Azaan is an integral part of the faith, not the gadget, says veteran writer-lyricist Javed Akhtar, asking that the Islamic call to prayer on loudspeakers should be stopped as it causes "discomfort" to others. In a tweet on Saturday, Akhtar wondered why the practice was 'halaal' (allowed) when it was, for nearly half a century in the country, considered 'haraam' or forbidden. "In India for almost 50 years Azaan on the loud speak was Haraam. Then it became Halaal and so halaal that there is no end to it, but there should be an end to it. Azaan is fine but loud speaker does cause of discomfort for others. I hope that atleast this time they will do it themselves (sic)," Akhtar tweeted. When a user asked his opinion on loudspeakers being used in temples, the 75-year-old writer said everyday use of speakers is a cause of concern. "Whether it's a temple or a mosque, if you're using loudspeakers during a festival, it's fine. But it shouldn't be used everyday in either temples or mosques. "For

As part of a stimulus package for the coronavirus-hit economy, the government is working on a credit guarantee scheme to enable banks to provide additional 10-15 per cent working capital to MSMEs for payment of wages, sources said. Currently, banks are offering an extra line of credit of 10 per cent based on working capital limits, which the government intends to increase further. Since units are closed due to lockdown and there has been no operation for the past two months, most micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) do not have money for paying wages and financial assistance for them is under consideration of the government, the sources said. One of the proposals under consideration is to provide 10-15 per cent additional line of credit by banks over the working capital limit of the MSME sector, which is the largest employer in the country after agriculture. This loan, especially for wage payment, will be backed by a proposed credit guarantee fund so that lenders' money is ...

Himachal Pradesh reported two fresh cases of COVID-19, taking the total virus count in the state to 55, officials said on Sunday. Two people quarantined at Swarghat in Bilaspur district along the HP-Punjab border have tested positive, Bilaspur deputy commissioner Rajeswar Goel said. The two are taxi drivers and had recently ferried two families from Gujarat's Ahmedabad and Haryana's Gurgaon to their native places in Mandi and Kangra districts respectively. As the two showed symptoms during screening at the border, the two were quarantined and their samples were taken, he added. One of them is from Gujarat. They are being shifted to Nerchowk's Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Government Medical College and Hospital (SLBSGMC) in Mandi, he added. Samples of their contacts will also be taken for testing. The number of active cases in Himachal Pradesh now stands at 13 three each in Chamba and Kangra, two in Hamirpur, Bilaspur each and one each in Mandi, Una and Shimla districts. While 35 patients

The Dakshina Kannada district administration has made arrangements to quarantine non- resident citizens arriving here by flights from various countries amid the COVID-19 crisis. The first repatriation flight from Dubai carrying 170 passengers is expected to land at the Mangaluru International Airport (MIA) here on Tuesday. Nearly 1,000 rooms at lodges, hostels and service apartments have been kept ready as quarantine facilities for the NRIs. The authorities have reserved rooms in 18 hotels, lodges and six hostels for the mandated two-week quarantine. The returnees will be given the option of staying either at hotels or in government facilities, sources said. All the quarantine facilities will have the services of doctors to monitor the health of those coming from abroad. Around 3,000 Indian citizens have sought repatriation to DK and Udupi districts from different countries, sources said. Some of them will arrive in ships once the services are started to the New Mangalore ..

Nearly a month after recovering from the coronavirus, actor Zoa Morani says she has donated her blood plasma to do her bit in helping the patients currently suffering from the novel virus. The actor, who was quarantined and kept under medication in April, also urged those who have recovered from COVID-19 to donate their plasma. "Donated my blood today for the Plasma therapy trials at Nair hospital. It was fascinating! Always a silver lining I suppose. The team there was so enthusiastic and careful. There was a general physician on standby just incase of emergency and the equipment brand new and safe (sic)," Zoa wrote on Instagram on Saturday. She thanked the doctors for taking care of her and hoped patients benefit from the donation. "All #Covid19 recovered people can be a part of this trial, to help others covid patients recover! I hope this works #IndiaFightsCorona. They even gave me a certificate and Rs 500. Wont lie, I felt super cool today (sic)," she added. Zoa, along with her ..

Mizoram's corona-free status can be attributed to the discipline of its people and the combined efforts of the church, NGOs and administration, says Chief Minister Pu Zoramthanga. While happy that his state has managed to contain the spread of COVID-19, the chief minister told PTI he was worried about the economic slump due to the lockdown and the threat posed by corona carriers from neighbouring Bangladesh and Myanmar. On Saturday, Mizoram became coronavirus-free with its lone COVID-19 patient being discharged from hospital, officials in the state capital Aizawl said. The credit, Zoramthanga said, goes to the discipline of the people who allowed the state to execute all the provisions suggested by a special task force constituted for the sole purpose to curb the spread of the virus. "Mizoram is a very disciplined state With the help of the church, NGOs and administration, we have so far survived this crisis and are determined to continue to do so in the future," he said in a phone ..

A massive dust storm barrelled through the national capital and neighbouring areas on Sunday, a day after the mercury touched the 40.9 degrees Celsius mark in the city -- the season's highest so far. Light rains were also reported from isolated places in Delhi-NCR, weather experts said. Gusty winds and rains led to a significant drop in the mercury. The maximum temperature is expected to settle around 35 degrees Celsius. Delhi residents on social media shared videos of gusty winds with plumes of dust engulfing the streets. Kuldeep Srivastava, the head of the regional forecasting centre of the IMD, said it was a result of a fresh western disturbance. Winds gusting up to 70 kilometers per hour swept across the national capital accompanied by light rains, he said.

Uttarkashi on Sunday reported its first COVID-19 case, raising Uttarakhand's coronavirus tally to 68. Uttarkashi district falls in the green zone.The red, orange and green zone classification is based on the number of coronavirus cases, doubling rate of coronavirus cases, and the extent of testing and surveillance The man, who tested positive, hails from Dhanaripatti village in Dunda block and had returned recently from Surat in Gujarat, Chief Medical Officer DP Joshi said. Three persons who came along with him in separate two wheelers from Gujarat have been kept in isolation, he said, adding contact tracing is underway. The 32-year-old man's swab sample was tested at AIIMS, Rishikesh, Joshi said.

The coronavirus lockdown has brought a sea change in the buying behaviour of many Indians, such as purchasing vegetables and other consumables without asking for prices, far from the old habit of asking 'dhaniya' or 'mirchi' free from vendors, according to a survey by Enormous Brands. The web-based survey, conducted between March 30 and April 22, took feedback from 3,737 respondents in cities including Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune and Ahmedabad. It found that there has also been a sharp increase in adoption of digital technology by older people to join the e-commerce bandwagon for ordering items like milk, grocery and home essentials and paying through wallets and UPI. The study also found that COVID19 has helped in forming an opinion for pushing the 'Make in India' agenda, with 42 per cent believing that "there is an active and deliberate attempt by China to spread COVID across the world for economic gains" which has led to a strong anti-China sentiment. "The ...

Several NGOs working in the disability sector are facing severe financial crunch as most of the funds and donations they would earlier get has been diverted towards tackling the COVID-19 crisis. Prashant Verma, general secretary, National Association for the Blind, says he could just pay 65 per cent salary to his employees in the last two months due to financial crunch and if no fresh donations are made he does not have any money to pay his 120 staff members this month. "We feel as if we are at the end of the line," he told PTI. Verma said his organisation used to get grants from many companies under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and even from individuals, especially during March as it was the end of the financial year. "But this year we didn't get any money. Some of the companies, which even committed to us, are saying that this time they have to think about their own survival. Many individuals (who earlier donated) don't have money to support us. A lot of the money is ...

Left without jobs and desperate to return home amid the lockdown, 10 migrant labourers have set off on foot from Pune in Maharashtra for their native place hundreds of kilometres away in Uttar Pradesh. The Pune administration has asked the officials concerned to make necessary arrangements for such migrants at hotels and halls available on highways in the district and set up camps for them, in the wake of the death of 16 migrant labourers after being run over by a goods train in Aurangabad. The 10 migrant workers, all natives of Allahabad district in Uttar Pradesh, started walking to their homes from Pune on Saturday evening after losing their jobs and finding to difficult to sustain their livelihood here. "We all were working as construction labourers in Pune. Now we don't have food to survive. Therefore, we have started for our native place in Uttar Pradesh," one of the labourers from the group said. Pune District Collector Naval Kishore Ram has ordered tehsildars and ..

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday said 75 per cent of COVID-19 cases in the city are asymptomatic or with mild symptoms. The chief minister said the government has also issued an order for requisition of ambulances of private hospitals, adding that the decision has been taken in the wake of shortage of state-run ambulances. "They (private ambulances) will have to be pressed into service when the government requires their service," Kejriwal said while addressing an online media briefing. The government has made arrangements for treatment of those at their homes with mild COVID-19 symptoms in accordance with the Centre's guidelines. "Out of 6,923 COVID-19 patients, only 1,476 are admitted at hospitals, rest getting treatment at their homes and COVID-19 centres," Kejriwal added.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back about half of new mortgages in the U.S. Now, talks are heating up about reshaping or shrinking the two companies, a move that could impact millions of Americans. Photo: Heather Seidel/The Wall Street Journal

We discuss the art of moving baseball fences, Kevin Harvick's theory on eating pancakes before driving and how "Frozen on Ice" is mostly pummeling NBA and NHL teams.

Jason Gay on Thanksgiving family touch football week and the instant overreaction on everything in sports.

Thoughts on the Iron Bowl, trading draft picks for a coach and grizzlies in Tennessee.

We handicap college football's league championships to see just how much chaos to expect, sort out Jim Harbaugh's job options and much more.

Breaking down the College Football Playoff, Jim Harbaugh's coaching options and William and Kate's royally late arrival to a Nets game.

Jason Gay prepares for Johnny Manziel's first start in Cleveland and tells of watching the royals meet Beyoncé and Jay-Z.

Johnny Manziel's deflating debut, Andrew Luck's perplexing trash talk and the etiquette on eating gingerbread houses.

Is it worth it for a prime basketball recruit to play fewer minutes in a rotation at Kentucky on his way to the NBA?

What does Andrew Luck's fantasy week of doom say about the Colts' chances to surprise in this year's NFL playoffs?

Hail to the victors of the Jim Harbaugh sweepstakes: Michigan. Plus, our favorite sports moments of 2014.

The new National Curriculum Framework has put the child firmly at the centre of its proposals. But critics point out that it has overlooked many problems, such as the lack of infrastructure, inadequate teacher training, and continuing social biases. Some provisions have also been attacked as obscurantist. Deepa A reports.

A number of new NCERT textbooks for class I to class XII have been designed to encourage children to question social prejudices, discrimination and inequalities. This is a conscious reversal of the earlier trend where textbooks reinforced prevailing stereotypes, notes Deepti Priya Mehrotra.

The Education Bill 2003 is well-intended, but its implication for contemporary Indian conditions must be examined first, says Sankrant Sanu.

The UGC has given the green signal to a plethora of value-added, job-oriented diploma programmes in colleges and varsities. An Education World report.

The new government's higher priority to education is seeing experts and activists revisit the 40-year old Kothari Commission recommendations for a common school system. Summiya Yasmeen reports.

To mark its fifth anniversary, EducationWorld asked several educationists and industry leaders with proven commitment to improving the education system to write prescriptions for a renaissance of Indian education. Dilip Thakore threads the responses together.

A draft curriculum for teacher training acknowledges several problems in preparing teachers properly for the classroom, but it's unclear if the proposed revisions would adequately tackle these. The typical classroom in India is nothing like the environment that teachers train in, and this, say experts, must change first. Deepa A reports.

The central government's own figures indicate that many as two-thirds of those eligible for secondary education remain outside the school system today. A Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) committee estimates that 88,562 additional classrooms will be required in 2007-08 and over 1.3 lakh additional teachers. Deepa A reports.

Since the introduction of the central government's Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) programme, enrolment numbers in schools have gone up. But how reliable and meaningful are the enrolment figures? Deepa A uncovers major indications of things having gone wrong in SSA's quest for targets.

In 2005, the Education department of Tripura decided to give a push to Kok-Borok as a medium of instruction at the Junior Basic level to help tribal students learn in their mother tongue. Ratna Bharali Talukdar reports on the challenges as well as the gains from a strong focus on education in recent years in the state.

A wide range of programmes and strong financial support have helped Tripura raise access to education for its tribal population. Ratna Bharali Talukdar on the many incentives that anchor the state's efforts to bridge the learning gap between tribals and non-tribals.

Children in 21st century India are having to deal with a rapidly gathering danger: a degrading environment from pesticides, air pollution and unsafe toys to contaminated rivers and more. Ramesh Menon surveys the troubling landscape.

The disconnect between civil society and government has led to successive generations of policy and implementation failures. The India Together editorial.

Now that the early days of the UPA government are behind us, we must begin to judge the administration not by its responsiveness to advocacy alone. Even when governments listen, deeper gaps in the policy arena can thwart progress, and the challenge is to overcome these as well. The India Together editorial.

We continuously embrace the capital-forming ideas of the West, without examination of the sometimes invisible support systems behind them, or notions of citizenship in those countries. As a result, our grand ideas for development often produce grotesque results. The India Together editorial.

It is impossible to record society accurately if the content of our news is not drawn proportionately from the events and issues. And when the news is drawn in the right proportions, the morality of our development goals is preserved better. The India Together editorial.

Why are our publicly held/debated notions of morality limited to a few things such as the world of those castigated as sexual outliers? Partly, the fault lies in our public discourse - a discourse that has turned conversations about morality itself into rare events. The India Together editorial.

Regulation that is working well, as well as others that plainly speak of misgovernance, are both instructive; the road forward lies in separating regulation from the government, and vesting this instead in independent and autonomous bodies created by Parliament. The India Together editorial.

Videh Upadhyay argues that adivasis will benefit greatly if the Provision of Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act (PESA) is implemented on the ground by the state governments.

Aarti Madhusudhan outlines the do's and dont's of getting new NGO Board members to be an integral part of the organisation.

A number of researchers in economics have started to look closely at political reservations. In one recent instance, Professor Rohini Pande of Yale University has found that reservations in state legislatures do increase influence in policy-making for scheduled castes and tribes. Tarun Jain reports.

Ruth Manorama is a women's rights activist well known for her contribution in mainstreaming Dalit issues. Herself from the Dalit community, she has helped throw the spotlight on the precarious situation of Dalit women in India. She calls them "Dalits among the Dalits." A peacewomen profile from the Women's Feature Service and Sangat.

Are they members of a Church without caste hierarchy, or are they still Dalits, with all that it implies in Hinduism? Dalit Christians find that despite being a numerical majority in the faith in India, the promise of equality is as distant as before. They're taking their protests to Parliament this winter, reports Padmalatha Ravi.

Male prostitution, both forced and voluntary, is a reality that is often forgotten in the discourse on gender rights and issues. Tejaswini Pagadala throws light on the lives of male sex workers in the country.

What's in a name? Apparently a lot in a country like ours, where even today regressive practices like identifying a person's caste by his or her surname or identifying a woman by her husband's name continue unabated, writes Navya P K.

A new child-led survey has documented the types of violence children in Maharashtra are exposed to. Alka Gadgil reports the important findings from the survey.

The Centre for Women's Development Studies (CWDS) has developed long-overdue indicators to assess gender sensitivity in governance.