The J&K Lieutenant Governor’s administration, in the third week of December, notified fresh land rules under J&KLand Grant Rules-2022 and replaced the J&K Land Grants Rules-1960, which dealt with the special rules to grant government land on lease in erstwhile State of J&K. Under the previous rules, prime locations such …

More than 140 experts and dignitaries have signed an open letter published by the Outer Space Institute (OSI) calling for both national and multilateral efforts to restrict uncontrolled re-entries — the phenomenon of rocket parts falling back to earth in unguided fashion once their missions are complete. Among others, the …

Tamil author M. Rajendran, Telugu writer Madhuranthakam Narendra and Sanskrit poet Janardan Prasad Pandey ‘Mani’ are among the 23 authors who won the Sahitya Akademi awards for 2022 announced on Thursday. Anuradha Roy has been selected for her English novel All the lives we never lived. The Bhasha Samman will be …

While cotton farmers in several States have demanded an increase in the minimum support price (MSP) of the crop, the Union government has said that it is “watching” the cotton production scenario and will decide accordingly. A senior official of the Union Textile Ministry told The Hindu that the domestic prices of …

India, along with Russia and China, abstained from a UN Security Council resolution criticising Myanmar’s military regime, and instead called for “quiet, patient” and “constructive” diplomacy with the junta. The vote, which marked the first Security Council resolution on the situation in Myanmar in decades, and in particular, since the …

The world has been witnessing a flurry of meetings and conferences on the issue of countering terrorism worldwide. The list resembles an alphabetic soup, viz., meetings of the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee, the No Money for Terror Conference, and an Interpol Conference in which terrorism figured prominently. The recurring …

Gulf countries account for more than half of the Indian prisoners including undertrials and convicts lodged in foreign jails. According to data available with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), as many as 8,441 Indians including women are lodged in foreign jails in 69 countries in connection with various offences …

There is nothing extraordinary about this. But the house is located on a site that was possibly a part of the historic fort built by the Marathas. “No one at the school tells us about the importance of the fort or the town,” says the girl, who seems to have …

The Humayun Mahal in Chepauk Palace complex, which is under renovation, will house the Independence Day museum. The restoration of the heritage building, which was ravaged by a fire in 2012, is set to be completed in a month. After four years of struggle and overcoming the challenges posed by …

India and China held the 17th round of Corps Commander-level talks on December 20, at the Chushul-Moldo border meeting point on the Chinese side, during which they agreed to continue dialogue through military and diplomatic channels and work out a “mutually acceptable resolution of the remaining issues at the earliest,” …

The Rajya Sabha on Thursday cleared the way for the inclusion of the Narikoravan and Kurivikkaran hill tribes to the Scheduled Tribes list of Tamil Nadu and the inclusion of the Betta-Kuruba community as a synonym for the already categorised Kadu Kuruba tribe in the ST list of Karnataka, clearing …

Former IAS officer M. Rajendran’s historical novel Kala Pani (Black Water), which depicts the defeat and exile of 72 people, including VengaiPeriyaUdayannaDevar, the ruler of Sivaganga, and Duraisamy, son of ChinnaMarudu, after the Kalayarkoil war, has won the Sahitya Akademi Award for 2022. “I would rather treat the award as a recognition …

Delhi Lieutenant-Governor (L-G) Vinai Kumar Saxena has directed Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar to implement a 2016 order of the Committee on Content Regulation in Government Advertising (CCRGA). The order calls for recovering ₹97.14 crore plus interest from the ruling AamAadmi Party (AAP) for “political advertisements” published or telecast as government …

In a boost to the country’s maritime capabilities, INS Mormugao has officially joined the Indian Navy’s fleet, marking a significant milestone for indigenous military expedition. The warship ‘Yard 12705’, named after the Goan port city of Mormugao, is the second of the four Visakhapatnam-class destroyers being built under the Indian …

The Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) has recommended the imposition of anti-dumping duty (ADD) on viscose staple fibre being imported from Indonesia. In a notification dated December 19, the DGTR recommended a levy of $0.512/kg as ADD. The DGTR said based on its recommendation, the Centre withdrew ADD on …

Sri Lanka is waiting for financing assurances from its bilateral creditors, including India and China, to tap support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), according to Central Bank Governor P. Nandalal Weerasinghe. In September, the IMF reached a staff level agreement with Sri Lanka for a $2.9 billion package to …

Despite a year-long mission-mode recruitment drive to hire faculty for reserved category positions at the elite Indian Institutes of Technology and Central universities, just over 30% of identified vacancies were filled, the Education Ministry told Parliament this week. In the year to September 5, 2022, 23 IITs and 45 Central …

The Union Territories (UT) of J&K and Ladakh have started preparations for the G-20 meetings, as India is set to host 43 heads of delegations in September next year. “One G-20 meeting is being held in Srinagar. We have requested that one meeting is also held in Jammu,” J&K Lieutenant-Governor …

The way India’s constitutional and political structures have evolved over the years seems to have made elections almost a mechanistic and ritualistic exercise. The reason behind this is the setting up and functioning of the Election Commission of India (ECI). This has come into public discourse because of the hearings …

The English computer scientist Alan Turing’s “imitation game” or “Turing test” takes the stance that a machine successfully represents a human if it responds to a question like a human mind does. From Plato’s mimesis (representation) as the principle of art, to the Turing test, and to recent progresses in artificial intelligence, …