Author and activist Arundhati Roy on Covid-19 and the Indian response

With a slowly recovering economy, the recent spike in COVID-19 cases in India is affecting both the retail and service sectors.

India's budget 2022 plans to ramp up infrastructure spending to support the economy's post-pandemic recovery. Key announcements include a state-backed "digital rupee" and tax on gains from digital currencies.

With one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, Spain is looking at an exit strategy from the pandemic. Its government says it's time to start treating COVID-19 like any other endemic seasonal respiratory disease. DW's Jan-Philipp Scholz reports.

More than 180 million voters in five Indian states are eligible to vote for new assemblies from this Thursday. The month-long process will be a key test for the ruling BJP of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He wants to keep control of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous, which has been ruled by the BJP for the past five years.

India’s teenage chess grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa has won praise for a stunning victory over world number one Magnus Carlsen in an online championship.

In India, a loophole in the penal code states that rape within marriage is not against the law if the wife is over 14 years old. Two rights organisations have now filed a petition with the New Delhi's High Court seeking to criminalise marital rape, but the move has polarised public opinion.

Baky Meïté is a former captain of the Ivory Coast rugby team. Back in the spring of 2020, he put his rugby career on hold to work as a janitor in a geriatric hospital in Paris. He has now published a book, "Les Chiffons Bleus", as a tribute to his former colleagues who appear somewhat forgotten today. He joined us for Perspective.

Indian mystic and visionary Sadhguru is making a 100-day motorbike journey from Europe to India to raise awareness of soil erosion. He told FRANCE 24's Delano D'Souza why he feels his mission is important for humankind. With more than half of agricultural soils are already degraded, Sadhguru warned that "there is no alternative to soil". He also described his own personal journey, saying that he does not see himself as a guru.

India had supported Afghanistan's previous, Western-backed government. Since the Taliban took over, Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis has left millions of people at risk of hunger.

To promote the usage of typewriters in an age of mobile phones and computers, a man in India's central Indore city has collected around 450 typewriters that type in different languages.

US President Joe Biden has declared the pandemic to be "over," but hundreds still die in the US daily. Patient advocates and researchers warn that public health and the economy are still at risk.

One of the many consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was the exodus of thousands of foreign students, who were forced to flee the country. Among them were more 18,000 Indian medical students, who made their way to neighbouring European countries in order to be repatriated.