-The Economic Times The Union Cabinet has okayed a new price-control formula for pharmaceuticals, which seeks to cap prices at the arithmetic average of all drugs with more than 1% market share in any therapeutic segment that is to be brought under price control. Given that the existing system of fixing prices of select drugs is on the basis of costs, which is rigid, intrusive and prone to manipulation as well,...

-The Indian Express Nearly 45 trillion bidis and cigarettes manufactured over the past 100 years in the country are expected to be responsible for nearly 100 million deaths of adult Indians, a recent study has found. "Our calculations are derived from using the most conservative estimates and yet present mortality estimates which are significant and alarming," researchers Pranay G Lal, Nevin C Wilson and Prakash C Gupta said in a study published...

-Outlook Concerned over the health hazards likely to be caused by cell phone towers, the National Green Tribunal has restrained several telecom firms from setting them up without following mandatory provisions of law and taking permission from the competent authority. "Considering gravity of allegations levelled and health hazard likely to be caused, we direct that no construction of cell phone communication towers shall be made without following mandatory provisions of law and necessary...

-Outlook After a few weeks of hiatus, state-owned oil companies have resumed issuing new subsidised cooking gas (LPG) connections, beginning with North Eastern states. In September, issue of new LPG connections had been put on hold pending a massive nationwide exercise to eliminate users having multiple connections at the same address. The three oil PSUs have now started releasing new LPG connections in Meghalaya, Sikkim, Nagaland and Andaman & Nicobar Islands, said Indian...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: India ranks second globally in accessing private details of its citizens, next only to the US, if the latest data from Google is to be believed. The transparency report by the internet search giant lists out requests it received from governments across the world to access information on the users of its various services. In the first six months of 2012, India made 2,319 requests involving 3,467...