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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 …

Close on the heels of similar mobility agreements with France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Finland, India will sign a “Comprehensive Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreement” (MMPA) with Austria on Monday during External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s visit to Vienna. While India has been keen to finalise these agreements with …

The clash between Indian troops and the Chinese PLA at Galwan in 2020 and the recentaltercationbetweentroops at Yangtse in Arunachal Pradesh have served to highlight the lingering boundary dispute as well as the complex Line of Actual Control (LAC). It is tempting to examine the parallels in India-China relations in …

If 2022 was a momentous year for India and the rest of the world, 2023 is likely to further sharpen the geopolitical fault lines set in motion by the previous year. Amidst all the tectonic shifts around us, what appears to be a certainty is the emergence of an Asia-centric …

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 …

As most Union government offices are expected to go fully digital by the end of February 2023, several security measures have been put in place to avoid any cybersecurity incidents such as the recent cyber and ransomware attack on the servers of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) …

OnDecember 23, the Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI)arrested private lender ICICI Bank’s former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (MD &CEO)Chanda Kochhar along with her husband, Deepak Kochhar. This was in a case pertaining tofraudulentdisbursal of loansamounting to ₹1,875 crore between 2009-11to the Videocon group of companies, during her tenure at …

The border town of Belagavi has been a part of Karnataka since boundaries were demarcated along linguistic lines under theStatesReorganisationAct, 1956. But theinter-State border dispute between Karnataka and Maharashtra erupts every now and then.The decades-old dispute flared up again in 2022when Karnataka Chief Minister BasavarajBommaisaid the Karnataka government was considering …

India’s current account balance recorded a deficit of $36.4 billion (or a nine-year high of 4.4% of GDP) in the quarter ended September, rising from $18.2 billion (2.2%) in the previous quarter. Deficit for the year-earlier period came in at $9.7 billion (1.3%), according to data released by the Reserve …

The State Information Commission of Tamil Nadu has been the worst performing in responsiveness under the Right to Information Act, furnishing only 14% of the information sought. Maharashtra was the second worst, sharing 23% of the information asked for, according to a report card on the performance of Information Commissions …

Bank and cyber frauds in India are on the rise. According to data by the Reserve Bank of India, frauds have cost the country an estimated ₹100 crore a day over the last seven years. The frauds reported in 2021-22 were 23.69% higher than in the previous year (9,103 cases …

The conviction of former Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen by a criminal court in the Maldives just a year ahead of general elections could affect his plans to lead the PPM-PNC opposition alliance. He faces 11 years in prison and a $5 million fine after being found guilty of corruption and …

The State government has given administrative sanction for ₹52.83 crore towards the modernisation of the Tamil Nadu Forest Force for 2022-25. In the revised Budget Estimates (2021-22), the government had announced that special attention will be given to the forest force by providing it with modern equipment and technology, including …

Four Air Force aircraft — Sukhoi and Tejas combat jets and one AN-32 transport aircraft — on Thursday flew at a height of about 5 metres on the 4.1-km emergency landing runway (ELR) on the National Highway 16 at Pichukalagudipadu village in Bapatla district of Andhra Pradesh. However, the aircraft …

Wary of a rise in number of COVID-19 cases, the government has made negative RT-PCR reports a mandatory requirement for air travellers arriving from China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand. In its latest guidelines for international travellers, the Health and Family Welfare Ministry has said a pre-departure test conducted …