-Live Mint India, with its myriad ethnic and religious groups, has more legal speech restrictions than other democratic nations Freedom of speech is impossible to agree about. While hardly anyone will dispute that freedom of expression is essential for a democratic society and an effective free market, almost no one will be able to agree about exactly where to draw the line. In one corner, fighting for unbridled expression in various degrees, you...

-The Telegraph India’s research output measured through its scientific papers has improved over the past decade but four in 10 research papers by Indian scientists remain uncited, a report has said. The first government-commissioned independent analysis of research by Indian scientists has found that the country’s share of world research output has modestly increased from 3.1 per cent in 2007 to 3.7 per cent in 2011. The analysis by Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property...

-PTI Pharma firm Biological E Limited (BEL) today launched the country's first indigenous vaccine to tackle Japanese encephalitis (JE), a deadly viral disease. The vaccine, JEEV, is priced at Rs. 985. This is a one-time vaccine to be taken in two doses and will soon be available in the domestic market, Mahima Datla, senior vice-president of the city-based company, said at the launch here. "The vaccine, which will also be exported, has good...

-PTI The country's chief of World Health Organization on Thursday favoured regulation of private hospitals and tax-based financing of universal health coverage proposed in the 12th Plan. "The private sector in India is represented by five star hospitals. Their services need to be regulated," WHO's country representative Nata Menabde said at a media roundtable organized to discuss World Health Organisation's Country Cooperation Strategy with India over the next five years till 2017. Menabde...

-The Economic Times "Sedition" is a legal construct from less enlightened times, when the sovereign power claimed a divine sanction and subjects were expected to live in awe and fear. So what is republican India doing, in its seventh decade, in bringing a charge of sedition against a self-publishing cartoonist with a propensity for scatology and lurid imagery? A convulsive attack of folly that the agencies of the Indian state have...