Author: Urvasi Sirasikar

In “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story,” we watched as the queen decorated a Christmas tree, but did you know that actually happened? Learn more about the real-life tradition! In the third episode of Queen Charlotte, fans were treated to a glimpse of the beloved Bridgerton character preparing to celebrate her favorite holiday. As the episode opens, the queen (Golda Rosheuvel) instructs her servants to decorate a splendid Christmas tree. “More color,” she insists. “It is Christmas!” Later, she and her secretary Brimsley (Hugh Sachs) have a tense chat, during which she demands “more gold” for the tree, which is lit with candles. While…

If you were guaranteed a white Christmas, but it meant working thousands of miles away from your family and friends in a freezing wilderness, would you relish the opportunity? This is what the festive season holds for the hundreds of scientists, researchers and support staff living at remote stations in Antarctica this year. Almost 300 members of the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey (BAS) are spending Christmas at five research stations and on board the vessel, the Harwich-based RRS Sir David Attenborough. Although it is the busiest time of the year (with almost 24 hours of sunlight), many, who are not…

About 30 people are walking along a dirt path between a rural road and a persimmon orchard, kicking up dust with each step. Children run towards the front of the march, where a group of older men with turbans and thick beards keep the pace at a steady clip. For three weeks in October, a group of Sikhs — some joining for just an hour or a day — have walked 350 miles up the spine of California’s Central Valley from Bakersfield to Sacramento. They stopped at Gurdwaras, or Sikh temples, along the way. The journey, organized by the Sikh advocacy…

Four of the companies were identified as part of a network of shipping firms that helped Novatek, Russia’s largest LNG producer, procure vessels for its operations. Five Singapore-based firms have been sanctioned by the United States for their roles in enabling Russia’s efforts in the ongoing Ukraine war, the US government said on Wednesday (Oct 30). They have also been added to the list of Specially Designated Nationals by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The US on Wednesday took action against nearly 400 entities and individuals globally for “enabling Russia’s prosecution of its illegal war”, said…

Russia may respond to any U.S. confiscation of its currency reserves frozen in the West by seizing the assets, including property and cash, of U.S. citizens and investors in Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, a senior security official, said on Saturday. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill allowing the Biden administration to confiscate Russian assets held in American banks and transfer them to Ukraine, something the Kremlin has said would be illegal and trigger retaliation. In response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the United States and its allies prohibited transactions with Russia’s central bank and finance ministry and blocked about…

Tashkent 24/2/ (50). In Tajikistan, over 20% of the population lives in poverty, and millions of citizens have emigrated to Russia to find work. Meanwhile, a feudal elite under President Emomali Rahmon has ravaged the country with corruption, nepotism, and massive drug smuggling of Afghan heroin to Russia and Europe. Although Rahmon’s successor and son, Rustam Emomali, has been increasingly in the headlines, adopting a presidential look, his stiff and awkward appearance reveals a man seemingly afraid of his shadow. Sources inside the country’s security apparatus report that he is in conflict with his powerful sisters, including Ozada, the head…

When Chaudhary realised his son Manjit was one of the 41 construction workers trapped in a collapsed tunnel in northern India, he travelled almost 600km (372 miles) from his village in Lakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh, to be closer to him. Chaudhary, 50, has been at the tunnel site for the past 11 days. He is staying with men who know his son and is sleeping in barracks made for the labourers. Two years ago, he lost his eldest son in a construction accident in Mumbai. He says he cannot face the grief of losing another son. “I pray to God……

Toronto, Atlanta (28/11 – 20) A wise old expression intones “Behind every bad borrower is a bad lender”. Like many such cute, amusing aphorisms, it is accurate as far as it goes … but what if? What if a loan approval is held up, then granted, after a couple of phone calls from the office of the Vice President? What if the borrower is a crony or relative of Mr. Big, which is what practically bankrupted Indonesia, when the Soeharto vampire children took out multi-hundred-million-dollar “loans” (wink wink) for projects whose profit-making potential was near zero? What is the potential…

Rome (16/11 – 57) Sri Lanka is mired in a deep political and economic crisis and the country’s then President Rajapaksa has flown out of the country, days after a huge crowd of protesters stormed his residence in July 2022. Protesters for months have demanded the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose government has been blamed for chronic mismanagement of the country’s finances. The island nation of 22 million people has suffered months of lengthy blackouts, acute food and fuel shortages, and galloping inflation in its most painful downturn on record. Here is how the crisis unfolded: April 1: State of emergency Rajapaksa declares a temporary state of emergency, giving security forces sweeping powers to arrest and…

Brussel, Frankfurt (16/11 – 23) A levying of embargoes and export bans, the imposition of sanctions, erection of fearsome “license” (= restriction) protocol: there’s nothing new about this back-and-forth in world trade, in the eternal jousting for advantage among markets and nations. The clever Chinese imagined they had the world tea market all locked up until an earnest Scottish botanist carrying the telling name of “Robert Fortune” snuck into the Middle Kingdom to observe their agriculture, steal tea plants, and pick up tricks of tea processing. The Chinese global tea monopoly was busted wide open. The fortunate Mr. Fortune was…