Union Home Minister Amit Shah during the 'Vitasta Mahotsav' in Srinagar, said that this cultural festival has witnessed many kinds of research in Kashmir for thousands of years and also has the privilege of being an amalgamation place of many cultures. Amit Shah was addressing the Vitasta Mahotsav organised by the Ministry of Culture as the chief guest in Srinagar on Friday as part of his 2-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir.

Ruby Sinha takes over from Shabana Nasim, who has become the Executive Director of BRICS CCI and Chief Patron of BRICS CCI WE.

BRICS Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BRICS CCI) has appointed Ruby Sinha as the president of BRICS CCI WE, the women’s vertical of the body, for three years.

The UK-based Lloyds Banking Group has decided to invest in a new technology centre in Hyderabad. The Lloyds Technology Centre is a part of the group’s £3 billion strategic investment over the next three years to transform its digital offering, it said in its statement.

Indian and American startups will now be able to co-develop and co-produce advanced technologies, including in areas of space artificial intelligence, under the India-United States Defence Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X) which was launched at an event in Washington Thursday.

The launch coincided with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s three-day State visit to the US. What makes the launch critical is that it comes within months of operationalising the US-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) – NSA Ajit Doval met his US counterpart Jack Sullivan in February. Several startups of both countries are working in areas of critical technologies.

Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Narendra Singh Tomar today launched the PM Kisan Mobile App with a face authentication feature. Through this App, remote farmers can do e-KYC by scanning their faces without OTP or fingerprint.
 
Speaking on this occasion, Mr Tomar said that PM-Kisan is an innovative scheme whose benefits are being given by the central government to the farmers without any middlemen.

The former Urdu newsreader of Akashvani, Kausar Rizvi passed away in Dubai today. He was 79.
 
Kausar Rizvi was associated with the Urdu unit of the News Services Division of Akashvani in New Delhi for about 30 years from 1975 to 2004. He began his career as an announcer in Akashvani Varanasi. He will be laid to rest in his home town Lucknow.

The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur has successfully conducted a test flight for cloud seeding. The project was initiated at IIT Kanpur a few years ago and is headed by Prof. Manindra Agrawal from the Computer Science and Engineering Department. The experiment was conducted with due approval from the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation).
 
The test flight went up to an approximate height of 5000 ft. The short flight took off and came back to the IIT Kanpur Flight Lab airstrip, after successfully completing the test ride.

Hockey Madhya Pradesh won the 13th Hockey India Junior Men National Championship 2023 after defeating Hockey Chandigarh in the final at the iconic Birsa Munda Hockey Stadium. Meanwhile, Hockey Haryana defeated the Hockey Association of Odisha to finish third in the competition. Hockey Madhya Pradesh defeated Chandigarh 4-2 in the final. The goalscorers for Hockey Madhya Pradesh were Shreyas Dhupe (17', 46'), Mohd Konain Dad (25'), and Ali Ahmad (52'). Meanwhile, Sumit (9') and Surinder Singh (31') scored for Hockey Chandigarh.

Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) has started exporting the world’s first Nano urea invented and manufactured indigenously in India to the US. An agreement to export Nano urea was signed between IFFCO and Kapoor Enterprises Inc of California.

It came amid Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ongoing visit to the US. The nano urea is a revolution in the agriculture sector as it has the potential to reduce storage space and money. A 500 ml bottle of IFFCO Nano Urea Liquid has the capacity to replace at least one bag of conventional Urea. In a tweet, Managing Director and CEO of IFFCO Dr. U S Awasthi said the Nano Urea has the capacity to reduce chemical fertiliser usage and to control air and water pollution as well as save soil. So far, India has sold more than 5.7 crore bottles in the country.

American chipmaker Micron will invest 825 million dollars to build Chip Assembly and Testing Facility in Gujarat. The combined investment by Macron and Centre and Gujarat government will amount to 2.75 billion dollars.

Micron said in a statement that phased construction of the new assembly and test facility in Gujarat is expected to begin this year itself. Phase 1, which will include five lakh square feet of planned cleanroom space, will start to become operational in late 2024, and Micron will ramp capacity gradually over time in line with global demand trends.