-TheWire.in A foreign exchange crunch in Sri Lanka has led to a shortage of essential goods and power cuts that last up to 13 hours a day. New Delhi: Sri Lanka is grappling with the worst economic crisis in decades, which has spiked the prices of essential commodities like rice, milk powder, cooking gas and fuel. For instance, one kilogram of basmati rice currently costs between Rs 300-800 as compared to around Rs...

-The Telegraph An interview with the Alt News co-founder on his new Kolkata office, his fact-checking mission and more Alt News, the popular fact-checking website, has recently opened an office in Kolkata. Pratik Sinha, the co-founder of the site, has shifted to the city to spearhead Alt News’s activities here. My Kolkata spoke to Sinha about his fight against both misinformation and disinformation, which is deliberate deception; his vision for Alt News;...

-The Wire Science * Many regions in India, including the north and the centre, are currently reporting hotter weather thanks to heat waves. * The IMD has forecast ‘severe’ heat wave conditions for the next three days over parts of Rajasthan. Heat waves will also prevail over areas of Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Telangana. * According to the government, the IMD’s predictive power to forecast heatwaves has increased significantly over the years. Kochi: Many...

-The Hindu Women on period not allowed to have meals with men, legislators say citing custom Guwahati: A proposed Bill on granting a day’s leave to school and college-going girls and women in jobs was not found worthy of discussion in the Arunachal Pradesh Assembly. Congress MLA Ninong Ering had on March 11 brought a private member’s resolution seeking the introduction of a bill granting menstrual leave “as it is very disturbing for...

In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...