The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has welcomed the new targets set by world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly High Level Meeting on AIDS held in New York. Countries agreed to advance efforts towards reducing sexual transmission of HIV and halving by 2015 HIV infection among people who inject drugs. They also agreed to push towards eliminating new HIV infections among children in the next five years....

The battle against Posco appeared to be reaching a crucial stage as around 2,000 protectors today continued to block the entry of police and officials into Dhinkia and Gobindapur even as an Opposition delegation visited the area to lend support to the people’s movement. As the protesters refused to budge, the officials were forced to return empty-handed after a five-hour-long wait. The movement against the 12-million-tonne Posco steel project got a big...

In the season of Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council too is mounting pressure on the Centre to accept its recommendations on various social sector legislations. Over the past one month, the council has handed in its versions of the food security and communal violence bills as well as four notes on land acquisition, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), protection of street vendors and the...

-The United Nations   More than half of the world’s estimated 215 million child labourers are engaged in hazardous work which puts them risk of injury, illness or death, the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) said in a new report unveiled today. The report, “Children in hazardous work: what we know, what we need to do,” cites studies from both industrialised and developing countries that indicate that a child labourer suffers...

After two weeks of smooth land acquisition for Posco’s 12-million tonne steel plant in Jagatsinghpur, the district administration faced massive protests at Dhinkia, the epicentre of anti-Posco protests, as hundreds of children and women prostrated, preventing the entry of police and land acquisition officials. The land acquisition drive started on May 18 and so far, the district administration has acquired about 1,300 acres in Nuagaon and Gadakujang grampanchayats. But the district...