-BBC Global efforts to cut the number of deaths from measles have fallen short of World Health Organization (WHO) targets. An analysis published in the Lancet said deaths had fallen by 74% between 2000 and 2010, but the target was 90%. Outbreaks in Africa and delays in vaccination programmes in India have stalled progress, researchers say. A new campaign to tackle the disease has been launched, which will combine measles and rubella jabs. In 2000...

-The Economist For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere THE past four years have seen the worst economic crisis since the 1930s and the biggest food-price increases since the 1970s. That must surely have swollen the ranks of the poor. Wrong. The best estimates for global poverty come from the World Bank’s Development Research Group, which has just updated from 2005 its figures for those living in...

India is coming under increasing pressure from the U.S. and the European Union for the strict patentability criteria it applies for medicines. AS was only to be expected, the two landmark decisions made by the Indian patent office in recent times concerning pharmaceutical patent cases have not gone down well with the multinational drug industry. First, there was the rejection in 2006 of the patent application by the Swiss multinational...

-The United Nations The world must tackle the urgent challenge of ending hunger if it is to ensure a model of development that is sustainable over the long term, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) stressed today. “We cannot call development sustainable if we are leaving almost one in every seven people behind, victims of undernourishment,” Director-General José Graziano da Silva told participants at FAO’s biennial regional...

A classroom reflecting life's diversity will benefit children of all strata while enriching teaching experience. Now that the Supreme Court has validated the Right to Education (RTE), its success will depend on teachers. When I said this to a friend who teaches in a primary school, she said, “you are being unfair.” I was startled to hear this response because what I had said was common sense. When I pointed this...