New Delhi, August 14 (PTI): A fascination for robotics and technology has pushed students of a Zilla Parishad-run school in a remote village of Maharashtra's Aurangabad district to learn Japanese. Gadiwat village, located 25 km from Aurangabad city, may not have access to good roads and other necessary infrastructure, but Internet connectivity has proven to be a boon for children studying at the local Zilla Parishad school. In September last year, the government-run school de

BY VISHNU MAKHIJANI New Delhi, August 13 (IANS): In India it was long assumed that literature for children must have 'safe topics but in a world where Google knows everything, so do children. Now, a growing body of children's literature beyond the 'adventure genre is helping young readers discuss issues like inequality, conflict or alternate perspectives on history with as much ease as their global counterparts, says educationist and entrepreneur Kavita Gupta Sabharwal.

Rise in child marriages feared as struggling families marry off girls to ease their economic hardship during the pandemic MUMBAI, August 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When the police knocked on the door as 15-year-old Muskaan prepared to head to the temple in their village in northern India, the bride-to-be was distraught. With a sick father and unemployed brother, Muskaan believed that getting married to a distant relative's son would alleviate the financial burden on he

Srinagar, August 10 (IANS): Governance in Jammu & Kashmir was "badly managed and broken", and there was no system, no rule and no process, J&K Chief Secretary B.V.R. Subrahmanyam has said. The whole political system was captured by feudalism, and Kashmir remained untouched at a time when everything improved in the rest of the country, Subrahmanyam said. Terming the system in the Union territory before 2018 as the "biggest flop", the 1987-batch Chhattisgar

New Delhi, August 9 (IANS) With the National Education Policy 2020 recognising the need for flexibility in choosing the subjects that a student wants to study, implementation of this policy will boost science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education in India, edtech startup SP Robotic Works has said. The new education policy also recognised that skills like coding and scientific temper and evidence-based thinking should be learned by all students to become good, suc

New Delhi, August 8 (IANS) Quite obviously, Independence Day - August 15 - means different things to different people. Is it tainted with pain, despair, and bloodshed due to Partition and the long drawn struggle for freedom, or is it coloured with hope and happiness - looking forward towards the endeavours of an independent nation? Given that it's a time for introspection, here's a collection of non-fiction and fiction to draw inspiration from and serve as a beacon for the f

New Delhi, August 8 (IANS) For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), determined to shape the world in its own image without a shot being fired, the Cold War never ended 30 years ago as it aims to make China the number one global power, says a scholarly new work that traces how the party has been relentlessly going about the reshaping. To this end, the Bridge and Road Initiative (BRI) is the ultimate instrument of economic blackmail through which Beijing is changing the post-war internatio

BY SUKANT DEEPAK  New Delhi, August 7 (IANS) Even as the film 'Peepli Live', India's official entry for the 83rd Acadmey Awards Best Foreign Film category completes a decade this month, its Delhi-based writer and director Anusha Rizvi says that the media and the system she satirised looks positively benign in comparison to what is going on today. "Now it is beyond caricature, forget satire," she smiles. All set to produce 'Dastan-e-Haroun' (Augu

BY SIDDHI JAIN  New Delhi, August 7 (IANSlife) As the world at large continues to lose people to the rising Covid-19 toll, the impact of the pandemic are exacerbated for women and girls. Restrictive social norms and global lockdowns have limited women's ability to access health services as well as make them more susceptible to health risks and violence, says a population expert, adding that the outbreak will likely not have a major impact on India's population projectio

On Wednesday, Chief Aritana Yawalapiti, one of Brazil's most influential indigenous leaders died from COVID-19 aged 71 BRASILIA, August 6 (Reuters) - Brazil's Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that President Jair Bolsonaro's government must adopt measures to stop the spread of novel coronavirus to the country's vulnerable indigenous communities. A majority of the justices voted to give the government 30 days to draw up a plan to reduce the threat to indigenous peop

Ayodhya, August 4 (IANS): Thirty years is not a small period -- to heal. But for Purnima Kothari, living in the suburbs of Kolkata, a lifetime may be too short to move on from the fact that her two brothers -- Ram and Sharad -- set off for kar seva in Ayodhya with a promise to return just before her wedding. They never did. It was 1990. With just a day left for the Ram Mandir's 'Bhoomi Pujan', a reality now that the Kothari brothers had dreamt about, Purnima is back in R

Indigenous activists want places named after colonialists to revert to traditional names that have been used for 60,000 years   BRISBANE, August 4 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Like many indigenous Australians, Pat Dudgeon grew up in the shadow of a mountain range that made her feel inferior and "conquered" on her own traditional lands. The King Leopold Ranges, a mountain chain in Western Australia, were named after the Belgian ruler King Leopold II, whose regime

BY SUMIT SAXENA  New Delhi, August 3 (IANS) With the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the Ram temple in Ayodhya slated to take place on August 5, retired judge Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan, who investigated and identified the people involved in the demolition of the Babri Masjid, said he always had a feeling that a Ram temple would be built in Ayodhya. Speaking to IANS, two days before the Bhoomi Pujan ceremony, Justice Liberhan said "Personally, I have always had

New Delhi, August 2 (IANS) India's COVID-19 recovery difference compared to active cases has increased from 1,573 to 5,77,899 in just 52 days amid a spike in new infections, a signal for those under observation to shed the stigma of the disease. On June 10, for the first time, the latest Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) data revealed, the difference between the total number of recovered and active patients was 1,573. Now, the difference has increased to 5,77,899 as

New Delhi, Aug 1 (IANS) The Modi government came out with the New Education Policy 2020, replacing a 34-year-old national policy on education. Under the new policy, students will get a chance to take the board examination twice. What will be the big changes in higher education, what will be the type of board examinations, what will be the nature of primary classes, what will be the changes in engineering and medicine streams -- to get the answer we spoke to Union Education Minister

LONDON/CHICAGO, August 1 (Reuters) - It's dog eat dog in the world of COVID-19 vaccines. That's the fear of global health agencies planning a scheme to bulk-buy and equitably distribute vaccines around the world. They are watching with dismay as some wealthier countries have decided to go it alone, striking deals with drugmakers to secure millions of doses of promising candidates for their citizens. The deals - including those agreed by the United States, Britain and

BY YOGI ADITYANATH IANS | July 31 It will be a befitting culmination of about five centuries of perseverance, reverence and penance of crores of devotees when the Hon'ble Prime Minister Narendra Modiji will lay foundation stone of much-cherished Shri Ram temple in Ayodhya on August 5,2020 at an auspicious time between 12.30 and 12.40 p.m. It will be a reverential moment for the devout who had been waiting for a long time to see a Grand temple of Lord Ram at his birth place of A

July 31 (Reuters) - Children younger than five carried major amounts of coronavirus in their upper respiratory tract, a small study published on Thursday showed, raising new questions about whether kids can infect others. Data on children as sources of coronavirus spread are sparse, and early reports did not find strong evidence of children as major contributors to the deadly virus that has killed 669,632 people globally. Understanding the transmission potential in children will

A noise-cancelling system designed to fit on apartment windows can also encourage more natural ventilation for better health BANGKOK, July 31 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Residents in Southeast Asia's bustling cities who face the dilemma of leaving windows open for fresh air but enduring traffic sounds, could find quiet with new noise-cancelling technology developed by researchers in Singapore. The system comprises 24 small speakers fixed to the window grille, and a microph

Bengaluru, Jul 30 (IANS): Terming the Union Cabinet's approval of the New Education Policy as historic, its draft committee chairman Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan on Thursday said it (policy) would be a game-changer for India over the next 20 years. "It is a significant milestone for education in India from school to college. The policy gives hope for a bright future, as it aims to build quality human resources to sustain the country's socio-economic growth and development