News Digest: What is Death? 8-Year-Old Asks After School Scuffle Kills Junior

Here are some important reports from the biggest newspapers of India:

1. What is Death? Eight-Year-Old Asks After School Scuffle Kills Junior

"What is death?" This was what an eight-year old boy in Hyderabad asked the police when questioned why he allegedly killed a six-year-old schoolmate after a scuffle over repeated bullying, as reported in the Hindustan Times. Last Tuesday, the eight-year-old Class 3 student repeatedly teased his junior, the six-year-old Class 1 student, for a runny nose during the lunch break, police said. Enraged, the younger boy reportedly hurled abuses, triggering a brawl between the children.

During the fight, the older boy kicked the six-year-old in the stomach and private parts, sources said. The Class 1 student collapsed during the scuffle and the school management rushed him to a local hospital, where he was given first aid treatment and sent home. But later in the evening, he complained of severe pain in his private parts and succumbed to his injuries on Saturday evening.

2. Getting Married? Sell Tickets to Your Wedding and Have Foreign Tourists Attend

There's nothing quite like the Big Fat Indian Wedding. We know it, the world knows it. And now a month-old startup called JoinMyWedding.com is connecting the dots and offering curious foreign tourists a chance to attend an Indian wedding for a fee, Hindustan Times reports.

The website is called JoinMyWedding.com and the idea for it came to Australian start-up mentor Orsi Parkanyi, 33, when a friend told her she was travelling to India for a wedding. "I wished I could go too, but I didn’t have an invite," Parkanyi says. "Another friend said she would have loved to go too, and after some research, I realised there was a market for such a service and no one to cater to it."

3. Qandeel Baloch's Brother 'Proudly' Accepts Drugging, Killing Her, Has No Regrets

Pakistani internet star Qandeel Baloch's brother publicly confessed on Sunday that he drugged and strangled his sister to death, adding he could not tolerate her bringing "dishonour" to Baloch people, as per a news report on the Hindustan Times.

"I proudly admit to murdering Qandeel and I have earned heaven and honour by providing relief to my parents and family," Waseem Baloch, who was arrested on late Saturday, said at a press conference held by Multan police.

4. Shave or I'll Kill Myself: Wife to Cleric

Thirty-six-year old Arshad Badruddin, a cleric here, is in a fix after his wife demanded that he should shave or else she would commit suicide. He even claimed that his wife was using a smartphone to chat with 'gair mard' (other men) against his wishes. Arshad has also asked the DM to arrange for counselling for his wife. He fears that he would be blamed if his wife takes the extreme step, as reported in the Times of India.

In his complaint to DM Pankaj Yadav, the cleric stated: "I am a 'pesh imam' (who leads prayers at a mosque) and I am a true follower of Islam. I got married to Sahana of Pilkhuwa town in Hapur district in 2001. Soon after our marriage, my wife demanded that I should shave and not keep beard as she likes clean-shaven men like Bollywood actors Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan. She has also brought a smartphone and chats with gair mard all day and night."

5. 17% Indian Families Make an Overnight Trip Every Month

Indians seem to have the wander-lust big time. Nearly every sixth Indian family went out on an overnight trip every month, adding up to 58 million trips. No less than 86% of these trips were for social reasons — to meet friends and relatives, perhaps on festive occasions, as reported in the Times of India.

Some opportunities for an overnight trip came up only once in a year, like annual holidays or a serious illness in the family. These, when counted separately, added up to another 56 million trips over a year, with holidaying, leisure and recreation being the purpose of 34% of such visits and health reasons for 65%.

6. Woman Must Follow Her Man: Rajasthan Textbook

The deep-rooted gender bias in our society is being propagated by the revised school textbooks in Rajasthan. Ample instances hinting at male superiority have been found in Hindi and English revised textbooks, as reported in the Times of India.

Class III Hindi textbook chapter 'Games' has three pictures showing only boys playing games, indicating that sports is meant only for boys. In most chapters, women have been introduced in reference to men, says a report prepared by a group of academics based in Jaipur and Delhi. "The previous books had decent representation of girls in all illustrations, if not equal," said Devyani Bhardwaj, one of the academics who scanned the revised textbooks.

7. WHO Report Sounds Alarm on 'Doctors' in India

Almost one-third (31 per cent) of those who claimed to be allopathic doctors in 2001 were educated only up to the secondary school level and 57 per cent did not have any medical qualification, a recent WHO report found, ringing the alarm bells on India’s healthcare workforce, as per a news report in The Hindu.

The situation was far worse in rural India, where just 18.8 per cent of allopathic doctors had a medical qualification, the study titled 'The Health Workforce in India', published in June 2016, revealed.

8. India Ramps Up Its Military Presence in Eastern Ladakh

Bunkers drilled into barren hills, battle tanks at over 14,000 feet, and additional troops on newly built roads. India's quiet efforts at beefing up military capabilities to match China's wide-ranging transformation across the border are finally becoming a reality. Read full article in The Hindu.

A much-criticised policy after the humiliation of 1962 war had resulted in India deliberately neglecting infrastructure even as the Communist neighbour transformed the mountainous and disputed border into a showcase of its economic might with all weather roads running up to frontline military posts.

9. SIP Investing Yields Better Returns Than Timing The Market: Study

If you are a mutual fund investor, it doesn't pay to be a Nostradamus on Dalal Street. A backtesting study by ET shows that regular investing yields better results than timing the market. A mutual fund investor who continued his SIPs irrespective of market movements would have made more money than one who successfully avoided the 10 biggest falls in the Sensex in the past five years, as reported in The Economic Times.

Both investors are assumed to have started SIPs in a diversified equity fund five years ago in July 2011. While the regular investor kept investing in the fund irrespective of the noise, the market timer withdrew the entire investment a day before the market crashed and reinvested the entire amount on the next SIP due date.

10. PMO Tasked Smriti Irani With 39-Point List For Schools

It wasn't just non-delivery or slow movement on the PMO to-do list for higher education that may have cost Smriti Irani her job, the school education sector was being just as closely scrutinised by the Prime Minister's Office, as reported in The Economic Times.

While there were just five key stuck issues with PMO on the higher education side, including the autonomy of IIMs and world class institutes, a 39-point to-do list for school education was identified and monitored closely by the PMO with focus on improving learning levels, teacher training and vocationalisation.