Note: The first snippet says polling in West Bengal is underway, this is incorrect. Polling begins on April 29th, a day later. This error is regretted.

The second phase of elections in West Bengal is underway. The first phase recorded a massive turnout of 93.2%. In this phase, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is in the fray from in Kolkata, where she faces BJP's leader of the opposition, Suvendu Adhikari.

Staying with politics, but from the other end of the country, Vinod Nikole, MLA from , a couple of hours north of Mumbai, is Maharashtra's poorest sitting MLA. With total assets of Rs 87 lakh, Nikole belongs to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and won his second term in the 2024 assembly polls.

Global military spending hit a record $2.88 trillion in 2025. The United States remains the top spender at a third of the total, though its spending actually fell 7.5% from the previous year. went the other way, raising defence spending by 8.9% to $92.1 billion, making it the fifth highest spender globally.

Italian fashion giant has launched a limited edition line of Kolhapuri sandals priced at 750 Euros ($880) a pair. First shown at a fashion show last June, the label drew sharp backlash for cultural appropriation and for listing the footwear simply as leather sandals, with no acknowledgement of their origin. This time, the company says each pair is handmade by artisans in India.

A 17th Century brass , perhaps the largest in existence, goes under the hammer at Sotheby's London on April 29. Made in Lahore, it once belonged to the royal collection of Jaipur and later to Maharani Gayatri Devi. Essentially a handheld astronomical computer, it could calculate sunrise, sunset, the height of a building, the depth of a well and, if you believed in that sort of thing, your future.