest threat to India today, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Tuesday.

Having made inroads into every state and small towns, with schools and colleges now becoming increasingly exposed to this threat, Sitharaman said that in such cases, coordination with state enforcement authorities is a grey area that needs to be discussed further. Greater coordination with enforcement authorities in the states, she said, is needed to expedite on-ground action in such cases.

'All India-Abu Dhabi traffic rights exhausted, time to explore expansion of bilaterals'

The Emirate of Abu Dhabi could be the next Gulf territory to approach India seeking an expansion of the bilateral air serv-ices agreement as existing traffic rights have been exhausted by Abu Dhabi-based Etihad as well as India's airlines.-

'Al shifts from experimental to production-ready stage

"The true magic of great technology is taking something very complicated and making it feel easy," said Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of cloud-based data storage company Snowflake in his keynote address at the Snowflake Summit 2025, the company's seventh annual user conference, setting the vision for the company

‘India, EU may agree on full FTA’

India and the European Union (EU) are likely to agree upon a comprehensive free trade agreement (FTA) instead of an interim deal, an official said on Tuesday.

However, the proposed investment treaty and a pact on geographical indications (GI) may not be concluded simultaneously. The official said that the situation re-mains dynamic in the FTA talks. Negotiations for the "comprehensive agreement" between India and the EU are progressing at a rapid pace, and the deal could be concluded before the year-end, the official added.

OECD lowers global outlook as Trump trade war hits US growth

Global economic growth is slowing more than expected only a few months ago as the fallout from the Trump administration's trade war takes a bigger toll on the US economy, the OECD said on Tuesday, revising down its outlook. The global economy is on course to slow from 3.3 per cent last year to 2.9 per cent in 2025 and 2026, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said, trimming its estimates from March for growth of 3.1 per cent this year and 3.0 per cent next year.

Domicile rules for Ladakh notified by Govt to address job and quota concerns

The Centre has notified a series of regulations aimed at addressing Ladakh's concerns over jobs, quotas and cultural preservation. The new legal framework intro-duces a domicile-based job reservation system, recognition of local languages, and procedural clarity in civil service recruitment.

Chill in ties, window closing for Canada invitation to G7 summit

With less than two weeks to go for the start of the G7 Summit, being hosted by Canada in Kananaskis in Alberta from June 15-17, India is still to receive an invitation to the gathering.

‘I'm here to build bridges... 400-mn market in South America, we are its heart'

The Visiting President of Paraguay, Santiago Peña Palacios, has said he's trying to "build bridges" between Latin America and India, just like what Prime Minister Narendra Modi is doing.

In an exclusive interview with The Indian Express in Delhi, Peña, who met Modi Monday, condemned the Pahalgam terror attack and expressed support for India's right to defend its people. Edited excerpts: 

Garden Reach inks pact with Norway firm, India to build its first polar research vehicle

Kolkata-Based Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited (GRSE), a Government of India undertaking, signed an MoU with Norwegian firm Kongsberg on Tuesday to codesign and build India's first-ever polar research vehicle (PRV) indigenously.

PROMISE OF A PACT

The uncertainty unleashed by Donald Trump's tariffs has only been aggravated by a spate of recent court rulings. On May 28, the US Court of International Trade struck down Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs, saying that the emergency law (International Emergency Economic Powers Act) does not give the President the power to impose broad tariffs. However, a day later, a federal appeals court temporarily reinstated the tariffs. The case is now likely to work its way through the US legal system. The uncertainty is likely to linger on as the 90-day pause on the Liberation Day tariffs ends in the second week of July.

The great churn in Asia

Two recent developments to India's east offer insights into the rapidly shifting contours of Asian geopolitics. The first was the annual Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD) in Singapore, where US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth outlined the administration's priorities for Asia. French President Emmanuel Macron's keynote address offered a European perspective on Asian security that diverged from Washington's in key respects. The second was South Korea's presidential election, where the likely victory of left-leaning candidate Lee Jae-myung could reshape not only Korea's political trajectory but also the strategic dynamics of Northeast Asia. More broadly, South Korea's political churn reflects the growing dilemmas across Asia in responding to an assertive China and an increasingly unpredictable US.

HAPPINESS IS NOT AN APP

On April 28, Hariman Sharma, a farmer from the hills of Himachal Pradesh, walked up barefoot to Rashtrapati Bhavan's Durbar Hall to receive the Padma Shri from the President of India. He had developed a new variety of apple that could be cultivated in tropical or subtropical climate regions, potentially enabling it to be grown almost anywhere in our country. Sharma is not a government scientist or a researcher in a multinational biotech company. He is a common man.

America Inc is not America 

Several Years Ago, Nobel-Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote an insightful article, 'A Country is not a Company', in which he argued that business leaders need to understand the difference between eco-nomic policy on the national and international scale and business strategy on the organisational scale. In other words, and to put it bluntly, CEOs who do not understand economic policy are ill-suited for the role. Little did many realise, including perhaps Krugman himself, that an article written in 1996 would command such resonance almost three decades on.

The Centre, for the states

In the past 11 years, India has witnessed an era of cooperative and fiscal federalism. The Centre and state governments have worked together on socioeconomic transformation for the achievement of shared goals. The ideal of Team India championed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been the driving force behind this approach. Institutional and process reforms of unprecedented scale have brought about exceptional impact at all levels, the most significant being the rise of 25 crore citizens from multidimensional poverty.

Redrawing red lines on Tehran 

After less than two months in office, US President Donald Trump made a "sudden" offer to Iran's Supreme Leader for direct US-Iran talks on the Iranian nuclear weapons programme and easing of US sanctions. So far, five rounds of US-Iran talks have been led by the US Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Though the talks remained on track up to the third round, both sides started hardening their stances before the fourth round, held just a day before Trump's three-nation Gulf tour. However, it was before the fifth round that both drew irreconcilable red lines about Iranian enrichment capability. While Witkoff stressed that Iran can't have any enrichment capability, Araghchi tweeted "no enrichment, no deal". Despite serious doubts, the fifth round took place on May 23. It appears that the talks did not collapse and both sides have taken back proposals to ponder over.

SC: No contempt if Parliament and state legislature simply make laws

The Supreme Court has said that any law enacted by Parliament or a state legislature "subsequent" to a court order cannot be held an act of contempt, and the enactment would have the "force of law" unless declared "null and void" by a Constitutional Court.

A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and SC Sharma said this in a May 15 order disposing of a 2012 contempt plea alleging that the Chhattisgarh government failed to comply with the SC's directions to stop support to vigilante groups like Salwa Judum and arming tribals in the name of special police officers (SPO) in the fight against Maoists.

Axiom-4 mission to ISS deferred, launch on June 10

The axiom-4 mission, carrying Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla and three others to the International Space Station, has been pushed back by a couple of days - with the liftoff now expected "no earlier than" Tuesday, June 10, at 05:52 pm. The mission was earlier expected to be launched on Sunday, June 8.

India experienced wettest May since 1901: IMD

This Year, May was not about sweltering heat and extreme temperatures but rain and floods. India experienced the wettest May in 124 years as the country recorded 126.7 mm of rainfall last month, said the IMD. May was unusually wet and marked by the early southwest monsoon onset, which brought bountiful rainfall over southern and eastern India regions over the past 10 days.

ICRISAT Launches agri co-op centre for Global South

The International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) launched Tuesday a new Centre of Excellence for transformation of agriculture in developing countries through South-South cooperation.

The new Centre-ICRISAT Centre of Excellence for South-South Cooperation in Agriculture (ISSCA) - based in Hyderabad, will serve as a catalyst for translating agricultural solutions into scalable impact.

At a press meet, RIS Director General Sachin Chaturvedi said this Centre will take India's development experience to other developing nations. It would democratise agricultural knowledge and translate experience into policy. Sharing an example of collaboration between countries, Chaturvedi said Ethiopia and Kenya have approached the RIS, seeking support for institutional framework to have growth of the private seed industry in their countries. 

What Ukraine's drone attack on Russia means for peace talks

How can the Ukrainian attack on Russian air assets affect the negotiations? What will Russia be looking for as it investigates the drone strikes? What does the attack mean for President Putin? ALIND CHAUHAN put these questions to one of India's foremost experts on Russia.

WHAT CAUSED THE MASSIVE ERUPTION OF ITALY'S MOUNT ETNA

Italy's Mount Etna, the largest volcano in Europe, produced an explosive eruption on Monday morning, sending a huge cloud of ash, smoke and rock fragments several kilometres into the sky.

Although the eruption created a spectacular sight, it resulted in no reported injuries or damage and barely even disrupted flights in the region.

New protections for Ladakh

The central government has notified regulations to preserve Ladakh's land, jobs, and culture, aimed at addressing concerns raised by civil society over the past five years.

The new legal framework includes domicile-based reservation in jobs, recognition of local languages, and procedural clarity in recruitment in the civil service.