India ready for world’s biggest religious festival

As elections near, India's nationalist BJP is trying to wrestle votes away from the opposition in Indian-administrated Kashmir. But standard campaign tactics might not be enough to win over Muslim voters in the region.

She has featured in Beyoncé's music videos, choreographed a sell-out stage musical and brought underground nightclub moves to the stage of the Opéra de Paris. Now Josepha Madoki is hosting a weekend of waacking in the Musée d'Orsay’s imposing entrance hall; she tells us more about this 1970s queer subculture and how she became France’s unofficial queen of waacking. She also tells us about the phone call from her friend and colleague, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, which led to a video shoot in the Louvre with Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Plus, Josepha explains why sports and the performing arts are complementary disciplines as she discusses her part in the Paris 2024 Cultural Olympiad.

India's mammoth elections are now under way, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi widely expected to win a third term. Since coming to power in 2014, Modi has expanded subsidy programmes for the poor and women. These programmes include measures like equipping homes with butane gas by offering free cylinders or distributing free food rations. Some 60 percent of the population benefits from Modi’s food distribution scheme, which he has pledged to renew for another five years. Another success story is the nationwide rollout of digital payment services. Meanwhile, critics say the prime minister is eroding democracy by targeting opposition parties and controlling the media.

A world record of 969 million citizens are called to the polls for what some see as a referendum on one man. India is about to embark on the world's biggest election, staggered over seven weeks, with Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP expected to extend its solid lead in parliament. Modi has been pointing to a decade of unprecedented growth and power for a nation courted by the West and beyond.

Opera stars, politicians and public figures are attending a gala to raise funds for Ukrainian children living with trauma.

How can a conflict that is taking place right now, and that’s regarded as the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world, become known as the forgotten war? Aid agencies say that after exactly a year of civil war in Sudan, driven by a fight for power between two military factions, the world has turned away.