The number of Internet users worldwide has doubled in the past five years and will surpass the 2 billion mark in 2010, with the majority of the 226 million new users this year coming from developing countries, the United Nations telecommunication agency reported today. The number of people with Internet access at home has increased from 1.4 billion in 2009 to almost 1.6 billion in 2010, with 65 per cent of...

Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad called for a "jihad" against tobacco use after a report released on Tuesday identified India as the world's second largest consumer of tobacco. An estimated 274.9 million Indians consume tobacco, the first Global Adult Tobacco Survey said. Nearly 0.9 million tobacco-related deaths occur in India annually as compared to 5.5 million world wide. India is also the world's third largest producer of tobacco, the report added. "A...

Our right to know includes the right to know what we eat. We live in a transgenic age, one in which it is no longer sufficient for food labelling to stop with listing such things as nutritional values, chemical additives, and possible allergens. Although there is no evidence that approved genetically modified food is unsafe for human consumption, people have the right to choose not to eat it for ideological,...

India is taking proactive measures and ready to make concessions to ensure a successful conclusion of the Doha round of multilateral trade talks, an official said here Tuesday. Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma is scheduled to meet World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director-General Pascal Lamy, chairs of the sub-groups on agriculture, industrial products and services and ambassadors of various informal groupings at the WTO headquarters in Geneva Wednesday to push for...

Lancet dismisses criticisms levelled at the “rural MBBS,” saying they bear little credibility The Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry might still be awaiting “formal” clearance for its much debated Bachelor of Rural Health Care course that aims to create a cadre of healthcare workers for the rural areas, but the Centre has received global appreciation for “trying to find an innovative solution to a deeply entrenched problem which is not...