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Svante Paabo the Swedish Nobel Prize winner in Medicine in2022 had proved through his work that modern humans shared some of their genes with the ancient and now extinct Neanderthals. This meant early humans had come into contact with these human-like species, the Neanderthals, and they interbred.

By now the Netflix film Blonde is notorious for its length, it’s NC-17 rating, and its cruelly narrow view of film star Marilyn Monroe (Ana de Armas) as a relentlessly abused and exploited waif from early childhood through her death of a drug overdose at age thirty-six.

With Earth’s Orbits getting crowded, the risks of Kessler syndrome – a catastrophic and irreversible chain reaction of on-orbit collisions between debris and operational satellites –is becoming high, even though according to the most recent projection by Merrill Lynch/Bank of America the space economy would grow to $2.7 by 2040, while the global commercial revenues reached an estimated $271 billion in 2020. The monetary losses in case of Kessler Syndrome have been estimated to $191.3 billion.

Karl Marx’s French translation of “Capital” was first published on September 17, 1872. In February 1867, after more than two decades of herculean work, Karl Marx told his friend Friedrich Engels that the first part of his long-awaited critique of political economy was finally complete. Marx travelled from London to Hamburg to deliver the manuscript of Volume I (“The Process of Production of Capital”) of his magnum opus and, in agreement with his editor, Otto Meissner, it was decided that Capital would appear in three parts. Brimming with satisfaction, Marx wrote that the publication of his book was, “without question, the most terrible missile that has yet been hurled at the heads of the bourgeoisie.”

As we approach August 6, we remember 8.15 am on that day in 1945 when the US exploded first ever nuclear weapon on human population at Hiroshima in Japan. This was followed by another attack on Nagasaki on 9th August. Over two lakh people died on these two days in these two cities. Number of people injured, rendered destitute, homeless and orphaned far exceeds this number. Effect of radiations on the generations after that is still felt. That was the time of unprecedented humanitarian crises and agony never heard of before.

Aparna Sen, 76, has just received the Icon Award at the London Indian Film Award for her contribution to cinema. Her latest film, The Rapist, a complex look at how impact the perpetrator, the survivor and her husband has been winning Awards and accolades across the Indian and International festival circuits.

Two hundred years ago, on July 8, 1822, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned. He was less than a month short of thirty.

For over two years now, the world has been facing a pandemic the like of which has not been seen for a century, and which has already taken 15 million lives according to the WHO, without being anywhere near an end. This is an unprecedented crisis for humanity as a whole, which requires a massive effort on the part of every government, especially governments in third world countries where the people are particularly vulnerable not just to the disease but also to the destitution it brings in its train.

Constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair... (what) we have to accomplish at present (is) ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be. This slightly paraphrased sentence is quoted from a letter a 25-year-old young man had written to a friend way back in 1843. The young man had lived for another forty years and he lived precisely by this maxim, applying it to not just the external world around him, but also to his own ideas as he set about analysing the world and changing it.

The legend of the Indian cinema, Satyajit Ray, has crossed one more year after his centenary celebrations began on May 2 of last year. The last icon of what is termed as Bengal Renaissance, died at the age of only 71 on April 23, 1992. Though his last film ‘Agantuk' was released in 1991, just a year before his death, the last eight years of his life since 1984 was controlled with strict medical supervision in view of his heart disease.