-Mid-Day.com Mumbai: Thane resident Priya Mahunta is still undergoing surgeries for the 45 per cent burns she sustained in a kitchen accident last year. But despite the scars and marks, which hindered her learning, she has done the unthinkable. Thirteen-year-old Mahunta has passed her Std VIII examinations with flying colours, securing 94 per cent, in spite of being snubbed by several tuition classes from the area who were afraid that other...

-The Hindu "Freedom without limits is just a word" -Terry Pratchett Kamlesh Vaswani's PIL seeking to ban the viewing of pornography and make it a non-bailable offence has raised eyebrows. Columnists and social media commentators have greeted the idea with shock, raising issues such as social liberty, sexual freedom, and the fact that the mere banning of pornography might not bring down the incidence of rape. On the surface of it, this sounds...

-The Hindu From the outside, it is just one of those private schools tucked away in an obscure corner that holds out the promise of convent-education, but once you are inside the poorly-lit building -- known as House No.16 -- in South-West Delhi's Bijwasan, you are confronted by the presence of countless buzzing flies and a pervading nauseating stench. This school with cramped classrooms and no students is home to grown...

-The Hindu     ‘We have nothing against Fathima, but cannot make a special case for her' Guwahati: The mother of a four-year-old Muslim girl has moved the Gauhati High Court after the authorities of a Catholic Mission-run school, Kristo Jyoti School, near Bokakhat in upper Assam's Golaghat district refused to allow her daughter Fathima Beevi to wear a ‘hijab' (headscarf) along with the school uniform. The school's authorities have given the girl's parents 15...

KEY TRENDS   • According to National Sample Survey report no. 583: Persons with Disabilities in India, the percentage of persons with disability who received aid/help from Government was 21.8 percent, 1.8 percent received aid/help from organisation other than Government and another 76.4 percent did not receive aid/ help *8   • As per National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), the Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR) was 57.2 per 1,000 live births (for the non-STs it was 38.5)...