-The Telegraph New Delhi: Countries negotiating a global declaration on tuberculosis are under pressure to give up their rights to use existing provisions in world trade laws to provide affordable second-line and new anti-TB drugs to their populations, an international humanitarian agency said on Friday. Medecins Sans Frontieres said the US was "exerting extreme pressure" on other negotiators by refusing to sign the declaration if it retained text that "recognises the importance...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The income tax department has allowed referral kickbacks paid to doctors by private hospitals, nursing homes and diagnostic centres and spending on advertisements by doctors as expenses despite such expenditure being disallowed and unethical, a parliamentary panel said on Thursday. The public accounts committee for the Union finance ministry's department of revenue has cited an audit that found that in 19 instances in eight states, income-tax officers had...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Controversy has again enveloped the bailiwick of the chief economic adviser to the finance ministry amid suggestions that the Narendra Modi government has lowered the academic credentials and experience for the next incumbent who will replace Arvind Subramanian. Congress leader Ahmed Patel stirred the pot with a tweet: "Why has government diluted the educational and professional requirements for the post of chief economic advisor? Economist positions, even in...

-Livemint.com WHO says the Indian govt should ‘reconsider’ the compensation clause because an approval to the rules in the current form would affect the conduct of clinical trials in India New Delhi: The World Health Organization (WHO) has told the central government that the United Nations (UN) agency’s work with India would be “hampered” and drug companies driven away if the government goes ahead with stringent draft rules for compensation in case...

-Business Standard Reliance set up a new company to apply for it Within two weeks of the government formally notifying the rules for institutions of eminence, Reliance group incorporated the Reliance Foundation Institution of Education Research (RFIER), a section 8 company under the Companies Act, 2013. It is this company of the Reliance group that shall set up the Maharashtra-located Jio University, which the government has selected for the institution of eminence...