Coronavirus Pandemic

Karnataka Public Instruction department has decided to not conduct written exams for students from class 1-9. While students from class 1-5 will be promoted directly to the next class, oral examinations will be conducted for the students from grades 6-9 along with an assignment-based approach. The decision was made after analysing the effect of learning and accessibility of online classes to several students citing the pandemic.

Around 25 class10 students in Karnataka's Mandya were stripped from their answer sheets mid-exam as the authorities alleged that they paid only 50% tuition fees. Moreover, the authorities allegedly had humiliated the students and drove them out of school premises. Reportedly, Srirangapatna's block education officer has assured of appropriate action over the school. Earlier, Karnataka's High Court had ordered schools to settle with lower fees… read-more

Hit by the pandemic blues, the national-level archer and gold medal winner from Dhanbad, Mamta Tuddu has resorted to selling pakodas (fritters). The eldest daughter of a retired government-employee, Mamta has been the sole earning member of her family. She returned home in between training amid the COVID-19 lockdown. Besides, Mamta claimed that she did not receive any aid from the authorities. After knowing Mamta's plight, the Dhanbad Archery… read-more

In a report, Google Maps has revealed that searches for wine and liquor shops on its platform declined by 11% and 6% respectively in January 2021 in parallel with previous year's data. However, searches for healthy food hiked 46% from December 2020. The search for fast food restaurants fell by 1.5% compared to 20% in January 2020. As an interesting trend, searches for sweets and ice-cream shops have increased in contrast with December 2020.… read-more

Social media giant Facebook, while sharing its annual milestones reported that over 1.4 billion voice and video calls were made through whatsApp on the New Year's Eve (NYE) 2020. Resulting from higher digitalization during pandemic, WhatsApp calls were 50% higher than in NYE 2019. However, WhatsApp had also exceeded the group calling limit from four to eight users. Moreover, the global usage of live broadcasts also surged to 55 million on… read-more