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The Morning Wrap: Schools Reopening In 4 Districts In Kashmir; Aamir Khan To Rap For 'Dangal'

Our selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers.
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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.

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India's youngest transgender came out to her parents and the society during an inspiring speech at Delhi's Vasant Valley School assembly. Her journey from being Krishna to becoming Naina has been exemplary. Naina battled depression and suicidal tendencies before she came out to the world. Reportedly, she mentioned that it was all very difficult and she decided to put an end to all that by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills. But her mother and friends have been her largest support system.

In yet another shocking incident of cruelty against animals, a group of boys from Hyderabad posted a video on Facebook in which they are seen burning alive three puppies after tying them together. In the video shot at a graveyard near Ek Minar mosque in Hyderabad, the hapless puppies were seen squealing in fear as the boys mercilessly kept on torturing them.

Two studies released this week show how retiring in India remains a sobering prospect. India ranked last on the Natixis Global Asset Management's annual retirement index, which ranks 43 countries including BRIC nations on retirement security based on factors such as quality of life, health and finances. Another report showed that nearly 47 per cent of working people in India have either not started saving for retirement or face difficulties in saving for the future. About 44 per cent of those people who had started saving aren't saving anymore, the study said.

Main News

Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday declared a three-month state of emergency following a failed coup in the country. The president said that the measure was being taken to counter threats to Turkish democracy and wasn't intended to curb basic freedoms. He spoke after a meeting with Cabinet ministers and top security advisers.

Hitting back at BJP's Dayashankar Singh, who compared Mayawati to a sex worker, the BSP chief said in an emotional speech that he had not only just insulted his mother, sister and daughter, but all the women and oppressed classes in the country. She also added that the nation would not forgive the ruling party for its anti-women and anti-Dalit stance. "You encourage such people... you should control them," she said.

Schools in four of he 10 districts in the violence-hit valley are being re-opened from Thursday. The Jammu and Kashmir government decided that the schools in the districts of Baramulla, Bandipora, Budgam and Ganderbal as well as winter Zone of Jammu Division will reopen on 21 July.

Off The Front Page

After his memorable number song 'Aati kya Khandala' in Ghulam (1998), actor Aamir Khan is set to sing for his upcoming film Dangal. Khan is set to rap in a composition by Pritam for the film.

Indian business tycoon Vijay Mallya recently accused Indian authorities of conducting a "witch hunt" against him. Saying that he has 'been through this before', he invited the authorities to come to London to interview him, as he had 'nothing to hide'. Mallya added that his presence in India is impossible because his diplomatic passport was revoked.

Madhya Pradesh home department recently said in reply to a question raised in the state assembly that three farmers in Sehore district committed suicide under the influence of 'bhoot aur pret' (ghosts and spirits). They later explained that they had merely repeated the 'reasons' the family members of the dead farmers had given.

Opinion

Rarely in Indian cinema have actors of Malayalam superstar Mammooty's stature been pulled up by the women's commission for smutty and sexist dialogues while he revels in a public image as a left-leaning progressive, writes G Pramod Kumar for HuffPost India. "Throughout his career, particularly in the early years, he had often mouthed dialogues that were both puerile and patently misogynistic... Strangely, while he holds this regressive idea of the "honour" of women, he doesn't have a problem when he is paid to sexually abuse women and indulge in on-screen behaviour that in real life is against law," he says.

Even as the reverberations of the violence inflicted on a group of Dalit men by "cow protection" vigilantes near the small Gujarat town of Una are felt in Parliament, the protests continue to spread across the State, says an editorial in The Hindu. "The victims of the Una assault must be reassured by the authorities seeing to it that their assailants are punished... But for this to happen, the Central and State governments need to level with the people. Gau Raksha cannot be a cover for the pursuit of the kind of aggressive vigilantism that has been witnessed in different parts of the country, more often than not as an exercise in communal consolidation," it says.

The BJP and the Congress have both been cynical in their approach towards the GST bill, says an editorial in Mint. "The Congress's stand against the GST may revolve around the details of its implementation, but the motive is transparently political. This is a party that had championed the tax for the duration of both UPA administrations β€” a period when the GST's current champion, the BJP, had been its fiercest critic. The idea may have originated during Atal Bihari Vajpayee's time at the helm, but that didn't stop Modi β€” then Gujarat chief minister β€” among others from opposing it at every turn," it says.

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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.