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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, …

The subject of the spiralling costs of cancer medicines and their implications that have frequently been highlighted the world over were dwelled on in a recent report (“Cancer Care Plan and Management”) by the Rajya Sabha’s Standing Committee on Health (bit.ly/3jfmxLG). Alluding to the implications of the high cost of …

In its latest outrageous decision, the Taliban regime has announced a ban on female students studying in universities. The “cabinet” meeting decision is one in a series that wipes out the many societal gains since 2001, the last time the Taliban was in power. These decrees include banning Afghan schoolgirls …

The spurt in coronavirus cases reported out of China has triggered global alarm. India’s Health Ministry has issued a directive to States to send positive samples to the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) to check for new, concerning strains. The Health Minister, too, has called for a review meeting of …

Almost two weeks since its capture and relocation to the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR), the elephant Pandalur Makhna-2 (PM2) is acclimatising to the new habitat, officials said. Since its release into the Congress Mattam in the MTR, PM2 has spent the last 12 days exploring the place. The elephant was …

The BF.7 variant of coronavirus, belived to be linked to the surge in COVID-19 cases in China, was identified in India as far back as July. Four instances of the Omicron subvariant was genome-sequenced in Gujarat and Odisha in the subsequent months, but it was not linked to increased severity …

The Smart Cities Mission, Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs won the Platinum Icon in the Digital India Awards 2022 for their initiative “DataSmart Cities: Empowering Cities through Data” under the ‘Data Sharing and Use for Socio Economic Development’ category. The award was announce on 19th December 2022. The DataSmart Cities Initiative is …

NARS coordinated at the apex level by the ICAR/ Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), comprises of 98 Agricultural Research Institutes, 5 Deemed Universities and 3 Central Agricultural Universities besides 63 State Agricultural Universities, 4 Universities with Agriculture Faculties mandated for developing, testing and refining new technologies in agriculture …

Various activities have been taken up by the government, using Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in agriculture. Some of the activitiesare given below: Department of Science & Technology (DST) is implementing a National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems (NM-ICPS). Under the Mission, 25 Technology Innovation Hubs …

The Group of Seven (G7) countries, the European Union and Australia have imposed a price cap on Russian sea-borne oil to make it harder for Russia to fund its war against Ukraine. Under the plan, which took effect on December 5, western companies that dominate the global oil shipping and …

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations agreement to conserve and sustainably use earth’s biodiversity, got a boost at a conference held in Montreal recently, when 188 of 196 member governments agreed on a new framework to halt the sharp and steady loss of biological species. These governments, …

The balance of risks is increasingly tilted towards a darkening global outlook and emerging market economies (EMEs) appear to be more vulnerable, even though incoming data suggest that global inflation may have peaked, Reserve Bank of India officials led by Deputy Governor Michael D. Patra wrote in an article in …

The Taliban authorities on Tuesday ordered a nationwide ban on university education for girls, as the hardline Islamists continue to crush Afghan women’s right to education and freedom. Despite promising a softer rule when they seized power last year, the Taliban have ratcheted up restrictions on all aspects of women’s …

Gujarat’s Vadnagar town, the iconic Sun Temple at Modhera, and the rock cut sculptures of Unakoti in Tripura have been added to the tentative list of UNCESO World Heritage Sites. The UNESCO tentative list is an “inventory of those properties which each State Party intends to consider for nomination”. “With …

The Centre’s decision to get the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to investigate the recent Bihar hooch tragedy was called into question with Opposition parties in both Houses of Parliament criticising the BJP-led government of misusing constitutional bodies. While the Lok Sabha saw members of the JD(U) and BJP get …

The Union government has not conducted any survey nor is it considering a proposal to conduct one to identify the number of beneficiaries entitled to the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) reservation, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment said in response to a question from Sajda Ahmed of the Trinamool …

As 2022 comes to an end, the world is embracing a ‘new normal’ where new fault lines are being reconfigured in the Indo-Pacific. The Indian Ocean and South Asian regions are at the heart of this contestation, considering their geo-political and geo-economic prominence and India’s emergence as a major power. …