Mepco bill

(1) Madras High Court forms an SIT to probe Karur stampede The Madras High Court constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the stampede in Karur that resulted in 41 deaths during Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) leader Mr. Vijay’s rally last month. The SIT’s constitution, to be headed by Inspector General of Police Asra Garg, … Read more

Mary E. Brunkow (US), Fred Ramsdell (US) and Shimon Sakaguchi (Japan) win Nobel medicine prize. | Photo Credit: Courtesy: https://www.nobelprize.org/ The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi for their work on how immune systems work in determining what should be attacked or protected. … Read more

Mary E. Brunkow (US), Fred Ramsdell (US) and Shimon Sakaguchi (Japan) win Nobel medicine prize. | Photo Credit: Courtesy: https://www.nobelprize.org/ The Nobel Prize for 2025 in Physiology or Medicine goes to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday … Read more

The Nobel Prize for 2025 in Physiology or Medicine goes to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday (October 6, 2025). The laureates identified the immune system’s security guards, regulatory T cells, which prevent immune cells from attacking our … Read more

Known as the “Amazon of the seas”, the Coral Triangle is a 5.7 million sq. km expanse across the tropical waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste — and the richest marine ecosystem on the earth. The Triangle is home to more than three-quarters of the world’s coral species, … Read more

Xenobiology asks whether earthlife is the only possible form of life. | Photo Credit: Warren Umoh/Unsplash Xenobiology is a new and rapidly growing branch of science that studies how life could exist using biological systems different from those that prevail on the earth. The word comes from the Greek for “the study of alien life”. … Read more

The story so far: On September 27, a political rally by actor and Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) founder Vijay in Tamil Nadu’s Karur district ended in a fatal crowd crush in which 41 people were killed. Chief Minister M.K. Stalin appointed a one-person commission headed by retired judge Aruna Jagadeesan to examine the tragedy’s causes. … Read more

For most of us, influenza, or “the flu”, is dismissed as a seasonal nuisance that causes fever, cough, and body aches for a week or so before disappearing. Influenza is far from harmless, however. Worldwide, it’s a major cause of respiratory illness, hospitalisation, and deaths, especially among children, older adults, and people with underlying medical … Read more

We’ve lived through a pandemic, surviving to tell a tale. Ask anyone now, or even decades later, what they remember of the year 2020, and the first thing that would come to their minds, regardless of where they hail from, would be the COVID-19 pandemic. Such was the all-pervasive nature of the disease and the … Read more

On a July morning in 1960, Jane Goodall stepped off a boat onto the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. She was 26, untrained by universities, armed only with binoculars, a notebook and patience. What she saw in the forests of Gombe in East Africa altered science itself: chimpanzees who shaped tools, who mourned, who … Read more

A large share of women’s work takes the form of unpaid household labour, which does not count as employment in official statistics | Photo Credit: M A SRIRAM The female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) measures the share of women who are either employed or actively seeking work. A higher FLFPR is often seen as … Read more

Women-led development has been recognised as a structural game-changer for advancing India’s economic ambitions, yet its full potential remains under-leveraged. Nowhere is harnessing this potential more urgently than in the agriculture sector, the backbone of India’s economy and the largest employer of its women. Despite their growing presence on farms, women’s contributions remain systematically unremunerative. … Read more

The west coast of India, nestled between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats, has long been a melting pot of diverse human populations. Over centuries, it has witnessed the movement of various West Eurasian groups — including the Portuguese, Middle Easterners, Jews, Parsees and Christian missionaries. Now, scientists at the CSIR-Centre for Cellular & … Read more

Andre Geim remains the sole scientist to have won both an Ig Nobel prize and a Nobel Prize. | Photo Credit: Bengt Oberger (CC BY-SA) Recent reports stated that two Indian scientists had received Ig Nobel prize in the Engineering Design category in 2025. We know of the Nobel Prizes but the Ig Nobels?  As … Read more

Watch: Is climate change driving people out of the Sunderbans?

Daily Quiz | On Jane Goodall Visual Question: What was the name of this plush monkey that was a constant companion to Goodall for many years? START THE QUIZ 1 / 8 | Name the facility on the banks of Lake Tanganyika which was the location of her famous long-term study of chimpanzees? 2 / … Read more

India’s digital transformation has revolutionised communication, education, commerce, and governance. From smartphones to smart homes, convenience has become the cornerstone of contemporary urban living. Yet, beneath this technological leap lies a growing environmental and public health catastrophe: electronic waste (e-waste). E-waste, the fastest-growing solid waste stream globally, is now one of India’s most pressing yet … Read more

The vortex is the liquid’s way of balancing rotation, pressure, and gravity. | Photo Credit: TPMotion/pixabay When you stir liquid in a tumbler, you are forcing it to spin in circles. For anything to move in a circle, it needs an inward pull. In a liquid, this inward pull comes from pressure differences: the pressure … Read more

The SARAL tool, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation’s CEO Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, said would help generate lay person summaries of complex scientific research. Photo: X/@ANRFIndia As part of its outreach to make scientific research more accessible, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), India’s newest science funding agency, has developed a tool called SARAL (Simplified and Automated … Read more

Jane Goodall, a primatologist and ethologist known worldwide for chronicling the life of chimpanzees in East Africa, died on October 1 at the age of 91. Goodall died of natural causes in Los Angeles while on a speaking tour of the U.S., a statement from the Jane Goodall Institute said.  Goodall’s films and books reshaped … Read more

Scientist and global activist Jane Goodall, who turned her childhood love of primates into a lifelong quest for protecting the environment, died on Wednesday (October 1, 2025) at 91, the institute she founded said. Dr. Goodall died of natural causes, the Jane Goodall Institute said in a social media post. “Dr. Goodall’s discoveries as an … Read more

Cartilaginous fish like sharks, among many vertebrate animals, have an orifice called the cloaca from which they excrete urine and faeces. | Photo Credit: Gerald Schömbs/Unsplash The transition from fins to limbs is one of the most important events in vertebrate evolution. It explains how animals that once lived in water eventually walked on land. … Read more

Cartilaginous fish like sharks, among many vertebrate animals, have an orifice called the cloaca from which they excrete urine and faeces. | Photo Credit: Gerald Schömbs/Unsplash The transition from fins to limbs is one of the most important events in vertebrate evolution. It explains how animals that once lived in water eventually walked on land. … Read more

Trader businessman searching on smartphone, analyzing in dynamic stock exchange investment | Photo Credit: NanoStockk At a time when foreign investors have been pulling money out of the Indian stock market, domestic investors have kept it afloat with their steady contributions. Data show that this trend has persisted for some time now. But who are … Read more

Smoke billows from an abandoned house set on fire by miscreants in the violence-hit Manipur, in Imphal on August 5, 2023. Manipur reported over 6,200 cases of arson in 2023 — a dramatic surge from fewer than 30 cases annually in each of the previous five years. The State alone accounted for 45% of all … Read more

A laboratory technician collects river water samples to test for faecal coliform bacteria from the Ganges river in Varanasi on March 5. | Photo Credit: Getty Images The story so far: Pathogens (usually bacteria and viruses) that cause diseases in humans and animals, can be tracked in samples taken from the environment, for example, by … Read more