Will be hitting Pickaxe Mountain area pretty soon, says Trump

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the US will be hitting the Pickaxe Mountain area, located near Iran's heavily damaged Natanz uranium enrichment facility, "pretty soon."

Pickaxe Mountain is a heavily fortified site that hosts two deeply buried tunnel complexes that experts assess as beyond the reach of the most powerful bunker buster bombs in the US arsenal. The site is linked to Iran's nuclear program.

PM Balen Shah likely to meet Indian, Chinese envoys soon

After four months in power, PM Balen Shah has finally agreed to meet the envoys of India and China, said a close aide. "PM Shah will soon be meeting the ambassadors of two immediate neighbours, India and China.

British-Indian Narayan named Britain's first minister for AI

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham finalised his top team within hours of taking charge at 10 Downing Street and promoted British Indian minister for artificial intelligence (AI) Kanishka Narayan to the Cabinet, and purging allies of predecessor Keir Starmer from the government.

Burnham, who was invited to form the government by King Charles on Monday, set about unveiling the team of ministers who will join him around the Cabinet table soon after.

Census: 6 months to go, Govt explores how to count caste

With the population enumeration phase of the nationwide Census just six months away, the Registrar General of India (RGI) is learnt to be grappling with the methodology for caste enumeration that is meant to be a part of it. Sources said two broad options are under consideration: allowing respondents to state their caste in an open-ended format or restricting entries to a drop-down menu of recognised castes.

Jaishankar to meet Quad counterparts in Manila on sidelines of ASEAN meet

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will visit Manila, Philippines, on July 22-23 to at-tend the Quad Foreign Ministers' Meeting under the ASEAN framework, including the ASEAN-India, East Asia Summit (EAS), and ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).

Lifting off, reaching a new space milestone

The Successful launch of Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 rocket marks a defining moment in India's space journey. It signals a transition from a pro-gramme led almost exclusively by the state-run ISRO to one in which private enterprise is emerging as a driver of innovation. With this achievement, India entered an exclusive league: Until Skyroot's mission on Saturday, only private companies in the United States and China had independently developed and launched rockets that reached orbit. The milestone comes six years after the government opened the space sector to private participation in 2020, a reform that was then institutionalised through the Indian Space Policy, 2023.

Protect seafarers, and the maritime order

The Killing of four Indian seafarers in the Russia-Ukraine war is tragic. It also signals the erosion of long-standing norms, underpinned by international law, that are meant to protect civilian maritime commerce. The MV Golden Leo, struck by a Russian missile in an attack that killed 10 seafarers in all while departing a Ukrainian port, was not a military vessel but a merchant ship. 

The purpose of International Humanitarian Law is to shield non-combatants from the horrors of war. Repeated attacks on shipping suggest that these protections are being increasingly violated, especially when great-power interests are involved. Merchant vessels engaged in civilian commerce cannot lawfully be attacked unless they are being used for military purposes.

From 1991, three foreign policy lessons for managing disruption of certainties

Historical Analogies must be approached with caution. Yet there is a striking symmetry between the foreign policy challenges that confronted India in 1990-91 and those now posed by the wars in Iran and Ukraine. Simultaneous upheavals in the Middle East and Europe in 1991 shattered India's economic and strategic assumptions. Today, the two regions are again compelling Delhi to recon-sider the foundations of its national strategy.

A checklist for a new-age courtroom

Artificial Intelligence is coming to India's courts, not as a distant possibility but as an active policy question. This June, the Supreme Court published draft regulations for the use of Al in courts for public comments. They govern how Al may be used across the entire judiciary, create institutions to oversee their adoption and prescribe approval processes for AI systems.

But courts are only beginning to use AI, and no one fully understands yet how it will behave in practice. These regulations will need to evolve as experience accumulates.

KEN, BETWA AND A LINE DRAWN ON WATER

The idea of linking India's rivers dates back to the early 1980s. The National Water Development Agency, set up in 1982 to examine the feasibility of interlinking river basins, identified the Ken-Betwa Link, as a priority project. The project, India's first inter-basin river link, aims to transfer water from the Ken to the Betwa basin.

A feasibility report followed in 1995, and in August 2005, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and the Centre agreed to prepare a Detailed Project Report. The Union Cabinet finally approved the project in December 2021, transforming the landscape around the rivers into construction sites.

IISc's novel method holds promise for oral cancer treatment

In a recent scientific breakthrough, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru, in collaboration with the MS Ramaiah Medical College, have discovered potential applications of an ultrasound stimulation technology in treating oral cancer.

Given the prevalence of chewable tobacco products, oral cancer is a significant health concern in India, accounting for about 1 in 4 of all global cases. The study, titled "Revealing biomechanical vulnerabilities in oral cancer cells using 3D coculture platform and low-frequency ultrasound", was published in the journal Materials Today Bio.

Education's falling share in Budget over 12 years

The Education Ministry's share in the Budget fell from 4.6% in 2013-14 (the last year the UPA was in power) to 2.5% in 2025-26.

The share of money spent on making roads and highways has almost trebled to 5.8% in the past 12 years.

First sanctions, now war: India's Chabahar plans up in the air

• The sea-land transit route from Chabahar, that allows India to bypass Pakistan, is viewed as an important part of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC).

• INSTC is a multimode transport network connecting India with Iran, Russia, Europe and parts of Central Asia. In that sense, the port represents far more than maritime infrastructure.

• The end of the US's Chabahar waivers tilts the regional balance toward China and Pakistan.

How a new law aims to place 'Vande Mataram' on a par with Jana Gana Mana'

Union Home Minister Amit Shah is set to introduce the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill, 2026, in Rajya Sabha during the Monsoon Session. This will amend the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, to grant the national song, Vande Mataram, the same statutory protection currently given to the national anthem, Jana Gana Mana.

According to Section 3 of the Act, intentionally preventing the singing of the national anthem or causing a disturbance to any assembly engaged in such singing is a criminal offence punishable with imprisonment of up to three years, a fine or both. The Bill proposes to include the national song within the ambit of this section.

Al law may cover agent autonomy, deepfakes

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is exploring a consent-based framework for synthetically-generated content, along with curbs on agentic Al autonomy, and regulatory sandboxes for high-risk applications as it weighs a separate law to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). 

Synthetically-generated content is digital media made or altered by Al, rather than humans. The Al law is likely to be presented as a standalone piece of legislation, rather than being under the umbrella of the Information Technology Act, 2000.