A spooky house. A troubled family. Odd sounds. Things that creep about in the dark. Insidious: The Last Key — the fourth installment in the horror franchise — features all the hallmarks of the genre/TheConjuring movies. This time, however, parapsychologist Elise Rainier has a deeper connection with the case she is asked to consult on. When she receives a call to come help a family with a haunted house in […]

As people from across the country continue to condemn the murder of firebrand journalist, Gauri Lankesh, the big question that comes to my mind is, are we seeing the death of tolerance? I will not go into details of what Gauri said or wrote or who or what was the murder motive. The bottom line is a murder is a murder. No line of justification can adequately support taking away […]

President Donald Trump on Tuesday scrapped a program that protects from deportation almost 800,000 young men and women who were brought into the United States illegally as children, giving a gridlocked Congress six months to decide their fate. Trump’s action, announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, rescinds a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The program, created by Democratic former President Barack Obama, is supported by Democrats, many […]

A recent study has offered a promising entry point for attacking a near-universal and debilitating symptom of schizophrenia, memory deficits, which has thus far withstood all forms of treatment. The Columbia scientists found that disruptions to the brain’s centre for spatial navigation, its internal GPS, result in some of the severe memory deficits seen in schizophrenia. The study in mouse models of the disorder marks the first time that schizophrenia’s […]

Senior journalist Gauri Lankesh was on Tuesday shot dead at her residence in Rajarajeshwari Nagar in Bengaluru. She edited Kannada tabloid ‘Lankesh Patrike’ besides owning some other publications. Gauri, aged 55, had returned home in her car and was opening the gate when motorcycle-borne assailants fired at her indiscriminately with two bullets hitting her in the chest and one on her forehead. She died instantaneously. Four bullets hit the compound […]

JK Rowling is primarily known across the world for her fantasy novel series Harry Potter. But she has also written a few amazing books under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The first time she used this pseudonym was for her first adult book The Casual Vacancy. After that she switched to detective crime fiction, also for adults, with Cormoran Strike novels. The first one – The Cuckoo’s Calling has already been […]

The unemployment rate has been crawling up recently. I consider this to be a good sign because this seems to reflect a rise in the labour participation rate. In the recent past, that is since April 2017, the unemployment rate has been below 4 per cent. In any mature economy such a low rate could be considered as close to full employment. But, we do not have full employment. Our […]

UN Security Council members called for further sanctions against North Korea on Monday after a powerful nuclear test explosion added another layer of urgency for diplomats wrestling with what to do about the North’s persistent weapons programs. Scheduled after North Korea said it detonated a hydrogen bomb underground Sunday, the emergency session comes six days after the council strongly condemned Pyongyang’s ‘outrageous’ launch of a ballistic missile over Japan. Less […]

After our parents, the people who most significantly impact our lives – and a life-long love or dislike for a particular subject – are our teachers. Teachers’ Day is an occasion to celebrate this unique role that gives adults the power to shape young minds and thereby the future of a country. At every stage of life, the significance of the Day evolves but it never diminishes. For the middle-schoolers, […]

Let’s begin with two questions. One, if Raghuram Rajan didn’t approve of demonetisation “at any point during his term”, how did the government claim it got the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on board some six months before the launch to start preparations for the massively disruptive exercise in the economy? Rajan left the RBI on 4 September 2016 and demonetisation was announced just two months later, on 8 November […]