Cockroach Janta party supporters in Mumbai, India, celebrate the resignation of the education minister following protests over an exam paper leak that affected millions of students. Cockroach Janta party supporters in Mumbai, India, celebrate the resignation of the education minister following protests over an exam paper leak that affected millions of students. F amilies with teenagers in education know the private, hidden pain of exam season. But this year, what might have been a summer of quiet family anxiety has erupted in several countries into public unrest. Exam-related turmoil has led to mass student protests in Mexico after nearly 60,000 university applicants were forced to resit tests amid suspected cheating, while Portugal's disastrous attempt to digitise school exam marking sparked the country's worst education crisis in decades. By far the largest and most ground-shaking incident was in India, however, where an exam paper leak affected millions of students and was linked to more than a dozen students taking their own lives.

Modi threatens to target'intellectual Naxals' in Independence Day speech India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said the country has largely eliminated a Maoist rebellion which it battled for decades but still faces a threat from the movement's ideological backers. Speaking on India's Independence Day on Saturday, Modi said India had succeeded in "getting rid of armed Naxals" - referring to members of the Maoist-influenced Naxalite movement that challenged state authority across swaths of central and eastern India. The phrase "dimagi Naxal" echoes the politically charged label "urban Naxal," a term Modi and leaders of his Bharatiya Janata Party have previously used for activists, academics, intellectuals and other government critics. The remarks come weeks after a youth-led protest movement, the Cockroach Janta Party, emerged as a rare challenge to Modi's government and helped force the resignation of his education minister . While Modi did not mention the protests, he repeatedly highlighted initiatives aimed at young Indians, including AI skills training and free online coaching for competitive exams.

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It began with a fear familiar to millions of young Indians: if the examinations that determine their future cannot be trusted, what can? Weeks later, on Monday, tens of thousands of young men and women tried to march on India's parliament. Police responded with tear gas and baton charges. Thousands more have returned to the streets in the days since. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-led movement born out of anger over repeated examination paper leaks, has quickly become India's biggest student mobilisation in years. It is demanding education reforms and the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

US announces tariffs on dozens of trade partners over'forced labour' imports The US is imposing new tariffs on imports from around 60 trading partners over claims they failed to properly stop forced labour. They go into effect on Friday. The move is the latest escalation in the global trade war reignited by US President Donald Trump when he returned to office last year. The US Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that many of the tariffs imposed globally under emergency powers were illegally enacted. So the president has since sought other legal avenues to pursue his flagship trade policy.

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Is the war entering a new phase? Civilian casualties in the war between Russia and Ukraine are increasing sharply, mainly because of long-range ballistic missiles and drones "affecting densely populated urban areas that are far away from the front line", the United Nations says. Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that the unit documented 1,396 civilians killed and 7,978 wounded in Ukraine in the first six months of 2026. Pointing to credible Russian open-source reporting, Bell said 250 civilians had been killed and 1,596 injured in attacks inside Russia during the first six months of this year. "This represents a 121 percent increase in civilian casualties in the Russian Federation compared with last year," she said.

India has successfully tested its first private-sector orbital rocket, marking a milestone in New Delhi's ambition to become a major player in the global space economy. The three-stage 22-metre Vikram-1 was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota and deployed customer payloads into a 450km (280-mile) low-Earth orbit, making India the third country to achieve orbital launch capability through private enterprise. It also carried experimental equipment, a lab-grown diamond and a miniature 18-carat gold sculpture commemorating India's national space programme. India Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the achievement, saying that it will "encourage countless youngsters to dream bigger and innovate fearlessly". Founded in 2018, Skyroot is among a new generation of Indian space startups that have attracted backing from global investors following the sector's liberalisation.

Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. In early June, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was wheeled into an operating room at Apollo Hospital in New Delhi. Spiritually, His Holiness is an emanation, or of the bodhisattva Chenrezig, who renounced nirvana to help mankind.

Developers think feeding first-person footage, called “egocentric data,” into specialized AI models will help robots copy humans.