Table of Contents
Its absolutely normal
•A big majority of Indian girls and women don’t have access to modern menstrual products such as sanitary napkins or tampons.
•Sales people wrap these products up in dark polythene
•Bodily rhythm is a matter of shame.
•Penalties of periods
1.missing school
2.missing sports competition
3.banned from the kitchen
4.place of worship
•At worst it stops that teenager from reaching her fullest adult potential.
•Family itself teaches the stigma and other societal institutions perpetuate it.
•21st century women are no longer second-class citizens.
•Especially given worryingly low employment levels for women, normalising menstruation as just another part of the healthful life cycle is imperative in India.
•Supreme Court will score a goal for women against at least one expression of centuries-old patriarchy and dogma.
•On Wednesday, the apex court—hearing a petition to strike down the ban on entry of women aged between 10 and 50 into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala—observed that the ban was “against the Constitutional mandate” and that women’s right to pray at the temple “is equal to that of a man and it is not dependent on a law” for women to be able to that.
•The temple administration: “naisthika bramhacharya” (disciplined & perennial celibacy) that involves ritually maintaining the temple’s “purity”.
•Summarily banning women of a certain age, to prevent any menstruating women from “defiling” the temple reduces all the women of that age group to secondary, not just in the eyes of the divinity and clergy, but also the law, if it allows the practice to continue.
•Purity stemming from celibacy: sexually active male and female devotees are still permitted inside the temple.
•What about “pure” mind.
•10-50-years qualification: in some cases menarche may happen early and menopause may get delayed.
•Worst part: social attitudes towards menstruation, and sexuality.
1.It ties the two together, while there is not even a tenuous connection between the two.
2.Age-old taboos and practices that have endangered women’s health.
3.It fosters an unhealthy attitude towards sexuality.
Important News
•Muslim man lynched on suspicion of cow smuggling
•In yet another instance of alleged cow vigilantism, a 28-year-old Muslim man was beaten to death in Rajasthan’s Alwar district on Friday night by a group of people on suspicion that he was smuggling cows.
•According to the victim’s last statement, he was assaulted by five people, the official said.
•A case has been registered under Sections 302 (murder), 143 (unlawful assembly), 341 (wrongful restraint), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 34 (criminal act with common intention) of Indian Penal Code at Ramgarh police station.
•The incident comes just over a year after a dairy farmer, Pehlu Khan, was lynched by a mob of cow vigilantes near Behror in Alwar district.
•Turn on the lights and study! The National Moth Week is here
•India is among 40 countries in which enthusiasts and citizen scientists are devoting the week from July 21 to 29 to document the insects
•The National Moth Week, which encourages people to observe and document moths in backyards and neighbourhoods, is underway across the world, and
India’s citizen scientists are also taking part.
•The main aim of the National Moth Week, initiated in 2012 by scientists in America, is to increase awareness on moths, said researcher Vijay Barve, India coordinator of the initiative.
•Observed in the last week of July in more than 40 countries worldwide now, enthusiasts observe moths either individually or in groups. Since moths are naturally attracted to light, some observers use ‘light traps’. The most simple version of such a trap involves shining a bright light on a white wall or screen, to which moths flock.
•India is home to more than 10,000 moth species, including the large and flamboyant Indian moon moth Actias selene. Important food sources for many animals, moths can be indicators of ecosystem health.
•Over 50 products cheaper as GST Council slashes rates
•The Goods and Services Tax Council, at its 28th meeting on Saturday, reduced the rates on more than 50 products, including sanitary pads, small televisions, washing machines, and refrigerators.
•The council also simplified the return filing process for small businesses.
•While GST on sanitary pads was cut from 12% to zero, rakhis were exempted from the tax, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal told presspersons here.
•Small televisions, washing machines, fridges and kitchen appliances such as mixers and juicers have their tax rates slashed from 28% to 18%.
•“Out of the 49 items currently taxed at the highest rate of 28%, rates on 17 have been reduced to 18%,” Pratik Jain, partner & leader, indirect tax, PwC, said in a note. “Tax rates on white goods, including small television (about 27 inch), refrigerators, washing machines, water coolers, vacuum cleaner, mixer, juicer, etc. have been reduced.”
•Consumer-durable makers welcomed the government’s move, saying it will help domestic manufacturing and create more employment opportunities.
•The council also approved a simplified return filing mechanism wherein all taxpayers, excluding small taxpayers, will now file one monthly return with two main tables — one for reporting outward supplies and one for availing input tax credit based on invoices uploaded by the supplier.
•Tax filers with an annual turnover of less than ₹5 crore a year need to file returns on a quarterly basis while paying tax on a monthly basis. Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said the modalities of this would be laid out by the GST Network.
•Modi, Ranil launch ambulances
•Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Saturday, flagged off an expanded emergency ambulance service, supported by the Indian government, at a cost of about $23 million.
•The event, which was held in Jaffna, marked the island-wideexpansion of the service that was initially launched in Sri Lanka’s
Western and Southern Provinces in 2016, with 88 ambulances.
•“In good times and bad, India has been, and will always be the first responder for Sri Lanka,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who joined the event through video- conferencing.
•Biologically different
•New research thwarts earlier beliefs that deep sea coral ecosystems may be a refuge for shallow-water corals endangered by anthropogenic activities.
•Instead, it suggests that the deep sea corals are biologically different from the shallow water ones and are themselves at risk due to climate change
•India’s ‘Jaipur Foot’ for 1,000 differently-abled people in Myanmar, Vietnam
•The Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS) has started an artificial limb fitment camp in association with the central government at Myanmar’s Yangon city.
•The camp is being organised as per an agreement between BMVSS and the Ministry of External Affairs for providing 5,000 ‘Jaipur Foot‘ to the needy amputees of various countries.
•“In both Myanmar and Vietnam, 1,000 disabled people will be provided with ‘Jaipur Foot‘. This is a humanitarian effort of the Union government where BMVSS is the implementing agency,” according to an official statement issued.
•“The joint effort of the Ministry of External Affairs and BMVSS will help the disabled people of various nations in coming years,” said D R Mehta, the founder and chief patron of BMVSS.
•Plastic trash into car parts?
•They are melting the plastic waste down and feeding it through 3D printers to make intricate pieces such as car parts.
•These have become increasingly hard to obtain in Venezuela as dysfunctional currency controls restrict the import of basic materials.
•Albermar Dominguez and John Naizzir produce only a kilogram of plastic printing filament a day, but they aim to help once-wealthy Venezuela’s vanishing manufacturing sector by making it cheaper for companies that depend on expensive imports.
•It’s a sign of how an unprecedented crisis has spurred some young people to innovate following five years of economic contraction caused by failed state- led policies and a plunge in global oil prices.
•Many of their former classmates at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas have already left Venezuela, joining an exodus of over a million people amidwidespread shortages of food and medicine.
•Annual inflation has hit almost 50,000 percent and Caracas ranks as one of the world’s most dangerous cities.
•New solar supercapacitor could power future of wearable sensors
•In a paper published in the journal Nano Energy, researchers from the University of Glasgow’s Bendable Electronics and Sensing Technologies (BEST) group describe how they have developed a promising new type of graphene supercapacitor, which could be used in the next generation of wearable health sensors.
•Currently, wearable systems generally rely on relatively heavy, inflexible batteries, which can be uncomfortable for long-term users.
•The BEST team, led by Professor Ravinder Dahiya, have built on their previous success in developing flexible sensors by developing a supercapacitor which could power health sensors capable of conforming to wearer’s bodies, offering more comfort and a more consistent contact with skin to better collect health data.
•This research could take the wearable systems for health monitoring to remote parts of the world where solar power is often the most reliable source of energy, and it could also increase the efficiency of hybrid electric vehicles. We’re already looking at further integrating the technology into flexible synthetic skin which we’re developing for use in advanced prosthetics.
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