Rising trends in malnutrition among children under six here and in other cities have prompted the Maharashtra government to introduce an Urban Malnutrition Mission from next month, official sources said. A quarter of children below six years in the city weighed at anganwadis are underweight, according to the latest monthly progress report (MPR) of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). Non-governmental organisations point to a severe crisis of primary health...

NOVARTIS has long been suing the Government of India to eliminate or weaken Section 3(d) of the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005, which established strict standards of patentability in order to prevent the ever-greening of patent monopolies on medicines. Although Novartis lost in 2007 its initial efforts to have Section 3(d) declared unconstitutional and violative of international norms for national patent regimes, it has persisted in appealing and re-appealing the denial...

Dispur has decided to seek the intervention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to resolve the contentious D-voter issue as well as consider the case of Hindus who came to Assam after Partition on humanitarian grounds. These issues will be part of the memorandum Dispur will be submitting to Singh, who will be here on a daylong visit to attend the platinum jubilee celebrations of the Assam Assembly, despite the 12-hour Assam...

-The Hindustan Times   Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit has said she is not to be blamed for the Congress’s defeat in the MCD elections and that there was a wave against the party in the Capital. “These weren’t my (Delhi government) elections. I wasn’t contesting them. The outcome is not my responsibility solely. I worked in these elections as a party worker. It is unfair (to blame me),” Dikshit told HT...

-The Economic Times Going by the latest report on deforestation in India, we have lost forest area equivalent to more than half of New Delhi or as big as a tier two city between 2007 and 2009 alone. The study conducted by a team of forestry researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore for "Current Science" journal says that massive deforestation has been masked by Forest Survey of India's afforestation...