A five-year effort to promote condom use by sex workers and their clients and the use of safe needles by drug users may have helped India prevent about 100,000 HIV infections, according to a study to be released tomorrow. The study suggests that the high-profile HIV prevention initiative called Avahan, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and implemented in six states, was less effective in Nagaland, Manipur and Maharashtra...

The Planning Commission’s poverty line affidavit has exposed how blissfully ignorant the glorified economists of the UPA are of the true reality of India The 2G spectrum scam, Commonwealth Games loot, cash-for-vote bribery, Lokpal fiasco, Pranab-Chidambaram duel on the Finance Ministry note, and the count goes on. It seems the UPA-II is stuck in a rut.  As if the battering by the united Opposition and hauling over the coals by civil...

The finance department wanted to know what would be the extra burden to the state to implement the 25% quota in private schools under the RTE. It got a mind-boggling figure of Rs 3,800 crore. The state unit of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan furnished this exact figure to the government on how much it would cost the government to reimburse private schools ( ICSE/CBSE) if the 25% seats are reserved for...

The finance ministry has asked the telecom department not to entrust state-owned BSNL with the Rs 20,000-crore project to build a nationalbroadband network to take high-speed internet to the hinterlands. It has recommended that a special purpose vehicle (SPV), consisting of many mobile phone companies, be entrusted with implementing this project, while adding that all stakeholders should be chosen through a transparent and competitive bidding process. The telecom department had identified...

-PTI   The Gujarat government has made a request to the Centre not to ban Endosulfan, an agriculture pesticide found to be an organic pollutant, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said in the Rajya Sabha on Friday. Answering questions, he said production, sale and use of Endosulfan has been banned by Supreme Court, through an interim order, on May 13 in the country. “What the Supreme Court said, we will oblige,” he said. In reply to...