On a Saturday evening this month, an 11-year-old girl left her home for a friend’s birthday party in a small town in eastern India. She never returned. She was kidnapped, raped, bundled into a sack and thrown into a pond by a gang of men while still alive, according to a local investigating police officer. A health and physical education textbook of an 11-year-old girl who was raped and killed last week, is kept inside her parents’ house in a town near Kolkata, West Bengal, India on July 11, 2026. —Reuters/File The assault was the latest example of the brutal sexual violence that is endemic across India, with over 80 rapes reported to police every day, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Many more assaults go unreported because of victim blaming and shaming, activists say. Deep-seated patriarchy and misogyny, understaffed police forces and severe judicial delays contribute to many perpetrators believing they can escape punishment for assaulting women. That sense of impunity feeds into th...
Indian leader Narendra Modi said he clinched a uranium supply agreement while visiting Australia on Thursday, securing a fuel source that will play a crucial role in his nation’s nuclear energy ambitions. Faced with an almost-insatiable appetite for electricity in the world’s most populous nation, Modi has outlined plans to substantially scale-up nuclear power generation in coming years. Australia lays claim to around 28 per cent of the world’s uranium resource, but legal hurdles and political sensitivities have hindered exports to India. “We have signed an important agreement today on nuclear energy,” Modi said after talks with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese. “This will pave the way for uranium supplies from Australia to India and give our clean energy objectives fresh momentum.” A joint statement said the arrangement allowed long-term uranium exports for “exclusively peaceful purposes”. The exports would fall under safeguards established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “The ar...