Unpacked
The ideas behind the headlines, unpacked.
Terms, laws, statements, and concepts from the news — explained in 2 minutes, without the jargon.
3 articles
Updated regularly
What are burner phones?
Cheap, disposable prepaid phones designed to be used briefly and then destroyed — so that if they get hacked, stolen or bugged, there's nothing valuable to lose. The US delegation used and discarded them on Trump's China trip.
Why is gold called a 'dead capital'?
Indian households sit on roughly 25,000 tonnes of gold — over $2 trillion locked in lockers that earns nothing for the owner or the economy. PM Modi's recent appeal to stop buying gold has put that 'dead' wealth back in the headlines.
What is Delimitation?
The act of redrawing the boundaries of parliamentary and assembly constituencies so each one represents a roughly equal number of voters, based on the latest Census.