-Press release by National Coalition on the Education Emergency (NCEE) dated January 22, 2022 Schools in Bengaluru remain closed while malls, theatres, pubs and restaurants have been kept open. As of 21 January, the weekend curfew has been lifted as well. The decision to keep schools closed is having catastrophic consequences on children. Schools had only recently started opening after remaining mostly closed since March 2020. Their being closed again spells...

-Article-14.com One of the issues that brought Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power in 2014 was corruption, the antidote to which was to be a Lokpal, a public ombudsman. His government reluctantly set it up only five years later, after a Supreme Court order. In 2021, it received no more than 30 complaints, with critical posts of inquiry and prosecution chiefs vacant, a third of its budget unused and a former...

-The Telegraph They say the revised testing guidelines that exempt asymptomatic contacts from tests are suited only for omicron, which is linked to mild disease and rapid spread A mix of narrower targeted Covid-19 testing, home-based self-testing kits and large cities approaching epidemic peaks might explain falling counts of daily new infections nationwide, doctors and health experts said on Tuesday. India’s daily count of new Covid-19 infections fell to around 238,000 for the...

In the previous news alert, we looked at the under-nutrition problem in the Bundelkhand region in terms of 3 indicators -- proportion of children under 5 years who are stunted (height-for-age); proportion of children under 5 years who are wasted (weight-for-height); and proportion of children under 5 years who are underweight (weight-for-age). However, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data also indicates that severe under-nutrition like severe wasting and anaemia among...

-PTI/ News18.com The activists, in the fresh plea, have sought directions to the Centre to file a status report with respect to compliance of the directions given in the judgment delivered in June last year. The Supreme Court Wednesday said it would consider listing for hearing the fresh plea of activists seeking implementation of an earlier order on ensuring food security and other welfare measures for migrant workers who are again in...