-The Indian Express "The Guild urges the government to take immediate steps to restore normalcy for the media’s communication links. Media transparency has and always should be India’s strength, not fear," the statement said.   The Editors Guild of India on Saturday expressed concern about the lockdown in Kashmir and the “consequent curtailment of the media’s freedom and ability to report”, and asked the government to ensure safety of journalists there and...

-Livemint.com * An exclusive excerpt from a forthcoming book on the Assam Accord takes a critical look at the NRC crisis * The passage analyses the pros and cons of the debate over a work-permit formula to deal with the situation. One of the foremost thinkers to academically elaborate on the formula (of work permits in Assam) was author–journalist–rights activist Sanjoy Hazarika in Rites of Passage: Border Crossings, Imagined Homelands, India’s East and...

-Hindustan Times The changes empower the government to designate individuals as terrorists, merely if it believes so On August 8, 2019, the President assented to amendments to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, introducing a set of changes to an already draconian law. The most fundamental of these changes empowers the government to designate individuals as terrorists, merely if it believes so, leaving little to no recourse for them to protest...

-Down to Earth The IPCC’s Special Report on Climate Change and Land says land-based carbon sinks are not limitless The carbon cycle is classically described in terms of ‘sources’ and ‘sinks’ of emissions. The electricity sector, which converts fossil fuels into light and heat, is a source (as are most human activities since the dawn of the industrial age). Identifying sinks is trickier. We know that, as a general principle, more forest cover...

-TheWire.in Basheer was the founder and managing trustee of Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access or IDIA, a body which aims at bringing legal awareness to the underprivileged. Legal scholar, intellectual property rights activist and public interest litigator Shamnad Basheer passed away on Thursday, in an accident at Chikkamagaluru in Karnataka, reports say. He was 43. Basheer was the founder and managing trustee of Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access or IDIA, a body which...