Women today are spending longer in labour than half a century back. After comparing data on nearly 1.4 lakh deliveries between 1960 and 2000, scientists have found that the first stage of labour had increased by 2.6 hours for first-time mothers.  For women who had previously given birth, this early stage of labour took two hours longer in recent years than for women in the 1960s. Infants born in the contemporary...

-The Economic Times   What's common between foggy movements of two army battalions, the government auditor's assessments of large notional losses to the exchequer and a letter from the army chief to the PM on his unit's preparedness for war?  The information in each of these instances in the past six months was marked 'secret' in official files, but screamed its way to the public, forcing the government into damage-control mode.  Information leaks in...

-PTI Eight months ahead of the Gujarat Assembly polls, the cyber space has become a battlefield between supporters of tech-savvy Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his opponents.  Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, blogs, e-mails, websites, video uploading sites and every possible avenue on the internet is being used to attract the attention of the net-savvy, especially youths, towards Modi.  His opponents, chiefly the Congress, which calls him an "internet manipulator"...

The announcement of an anti-Naxal tribal battalion in Gadchiroli by Maharashtra home minister is little more than a knee-jerk reaction THREE DAYS after a bus carrying 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel was blown up by Naxals in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, the state home minister announced the setting up of a new anti-Naxal tribal force — a “tribal battalion” recruited by the state reserve police force. Is this new force Maharashtra’s...

In the mid-eighties there was a rumour which later turned out to be true: US livestock were being fed with foodgrains in order to ensure better quality of their meat. Later it proved to be corn and not fine cereals like wheat and rice. The Indian intelligentsia was appalled and indignant: How come cows and buffaloes were fed with grains while millions of people continued to live below the poverty line...