Message of peace

The Nobel Committee has redeemed itself by awarding Navi Pillay

By awarding the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to South African jurist Navi Pillay, the Norwegian Nobel committee has sought not only to restore its credibility, tarnished by controversial decisions in the recent past, but also to strengthen the voices defending international law. Ms. Pillay served on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court (ICC), and chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The gaps in the implementation of the RTI Act

The Right to Information (RTI) Act completed 21 years today. Besides empowering citizens to demand information from public authorities, a key aspect of the RTI Act is the provision for suo motu mandatory disclosure of a variety of information on their websites so that people do not have to resort to filing requests

under the Act for accessing basic information regarding any department.

Why UAPA demands urgent reform

The UAPA, for example, criminalises "membership" of unlawful organisations without clarifying what the word "membership" means. It has a similar host of provisions that carry broad and vague wording, and which are susceptible to multiple interpretations - including, at their extreme, mere sloganeering or possession of literature.

'Indo-French satellite set for launch in 12-16 months'

The Indo-French satellite TRISHNA (Thermal Infra-Red Imaging Satellite for High-resolution Natural Resource Assessment) will be launched in the next 12-16 months, said Jasvinder Singh Khoral, Director (Projects) of the Indian Space Research Organisation's U.R. Rao Satellite Centre (URSC), on Sunday.

Global warming is turning sex reversal in frogs into extinction risk

Around 40% of amphibian species face the risk of extinction, which makes them the most threatened vertebrates on the earth. As temperatures continue to climb, scientists are asking whether increased sex reversal could affect the long-term survival of amphibian populations.

Type I and type II errors

The null hypothesis is a cornerstone of scientific experiments. It is the hypothesis that an experiment tests. For example, if a hospital is testing a new drug, the null hypothesis will be that the drug has no effect.

In this scenario, scientists are vulnerable to making two kinds of mistakes. One, the type I error, happens when a scientist rejects a null hypothesis that is actually true: they conclude the drug works when in fact it does not. This is called a false positive. In a type II error, a scientist does not reject a null hypothesis even though it is actually false, i.e. a false negative.