Foreign students in the UK have been plunged into financial hardship as they struggle to pay their tuition fees during the coronavirus pandemic and are blocked from accessing state support, charities warn. Dismissal from part-time jobs and a loss of financial support from family members abroad due to Covid-19 has left some students having to choose between eating meals or paying their course fees, which they are usually required to pay in order to remain in the UK. This is exacerbated by the fact that most overseas students are blocked from accessing state support because of the no recourse to public funds (NRPF) policy, which prevents thousands of migrants from accessing help from the government due to their immigration status. Ministers are being urged to take action to ensure that these individuals are able to access support, and are not suspended from their studies and forced to leave the UK as a result of not being able to pay their tuition fees, which vary between £10,000 and £

Every day, it seems that creative and forward-thinking people are responding to the rising demand for inventions that are both useful and ecologically conscious. Some products seem to be straight out of Black Mirror—with their sleek, modern designs—while others are still in their clunky trial stages. We’ve compiled a list of ten green creations that give us hope for the future of our planet. 1. The Ocean Cleanup 23-year-old boy genius, Boyan Slat, is the founder and president of The Ocean Cleanup, a foundation which is dedicated to developing advanced technologies to rid the oceans of plastic.  The Dutch inventor is in the works of creating a 62-mile underwater, V-shaped barrier to trap plastic trash as it floats along ocean currents. Slat said the technology, which he hopes to deploy by 2020, could remove half of the trash—amounting to 150 million pounds of trash—from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch within 10 years. Once removed, much of that plastic could be properly recycled. 2. AVA

  A video from Punjab which became viral in June showed a newly married woman—wedding bangles (chooda) on her wrists—taking drugs. She put a lighted candle below a foil and snorted what was thought to be chitta—Punjab's notorious synthetic drug made from heroin and other substances. The video indicates that Punjab's drug problem is not restricted to the typical demographic of unemployed youth. It is rampant across divides such as class, gender, age and geography. No wonder, the Punjab government recently ordered all its employees to undergo drug tests. A crackdown on drugs by the state government after Capt Amarinder Singh came to power last year has led to arrests of a large number of peddlers and choked supply routes. Yet there is no end to the problem. In June this year, dozens of drug-related deaths were reported in the state. In the last few years, while the business and economy in the state kept sliding, the drugs trade flourished. With addicts turning peddlers and severa

  If there is one thing common in all of us, it is the flaming urge to be happy and satisfied in life. Whether a crying baby, an insecure teenager, or a responsible family person, we all seek something that would comfort us. But the question is: Are we looking for happiness in the right place? Trinlay Rinpoche, an accomplished meditator and scholar, said that the real source of happiness lies in the clarity of thoughts. External factors can only be pleasurable as long as we are happy from the inside. According to Buddha, meditation trains the mind to “not dwell in the past or contemplate about the future.” It lets the mind settle in the ‘now’ and allows us to see the beauty of the present. This article is an effort to understand why meditation works so well and how we can resort to its benefits for becoming a better version of ourselves. A Look at the Benefits of Meditation Meditation establishes a secure connection between our internal and external worlds. It awakens the body and bene

  Yoga is a spiritual, mental and physical practice that has been around since ages. With time, people have discovered a number of health benefits associated with yoga. Yoga does more than burning calories and strengthening muscles, it is a workout which involves both body and mind. This International Yoga Day start a good habit and promise yourself the following health benefits: • Improves posture Working for long hours on a desk could not only hurt your spine but also make you feel tired at the end of the day. Practicing certain yoga asanas could help you in improving your posture and also prevent pain in your neck and lower back. • Increases flexibility When was the last time you wished you could easily touch your toes which bending forward? Well, practicing yoga could help you in that. Yoga can not only help you in increasing your flexibility but also let you perform complex asanas. • Builds muscle strength Yoga could help in strengthening weak muscles of the body. It helps in toni

  What Is Carbon Pricing? The phrase put a price on carbon has now become well known with momentum growing among countries and business to put a price on carbon pollution as a means of bringing down emissions and drive investment into cleaner options. So what does it mean to put a price on carbon, and why do many government and business leaders support it? There are several paths governments can take to price carbon, all leading to the same result. They begin to capture what are known as the external costs of carbon emissions – costs that the public pays for in other ways, such as damage to crops and health care costs from heat waves and droughts or to property from flooding and sea level rise – and tie them to their sources through a price on carbon. A price on carbon helps shift the burden for the damage back to those who are responsible for it, and who can reduce it. Instead of dictating who should reduce emissions where and how, a carbon price gives an economic signal and polluters

  In 2016, nearly 200 countries signed up to the Paris climate accord, which set individual targets aimed at preventing global temperatures from rising above 2C this century – and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5C or less. Despite such promises, many countries are still not on track. Some of the globe’s biggest emitters – the US and Russia – have either left or not yet ratified the treaty. As mass strikes united the globe in its fight against our climate crisis, we look at what some of the countries with the largest stake in our environment are either doing – or not doing – to save our planet. The US Since Donald Trump’s administration took office, the US president – who famously called climate change a “hoax” – has done plenty to reverse his predecessor Barack Obama’s pro-environmental policies. Mr Trump has often pursued the interests of industries such as coal and car manufacturing at the expense of the environment in his pursuit of jobs growth