The out-of-control line between India and Pakistan Thursday, January 07, 2021 By: ET
Shells and bullets are hurtling thicker and faster than ever between Indian and Pakistani forces across Kashmir s ceasefire line, killing and maiming at a rate not seen in the entrenched conflict for two decades.
Zameer Ahmad was building a community bunker on the Indian side of the Himalayan region s disputed frontier officially known as the Line of Control (LoC) when a sniper round fired from Pakistani-controlled territory struck the ground nearby.
Ahmad and co-worker Sadakat Hussain took cover behind a wall in the village of Simari. We finally decided to try to run but we both got hit, the 26-year-old told AFP.
Lessons learned
Evidence is trickling in that this year’s cohort have fallen behind
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LOSED SCHOOLS are bad for all children, but especially bad for poor and disadvantaged pupils. This basic pattern recurs wherever and whenever researchers look for it in the wake of an epidemic of polio in America in 1916, after teachers’ strikes in Argentina since the 1980s, and after a devastating earthquake in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir in 2005.
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Most natural experiments in school disruption come after isolated natural disasters. The covid-19 pandemic is leading to a simultaneous global experiment, however. In America, where schools have been significantly disrupted for the better part of a year, the first batches of reliable data are being gathered to assess how bad the damage has actually been. Sorting through them shows that sadly, America has not defied the gloomy predictions.