Author: Indmedia

Audit at private institutes Kolkata: The state higher education department on Wednesday formed teams to visit private institutes, including BEd colleges, primary teachers training institutes and degree colleges, and evaluate classroom teaching, student enrolment and attendance. The inspection is meant to verify if private college students, who first pay high admission fees and then hefty semester fees, are receiving quality education.During the inspection, the teams will audit the institutes’ biometric entry systems, if any. At colleges that still follow a manual attendance system, the teams will verify the numbers against the total enrolment for each course. Officials will check CCTV…

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that military personnel aged 30 and older will undergo testing for testosterone deficiency as part of annual health screenings.In a video posted on X, captioned “High-T Department”, Hegseth said he was authorising the screening programme for troops to ensure “you have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best”.Troops with low testosterone levels will be offered voluntary hormone replacement therapy. The tests will be optional for those younger than 30. Hegseth did not specify whether the screening would apply to women, whose testosterone levels also decline as they age. The BBC has…

Five people suspected of selling and displaying books deemed “seditious” in Hong Kong have been arrested after police raided two independent bookshops.Authorities said the publications incited “hatred” against the territory’s government, judiciary and law enforcement agencies. Officers seized books from both shops, the government said in a statement.The group – two men aged 37 and 57, and three women aged between 30 and 59 – are suspected of violating national security legislation by “acting with seditious intent”.They are currently being held for investigation. If convicted, they could face up to seven years in prison.Officials did not name the businesses raided…

England’s World Cup “dream” ends and Andy Burnham is “poised” to make Shabana Mahmood his chancellor – Thursday’s papers. Source link

For a long time, the last Neanderthals in Europe were pictured as a genetically diverse bunch, scattered across the continent right up until they disappeared. New DNA evidence tells a very different story. Researchers have found that Neanderthals actually went through a severe population crash around 75,000 years ago, one so extreme that only a single surviving group in what is now southwestern France seems to have repopulated the rest of Europe afterwards. This means almost every late Neanderthal we know about, all the way from Spain to the Caucasus, traces back to that one small, surviving population rather than…

Shubman Gill’s cramps at Edgbaston appeared, at first, to be a passing inconvenience in an otherwise convincing Indian victory. He had already scored 80 from 75 balls, stabilised a chase damaged by the early dismissals of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, and built a 101-run partnership with Shreyas Iyer. Axar Patel and Washington Sundar completed the job after he left.Shubman Gill has issues with cramps during the 1st ODI. (ANI Pic Service)Yet Gill’s uncertain availability for the second ODI carries a significance beyond the loss of India’s best batter from the opening game. Cardiff could become an unscheduled examination of…

The day opens with a brighter current for you, Pisces. The Moon supports learning, expression, and intelligent choices, while Jupiter gives confidence to think ahead. You may feel more active than usual, more willing to get moving, answer pending calls, finish paperwork, or sort out a plan that’s been hanging in the air.Students especially benefit from this enthusiasm. It makes the mind more engaged and receptive. It is less prone to drift into thoughts of the day. That’s saying something for Pisces. If you use the morning well, the rest of the day can unfold with satisfying momentum. There’s a…

Ever heard of the Zero Temple? Hidden inside the grand Gwalior Fort in Madhya Pradesh is a shrine that changed the course of human civilisation. We are talking about the Chaturbhuj Temple, famous as the Zero Temple. It is home to one of the world’s oldest known stone inscriptions featuring the numeral “0” in the decimal place-value system. From outside the temple appears modest, but its contribution to mathematics is beyond any value. For travellers, history enthusiasts, and science lovers, visiting the Zero Temple is like standing at the birthplace of one of humanity’s greatest inventions.The history of the Zero…

Srinagar, Jul 15: The damage to Kashmir’s wetlands is no longer confined to shrinking water bodies, disappearing birds or encroaching settlements. Increasingly, the scars of human activity are being found beneath the surface — in the very soil that sustains these fragile ecosystems.A new study published in the prestigious journal Scientific Reports has revealed alarming signs of ecological degradation in some of the Valley’s most important wetlands, with urbanisation, waste disposal, tourism, grazing and agricultural activities steadily eroding soil health and microbial diversity.The study, titled “Demystifying the impacts of anthropogenic activities on physicochemical characteristics of soil in four wetlands of Kashmir Valley, India”, was…

The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave its nod for establishing the country’s first night safari at Lucknow’s Kukrail Reserve Forest and directed the state to comply with all conditions imposed by various statutory authorities along with prior clearances before starting the work.The court allowed the state to proceed with the project as per the CEC recommendations. (Representational Photo/Unsplash)The bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant passed the order on an application moved by the Uttar Pradesh government after obtaining the opinion of the expert body, Central Empowered Committee (CEC), which granted conditional approval for the project.Also Read:…