| Good morning, 225 million kilometres away on Mars, there's a crater named after Kerala's most popular beach — Varkala. There's fine logic to it. The jarosite minerals that make up the Varkala cliff are the closest links to Martian land composition and could offer clues to the planet's evolutionary history. And that's not at all. The state's largest river, Periyar, its largest fort, Bekal, and two of its towns, Thumba and Valiamala, all now have a second address on Martian soil, right next to the large 'Krishnan' crater, named after renowned geologist M S Krishnan. Of the 2,000 features named on Mars till now, about 50 have Indian references. On that note, let’s get to the rest of the edition👇 - The view on One Nation, One Elections
- The future of G20
- The Smriti Mandhana episode, and more
🚨Big Story The Sensex, which measures the performance of the 30 largest and most actively traded stocks at the Bombay Stock Exchange, breached the 86,000 mark for the first time on Thursday. This came after 14 months of turbulence in the Indian markets. The wobble: Trade tensions and protectionist fears under the Donald Trump presidency have weighed on market sentiment since November 2024. Besides, crude oil prices, geopolitical stress from wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the US-China tensions also contributed to risk-off sentiment. Several domestic factors were also at play. George Mathew and Sandeep Singh explain. The rise: So what changed on Thursday? Stock markets were already rallying on Wednesday, buoyed by expectations of interest rate cuts in the US and India. Meanwhile, crude oil prices fell sharply as renewed hopes for eased sanctions on Russia grew following signs of progress toward a peace deal with Ukraine. In this backdrop, the Sensex appears poised to set a new record high in the coming days, George Mathew reports.
⚡Only in Express ‘No violation’: Representatives of the 23rd Law Commission and the Election Commission are scheduled to brief members of the Parliament's joint committee on simultaneous elections on December 4. Ahead of this, the Law Commission is learnt to have firmed up its view that the ‘One Nation One Election’ Bills do not disturb the basic structure of the Constitution. In its view, the Bills don't require state ratification, nor do they infringe on an individual's right to vote. Here’s what we have learnt.
📰 From the Front Page A remedy: The Karnataka government is likely to table the ‘Karnataka Rohith Vemula (Prevention of Exclusion or Injustice) (Right to Education and Dignity) Bill, 2025’ in the upcoming winter session, starting December 8. Named after a Dalit PhD scholar who died by suicide at the University of Hyderabad, the Bill seeks to curb caste-based discrimination in educational institutes. The Bill calls for the establishment of an Equity Committee in all institutes and prescribes penalties ranging from a written apology to a three-year jail term and a Rs 1 lakh fine. Nikhila Henry brings you the details. Resentment: Violent protests broke out at the Vellore Institute of Technology in Madhya Pradesh’s Sehore on Tuesday. What led to the anger? Anand Mohan J sifts facts from fiction, among a jaundice contagion scare, alleged lack of clean water and food, and the absence of a student body to address issues.
📌 Must Read Home truths: Is Gautam Gambhir solely responsible for India's Test slump at home, a previously untarnished record? Well, he has been blamed for the exits of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, the exclusion of Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane, and effectively dismantling India's Test team. National sports editor, Sandeep Dwivedi, writes that the lack of Test skills among players may also be to blame, but the head coach doesn't get a clean chit. Irrelevant? The Big Three, the US, China and Russia, stayed away from the G20 summit in Johannesburg this month. Trump's new détente with China and Russia has resurged the significance of G2 (US-China) and the G8 (Russia + G7). All this combined underplays the significance of the G20 grouping. Sanjaya Baru reflects on what this means for the future of the G20, now an arena of "middle powers". Tragic: A brazen daytime shooting of two National Guard members near the White House in the US capital, Washington DC, has shaken the nation. One of the guards died from her injuries on Thursday. The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, has been identified as an Afghan national who worked with the US government as a member of a partner force in Kandahar. The incident has left the future of Afghan nationals who resettled in the US uncertain, as the government has initiated a review of all asylum cases.
⏳ And Finally... Smriti Mandhana should be celebrating. Just weeks ago, her team won the ICC Women’s World Cup for the first time. But recent events in her life have propelled her to the toxic corners of stardom. The postponement of her wedding and health issues in the family have fuelled intense speculation on social media. Amid swirling rumours, one thing is clear: Mandhana deserves grace. The question isn’t whether she deserves privacy, but what kind of audience we want to be. Read on. 🎧 Before you go, tune in to today’s ‘3 Things’ podcast episode, where we focus on the new Labour Code, and what it means for employers and workers. That’s all for today, folks! Happy weekend! Sonal Gupta |
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