-PTI The Law Commission in its recommendation said Section 309 needs to be effaced from the statute book because the provision is inhuman, irrespective of whether it is constitutional or unconstitutional The Home Ministry is in the process of effacing Section 309 of IPC, under which anyone attempting to commit suicide is punishable with a jail term of upto one year and fine, and discussions in this effect are on. Minister of State...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The M.P. Bezbaruah committee suggested in its report to the Centre last month that a law be drafted specifically to prevent discrimination against people from the Northeast living outside the region. The panel was set up after the lynching of Arunachal Pradesh student Nido Tania in Delhi's Lajpat Nagar in January this year. So far, only the committee's push for a debate on the need for an anti-racism...

-The Hindustan Times ‘Himalayan Glaciers will disappear by 2035'. This was one the very alarming conclusions of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that was brought to my attention when I took over as minister for environment and forests in May 2009. Could this really be true, I wondered. I then decided to convene a series of meetings with experts from different institutions across the country. And what...

-The United Nations (Press Release) New Delhi - "While India has made major progress in the supply of electricity and modern forms of energy, a large part of the population still lives in a state of energy deprivation," said Dr. R.K. Pachauri, Director-General, The Energy and -Resources Institute (TERI) and Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr. Pachauri was delivering the third United Nations Public Lecture in New Delhi...

-Economic and Political Weekly     Sustained and focused efforts have to be made by the Tamil Nadu state government to provide relief and rehabilitation to the drought affected people of the state. S Rajendran (myrajendran@gmail.com) is with the Department of Economics, Periyar University, Salem, Tamil Nadu. Due to the failure of the north-east monsoon in December 2013, Tamil Nadu is witnessing drought like conditions this year, leading to poor agricultural productivity, rural distress,...