In a discovery that has sent ripples of excitement through the conservation community, a pair of rare dusky eagle owls has been sighted in the Phato tourism zone of the Terai West forest division, adjacent to the Corbett Tiger Reserve in Uttarakhand.

The sighting is being hailed as a landmark event, as the species—known for its highly elusive nature—was last officially recorded in the region over 15 years ago in 2010. The rare pair was documented by naturalist Himanshu Tiruva, whose photographs have since gone viral among ornithologists and wildlife enthusiasts.

"The dusky eagle owl is a master of camouflage and is incredibly wary of human presence," said Tiruva. "Finding them in the dense canopy after such a long hiatus is not just a personal milestone but a significant record for the state’s avian diversity."

The High Court of Karnataka has directed the State government to issue a further notification to include the left-out areas of the Kappatagudda reserve forest as part of the Kappatagudda Wildlife Sanctuary in Gadag district, as per the resolution passed at the 11th meeting of the Karnataka State Wildlife Board (KSWB) in January 2019.

A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice C.M. Poonacha issued the direction after noticing that only 244.15 sq. km area was declared as a wildlife sanctuary in the May 16, 2019, notification, even though the KSWB had on January 9, 2019, unanimously resolved to declare the entire 300 sq. km of Kappatagudda reserve forest as wildlife sanctuary.

AI robot powers the next generation of urban sanitation in Thiruvananthapuram as the local municipal corporation deployed the G-SPIDER system to manage high-risk waste removal. This initiative, launched under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0, aims to ensure human-free canal cleaning in inaccessible areas.

According to the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs, the technology provides a solution for the Amayizhanchan canal near the Thampanoor railway station premises, where restricted vertical clearance and continuous water flow make conventional maintenance difficult.

The Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation commissioned the AI-powered robotic canal-cleaning system to phase out manual scavenging. Developed by Genrobotic Innovations, the G-SPIDER robot operates on a Cable-Driven Parallel Robotics architecture.

Former Indian Ambassador to the United States Taranjit Singh Sandhu has been appointed as the new Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, according to official communiqué issued by President’s Secretariat.

Sandhu will replace Vinai Kumar Saxena, who has served as Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor since May 26, 2022. Saxena has now been appointed as the Lieutenant Governor of Ladakh, replacing Kavinder Gupta, who will take charge as Governor of Himachal Pradesh.

The appointments are part of a broader reshuffle of Governors and Lieutenant Governors across several states and Union Territories announced by President Droupadi Murmu. The changes will come into effect once the appointees assume charge of their respective offices.

The US has tested the unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile, dubbed the "doomsday missile", amid a raging war with Iran.

The test launch was equipped with two test re-entry vehicles and was conducted on Tuesday from the Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, the Air Force Global Strike Command said in an official statement on Wednesday.

The launch was scheduled years ago and is "not in response to world events", it said.

The inaugural Khelo India Tribal Games (KITG) will be held in three cities of Chhattisgarh—Raipur, Jagdalpur and Sarguja—between March 25 and April 6.

The KITG will feature seven medal sports—athletics, football, hockey, weightlifting, archery, swimming and wrestling. There will be two demonstration sports—mallakhamb and kabaddi. The Games will see representation from most states and Union Territories of India.

“The Khelo India Tribal Games are part of our expanding footprint that offers an opportunity and scope to every young person wanting to play a sport. It is part of PM Narendra Modi’s vision of a Viksit Bharat by 2047, and sports have a massive role to play in that journey,” said Sports Minister Mansukh Mandaviya.

NITI Aayog on Thursday said that it has signed a Statement of Intent (SOI) with UNICEF India to support strategic interventions in aspirational districts and aspirational blocks. The objective of this agreement to leverage the strengths of both institutions to advance efforts towards improving maternal and child nutrition outcomes in underserved areas. The SOI was signed by Rohit Kumar, Additional Secretary and Mission Director of the Aspirational Districts and Blocks Programme at NITI Aayog, and Arjan de Wagt, Deputy Representative at UNICEF India, the government think tank said.

“The partnership will support the promotion of multi-stakeholder engagement and strengthen implementation systems for nutrition and health interventions at the block level,” NITI Aayog said.

Korea district in Chhattisgarh has emerged as an example of community-led water conservation through the ‘Jal Sanchay Jan Bhagidari’ initiative, where farmers voluntarily dedicate a small portion of their land to support groundwater recharge and sustainable water management.

The initiative, carried out under the Aawa Paani Jhoki movement, encourages farmers to set aside five per cent of their agricultural land to create small recharge ponds and terraced pits. These structures capture rainwater directly in the fields, allowing it to seep into the soil and replenish groundwater.

According to official information, the initiative has helped retain rainwater that earlier flowed away during the monsoon season. The structures have improved soil moisture, reduced soil erosion and contributed to steady groundwater recharge in the region.

Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, while inaugurating various projects at Gujarat University in Ahmedabad, stated that Gujarat is committed to implementing the vision of women-led development given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

CM Patel was addressing the gathering on the occasion of naming the Gujarat University Convention Centre as Vidyagauri Nilkanth Sabhapuram, the inauguration of the newly built Research Park, and the launch of the fifth edition of herSTART.

The herSTART initiative by the Gujarat University Startup and Entrepreneurship Council (GUSEC) provides incubation, mentorship, and market access support to women-led startups. The fifth edition of the programme has commenced at Gujarat University.

IBM has launched its maiden Infrastructure Innovation Centre within its India Systems Development Lab (ISDL) campus, as it continues to focus on advanced infrastructure engineering and artificial intelligence (AI) innovation in one of its key markets.

Designed as a collaborative engineering hub, the innovation centre will bring together IBM’s systems architects and infrastructure specialists from ISDL to co-create AI solutions with clients, software makers, system integrators and GCCs. By bringing together cutting-edge infrastructure technologies, hybrid cloud capabilities and AI solutions under one roof, the center is designed to accelerate the development and deployment of secure, scalable and responsible enterprise AI systems.