There is an erroneous impression after the recent Supreme Court judgment that the Muslims in Andhra Pradesh have been given four per cent reservations in jobs and education. The fact of the matter is that the court has upheld only that part of the Andhra Pradesh act which relates to Muslims belonging to Other Backward Classes (OBC). Rightly, the court has referred to the five-judge constitution bench the portion relating to reservations to the Muslim community on the whole. This was necessary because the constitution does not provide any reservations on the basis of religion.

As well-intentioned gestures go, Earth Hour is hard to beat. At the stroke of 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 27, nearly a billion people in more than 120 countries demonstrated their desire to do something about global warming by switching off their lights for an hour. In a show of official solidarity, the lights also went out at many of the planet's most iconic landmarks, from the Opera House in Sydney to the Great Pyramid at Giza, not to mention Beijing's Forbidden City, New York's Empire State Building, London's Big Ben, Paris's Eiffel Tower, and the skylines of both Hong Kong and Las Vegas.