-Reuters India has launched a wide-ranging surveillance programme that will give its security agencies and even income tax officials the ability to tap directly into e-mails and phone calls without oversight by courts or parliament, several sources said. The expanded surveillance in the world's most populous democracy, which the government says will help safeguard national security, has alarmed privacy advocates at a time when allegations of massive US digital snooping beyond American...

-Newsclick.in A few weeks back Fortune magazine and CNN carried a long online blog titled ‘Dirty Medicine' by Dinesh Thakur, a former employ of Ranbaxy, where he recounts how he came across several procedural and other lapses in the company's manufacturing facilities. Since then the Fortune blog has become one of the most widely circulated and commented upon business stories in the world. The story received attention as it came in the...

-The Business Standard NPPA to soon notify prices in line with new pharma pricing policy Some key cancer drugs, antibiotics and medicines to treat cardiovascular diseases and tuberculosis are set to become cheaper by up to 50 per cent within the next 45 days. The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) will soon notify prices of as many as 150 packs of essential medicines in line with the new pharma pricing policy, according...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Was 2012 the most dangerous year for women in the capital in the recent past? One statistic would seem to suggest so: the proportion of rapes committed by men who were strangers to the victim rose above 2% for the first time in five years to cross 10%. 'Stranger rape' of the type that occurred in Delhi on December 16 last year tends to form...

-The Hindu     In spite of the rosy picture painted by the World Bank, the prospect of eliminating extreme poverty remains distant In a protracted period of gloom and persistent recession with feeble signs of recovery in a large part of the developed world, the World Bank, Brookings Institution and others can be forgiven for their euphoria over the accomplishment of a key Millennium Development Goal (MDG) - of halving extreme poverty in...