-The Hindu The World Health Organisation (WHO) has put in place a mechanism to define counterfeit medical products. The set of definitions of sub-standard, spurious, falsely labelled, falsified and counterfeit products will be globally accepted and help to bring about uniformity in identifying such drugs, without interrupting worldwide supplies. The decision to establish a member state mechanism was taken at the World Health Assembly, the WHO's policymaking body, at a meeting held recently. The...

Move to form body with 50 governments to oversee Internet governance The raging controversy over excessive state regulation of the Internet based on the IT Rules 2011 is now likely to be dwarfed by discussions in Geneva later this week on India's proposal to the United Nations General Assembly for government control of the Internet. Led by the Commission on Science and Technology for Development, the Geneva meet is a multi-stakeholder discussion...

The Union government has decided to intensify its operations against the CPI (Maoist) by launching the third and fourth phase of its multi-winged, coordinated stratagem to squeeze the expanse of what the Naxalites now refer to as the ‘ring of fire' (part of the red corridor). However, several ministries are not extending any cooperation. Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh raised the issue in his letter to Prime Minister Manmohan...

-The Hindu The India Meteorological Department announced on Thursday that the coming monsoon would “mostly likely” be normal. The average rainfall would be 99 per cent of the long period average [LPA], with a model error of plus or minus five per cent. There was a 47 per cent probability of the rainfall being between 96 per cent and 104 per cent, 24 per cent probability of its being between 90 and...

Audits will look into the money released to the states in the last seven years, says Ghulam Nabi Azad The health ministry will conduct annual audits of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) to detect irregularities in the utilization of funds. Health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has written to the state governments seeking their cooperation on this. “We have decided to go for an audit of NRHM fund utilization across the states,”...