Author: Rahul M

Polling for the first phase of Bihar Assembly elections began in 121 consituencies at 7 AM on Thursday. The fate of several ministers, along with RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav and his estranged brother Tej Pratap Yadav, will be sealed. The contest will see the NDA face off against a resurgent Mahagathbandhan, with Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party emerging as the wildcard in this high-stakes battle. A total of 121 constituencies across 18 districts, many of them south of the Ganga, are going to the polls. In 2020, the Mahagathbandhan, led by the RJD, had the edge here, winning 63 seats…

Scientists have revealed how microscopic defects trigger catastrophic failure in perovskite solar cells. A research collaboration led by RASEI Fellow Mike McGehee at the University of Colorado Boulder, together with scientists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), has published new findings in the journal Joule that could help overcome a major challenge in scaling […]

CBS Contains spoilers for “NCIS” Season 23, Episode 4 — “Gone Girls” The past is always present in the “NCIS” world, and sometimes those old ghosts pop up in surprising places. So when Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) approaches Tim McGee (Sean Murray) with a tux bagged and slung over his shoulder in “Gone Girls,” he’s looking for something their old pal Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) might have left behind.  Jimmy was hoping that Tim might have held onto an old horde of shoe polish that Tony had in the secret compartment of…

One of the main curiosities about this Bihar election — voting for the first phase takes place Thursday — has a name that has newly entered conversations in this state of old and tangled challenges, across unequal and uneven political terrain: Prashant Kishor. The former poll strategist, who has worked with leaders of varied political hues, and has been described and criticised as ideology-agnostic, has moved out of the backroom, climbed on to the political stage. He has been marching and mobilising on the Bihar ground for three years, and almost exactly a year ago, launched his party, Jan Suraaj.…

Claiming that the 2024 Assembly elections in Haryana had been “stolen”, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi cited examples, among them a house in Palwal district’s Hodal with 66 voters and another with 501. He also said that in Sonipat district’s Rai, a stock photograph of a Brazilian national was used to cast votes 22 times at 10 booths. “She has got multiple names — Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi, Vimla,” he said.The Indian Express visited both places and found that in Hodal, the two addresses are, in fact, large plots where multiple homes exist and multiple families reside, many of whom…

Greg Gayne/CBS Contains spoilers for “NCIS: Origins” Season 2, Episode 4 — “No Man Left Behind” It’s clear that the powers that be over at “NCIS: Origins” are having a whole lot of fun weaving various callbacks to “NCIS” and Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ (Austin Stowell) past throughout the series. But fans of both shows probably didn’t expect Season 2’s fourth episode, “No Man Left Behind,” to explain an ancient in-joke between Gibbs and Mike Franks (Kyle Schmid). The episode revolves around Franks coping with a visit from his older brother, Mason…

“If I were to tell you that I will take one of your dearest wishes to the Prime Minister and Bihar Chief Minister, what would that be?” I asked a group of women belonging to the Musahar community – one of the most deprived Dalit groups – in Piparghatti village in Gaya district. “Berozgari (unemployment),” replied three of them in unison.In the neighbouring Barachatti town, which is also an Assembly constituency, I asked an 18-year-old, visiting from a nearby village, the same. Dressed in a bright orange saree that matched the sindoor in her hair parting, the Musahar teenager who…

Warner Bros. Pictures The new DC film universe, under the stewardship of James Gunn, got off to a fast theatrical start in 2025 with “Superman.” While it effectively killed the previous DC Extended Universe overseen by Zack Snyder, there were a few projects from that era that remain in play. One of those is “Blue Beetle,” an overlooked DC movie from 2023, whose title character might have a bright future in the DCU. And while the film itself flopped in theaters, the good news is that it will be hitting Netflix very…

Days after a video showed a few people handling three tiger cubs and filming them under the headlights of a vehicle at the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple (BRT) Tiger Reserve in Karnataka’s Chamarajanagar district, Forest Minister Eshwar Khandre ordered a CID investigation into the incident on Wednesday. The video surfaced during the third week of October and is said to have been shot in the Bedaguli forest area of the Punajanur range in the reserve. The incident sparked outrage among wildlife activists, who demanded action against the culprits. A complaint was filed with the forest department alleging that three people from…

The amount of capital pouring into AI data center projects is staggering. Last week, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon reported their 2025 capital expenditures would total roughly $370 billion, and they expect that number to keep rising in 2026. The biggest spender last quarter was Microsoft, which put nearly $35 billion into data centers and other investments, equivalent to 45 percent of its revenue.Rarely, if ever, has a single technology absorbed this much money this quickly. Warnings of an AI bubble are getting louder every day, but whether or not a crash eventually happens, the frenzy is already reshaping the…