-PTI   Ashodaya Samiti, a sex workers' collective in Mysore, has for the first time tied up with foreign universities and institutions to conduct a comprehensive research on improving women's Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) in India and in Africa.  Ashodaya Samiti has joined a consortium consisting of universities and institutions in five countries, of which three are in Africa, to conduct SRH research services through identifying best practices in delivering a combined...

Bhukan Singh is a small, shy figure, with a nervous smile - he does not look like a hero. But standing in a field near his home, he recalls the day last March when his fight for transparency and justice in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand nearly resulted in his death. "In today's India speaking the truth is not easy," Mr Singh, 44, says wistfully, remembering how, on that March day...

-The Pioneer   Three more debt-ridden farmers committed suicide in Kerala in 24 hours till Monday morning taking the total number of farmers ending life due to financial problems in the past two weeks in the State to seven.  Farmers Kunhikrishnan (50) and KK Joseph (48) of Wayanad district committed suicide by hanging while Chandran of Palakkad district ended his life by consuming poison. All of them had pending repayments of huge loans...

Social activists up in arms against proposed reforms; impact on procurement feared   The Union Government's new move to give primacy in the revised draft of the National Food Security Bill, 2011, to controversial schemes like cash transfers and issuance of food coupons to identified public distribution system beneficiaries in lieu of foodgrain entitlements has got social activists up in arms. The scheme was introduced under ‘Schedule II' in the initial draft of...

-The Times of India   The anti-nuclear protests by the largely illiterate fishermen and women from coastal hamlets that has stalled the commissioning of the multi-crore nuclear plant at Kudankulam in Tirunelveli district enters the 100th day on Thursday. The protests that begun on August 16 in Idinthakarai, also a coastal hamlet with dusty roads and thatched houses adjoining Kudankulam, has been a success for the agitators in the sense that they had...