-IANS Washington: India had the highest level of social hostilities involving religion in 2013, while China had the highest level of government restrictions on religious beliefs and practices, according to a new study. Worldwide, social hostilities involving religion declined somewhat in 2013 after reaching a six-year peak the previous year, according to the Pew Research Center's latest annual study on global restrictions on religion released here Thursday. But roughly a quarter of the...

-Vikalp Once again, India is under pressure from the US to revise its patent law. Anyone familiar with the activities of the United States Trade Representatives (USTR) would know that this is nothing new. It has been among the USTR's primary mandates to use trade restrictions in order to persuade (to put it mildly) countries to strengthen their IPR laws. There is, however, a qualitative difference between the actions it has...

-Down to Earth Sixty-four countries are on track to meet Millennium Development Goal of reversing the incidence of malaria, according to a WHO report WHO's World Malaria Report 2014 has reported a significant decrease in deaths due to malaria. Mortality rates due to the disease have reduced by 47 per cent worldwide and 54 per cent in the WHO African region. The report estimates that of approximately 4.3 million deaths averted between 2001...

-The Hindu India ranks 85 among 178 countries on the global Corruption Perception Index this year. India has marginally improved its ranking on the global Corruption Perception Index this year, on the back of prosecutions of high-level officials and hope that the new leadership will reduce corruption, Transparency International said on Wednesday morning. India's two-point improvement (on a total possible score of 100) did not count as a "significant change" unlike that in...

-Livemint The revival of PDS is a reality but that alone does not explain the decline in child malnutrition rates Noting the wide disparities in living standards between different countries of the world, Nobel-winning macroeconomist R.E. Lucas commented in a widely cited research paper that one could not but help looking at such figures without thinking of them as possibilities. "Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead...