On November 10 more than 70 websites in the UK defied police rulings to issue guidance to student protesters on avoiding arrest. The protests that began in early November against a hike in university tuition fees have been described by the media as the country’s most intensive student upsurge in …
Google Maps is tangled in a border dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. According to the Costa Rican press, misrepresentation of the country’s northeast around the river San Juan by Google Maps encouraged former Nicaraguan guerrilla leader Eden Pastora to conduct a river dredging operation in the disputed territory. Pastora …
Four drafts and three years later, the Policy on Open Standards for e- Governance was finally released on November 15. The policy is a victory for the open source community fighting since 2007 for the use of free and open formats to manage and create digital data of the Centre …
The definition is contested as the answer has immense economic implications. If bamboo is a tree or timber, it belongs to the forest department and can be auctioned to the paper and pulp industry, often at throwaway rates. If it is a grass, then it would be classified as a …
Frank Lloyd Wright, the American architect, once said that to look at the cross-section of any plan of a big city is to look at something like the section of fibrous tumour. It is probably an apt description of how India
How many of the Einsteins who exist now will be allowed to learn physics? That is the question Eben Moglen, professor of law and legal history at Columbia University, threw at a selected audience in Delhi last month. And the answer he provided—none, perhaps—did not occasion much surprise. Those attending …
In the past two decades, the US government has become a bulwark of the movement for intellectual property rights. Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights regime owes much to tough talking US representatives at WTO deliberations. Players in music, film, agriculture and pharmaceutical industry look up to USA to secure their monopolistic …
Penguins are lovable. And it is hard to believe a children’s book on such an inoffensive bird can trigger a controversy. But that’s exactly what happened with And Tango Makes Three in 2005. Based on a true New York zoo story by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, the book tells …
David Henry discusses a research article by Geoffrey Spurling and colleagues that examined the relationship between exposure to promotional material from pharmaceutical companies and the quality, quantity, and cost of prescribing. Original Source
THE Asian Development Bank (ADB) that supports infrastructure projects in Asia and the Pacific region is finalising its new public communication policy. It faces a tough challenge: ensuring access to information to communities affected by the projects it funds. To meet this challenge, the bank will have to do away …
CHHATTISGARH “It was a crazy time and we took great risks,” said Alok Shukla. “Sometimes I shudder to think what would have happened if we had not succeeded. We would have been facing audit questions the rest of our lives.” Shukla was referring to his challenging time as food secretary …
In recent times, critics have questioned the Internet's utility. The net Luddities range from those who berate it for being an emporium of pornography to those who question the worldwide web's all pervasive influence on modern life. Nicholas Carr is among those who raise significant questions while criticising the Internet. …
ALMOST all civilisations hold insects as an important element within their cultures. Scarab beetles were central religious artifacts within Egyptian culture. The Chinese viewed cicadas as a symbol of birth or immortality, the San of the Kalahari believe the praying mantis represents creation and patience, and the Greeks also created …
It took two two-and-a-half-metre bamboo poles and a small transmitter worth Rs 50 to start Radio FM Mansoorpur in Bihar’s Vaishali district. The radio station, started in 2002 by Raghav Mahato, a radio mechanic, shut four years later because he did not have a licence. Mahato, now in his late …
In recent times, the social networking site, Facebook, has been dogged by allegations of privacy violations. David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect does not take issues with these accusations. It is at its best in describing the genesis of the site. For most part the book is a celebratory account. In …
OVER the next six months, 22 information commissioners, including 11 state chief information commissioners (SCICs), would retire. The impending mass vacancy has turned the spotlight on the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT). It turns out the department has been filling these posts without any policy guideline. Documents accessed by …
An 18th century library in Aurangabad that shut down in 1970 has thrown its doors open to the public. Once reputed to be one of the biggest libraries in Asia, it had more than 100,000 books and manuscripts in the 1950s. It is situated adjacent to another historic monument, a …
This article interrogates the claims of intellectual property to be a right. Drawing on the political theory of rights, it argues that information, ideas and knowledge fail to meet the basic test of rights and intellectual property right prevents those who do not own it from accessing and exercising their …
With the advent of "World Wide Web", the Cyberspace has spread its tenatacles throughout the globe bringing in its wake highly controversial issues. Despite advantages of this matrix of immense utility, the Internet poses potential threat to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) of incurring liability for no fault of theirs.
The objective of the study was to assess the impact of direct to consumer advertising of prescription drugs in the United States on Canadian prescribing rates for three heavily marketed drugs—etanercept, mometasone, and tegaserod. Original Source
