-The Hindu     Drug patents are designed to create profits that enable more research on diseases affecting millions. But in practice, they have often generated super profits for big pharma companies while erecting access barriers for the poor. The Novartis case spotlights much that is wrong with the system. The rejection of the Novartis petition challenging one of the most progressive tenets of the Indian Patents Act (1970), as amended in 2005 by...

-Bloomberg The corpse of Indian farmer Bengali Singh burned to ash atop a blazing funeral pyre on the banks of the river Ganges in 2006. Five years later, the dead man was recorded as being paid by India's $33 billion rural jobs program to dig an irrigation canal in Jharkhand state. Officials in his village and the surrounding region used at least 500 identities, including those of Singh, a disabled child of...

-PTI State tweaked rules to grant land to Ford and L&T, says report The Comptroller and Auditor-General of India has come down heavily on the Gujarat government and State public sector undertakings for causing a loss of nearly Rs. 580 crore to the exchequer by bestowing "undue" favours on large corporate entities. Major industrial houses to which the Narendra Modi government played benefactor included Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), Essar Steel and Adani Power...

-The Indian Express Sonepat: Dharampal, the Haryana rape convict who was released on parole and went on to murder five members of the victim's family, is set to be hanged next week. President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected his mercy petition, pending for 14 years. Initially accused of raping a girl in Sonepat in 1991, Dharampal was given a 10-year jail sentence in 1993. He had allegedly threatened the girl against deposing in...

-The Hindu Mumbai: Despite Union Minister of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation Ajay Maken's plea to the Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan for stopping the demolition of the houses of slum-dwellers, 43 houses were pulled down at the Golibar slum here on Wednesday, under the supervision of the Collector's office. The activists of the National Alliance of People's Movement (NAPM) have alleged that Shivalik Ventures, which develops the prime property of...