Data on fatalities and injuries must jolt the government into action The Road Accidents in India report of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways for 2017 comes as a disappointment. By reiterating poorly performing policies and programmes, it has failed to signal the quantum shift necessary to reduce death …

A series of pro-citizen policies in Delhi offers important lessons All parties and governments claim control over the nation’s resources, but the real question should be on where those resources are spent and how they are redistributed by people in power. Consider the case of the three-year-old Aam Aadmi Party …

It is time that marital rape is criminalised The Supreme Court’s verdict on Section 377 should be celebrated for ejecting an ugly Victorian norm from the Indian criminal justice system. The landmark decision breaks new ground by removing restrictions that made consensual sexual relations between members of the same sex …

Ahead of the PM’s visit to Japan, hopes are high for a greater synergy on security and connectivity issues Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Tokyo later this month will be keenly watched by India’s strategic community. Since he assumed office in 2014, Mr. Modi has made India-Japan relations a …

The Opposition parties have to press ahead with political adjustments to counter the dominant narrative The political discourse, as Assembly elections approach, is slipping to new lows. Addressing a rally in Madhya Pradesh recently, the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Amit Shah, once again described infiltrators as “termites”. …

There is space to resurrect the old movement as a soft balancing mechanism against powerful states The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and its precursor, the Bandung Afro-Asian conference in 1955, were examples of soft balancing by weaker states towards great powers engaged in intense rivalry and conflict. As they had little …

U.K. now has a Suicide Prevention Minister Britain’s Prime Minister has appointed a Suicide Prevention Minister as part of a national effort to reduce the number of people who take their own lives. Theresa May named Jackie Doyle-Price to the newly created post on Wednesday.AP Source :  https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-life/uk-prime-minister-appoints-suicide-prevention-minister/article25185854.ece

Organic Sikkim on shortlist for FAO prize Sikkim’s achievement in becoming the world’s first totally organic agriculture State in India has won it a place on the shortlist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Future Policy Award. The FAO said that the award would celebrate policies that create …

Instagram on Tuesday added more weapons to battle cyber-bullying, using artificial intelligence to scan photos for abusive content at the Facebook-owned service. The move comes after Facebook also increased anti-harassment measures, following a survey which said young victims of online abuse feel social media firms aren’t doing enough to fight …

Inflatable sculpture takes over rusting warehouse in U.S. A giant sea monster has taken over a building at Philadelphia’s Navy Yard, but only temporarily. The inflatable sculpture titled “Sea Monsters HERE” is at a rusting warehouse called Building 611. It features huge purple tentacles bursting out of windows and reaching …

Musician Nathan Meltzer plays instrument owned by Roman Totenberg The Stradivarius stolen from the late violinist Roman Totenberg and miraculously found more than three decades later has a new life under the chin of a budding 18-year-old virtuoso. On Tuesday in New York, his three daughters presented the multimillion-dollar instrument …

Land Management Agency to dispose assets, says Centre The Cabinet on Wednesday approved the closure of National Jute Manufactures Corporation and its subsidiary Birds Jute & Exports Ltd. “Disposal of fixed assets as well as current assets will be in accordance with the guidelines of DPE dated June 14, 2018 …

Centre appoints Sachin Chaturvedi and Revathy Iyer The government has appointed Sachin Chaturvedi, who heads Delhi-based think tank Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), in place of Nachiket Mor on the central board of the Reserve Bank of India. Revathy Iyer, a former Indian Audit and Accounts Services …

Axis, Yes Bank and Kotak Mahindra among top gainers in the Sensex pack In a relief rally of sorts, benchmark equity indices gained more than 1% on Wednesday, a day after the State Bank of India (SBI) said that it would provide liquidity support to non banking financial companies (NBFCs). …

Focus on easy-to-implement schemes The government on Wednesday released a draft National Electronics Policy under which it is targeting a turnover of $400 billion for the electronics system design and manufacturing (ESDM) sector. “This shall include targeted production of one billion mobile handsets by 2025, valued at $190 billion (approx. …

‘Central bank has wherewithal to make any intervention’ The current rupee exchange rate situation is different from past instances when the rupee depreciated, since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), this time, has the wherewithal to make any intervention as and when it wants to, former RBI Governor Bimal Jalan …

Association tells govt. to stop prioritising supply to power plants, says others deprived of raw material The Aluminium Association of India (AAI) has written to the government asking it to stop prioritising coal supply to power plants. The exclusion of other industries that required coal was depriving them of the …

While LIC has a direct stake in more than 300 listed companies – with a stake of at least 1% or more – there are at least 24 entities in which it has a stake of over 10%, as per the shareholding data available on the BSE. Most of these …

Sri Lanka’s Parliament on Wednesday passed legislation to pay compensation to victims of the island’s brutal civil war, nearly a decade after the end of the conflict which claimed 1,00,000 lives. The legislature voted 59-43 to approve a broad reparations Bill, which seeks to establish an independent office that will …

Calls for ‘vocational education centres to reform extremists’ Anti-terror efforts in the controversial “reeducation centres” in China’s Xinjiang region will be governed by new standardised rules, as international criticism mounts over the detention of as many as one million in the restive far west. The revised rules, passed on Tuesday, …