Finnish telecom gearmaker Nokia on Monday said it has signed an agreement with the Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya (GSV) for carrying out joint research related to 5G/6G communications in the transportation and logistics sector.

Nokia and Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya, a university under the Ministry of Railways, will collaborate on research opportunities in 5G/6G communications targeting air, land and sea transportation use cases, as well as standards development, smart factory/ automation, and AI/GenAI labs, a company statement said.

The MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) was signed at Rail Bhawan, New Delhi, in the presence of railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who is also the Chancellor of Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya.

The Defence Accounts Department (DAD), which functions under the administrative control of the Ministry of Defence will onboard the Bank of India, Canara Bank, Central Bank of India and Utkarsh Small Finance Bank to provide the last mile connectivity to the pensioners.

According to the Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) signed in Delhi, the web-based SPARSH [System for Pension Administration (Raksha)] Service Centres will be available across 1,128 branches of the four banks across the country.

The Department of School Education signed an MoU with the National Book Trust in New Delhi to create an institutional framework for the Digital Library Platform, Rashtriya e-Pustakalaya. Speaking on the occasion, Secretary of the Department of Higher Education K. Sanjay Murthy said that the Rashtriya e-Pustakalaya will be available round-the-clock, irrespective of the geographic location of the readers, making books more accessible to them. He also added that the problem of last mile presence of a library for many states will be solved with Rashtriya e-Pustakalaya. He hoped that in the coming 2-3 years, there will be over 10 thousand books in more than 100 languages.

From this academic year, around 4 lakh students in class VII in state syllabus schools will get to learn Artificial Intelligence (AI) with its introduction in the revised Information & Communication Technology (ICT) textbook. With this initiative, the state has ensured uniform exposure to AI for all students, unlike offering it as an optional subject.

“From next year, curriculum of classes VIII to X will also include in-depth exploration of AI,” Kerala Infrastructure for Technology and Education (KITE) CEO K Anvar Sadath, who is also the chairman of the ICT textook committee, said. KITE, the technological arm of the general education department, has started AI training for 80,000 secondary school teachers.

Hyderabad, one of the bustling metropolitan cities of the country, ceased to be the common capital of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh from Sunday as per the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014.

Beginning June 2, Hyderabad will be the capital city of Telangana only.

Hyderabad was made the capital city of the two states for 10 years when the bifurcation of undivided Andhra Pradesh was carried out in 2014.

Telangana came into existence on June 2, 2014.

"On and from the appointed day (June 2), Hyderabad in the existing State of Andhra Pradesh, shall be the common capital of the state of Telangana and the state of Andhra Pradesh for such period not exceeding ten years," said the AP Reorganisation Act.

South Korea has officially launched its space agency, the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA), to lead policy and industrial development in its aerospace sector. The establishment was made possible after the Country’s national assembly passed a special law in January to unify government organizations in charge of space policy and projects. The new agency is based in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province, with an annual budget of 758.9 billion won ($556 million).

Aligning with the government’s policy, KASA will subsequently establish a roadmap for Korea’s space exploration, aiming to promote reusable launch vehicles, development of South Korea’s global positioning system (GPS) and a lunar lander program. Furthermore, the agency has plans to land its lunar lander on the moon in 2032 and to design and develop engines to enter the commercial launch service market.

In what may be a breakthrough for India in vaccine production and development of monoclonal antibodies (MABs) against the Nipah virus, the Institute of Advanced Virology (IAV) in Kerala has developed non-infectious Nipah virus-like particles (VLPs).

This will also help in testing the effectiveness of preventing the entry of Nipah in target cells. This is a major development as India used to import antibodies.

During the 2018 outbreak, a non-patented drug developed by Christopher C Broder from Australia was imported for compassionate use from the University of Queensland.

A distinct, stunning blue-coloured ant species was discovered in Siang Valley, a "biodiversity hotspot" of Arunachal Pradesh, in a new research from India.

Accompanying the 'Abhor' expedition in 1911-12, a punitive military one against the indigenous people of Siang Valley, was a team of researchers to document its natural history and geography.

After exploring and mapping large parts of the valley, the team catalogued every plant, frog, lizard, fish, bird and mammal and insects they found. Their discoveries were published in several volumes from 1912 to 1922 in the Records of the Indian Museum.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has once again expanded our understanding of the universe. Astronomers using the powerful infrared telescope have discovered what appear to be the two earliest and most distant galaxies ever observed, dating back to just 300 million years after the Big Bang. This groundbreaking discovery, detailed in a recent paper published on the preprint server arXiv, not only pushes the boundaries of our knowledge about the cosmic dawn but also raises new questions about galaxy formation in the early universe.

The Netherlands has emerged as India's third largest export destination after the U.S. and UAE during 2023-24, even as the country's merchandise shipments dipped by over 3%, according to the Commerce Ministry data.

The main commodities which registered healthy exports growth in the Netherlands include petroleum products ($14.29 billion), electrical goods, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals in the last fiscal.

India's trade surplus with the Netherlands has increased to $17.4 billion in the last fiscal from $13 billion in 2022-23.