-The Telegraph   An international sympathiser group for Indian Maoists has declared it will protest outside offices of Indian multinationals worldwide, adding to problems the government already faces in combating the home-grown rebels. Last week, the International Committee to Support the People’s War in India announced the plan to launch its “international week of action from January 14 to 22” next year to support the CPI (Maoist)’s “people’s war” against the Indian state. The...

Several state governments have come out strongly against how the centre has planned the resource Mobilisation for the national food security law, a key initiative of the UPA-II government. States including those ruled by the Congress party has complained to the Union food ministry that legal entitlements for subsidised grain to a large section of the population as envisaged in the Bill would put an enormous financial burden on them....

-PTI The health sector will get a larger share of 2.5 per cent of GDP instead of 1.8 per cent, in the next Plan period, said Planning Commission member Syeda Hamid. Addressing an international Vaccination Symposium at Surajkund near here today, she said this will be a very "big jump." She said that year-by-year achievement has to be recorded to get maximum benefits and the Planning Commission will insist that what is spent...

A life bound to a wheelchair, with speech inability and two heart attacks, would not seem like much of a life. But doctor Sharadkumar Dicksheet proved it wrong. In over four decades, Dicksheet performed over 2.5 lakh facial reconstructive surgeries for free. Until this winter, that is. He died on November 14 in Brooklyn, US. He was 81. Dicksheet has two daughters and a son from two marriages, neither of which lasted. What...

-The Hindu   “Church premises used for stir against Kudankulam plant” As some of the churches are being used to disseminate anti-Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) messages urging the people to join the ongoing protest against the nuclear power project, the police here have started registering cases against priests who either allow or indulge in such activities. After the St. Lourdes Church premises at Idinthakarai was converted into anti-KKNPP protest venue, a number of...