Author: Rahul M

A letter turned Uttam Brajabasi’s life upside down.Back in January, the villager from Dinhata in West Bengal’s Cooch Behar district received a notice from the Assam Foreigners Tribunal (FT) that said he was an “illegal immigrant” who entered Assam without any valid document between 1966 and March 24, 1971. Now, as he scrambles to meet the July 15 deadline to prove his citizenship, Brajabasi’s case has sparked a war of words between the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the BJP, with West Bengal Minister Mamata Banerjee accusing the BJP government in Assam of attempting to implement the “NRC (National Register of…

Bihar’s 77,895-odd Booth Level Officers (BLOs) are the footsoldiers in the Election Commission’s unprecedented Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls that has set off widespread confusion and apprehension across the state. They have a deadline of July 25 to upload voter enumeration forms in their respective jurisdictions. But tonight, like most nights, the internet is in no hurry.To get a sense of the formidable challenge of the task and to see how hapless residents are at its receiving end, The Indian Express followed a BLO through his day — and long night. “The app rarely opens during the day…

The ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar that comes up in the Supreme Court Thursday amid widespread apprehension across the state marks a sharp departure from previous such drives in two key aspects.One, for the first time, the SIR, essentially a fresh preparation through door-to-door enumeration, places the burden of proof on already-enrolled voters (on the question of citizenship) at the draft roll stage. And, two, it disregards the “sanctity” of the existing electoral roll – something the Election Commission (EC) had consistently instructed its officers to uphold in all earlier revisions, an analysis of past…

The ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar that comes up in the Supreme Court Thursday amid widespread apprehension across the state marks a sharp departure from previous such drives in two key aspects.One, for the first time, the SIR, essentially a fresh preparation through door-to-door enumeration, places the burden of proof on already-enrolled voters (on the question of citizenship) at the draft roll stage. And, two, it disregards the “sanctity” of the existing electoral roll – something the Election Commission (EC) had consistently instructed its officers to uphold in all earlier revisions, an analysis of past…

A new kind of large language model, developed by researchers at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2), makes it possible to control how training data is used even after a model has been built.The new model, called FlexOlmo, could challenge the current industry paradigm of big artificial intelligence companies slurping up data from the web, books, and other sources—often with little regard for ownership—and then owning the resulting models entirely. Once data is baked into an AI model today, extracting it from that model is a bit like trying to recover the eggs from a finished cake.“Conventionally, your data is…

The National Investigation Agency was on Wednesday granted six days’ custody of a prison psychiatrist, a police officer, and a woman who the agency said had been involved in providing resources and information to a terror convict lodged in Bengaluru’s Parappana Agrahara Central Prison. The trio–Dr Nagaraj S, a psychiatrist employed at the Parappana Agrahara prison; Chan Pasha, an assistant sub-inspector with the City Armed Reserve (CAR) in North Bengaluru; and Anees Fathima, mother of absconding accused Junaid Ahmed–were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) prison radicalisation case of 2023. Special Public Prosecutor P Prasanna Kumar, representing…

Karnataka Bhavan located in Delhi’s Chanakyapuri is bustling with activity and talks. Both Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy CM D K Shivakumar have checked in at the state bhavan amid the buzz of a change of guard, which refuses to die down despite the party’s dismissal of it for now.What gave further grist to the speculation mill was Shivakumar’s move to occupy the CM suite in the bhavan’s new annexe building following his arrival Tuesday. Siddaramaiah, who landed in the national capital Wednesday, moved into the CM suite in the old bhavan building. He had stayed at the new…

The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday directed former JD(S) MP Prajwal Revanna, accused of sexually assaulting several women, to seek bail first from a sessions court before approaching the high court. Revanna, grandson of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, has been in custody since his arrest in May last year. A bench of Justice S R Krishna Kumar did not accept the contention of Revanna’s counsel Prabhuling Navadgi that the high court could hear the bail matter at this stage. The bench stated that Revanna would have to first move the trial court, which would decide the issue…

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Linda Yaccarino, who has served as CEO of X since Elon Musk appointed her to the role in June 2023, announced Wednesday that she is stepping down.Her departure comes less than four months after Musk announced that X would be absorbed into xAI, the billionaire’s existing artificial intelligence startup. In a post on X, Yaccarino thanked Musk for “entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”Under her leadership, Yaccarino said that X did “critical early work” to make the platform safe for users and to “restore advertiser confidence.”…