Fifteen Cabinet ministers and 28 Ministers of State were sworn-in by President Ram Nath Kovind at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Wednesday evening.
The IMD said that the impact of Vayu had led to heavy to very heavy rainfall in isolated places in Saurashtra, while the entire state received scattered rainfall on Saturday.
More than 6 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been sent to 76 nations, while 4.5 crore doses have been administered to beneficiaries in the country till now, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said.
India received 41 per cent more rainfall than normal from October 1-21 with Uttarakhand alone recording more than five times its normal precipitation, IMD data showed on Thursday.
All those in the Union council of ministers with two portfolios are likely to lose at least one and major administrative changes are expected in a Cabinet reshuffle due on October 28 or 29 on the return of President Pranab Mukherjee from Durga Puja celebrations in West Bengal.
Vayalar Ravi on Tuesday became the fifth person to assume charge as minister for science and technology in three years since United Progressive Alliance returned to power in 2009.
A high-intensity earthquake hit the Central Asian country of Tajikistan on Monday, tremors of which were felt in parts of north India, including Delhi and Kashmir.
Over 1.4 lakh jobs are estimated to be created between March 2019 and March 2021 in various central government departments, according to the Union Budget presented on Monday. The strength of government establishments was 32,71,113 as on March 1, 2019, which is estimated to increase to 34,14,226 by the first day of next month - an increase of 1,43,113, it said. The budget documents have given a break-up of the jobs estimated to be created in central government departments between 2019 and March 2021.
India on Wednesdy said there was no likelihood of tsunami tidal waves being formed anywhere in the Indian Ocean region after an earthquake of 8.9 magnitude hit waters off western coast of northern Sumatra in Indonesia.
The experts said that climate change is not only raising temperatures and making India's heatwaves hotter, but also changing weather patterns that further drive dangerous weather extremes.
The earthquake had a depth of 10 kilometres, measuring 4.4 on Richter scale.
Aqua, Latin for water, is a NASA Earth Science satellite mission named for the large amount of information that the mission is collecting about the Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice.
The entire wing where the OSD office is located is being sanitised and several staffers, including the OSD, is learnt to have been advised self-quarantine.
Some global weather watchers have warned that India will likely see below-normal rainfall during this coming monsoon -- and that should be taken seriously, regardless of whether it turns out to be true or not.
A middle school teacher from Maharashtra has been selected as the first international teacher for a prestigious space programme in the United States.
An earthquake measuring 4.9 on the Richter scale hit Pakistan-occupied-Gilgit late on Tuesday night and resultant mild tremors were felt in Doda and Kishtwar districts of Jammu and Kashmir.
President Pratibha Patil on Wednesday accepted the resignation of Prithviraj Chavan from the Union Council of Ministers and asked Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal to hold additional charge of two ministries independently handled by him.
Mileage derived from the test drive was 12.4 km.
Sunday's opening T20 International against Bangladesh can't be cancelled at the last minute despite deteriorating air quality in the capital, said BCCI president Sourav Ganguly.
"The overall Delhi's Air Quality Index is in the very poor category with few Delhi locations entering at higher zone but that will be short lived. This is mainly because the extremely calm local surface winds which were prevailing yesterday are likely to increase slightly and may further pick-up by Oct 26," SAFAR said.
Expressing concern over China supplying nuclear reactors to Pakistan, India on Sunday said the global community should closely look at the collaboration considering Islamabad's track record on nuclear technology.
Both the countries discussed issues of mutual interest like comprehensive economic partnership, high level structured energy dialogue, cooperation in mining and earth sciences, social security agreement, civilian nuclear cooperation at the 6th round of Annual Bilateral Trade Policy Consultations that concluded in Ottawa on Thursday.
Amid the political spat, the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) lent its weight to the prime minister's suggestion, noting that the idea of using wind turbines in generating water from moisture in air and separating oxygen from air is technically feasible.
Addressing participants at the Tenth Editors' Conference on Social Sector Issues-2010 in New Delhi on Tuesday, Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Prithviraj Chavan said his ministries have been focussing on six priority sectors to ensure a better quality of life for Indian citizens.
Normally, monsoon reaches Delhi by June 27. It covers the entire country by July 8. Last year, the wind system had reached Delhi on June 25 and covered the entire country by June 29.
A business in India wanting access to maps and geospatial data would typically have to wait months before it got what it wanted. All this is set to change with the new guidelines on geospatial data, report Neha Alawadhi and Peerzada Abrar.
The TEWS was envisioned as a national importance e-governance project by the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences after the 2004 tsunami disaster.
According to the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), the air quality is considered to be in the emergency category if the PM2.5 and PM10 levels continue to be above 300 micrograms per cubic metre and 500 micrograms per cubic metre respectively for 48 hours or more.
22 of the 37 air quality monitoring stations across Delhi recorded the air quality in the severe category on Thursday morning.
Southwest monsoon, critical for the farm-based economy of the country, is expected to reach Kerala on May 30, two days before its normal onset date in the coastal state.
As many as 29,557 COVID-19 patients have recuperated in the past 24 hours.
Identifying India as a 'big partner' of the US space programme, NASA has applauded the country's efforts in using its space missions for "societal needs." "I think it's 85 per cent of their budget is spent on what they call societal needs. It's earth science, climate change, those kinds of things, and they still insist that they're going to bring about a human space flight programme, you know, by 2020 or so," NASA Administrator Charles F Bolden said.
The central government's Air Quality Early Warning System for Delhi said a significant increase in the number of "fire points" was observed over Punjab (around 3,000), Haryana and Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday, which is likely to impact the air quality of Delhi-NCR and other parts of northwest India.
South-west monsoon is likely to be below normal this season, government announced on Wednesday raising concerns about its impact on agriculture and economy.
United States space agency NASA said it would launch a water-related satellite in collaboration with India's ISRO.
Delhi's air quality was again in the severe category with the 24-hour average AQI recorded at 403 after remaining in the 'very poor' category till Tuesday morning, when the AQI was recorded at 396.
After a making a slow progress, the southwest monsoon is expected to gain momentum and advance further into several parts of drought-hit Maharashtra and central India.
The minister said that the available data and model studies do not indicate inundation in a major part of southern Mumbai occurring at least once a year during 2040-50, as published in an international study report.
Pradeep Sharma, mechanical engineer at the University of Houston, Kavita Ramanan, professor of Applied Mathematics at Brown University, Dilip Da Cunha, architect, planner and teacher at Harvard University and Columbia University, Mukul Sharma, professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth College, and Tahera Qutbuddin, professor of Arabic Literature and Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago, have been awarded the 2020 Guggenheim fellowships.
In the 30-year period between 1986 and 2015, temperatures of the warmest day and the coldest night of the year have risen by about 0.63 degree Celsius and 0.4 degree Celsius, respectively.
