-The Times of India A six-member CBI and income tax team has begun examining over 5,800 tapes of recorded conversations of former corporate lobbyist Niira Radia with politicians, corporate honchos and others. The team, headed by a deputy inspector general-rank officer, started going through the tapes and its transcripts running into 49 volumes last week as per the directions of the Supreme Court in February, sources said. An apex court bench comprising...

-AFP A man arrested for indecency after he kissed a female friend on the cheek says he has finally been acquitted after a battle lasting more than a year against Mumbai police. Kuber Sarup, 26, was hauled to a city police station in February last year after an officer witnessed the alleged obscenity - a goodbye hug and a "peck on the cheek" - in the fashionable Bandra suburb. "He gave me a...

-The Economic Times WASHINGTON: Big Pharma found little support from the small guy on the street as the Indian Supreme Court's decision to reject patent claims of the drug maker Novartis for its celebrated cancer medicine Glivec reverberated across the world. The pharma lobby railed against the decision but the overwhelming sentiment, from physicians to politicians, from academia to Media, particularly in a country groaning from the high cost of health care,...

-The Hindu Amid protests and a walkout by Opposition MLAs in the Assembly, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday pushed through a new Gujarat Lokayukta Aayog Bill, 2013 that ostensibly seeks to end the role of the Governor and the Chief Justice of the High Court in appointing the ombudsman. The Bill proposes a seven-member selection panel headed by the Chief Minister, which will recommend a candidate for the Lokayukta's post...

-Tehelka A public issue is not truly public unless Markandey Katju has passed judgement. Rahul Kotiyal and Ajachi Chakrabarti stand downwind "Journalists" writes Markandey Katju, with little sense of irony, "comment on everything under the sun." He goes on to say that when the shoe is on the other foot, when someone comments on journalism, it is misconstrued as an attack on press freedom. That when he announces he is appointing a...