Cuttack: Odisha Vigilance has arrested a senior government official for allegedly accepting a bribe from a licensed coal vendor in exchange for facilitating the complainant to run his business smoothly. According to the Vigilance sources Tuesday, the accused officer Debabrata Mohanty, Cuttack Deputy Director of Mines, was apprehended by the Vigilance sleuths while he was taking a...

Nabarangpur: The Nabarangpur district administration Tuesday launched ‘Aame Padhiba Aama Bhasare’, a mother tongue-based early education initiative, at the Block Conference Hall. Collector and District Magistrate Maheshwar Swain chaired the programme. The initiative will be implemented in 30 anganwadi centres in Raighar block as a pilot project, focusing on foundational learning in Gondi, the mother tongue of...

Keonjhar: As many as 27 leopards and three cubs have been spotted in the Atei and Karlapat reserve forests under the Keonjhar forest division, Divisional Forest Officer HD Dhanaraj said. While 18 leopards were found in the Karlapat reserve forest in Telkoi, nine leopards and three cubs were recorded in the Atei reserve forest during the recent...

Koraput/Borigumma: A 16-year-old girl has been detained for allegedly killing her 45-year-old mother and 14-year-old brother in Borigumma area of Koraput district, police said Tuesday. The deceased were identified as Anushka Parida (45) and her son Ahem Parida (14), residents of Borigumma town. The murder surfaced after relatives lodged a missing complaint at Borigumma police station February...

Bhubaneswar: Odisha has earned global recognition by securing two new entries in the World Book of Records for terracotta craft at the ‘Grand Terracotta Craft Creation’ event organised by the Handlooms, Textiles and Handicrafts Department. A total of 1,000 terracotta artisans participated in the competition, setting a new record for the highest number of participants in a...

Bhubaneswar: Renowned pathologist and academician Maya Nanda died February 20 in Bhubaneswar at the age of 85 following a month-long respiratory illness, family sources said, leaving an irreplaceable void in Odisha’s medical fraternity. Born in 1940 in Puri, Nanda was the daughter of noted freedom fighter and physician Basant Kumar Nanda. She completed her MBBS from SCB...

Tarbha/Bolangir/Sonepur: Police in Subarnapur district have rescued a newlywed bride and arrested a man accused of abducting her at gunpoint while she was going to her in-laws’ house after marriage. The accused, Sanjeeb Sahu (35) of Badachhepapali village under Kantamal police limits in Boudh district, was arrested Tuesday from a rented house in Sambalpur town. The bride...

Anya Schiffrin & Roberta Carlini Media outlets worldwide are dying. On top of a persistent lack of funding, they must now contend with AI summaries and chatbots, which are siphoning away audiences. A recent study found that in 2025, online traffic to news sites fell by one-third. This problem should concern everyone, not just journalists and media...

Melvin Durai During the Winter Olympics, while Americans were cheering for Americans, Norwegians were cheering for Norwegians, and Germans were cheering for Germans, people of all nationalities were cheering for a little monkey named Punch. The 7-month-old macaque monkey was having trouble making friends with his fellow monkeys at Ichikawa City Zoo, outside Tokyo. Abandoned by his...

President Vladimir Putin of Russia believed he could finish off, within months, the conflict that he started on European soil against Ukraine. This war could be labelled the biggest since World War II. But four years to this day, he still has not secured the victory he had hoped for. In the process the human cost of...