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Visit to Hiroshima to participate in the All Asia Conference of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in 2009 and again on the occasion of 20th World Congress of IPPNW in 2012 is an unforgettable experience. We had the opportunity to go around the Peace Memorial Museum situated adjacent to the epicentre where the atom bomb was dropped. This left a heart rending imprint in the mind about the destruction caused due to the atomic bombing. Never before in the history of mankind has so much catastrophic damage been heard of in such a short span of time.

Appearing at the triumphant moment of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Fred Halliday’s book Iran: Dictatorship and Development immediately became an iconic text to Middle East readers and the international left. The book’s appeal to a generation of leftists, particularly Iranians, was phenomenal.

Artificial intelligence, a never before new frontier of technology is emerging worldwide in a big way, which will disrupt traditional voice and video communications as well as produce mindboggling data that will change all round human conduct in all walks of life. Be it trade, commerce, industry, businesses, education, justice delivery, health care, life style, travel, tour, hospitality sector, road traffic, safety of vehicles, and may disrupt altogether existing technology, pattern of innovations, research and development. It will affect wokings of media world enormously as well. The way Big Tech and governments worldwide are pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence, there are worries about future of humans. Could humans be fast approaching the point when machines do not need human inputs any more?

When the protesting students approached Dr. Muhammad Yunus to head interim government in Bangladesh, the Nobel laureate had several examples he could turn to while weighing his options. While French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre declined to be a leader of the 1968 students’ movement, Russian author Alekxander Solzhenstein refused to pursue Presidency in the post-Soviet Union era because he preferred an authoritarian regime with traditional Christian values. Author Vaclav Havel went the other way. He accepted the offer to become President of Czechoslovakia after the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

After catching attention with her National Award winning big screen debut as Lakshmi, a low caste and morally ambiguous villager in Shyam Benegal’s Ankur 1974, Shabana Azmi has pitched out a rare feat of winning five National Awards for – Ankur, Arth (1983), Khandhar (1984), Paar (1985) and Godmother (1999)— and a masterful turn in both mainstream and arthouse movies. Azmi is arguably one of India’s most gifted actresses.

Early this week, Indian writer Pankaj Mishra won the 2024 Weston International Award. The $75,000 award is given to an international non-fiction writer based outside Canada by The Writer’s Trust of Canada. “Through a compelling and essential body of work that braids memoir, philosophy, history, sociology and criticism, Mishra proves he is a master of disassembling and uplifting magmatic argument and pressing issues of identity, nationalism and belonging,” said the jury in a press statement.

The radical shift in labour relations from regimes of standard employment to fragmented and flexibilised labour force under neoliberalism is signified by a radical shift of responsibilities of their production of labour force from the capitalist employer to the State through the denial of indirect wage payments to workers. One of the major achievements of labour movement in the past was the recognition of elements as constituents of wage and benefits that ensured the reproduction of labour force in its totality. The underlying spirit was wages should not only cover the immediate needs of the worker but also should at the minimum be enough to maintain the intergenerational supply of a healthy workforce and the labour force not currently absorbed at work. This was required by capitalism to ensure the supply of workers in future.

KOLKATA: The skies had opened when Uttam Kumar, an icon to Bengalis in every part of the globe passed away on July 24, 1980. Cutting across the generation gap, his fans poured into the streets on that day as the news of his being summoned to the land of the shadows spread like a wildfire.

OKEMAH (USA): The revolutionary spirit of Woody Guthrie permeates his birthplace of Okemah, Okla., where the 27th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival was held July 10-13. There attendees celebrated Woody’s 112th birthday, and modern musicians added their voices to the folk canon. A sense of camaraderie flowed throughout the festival as musicians jammed long into the night and attendees engaged in conversation over shared meals.

Phenomenal rise in the use of smartphones in India has helped the people get everything on their fingertips. This has distracted youth and children from their main goal post of studies, pursuit of excellence in their higher education, turned youth unemployable, those in jobs inefficient and less and less productive, thus ruining their career prospects, as they become addict. In the process, lives of many children and youths are doomed, their families ruined as this has spread like viral.