ASSOCIATED PRESS

Will the Republican party continue to despair, remain in denial or make peace with the fact that Donald Trump for all purposes is now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee?

ASSOCIATED PRESS

While some may find it shocking, there are times when India's parliamentarians do a good job. One such group of MPs has been in the limelight recently: the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare, chaired by Uttar Pradesh MP Prof Ram Gopal Yadav. Following are some significant points from a 170-page report (PDF) submitted by the committee on 27 April.

Punit Paranjpe / Reuters

The first train in India, built by the British, ran between Bori Bunder (today's Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) and Thane in April, 1853. The journey also marked the birth of the Mumbai Suburban Railway offshoot. Hundred and sixty three years later, with so much experience tucked under her rusty wheels, the Mumbai Local has seen India's financial capital grow like no other. Imagine what would happen if she started speaking one fine day? What would she try to tell us?

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Gliding up escalators, dashing through the booths, running down squeaky-clean platforms and hopping on to cool coaches--the Delhi Metro makes it all such a breeze. Of course, snaking queues and jam-packed coaches during peak hours take away from a breezy journey many a time. But that's the reality of metro travel in any big, bustling city. Down south, Bengaluru is looking to emulate the capital city's success.

Namrata Tanna

A week-long immersion into rural Maharashtra with a grassroots NGO after a particularly difficult personal challenge proved to be a transformational journey for me. This three-part series showcases the challenges, successes, strategies and innovation of a unique organization that is trying to bring a holistic change to the villages of Mokhada and Jwahar talukas (districts)--much as I'm trying to do in my personal life.

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Let's face it, water almost everywhere in India is not safe to drink without purifying it, either by boiling or by using a water purifier. Nor does recycled water appear to be safe for irrigation. After nearly 70 years of independence, we still can't be sure about the safety of water coming out of our taps, or the safety of the water we use for our crops. This is absolutely unacceptable.

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Being black in China is not easy, but it's not as bad as many would have you think, according to our two guests this week who are both black immigrants currently living in Beijing.

Council on Foreign Relations

An analysis of U.S. security assistance to Southeast Asian nations shows that, in nominal dollars, overall security aid to Southeast Asia fell by 19 percent since 2010, the year before the "Pivot to Asia" was launched.

Edgard Garrido / Reuters

MEXICO CITY -- Migratory monarch butterflies, which flock to the mountains of central Mexico every winter, are severely endangered because of herbicides, extreme weather and climate change. Now, a Mexican mining company with a terrible environmental record plans to reopen a mine in the heart of a protected monarch reserve.

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The Chief Justice of India got somewhat emotional the other day. He made a fervent appeal for raising the number of judges in the country from 21,000 to 40,000--the only way, according to him, to tackle the mounting pendency in courts across the country. However, the lack of judges is not the only reason for the backlog of cases. In fact it is not even the most important reason for the huge pendency of cases or the glacial pace at which administration of justice moves in this country.

Sohini Chatterjee

I looked at women in the Rohingya community, and their children, to understand how their lives have been distorted beyond recognition by displacement. This is important in the light of the often uncritical accounts of refugees that are brought about, which pay very little attention to the differentiated lived experiences of men and women. Being gender blind in this regard serves to homogenize the narratives of a community which is hardly uniform in terms of how they experience conflict, displacement and migration.

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On a recent visit to Kerala, the change sweeping across the state and rapidly turning into a way of life for many was palpable. Everywhere in God's Own Country, people are using the backyards of their homes, terraces, rooftops and any other available space to produce several varieties of vegetables and fruits that not only provide tasty meals but are reassuringly free of pesticides and toxic chemicals.

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With the denial of rights of workers becoming daily headlines these days, a protest demonstration demanding the payment of minimum wage for garment factory workers in Udyog Vihar, a textile hub, was held on Thursday, 28 April, in Gurugram, Haryana. Journalists were informed the night before, but police and factory management were kept in the dark.

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"If you answer aunty properly, she will give you a chocolate! She has a nice big chocolate in her bag," the mother says as I try to begin a session with her child. I cringe in my seat. Oh no, not again. In most cases, the parent does not even realize why I am not supporting her statement until I explain my reasons in the counselling session. I sincerely feel that it is criminal to give a child false hopes.

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Bundelkhand, the size of Ireland or Texas at some 700,000 sq km, is home to some of the poorest people in India, an unforgiving land where about half of its 18 million people live under the official poverty line, close to destitution.

Rupak De Chowdhuri / Reuters

The tobacco industry has been raising a hue and cry via newspaper advertisements against the decision to have pictorial warnings covering 85% of cigarette/bidi packaging. They are calling the warnings a global conspiracy and outlining the impact it will have on the livelihoods of tobacco farmers. This is a wily effort to evoke public sympathy and mislead the government. Let me explain why I think so.

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It is a tragedy that most Indians think of Satyajit Ray almost exclusively as the serious filmmaker who made complex award-winning cinema about poor villagers and conflicted women. They couldn't be more wrong.