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    As people across India prepare to celebrate Makar Sankranti, the festival will arrive amid persistent cold wave conditions and widespread fog across large parts of northern India, even as meteorologists indicate that winter’s tight grip may begin to loosen gradually after midweek. Traditionally, Makar Sankranti marks the Sun’s northward movement and is associated with the waning of peak winter. This year, however, the seasonal transition is expected to be slow and subtle. Weather experts say that while temperatures may start inching upward after the next couple of nights, cold conditions and reduced visibility due to fog will continue to dominate mornings across the Indo-Gangetic plains. “There will be no major change in overall weather conditions on January 14. F...

    The H5N1 avian influenza virus, long considered a major pandemic threat, is once again under intense scientific scrutiny as evidence mounts of its expanding reach across species and its increasing ability to adapt to mammals. Although sustained human-to-human transmission has not yet been detected, researchers warn that the virus may be edging closer to that threshold. Since its first detection in poultry in southern China in 1997, H5N1 has evolved continuously, spreading far beyond birds to infect a wide range of wild animals, marine mammals and, most recently, cattle. What began as a regional outbreak has now turned into a global panzootic, with scientists describing the virus’s spread among animals as largely uncontrollable. According to the World Health Organi...

    India’s climate trajectory is entering a far more dangerous phase, according to consolidated national climate data for 2025, which places the year among the warmest on record while revealing a sharp rise in deadly extreme weather events across the country. Climate experts warn that the signals are no longer gradual or ambiguous but are accelerating at a pace that challenges existing preparedness and response systems. In 2025, India’s annual mean land surface air temperature stood 0.28 degrees Celsius above the 1991–2020 average, ranking it as the eighth warmest year since systematic records began in 1901. The data reinforces a troubling long-term trend, with ten of the fifteen warmest years recorded since 2011. The decade spanning 2016 to 2025 has now officially been...

    India took a significant step toward consolidating its position as a global technology leader with the launch of the Department of Science and Technology–National Initiative for Developing and Harnessing Innovations Centre of Excellence at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. The initiative aims to accelerate deep-technology entrepreneurship and strengthen the country’s science-to-market ecosystem. The Centre of Excellence has been established with financial support of approximately ₹40 crore from the Department of Science and Technology and was formally dedicated to the nation by the Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Dr Jitendra Singh. The facility is housed in a newly constructed, purpose-built block on the IIM Ahmedabad camp...

    Global renewable energy capacity continued to surge in 2024, but employment growth in the sector failed to keep pace, according to the newly released Renewable Energy and Jobs – Annual Review 2025 by the International Renewable Energy Agency and the International Labour Organization. The report highlights a growing gap between clean energy expansion and workforce development, raising concerns about the social sustainability of the global energy transition. The findings show that global renewable energy employment increased by only 2.3 percent year-on-year, reaching 16.6 million jobs in 2024, despite record-breaking levels of renewable energy deployment worldwide. Analysts attribute the slowdown in job growth to a combination of geopolitical tensions, increasingly aut...

    In a strong enforcement move to curb rising air pollution levels, the Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) has ordered the immediate closure of 16 industrial units operating across NCR-linked regions of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. The action follows detailed inspections that revealed serious and repeated violations of environmental laws, according to an official statement issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Among the shut units, one is located in Uttar Pradesh’s NCR region, another in Rajasthan’s NCR area, while the remaining 14 are situated in Haryana’s Sonipat district. The inspections were carried out as part of CAQM’s intensified enforcement drive aimed at reducing ...

    Mangrove forests in Nigeria’s Niger Delta are rapidly declining, leaving coastal communities increasingly exposed to flooding, erosion and storm surges, according to new research that uses advanced ecosystem modelling to track the health of these vital forests. The Niger Delta, home to Africa’s largest mangrove ecosystem and the third-largest mangrove forest in the world, supports fisheries, biodiversity and the livelihoods of thousands of people. In Rivers State alone, mangroves act as a critical natural barrier between coastal settlements and rising waters. However, decades of oil exploration, industrial activity and local resource extraction have severely degraded these ecosystems. The region is the centre of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry, and its landscape ha...

    As people across India prepare to celebrate Makar Sankranti, the festival will arrive amid persistent cold wave conditions and widespread fog across large parts of northern India, even as meteorologists indicate that winter’s tight grip may begin to loosen gradually after midweek. Traditionally, Makar Sankranti marks the Sun’s northward movement and is associated with the waning of peak winter. This year, however, the seasonal transition is expected to be slow and subtle. Weather experts say that while temperatures may start inching upward after the next couple of nights, cold conditions and reduced visibility due to fog will continue to dominate mornings across the Indo-Gangetic plains. “There will be no major change in overall weather conditions on January 14. F...

    Bones once believed to belong to a woolly mammoth and thought they could rewrite the timeline of mammoth extinction have turned out to come from a completely different and unexpected animal. The fossilised remains, consisting of two epiphyseal plates from a large mammal’s spine, were discovered in 1951 by archaeologist Otto Geist during an expedition in Alaska’s interior, just north of Fairbanks. The region, known as Beringia, is famous for yielding fossils of Ice Age megafauna, including mammoths, bison and ancient horses. Given the size of the bones and their location, Geist’s identification of them as woolly mammoth remains seemed reasonable. Late Pleistocene mammoth fossils are common in the region, and the vertebrae were large enough to fit an elephant-sized ...

    The Tamil Nadu government has notified 100 forest blocks as Reserved Forests between 2021 and 2025, significantly expanding the state’s legally protected forest area and reinforcing long-term biodiversity conservation and climate resilience efforts. With this move, the total Reserved Forest area in Tamil Nadu has increased by about 135 square kilometres, rising from 26,450 sq km to 26,585 sq km, according to official data released by Forest Minister RS Raja Kannappan. The newly notified forest blocks span 10 districts — Dindigul, Dharmapuri, Madurai, Kallakurichi, Theni, Sivaganga, Namakkal, Nilgiris, Salem and Tenkasi — and together cover nearly 13,495 hectares. Among them, the Highways Forest Block in Theni district, spread over 2,836.33 hectares, is the largest si...