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The Morning Wrap: 75,000 Beggars In India Have Passed Class 12

The Morning Wrap: 75,000 Beggars In India Have Passed Class 12
Means of helping someone needy is really appreciable. This picture brings out same.
Santanu Majumdar via Getty Images
Means of helping someone needy is really appreciable. This picture brings out same.

The Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.

Essential HuffPost

India is "Asia's deadliest country" for journalists, worse than Pakistan, Afghanistan or Bangladesh, according to Reporters Without Borders. Out of the 110 journalists killed in 2015, so far, nine were Indian. Most of them were investigating illegal mining as well as politicians links with the mafia.

Islamic State theologians have issued a fatwa on how to have sex with enslaved women to avoid violations. There are 15 directives including a ban on a father and son having sex with the same female slave; and the owner of a mother and daughter having sex with both.

How Mumbai's Dabbawalas plan to feed the city's poor: Have you ever wondered what to do with the staggering amount of left over food from parties? Most of which goes straight to the bin the next day because you don't know who to give it to, or you don't have the time to go find people who may need it.

This Indian tea seller who teaches slum children is everyone's hero: Prakash Rao educates around 70 children from class one to three. He then tries to register them in government schools. Over 150 students have been enrolled under his care: “I was spellbound after listening to his story."

A woman was allegedly raped on the Infosys campus in Hinjewadi area of Pune on December 27. One of the two accused reportedly raped the woman in the lavatory while the other captured the crime on his mobile phone.

We have slowly become tolerant of issues that should actually bother us: healthcare, for example. India has a whopping 20% of all the global burden of disease. Despite a continuing health crisis, in the 2015-16 budget, the government allocated just Rs33,150 crore -- about 4.2% of GDP -- for healthcare, of which only 1.2% is for public health spending.

Here are PETA's hottest vegetarian celebrities of 2015: Bollywood actor Aamir Khan and his PK co-star Anushka Sharma have been named hottest vegetarian celebrities in a poll.

2015: A Rewind In Rhyme For Modi Sarkar: The year's buzzword was "intolerance", manifested in Award Wapsi. Libertarians, writers, artists, film-makers, even the President lamented the Dadri lynching. A mere accident, said BJP leaders. A state issue, rued Modi. Oh what a pity, beef and cow became pet-subjects for communal milking.

Main News

Over a year after the BJP got a walkover in an Assembly by-election in Chhattisgarh, when the Congress candidate pulled out at the last minute, purported conversations between key political players suggest financial inducements could have been offered to make him withdraw from the fray.

Eleven women and a man have been convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for assaulting a 22-year-old woman, ripping her clothes and parading her naked in Sewri in 2010. The sessions court in Mumbai rejected the defence plea that women cannot be held guilty under the charge of outraging the modesty of a woman.

Upholding the controversial ‘Liquor-Free Kerala’ policy, which restricts the serving of liquor to five-star hotels in the state, the Supreme Court has ruled that state governments be given a free hand to curtail or ban public consumption of alcohol to protect health and nutrition.

The 'Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2015' prescribes that no child, who is born a transgender, shall be separated from his parents. Only a court order can take the child away from the parents, and courts too can intervene only in the interest of the child, like in cases where the immediate family is unable to care for a transgender child.

The central government has approved assistance of Rs5,083 crore to two states where farmers are suffering because of drought. Worst hit Maharashtra will get Rs3,050 crore while Rs2,033 crore will go to Madhya Pradesh.

At least 40 faculty members from the IITs at Mumbai, Delhi, Khargapur and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore have signed the petition lambasting Free Basics (a Facebook initiative to offer free access to a few sites) as ‘misleading’ and ‘flawed.’ They will submit the petition to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday.

Off The Front Page

75,000 of India's beggars has passed class 12: 21% of India's 3.72 lakh beggars have at least passed their senior secondary certificate exams. More than 3,000 of them have professional diplomas, and are graduates or post-graduates, according to the Census 2011.

Sixteen-year-old Vardhin Manoj, a U.S. citizen by birth, has been offered a place in Harvard University soccer team.The 11th grade student of La Costa Canyon High School, California, is the first player from India to be offered a place in the Harvard University soccer team purely on the basis of football talent.

Dishant Mehndiratta’s mother doesn't know how her son knocked the knife out of the hands of the intruder who was holding it to her neck while demanding the valuables in their house. On Tuesday, Dishant was selected for the National Bravery Award-2015 by the Indian Council for Child Welfare.

Hardik Patel, the firebrand founder of the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), lodged at the Rajpore Central Jail in Surat since mid-October, is using the time to write on social issues. “Hardik was always interested in reading and writing. But he could not do so because he hardly got any spare time. After completing his graduation, he took to social work. Then the OBC quota movement happened. Now that he has some time in jail, he is writing,” said his father Bharatbhai Patel.

A Tamil Nadu-based Muslim organisation has issued a fatwa against yoga guru Ramdev’s Patanjali products containing cow urine. "According to the beliefs of Muslims, cow’s urine is haram. Therefore, TNTJ issues a fatwa that products of Patanjali are haram,” said a TNTJ release.

Opinion

In the case of India and Pakistan, Sharif and Modi definitely seem to have the desire to normalise relations. But there is considerable potential for spoilers on both sides to ensure that nothing substantive moves forward. The two PMs can ignore politically weak opponents trying to play to the gallery at home. On the Pakistani side, all major political parties have welcomed Modi’s trip, though that has not been the case in India. So far, it seems that the Pakistan military too is on board with Sharif’s efforts to resume dialogue through foreign secretary-level talks. But will Sharif be able to shut down all jihadi groups in Pakistan, including India-specific groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad? writes Husain Haqqani in The Indian Express.

The Free Basics platform is a mildly tweaked rehash of the controversial internet.org that Facebook had floated earlier. Facebook and Reliance, the sixth-largest mobile service provider in the country, have joined hands to offer it as a platform for free data services restricted to a few websites. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has stopped this service for now, pending its public consultation on the subject. Facebook’s campaign is essentially to influence the outcome of such a consultation, writes Prabir Purkayastha in The Hindu.

Indian football could be readying for a quantum leap in 2016-17. Indeed, this two-year spell could make or break everything. Many years ago, Sean Fitzpatrick, the one-time All-Blacks captain, had told me, “Rugby is to New Zealand what cricket is to India — a near-religion. The difference is that a major portion of the rugby-viewing population plays the game, while in India, there are very few that actually take to the field at a competitive level," writes Shamya Dasgupta in The Economic Times.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.