-The Telegraph New Delhi: Some 55,000 women and girls trafficked from Bengal are working as maids in Delhi, many of them "sold as bonded labourers" to wealthy households where they slog for ungodly hours without pay and are often tortured or sexually abused. More than half these women are minors - many as young as 10 - who are duped with promises of a better life and brought to the capital by...

-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 Caste discrimination percolates down to the food plates for Musahar community in Madhepura district of Bihar reports Neha Dixit "The mahant of the Shankar Math told me to stay away from ultra-Left people the day I questioned the Collector about the hunger deaths in my village," recounts Prabhansh Manjhi. Prabhansh is from the Musahaar community in Madhepura district of Bihar. Estimated to be 2.3 million in the country, they are Mahadalits, one...

-The United Nations The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2012, continuing an upward trend which is driving climate change and which will shape the future of the planet for hundreds and thousands of years, according to the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The agency's annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin shows that between 1990 and 2012, there was a 32 per cent increase in radiative forcing...

-The Guardian World Bank report calls for action to cut common pollutants such as soot, which could save millions of lives every year Cleaner cookstoves could save a million lives every year, but costs need to decrease sharply for poor households in developing countries to be able to afford them, according to a World Bank report. On thin ice: how cutting pollution can slow warming and save lives, published on Sunday evening, calls...