Author: Rahul M

Show Quick Read Key points generated by AI, verified by newsroom Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Monday announced that the Election Commission will undertake a pan-India Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls across 12 states and union territories. “…The voter lists in all states undergoing SIR will be frozen at 12 am tonight. BLOs will distribute Unique Enumeration Forms to all voters on these lists. These forms will contain all relevant details drawn from the current voter registers,” Kumar said. Pan-India SIR: Indicative List Of Documents As Per ECI The Election Commission released an indicative, though not exhaustive,…

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Israeli army launched a barrage of attacks in Gaza on Tuesday as tensions with Hamas grew two weeks into a fragile ceasefire, and the militant group responded by saying it would delay handing over the body of a hostage. At least seven Palestinians were killed, health officials said.The flare-up of violence presented one of the biggest tests so far for the truce and had international mediators scrambling to prevent it from collapsing. U.S. Vice President JD Vance attempted to play down the fighting, saying he expected “skirmishes” to quickly die down.The order from…

More than four decades after Nellie in Assam’s Morigaon district saw one of independent India’s worst acts of mass violence, amidst the Assam Agitation against immigration from Bangladesh, the BJP government in the state has said it will table the report of a commission formed then to probe the massacre.The surprise announcement, by Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma last week, comes just a few months ahead of the Assembly elections in the state, scheduled for March-April 2026. It also comes amidst mass churning in the state in the aftermath of superstar singer Zubeen Garg’s sudden death in Singapore last month.…

Four-time West Champaran MP Sanjay Jaiswal was the Bihar BJP president in 2020 when the NDA clinched the Assembly elections, which also saw the BJP bagging 74 seats as compared to its ally JD(U)’s 43 in the 243-member House. In the midst of campaigning for the BJP candidates for the upcoming Bihar polls across his home turf, Jaiswal, 59, speaks to The Indian Express on various issues related to the polls, including migration and whether Nitish Kumar will continue to be the CM should the NDA return to power. Excerpts:* The migration issue seems to have become key to this…

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Hurricane Melissa was set to pummel Jamaica on Tuesday as a catastrophic Category 5 storm, the strongest to lash the island since recordkeeping began 174 years ago.The storm was expected to make landfall early Tuesday and slice diagonally across the island, entering near St. Elizabeth parish in the south and exiting around St. Ann parish in the north, forecasters said.Hours before the storm, the government said it had done all it could to prepare as it warned of catastrophic damage.“There is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a Category 5,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness…

New Delhi: Over the past few weeks, the ruling BJP in Tripura has been rocked by a series of controversies that have not only put its ties with tribal ally Tipra Motha under tremendous strain, but also laid bare deep divisions between rival factions within the party, both loyal to and those ranged against Chief Minister Manik Saha.The political turmoil has also reignited concerns about deepening ethnic fault lines in the state after a lull in violence over the last decade and a half, first during the Left Front government and then under the BJP. Tensions between the BJP and the…

Despite several rounds of negotiations between the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Opposition Mahagatbandhan parties were unable to prevent “friendly fights” in 11 seats in Bihar. The Congress is in the contest in nine such seats, facing off against the Tejashwi Prasad Yadav-led RJD in five seats and against the CPI in four. The RJD and Mukesh Sahani’s Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) are facing off in two constituencies.While seven of these constituencies are currently held by NDA parties, one was won by a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate who later switched to the JD(U), and the rest…

Nitish’s flip-flops: How returning to NDA fold has paid off for JD(U)

Prashant Kishor, poll strategist turned politician whose Jan Suraaj Party is contesting the Bihar Assembly polls, has his name enrolled in the voter lists of two states – West Bengal and Bihar. In Bengal, his address is listed as 121 Kalighat Road, which houses the Trinamool Congress office in Bhabanipur, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s assembly constituency. Kishor had worked with the TMC as a political consultant during the 2021 Assembly polls in the state. His polling station is listed as St Helen School on B Ranishankari Lane. In Bihar, he is registered as a voter under the Sasaram parliamentary constituency…

On Monday, Elon Musk’s xAI startup launched Grokipedia, which the billionaire is pitching as an AI-generated alternative to the crowdsourced encyclopedia Wikipedia. Musk first announced the project in late September on his social media platform X, saying it would be “a massive improvement over Wikipedia,” and “a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”Musk said last week that he had delayed the launch of Grokipedia because his team needed “to do more work to purge out the propaganda.” When Grokipedia eventually dropped on Monday, WIRED was initially unable to access the website and received an automated message…