-The United Nations Punitive laws and human rights abuses are costing lives, wasting money and stifling the global AIDS response, according to a report released today by a United Nations-backed commission.   Entitled HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights and Health, the report by the Global Commission on HIV and the Law – made up of former heads of state and leading legal, human rights and HIV experts, and supported by the UN...

-The Times of India HYDERABAD: Nithin Gollamudi, a city student dreams to be a doctor and secretly wants to be the state topper in medical entrance examination. Belonging to an economically and socially backward family, the 12-year-old who was helping his father in a masonry shop in Chotuppal till two years ago even while going to a nearby government school says that it would have been impossible for him to dream...

-The Hindu “Most of prisoners in Maharashtra jails victims of prejudice” A report on Muslim prisoners in Maharashtra jails by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) establishes that most of them do not have connections with criminal gangs, and points to an acute bias of the police for arresting them in some cases only because they belong to a particular community. A Study of the Socio Economic Profile and Rehabilitation Needs of...

-The Times of India NAGPUR: While almost all private CBSE schools in the city reopened their admissions on Wednesday for 25% free seats as mandated under Right To Education Act, the older minority institutions of state board have decided to hold back. These schools claim 'unaided minority' status allows them to refrain from participating in the RTE admission exercise. However, these schools receive financial aid from Std V onwards, and the...

John Vidal, who was in Rio for the '92 Earth summit, looks back at that momentous event, and how the 2012 version compares Helicopters thundered up and down the chic Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. Tanks guarded the bridges and tunnels. The favelas were in lockdown, schools closed and supermarkets stood empty. Unexpectedly, George H W Bush, the 41st US president, flush with success at the collapse of communism, had arrived in...