The cricket world has been rocked in the last five weeks by a string of high-profile retirements, by superstars of different vintages from different formats of the game. It started with Rohit Sharma, the Indian captain, pulling the plug on his Test career on May 7, five days before his predecessor, the talismanic Virat Kohli, followed suit.

Their decisions weren’t completely unexpected though when they were formalised, there was a touch of the sudden, leaving a huge gap in Indian cricket. These were followed by Glenn Maxwell bidding adieu to One-Day International cricket so that he could channel his energies towards the T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka early next year, and South African stumper Heinrich Klaasen walking away from white-ball formats internationally – he had already retired from Tests – within a few hours of each other.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)’s 2025 State of World Population (SOWP) Report, titled, ‘The Real Fertility Crisis’, states that one in three adult Indians (36%) face unintended pregnancies, while 30% experience unfulfilled desire for having either more or fewer children. Notably, 23% faced both, said the report released on Tuesday (July 10) morning.

The report calls for a shift from panic over falling fertility to addressing unmet reproductive goals and stated that millions of individuals are not able to realise their real fertility goals, which is a real crisis and not the underpopulation or overpopulation. Andrea M. Wojnar, UNFPA India Representative said that the answer lies in greater reproductive agency – a person’s ability to make free and informed 150% choices about sex, contraception and starting a family.

The National Highway Authority of India has for the first time outlined its strategy to monetize assets to unlock value and increase public-private participation for developing infrastructure in India.

The state-run agency’s ‘Asset Monetization Strategy for the Road Sector’ provides a blueprint to mobilize capital through toll-operate-transfer (ToT) model, infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs), and securitization.

The strategy is anchored in three core pillars: value maximization of government road assets; transparency of processes and dissemination of investor-relevant information; and market development through deepening the investor base as well as promoting stakeholder engagement.

In the dry heartland of Rajasthan, a transformative rural water conservation model is set to benefit farmers in the upcoming monsoon. Those behind the initiative, which relies on 50 scientifically designed and climate-resilient farm ponds at Kukas village in the State capital of Jaipur, claim it has a 10-crore-litre seasonal monsoon run-off conservation potential.

The village panchayat in Jaipur district’s Amber block is the second place in the State selected for the rainwater harvesting enterprise, following the successful installation of farm ponds in the rainfed land of Dausa district. As many as 250 ponds dug in the agricultural land of Dausa have enabled the farmers to get perennial crops.

On the eve of the World Environment Day, CM Nitish Kumar on Wednesday inaugurated Bikram Lock Canal Bank Solar Energy Project in Patna district.

The project officials informed the CM that solar energy plants are being installed in the state with the goal of promoting green energy, as part of the 10th component of the Bihar govt's Jal-Jeevan-Hariyali Abhiyan.

"A 2-megawatt solar power project has been installed on the land of the water resources department near Bikram Lock along the main canal. Under an agreement with the energy department, a private company will provide electricity to it at a rate of Rs 3.10 per unit for 25 years. Residents of Bikram and nearby areas in Patna district can now avail affordable, green and clean energy," an official told the CM.

With the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) undertaking a base revision exercise and expansion of its data indicators, the key economic datasets — GDP, IIP and CPI — will see a new base from next year onwards, MoSPI Secretary Saurabh Garg said. In an interview with Aanchal Magazine, Garg also said that the weights and items for the new retail inflation basket will now be linked with Household Consumption and Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2023-24 instead of the earlier decision to derive it from HCES 2022-23.

The base year revision exercise of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and Consumer Price Index (CPI) is currently underway. For GDP, the new series is scheduled to be released on February 27, 2026 with financial year 2022-23 as base year. For IIP, 2022 -23 has been tentatively identified as the revised base. IIP on revised base would be released from 2026-27. For CPI, 2024 has been identified as the revised base year as the item basket and the weightage of the items would be decided based on the NSO’s Household Consumer Expenditure Survey (HCES) conducted in 2023-24. The new CPI series is expected to be published from the first quarter of 2026.

The 11th BRICS Parliamentary Forum concluded in Brasilia, Brazil, on June 5, with participating parliaments from all 10 BRICS member countries unanimously condemning the recent terrorist attack in Pahalgam, India. The forum also saw India assume the chairmanship of the 12th BRICS Parliamentary Forum, to be hosted next year.

Led by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, the Indian delegation played a key role in shaping the joint declaration. The expanded BRICS parliamentary forum now includes India, Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa, Iran, the UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia.

A major outcome of the two-day event was the collective agreement among member nations to adopt a zero-tolerance policy on terrorism. India’s firm stance on countering terrorism—through enhanced intelligence sharing, curbing financial support to terror groups, and preventing the misuse of emerging technologies—received widespread support.

The UNESCO Regional Office for South Asia, in partnership with the IndiaAI Mission under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Ikigai Law, hosted the fifth and final stakeholder consultation on the AI Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM) at the Shangri-La Eros Hotel in New Delhi on June 3. Over 200 experts from government, academia, industry, and civil society convened to strategize the responsible adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in India.

This consultation marked the culmination of a series of five sessions held across New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Guwahati, organized under the joint AI RAM initiative by UNESCO and MeitY’s IndiaAI Mission. The initiative is focused on crafting an India-specific AI policy report that identifies strengths, pinpoints growth opportunities, and offers actionable recommendations for ethical AI adoption across various sectors. The RAM serves as a diagnostic tool to bolster governmental capacity for AI regulation and institutional governance.

At a time when habitat loss and climate change threaten countless species, the discovery of a new species of parasitic wasp - named ‘Losgna Occidentalis’ from Chandigarh has drawn attention to the unexplored richness of India’s biodiversity.

A recent study published in Zootaxa, a peer-reviewed scientific journal for animal taxonomists, titled - ‘Rediscovery and description of a new species of Losgna (Cameron 1903): reviving a forgotten ichneumonid genus (Darwin wasps) in India’ - points out the rediscovery of the Losgna genus in India, after close to six decades, and describes “a new species collected from an urban dry scrub forest in Chandigarh.”

The State Public Health Laboratory, one of the apex referral laboratories in the State, has developed its own molecular diagnostic test kits to identify five common species of free living amoeba (FLA) which are toxic to humans and which can cause amoebic meningoencephalitis. A highly fatal brain infection, cases of amoebic meningoencephalitis are being reported frequently in Kerala now.

“It was a proud moment for us when we identified Acanthamoeba spp. as the pathogenic organism in one of the acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) samples that we received from the Thiruvananthapuram Government Medical College on Thursday. It was also the first human sample in which we could identify the organism, after we developed the molecular diagnostic test kits six months ago,” says S. Sunija, Director of the State PH Lab.