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Following the tragic Air India Flight AI-171 plane crash near the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, which hit a hostel that accommodates medical students, B.J. Medical College (BJMC) has decided to cancel all existing and future internal tests for MBBS students.

The college has also canceled the summer break for all the medical faculty and doctors and requested them to help in the treatment of the injured.

The move will impact more than 500 students, mainly the first and second year students, who were residing in the building that was struck by the Boeing Dreamliner.

Over 200 students, including MBBS residents, have left their hostels and gone back home in trauma and fear.

Sources in the college said at least 40 students who were on the spot when the accident happened are still in a state of shock and trauma.

The exams will be postponed after students recover from the psychological trauma, officials added.

"In view of the present psychological and emotional condition of our students, and the logistical inconvenience brought about by the destruction of the mess-cum-hostel building, all in-house theory and practical exams are put off until further notice," a BJMC senior official confirmed.

The mess building, where students' hostel as well as the dining area were located, was hit squarely by the aircraft wing when it crashed.

With the chaos located on the second and first floors, residents and interns have been left without the availability of regular meals and basic facilities.

In a similar development, the college has also canceled the summer break for all medical staff and physicians.

The second half of the summer recess was to commence from June 13, but all medical personnel have now been ordered to join duty from June 14.

It has been done in consideration of the emergency medical requirements following the aircraft crash and the treatment of injured victims at Civil Hospital where BJMC doctors are on night shifts.

While Vijay Rupani's son Rishabh Rupani had come to Gandhinagar from the United States on Saturday, his wife Anjali Rupani arrived from London on Friday on a special chartered flight.

Other senior BJP leaders like Health Minister Rushikesh Patel, Union Minister Parshottam Rupala, and some party members and relatives have also been reaching the Gandhinagar residence of the family to pay their condolences.

The party sources have said that the late leader will be given the last rites in his hometown, Rajkot

With schools re-opening in Telangana, transport authorities have intensified checks on school buses to ensure the safety of children. Nearly 60 school buses operating in the Greater Hyderabad region were seized on Thursday for various violations. Of these, 25 were seized within the limits of Hyderabad city alone.

Hyderabad currently has 1,257 school buses, Joint Transport Commissioner C Ramesh told us. Besides, there are 6,149 buses on Rangareddy district's roads and 6,095 on Medchal district's roads.

The inspection teams started early on Thursday morning with school buses. Transport officials found several violations, such as documents missing, absence of fitness certificates, and non-compliance with safety standards.

The department knows that almost 15% of the Hyderabad school buses have not procured mandatory fitness certificates. But almost 90% of the educational institution buses in Rangareddy and Medchal district procured it.

The inspections ensured that buses have compulsory equipment for safety: each student should have his own seat; the buses should have fire extinguishers and first-aid kits; and the vehicles should get regular maintenance. Also, each school bus should be accompanied by an attendant to serve students' safety.

It is also required that a bus driver hold a valid heavy vehicle licence and be below the age of 60 years. School buses must change their fitness certificates annually, on a test performed by the RTA. These certificates and registration records, the driver's licence and other documents, have to be carried on board on a permanent basis.

School bus seized in Nizamabad for not having fitness certificate

Rahul Kumar, DTO In-charge, Nizamabad, told that one of the school buses running without a fitness certificate was impounded when they went on inspections on Thursday. He added that 790 school buses are present in the district and 680 of them have been inspected to date and found to have valid fitness certificates and licensed drivers.

There are 170 pending buses to inspect. All of them are nearing 15 years of service, and some of them are still on the road for one reason or another. "If any unfit buses are operating on the roads, they will be seized and fined under the Motor Vehicles (MV) Act," DTO stated. He also mentioned that the regular inspections will go on in the district with a special emphasis on safeguarding students and preventing road accidents.

Kannur district has shut down all schools, professional colleges, anganwadis, and tuitions since there has been continuous rain in Kerala. It is to be shut down on June 14 and 15 as a heavy rain warning. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) predicts the state to encounter rains within five days because of westerly winds and cyclonic circulation over north Karnataka.

IMD has put out the alert in various parts of Kerala. Ten districts received an orange warning on June 14, and four districts received a yellow alert. Two districts have been put on a red alert on Saturday, nine districts have been put on an orange alert, and two districts have been put on a yellow alert. The alert measures the possibility of bad weather.

The IMD has put out a warning for fishing along the Kerala-Karnataka-Lakshadweep coast from Friday to June 17 due to anticipated strong winds and inclement weather. The IMD issues a red alert for excessive rain of more than 20 cm in 24 hours. Extremely heavy rain between 11 cm and 20 cm is furnished on orange alert, whereas heavy rain between 6 cm and 11 cm is furnished on yellow alert. Pre-monsoon season in Kerala was brought to a close by an all-time record start of monsoons on May 24, causing havoc to government and private property. Low-lying fields and public roads were inundated with rain and wind, felling trees and toppling power poles. The monsoon rains pounded various regions of the state mercilessly until around May 31 before it died down.

The IMD forecast that rains were set to increase in the next few days. The continuous rain has already brought mass scale disruption to the state. While masses are getting ready for more rain, officials have appealed for caution and preparedness so that no more damage is inflicted.

A team of young enthusiasts of physics has just created history by securing the 6 th position at the PLANCKS 2025, organized by the Royal Spanish Society of Physics student group and IAPS,  that is the World Physics Challenge which was held recently in Barcelona. And guess what? It is the best ranking any Indian team has ever reached in this prestigious foreign tournament!

The ‘Denormalisation Group', as they call themselves, are four undergrad physics students at IISc: Simar Narula, Ritabrata Ghosh, Susmit Roy, and Avik Das. What could be cooler? Three of them are sophomores, and one is a freshman only! They qualified by finishing on top of the Indian Young Physicist League (IYPL) which is essentially the most difficult physics qualifier in India.

The Indian Young Physicist League (IYPL) is an annual online theoretical physics competition at the national level in which teams of theoretically inclined physics enthusiasts all over India participate and solve difficult physics problems. It is the official national qualifying round to PLANCKS and the winning team gets the privilege of representing India at this esteemed international event.

In case you have been wondering what is so special about PLANCKS; well, here is the low down, it is a ridiculously hard, four-hour theoretical physics test, which challenges your knowledge on mind boggling concepts such as dark matter, universe creation and complicated field equations. The problems are not of the ordinary textbook type, they involve intense thinking, imagination and the nerves of steel.

It is through the lively academic environment and rigorous  training in their institute that the IISc team managed to work so hard. It was worth their preparation!

However, PLANCKS 2025 was not all about the exam. It was a conference full of thrilling moments, a keynote address by a Nobel Laureate Anne L’Huillier , talks on gravitational waves, photonics among others. The students also visited spectacular research facilities such as the ALBA Synchrotron and the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO). And they had a chance to talk to founders of deep-tech startups, where science and innovation are mixed.

And how can one miss attending to the culture of Barcelona on a visit to this beautiful city? The IISc group visited famous landmarks such as the Cathedral of Barcelona, the Montjuc hill, and even the mythical FC Barcelona stadium. It turned out to be the best combination of studying and recreation.

It is a big deal in Indian physics education. The team has succeeded with the support of the Office of Development and Alumni Affairs at IISc, which has motivated students across the nation. It demonstrates that passions and hard work can make Indian students competitive on the global scale and make them victors.

Cheers then, to the IISc ‘Denormalisation Group’ - the young Indians who have placed India on the world physics map! Their success story is a testimony of what commitment and the right learning environment can accomplish. To all the future physicists, this is your hint to think big and reach high.

More such inspiring tales of the education front in India are on the way!

The fate of thousands of Bachelor in Education (BEd) hopefuls of the state hangs in the balance after the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) cancelled the recognition of 295 BEd colleges of the state. It is part of a national inspection of teacher training institutes. It may result in cutting down over 16,000 seats in Maharashtra and seriously affecting admissions for the year 2025–26.

The NCTE had begun a process of scrutiny last month amid complaints about the functioning and quality of BEd colleges in the country. Numerous institutions allegedly did not file the mandatory evaluation reports within the deadline of May 31. Consequently, they have lost recognition and cannot admit students from the next academic year.

The Higher and Technical Education Department had raised an eyebrow over how this would affect students, who are currently confused because the admission season is coming up as there will be a rush for fewer seats in the remaining colleges.

The head of a city BEd college said, "This year, lots of changes are being proposed in the BEd education, which causes confusion among colleges and students.". Early this year, the NCTE also revised the design of teacher education programs. It had initially declared that the current four-year integrated BA/BSc-BEd course would be phased out from the 2025–26 academic year and introduced a new four-year Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP) in its place. After this announcement, the State Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell halted registration for the current integrated course on March 9.

After receiving protests from different stakeholders, the NCTE changed its decision and suspended the discontinuation of the integrated BEd courses to 2026–27. The Higher and Technical Education Department then directed the CET Cell to reopen the admission process for the 2025–26 academic year.

As per the new directive, the registration window of the CET Cell for the integrated course was reopened on June 2. Applications are allowed until June 15, and the entrance exam will be conducted on July 20.

"Though the resumption of the integrated course admission process provides temporary relief, the bigger problem of cancelled college recognitions still hangs over the future of B.Ed aspirants of the state," said another principal. Officials in the Higher and Technical Education Department said the government will step in and talk to NCTE officials within two days.

A team of undergraduate students from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, ranked sixth place in the 12th edition of Physics League Across Numerous Countries for Kick-ass Students (PLANCKS) 2025. This marks the highest ranking ever achieved by an Indian team.

The 4-hour closed-book test, which took place at Barcelona, Spain, last month, is the most difficult theoretical physics competition for undergraduate students. Hosted by the Royal Spanish Society of Physics and co-organized with the International Association of Physics Students (IAPS), PLANCKS 2025 assessed participants' problem-solving ability, creativity, and profundity in different areas of physics.

One of the problems was the question regarding the birth time of the universe.

"Initially they provided the field equations, matter densities, dark matter information, cosmological constant (and so forth) and then they posed lots of questions such as when did the universe begin," stated Simar Narula one of this year's awardees, along with Ritabrata Ghosh, Susmit Roy, and Avik Das.

"Those questions were not questions that you would typically expect from a competitive exam, in general. Those were concept-building questions," Ghosh said. "The aptitude that one acquires in IISc, and the kind of exposure one gets in undergraduate programs to a certain extent, developed us in such a way that we were able to solve those problems pretty fairly."

Last year also, a group of IISc students traveled to PLANCKS and bagged the seventh position. Ghosh and his team were motivated by their senior batch, and decided to appear for the national prelims.

The top three prizes were declared immediately after the competition on 5 May, and the rest of the prizes on 6 May.

The group, which was earlier doubtful about their performance, waited with bated breath, eyes glued to the screen of the Discord app. The moment the result was declared, they celebrated the triumph with their classmates and teachers. "They were all proud of this and they asked us to do more such things," Narula said.

Not just an exam

To qualify for the main event, IISc's undergraduate team of four—the Denormalisation Group—won first position in the Indian Young Physicist's League, the country-level qualifying round for the event. 

Since 2014, after the inaugural edition held in Utrecht, PLANCKS has been an event for physics students to compete, network, and, above all, to share their love for physics. This year, the event was attended by around 200 students from 29 countries, with the United Kingdom team securing first place. More than an academic contest, PLANKCS 2025 was also a physics, innovation, and international cooperation celebration. The event kicked off this year with a talk by the 2023 Nobel Laureate in Physics Anne L' L'Huillier.

Outside of these lectures, entrepreneurial advice and institute tours in Barcelona, PLANCKS is also a chance to experience another culture.

During the event, the organizers took us on a brief tour (of the city) and (they) allowed us to visit historic sites such as the Cathedral of Barcelona. Post the event, we also explored on our own to visit Montjuïc hill," Narula said, particularly excited to have visited the FC Barcelona's current home stadium.

The Denormalisation Group's success at PLANCKS 2025 is also heartening for enthusiastic students of physics all over India. As Ghosh awaits PLANCKS 2026, he remains conscious of the uncertainty in questions. "You have to think it (questions) out from scratch, and it's more about experience and (how) you keep your calm at that moment to work that out within those 4 hours," he said.

The journey of the team to PLANCKS 2025 was sponsored by the Office of Development and Alumni. Affairs (ODAA), based on IISc news.