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A bird survey conducted at the Silent Valley National Park in Kerala in the last week of December identified 141 species, of which 17 were new. So far, 175 species of birds have been spotted in Silent Valley. The survey held on December 27, 28 and 29 marked the 30th …

Talacauvery in Kodagu district of Karnataka, which is the source of the Cauvery river, has emerged as South India’s Hanle, as astronomers have been hosting “star parties” there for some time now. Hanle, located in Ladakh, and known for its pristine skies and minimal light pollution, is also India’s first …

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the National Green Hydrogen Mission with an initial outlay of ₹19,744 crore, in a move aimed at making the country a global hub to produce, utilise and export green hydrogen and its derivatives. The government expects that the initiative will help abate nearly 50 …

India aims to cut spending on food and fertilizer subsidies to ₹3.7 trillion in the fiscal year from April, a 26% cut from this year, two government officials said, to rein in a fiscal deficit that ballooned during the COVID-19 pandemic. Food and fertilizer subsidies alone account for about one-eighth …

The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Centre what would happen to the small and traditional fishermen in the State of Tamil Nadu if “affluent” purse seine fishermen on mechanised boats are allowed to operate beyond the 12 nautical mile territorial waters and end up catching hundreds of tonnes of …

The India-China skirmish on the Arunachal Pradesh border has brought the Chinese threat on the front burner again. This has made External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar accept that to counter this threat, “…we have a deployment of the Indian Army… that we have never had.” The threat had never decreased, …

An invertebrate survey undertaken in the Thiruvananthapuram Wildlife Division has reaffirmed the relevance of the region as a biodiversity hotspot. The four-day exercise to survey the invertebrates of Neyyar and Peppara wildlife sanctuaries and the Agasthyavanam Biological Park with emphasis on arachnids was jointly conducted by the Forest Department and …

The National Commission for Indian System of Medicine (NCISM) and the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), the two prominent institutions under the Ministry of Ayush, Government of India for regulating medical education and conducting scientific research respectively, have launched ‘SMART’ (Scope for Mainstreaming Ayurveda Research in Teaching …

India’s first case of the XBB.1.5 subvariant of Omicron was confirmed in Gujarat by the national genome sequencing consortium on December 31. XBB.1.5 has been driving COVID-19 cases in the U.S. Studies of the strain indicate that it is highly transmissible and evades pre-existing immunity. Yet it doesn’t seem to …

For much of the global economy, 2023 is going to be a tough year as the main engines of global growth, the United States, Europe and China, all experience weakening activity, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Sunday. The new year is going to be “tougher than …

At almost ₹1.5 lakh crore, Goods and Services Tax (GST) inflows in December 2022 signal a recovery of sorts from November, when revenues fell to a three-month low. November 2022 revenues were 10.9% higher than a year ago, but still marked the slowest growth since June 2021. December’s revenues were …

Private Equity and Venture Capital (PE-VC) firms invested $2,614 million across 65 deals in Tamil Nadu-based companies in 2022. Of this 45 firms are headquartered in She state while the remaining 20 now have their base overseas but were headquartered here at some point and also have a substantial part …

The year 2022 can perhaps be best summarised by a quote by Vladimir Lenin: ‘There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.’ The year began with the ostensible vanquishing of the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the remarkable collective vaccination efforts of science, business and governments …

The output growth of India’s eight core sectors rebounded to 5.4% in November from a revised estimate of a 0.9% uptick in October, the slowest in 20 months. This was despite the fact that overall production levels in November 2022 remained the same as in the previous month. The recovery …

December 2021 and December 2022 could not have been more contrasting for India’s pharmaceutical industry. Last year, it was hailed for developing vaccines that inoculated billions against the coronavirus and underlined its moniker as the ‘pharmacy of the world’. This year, two Indian drug-manufacturing firms stand accused by two countries …

In a five-year study, scientists of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru have discovered secrets of a long evolutionary game through which butterflies come to warn, fool, and escape their predators using traits such as wing colour patterns and even flight behaviour. The study conducted by Ph.D. …

In December 2022, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told Parliament that banks had written off bad loans worth ₹10,09,511 crore during the last five financial years. A National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd. (NARCL) was announced in the Union Budget for 2021-2022 to resolve stressed loans amounting to about ₹2 lakh crore …

What are deepfakes? Deepfakes are digital media – video, audio, and images edited and manipulated using Artificial Intelligence. It is basically hyper-realistic digital falsification. Deepfakes are created to inflict harm on individuals and institutions. Access to commodity cloud computing, public research AI algorithms, and abundant data and availability of vast …

India’s unemployment rate rose to 8.3% in December, the highest in 16 months, from 8% in the previous month, data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed on Sunday. The urban unemployment rate rose to 10.09% in December from 8.96% in the previous month, while the rural unemployment …

A lone Great White Pelican was spotted for a few fleeting moments at the Nelapattu Bird Sanctuary, located at the end of the Pulicat lake in Andhra Pradesh, on December 29. The sighting was documented by K.V.R.K. Thirunaranan, founder of The Nature Trust, and K. Hussainaiah, bird watcher and guide …