Author: Rehmat Arora

Berlinale or the Berlin Film Festival has been dominated by politics and activism, with protests and demonstrations taking centre stage over celebrities and films. This year’s festival has seen a series of demonstrations on issues ranging from environmentalism to the rights of women in Iran and solidarity with Ukraine. On Saturday, a group of actors and filmmakers gathered on the red carpet to show their support for anti-government protesters in Iran. Exiled Iranian film director Sepideh Farsi predicted the imminent fall of the country’s government and held up placards emblazoned with the Kurdish revolutionary slogan Jin, Jîyan, Azadî (Woman, Life,…

South Korea’s Chief of Staff and the Japanese coast guard have accused North Korea of firing a missile off its east coast this Saturday. The ballistic missile has landed in Japan’s economic exclusion zone, according to officials. The launch occurred ahead of the US-South Korea military exercises, with North Korea’s Foreign Ministry threatening to take “unprecedentedly” strong action against South Korea. The missile is believed to be an intercontinental ballistic missile, and it is estimated to have travelled 900 kilometres with a maximum altitude of 5,700 kilometres. The launch marks the first detected from North Korea since January 1 and…

Google India has reportedly fired 453 employees across the country. This comes after, its parent company, Alphabet Inc., announced in January that it would be laying off 12,000 or 6 per cent of its total employees this year.  The employees were said to have been informed by email, sent to them by Sanjay Gupta, country head and vice president of Google India. The concerned employees were also sent an email by Google CEO Sundar Pichai that claims to state that he takes full responsibility for the decisions that led them here. “We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in…

World Health Organisation (WHO) Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus vowed to push investigation till the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic is uncovered. This statement comes after an article on the Nature website alleged that the organization is faced with a lack of cooperation from China, where the outbreak began in late 2019, and the WHO had given up on the search. The report suggested that the organisation had quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the organisation refuted these claims and the WHO Chief instead told reporters “We need to…