-Deccan Herald Students admitted to schools under the 25 per cent quota as per the Right to Education Act, are subjected to harassment and humiliation, Dalita Samrajya Sthapana Samiti, a City-based organisation, has alleged. Addressing the media on Tuesday, Samithi state president D Narayan alleged that some schools were discriminating against the students admitted under the RTE quota. “Ten children are enrolled under RTE in a Nandini Layout school and strands of their...

-The Hindu Ethical, legal issues thrown to the winds as poor women play surrogate mothers   Right in the heart of this city, which found a place on the atlas as the Milk Capital of India, is a ‘fertility clinic-cum-hostel’ to house women who rent their wombs, mostly for foreign couples. The facility, which runs under the name Akanksha Fertility Clinic, caters for 30 surrogate mothers at any given point. Driven by poverty, the...

Census 2011 data bring into the open Maharashtra’s terrible record in sex-selective abortions. In early June, Vijaymala Patekar, a mother of four girls, haemorrhaged to death at a hospital in Parli, Beed district, Maharashtra. She was reportedly in her second trimester of pregnancy. Her family had allegedly forced her to abort the foetus when they learnt it was a girl child. Sudam Munde, the doctor who performed the procedure, fled Parli but...

-The Times of India   GUWAHATI: In a sign of shocking administrative apathy, herds of animals trying to reach elevated ground to escape the Brahmaputra's furious, swirling floodwaters were run over on NH-37 by speeding trucks in the last one week. Park officials said at least 20 animals, mostly deer, were killed on the high ground along the southern boundary of Kaziranga, and these numbers could go up because there isn't enough deployment...

-The Indian Express The government will be analysing mortality figures during drug trials in India following WHO data showing that 2,031 people died between 2008 and 2011 in such trials in the country. That amounts to about 10 people per week, or more than one person a day. At the same time, the data shows that only 1.5 per cent of clinical trials held across the world so far (2,770 of 1,76,641)...