-The Telegraph New Delhi: Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan today urged environment minister Anil Dave to reject a regulatory panel's recommendation to release genetically modified mustard for commercial cultivation, questioning the regulatory process and claims about the plant's superiority. In a letter to Dave, Bhushan cited a Supreme Court hearing on GM crops and described India's regulatory mechanisms for such crops as "farcical". He asked Dave to "withhold" his approval to the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Acknowledging that women are a disadvantaged section despite comprising nearly half of the population of the country, the Centre is considering lowering income tax for single women, introducing Aadhaar-linked health cards for free basic health check-ups for women and cashless medical service for those who are pregnant. A national policy for women, framed by a group of ministers headed by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, is...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Doctors and Public health groups have come together to suggest that the government should phase out branded drugs in a calibrated manner and ban differential pricing under different brands to promote generic drug prescriptions. This comes in the wake of PM Narendra Modi's announcement that the government was working on a legal framework to ensure that doctors mandatorily prescribed low cost generic medicines. Following the PM's...

-Scroll.in/ IndiaSpend.com Uttar Pradesh tops the list of under-five mortality. Despite recently revealed improvements, primitive sanitation is killing, retarding the growth or leaving susceptible to disease millions of Indian children, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of the latest available national health data. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Chhattisgarh had India’s highest under-five mortality, higher stunting (low height-for-age) rates and higher prevalence of diarrhoea due to lack of “improved sanitation” –...

-Scroll.in Arsenic levels in water have been as high as 3,880 parts per billion in parts of the state. Pollution standards cite 50 parts per billion as harmful. It is a day like any other at Mahavir Cancer Sansthan. The driveway is lined with people who have travelled a long way to get to this charitable hospital in Patna. Families sit huddled, holding their bags close. The lobby is even more crowded,...