-The United Nations The health gap between poor and rich countries has narrowed significantly over the past two decades according to a United Nations report released today, which stresses that in spite of this progress, challenges still remain to achieve the health targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). "Intensive efforts to achieve the MDGs have clearly improved health for people all over the world," said the Director-General of the World Health...

-The HIndu For all its influential reach, the IPL has done little to combat the existing stereotypes about women and done everything to reinforce them IPL 2013 is heading towards its high-intensity, high-octane, high-pitched finale. After the season's numbers have been crunched, the League will dissipate into general back-slapping, errors and omissions excepted. Except that 2013 has been a revelation in itself. While the IPL occupies "soap opera" prime time on TV for...

-The Hindu The pressing need to end the misuse of Section 66 A of the Information Technology Act has once again been underscored by the arrest of Jaya Vindhyala, president of the People's Union for Civil Liberties in Andhra Pradesh. Her alleged offence of putting up posts critical of a legislator, Amanchi Krishna Mohan, and Tamil Nadu Governor K. Rosaiah on Facebook has resulted in heavy-handed police action. Clearly, the Supreme...

-The Hindu   Investment in a scheme that guarantees rural employment with minimum wages should be seen as complementary and not alternative to development activities A recent paper by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) has argued that the "push" factors of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) are not as important as the economic growth "pull" factors, for increasing agricultural wages. The paper has received wide media...

-The Business Standard Bodies established under the Constitution fall under RTI and hence do co-operatives, but more clarity is needed Bangalore: The recent news about co-operatives coming under the Right To Information (RTI) Act saw many excited activist and individuals. Till now, Maharashtra is the only state to have ratified the 97th Constitutional Amendment that came about in March 2012. Orissa is learnt to have notified the amendment while Gujarat has rejected...