VISHAL, the son of a farm labourer in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, is almost four. He should weigh around 16kg (35lb). But scooping him up from the floor costs his nursery teacher, a frail woman in a faded sari, little effort. She slips Vishal’s scrawny legs through two holes cut in the corners of a cloth sack, which she hooks to a weighing scale. The needle stops at...
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Ailing Orissa by Prafulla Das
Contaminated water sources and the virtual absence of health care claim dozens of lives in the State, now in the grip of cholera. COME monsoon and the backward regions of Orissa are in the grip of water-borne diseases. This year too has been no different. According to official figures, 150 people had died of cholera and diarrhoea in the State as on September 15. Unofficial reports put the toll at more...
More »Farmers from across state join indefinite strike
Mohali/Chandigarh: *Govt refuses to give into concession demands*Deputy CM says demands unjustified*Balbir Singh Rajewal sits on hunger strike Even as the farmers from across the state on Monday launched an indefinite agitation to mount pressure on the state government to accept their demands — for a financial package to farmers and waiver of electricity bills—¿ the Punjab government refused to accept any of them. Hundreds of farmers from across the state descended...
More »Greater progress needed despite recent drop in maternal deaths, say UN agencies
While the number of maternal deaths has recently dropped by one third, United Nations agencies today stressed that more must be done to save the lives of women given that 1,000 of them still die every day due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth. According to a new report released by the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Bank, the...
More »Number of hungry people in the world drops for the first time in 15 years: FAO by Amulya Nagaraj
The number of hungry people in the world dropped about 10 percent for the first time in 15 years to below 1 billion but the figure is still "unacceptable," the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a report. According to a report titled "The State of Food Insecurity in the World," which will be jointly published by FAO and World Food Program (WFP) in October, about 925 million people...
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