THE POPULAR NOTION that the COVID-19 pandemic has been “good for the environment”—that nature is recovering while humanity stays at home— appeals to many people grasping for some upside to the global tragedy. Reality, though, may not cooperate with such hopes. The benefits many found heartening early on—from cleaner air to birdsong newly audible as cars and planes went quiet—were always likely to be temporary. And with lockdowns easing, they have already begun to dissipate. Now, some experts fear that the world risks a future with more traffic, more pollution, and climate change that worsens faster than ever. It’s too soon to know whether that gloomy scenario will play out, but concerning signs seem to be growing all around the world. In early April, with shutdowns widespread, daily global carbon emissions were down by 17 percent compared to last year. But as of June 11, new data show that they are only about 5 percent lower than at the same point in 2019, even though normal activity h...

Around the world, as cities have gone into lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus, the mass efforts to save lives have put one vulnerable group more at risk. Women and children who live with domestic violence have no escape from their abusers during quarantine, and from Brazil to Germany, Italy to China, activists and survivors say they are already seeing an alarming rise in abuse. In Hubei province, the heart of the initial coronavirus outbreak, domestic violence reports to police more than tripled in one county alone during the lockdown in February, from 47 last year to 162 this year, activists told local media. “The epidemic has had a huge impact on domestic violence,” Wan Fei, a retired police officer who founded a charity campaigning against abuse, told Sixth Tone website. “According to our statistics, 90% of the causes of violence [in this period] are related to the Covid-19 epidemic.” It is a pattern being repeated globally. In Brazil a state-run drop-in centre has already s...

The COVID-19-induced lockdown that started on March 25 and is yet to be lifted has hit the economic activity. Sights of millions of walking, cycling or hitching rides back home have led to concerns over sustainability for the poor. The COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult for the country’s poor going by income generation and consumption data, according to an analysis of data of 5 lakh people for May by a credit risk assessment company. The COVID-19-induced lockdown that started on March 25 and is yet to be lifted has hit the economic activity. Sights of millions of walking, cycling or hitching rides back home have led to concerns over sustainability for the poor. Private think-tank CMIE had said that unemployment in India had risen to 27 per cent as of May 3 and has improved later. In its analysis, Creditvidya said even though there was a decline in the number of people with no income in May at 7.5 per cent of the workforce as against 9 per cent in April, the same was elevated when com...

A brain dead man has breathed new life into a Covid-19 patient with severe lung infection and given new hope to a young Mumbai woman after his lungs and hands were transplanted to the respective donors. The 34-year-old deceased man’s wife also agreed to donate his heart, liver and skin for various recipients in city hospitals. Incidentally, the hands were airlifted to Mumbai with the hope of giving the woman a real pair of limbs after she lost her hands in a train accident in Ghatkopar on January 12,2014. The transplant that benefited more than one recipient was made possible due to the donation from the deceased, who was declared brain dead by doctors at Gleneagles Global Hospital in Chennai after intracerebral hemorrhage on Thursday, hospital sources said. After his wife’s consent, the departed man’s organs were allotted to various hospitals. While Global Hospital Chennai retained the liver, the heart, lungs, kidneys and skin were donated to different hospitals in the city. His hands...

The outbreak of pandemic Covid-19 all over the world has disturbed the political, social, economic, religious and financial structures of the whole world. World’s topmost economies such as the US, China, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and many others are at the verge of collapse. Besides, Stock Markets around the world have been pounded and oil prices have fallen off a cliff. In just a week 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment and a week later another 6.6 million people started searching for jobs. Also, many experts on economic and financial matters have warned about the worsening condition of global economic and financial structure. Such as Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of International Monitory Fund (IMF), explained that “a recession at least as bad as during the Global Financial Crisis or worse”. Moreover, Covid-19 is harming the global economy because the world has been experiencing the most difficult economic situation since World War-II.  When it comes ...

T he global impact of Coronavirus is immense as educational institutes all over the world – from Harvard to the IITs – are closed. Covid-19 has thrown education all over the world in a loop. Here are the major problems. Schools are shut, and students are stranded at home, with extremely limited contact with friends and virtually no physical activity, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic raging across the world. IB, A Levels, ICSE, CBSE all known and recognized boards have postponed or cancelled examinations. Likewise, top colleges like MIT, Harvard, Princeton have closed. Closer home, institutions like IITs and IIMs have all closed their campuses and moved classes online. Even standardized tests like GMAT, GRE, SATs, ACT remain suspended and the future of many students hangs in balance! Clearly, there is panic all around and educators and students alike are confused as to next steps and continuity with respect to educational objectives. In our opinion there are three major education problem...

It’s starkly evident that major ethnic and racial inequalities persist in employment, housing and the justice system. Black and Muslim minorities have twice the unemployment rate of their white British peers and are twice as likely to live in overcrowded housing. They are also much more likely to be stopped and searched by the police. We could also add to the list the alarming ethnic differences in deaths from COVID-19. The government’s pioneering ethnicity facts and figures website brings together in a single accessible format the hard evidence on ethnic disparities collected by government departments. It is a world-first, established in 2016 by former prime minister Theresa May, who pledged to tackle “burning injustices”. Critics could plausibly argue that disparities of the kind demonstrated by the website do not, in themselves, prove that racism and discrimination are the driving forces behind the inequalities. But, when combined with other direct evidence, it’s hard ...

There’s a common refrain that masks don’t protect you; they protect other people from your own germs, which is especially important to keep unknowingly infected people from spreading the corona virus. But now, there’s mounting evidence that masks also protect you. If you’re unlucky enough to encounter an infectious person, wearing any kind of face covering will reduce the amount of virus that your body will take in. As it turns out, that’s pretty important. Breathing in a small amount of virus may lead to no disease or far more mild infection. But inhaling a huge volume of virus particles can result in serious disease or death. That’s the argument Dr. Monica Gandhi, UC San Francisco professor of medicine and medical director of the HIV Clinic at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, is making about why — if you do become infected with the virus — masking can still protect you from more severe disease. “There is this theory that facial masking reduces the [amount of virus you get e...