Nasa has launched a groundbreaking mission to investigate Jupiter and its moon, Europa, one of the prime locations in the search for life beyond Earth.

The spacecraft, named Europa Clipper, launched on Monday, is designed to study the moon’s icy surface and the subsurface ocean believed to exist beneath.

It was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center, with the mission costing $5.2 billion.

Europa Clipper will not directly search for life, but will assess whether Europa's environment could support it. The spacecraft will examine the moon’s ice-covered ocean, located relatively close to the surface. Although it won't hunt for microorganisms, its findings may pave the way for future missions aimed at detecting life.

The Election Commission (EC) is set to announce the poll dates for assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand on Tuesday. The announcement will be made during a press conference at 3.30 pm.

With several upcoming festivals, including Diwali from October 29 to November 3, Chhath, and Dev Deepawali, the EC is likely to schedule the polling in the second week of November.

This will allow voters, particularly those temporarily migrating for the festivals, ample time to return to their registered voting locations.

The elections will cover bypolls of over 45 assembly as well as Lok Sabha seats across various states including Wayanad and Basirhat. Wayanad's seat became vacant following Rahul Gandhi's resignation, while the Basirhat bypoll is due to the death of Trinamool MP Sheikh Nurul Islam.

Karnataka can become the gaming and animation capital of India, and Asia said Priyank Kharge, Minister of Information Technology and Biotechnology, Government of Karnataka, addressing the second edition of the Indian Gaming Convention (IGC) in New Delhi, organised by the Internet and Mobile Association of India. He announced plans to set up a gaming accelerator by the end of this financial year.

“Karnataka is the fourth largest technology cluster in the world. We run over 27 centres of excellence (COE) and are setting up a COE specifically for gaming. I am keen to host India’s first government-sponsored eSports Olympics to ensure we remain the leaders in this sector and be the most disruptive innovation capital in the world,” he added.

Speaking on the scale of India’s gaming sector, Shri Kharge said, “The global AVGC market is estimated to be more than $366 billion with animation and visual effects constituting 46per cent share and gaming 54per cent share. The country boasts as the world’s second-largest gaming community, comprising 42.5 crore gamers, and from 2020 to 2023, the online gaming segment in India experienced a rise of 28per cent which was a market size of 16428 crore in 2023 and in the next four years, it should double.”

A week after Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s first official bilateral visit to India after he was voted to power late last year following a campaign centred on an ‘India out’ policy, senior diplomat Aishath Azeema is set to replace Ibrahim Shaheeb as Maldives’ top envoy to India.

The decision to appoint a new ambassador to New Delhi comes as the island nation looks to strengthen and restore its relationship with India, which the news portal Sun.mv described as one of the Maldives’ “closest bilateral partners.”

On Monday, Muizzu sent a letter to the Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee seeking approval for Azeema’s appointment. The Committee granted its approval on Tuesday, the PTI reported.

India was on Sunday awarded the hosting rights of ISSF junior world Cup next year by the international shooting federation, with its president Luciano Rossi saying the sport's world governing body will back the country if it is interested in hosting more big-ticket tournaments in near future.

Rossi is in the national capital to attend the season-ending World Cup Final of the International Shooting Sport Federation, in which the year's top performers compete against each other.

"I would like to congratulate India for their stellar performance at the recently concluded Junior World Championship in Peru. I would also like to inform that we at ISSF will support India's application to host the Junior World Cup in 2025 and other future international events as and when we are approached by NRAI," Rossi told the media.

Navi, a fintech company owned by Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal, has become India's fifth-largest ecosystem player on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), clocking 120.41 million transactions amounting to Rs 6,549.1 crore in September.

The Bengaluru-based company, which surpassed Amazon Pay’s UPI volumes in August, was just shy of 20 million transactions from the fourth-largest player, Cred, which processed 140 million transactions last month, data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) shows.

In August, Navi processed 88.71 million transactions with a cumulative value of Rs 4,651 crore, reflecting a 35.7 per cent growth in volumes on a month-on-month basis.

India has surged to become the second-biggest supplier of restricted critical technologies to Russia, US and European officials said, highlighting the challenge in efforts to choke off exports fueling President Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

Indian exports of restricted items such as microchips, circuits and machine tools surpassed $60 million in both April and May, about double from earlier months this year, and leaped to $95 million in July, according to the officials, who asked not to be identified discussing private assessments. India is exceeded only by China.

Even more frustrating to Ukraine’s allies, some of them said, is that envoys who raise the issue have received little response from their Indian counterparts. India’s Ministry of External Affairs declined to comment when asked about the trend.

SpaceX in its fifth Starship test flight on Sunday returned the rocket’s towering first stage booster back to its Texas launch pad for the first time using giant mechanical arms, achieving another novel engineering feat in the company’s push to build a reusable moon and Mars vehicle.

The rocket’s first stage “Super Heavy” booster lifted off at 7:25 a.m. CT (1225 GMT) from SpaceX‘s Boca Chica, Texas launch facilities, sending the Starship second stage rocket toward space before separating at an altitude of roughly 70 km (40 miles) to begin its return to land – the most daring part of the test flight.

The Super Heavy booster re-lit three of its 33 Raptor engines to slow its speedy descent back to SpaceX‘s launch site, as it targeted the launch pad and tower it had blasted off from. The tower, taller than the Statue of Liberty at over 400 feet, is fitted with two large metal arms at the top.

With its engines roaring, the 233 foot (71 metres)-tall Super Heavy booster fell into the launch tower’s enclosing arms, hooking itself in place by tiny, protruding bars under the four forward grid fins it had used to steer itself through the air.

The Telangana government has officially commenced a comprehensive household caste survey, marking the state as the third in the country to undertake such an initiative, following Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.

This survey is aimed at ensuring targeted and equitable distribution of resources across all communities.

Orders to begin the door-to-door survey were issued by Chief Secretary Santhi Kumari on Friday. The government has set a timeline of 60 days for the survey’s completion, with the Planning Department appointed as the nodal agency for its execution.

“This survey is crucial for planning and implementing various opportunities- socio-economic, educational, employment, and political—for the upliftment of Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and other marginalized groups within the state,” the order stated.

In IWLF National Weightlifting Championships, Harmanpreet Kaur set a new national record in 76 kg Senior section women category at Rainbow Khelo India Residential Academy, Nagrota Bagwan in Himachal Pradesh yesterday. Harmanpreet lifted 127 kilograms in clean and jerk and 223 kilograms in total. Meanwhile in the Junior section, Heena lifted 123 kg in clean & jerk and 211 kg in total to set a new record in the 76 kg category.

In the total category, G. Ravishankar also set a new national record with a combined lift of 311 kg, surpassing the previous record of 304 kg held by Ramkaran Prajapati in the Junior section.