The Evening Wrap Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. We hope you are staying home and staying safe. Here are the big stories that you need to follow today: Supreme Court steps in on migrant workers crisis The Supreme Court has taken suo moto cognisance of the “problems and miseries” of migrant labourers left stranded by the lockdown and asked the Centre and states to list the steps taken to help them. The case will be heard on Thursday. "We take suo motu cognisance of the problems and miseries of migrant labourers who had been stranded in different parts of the country,” the court said. “The newspaper reports and the media reports have been continuously showing the unfortunate and miserable conditions of migrant labourers walking on foot and travelling on cycles for long distances. They have also been complaining of not being provided food and water by the administration… In the present situation of lockdown in the entire country, this section of the society needs succour and help by the concerned governments,” the order added. A reminder at this point that the national lockdown, and by extension the “problems and miseries” of migrant labour, are now over two months old. The top court, despite petitions to intervene, had thus far been reluctant to do so. In the intervening period, several experts had publicly disagreed with the apex court’s stance. Former Delhi High Court judge Justice A.P. Shah, in a powerfully worded column for The Hindu, had observed that the court was letting down migrant workers when they most needed protection. On May 15, for instance, dismissing a petition that had sought directions to the Centre to provide food and water to migrants on the move, the Supreme Court had said: “It is impossible for this court to monitor who is walking and not walking… Let the state decide. Why should the court hear or decide?" Going back even further to April 26, in an exclusive interview to The Hindu, Chief Justice S.A. Bobde had said that it would be very hard for the court to intervene in problems arising out of the lockdown and that it was for the executive to take charge. “It is very difficult for the court to assume charge and say ‘this is what the priority should be’ and ‘this is what it should be like’. The Executive is better suited to decide on the ‘whats’, ‘hows’ and ‘whens’ of deploying money, material and men” he had said. Ladakh tensions The stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops in the Ladakh region appeared to assume a more serious dimension today, with reports of massive Chinese incursions into Indian territory along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). According to media reports based on satellite imagery and intelligence sources, Chinese incursions – some experts put the number of troops involved at 5,000 to 10,000 -- were seen in at least two different areas: the GalwanRiver area and Pangong Tso Lake area. The Pangong Tso Lake area has long been a disputed territory, with scope for varying interpretations of territorial borders. But significantly, this is the first time since 1962 that the Galwan Valley figures as a zone of contention. The Galwan river flows from Aksai Chin, which India claims as its own, into Xinjiang in China, before entering Ladakh. In the words of our Foreign Editor Stanly Johny, “China has turned one undisputed area on LAC into a disputed one, while stepping up troops presence and patrolling in a disputed area. That these two flashpoints are 200 km apart suggests that these are not localised events, and may not be the last either.” As of the publication of this newsletter, India is yet to release an official response to these developments. Locusts invasion At least 10 districts in Uttar Pradesh that border Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have been put on alert after swarms of locusts attacked crops in the two States. The locusts initially entered Rajasthan from Pakistan. From Rajasthan, locust swarms also entered Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The locust swarms, which are infamous for devastating thousands of hectares of standing crops in the African continent, have triggered concerns about the threat they could pose to India’s agricultural output this year. Covid Watch: Numbers and Developments The total number of positive coronavirus cases in India stood at 1,49,721 at the time of publishing this newsletter, with the death toll at 4,301. The Health Ministry today said that India’s fatality rate was among the lowest in the world. “It is now 2.87%. Globally, the fatality rate is 6.4%. Our low death/lakh population was because of lockdown, social distancing, stringent containment measures,” an official said. The official line has also been skirting around the term “community transmission” though the country is closing in on a lakh and a half cases. “We have clear cut containment zones, where prevalence is being studied. So it would be premature to comment on community transmission,” ICMR director Balram Bhargava said today. India pushes on with HCQ In more Covid-19-related news, the ICMR today said that no major side-effects of hydroxychloroquine have been found in studies in India and its use should be continued in preventive treatment for Covid-19. This comes against the backdrop of the World Health Organization (WHO) temporarily suspending the testing of the drug among Covid-19 patients in its global study, following safety concerns. We did observational studies and found that it may be working. We found no major side effects except nausea, vomiting, and occasional palpitations. We've advised that it has to be taken with food, Dr Balram Bhargava said at a press conference today. Long battle ahead: WHO As Brazil and India, among other big countries, struggle with surging coronavirus cases, a top health expert is warning that the world is still smack in the middle of the pandemic, dampening hopes for a speedy global economic rebound and renewed international travel. Right now, we’re not in the second wave. We’re right in the middle of the first wave globally,” said Dr Mike Ryan, the WHO’s executive director. We’re still very much in a phase where the disease is actually on the way up, Ryan told reporters, pointing to South America, South Asia, and other areas where infections are still on the rise. Rahul slams lockdown policy Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said that all the four stages of lockdown have ‘failed’ and claimed that India was the only country that was opening up when the coronavirus infection was rising ‘exponentially’. Addressing an online press conference, he warned the government of “devastation and a second wave of infection if it opens up haphazardly”. He asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to spell out his government’s plan B. He reiterated the party’s demand to go in for direct cash transfers to help poor families, migrant labourers, and small and medium businesses. Not doing so would be “fatal” for the economy, he said. In Brief: A red-colour coded weather alert has been issued for Assam and Meghalaya from May 26-28, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said today, predicting very heavy rainfall in these two north-eastern states. Sathi Devi, head of the IMD’s national weather forecasting centre, said there is a strong flow of south-westerly winds from the Bay of Bengal, bringing a lot of moisture to these two states. Anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) activist Sharjeel Imam on Tuesday failed to get any immediate relief from the Supreme Court despite arguing that the FIRs registered against him in different States were politically coloured and were a tactic to silence his right to dissent. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. | 
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