-The Hindu Snag comes amid rising levels of hunger and poverty. Some States have developed their own software modules A massive nutrition portal developed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), which is used by the Centre as well as most States, and touted as the world’s biggest nutrition system, to record and monitor delivery of services to children and mothers across nearly seven lakh anganwadis has been down for nearly...

-IndiaSpend.com Chennai: About 10 months, nine million cases and over 130,000 deaths later, India does not yet know enough about why the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 affected whom it did, and how it did that. There is wide variation in the spread of COVID-19 between states. Areas with higher population density are expected to have more cases, but varying testing rates could be affecting case detection. While the elderly and those...

-Newsclick.in Almost 24% of the respondents reported having earned no wages in the unlock phases and close to 50% said that their monthly wages were less than Rs 5,000. A fact sheet produced by ActionAid Association India following its surveys focussing on informal workers has exposed the inadequacies of the governments that are failing in improving workers’ lives. The extensive report, which is a part of the organisation’s longitudinal study on the impact...

A report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which was released on July 6th (observed as World Zoonoses Day by research institutions and non-governmental organisations across the globe) this year, says that around 60 percent of known infectious diseases in humans are estimated to have an animal origin. Likewise, almost three-fourth of all new and emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic i.e. these diseases...

-Down to Earth As the new ordinance seeks curtailment of judicial intervention, the executive faces the real challenge of pushing difficult and inconvenient solutions to clean air President Ramnath Kovind has signed a new ordinance to form a commission for air-quality management in the National Capital Region (NCR) and adjoining areas. This move, in one sweep, erases all other committees and authorities that were set up under judicial and administrative orders, seeks to...