-The New Indian Express Experts say intervention needed as cases of abuse rose in lockdown CHENNAI: With schools shut and children confined to their houses, activists are concerned about kids’ safety. This is because the number of child sexual harassment cases in Tamil Nadu increased during the previous lockdown. Though schools are closed, teachers should regularly interact with students and enquire about their well-being, these activists say. “The number of sexual harassment cases...

-The Telegraph The police as the arbiters of communication For a country with serious challenges to tackle, the amount of time and energy of government agencies and courts that is now spent on offence-taking and conspiracy-chasing borders on the ludicrous. Through 2021, the police in various parts of the country sought to criminalize news gathering as well as social media expressions, registering first information reports indiscriminately under various sections of the Criminal...

-PTI/ The Tribune The report says no evidence that reopening schools has caused a surge in Covid cases and that schools are not a “safe place” New Delhi: There is no justification now for keeping schools closed in view of the Covid-19 pandemic and even if there are new waves, closing schools should be the last resort, according to World Bank’s Global Education Director Jaime Saavedra. Saavedra, whose team has been tracking the...

-The Hindu India records 2,59,291 New cases on Thursday Like every wave in the past, cases fuelled by the Omicron variant of COVID-19 have initially spread only in the urban areas. However, many rural and semi-rural places recorded a sharp spike in infections in the past week. At the start of this year, 50% of the cases were from urban centres such as Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata. However, the share reduced to...

-The Telegraph  The trends so far are in line with observations from South Africa, where demand has been lower during omicron-driven surge The demand for oxygen beds and ventilators for Covid-19 patients appears for now decoupled from the steep rise in cases and hospitalisation, doctors said on Sunday, citing early observations over the past week in Calcutta, Delhi and Mumbai. The counts of hospitalised Covid-19 patients have increased in all three cities, but...