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Police say Harish eventually spent about 1.8 million rupees (more than $21,000 in 2024) on betting and borrowed money from at least 12 people in his village.

His parents tried to rescue him from the growing debt. His father, Ranganaveni Suresh, 53, was a farmer who also ran a grocery shop. His mother, Hemalatha, 45, worked alongside him. The family sold a plot of land to repay some of what Harish owed. It was not enough. As the debts mounted, Harish and his mother began working for a caterer to raise money. But the pressure continued to grow.

On October 3, 2024, Harish and his parents died by suicide at their home. “We did not know how much money he had borrowed until people started coming to our house asking for their money back. By then, the situation was already out of control,” said Mukesh Kumar, a cousin of Harish.

It is a refrain that is increasingly echoing across India, as the country grapples with the growing and fast-adapting challenge of an online gambling addiction crisis. The country had about 591 million gamers in 2024, according to an industry report. India’s online gaming sector generated about $3.7bn that year — a figure that was then projected to more than double to $9.1bn by 2029. Gaming involving money accounted for about 86 percent of the industry’s revenue in 2024.

In 2025, the Indian Parliament passed a law banning all online gaming involving money, trying to plug regulatory gaps that platforms pushing internet betting were exploiting. However, smartphones, global connectivity and a black market ecosystem have allowed online gambling to shapeshift and survive.

How online gambling works

The deaths in Yedapally offered India a glimpse of the risks surrounding its expanding online betting economy, where the promise of quick money can draw young users into repeated wagers, losses and debt.

Betting no longer requires a bookmaker, a cash transaction or a visit to a betting shop. It can happen on a smartphone, often while a cricket match is playing and advertisements promising winnings appear on the same screen.

For some users, a few hundred rupees lost becomes another wager to recover it. That wager can become a loan, and the loan can become a debt that reaches far beyond the person who placed the bet.

The first encounter with online betting does not always look like gambling. For a young cricket fan, it can begin with fantasy sports or a prediction game. The language is about knowledge, competition and skill. Advertisements are bright and polished, and often appear alongside the sport itself. India’s enormous smartphone and gaming market has provided fertile ground for the business.

Behind the legitimate gaming economy is a much harder-to-track illegal market. A 2025 report by public-policy organisation CUTS International estimated that the 15 largest unauthorised online betting platforms received more than 5.4 billion visits from India during the 2024-25 financial year. It estimated annual deposits on illegal gambling platforms at about $100bn and documented the use of phone banking, mule bank accounts and mobile applications to move money. The figure is an estimate rather than an official measurement of India’s gambling market, but it illustrates the scale of demand facing regulators.

The money is generated through several layers of the online betting economy. Operators earn from amounts users stake or lose, while legal gaming platforms have built businesses around entry fees and commissions. Advertising, celebrity endorsements, affiliate networks and user acquisition add further commercial incentives.

Just one such gambling app, Mahadev Online, is estimated to have generated about 430 billion rupees (about $5bn) over seven years, according to prosecution documents filed by India’s financial crimes agency, the Enforcement Directorate. But while at one end are enormous sums flowing through betting networks, at the other are families struggling to understand where their money went.

When winning and losing become an obsession

In Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana, Selam Manoj, a 20-year-old aeronautical engineering student, died by suicide in February 2024 after reportedly becoming addicted to online games and betting. His father told police that Manoj had borrowed 300,000 rupees (about $3,600) from friends.

The family repaid the debt, but Manoj died by suicide. In another Telangana case, 27-year-old cattle-feed trader Balagoni Pavan Kumar accumulated hundreds of thousands of rupees in betting losses. Police said his father had previously cleared his debts and warned him to stop. However, the betting continued. Pavan Kumar later died by suicide.

“The betting did not affect only him. The whole family paid the price. We lost our peace, our savings and the future we had planned,” said Kalpana, his sister.

These cases cannot establish that gambling alone caused the deaths, say experts and police officials. Suicide is complex and can involve multiple factors. But they show how financial losses, addiction, shame and pressure can collide.

Research has also examined the relationship between gambling disorder and suicide. A 2026 meta-analysis of 14 observational studies found significant associations between gambling disorder and suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and suicide mortality, although the strength of those associations varied across studies and regions.

For families, however, the crisis often begins with a simpler question: Where did the money go?

The chase

Gambling addictions have a particularly destructive financial logic.

So, if a person loses 5,000 rupees ($53) and decides to win it back, the next wager is likely to be 10,000 rupees ($106). Another loss follows. A loan makes another bet possible. The gambler may no longer be trying to make money. They are trying to recover money that has already disappeared.

That pattern can be difficult for families to recognise. Parents may pay off a debt believing the crisis has ended, only to discover that the betting has continued, say experts.

That dynamic appeared repeatedly in Telangana’s reported cases. Harish’s parents sold land. Manoj’s father repaid his son’s debt. Pavan Kumar’s father also cleared earlier debts. The financial burden moves outward from the gambler to the family. Savings disappear. Jewellery is sold. Loans are taken from relatives and neighbours.

Manoj Kumar Sharma, professor of clinical psychology at the Bengaluru-based National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), India’s top mental health facility, said it is easy for people to move from casual gaming to money games and eventually to higher-stakes gambling.

“Wins can produce a strong sense of reward, while losses can create guilt and regret alongside the belief that the money can still be recovered,” Sharma said. “That expectation can keep people gambling even as their losses increase, creating a cycle that becomes increasingly difficult to break.”

In rural communities, where land can represent generations of security, gambling debt can threaten more than a household’s monthly income. It can threaten the family’s future.

India draws a new legal line

For years, India’s gambling laws were fragmented. Betting and gambling are primarily regulated by the states, with various state laws taking different approaches.

State laws determined what forms of offline betting and gambling were permitted or prohibited, while courts historically examined whether particular activities were games of chance or involved sufficient skill. That distinction became central to the growth of online fantasy sports and real-money gaming, with companies arguing that their products involved skill rather than gambling — and so should be allowed.

But the smartphone created a parallel challenge for regulators. A player could be sitting in one state, using an application operated elsewhere, while payments moved electronically and the operator could be based outside India. The Mahavir app, for instance, was run by a businessman based in the United Arab Emirates.

The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 changed all that, prohibiting online money games, including those based on chance, skill or a combination of the two. It also prohibits their advertising, promotion and facilitation. Banks and payment systems are barred from facilitating transactions connected to prohibited online money games, while authorities have powers to block unlawful services. The law came into force on May 1, 2026.

But tougher laws have not eliminated the appetite for betting.

The offshore problem

As India has tightened restrictions, illegal and offshore operators have increasingly become a focus for enforcement agencies.

A website can disappear and return under another domain. A social media account can be removed and replaced. Users can be redirected into private messaging groups. Affiliate networks can also promote betting services without appearing to operate the betting platform themselves.

That makes enforcement harder than closing a physical betting shop.

Advertising has become another battleground. In June 2026, India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting warned celebrities and influencers against endorsing or promoting offshore online betting and gambling platforms, including through surrogate advertising. The Advertising Standards Council of India has documented the scale of the problem.

Its 2025-26 annual report said it identified and escalated 7,927 offshore betting advertisements in 2025. Offshore betting accounted for 72 percent of advertisements found to be in violation in its monitoring. The ASCI also identified 854 influencers involved in offshore betting promotions between April and December 2025.

Selling the dream

Celebrity influence has helped make online money gaming familiar to millions of Indians.

Cricketers, actors and social media personalities have appeared in advertisements for gaming and fantasy-sports brands, helping turn digital money games into an apparently ordinary part of sporting culture.

For companies, the attraction is obvious. A famous face can lend legitimacy to a product that might otherwise appear unfamiliar or risky. The viewer sees a celebrity they recognise, rather than an offshore company operating behind a screen. The message becomes less about gambling and more about entertainment.

In 2025, former Indian cricketer Suresh Raina was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate as part of an investigation into illegal betting-app promotions. Reports said the investigation also examined other celebrities associated with platforms under scrutiny.

But it is already too late for several families. For the companies and networks that profit from betting, India’s 1.4 billion people represent a sizeable digital market.

For families such as Harish’s, though, online betting has meant something completely different. In Yedapally, the story began with a young man trying to make money through his phone. It ended with three deaths. %!s()

His killing came a day after a seperate mistaken identity shooting in the city, which left 23-year-old university student, Marco Talia, dead in his Glen Alpine home.

NSW police on Friday arrested two men, aged 18 and 19. They alleged the younger man was involved in the killing of Macdonald.

“A drone was seized and forensically examined by detectives, who allegedly uncovered evidence to suggest involvement in the fatal shooting in Merrylands,” police said in a statement on Saturday.

The 18-year-old was charged with murder, participating in a criminal group and contributing to criminal activity and was expected to appear in bail court on Saturday.

The 19-year-old was charged with participating in a criminal group, contributing to criminal activity and driving with a suspended licence.

He was granted bail in Liverpool local court on Friday and was scheduled to return to court on 24 September.

NSW police said the 18-year-old was operating a drone when he was arrested on Friday morning.

“That behaviour is obviously of great concern to us,” Det Supt Joe Doueihi told reporters.

“It’s more than likely that he was involved in some type of criminality and conducting surveillance on someone or some premises. We are still in the process of identifying who that may have been.”

The shooting of Macdonald was at least the fifth suspected NSW mistaken identity killing since May 2025, with fears reckless overseas criminal leaders are ordering the attacks.

Senior NSW government ministers have insisted the situation was under control.

Last week, the acting NSW premier, Prue Car, said “police are on top of this”.

The police minister, Yasmin Catley, echoed that sentiment and said a new criminal model, which allegedly outsourced criminal activities to teenagers, was “very challenging”.

“Police are doing everything they can,” Catley said.

– with Australian Associated Press %!s()

While I’m sure I read it earlier, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned to appreciate the open-ended beauty of the last Calvin and Hobbes comic, which features the titular duo sledding off into a snowy white wilderness, suggesting that, even though the strip has ended, Calvin and Hobbes’ adventures, and their friendship, endure.

Image: Bill Watterson/Andrews McMeel Publishing

And when I became a dad, I remember being deeply moved by a wordless comic strip with Calvin’s dad, who decides to put his work aside to go play with his kid in the snow.

Image: Bill Watterson

On occasion, Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes has gotten me thinking about the nature of life itself, particularly in the thoughtful philosophical panels where Calvin and Hobbes are engaged in some deep conversation about the nature of existence. There are quite a lot of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips like this, so I’m going to make an attempt here to find the very best quote from Calvin and Hobbes about the meaning of life.

Image: Bill Watterson

My initial instinct was to turn to the “Baby Raccoon Story.” Back in March, 1987, Watterson crafted a touching series of comic strips lasting two weeks where Calvin finds an injured baby raccoon. His parents take it in and hope for the best, but the next morning, Calvin is told that the raccoon has died. Calvin wrestles with those feelings and the scariness of death.

The series is probably the most emotional the comic strip ever got, and Calvin says a number of really poignant things in it, like when he’s laying in bed with Hobbes and he says “You know, Hobbes, I can't figure out this death stuff. Why did that little raccoon have to die? He didn’t do anything wrong. He was just little! What’s the point of putting him here and taking him back so soon?”

Image: Bill Watterson

But that quote, along with Calvin’s other sad, thoughtful lines in the story, are more about death than life, and it’s more about the questions Calvin is asking as opposed to any significant answer being given. So I continued to dig and found a number of good options.

Image: Bill Watterson

”What if you find someone you can talk to while you eat apples on a bright fall morning?” is a good one that basically says, “All you need in life is one really good friend,” although you kind of need the rest of the strip to understand its context. Then there’s this one, from a comic where Calvin and Hobbes are stargazing: “If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I’d bet they'd live a lot differently.” It’s a really thoughtful quote, but in my digging, I think I found one even better.

Image: Bill Watterson

It comes from a 1992 Sunday comic where Calvin wonders why humans have evolved to have a sense of humor. He says to Hobbes, “When you think about it, it’s weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it’s funny. Don’t you think it’s odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?”

In response, this is what Hobbes says:

“I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.”

Image: Bill Watterson

Now that’s the kind of quote that will make you really think about it. It’s not too sad or too optimistic, it just addresses the nature of life's many absurdities, which is why it's all the more perfect that the quote comes from a stuffed tiger. %!s()

With nearly 44% of the vote, the AfD fell three seats short of an absolute majority. Its media savvy chief candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, is racing to find enough support from the other parties to prop up what would be the first rightwing extremist state government since the Nazi period.

It is still anyone’s guess whether he will succeed, leaving a corrosive uncertainty at the heart of Europe’s top economic power. Hanging in the balance is the fate of Friedrich Merz’s centre-right government, once called “democracy’s last shot” to prevent an extremist takeover in Germany.

The result in Saxony-Anhalt has put the conservative chancellor on the ropes, with further punishment for his Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) expected in two more state polls later this month.

“This is the worst defeat for the CDU in years – decades – and something has changed, not just in Saxony-Anhalt but in all of Germany,” he said on Monday.

Whether or not he survives politically until the next general election, due in 2029, will have dramatic repercussions for Germany and its European allies trying to beat back anti-democratic forces. Pivotal elections are due next year in countries including France, Spain, Italy and Poland.

Merz’s many critics say the 70-year-old former BlackRock executive is the wrong man at such a consequential crossroads, calling him a ham-fisted and empathetically challenged leader who is erratic in his messaging.

Only in office 16 months, the chancellor often seemed incapable of one of the basic tasks of leadership: making the case to voters that accepting bitter pills now could lead to a brighter future, said the political scientist Thomas Biebricher of Frankfurt’s Goethe University.

“The prevailing impression at the moment is that, in terms of communication, he is unable to explain the many reforms – and the sacrifices they entail – to the public, and thereby win their acceptance,” Biebricher said, referring to planned cuts to the statutory pension and healthcare schemes.

The former chancellor Angela Merkel, Merz’s longtime rival within the CDU, has criticised him publicly for his hardline rhetoric on migration and integration but said she took no pleasure in the debacle given the stakes.

“This is a turning point – a real turning point – in the history of the federal republic of Germany,” said Merkel, who left office of her own accord in 2021 after 16 years in power. “As a CDU member it breaks my heart.”

Speaking at a digital affairs conference on Tuesday, she advised Merz to rethink his messaging in a changing political ecosystem in which emotions counted more than facts.

Merkel, 72, noted that the CDU had pointed to data during the Saxony-Anhalt campaign showing that joblessness had fallen and household wealth had risen in the small, relatively poor state. “And then [Siegmund] says: ‘That may be so, but that’s not how it feels.’”

The AfD formed in 2013, during Merkel’s tenure, as a Eurosceptic outfit opposed to bailouts for debt-mired countries. It grew increasingly radical during the 2015-2016 refugee influx, when she left the borders open to more than a million asylum seekers fleeing war and hardship.

Merz took office last year saying he would put the country back on track after the implosion of the previous government under Olaf Scholz. He promised a return to economic growth, a restoration of defence capabilities and urgent repairs to the creaking social welfare system.

His recipe for confronting the far right – one of his key pledges – was competence in governing and solutions for Germans’ most urgent problems.

Merz also promised a rejection of Merkel’s open-border policy in an attempt to rob the AfD of its signature issue. He had infamously accepted support from the far-right party for a tough draft law on migration just before the February 2025 general election, before back-pedalling in the face of protests.

As “irregular” arrivals of migrants have fallen sharply since Merz took office, the AfD has successfully pivoted to a broader range of concerns about deindustrialisation, regional identity, affordability and crime to gain ground far beyond its eastern heartland.

The AfD, widely seen as more radical than comparable European parties, had been relegated to permanent opposition in Germany by the “firewall” strategy of shunning by the mainstream parties. But this policy is now widely seen to have failed, allowing the AfD to snipe from the sidelines about the slow pace of any positive change.

Biebricher said that for all Merz’s weaknesses, replacing him would not be a magic bullet for the mountain of challenges facing German security and prosperity.

As well as the threat from Russia, he cited decrepit infrastructure, the demographic crunch on social welfare benefits, competition from China in once mighty industries such as car manufacturing, and geopolitical upheaval weighing on supply chains and energy imports.

“None of that simply goes away the moment you have someone who communicates better,” Biebricher told public radio.

Merz’s centre-right CDU-CSU bloc, divided between conservatives and moderates, is nevertheless known for its internal discipline in times of crisis – if only out of fear of even graver consequences from drastic changes.

The situation is seen as so grim that it has triggered paralysis, with neither the popular North Rhine-Westphalia state premier, Hendrik Wüst, or Bavaria’s ambitious leader, Markus Söder, keen at this stage to snatch the poisoned chalice.

“Merz has now reached a stage where the crisis – which he himself constantly exacerbates – is stabilising him,” said the veteran political journalist Bernd Ulrich of Die Zeit newspaper.

“The CDU and the government (in coalition with the Social Democrats) as a whole are in such a dire state that, as far as anyone can tell, no one wants to take over his post.”

Wüst, 51, leads a coalition with the Greens in Germany’s most populous state and faces a re-election battle next April. If he wins, the calls for Merz to make way for him may grow louder.

Söder, who represents the bloc’s conservative wing, shares Merz’s view that it needs to echo the AfD’s harsh rhetoric on migration in order to win back support – a strategy political scientists have long disparaged as counterproductive.

Yet the dangers of keeping a revolt at bay by betting on a status quo voters so clearly reject are apparent.

Much will depend on how bad the news is from the regional elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on 20 September. The AfD is polling well in both states, with clear momentum after Saxony-Anhalt, putting pressure on the CDU in particular.

During a fiery clash with the AfD in parliament this week in which he laid out the threat it poses to German democracy, Merz was reflective about how to steer the country – and himself – out of the current straits.

He quoted from a letter he received from the rector of a theological university arguing how many opportunities still lay ahead for Germany and advising him not to give in to despair.

Merz said he intended to take this to heart and stay on as chancellor using a new roadmap: “Admit mistakes, forgive, get back on your feet, shape the future.” %!s()

Two people have died and 570 were hospitalised in recent months in relation to the outbreak of cyclospora, a microscopic parasite that can cause explosive diarrhoea.

In an advisory notice saying the outbreak was over, the CDC said cases had "significantly declined", and it was continuing to investigate the cause of the infection.

Officials have linked the outbreak, which affected 21 states, to lettuce imported from Mexico by Taylor Farms, a key supplier for many US food outlets.

Taylor Farms announced a voluntary recall of lettuce sourced from central Mexico, while the US fast-food chain Taco Bell said it has removed lettuce from the supplier from its menu.

Cyclospora causes an intestinal illness called cyclosporiasis. It is spread through contaminated food or water and can cause symptoms including severe diarrhoea.

The CDC says deaths from cyclosporiasis are uncommon, as it is "not usually life-threatening".

Health officials in Michigan said that the two deaths, which both happened in the state, were of people who had "significant underlying health conditions that may have been impacted by cyclosporiasis and dehydration".

According to CDC data, there have been nearly 20,000 confirmed cyclosporiasis cases since 1 May, as well as more than 1,000 hospitalisations. Forty-nine states, as well as DC, have reported cases.

The agency notes that the true number of people who have been sick with the parasite is likely to be much higher.

While the majority of these were linked to the contaminated lettuce, thousands were not.

UK health officials too have warned about the outbreak following recent cases contracted by returning travellers.

Before the latest outbreak the worst year for infections was 2019, when there were about 4,700 across the country. %!s()