-The Business Standard Indian plantations bloom in Ethiopia at the cost of the livelihoods and homes of the tribals If there is “blood diamond”, there is also such a thing as “blood maize”, “blood soya” and “blood pulses”. These come all the way from plantations in Ethiopia and other countries with repressive regimes. India, which claims to shun blood diamonds coming from African mines that use slave labour, is enthusiastically backing exploitation of...

-The Times of India In a scathing indictment of the Bihar government, a Press Council report has leveled serious charges against the state establishment including attempts to censor the media, misuse its "monopolistic status" for giving advertisements and arm-twisting newspapers to publish positive stories. Comparing the situation to Emergency, the three-member team that recently submitted its report to PCI chief Markandey Katju said that the Nitish Kumar government was forcing the...

-The Hindu The ground beneath Arundhati Roy’s seismic claims on the Parliament House attack, is shaky — to say the least “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions”, the American politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan — among others — is credited with having said, “but not to his own facts.” Muhammad Afzal Guru’s execution on Saturday morning — a grim spectacle, where the Indian government disgraced itself by denying his family a last meeting,...

-The Hindu Wasn’t it? Yesterday I mean. Spring announced itself in Delhi. The sun was out, and the Law took its Course. Just before breakfast, Afzal Guru, prime accused in the 2001 Parliament Attack was secretly hanged, and his body was interred in Tihar Jail. Was he buried next to Maqbool Butt? (The other Kashmiri who was hanged in Tihar in 1984. Kashmiris will mark that anniversary tomorrow.) Afzal’s wife and...

-The Hindu PCI chairman slams detention of Iftikhar Gilani Slamming the Delhi Police’s detention of senior journalist Iftikhar Gilani hours after Afzal Guru’s execution on Saturday, Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju has demanded that the officers responsible be suspended and charge-sheeted. Mr. Gilani, who works as an assistant editor for English news daily DNA, is also the son-in-law of Kashmiri separatist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani. On Saturday morning, he and...