-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Being the global host of this year's World Environment Day (June 5) with 'Beat Plastic Pollution' as its theme, the Centre has written to all states and Union Territories (UTs) to undertake a massive campaign against use of single-use plastics and enforce rules to ensure elimination of plastic carry bags of less than 50 microns in thickness. Though the Centre had banned polythene bags below 50...

-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...

-The Hindu The problem with the SC/ST Act is the failure of the criminal justice system to recognise its own casteist biases For India’s Dalits and Adivasis, May 1 this year was a ‘May Day’ in more ways than one. It was May Day, the day to commemorate the labour movement (the vast majority of them do belong to the working classes), and also ‘mayday’ in the maritime sense, an occasion to...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Dalit and tribal groups observed "national resistance day" on Tuesday to demand restoration of key provisions of a protective law that has allegedly been diluted by a Supreme Court judgment. Over a dozen organisations representing Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes held the protest in 70 cities across the country to demand a reversal of the judgment that stopped immediate arrest of offenders under the SC-ST (Prevention of Atrocities)...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Coinciding with the anniversary of India’s first War of Independence on May 10, 1857, farmers from across the country will submit signed representations to district magistrates across India, demanding that the Lok Sabha Speaker and Rajya Sabha Chairman take up two private members’ bills, one each for putting an end to farm indebtedness, and for guaranteeing remunerative minimum support prices for all agricultural products. Also...