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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.SÃO PAULO—A Brazilian gang founded in the country’s violent prisons is fast becoming one of the world’s biggest criminal organizations, reshaping global cocaine flows from South America to Europe’s busiest ports and edging into the U.S.Long under Washington’s radar, the First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese initials PCC, started out as a disgruntled band of inmates fighting for soap and toilet paper in the 1990s.It now has some 40,000 members behind bars and on the streets with a vast network of affiliates—making it the largest criminal group in the Americas by some estimates, operating in nearly 30 countries on every continent except Antarctica.“The PCC has become a truly transnational group,” said Lincoln Gakiya, Brazil’s top PCC prosecutor, who has tracked its rise for two decades. “I believe it is now the fastest-growing criminal organization in the world.”With the scale of Italian organized criminal groups and the efficiency of a multinational corporation, the PCC has helped drive record cocaine seizures in Europe and sparked violent turf wars in the heart of major ports in Belgium and the Netherlands.Prosecutors and police in Brazil are calling on President Trump to label the PCC a Foreign Terrorist Organization, joining more than a dozen other Latin criminal networks.The PCC is organized crime at its most organized, prosecutors say.Unlike the narco-tycoons of Mexico, the heavily armed Colombian cocaine militias or the flashy drug lords of Rio de Janeiro’s Red Command gang, PCC members keep a low, businesslike profile, seeking fortune not fame—and shying away from the kinds of gratuitous violence that attract police and TV news crews.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged employees across organizations to work from home (WFH). With fewer commutes, nationwide fuel consumption would fall, making WFH seem like an instant remedy for the current fuel crunch. The critical question, however, is whether WFH is a reversible move.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Assamese was, of course, his mother tongue, the language in which he thought and dreamed, the linguistic landscape that felt like home. But the Northeast’s complex demographics meant that multilingualism was practical necessity as much as cultural richness.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.I first heard about Margherita 10 years ago and was immediately intrigued. A short and very scenic drive from Dibrugarh, this village in Assam remained on my bucket list since, and last week, the trip finally materialised.Its claim to fame is not just as the source of India’s tea story but also of oil, coal and plywood. The Digboi oil refinery is a stone’s throw from here, oil having been discovered accidentally while the railway line was being built in 1881.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.New Delhi: India’s latest fuel price increase is expected to raise cultivation and transportation costs across the farm sector ahead of the crucial kharif sowing season, potentially adding fresh pressure on food inflation in the coming months, according to farmers, economists and agriculture experts.Oil marketing companies on Friday raised petrol and diesel prices by ₹3 per litre as a surge in global crude oil prices was hurting their margins. Following the hike, diesel prices in New Delhi rose to ₹90.67 a litre, while rates in Kolkata and Chennai increased to ₹95.13 and ₹95.25, respectively.The development assumes significance as the agriculture sector accounts for nearly two-fifths of India’s annual diesel consumption of around 92 million tonnes.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The memory of the 1999 supercyclone in Odisha is as vivid as a nightmare for Bina Kandi of Biluamundali village in Puri’s Astarang block. She was pregnant and the flooding in her village was catastrophic. “The water rose up to my neck, the walls of my house were damaged and my family had to take shelter in a nearby structure to survive,” says Kandi, 55.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In 2018, photographer and documentary filmmaker Shino Cherian decided, on an impulse, to attend the Koovagam festival in Tamil Nadu, which spans 18 days of the month of Chithirai (April-May) in the Tamil calendar.At 28, he hadn’t done anything close to as daring as venturing into a completely unknown terrain, inhabited by people who were nothing like him. However, along with his friend and fellow photographer Ram Manu Prasad, Cherian went on to document the events of the crucial two days that mark the end of the festival.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In December 2024, a number of scientists from around the world signed a four-page paper in Science that urged their own community to ensure that an entire class of organisms is never created. Their efforts managed to halt progress in a field that many of them had themselves been pursuing. This marked a rare moment in science when an entire field voluntarily abandoned the path it had been on because of the risks scientists saw ahead of them.The science in question was mirror-life, and the fact that such a moratorium was achieved raises the question of why similar outcomes were not achieved in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Being a new parent transforms one’s relationship with their city. The park is central to this change as it becomes an essential third space. These outings are not merely recreational, but also require active engagement with everything, from the grass to the play area and even the security guards.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Hooghly/Durgapur/Murshidabad/Medinipur/Kolkata: On a sultry April afternoon in Singur, Hooghly, a group of men sit shirtless on the cool floor under a tin shed, taking turns drinking cold water from a jug to beat the heat as they chat about the upcoming elections.“We’ve seen the Trinamool Congress government for 15 years now and there really isn’t much work that has been done. Development and infrastructure are lacking, and unemployment is a big concern,” says Pranab Parui, a vegetable seller.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Late on Sunday, Tata Trusts announced it would seek to amend an exclusionary clause in the 103-year-old Bai Hirabai Trust, a charitable entity under its control, that restricts eligibility for trustee positions to members of the Zoroastrian community. The move has put the spotlight back on long-standing disputes within the philanthropic organizations that hold a majority stake in Tata Sons.Here is a snapshot of the simmering tensions that have gripped the House of Tata since the death of Ratan Tata on 9 October 2024.Since Ratan Tata’s demise, India’s largest industrial conglomerate has seen several top-level skirmishes.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.It is 8 a.m. in the courtyard of the Life Time Living apartment complex in Henderson, Nev.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Bengaluru: Senior housing developers and operators, which build and manage residential communities for those aged 55 and above, are looking to ramp up operations by acquiring land, expanding into new cities, and adding premium services as demand for such homes rises.The senior living segment in India has seen mixed success in the past, and has remained under-penetrated. That is fast changing, though, with operators riding a strong demand, and developers too, entering the space.Bengaluru-based Manasum Senior Living, which has four operational projects in the city and one in Goa, has entered Chennai, Mysuru, Tirupati, Mangaluru, and Pune.

What I’m about to say was once obvious, yet it will seem less persuasive with each passing year: Bitcoin is nothing without its origin story. The story is that an unknown man whose real name was certainly not Satoshi Nakamoto created this cryptocurrency between 2008 and 2009 to liberate us from governments and banks. As Bitcoin’s value rose hundreds of times, it became public knowledge that he held about 1.1 million Bitcoin, worth over $120 billion US dollars at some point last year, and over $70 billion at the time of filing this column.

Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu, the textile processing clusters in Surat, Gujarat, and the glass manufacturing cluster in Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh.This assumes significance given that the MSME sector contributes about 30.1% to India’s GDP and accounts for 35.4% of its manufacturing output and nearly 45% of the country's export.“The plan is to extend community kitchen services, which are already in operation in several states, to the manufacturing clusters. It may also include setting up new community kitchens with the cooperation of state governments, as well as industry and social groups,” said the second person, adding that it would be initiated with the provision of three meals a day.Queries sent on Wednesday to the spokespersons of the ministries of finance and MSME remained unanswered until press time.To be sure, several states run subsidized community kitchen or low-cost meal schemes for workers and the urban poor.

Assam, which has a 126-member assembly, votes on 9 April, with counting scheduled for 4 May along with other poll-bound states. In the 2021 election, the BJP won 60 seats with a 33.2% vote share, while the Congress won 29 seats and cornered a vote share of 29.2%.There is much at stake both for the ruling BJP and the main opposition Congress, and for the two state leaders leading these respective camps: CM Sarma and Gaurav Gogoi.With this election, the BJP will seek a third consecutive term in power.

Water is life. Our lives, environment and livelihoods depend on this vital resource. As we aspire to a new India, we stand at a crossroads in our water management journey.

New Delhi: India has intensified its public health battle against tuberculosis (TB), a disease that the World Health Organization said officially reclaimed its position as the world’s leading infectious killer in 2023, surpassing covid-19. While the initial 2025 target set in the National Strategic Plan served as a catalyst for a 10-fold increase in funding to ₹6,356 crore in FY26 from ₹640 crore in 2015, India remains committed to eliminating the disease well ahead of the global 2030 deadline.To reach this goal, the government is leveraging artificial intelligence, community support, and rigorous airborne infection control.

tax efficiency. Instead, we began with questions about their marriage.

.A technical committee review has flagged the existing BIS standard for drinking water as outdated, noting it does not adequately reflect newer technologies or the challenges seen in real-world use.The review signals a shift in policy focus—from just expanding tap water access to ensuring the water supplied is safe to drink. Mint explains the development.Fluoride contamination remains a structural issue in India, particularly in groundwater-dependent regions.

‘Water bankruptcy’ is a term coined to convey a stage after which it is impossible to return to ‘normal’ water levels without major changes. Popularized by a January 2026 United Nations report calling out the reality of an era of “global water bankruptcy,” the term has attracted considerable attention. While globally relevant, the report highlights India as a hotspot for groundwater depletion, given our overdependence on rapidly diminishing aquifers.