-The Telegraph Two Union government health agencies colluded with a foreign entity to conduct a mass vaccination campaign on thousands of girls in India four years ago, violating medical ethics and national laws, a parliamentary committee said today. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on health and family welfare has blamed the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Drugs Controller General of India for collaborating with the US-based Program for Appropriate Technologies...

-The Hindu There was a last-minute hiccup in the passage of the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill in the Lok Sabha on Thursday when the Trinamool Congress demanded that the clause mandating private projects to take the consent of 80 per cent of landowners be changed to 100 per cent, as is prevalent in West Bengal. The State, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said, could change this provision, but...

-The Hindu The long-pending Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on Thursday night after Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh assured the House that the measure allowed enough room for State governments to implement it as per their requirements. The Bill is only setting a bottom line for fair compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement in the case of land acquisition and State governments were free to further...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Notwithstanding strong warnings by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on health, new drugs continue to be approved for marketing in the country without holding any clinical trials on Indian patients to test their safety and efficacy. Sources in the Health Ministry admit that as many as 26 new drug molecules have been approved since 2010 without testing them through drug trials on local populations. While eight new drug molecules of biologicals...

-PTI New Delhi: Amid differences between rural development and agriculture ministries over implementation of works under rural job scheme, a parliamentary panel said that improper planning of jobs during farm season was causing labour availability problem in the key sector. "... Lack of proper planning of works under MNREGA without keeping in view of local agriculture practice is causing the problem of labour availability in agriculture sector," Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural...