78 Per Cent of Mumbai Lives in Slums

• Slum Bay. Dharavi is no longer Asia’s biggest slum, with four other contenders from Mumbai outranking it in size. The four slums—in the Kurla-Ghatkopar belt, the Mankhurd-Ghatkopar belt, the Mankhurd-Govandi belt and the Yogi and Yeoor hill slopes—are all in the north part of the city. The island city, meanwhile, only has a few clusters left in the south and east. Data from the 2011 census shows that 78 per cent of Mumbai now lives in slums. [The Times of India]

• About Turn. Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has defended his controversial remark that gay sex was unnatural and a disease, saying they were taken out of context by the media. Azad said he was referring to HIV as the disease and not the action of men having sex. [The Hindu]

• Doping Scandal. The sports ministry has sacked India’s athletics coach Yuri Ogordnik after it was revealed that eight athletes, many of them Commonwealth Games medallists, tested positive for banned substances. The Ukrainian coach said food supplements that he prescribed may have been responsible for the tainted urine samples. “They (the athletes) are innocent. What all the girls are saying that it’s me, who recommended them the food supplements, is absolutely correct. I recommended the supplements and all of them had gone by my advice,” Ogordnik said. [Hindustan Times]