-Business Standard From occupying 3% of all sugarcane area in the state in 2012-13, the variety that now covers 52% New Delhi: India’s sugar sector is staring at an unprecedented glut, with production topping 31 million tonnes. Sugar is suddenly tasting bitter as mills are finding it difficult to pay sugarcane farmers in the politically sensitive state of Uttar Pradesh. At the heart of the surplus lies a new variety of sugarcane called CO-0238,...

-IANS New Delhi: Press freedom in India has deteriorated in 2018 and three journalists have been killed in the first four months, media watchdog The Hoot said, stating that "journalists continue to be vulnerable". The number of killings documented by the Hoot report for the first four months was the same as in the whole of 2017. "They were killed in connection with their reporting, judging by what initial investigations show," it said. India...

  There is some bad news for the world’s largest democracy. Thanks to the vitiated atmosphere induced by troll attacks on scribes on social media, among other things, the country's World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) ranking has fallen two places to 138th position.   Among 180 countries, India ranked 136th last year with a score of 42.94. However, in 2018 it attained 138th position with a score of 43.24 according to the...

-The Indian Express RSF mentions that government was using prosecutions to “gag journalists who are overly critical” of it, invoking, among other sections, sedition charges, which are punishable by a life-term in jail. New Delhi: On the account of “deadly threat” from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “nationalism”, India has slipped down two ranks compared to last year in the Reporter’s Without Border’s (Reporters Sans Frontières, RSF) World Press Freedom Index 2018....

-The Indian Express Former Union Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal on Tuesday argued against the move to make Aadhaar mandatory, saying the data collected for it was prone to misuse in the world of information technology. “In the era of information technology, the question of possibility of misuse is not just a possibility. It will be misused,” the senior advocate told a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice of India...