Coronavirus is ensuring the trade-off, especially for developing economies is significant, notwithstanding efforts to strike a balance

Zoetis raised £20,000 for the nonprofit organization Hounds for Heroes with its ‘Pounds for Hounds’ fundraising campaign.

This new film is the latest remake of Devdas, but what is equally interesting is the fact that it is in conversation with films made in the West. Unlike Bhansali’s more spectacular version of the older story, Anurag Kashyap’s Dev.D is a genuine rewriting of Sarat Chandra’s novel. Kashyap doesn’t flinch from depicting the individual’s downward spiral, but he also gives women their own strength. He has set out to right a wrong—or, at least, tell a more realistic, even redemptive, story. If these characters have lost some of the affective depth of the original creations, they have also gained the hard edges of modern lives.

We don’t always feel the pain of Kashyap’s characters, but we are able to more readily recognize them. Take Chandramukhi, or Chanda, who is a school-girl humiliated by the MMS sex-scandal. Her father, protective and patriarchal, says that he has seen the tape and thinks she knew what she was doing. “How could you watch it?” the girl asks angrily. And then, “Did you get off on it?” When was the last time a father was asked such a question on the Hindi screen? With its frankness toward sex and masturbation, Dev.D takes a huge step toward honesty. In fact, more than the obvious tributes to Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, or the over-extended psychedelic adventure on screen, in fact, as much as the moody style of film-making, the candour of such questions make Dev.D a film that is truly a part of world cinema.

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It would be unfair for the government to propose a blanket isolation strategy based only on age.

Rawalpindi : Another two patients died of coronavirus illness, COVID-19 in town in last 24 hours taking total number of deaths so far caused by the disease to 46 in the district while four have already lost their lives due to the illness in the federal capital.Data collected by ‘The...

Welcome to the Evening Standard's LIVE coverage as the coronavirus crisis continues to heavily impact sport across the globe.

The Premier League's Project Restart plan could 'cost lives' if competition is resumed prematurely during the coronavirus pandemic, warns Brighton chief executive Paul Barber.

When Rhys Graham first picked up his camera in lockdown, he assumed he would take a few portraits of friends. Now, weeks in, it has turned into a sprawling project documenting Australia’s new domesticity

In these strange, suspended times, a camera and lens can be an emotional bridge from one person to the next.

As a film-maker you become reliant on the manic energy of shooting and the warmth of your community – crews, actors, colleagues or subjects – to keep you buoyant.

The holiday season may be a good time to eat, drink and have a ball but over indulgence can peel several years off one'

The OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050: Consequences of Inaction warns that by 2050, under a worst-case scenario, we could see a 10% biodiversity loss; 2.3 billion more people living in water-stressed areas; and a 50% increase in GHG emissions, primarily caused by a 70% growth in CO2 emissions from energy use.

Encouraging more people to work later in life would help Poland meet the challenges of a rapidly ageing population. The percentage of old to younger groups (defined as share of over 65s to people aged 20-64) is projected to nearly triple from 22% in 2012 to 63% in 2050, according to a new OECD report.

Encouraging more people to continue to work later in life would help Denmark meet the challenges of its rapidly ageing population. The ratio of the population aged 65 and over to the working-age population is projected to increase from 30% in 2012 to 43% in 2050, according to a new OECD report.

How do apprenticeships and other forms of workplace learning help people to make a successful transition from school to work? Global economic competition requires a labour force with a range of mid-level trade, technical and professional skills alongside the high-level skills typically associated with university education.

The United Arab Emirates is identified by PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) as one of the most rapidly improving education systems in the world. However its students still perform well below the levels expected in advanced economies.

On December 6 2016 the Education Policy Institute will host the global launch of the 2015 results from the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) - a test of reading literacy, mathematics, and science given every three years to fifteen-year-olds in more than seventy countries and economies worldwide. This year's results will focus on science.

Teenagers who feel part of a school community and enjoy good relations with their parents and teachers are more likely to perform better academically and be happier with their lives, according to the first OECD PISA assessment of students’ well-being.

There are profound reasons for studying the languages, literature and civilisations of the Greeks and Romans

Boris Johnson is expected to drop the 'stay at home' slogan during a televised address to Britain on Sunday at 7pm in an effort to reopen parts of the economy damaged during the coronavirus crisis.

Wanda Cooper spoke out over her son's brutal slaying on what would have been his 26th birthday and slammed law enforcement for failing to bring his killers to justice for months.

Alex R. Barron, 29, of Horizon City, Texas, was arrested Friday evening after the FBI said it received a tip on Thursday evening about a social media post containing a threat against Walmart.

Boris Johnson is expected to drop the 'stay at home' slogan during a televised address to Britain on Sunday at 7pm in an effort to reopen parts of the economy damaged during the coronavirus crisis.

What is history, and who are its worthy subjects? The Sound and Pictures Archives for Research on Women preserves women's voices from the past and present.

Widows in India have lived on the margins of society for decades but the intervention of NGO Sulabh International, led by Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, has brought new hope and colour in their lives. Ramesh Menon reports on one of the first celebrations in their new-found lives.

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, even as the state has entered the Green Zone, for the South Goa mining belt residents, it is the fear of being run over by a mining truck that is keeping them indoors.

An alert loco driver of a goods train saved the lives of at least 20 migrant workers by applying the emergency brakes and halting the train just 100 metres away from them near Pune on Friday evening. The migrants were walking on the tracks between the Uruli and Loni stations. The incident happened barely 14 hrs after 16 migrants were killed on Aurangabad tracks.

A new video to help aviators identify the cause of bird strikes has been posted on YouTube by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services Airport Wildlife Hazard Program and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

The post Aircraft bird-strike reports can save lives. New video shows how to report, collect and ship evidence appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Africa isn’t the kind of place you might expect to find penguins. But one species lives along Africa’s southern coast today, and newly found fossils […]

The post Penguins once thrived in Africa; one endangered species lives there today appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Hungry rodents that wake up early are much more likely to be eaten than rodents getting plenty of food and shut-eye, according to new results […]

The post Rain forest rodents risk their lives to eat appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the SVF Foundation have launched a new collaboration to strengthen rare and endangered livestock breed conservation through the preservation […]

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Increasing the minimum age of legal access (MLA) to tobacco products will prevent or delay initiation of tobacco use by adolescents and young adults, particularly those ages 15 to 17, and improve the health of Americans across the lifespan, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine.

Infectious disease outbreaks that turn into epidemics or pandemics can kill millions of people and cause trillions of dollars of damage to economic activity, says a new report from the international, independent Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future.

The number of patients in the U.S. awaiting organ transplantation outpaces the amount of transplants performed in the U.S., and many donated organs are not transplanted each year due to several factors, such as poor organ function, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

While legal abortions in the U.S. are safe, the likelihood that women will receive the type of abortion services that best meet their needs varies considerably depending on where they live, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Medications to Treat Opioid Addiction Are Effective and Save Lives, But Barriers Prevent Broad Access and Use, Says New Report

The Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments remotely this week, and for the first time the arguments were streamed live to the public.; Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

For the first time in its 231-year history, the Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments remotely by phone and made the audio available live.

The new setup went off largely without difficulties, but produced some memorable moments, including one justice forgetting to unmute and an ill-timed bathroom break.

Here are the top five can't-miss moments from this week's history-making oral arguments.

A second week of arguments begin on Monday at 10 a.m. ET. Here's a rundown of the cases and how to listen.

1. Justice Clarence Thomas speaks ... a lot

Supreme Court oral arguments are verbal jousting matches. The justices pepper the lawyers with questions, interrupting counsel repeatedly and sometimes even interrupting each other.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who has sat on the bench for nearly 30 years, has made his dislike of the chaotic process well known, at one point not asking a question for a full decade.

But with no line of sight, the telephone arguments have to be rigidly organized, and each justice, in order of seniority, has an allotted 2 minutes for questioning.

It turn out that Thomas, second in seniority, may just have been waiting his turn. Rather than passing, as had been expected, he has been Mr. Chatty Cathy, using every one of his turns at bat so far.

Thomas broke a year-long silence on Monday in a trademark case testing whether a company can trademark by adding .com to a generic term. In this case, Booking.com.

"Could Booking acquire an 800 number, for example, that's a vanity number — 1-800-BOOKING, for example?" Thomas asked.

2. The unstoppable RBG

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg participated in Wednesday's argument from the hospital. In pain during Tuesday's arguments, the 87-year-old underwent non-surgical treatment for a gall bladder infection at Johns Hopkins Hospital later that day, according to a Supreme Court press release.

But she was ferocious on Wednesday morning, calling in from her hospital room in a case testing the Trump administration's new rule expanding exemptions from Obamacare's birth control mandate for nonprofits and some for-profit companies that have religious or moral objections to birth control.

"The glaring feature" of the Trump administration's new rules, is that they "toss to the winds entirely Congress' instruction that women need and shall have seamless, no-cost, comprehensive coverage," she said.

3. Who flushed?

During Wednesday's second oral argument, Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants, a case in which the justices weighed a First Amendment challenge to a federal rule than bans most robocalls, something very unexpected happened.

Partway through lawyer Roman Martinez's argument time, a toilet flush could be distinctly heard.

Martinez seemed unperturbed and continued speaking in spite of the awkward moment.

The flush quickly picked up steam online, becoming the first truly viral moment from the court's new livestream oral arguments.

4. Hello, where are you?

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, considered one of the most tech-savvy of the justices, experienced a couple of technical difficulties with her mute button.

In both Monday and Tuesday arguments, the first time she was at bat, there were prolonged pauses, prompting Chief Justice John Roberts to call, "Justice Sotomayor?" a few times before she hopped on with a brief, "Sorry, Chief," before launching into her questions.

By Wednesday she seemed to have gotten used to the new format, but the trouble then jumped to Thomas, who was entirely missing in action when his turn came. He ultimately went out of order Wednesday morning.

5. Running over time

Oral arguments usually run one hour almost exactly, with lawyers for each side having 30 minutes to make their case. In an attempt to stick as closely as possible to that format, the telephone rules allocate 2 minutes of questioning to each justice for each round of questioning.

Chief Justice John Roberts spent the week jumping into exchanges, cutting off both lawyers and justices in the process, to keep the proceedings on track. Even so the arguments ran longer than usual.

But in Wednesday's birth control case, oral arguments went a whopping 40 minutes longer than expected.

Justice Alito, for his part, hammered the lawyer challenging the Trump administration's new birth control rules for more than seven minutes, without interruption from the chief justice.

Referencing a decision he wrote in 2014, Alito said that "Hobby Lobby held that if a person sincerely believes that it is immoral to perform an act that has the effect of enabling another person to commit an immoral act, the federal court does not have the right to say that this person is wrong on the question of moral complicity. That is precisely the question here."

Christina Peck is NPR's legal affairs intern.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments remotely this week, and for the first time the arguments were streamed live to the public.; Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

For the first time in its 231-year history, the Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments remotely by phone and made the audio available live.

The new setup went off largely without difficulties, but produced some memorable moments, including one justice forgetting to unmute and an ill-timed bathroom break.

Here are the top five can't-miss moments from this week's history-making oral arguments.

A second week of arguments begin on Monday at 10 a.m. ET. Here's a rundown of the cases and how to listen.

1. Justice Clarence Thomas speaks ... a lot

Supreme Court oral arguments are verbal jousting matches. The justices pepper the lawyers with questions, interrupting counsel repeatedly and sometimes even interrupting each other.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who has sat on the bench for nearly 30 years, has made his dislike of the chaotic process well known, at one point not asking a question for a full decade.

But with no line of sight, the telephone arguments have to be rigidly organized, and each justice, in order of seniority, has an allotted 2 minutes for questioning.

It turn out that Thomas, second in seniority, may just have been waiting his turn. Rather than passing, as had been expected, he has been Mr. Chatty Cathy, using every one of his turns at bat so far.

Thomas broke a year-long silence on Monday in a trademark case testing whether a company can trademark by adding .com to a generic term. In this case, Booking.com.

"Could Booking acquire an 800 number, for example, that's a vanity number — 1-800-BOOKING, for example?" Thomas asked.

2. The unstoppable RBG

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg participated in Wednesday's argument from the hospital. In pain during Tuesday's arguments, the 87-year-old underwent non-surgical treatment for a gall bladder infection at Johns Hopkins Hospital later that day, according to a Supreme Court press release.

But she was ferocious on Wednesday morning, calling in from her hospital room in a case testing the Trump administration's new rule expanding exemptions from Obamacare's birth control mandate for nonprofits and some for-profit companies that have religious or moral objections to birth control.

"The glaring feature" of the Trump administration's new rules, is that they "toss to the winds entirely Congress' instruction that women need and shall have seamless, no-cost, comprehensive coverage," she said.

3. Who flushed?

During Wednesday's second oral argument, Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants, a case in which the justices weighed a First Amendment challenge to a federal rule than bans most robocalls, something very unexpected happened.

Partway through lawyer Roman Martinez's argument time, a toilet flush could be distinctly heard.

Martinez seemed unperturbed and continued speaking in spite of the awkward moment.

The flush quickly picked up steam online, becoming the first truly viral moment from the court's new livestream oral arguments.

4. Hello, where are you?

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, considered one of the most tech-savvy of the justices, experienced a couple of technical difficulties with her mute button.

In both Monday and Tuesday arguments, the first time she was at bat, there were prolonged pauses, prompting Chief Justice John Roberts to call, "Justice Sotomayor?" a few times before she hopped on with a brief, "Sorry, Chief," before launching into her questions.

By Wednesday she seemed to have gotten used to the new format, but the trouble then jumped to Thomas, who was entirely missing in action when his turn came. He ultimately went out of order Wednesday morning.

5. Running over time

Oral arguments usually run one hour almost exactly, with lawyers for each side having 30 minutes to make their case. In an attempt to stick as closely as possible to that format, the telephone rules allocate 2 minutes of questioning to each justice for each round of questioning.

Chief Justice John Roberts spent the week jumping into exchanges, cutting off both lawyers and justices in the process, to keep the proceedings on track. Even so the arguments ran longer than usual.

But in Wednesday's birth control case, oral arguments went a whopping 40 minutes longer than expected.

Justice Alito, for his part, hammered the lawyer challenging the Trump administration's new birth control rules for more than seven minutes, without interruption from the chief justice.

Referencing a decision he wrote in 2014, Alito said that "Hobby Lobby held that if a person sincerely believes that it is immoral to perform an act that has the effect of enabling another person to commit an immoral act, the federal court does not have the right to say that this person is wrong on the question of moral complicity. That is precisely the question here."

Christina Peck is NPR's legal affairs intern.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Birth control pills in 1976 in New York. The birth control pill was approved by the FDA 60 years ago this week.; Credit: /Bettmann/Getty Images

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET

As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends.

"We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?"

Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked.

"I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out."

At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough.

By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to avoid having more babies — and she eventually was able to go on to college.

"It was just like going from night to day, as far as the freedom of it," Cato said. "And to know that I had control, that I had choice, that I controlled my body. It gave me a whole new lease on life."

Loretta Ross, an activist and visiting women's studies professor at Smith College, was among the first generation of young women to have access to the birth control pill throughout their reproductive years.

Ross, now 66, said by the time she came of age around 1970, the pill was giving young women more control over their fertility than previous generations had enjoyed.

"We could talk about having sex – not without consequences, because there were still STDS ... but at the same time, with more freedom than our foremothers had," Ross said. "So it changed the world."

For all it's done for women, Ross said that the pill has a complex and controversial history; it was first tested on low-income women in Puerto Rico. Ross said the pill also has limitations; she'd like to see it made available over the counter, as it is in some countries – not to mention, a pill for men.

When the pill was approved in 1960, women had few relatively few contraceptive options, and the pill offered more reliability and convenience than methods like condoms or diaphragms, said Dr. Eve Espey, chair of the Department of Ob/Gyn and Family Planning at the University of New Mexico.

"There was a huge, pent-up desire for a truly effective form of contraception, which had been lacking up to that point," Espey said.

By 1965, she said, 40% of young married women were on the pill.

For Pat Fishback, now 80 and living in Richmond, Va., the newly-available pill allowed her to delay having children in her early 20s until she'd been married for a couple of years.

"It also made having children a positive experience," Fishback said. "Because we had actually, emotionally and intellectually, gotten to the point where we really desired to have children."

It took a bit longer for unmarried women to gain widespread access to the pill and other forms of contraception: Linda Gordon, 80, a historian at New York University, remembers the stigma around single women and contraception at the time.

"When I was in college, a number of women had a wedding ring – a gold ring –that we would pass around and use when we wanted to go see a doctor to get fitted for a diaphragm," Gordon said. "In other words, there were people finding their way to do that, even then."

The pill also gave rise to a variety of other forms of hormonal contraception, many of which are popular today, Gordon said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 13% of American women of reproductive age use the pill — making it the second most popular form of contraception, after female sterilization.

Gordon said that 60 years after the pill's approval, contraception remains a contentious political issue.

Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case involving the birth control mandate in the Affordable Care Act. A decision on whether some institutions with religious or moral objections can deny contraceptive coverage to their employees is expected in the months to come.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Reducing meat and dairy consumption would help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from farming. A recent study describes the "ecological leftovers" approach to reducing livestock-related GHGs, which assumes that a sustainable number of livestock can be calculated on the basis of available marginal land, unsuitable for other purposes, and available agricultural by-products, which could be used as feed.

A new combination of three models has explored the future dynamics of European livestock distribution. The results indicate that, without environmental policy, livestock density will increase both inside and outside current livestock hotspots. This will also occur to a certain degree with regulation, but the risk of negative impacts will be less likely.

The livestock sector is estimated to contribute 14.5% of all global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study estimated the costs of reducing emissions from ruminant livestock using five different practices. The findings will help policymakers to understand the cost effectiveness of different interventions in the sector, and the contribution that different policies could make to addressing climate change.

As part of the EU’s Blueprint to Safeguard Europe’s Waters1, a new study from the Joint Research Centre has mapped the water requirements of livestock across Europe for 2005. The maps and data can help quantify total European water use but also inform sustainable management by making use of ecosystem services (ESSs).

Vermicomposting livestock manure with maize can increase agricultural benefit by 304%, shows a new study. The combination of increased crop yield and the additional earthworms produced as a result of the process led to a substantial increase in output compared to a traditional composting system.

A common anti-parasitic drug used to control gastrointestinal worms in livestock has been shown to inhibit seed germination of three common grassland species. This recent study is the first to show that anthelmintics may negatively affect plant regeneration. The researchers say that treatments should be carefully timed in order to avoid the strongest impact of the drugs on germination and the consequential negative affect on grassland regeneration.

Globally, more than 3.2 million premature deaths per year are attributed to exposure to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5). A new study estimates that 2.1 million premature deaths could be avoided if countries achieved the WHO guideline for PM2.5. Even meeting their closest WHO interim concentration targets could avoid 750 000 (23%) deaths attributed to PM2.5 per year.

A NEW exhibition will explore the role of fake news in our lives.

Last week, a brand new and highly topical exhibition of contemporary art opened to the public at the University of Hertfordshire. Visually stunning and extremely thought-provoking, Plastic Matter is a unique group exhibition that explores plastic’s potential to become something more treasured, looks at how hastily we consume and dispose of it, its environmental impact and its future role in society.