The speed and determination with which the Tamil Nadu government has been slapping its citizens right, left and centre with colonial-era laws, it would seem as if a full-fledged war of independence is raging in the fishing villages of Idinthakarai and Kudankulam along the coast of Tamil Nadu. According to findings by a team led senior journalist Sam Rajappa, in just four months between September (when the protest movement against the...

-The Hindu   We condemn the attack by the Maoists on April 21 near Kerlapal village in Sukma District in Chhattisgarh, in which they killed two security guards and abducted the Sukma District Collector, Alex Paul Menon. At the time of this attack, Mr. Menon, accompanied by the security guards, was in the process of conducting Gram Swaraj Abhiyaan across the district. A few hours prior to the attack, Mr. Menon had to...

-PTI A Delhi court, hearing a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case involving senior Congress leader Sajjan Kumar, was today told by the CBI that there was a conspiracy of “terrifying proportion” between him and the police during riots. “There was a conspiracy of terrifying proportion with the complicity of the police and patronage of local MP Sajjan Kumar,” CBI prosecutor R.S. Cheema told district judge J.R. Aryan. Winding up the prosecution arguments, Cheema focused...

Drug smugglers and third-world dictators laundering ill-gotten wealth through secretive banking systems in tax havens is an anachronistic image from crime novels. Leveraging US' remarkable success in compelling tax havens to block terrorist financing, the G20/OECD have successfully persuaded tax havens to improve tax transparency and participate in an international regime of information exchange.  All tax havens have committed to OECD standards for tax transparency and are executing Tax Information Exchange...

-The Telegraph   The New York Times has reported that Wal-Mart, the US-based retail giant, hushed up an internal investigation sometime after the company was told of a bribery campaign to obtain licences and facilitate rapid expansion in Mexico. Some of the alleged instances of bribery are certain to ring a bell in India where it is not too difficult to bend rules for a price. The New York Times said its “examination...