Almost half the women born in India are married off before they Turn 18, while 18 per cent of them are below 15, according to a Unicef report that shows legal and other measures have done little to curb child marriage. Among those married, 22 per cent became mothers before they got the right to vote. The figures are part of a report brought out by the organisation on the State of...

A police constable, allegedly beaten up by a group of miscreants who harassed his niece three days ago, died of injuries here on Sunday. Ashim Dam, a resident of Birati on the northern fringes of the city, died at a private hospital. His family alleged that although they had named the seven persons who perpetrated the attack, none had been arrested so far. “The incident occurred on the day of Holi [March 8]....

Closed mines and resultant unemployment are still stoking Naxalism in Saranda, a maiden jan adalat (public hearing) held 160km from the steel city insisted today, indicating that more needed to be done to make the much-touted central action plan for the red Turf a long-lasting success. More than 1,000 villagers from the Maoist dens of Noamundi, Gua, Kiriburu and Barajamda among others, which fall in the mining belt of Saranda command...

The results for the assembly elections held across five Indian states, announced yesterday, threw up some surprises. But a welcome surprise in these elections was the high voter Turn out. Voters, and particularly women voters, went to the polls in unexpectedly high numbers. Voter Turnout jumped nearly 50 percent in one state, Uttar Pradesh, and women voted at higher rates than men in all five states that had elections. Activists credit...

The myth that Fukushima radiation levels were too low to harm humans persists, a year after the meltdown.  A March 2, 2012 New York Times article quoted Vanderbilt University professor John Boice: “there’s no opportunity for conducting epidemiological studies that have any chance for success – the doses are just too low.”  Wolfgang Weiss of the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation also recently said doses observed...