-The Times of India The Centre on Thursday responded to the Supreme Court's concern over spiralling prices of essential medicines and promised to make all-out efforts to put under strict price control regime all the 348 drugs included in the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), 2011. A bench comprising Justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhaya had, in the last hearing, expressed concern over the shrinking list of medicines under...

-BBC   A judge in India has sentenced eight men to death and 20 others to life imprisonment for three so-called honour killings that took place in 1991. The men were found guilty of murdering a Dalit boy and a girl from a higher caste who had eloped together, as well as the boy's cousin. All three were set alight and hanged, the court in Uttar Pradesh state heard. A BBC correspondent says the sentences...

Civil society groups on Tuesday came out strongly against the Centre’s draft National Food Security Bill, which has not incorporated the National Advisory Council’s suggestion for providing maternity entitlements to about 15 crore women in the informal (non-Government) sector, as in the Central Government, thereby denying food security (breast feeding) to infants.  Similarly, the current legal guarantee of 'hot cooked meals' for children attending anganwadis has been diluted by providing the...

-The Hindu   The Supreme Court on Tuesday took a serious view of the Kerala High Court sending Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader M.V. Jayarajan leader to jail for contempt without giving him an opportunity to file an appeal, and ordered his release on bail forthwith. Mr. Jayarajan, who was found guilty of criminal contempt by the High Court for criticising the judiciary, was sentenced to six months' simple imprisonment and a...

-The Telegraph   The Supreme Court today directed the government to provide information about all mercy petitions pending before the President and governors. An apex court bench passed the ruling while hearing the plea of Punjab militant Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar. Bhullar wants his death sentence to be commuted to life term because of inordinate delay in deciding on his mercy plea. The bench, headed by Justice G.S. Singhvi, observed that it could not confine...