A couple from an Andaman tribe with just 100 members left have had a baby, sending their island hamlet into raptures and delighting anthropologists worried about the group’s extinction. The Onge baby boy born earlier this week to Shri Santosh, 28, and Reetai, 26, is doing fine, officials in the Andamans’ welfare department said today. “Both the mother and child are in good health. With the birth, the Onge population is now...

-The Economic Times   When it comes to Indian women, the picture is largely unchanged; depressingly so, going by the World Development Report 2012, released by the Bank on Wednesday. The latest report focusing on Gender Equality and Development makes dismal reading. No doubt the lot of women in India has improved over the years but not commensurately with the progress made by their country. As a result, women today might be better...

-Live Mint   As United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi prepares to intervene next week in the great national debate about who is poor, she might want to visit north-eastern Mumbai to see how the poorest are not even classified as such and how a giant government scheme to save their children from malnutrition is failing. The nauseating stench from a mountain of garbage greets a visitor to Rafi Nagar at the base...

An expert panel appointed by the Centre has found to its horror that fluorosis has reached epidemic proportions in Garhwa as a result of the Jharkhand government’s negligence and failure to check the alarming spread of the disease. The team, appointed by the Union ministry of drinking water and sanitation, visited the district last month and found men, women and children of all ages with deformities due to fluoride poisoning from...

-The Business Standard   Young women in India are much better off than their mothers, but they fare much worse than their counterparts in many developing countries when it comes to the physical survival rate of women and participation in labour force, says a report by the World Bank. The World Development Report titled ‘Gender Equality and Development’ looks at gender inequality as not just a moral but also an economic issue. The report...