-The Telegraph There is no respite in sight with the Regional Weather Forecasting Centre in Guwahati predicting rain in the region till May 21 Guwahati: Flood and landslides triggered by heavy rainfall in Assam have led to the death of eight people over the past 48 hours and snapped rail link to South Assam, Mizoram, Manipur and Tripura because of “unprecedented” damage caused by landslip and waterlogging on the Lumding-Badarpur hill section...

-The Telegraph  Jon Wakefield picks holes in Narendra Modi government’s twin claims Jon Wakefield was disappointed. India’s health ministry had issued a statement decrying the methodology adopted by the World Health Organisation to estimate excess deaths worldwide during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The exercise indicated 4.7 million excess deaths in India, 9.8 times the country’s official Covid-19 death toll. The ministry statement itself didn’t surprise Wakefield. Five times since July 2021,...

-PTI/ The New Indian Express The Centre, in its affidavit, said the applicants were attempting to create a dramatic impression of the proceedings before the court and to win sympathy. NEW DELHI: A plea by LGBTQ couples seeking live streaming of proceedings in the Delhi High Court on a batch of petitions to recognise same-sex marriage under various laws has been opposed by the Centre, saying the matter is not of national...

-The Telegraph Union health ministry asserts that Civil Registration System figures should be considered 'authentic' A table on “estimated deaths” is MISsing from India’s annual birth-and-death report for 2020. The absence has fuelled fresh questions about how the Union health ministry calculated that authorities had registered 99.9 per cent of the country’s deaths in 2020, the Covid-19 outbreak’s first year. A 99.9 per cent registration level would mean the country had recorded almost all...

-The Telegraph Court expresses 'hope' that the states and Centre would 'restrain from registering any FIR, continuing any investigation or taking any coercive measures' New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed “until further orders” all pending proceedings under the sedition law across the country, overruling the Centre’s objections by citing the government’s own stated intention to “re-examine and reconsider” the provision. The court also expressed “hope” that the states and the Centre...