-The World Bank   Policy Interventions Can Turn the Tide, Says World Bank Report WASHINGTON: A new World Bank report warns that risky behaviors -smoking, using illicit drugs, alcohol abuse, unhealthy diets, and unsafe sex- are increasing globally and pose a growing threat to the health of individuals, particularly in developing countries. The report looks at how individual choices that lead to these behaviors are formed and reviews the effectiveness of interventions...

-DNA An allocation of Rs 17,700 crore in the 2013-2014 Union Budget but not a single accountable rupee spent for pre-school education or a plate of food for the homeless children in Mumbai. Yoshita Sengupta investigates the absence of homeless children from ICDS registers Mumbai: In 2010, Ms. Rekha, a homeless woman living on the footpath in Mumbai in her last month of pregnancy, slipped while trying to cross a wall. She...

-The Hindu Although tuberculosis killed 1.3 million people across the globe in 2012 and nearly 8.6 million developed the disease, the world is on track to reach some important targets of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals. According to WHO's global tuberculosis report 2013 released recently, the incidence rate has been falling, and the mortality rate since 1990 has been reduced by 45 per cent. Yet, at 37 per cent, the reduction...

-Newsclick.in Mewat is a living example of how Haryana government has failed to look at malnutrition amongst adolescent girls as a socio-economic problem. Neha Dixit reports "Her father needed money for installing a tube well in the fields, we had no option," says Afra. She is the mother of Humra, 15, who passed away in the Punhana block of Mewat district in Haryana on September 22nd. She bled to death while delivering...

-The Times of India KOLKATA: First the good news. Bengal's sex ratio - 949.9682 - is at its highest since 1901, when it was 945. Now, the bad one. The state's women are still getting married very early - at 20.3 years - which is the least mean age for effective marriage of women in the country. The national average is 21.2 years. The data isn't surprising, for Bengal still ranks fourth...