INDIA last week once again breathlessly celebrated another record-breaking feat by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in launching 104 satellites on a single flight of its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C-37 on February 16, 2017.  Print and electronic media in India went ga-ga with stories about how India had pulled off another “first,” beating by several times the earlier Russian record launch of 37 satellites in a single flight in 2014.

THE World Health Organisation is set to elect a new director general at the World Health Assembly in May 2017, marking the completion of two four-year terms of the current director general, Margaret Chan. Three candidates were shortlisted at the recently concluded executive board meeting of the WHO in Geneva – Sania Nishtar from Pakistan, David Nabarro from the UK and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus from Ethiopia.

THE ink has barely dried on the acquisition of the French Rafale fighter aircraft, and India has once again entered the international arms market with the intention to procure hundreds of fighter jets, albeit with the proviso that they be manufactured in India. The Rafale deal, for outright purchase of 36 twin-engined medium-weight multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) worth around $ 7.8 billion (Rs 50,000 crores), did not quite turn out to be  ‘the mother of all defence deals’ it was once hailed as.

SWATI Chaturvedi's book I am a Troll, released a few days back, blows the lid off BJP's systematic trolling of its opponents. We have always known that the trolling on the internet we see on a daily basis was an organised effort of the BJP. We now learn that there is a team, directly controlled by the RSS and BJP leadership that is at the centre of this trolling. This was the team that fed the lies, the “drip of hate”, vicious attacks on women including threats of rape, to a larger troll army.

WITH the worst of the winter pollution crisis in Delhi and other northern cities having subsided for the moment, the episodic clamour in the media, the judiciary, government agencies and among the public at large has also quietened down. No doubt it will flare up at the next peak in air pollution. Forgotten, it seems, are the short-term fixes furiously discussed then. And, in the days of instant media, nobody has the patience to discuss long-term solutions.