Leprosy has officially been eliminated in India, yet 130,000 new cases are diagnosed every year. Richard Cookson and Seyi Rhodes report on the plight of the patients shunned by society Narsappa was just 10 years old when he was told he had leprosy, but the news changed the course of his life forever. People in his Indian village immediately began to shun him and told his parents that he had to...

Bagisa Shramik Santha and Asom Majuri Shramik Union, two registered unions of the state, have demanded that the tea industry should hike the daily wages of labourers on a par with wages given to workers under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) schemes. The unions have over one lakh members across the state. The Asom Majuri Shramik Union has its headquarters in Silchar while the Bagisa Shramik Santha has it headquarters...

Without additional funding in the battle against tuberculosis for research, improved prevention, early diagnosis and treatment, some 8 million people will die from what is largely a curable disease between now and 2015, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today. “There is cause for optimism,” he said in a message marking World Tuberculosis Day. “The recent adoption of a fast and powerful new diagnostic tool promises to accelerate international gains against the disease. “At...

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International today blamed India’s “failure” to hold a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir for the “mounting discontent” among Kashmiris, virtually echoing separatists and Pakistan. Delhi rejects calls for the plebiscite, saying Kashmir is an integral part of India. Both Pakistan and the separatists say Kashmir is a disputed territory whose status must be determined by its people. Amnesty today released an 82-page report — titled “A Lawless Law”...

The amounts of various radioactive releases into the environment are unknown, as are the winds and other factors that determine how radioactivity will disperse. The different radioactive materials reported at the nuclear accidents in Japan range from relatively benign to extremely worrisome. The central problem in assessing the degree of danger is that the amounts of various radioactive releases into the environment are now unknown, as are the winds and other...