-The Times of India LONDON: Amnesty International and Britain have strongly opposed the death penalty awarded to Nirbhaya's rapists. While Amnesty International condemned the decision to hang the four convicted of the crime, saying death penalty will not end violence against women, Britain asked India to refrain from carrying out death sentences and called on the government to establish a moratorium in order to permanently abolish capital punishment. Soon after the fast...

-The Indian Express On Friday afternoon, Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna will sentence the four men he found guilty in the December 16 gangrape case, bringing to an end a fast-track trial closely followed across the country. Of the 23 rape cases Khanna heard this year at the Saket court, this is only the third to result in conviction. In 20 cases, the accused were let off, mainly because the Evidence...

-The Indian Express   The street vending bill goes a long way in securing the livelihood of the urban poor. The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Bill, passed by Lok Sabha on September 6, 2013, is a landmark piece of legislation for the urban poor. It is the culmination of the efforts of organisations like the National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI) and the Self...

-Reuters Tobacco inflicts huge damage on the health of India's people and could be clocking up a death toll of 1.5 million a year by 2020 if more users are not persuaded to kick the habit, an international report said on Thursday. Despite having signed up to a global treaty on tobacco control and having numerous anti-tobacco and smoke-free laws, India is failing to implement them effectively, leaving its people vulnerable to...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: More than three decades after carving out 'rarest of rare' category of cases warranting award of death penalty, the Supreme Court found a new mitigating factor - poverty -- to commute a convict's death penalty to life imprisonment. "Poverty, socio-economic, psychic compulsions, undeserved adversities in life are thus some of the mitigating factors, in addition to those indicated in Bachan Singh and Machi Singh cases," said...