-KafilaOnline Blog On June 18 (Sunday evening in India), freedom-loving people across the world were shocked by the revelations of how a highly sophisticated and expensive digital technology, named Pegasus, a spyware sold by Israeli company NSO Group, has been systematically abused for years to spy on journalists, human rights defenders, academics, businesspeople, lawyers, doctors, union leaders, diplomats, politicians and even several heads of states. Regimes in several countries continue to...

-TheWire.in The eyes of many experts and non-experts alike are currently on Kerala, as its COVID-19 case load has been increasing in increments far greater than any other state in India. The average number of daily new cases reached a low of 11,000 around the last week of June, 2021, and it has since been rising, albeit slowly, over the past two weeks. At the same time, the number of cases...

-IndiaSpend.com Under emissions trading systems, it pays for companies to install pollution-reducing technology. Surat's pilot scheme enabled participating industrial units to reduce particulate emissions by 24%, an initial analysis has found. Now Ahmedabad and Ludhiana plan to follow suit New Delhi: Last week, China, the world's top greenhouse gas emitter, announced it was opening a national carbon market, a type of emissions trading system. Under the system, industrial units that cannot meet...

-IndiaTogether.org In low-income families, women have faced far more vulnerabilities than men during the covid pandemic. These priority areas for intervention could form the backbone of a new resilience for them now and in future disasters, writes Gaurav Gupta. The large and disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women has highlighted the importance of anticipating their distinct needs and challenges, especially in times of crisis. Our study of 15,000+ women (see Part...

Media reports indicate that at the start of the southwest monsoon season, lightning strikes caused the death of over 70 people in the states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh on a single day i.e. 11th July, 2021. Prior to those separate events related to human casualty caused by thunderbolts, eighteen elephants were found dead on a hilltop at Kandali Proposed Reserve Forest situated in Assam's Nagaon district on...