Over half of IITs saw 10 percentage point drop in placement since ’21-22: Govt data 

In more than half of the country's 23 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), placements for BTech students dropped by more than 10 percentage points in 2023-24 compared to 2021-22, according to the first such disclosure of data by the Union government.

Putin will visit India, we share call for talks on Ukraine: Russia

Praising the Indian government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for "consistently" taking a "balanced position on the Ukrainian crisis" and for advocating its "resolution through dialogue", Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that President Vladimir Putin will visit India this year and preparations for it are underway. 

Equalisation levy withdrawal not linked to Trump tariffs: Sitharaman

The centre's move to remove the 6% equalization levy on digital ads has nothing to do with today's global situation, and is part of an ongoing process, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in Rajya Sabha on Thursday. 

Multi-lane highway share rose to 33%, 1-lane cut to 9% in 10 yrs: Govt

The share of 4-lane and above national highways has increased to over 33% of the total NHs net-work of India in the last 10 years, Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari told the Lok Sabha on Thursday.

Also, the proportion of single lane/intermediate lane has de-creased by 52% in the last decade, the minister said, at-tributing the development to in-creased budgetary allocation and push for multi-lane National Highways (NHs) over the years. 

House panel: Judiciary, Govt synergy must to ensure timely processing of recommendations, appointments

A parliamentary committee on Thursday called for synergy between the Executive and the Judiciary for timely filling up of vacancies of judges in the 25 high courts and said there was a need to develop an institutional mechanism to align new appointments with retirements. 

House panel recommends framework for direct recruitment in CBI, law to probe national security cases without general consent

Noting the shortage of suitable deputations to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) where a significant number of posts are filled on deputation from various organisations a Parliamentary committee Thursday recommended that the organisation develop an independent framework by allowing direct recruitment through SSC, UPSC, or a dedicated CBI examination. 

Centre increases NREGS wages by 2-7% for FY26

The Centre has hiked the wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in the range of 2-7% for the financial year 2025-26.

The Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), which is the nodal ministry to run the rural job guarantee programmes, on Thursday issued a notification revising the NREGS wages for the FY 2025-26. 

'US varsities have helped the world, Trump crackdown damaging that'

Larry Kramer, President and Vice-Chancellor of the London School of Economics and Political Science, is in India as part of the institution's efforts to build and strengthen connections across the board with alumni and prospective Indian students. The former Dean of Stanford Law School spoke to RITIKA CHOPRA on a range of issues - from the financial crisis facing the UK's higher education sector to the US crackdown on campuses and foreign students, to generative Al's threat to academic integrity. 

Acts of Renewal and Rebuilding

From empowering students in Arunachal Pradesh with technology so that the class-room becomes a hub for innovation, helping farmers in Tamil Nadu take their produce to the world, floating community-based water conservation efforts in Jharkhand, starting projects for women in Odisha, providing over 40 villages with solar energy in Jharkhand to steering a 56-hour rescue operation after a devastating train tragedy in Odisha - these were stories of heroism, grit, determination and innovation. 

RE-ENGAGING DHAKA

Angladesh has, Arguably, been India's diplomatic success story in South Asia. With Sheikh Hasina at the helm, it provided India with an advantage in the region, strengthening economic and security cooperation, cracking down on cross-border insurgencies, and crucially, pushing back against Chinese influence. The dramatic change in Bangladesh's political circumstances since August last year have, un-surprisingly, complicated the picture. Now, Delhi's task is to recalibrate one of its most important relationships in the neighbourhood. Since Hasina's ouster, barring a congratulatory note to the Chief Advisor to the Interim Government, Muhammad Yunus, from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, bilateral engagement has been muted. PM Modi has yet to meet Yunus. A potential meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last year did not come to fruition, and it remains uncertain whether they will meet at the upcoming BIMSTEC Summit in Thailand. In this backdrop, PM Modi writing to Yunus on March 26, celebrated annually as Bangladesh National Day, reiterating India's commitment to advancing the partnership, is a strategic outreach that augurs well for India's neighbourhood policy. 

The colour of me

To begin with, a memory: I'm a child, whose relatives advise her to wear only light-coloured clothes. “If you wear black or any other dark shade, we can't see you," they complain, only half joking. This stricture "don't wear black!" - breeds in me a distaste for lighter colours. Ask me now and I'll tell you how much I love black, and that I wear it all the time. And that, to me, it's just a colour, like blue or orange. But that's not all, is it?

A TAX IN OUR INTEREST

As we bid farewell to the equalisation levy, its genesis has piqued interest. The 6 per cent levy on online advertising was unconventionally brought to life through the Finance Act in 2016, rather than the Income-tax Act. The benefit of introducing the tax in such a way was that it would do away with the treaty override. That is, a tax-payer could no longer avoid the tax on grounds that the treaty did not recognise it as a tax applicable. As expected, large digital corporations were averse to such a tax even though many at the time reported fairly low rates of taxes across the world a feature that the European Court of Justice has repeatedly attempted to set right. 

In Parliament, beyond politics

Parliament session after Parliament session, a few things change. The coffee spoons have moved from Central Hall to the seemingly swank, yet soulless, corridors of a modern-day cafeteria. Heritage can't be traded in for the Hyatt-like. In the about-to-be-concluded Budget session, a few Members of Parliament were spotted wearing white kicks. Kangana Ranaut is the photojournalist's top shot. 

'Preparation' for rape vs 'attempt' to commit rape: what law says

The supreme court on Wednesday stayed a ruling of the Allahabad High Court that said grabbing the breasts of a minor child and breaking the string of her pyjama "hardly constitute[d] an offence of attempt to rape", and merely amount[ed] to "preparation".

A Bench of Justices BRGavai and AG Masih said "some of the observations made in the impugned order...depict a total lack of sensitivity on the part of the author of the judgment". 

GAIA, THE EUROPEAN CARTOGRAPHER OF THE COSMOS, NOW RETIRED

The European Space Agency (ESA) shut down its space observatory mission, Gaia, on Thursday. Launched in December 2013, Gaia aimed to create the most precise three-dimensional map of the galaxy.

From July 2014 to January 2025, Gaia recorded 3 trillion observations of 2 billion stars and objects, and helped inform at least 13,000 scientific publications. 

India's deep-sea challenge

Last month, India completed wet testing of its Matsya-6000 submersible, capable of diving up to 6 km below the surface to look for underwater minerals off the coast. The launch of the first deep-sea manned vehicle is planned for later this year - it will put India in a select group of nations with the capability to send hu-mans to these depths.

Last week, China unveiled a compact deep-sea cable-cutting device that can be mounted on certain submersibles - and which is capable of severing the world's most fortified under-water communication or power lines. China reportedly operates the largest fleet of submersibles in the world. 

As Al-generated art goes viral, the story of Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli

Studio Ghibli-style images have taken over the Internet after OpenAl released its "most advanced image generator yet" via an update to the GPT-40 model. People around the world have been using the artificial intelligence chatbot to adapt images to the distinctive style developed by legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.

But not everyone is happy. Many see this as an affront to the creative process, especially given Miyazaki's own views about AI-generated art.