-The Indian Express New Delhi: Days after the December 16 gangrape incident, hundreds of rape cases were sent to special fast track courts for a speedy trial. In fact, in January this year, six newly created special fast track courts for sexual offences received over 500 cases within three weeks of their creation. A year later, the trial in the December 16 case is complete. The case is midway through appeal...

-The Hindu In upholding the constitutionality of Section 377 of the IPC the Supreme Court has made a judgment that is value-laden, based on a particular worldview that many disagree with The Supreme Court, in its judgment in Suresh Kumar Koushal and another v. NAZ Foundation and others (Civil Appeal No. 10972 of 2013) upholding the constitutionality of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, has been widely perceived to have espoused...

-The Hindu     With the closing of relief camps in Muzaffarnagar, even the meagre food support has disappeared. As the winter cold descends this year on Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts in Western U.P., some 20,000 people will camp in makeshift unofficial camps amidst squalor and official neglect, or survive in small rented tenements or with relatives - exiles from the villages of their birth. Three months after one of the grimmest communal outbreaks...

-The United Nations The number of people killed by malaria has been cut by nearly half in Africa and a slightly lower rate globally, but sustained funding is needed to lower the numbers even more, according to the United Nations health agency which today released its annual assessment report on the disease. "This remarkable progress is no cause for complacency: absolute numbers of malaria cases and deaths are not going down as...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: People infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) across India will receive free anti-HIV therapy even while their immune systems are still strong under new guidelines adopted by India's national AIDS control programme. The National AIDS Control Organisation (Naco) will provide anti-HIV therapy when the number of a class of white blood cells called CD4 drops to 500 cells per cubic mm or lower, senior Naco officials said....