The BRICS Heads of Anti-Drug Agencies Meeting will begin today in Guwahati, Assam. The two-day event is being organised by the Narcotics Control Bureau under the Ministry of Home Affairs. The meeting will bring together heads of anti-drug agencies and senior officials from BRICS member countries to strengthen cooperation against drug trafficking and substance abuse.

Akashvani’s correspondent reports that the BRICS Heads of Anti-Drug Agencies Meeting in Guwahati will focus on combating synthetic drugs and precursor diversion, strengthening intelligence sharing and operational coordination, and enhancing capacity building and institutional cooperation.

Delegates will discuss emerging challenges such as new psychoactive substances, darknet-enabled trafficking, cryptocurrency-linked financial flows, and the misuse of precursor chemicals. India will also showcase its efforts to combat drug abuse and trafficking, including the recently released Vision Document on Narcotics Control 2026-2029. During the meeting, member countries will deliberate on strategies to address evolving drug-related threats and strengthen international cooperation.

Odisha on Friday (July 3, 2026) signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) with ACME Group and Japan’s IHI Corporation for multiple projects that collectively entail investment of ₹67,000 crore. This comes a day after Adani Enterprises and UAE’s International Holding Company (IHC) Group signed a memorandum of understanding with the State, marking the its largest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

The projects were aimed at promoting collaboration in clean energy, advanced manufacturing and industrial development.

The collaboration is expected to facilitate technology transfer, promote sustainable industrialisation and generate significant employment and economic opportunities, the statement said.

The Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS) convened its fifth Executive Committee meeting in New Delhi yesterday under the chairmanship of the Secretary in the Ayush Ministry, Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha.

The Ministry said the meeting marked a significant step towards strengthening the country’s evidence-based Ayurveda research ecosystem with the launch of three major initiatives aimed at promoting Ayurveda education, research, scientific communication, and digital governance.

Addressing the meeting, Mr Kotecha appreciated the significant contributions of CCRAS in advancing evidence-based Ayurveda research, education, and public health.

He lauded the Council’s sustained efforts in strengthening the national research ecosystem and encouraged it to continue pursuing innovation and excellence.

Marking a historic milestone for the Indian tea industry, an Assam tea estate has successfully produced and launched India’s first-ever commercially manufactured “Matcha” tea.

The first batch of 5 kg of Indian Matcha, produced by the Chota Tingrai Tea Estate in upper Assam’s Tinsukia district, was sold at the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre through auctioneers J Thomas & Co. Pvt. Limited to the Guwahati-based buyers Sheosons Chai Co on Friday at Rs 3,000 per kg.

Matcha is a highly sought-after, premium green tea product primarily manufactured in Japan. It is currently facing a global shortage due to skyrocketing demand worldwide.

History has many hiding places. In West Bengal’s Chandannagar, it settled inside sandesh. This old French river town entrusted its memory to a sweet no larger than the palm of a hand. It looks ordinary but beneath its unassuming exterior lies a trick worthy of a magician: a pocket of fragrant syrup that somehow refuses to escape.

On June 26, 2026, the jalbhara was awarded the Geographical Indication (GI) tag. The sweet, made by Surjya Modak and his son Siddheshwar Modak, has officially been acknowledged as a confection inseparable from the town where they imagined it nearly 220 years ago.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated the new terminal building at Jodhpur airport and launched the Modified UDAN Scheme, aimed at boosting regional air connectivity and aviation-led development.

Modi arrived in Jodhpur and was received at the airport by Governor Haribhau Bagade, Union Minister and Jodhpur MP Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, and Chief Minister Bhajanlal Sharma.

He inaugurated the terminal by unveiling a plaque and pressing a remote button, followed by a walkthrough of the new facility.

Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Sarbananda Sonowal, today unveiled the first export-import shipping container manufactured in India for global shipping major A.P. Moller-Maersk in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh.

The Ministry said that the milestone reflects the Government’s unwavering commitment to transforming Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat, Make in India and Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047 into tangible outcomes. A.P. Moller-Maersk has also placed an order for one thousand additional India-manufactured shipping containers with DCM Shriram Group during the event. This marks the beginning of a long-term commercial partnership that is expected to strengthen India’s position in the global maritime value chain.

The development aligns with the Government’s efforts to promote domestic manufacturing through policy interventions, including the ten thousand crore rupees Container Manufacturing Promotion Scheme (CMPS) framework.

A banyan tree in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, estimated to be around 700 years old, has been identified by researchers as the world's oldest scientifically dated banyan tree, the Science and Technology Ministry said on Friday.

Using radiocarbon dating, a method that relies only on scientific evidence rather than historical records or folklore, a team of scientists from Lucknow's Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences established that the nearly 700-year-old tree is likely a surviving remnant of a natural forest that once existed in the region, the Ministry said.

Traditionally, estimating the age of banyan trees relied on folklore, local stories or historical records, which were often inaccurate. These living representations of history were not scientifically dated previously due to a lack of a clear protocol, it pointed out.

In a serious bid to regulate the consumption of high-caffeine beverages among youth, the Maharashtra government on Friday announced a comprehensive ban on the sale of high energy drinks like Sting within a 500-metre radius of schools across the state.

The directive was issued in the State Legislative Assembly by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Minister Narhari Zirwal, following a question raised by BJP MLA Vikram Pachpute.

Raising the issue in the House, MLA Vikram Pachpute highlighted the severe health hazards posed by the popular energy drink.

In the deepest, coldest corners of experimental physics, the rules of our everyday world completely break down. Now, an international team of scientists has pushed those boundaries even further, successfully creating a highly unusual and exotic new form of matter.

The breakthrough, which explores the strange landscape of quantum mechanics, has revealed what researchers are calling a "fractional Fermi sea." This research was published in Physical Review Letters and is available at the pre-print server arXiv.

To achieve this feat, experimental physicists at the University of Innsbruck in Austria began by cooling a cloud of roughly 70,000 cesium atoms down to just a few nanoKelvins. This temperature is a mere fraction of a degree above absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature in the universe.