Moves by developed nations such as the United States to tighten intellectual property laws are threatening to limit production and distribution of generic drugs, which experts say have been and will remain key in the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and currently account for 80 percent of HIV/AIDS treatment. These efforts are taking shape in two spheres. The first is in discussions on the outcome document that member states are expected...

A dalit chief minister in Mayawati has not changed the deep-seated caste bias in schools of Uttar Pradesh. In 40% schools of Shahjehanpur, Badaun and Pilibhit districts, teachers do not taste the mid-day meal food and students refuse to eat it since the cooks belong to lower caste. The rot in MDM in these three districts is not confined to caste bias alone. It has also been found that in schools...

Sheikh Sajed Ali doesn’t dare leave the Jamshed Ali Bhawan party office in West Midnapore’s Keshpur. It’s the only refuge the sharecropper has been able to find since the Left Front led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, or CPM, got wiped out in the recent assembly elections by the Trinamool Congress and its allies. Ali is terrified to venture out. He says his family is being asked to pay `2...

-The Business Standard   Five political parties stage protest against land acquisition Tension prevailed on Monday at the proposed Posco project site at Gobindpur village under Dhinkia panchayat as ten platoons of armed police conducted flag march ostensibly to create a fear psychosis among the local people ahead of the land acquisition process at trouble-torn Dhinkia panchayat. The situation is going to very critical at Gobindpur as the activists of Posco Pratirodha Sangram Samiti...

In the season of draft Bills, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has come out with its draft of the National Food Security Act, 2011, that gives legal backing to the highly leaky PDS system, thereby excluding innovative options like cash transfers, which may have included variants like food stamps and UID-linked smart cards. Despite the PM’s panel objecting to universal legal entitlement, the draft says that “not less than 90%...