The Cyclone Fani in South East Bay of Bengal is expected to intensify into a severe cyclonic storm by this noon. India Meteorology Department said it will further intensify into a very severe cyclonic storm by tomorrow morning. It is moving in a north westwards direction at a speed of 21 kilometres per hour.

Cyclone Fani, when observed last time, was laying centred at 910 kilometres south-east of Chennai and 1090 km from Machilipattinam.It is expected to continue to travel in North West direction till Wednesday and then recurve to proceed in the north-northeast direction.

Kerala is expected to get light to moderate rain at many places today and tomorrow and heavy rain at isolated pockets. A few places in north coastal Tamil Nadu and south coastal Andhra Pradesh are predicted to have light to moderate showers for the next two days.
A few places in coastal Odisha are set to get moderate rainfall on May 2nd and heavy rainfall on May 3rd. Fishermen have been asked not to venture into the deep sea in South East Bay and the adjoining equatorial Indian Ocean.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence Ministers' meeting in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek today. She arrived in Bishkek yesterday on a three-day visit to Kyrgyzstan. Mrs Sitharaman will also hold bilateral meetings with her counterparts from some SCO member countries on the sidelines of the conclave. 

The SCO Defence Ministers will explore ways to further boost defence and security cooperation among the member countries in the wake of evolving security challenges in the region.  India is also keen on deepening its security-related cooperation with SCO and its Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS) which specifically deals with issues relating to security and defence. 

The SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the Presidents of China, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.  India and Pakistan became its full members in 2017.  Kyrgyzstan is the Chair of the SCO at present.

The alliance will prioritise, plan, conduct, scale up, translate relevant research in a coordinated and combinatorial way to have a tangible impact on population at risk for malaria

ICMR launched Malaria Elimination Research Alliance (MERA)- India and organised the stakeholders’ meeting at ICMR headquarters, New Delhi to have vibrant discussions on the roadmap of the alliance. National and international leaders of malaria research, officials from Government of India, NGOs participated in the day-long meeting.

Indian Council of Medical Research has established ‘Malaria Elimination Research Alliance-India (MERA-India)’ which is a conglomeration of partners working on malaria control. The principal activity of the alliance is to prioritise, plan, conduct, scale up and translate relevant research in a coordinated and combinatorial way in order to have a tangible impact of this research on the population at risk for malaria.

5th Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) Media Summit on Climate Action and Disaster Preparedness began in Kathmandu on Thursday.

The theme of the two-day summit is “Media Solutions for Sustainable Future: Saving Lives, Building Resilient Communities”. 

Nepal’s Minister for Communication and Information Technology Gokul Prasad Baskota inaugurated the summit. The basic aim of the summit is to address the issue of fully utilizing media’s potential of accelerating climate action and disaster preparedness and connect stakeholders to media professionals for collaboration and joint practical projects. 

According to ABU, over 200 participants including political leaders, representatives of UN agencies and NGOs, climate change and disaster management experts, scientists and media persons are attending the event.

India bagged a gold and two silver medals at the Asian Boxing Championships in Bangkok today. 

With this, India has won 13 medals, including two gold, four silver and seven bronze. 

Boxer Amit Panghal picked up his second successive gold medal of the year, claiming the top honours in the 52-kilogram category. Panghal defeated Korea's Kim Inkyu Korea.
 
National champion Deepak Singh and Kavinder Singh Bisht in 56-kilogram category signed off with silver medals after close losses.

India's Divyansh Singh Panwar today secured the country's fourth Olympic quota place in shooting by winning a silver in the ISSF World Cup in Beijing. 

The 17-year-old teenager Divyansh finished second in the 10m air rifle event in the International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup for pistol and rifle shooters.

 This is India's fourth 2020 Tokyo Olympic quota after Anjum Moudgil and Apurvi Chandela (10m air rifle women) and Saurabh Choudhary (10m Air Pistol men) had secured berths in the earlier World Cups and last year's World Championship. 

NASA's robotic Mars InSight lander has recorded a likely mars quake for the first time ever. 

The US space agency said the faint seismic signal, detected by the lander's Seismic instrument, was recorded on April 6 this year. 

NASA said this is the first recorded trembling that appears to have come from inside the planet, as opposed to being caused by forces above the surface, such as wind. 

Scientists still are examining the data to determine the exact cause of the signal.

In Wrestling, India's Divya Kakran and Manju Kumari bagged bronze medals for the country in the women's competition of the Asian Championships in Xi'an, China on Thursday.

Asian Games bronze-medallist Kakran defeated Battsetseg Soronzonbold of Mongolia via fall in the playoffs of the 68-kilogram category to finish on the podium.   

It was double delight for India as Manju also secured a bronze medal earlier in the day by beating Vietnam's Thi Huong Dao 11-2. 

Seema, who also made it to the playoffs, however, failed to register a hat-trick of bronze medals for India after losing to Valentina Ivanovna Islamova Brik of Kazakhstan 5-11 in the 50-kilogram category.

Sri Lankan defence secretary resigned on Thursday taking responsibility for the suicide bomb attacks on Sunday as the country remains tense in the aftermath. 

Hemasiri Fernando said that while there had been no failure on his own part, he was taking responsibility for failures of some institutions he headed as the secretary of defence. 

He was asked to resign yesterday following reports that security agencies failed to act on intelligence inputs about the attacks. 

In a related development, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has confirmed one of the suicide bombers involved spent time in Australia on a student and a graduate skilled visa. 

Meteorological department in Chennai has issued a warning that a low-pressure system over the south Bay of Bengal would turn into a cyclonic storm which has been named Fani. 

The system which is a  low pressure now in the Indian Ocean adjoining the south-east Bay of Bengal is expected to turn into a depression during the next 24 hours.

A weather warning has been issued to the fishermen to return to the coasts immediately as the sea along the coasts of Tamil Nadu and South Andhra are on the predicted areas. 

Tamil Nadu government has taken stock of the situation and has ed the district administrations to keep a vigil.

Rain watchers say that if the cyclone reaches Chennai it might bring water to meet the summer demands.