-The United Nations The United Nations food standards body has agreed on new regulations, including the maximum level of melamine in liquid milk formula for babies, as part of its efforts to help protect the health of consumers, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today. Other measures adopted by the Codex Alimentarius Commission – jointly run by WHO and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – include new food safety standards...

-Pratirodh Bureau After the radiation accident at the Rawatbhata Atomic Power Plant (RAPP) was brought into light by DiaNuke.org, the NPCIL’s media managers seems to have gone into a knee-jerk trouble shooting mode.    Whereas the initial news in Rajasthan Patrika mentions 38 workers being exposed to Tritium leak at Rawatbhata, Nalinish Nagaich, the Executive Director in-charge of media at the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) has reportedly said that only...

Security forces will need to retool their strategy to ensure that innocent lives are not lost in anti-Maoist ops, reports Vicky Nanjappa  The killing of 19 persons alleged to be Maoists in Sarkeguda in Chhattisgarh on June 29 in a major operation by the Central Reserve Police Force has sparked off a major controversy, with villagers crying foul and calling the entire operation a fake one in which innocents were killed. According...

-Down to Earth As corruption hijacks procurement centres in Bundelkhand, farmers prefer suicide to a debt trap. Richard Mahapatra reports from Uttar Pradesh with photographer Sayantoni Palchoudhuri A fatal paradox strikes Bundelkhand in the face—an overflowing wheat stock yet an overwhelming number of farmer suicides. Farmers here dread the government wheat procurement centre and the post-mortem house. In Orai, a small town in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, the two are...

Regulations covering public health should override personal rights and the country cannot wait any more for a good public health law. The health care industry, including institutions of medical education, hospitals and pharmaceutical businesses, have grown into behemoths that can do considerable harm in the absence of independent and effective regulatory systems. While there are no success stories in the regulation of any kind of industry in India, I will focus...