Bell Looking For More Decisive, Productive Season

Political pundits and exit polls were quick to predict that Narendra Modi was poised to clinch a third term as India’s prime minister in this year’s elections, which began on April 19 and concluded on June 1. The question was: could his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), win enough votes to claim a supermajority?

Far right British politician Nigel Farage has launched a campaign for his eighth attempt at a seat in the U. K. House of Commons, a move that could lure Conservative voters to a new political home. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] On Tuesday, Farage, 60, met with supporters at a rally in the beach town Clacton-on-Sea, where he is campaigning to become the Member of Parliament in the general election on July 4.

Spring and early summer are difficult times for both Israelis and Palestinians. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] For Israeli Jewish citizens, the times move intensely from Passover, the holiday of freedom; to tragic Holocaust Memorial Day; to Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror; to the triumphant celebrations of Independence Day; to the anniversary of the Six Days War.

Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is leading in the 2024 Indian election as the results trickle in on Tuesday, but early trends suggest the Prime Minister’s government may not win the two-thirds supermajority predicted by exit polls. Early results show that the BJP and its National Democratic Alliance, which also includes other parties on the right, is ahead so far, winning 295 seats in India’s 543-seat Lok Sabha, or the lower house of parliament.

Every year since 1972, the Templeton Foundation has given a Nobel Prize-sized amount of money to a researcher who is exploring in a rigorous, scientific way “the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it.” This year the $1.3 million prize is going to Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a psychologist and professor at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, who looks at how people come together in the aftermath of horrific national violence, and particularly at the mechanisms of trauma and forgiveness. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Gobodo-Madikizela served on South Africa’s groundbreaking Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which, after the fall of the apartheid regime, offered citizens the opportunity to come forward and tell the stories of the injustices committed against them as well as the injustices they committed.

Australia’s military is loosening recruitment criteria to enable non-citizens to join its ranks and help address a personnel shortfall in the defense forces. The move, first announced in the National Defense Strategy released in April, will see the force ease eligibility requirements to allow permanent residents who’ve lived in Australia for 12 months to sign up, according to a statement Tuesday.