-Frontline Medecins Sans Frontieres warns that the free or regional trade agreements that are being negotiated, which seek to strengthen current patent regimes, are a potential threat to the developing world’s access to life-saving drugs, which it sources mostly from India. WHEN NELSON MANDELA’S GOVERNMENT passed the Medicines and Related Substances Control Act in 1997 to make medicines more accessible to the poor, 39 big pharmaceutical companies filed law suits in...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Government scientists have called for nationwide surveillance to look for a caterpillar native to South America that has slipped into at least four Indian states and could threaten the country's tomato growers and the ketchup-and-puree industries. The scientists at the National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources (NBAIR), Bangalore, worried about the pest's spread, have also initiated efforts to get wasps and predatory bugs to serve as its natural...

-The Hindu Business Line In Sirsa, Haryana’s westernmost district, the fight to end female foeticide includes tip-offs, thrilling chases and decoys “Chhori hai ! Kal marna tha , aaj mar gayi” (It’s a girl! She’ll have to die tomorrow, she died today). Deputy civil surgeon Viresh Bhushan’s face twists into a grimace as he recalls the incident at Sirsa’s Civil Hospital four years ago. A grandmother in her fifties had strangled to...

-AP New Delhi: Doctors Without Borders has challenged Pfizer’s application for an Indian patent for its pneumonia vaccine so cheaper versions can be available to children in poor countries and to humanitarian organisations. The medical aid group, also known as Medicins Sans Frontieres, said in a statement late on Friday that it was challenging Pfizer’s patent application to allow Indian manufacturers to make affordable versions of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine. If Pfizer is...

-The Times of India It's 8:00 am on a Sunday and outside Denzong Cinema in Gangtok's Lal Bazar, the otherwise languid atmosphere is punctured by grocers of two kinds. On one side of the cinema are those who sell vegetables, fruits and spices sourced from outside Sikkim, mostly from Siliguri, 115 km south in West Bengal. On the other side of the cinema, almost completing a triangle, are farmers from the...