Brazil and India are now among the top five government supporters of research into third-world diseases, according to a study issued last week, which found that middle-income nations are taking on more of the burden of ills afflicting their poorest citizens. The study, by the George Institute for International Health, based in Australia, found that nearly $3 billion was spent last year on new drugs or products for such diseases. Brazil...

When a problem is big and tends to profit a powerful group, there’s a time-honoured temptation to sweep it under the rug by assuming it’s natural and inevitable. This was true of slavery until the abolitionist movement of the 19th century, and of colonialism until the contagion of independence movements in the 20th century. Now these same forces are at work in attitudes toward the global and national realities of...

Referring to China in 1947, Nehru declared, “A new star has risen in the eastern horizon,” and some years later predicted, “If you peer into the future, the obvious fourth country in the world is India.” One of the countries he had in mind has disappeared, and he did not imagine that the emergence of India and China on the global stage would lead to mutual friction. The Chinese are...

The Copenhagen conference will definitely go down as the worst meeting in global climate negotiations. There is a complete mess here: lines of people standing outside the Bella Centre, where the conference is taking place, wanting to get in. Inside the meeting has broken down for the umpteenth time because industrialized countries refuse to commit to cutting emissions. Instead they want the global climate agreement changed, so that they do...

The number of sex workers in the country may touch a whopping five million in just a few years, if the world's oldest profession is legalized as suggested by the Supreme Court, warn activists. Hearing a PIL by NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan about large scale child trafficking, the apex court had last week said that if the trade can't be curbed through punitive measures, legalizing it would be a better...