"No Patent" low cost drug for Malaria proposed

A low priced drug for malaria has been produced by a paris based drug company Sanofi-Aventis. The world's fourth largest drug company has decided not to seek any patents so the pills can be freely copied by generic companies like those in India. The company proposes to sell the drug at no profit at less than $1 to very poor customers and $3 to $4 to wealthier ones. The pill is designed primarily for Africa, where a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds.

UN incited Bangladesh's army take over

The UN warned the Bangladesh Army chief that if it supported the forthcoming elections, which the UN feared would be violent, it might lose several peacekeeping contracts. UN peacekeeping contracts bring in $300 million a year to Bangladesh which is significant for the poverty ridden country. The next day, the Army chief walked into the office of Bangladesh's president and ordered him to declare a state of emergency, cancel the election, and install a military-backed caretaker government.

Novartis throttling AIDS relief operations in developing countries

Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis is challenging the Indian Governments decision to put peoples health before patents and profits. Until 2005, India was able to produce affordable versions of medicines which was pateneted elsewhere, since the country did not grant pharmaceutical patents.

Indian drugs constitute one quarter of the drugs brought by over 30 developing countries worldwide. 80% of medicines used for the treatment of AIDS in the developing countries come from India. Novartis is effectively trying to shut down the pharmacy of the developing world.

India has 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS, according to the United Nations, which is the world's highest caseload. But the prevalence rate is much lower than in most of Africa.

India complied to the The World Trade Organization's (WTO) Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement in 2005. But this agreement includes provisions to safeguard public health and India has included only these in its patent laws.

The Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health signed in 2001 reinforced the right of individual countries to implement these safeguards.

Challenging the public health safeguards in the Indian Law by Novartis will affect the access to medicines in developing countries when the TRIPS agreement by itself has made it difficult for India to produce affordable medicines.

The Indian Network for People with HIV/AIDS (INP+), the People's Health Movement, the Centre for Trade and Development (Centad), the international medical humanitarian organisation Mèdecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF) have all expressed their protest on the lawsuit. They have opposed patent applications for crucial AIDS drugs that they need to be able to access at affordable prices. The survival of these organizations and their effort to fight AIDS all depend greatly on winning these patent oppositions.

Widespread protests forced the Novartis to abandon a similar legal action agains the South African government in 2001.

Please join these efforts to get Novartis to back off from India.

Killing innocents for promotion and rewards

In the 17 year old insurgency in Kashmir, more than 60,000 people have been killed. Recently a new trend has been observed in these killings. Police officers have been conducting "false encounters" and killing innocent people to claim rewards and promotions.

The word "encounter" has until now been used principally to mean skirmishes between militants and the police or the military. For each new murder, the police invoke self-defence and insist that the miscreants opened fire first. Not surprisingly, since the law allows the police to use arms against anyone charged with an offence for which the punishment is death. In their affidavits, the police always say that the criminals had sophisticated weapons, imported or smuggled into the country.

It is said that the stand of human rights activists is demoralising for the police: The government says that it has neither ordered the encounters nor will it ask the police to stop the same. In fact, this isn’t an action taken against criminals, it’s a fight between two groups of criminals.

In the eyes of the public, law and order are breaking down. The prestige of the police is damaged and it needs to do something to limit the damage. "Encounters" are part of that damage control strategy. Police depend on informers to discover who pulled the trigger, not who instigated the murder. These known criminals are then tracked down and shot. The police version is that the criminals opened fire on them and they were killed in self-defence. There are no witnesses to corroborate the story. But public opinion is satisfied and police prestige is restored.

Police and politicians create an impermeable web of corruption and concealment..

In effect, there is a sustained effort by politicians and police to discredit the judiciary. Their story is that the judiciary is too liberal, too inefficient, cases take too long to come to court and too many criminals are released on bail on technicalities. The campaign to tarnish the judiciary is part of the apologia for the extra-judicial killings.

Rape and ye shall marry? In India, Yes.

Rapists in India has an option now - Marry and you may get away scot free.

Last year, a Delhi court asked a rape victim to consider a marriage proposal from her rapist in a bid to escape conviction. Women's groups, including the National Commission for Women had criticised the court for even entertaining such a proposal.

Indians offered cash prizes for marrying beneath their caste

The Indian Government is offering 50,000 rupees to higher-caste people who marry spouses from the lowest castes in its latest controversial effort to dismantle the ancient Hindu social hierarchy.

India's national carrier dishonours Indian Currency

Air India flights accepts only US Dollars or Dirhams on it's flights to UAE for in-flight purchases. If being in international territory is the reason for this, why would the tea vendor in the departure lounge (after emigration) accept Indian Rupees?

High priest sacked on allegations of sexual harassment

The preliminary police investigations showed that the priest had visited a flat in Kochi and spent time with a woman. There is a case of immoral trafficking pending against the woman in question whom the priest had gone to meet.

This is believed to be part of the same master plan that propagated the desecration story since the priest had opposed the move for corrective rituals and had alleged that the story was fabricated.

Actress breached security and touched idol at Sabarimala Temple

Controversy erupted at Sabarimala when a film actress admitted to have entered the sanctum sanctorum and touched the celibate idol. Earlier an astrologer had discovered that a woman had entered the temple which was out of bounds for females between the ages of ten to fifty and hence desecrated it.

The chief priest at the temple denied the allegations and maintained that it is part of a master plan to derogate the sanctity and popularity of the temple. It is also alleged that the astrologer is involved in this master plan and the whole set of discoveries by the astrologer and the ensuing revelation by the actress was fabricated.

It is believed that as part of the master plan, the presence of "Lord Ram" was discovered in the devaprasnam. The corrective action proposed was to instate Lord Ram also in Sabarimala to eventually make the believers chant "Jai Ram", the infamous slogan that preceded the destruction of Babri Masjid.

The relevance of Sabarimala in the context of multi-religious fabric of Kerala is the glorious camaraderie of Lord Ayyappa and Vavaru Swami. A muslim shine that co-exists in Sabarimala for centuries and where the hindu pilgrims paid a customary visit was also targeted in the master plan, threatening the centuries old secular tradition of the temple.

No skirts for girls in the campus

The women's commission of a state in India is considering a ban on skirts for girls and to enforce strict dress codes for women to prevent crimes against them.

The mindset prevails in these societies that it is the fundamental right of a man to misbehave with a woman and it is a woman's responsibility to protect herself.

Girl child labourer tortured and murdered

The 10 year old girl who was caught trying on her mistress's lipstick was tortured and killed by an educated urban mother of three.

Rapist escapes jail by marrying victim

A 25-year old man charged with raping a young hearing and speech impaired woman in Chennai has escaped conviction by marrying the victim after striking a compromise with her family.

This shocked women rights activists who feel this could be a precedent-setting verdict.

Spammers win the battle once again

In a disheartening development in the ongoing battle against spam by computers users, a computer security company waved a virtual white flag of surrender and closed down its operations.

Idealist politics humbles mafia rule

Former minister and prime accused in the infamous ice-cream parlour sex scandal, IUML leader Mr. P.K Kunhalikutty was defeated in a historic electoral reverse by his former aide Mr. K.T.Jaleel who was earlier expelled from the party since he began questioning the style of functioning of the party.

Police torture boy in custody

A 13-year-old boy taken into custody by police for alleged theft was tortured in a police station in Kerala.

Show cause notices issued to hostile witnesses

In a landmark judgment an Indian judge awarded life imprisonment to the Best Bakery case accused but also accused perjury on the witnesses giving a clear warning message to several other similar cases around the country where witnesses have been forced to change their statements owing to life threats.

Parents of peace activits killed by Israeli bulldozers sue Caterpillar

Parents of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American peace activist who was crushed and killed by an army-driven Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza are suing Caterpillar for violating the Geneva Convention and American torture laws in allowing its equipment to be used against the Palestinian people and their homes.

There is a boycott of Caterpillar, the company that makes the bulldozers Israel uses to knock down Palestinian homes.

Rigorous imprisonment for sexual harassment

A court in Kerala has issued a sentence of rigorous imprisonment for sexually harassing a Calicut University employee in a bus.

P.E. Usha, the mother of a 12 year old girl, received little help from the state. For pursuing the case, even her daughter was not left out. She was threatened over the phone that her daughter would be kidnapped, raped and killed. The State Women's Commission had refused to intervene since it is a police case. Though the entire state had been talking about Usha's case, there were few organisations willing to support Usha.

"This is wrong. This is the United States of America."

Law and order is gone, gunmen are roaming at will, raping and looting, as people die of heat and thirst, bodies lie rotting in the street, with no medicine and now there are thousands of people defecating in the streets. This is wrong. This is the United States of America.

Front-page photos of the dead and desperate in New Orleans, devastated by the Hurricane Katrina , almost all of them poor and black have shaken assumptions about American might.

The issue is being studied closely by American ethicists and social psychologists who opines that rules of human behavior including respect for others' property and for social order itself dissolve quickly in desperate circumstances like the storm's aftermath. Ethicists call it state of nature -- an atmosphere without rules or infrastructure, where the needs are so great that anything goes.

It is under extreme distress that the true character of a person emerges. This reflects the culture of the person and as a whole of the society he belongs.

The looting and chaos in New Orleans reflect a culture of violence. In South Asia, where the tsunami killed more than 30,000 not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged or raped.

Parallel religious courts under scrutiny

The Supreme Court of India has issued notices to the Islamic Seminary, Darul-ul-Uloom & the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) on a petition accusing the two most important Muslim bodies of trying to interfere with the country's legal system and introduce parallel Islamic laws in violation of the Constitution.

Cleric's power too large a challenge for the Indian Government

The 'culture' of rape that exists in India and Pakistan arises from profound social anomalies in their moral code, which is based on concepts of honour and shame. In honour-and-shame cultures like those of India and Pakistan, male honour resides in the sexual probity of women, and the 'shaming' of women dishonours all men. Any country claiming to be a democracy must secularise and unify its legal system, and take away power exercised by medievalist religious institutions that teaches the most fundamentalist, narrow, puritan, rigid, oppressive version of religion.

Ever since the Indian Government caved in and passed an act that nullified the Supreme Court's judgment in the Shah Bano case, denying alimony to divorced Muslim women, Indian politicians have not dared to challenge Islamist clerics' power.

Another honor rape in Pakistan

Another woman has been "honour raped" (read gang-raped) by five men in Pakistan's Central Punjab province where another high-profile gang-rape of a woman, Mukhtaran Mai, on the orders of a village council had triggered an international outcry.

Violence against women is common in rural Pakistan where tribal and feudal customs hold sway. Hundreds of women are raped or killed every year by men intent on restoring honour after behaviour by the woman or a male relative deemed inappropriate in the male-dominated society.

An Islamic Critique of the Rape Laws of Pakistan from a Woman-Sensitive Perspective.

Muslim council "finds" that the rape never occured....and hence the matter is closed?

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board which sent a team on a fact-finding mission says it is unlikely that Imrana was raped. They "support their finding" on the argument that her house did not offer sufficient privacy for a rape to have occured.

Protest against India rape fatwa

A ruling by a Muslim seminary in India that a woman allegedly raped by her father-in law must separate from her husband has been met with wide protests.

Mediapersons are the prostitutes of the governments?

Several top journalists who have covered the UAE say the country has a long way to go in respect of providing functional freedom to the media, while at least one top journalist in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region feels, “My colleagues and I are prostitutes of the government.”

Rape victim ordered to marry rapist

Police in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have arrested a man accused of raping his daughter-in-law. But a Muslim council of community elders has ordered that she marry her father-in-law and change her relationship with her husband to that between a mother and son.

It also ordered her to leave her home and stay away for seven month and 10 days to become "pure".

A village council in Kerala in India has lost its legal battle against the corporate giant Coca Cola Company.

The struggle by the villagers against the exploitation and pollution of water of Coca Cola Company at Plachimada completed three years on 22 April 2005.

In addition to depleting the water resource in the otherwise drought prone village, the company also dumped its waste sludge in the fields and banks of the irrigation canals, heralding it as free fertilizer. Aside from stinking so badly it made old folk and children sick, people coming in contact with it got rashes and kindred infections and the crops which it was supposed to nourish died.

Clamp down on Ladies Bars

Maharashtra government has ordered closure of ladies bars to protect the morals of the youth. The government should not be in the job of policing the morals of citizens. The states task is to regulate and ensure that people who do not want to be disturbed by such adult entertainment are isolated in time and space from such joints.

35 rapists acquitted

The High Court of Kerala has acquitted all but one of the 36 accused in the Suryanelly sex scandal. The prosecution failed to adduce adequate evidence before the court to ensure proper punishment showing how infirm the legal system was when it came to protecting women. The verdict points to the gender bias inherent in the Indian legal system, and the need to overhaul it to ensure that women received as much legal protection as men.

Minister bows to public demand; tenders resignation

Bowing to public outcry, controversial Kerala Industries Minister P.K. Kunhalikutty, facing charges in the infamous ice-cream parlour sex scandal, tendered his resignation from the Cabinet.

Kunhalikutty, also the General Secretary of the Indian Union Muslim League, the second largest constituent in the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF), submitted his resignation to party supremo Panakkad Syed Mohammedali Shihab Thangal at his residence.

An early-warning system could have saved thousands of lives

The 26 December earthquake was the largest anywhere in the world in the last 40 years, with a magnitude of 9.0. It was caused by the sudden collision of two tectonic plates under the floor of the Indian Ocean.

A monitoring station that could have provided early warning of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunamis lacked the telephone connection needed to relay news of the impending disaster.

Countries such as Sri Lanka and India, which suffered thousands of casualties, could potentially have been warned some two hours before the waves completed the 1,500-kilometre journey from the earthquake's epicentre off Indonesia.

India and Sri Lanka, which were devastated by killer waves, are not even part of the The Pacific Tsunami Warning System.

Scientists at the PTWS centre in Hawaii desperately tried to warn Asian nations by calling the US embassies in their capitals.

Prisoner starved to death

In an Indian Jail a prisoner was starved to death because the jailor and the fellow prisoners were scared to share food with him since he was suffering from AIDS.

Hindu seer confesses to murder

A top Hindu cleric has confessed to murdering a worker at his temple in India's southern Tamil Nadu state.

The murdered worker was reportedly writing anonymous letters charging the seer with various misdemeanours.

"In a moment of weakness I ordered his murder," the counsel quoted the cleric as saying.

The charges levelled against the cleric, Mr Saraswati included embezzlement of gold procured for making a temple chariot and providing lavish lifestyles for the seer's relatives.

Victim Girl Arrested

The victim girl was arrested today by the Kerala state police in connection with her attempt to commit suicide in the year 2000. The police explained that she was in hiding all these years and hence the delay in her arrest.

This was in fact a contradiction of facts since she was under police protection all these days and the police had arrested her from her house which was under police protection.

The incident was reportedly planned by the accused minister and she was threatened during her arrest by the police that she reverted from her statement saying a social activist had compelled her to level the charges against the minister.

Regina's case has striking similarities with that of Zahira Sheikh of the Best Bakery Case, who said she had made accusations against those who allegedly killed her father and 14 others in Gujarat in 2002 at the instance of social activist Teesta Setalvad.

Any way the harm has been done as the government spokesmen have started saying that someone who keeps changing her statement cannot be believed.

No plans to resign

Kunhalikutty has ruled out his resignation from the UDF ministry in Kerala saying that there is no question of his resignation as minister or a reinvestigation into the case which had been dismissed even by the Supreme Court.

The government of Kerala continues to support and protect the accused minister saying that the allegations are yet to be proved in the court of law.

The media and the public demands the minister to be ousted from power so as to pave the way for an impartial probe into the allegation.

The minister who is said to run a mafia gang in the state has reacted massively to the situation using muscle power and political power to threaten and suppress his opponents.

Cable TV services disrupted

Cable TV services were disrupted at key locations in Kerala due to severing of optical fibre and coaxial cables reportedly by the supporters of the accused minister who wanted to prevent the reach of news bulletins containing adverse comments against him.

Journalists stoned and beaten

Journalists including women were stoned and beaten by the supporters of Kerala Industries Minister P.K. Kunhalikutty, who was last week accused of sexually abusing a 22-year-old woman thrice in 1996 when she was 14.

News person manhandled

The Kozhikode bureau chief of The New Indian Express M.P. Prashanth was manhandled by a group of men, while covering the march taken out by the Youth League and IUML cadre in the city in protest against the recent media coverage linking Industries Minister P.K. Kunhalikutty in the ice cream parlour sex scandal.

Minister abuses minor girl

Regina, the girl who was involved in the infamous ice cream sex scandal, revealed that she was sexually exploited by Industries Minister and IUML general secretary P.K. Kunhalikutty three times at separate places in 1996.

She told mediapersons that Kunhalikutty's co-brother Raoof had given her Rs 2.25 lakh to retract from her earlier statement before the court naming Kunhalikutty.

Mobile phones in Kashmir

An increasing number of people in Kashmir are reported to be using Pakistan's national anthem as the ring tone on their mobile phones. Mobile phone services were not launched in Kashmir until last year due to security concerns raised by Indian security agencies.

Guantanamo Bay. What can you do about this?

More than 80% of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were captured by Pakistan. They were handed over by Pakistan directly to the US authorities without following any due legal process. Many of the prisoners were stripped naked, fun made of their naked bodies, had their money taken and were tortured by Pakistani Intelligence agents, before being sent to Guantanamo Bay. What can you do about this?

Hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners

Thousands of Palestinians began a mass hunger strike in Israeli prisons demanding that Israeli prison authorities desist from practising sinister methods of humiliation and torture, including the recurrent beating of inmates, forced stripping, surprise midnight searches, extended solitary confinements which often last for months, as well as protracted handcuffing and leg-fettering.

"Let them starve to death" is the Israeli state's policy toward all Palestinians--those now in prison, and those yet to be put in prison.

Israeli officials call this nonviolent activism "terrorism".

HIV positive siblings denied education in Kerala

A government-aided school in Kerala, under a Congress led Government slammed its doors on two HIV positive siblings. This is when Congress president Sonia Gandhi is addressing AIDS 2004 - XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok.

Ananthu, 6, and his sister Akshara, 8, returned empty-handed from Sree Narayana School in the northern Kannur district after a group of parents mounted a resistance, fearing that their children would also get infected by mingling with the two HIV positive kids.

This is not the first instance of HIV positive siblings being sent out or denied admission in Kerala. Benson and Benzy, who had lost their parents to AIDS, had to wage a protracted battle last year to gain admission to a regular school last year. The setting was similar. The villagers who learnt that the kids were HIV positive in fact prevented their children from attending classes.

In most of the civilized world, an individual's HIV status is a confidential matter between patient and doctor, and schools are accordingly unentitled to inquire about their pupils' HIV status.

Remembering the great Bohemian of our times

John Abraham who had become a living myth even during the short span of his nomadic existence due to his constant rebellion against all establishments and social conventions, was killed in a tragic mishap in Calicut on 30 May 1987.

He belongs to the glorious group of artists who were part of a tradition of Bohemian "experiments in living". Despite all the hardships, his life was a celebration. The intensity of the friendship, fun, colour and above all the freedom of life which he brought to the simplest details of his life made it worthwhile and memorable.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation suggests Israeli culpability for Iraqi prisoner abuses

On the May 4 broadcast of CBC TV's National News correspondent Neil Macdonald made a shift from Iraq to turn his report against Israel, proposing to viewers that Israeli intelligence might be linked in some way to the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Later, the CBC apologized for this statement by saying that in fact, there is no evidence that Israel was involved in what happened in the Iraqi prison.

Prisoner abuse: A regular occurrence in US Prisons

Horrific abuses, some similar to those revealed in Iraq, regularly occur in U.S. prisons with little national attention or public outrage, human rights activists says.

All over the world, prisoners of war are abused. Its just that when it comes to the so called 'Civilized, Fair and Just' nations that it is not normally expected or acknowledged. It is simply demanded that the prisoners are dealt with in a humanitarian way.

Pakistani council approves rapes to avenge honour

A village council in Pakistan permitted a landlord to rape the sister and sister-in-law of a man he accused of an illicit relationship with his daughter.

The council members, all of them landlords themselves, ruled that the influential landlord could avenge his honour by having sex with the farmer's daughter, who is 16, and daughter-in-law, who is 22.

Later the girls were locked in a room and raped by the landlord while two of his male relatives stood guard and the three-member council waited outside.

Pay woman drug addicts not to have children says Drugs Expert

Women drug addicts should be paid to take contraception to stop them from having children, according to a drugs expert Professor Neil McKeganey of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research.He suggested that in many instances, female drug users are becoming pregnant not because they want to but because of the sheer chaos of their lifestyle.

His research suggests that more than 50,000 children in Scotland have been exposed to drug addiction at home.

It found a number had even woken up to find their parents had died from an overdose while others had had their Christmas presents sold to pay for drugs.

The Catholic Church is against the idea. They say: "If you are going to sterilise drug-addicted women, why stop there? Why not sterilise alcoholics?

"This is social engineering on a massive scale and it's completely unacceptable."

4,392 Priests Accused of Sex Abuse

A survey compiled by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and overseen by the National Review Board documenting sex abuse by U.S. Roman Catholic clergy found that 4,392 clerics have been accused of molesting minors since 1950 and blame bishops' "moral laxity" in disciplining offenders for letting the problem worsen.

The Indian Army uses civilians as human shield to launch attacks on terrorists

More than ten thousand people took to the streets in Bandipore town in north Kashmir, protesting against the killing of five civilians who had been used as "human shield" by the soldiers from JAK Rifles in an operation to flush out militants in Argam forests.

Pesticide in soft drinks

In India, a parliamentary inquiry has found that soft drinks sold in India by US companies Coca-Cola and Pepsi contain high levels of pesticide that they could lead to cancer and other diseases.

The Joint Parliamentary Committee has also held the US soft drinks majors Coca Cola and PepsiCo's plants in Palakkad district of Kerala responsible for "causing pollution of water, depleting ground water and reducing crop yields besides causing ailments to human beings".

Kerala Government prosecutes Rationalist Association leader for writing against God Woman

Owing to protests by a group of writers and social activists and the ensuing international attention, the government had relented and halted its steps in March 2003 to facilitate the prosecution of the author for his book on the God Woman. These attempts have been resumed again. Please protest against this.