-The Times of India   Twenty thalassemic children from Junagadh have tested HIV positive in the last one year, thanks to the transfusion of infected blood. They are among 100 thalassemic children from Junagadh district who have been coming to the civil hospital there for blood transfusion regularly. The patients arrange for the blood and the hospital merely does the transfusion. Thalassemia is a blood disorder passed down through families (inherited) in which...

The government's auditor has accused Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd of violating terms of the contract for its showcase Andhra offshore acreage and expressed doubt over the costs at which India's biggest private sector oil company contracted goods and services for bringing the largest gas discovery into production. The Comptroller and Auditor General's final report on a special audit of Reliance's Krishna-Godavari basin fields, presented to Parliament on Thursday, also suggests...

A high-level meeting on racism, scheduled to take place later this month under the auspices of the General Assembly, is threatening to split the world body and trigger a North-South confrontation. Expressing unfounded fears the meeting might Turn out to be anti- Israel, several Western states, including Canada, Germany, the United States, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Austria, have indicated they will not participate in the meeting. The boycott...

A report from a sample survey of the functioning of the public distribution system in 12 villages in two districts in Orissa, a state usually associated with a poor PDS. While there are errors in exclusion and inclusion of households covered, there has been a vast improvement in operation of the PDS; below the poverty line households seem to be receiving their entitlements. The households also express a strong preference...

Anna Hazare’s fast is over, but the conjuncTure of which that fast was an episode is not: Hazare’s own movement, or other similar movements, are bound to recur in the coming months. The question naTurally arises: what are these movements all about? And to start with: what was Hazare’s own movement all about? It was certainly not about “corruption” in any definable sense. That word meant different things to the...