Category: Science & Technology

From Project Solara to MAI Thinking-1, Microsoft revealed five major AI announcements at Build 2026 as it ramps up competition with OpenAI and Anthropic.

The Delhi High Court found Google liable for trademark infringement, ordering it to pay Rs 30 lakh in damages.

Tech giant Google is facing strong criticism in India after losing a court case related to its advertising business. This time, Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has openly backed Zerodha co-founder Nithin Kamath and accused Google of following ‘shady business practices.’

In a post on X, Vembu said: “I am with Nithin on this. What Google was doing was completely unethical and I am glad it has been found illegal in India. They need to be held to account for these shady business practices.”

I am with Nithin on this.

What Google was doing was completely unethical and I am glad it has been found illegal in India. They need to be held to account for these shady business practices. https://t.co/fXCGlfD6s8

— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) May 29, 2026

His comments came after the Delhi High Court ruled against Google in a trademark infringement case involving Hindware. The case was related to Google’s advertising platform and the use of trademarked keywords.

The Delhi High Court has ordered Google to pay damages of Rs 30 lakh.

Google lost the case because the Delhi High Court said the company was not acting as a neutral platform. Instead, it actively allowed and benefited from advertisers using Hindware’s trademark to attract customers searching for the Hindware brand.

Hindware found that competitors like Cera and Grohe were buying the keyword ‘HINDWARE’ through Google’s ad platform. do when users searched for Hindware products, ads from rival brands appeared at the top of Google Search results.

Google argued that advertisers choose the keywords, not the company, he trademark was not visible in the ad itself and Google was only an intermediary platform.

The court said that even if a trademark is used invisibly as a keyword, it is still being used for advertising purposes. It also found that Google played an active role through its Ads system and Keyword Planner tools, rather than simply hosting ads.

This is not the first time Vembu has criticised Big Tech companies. Recently, the Zoho founder questioned the growing AI hype.

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/zoho-ceo-sridhar-vembu-calls-google-unethical-for-shady-business-practices-article-154427523

 

AI chatbots could be quietly blurring reality, a Stanford study warns, by validating users even when they’re off track.

Artificial intelligence tools have become a major part of our lives. Today, people depend on chatbots for most of the tasks and even for personal advice. However, a new study has revealed that these AI chatbots could be too eager to agree, even when users are wrong. Researchers warn this ‘agreeable reflex’ could eventually reshape how people perceive reality and make decisions bringing moral confusion in their lives.

The Delhi High Court has made a significant ruling affecting online advertising, particularly for companies like Google and Hindware.

Delhi High Court Has Passed a landmark judgement in a case that included Google and a sanitaryware brand Hindware, and this could completely change how companies advertise online in the country. Until now, and for a very long time, businesses across sectors have relied on a common digital marketing strategy bidding on rival brand names as keywords on Google Ads to attract potential customers. For example, someone searching for one brand could also end up seeing ads from its rivals.

Now, according to the latest court ruling, the practice may face legal scrutiny. The Delhi High Court has stated that Google cannot allow rival firms to bid on trademarked keywords ‘Hindware’ via its advertising platform. The judgment came on a trademark dispute filed by HSIL Limited, the parent company of Hindware.

The court found out that letting competitors use a trademarked name as a keyword to initiate ads comes under trademark infringement. As for the case, it began when Hindware argued that rival companies are using its registered trademark on Google Ads to divert customers searching particularly for Hindware products.

In this case, the court has also rejected Google’s defence that it was only acting as an intermediary. On the contrary, the judgment said Google played an active commercial role by selling keywords, conducting ad auctions and earning revenue from these searches.

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/google-lost-trademark-case-in-delhi-hc-and-it-could-reshape-how-search-ads-work-article-154428080

Google’s AI Search update has sparked fears among publishers as experts warn AI-generated summaries could reduce website traffic, hurt revenues, and threaten independent journalism globally.

The ongoing feud between big tech and news publishers seems to have wider implications for the newsrooms across the world. With Google’s new update on AI Search, the company announced how its AI agents will scan “blogs, news sites and social posts” to present crisp answers and quick summaries to users. Amid the issue, the question arises, what happens if readers stop checking the original content from the news sites and simply go with the AI-generated content? This will undoubtedly bring losses to the new outlets in India and across the world.

AI-powered search is fundamentally altering the traffic dynamics that have sustained digital news publishers, shifting the model from content discovery to direct in-platform consumption. Timesnownews.com spoke with experts to understand how such a move could impact India.

Google, under Sundar Pichai’s leadership, is broadening its AI initiatives by launching CodeMender, an AI security tool designed to identify and fix vulnerabilities in software code.

Sundar Pichai-led Google is expanding its AI ambitions beyond chatbots and Search. The Alphabet-owned search giant has now introduced CodeMender, a new AI security agent that can automatically detect vulnerabilities in code, suggest fixes, test them, and even deploy patches with human approval.

Google announced CodeMender to compete with Claude Mythos, a new AI tool from Anthropic created to help companies find and fix security issues in their software.

“Leveraging Agent Platform capabilities and advanced Gemini models, CodeMender autonomously identifies vulnerabilities within your code. It then recommends precise fixes, securely tests them, and can apply patches and necessary changes across dependent systems, with your approval. This entire process automates secure deployment while ensuring your developers retain control,” the company said in a blog post.

CodeMender was originally developed by Google DeepMind and is now being integrated into Google’s Agent Platform. The tool runs on advanced Gemini models, including Gemini 3.5, and is designed to help companies secure their software faster.

For those unaware, CodeMender works like an AI security engineer. It scans source code to find bugs and security loopholes, recommends exact fixes, tests whether the fixes work and can apply those changes across connected systems after getting approval from developers.

Google says this approach can help businesses reduce the time it takes to patch vulnerabilities while keeping engineers in control of the final decision. Several Gemini Enterprise customers are already testing CodeMender, though Google has not announced a wider release date yet.

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/google-takes-on-anthropics-mythos-with-new-ai-security-agent-codemender-article-154354928

Indian AI warfare company FWDA has partnered with Portugal’s SKETCHPIXEL to manufacture the autonomous combat aircraft ‘Kaal Bhairava’ in Europe. The collaboration marks a major step for India’s defence technology sector, integrating indigenous AI warfare systems into European and NATO-linked defence manufacturing networks.

 

In a major boost to India’s ambitions of becoming a global defence manufacturing hub, Indian AI warfare company FWDA on Friday announced that its autonomous combat aircraft ‘Kaal Bhairava’ will now be manufactured in Europe through a strategic partnership with Portuguese defence technology firm SKETCHPIXEL.

The collaboration marks a significant milestone for India’s indigenous defence technology ecosystem, as Kaal Bhairava becomes one of the first Indian-designed AI combat aircraft platforms to enter the European manufacturing and defence network.

SKETCHPIXEL is known for developing advanced fighter jet simulation systems for aircraft such as the F-16 Fighting Falcon.

Partnership to strengthen defence technology integration

OpenAI has integrated its AI coding assistant Codex into the ChatGPT for iOS and Android, enabling developers to monitor and manage coding tasks remotely. The feature allows real-time updates, approvals, and task control across devices, including remote environments. It is rolling out in preview across all plans, with expanded enterprise and security features.

OpenAI — the parent company of ChatGPT — has integrated its AI coding assistant Codex into the ChatGPT mobile app for iOS and Android users, allowing developers to monitor, manage and approve coding tasks remotely from their smartphones.

The feature is currently being introduced in preview mode across all ChatGPT plans, including Free and Go, in supported regions.

With the integration, users can connect their phones to machines running Codex — including laptops, Mac minis, devboxes and managed remote environments — and access live project updates directly through the ChatGPT app.

According to OpenAI, the mobile experience allows users to review outputs, approve commands, switch AI models, start new coding tasks and monitor ongoing threads without returning to their desktop systems.

“Real-time updates such as screenshots, terminal output, diffs, test results and approvals are synced to the mobile app, while files, credentials and permissions remain on the connected machine,” the AI company said.

The company further highlighted that more than 4 million users are now using Codex every week.

Source: https://www.freepressjournal.in/tech/openai-integrates-codex-into-chatgpt-mobile-app-for-remote-coding-management-on-ios-android

Satellite Internet Has An Exhaust Problem Nobody Is Regulating

AI is transforming corporate operations, with over 108,724 tech layoffs in 2026 linked to increased AI investments. However, a Gartner study reveals that companies reducing workforce for AI have not improved financially.

Cisco (CSCO.O), said ​on Wednesday it would cut nearly 4,000 jobs, as part of a restructuring aimed at ‌shifting investment toward artificial intelligence and related growth areas, and raised its annual revenue forecast after a surge in hyperscaler orders.
Shares of the San Jose, California-based networking equipment maker rose more than 16% in extended trading.

“The companies that will win ​in the AI era will be those with focus, urgency, and the discipline to continuously shift ​investment toward the areas where demand and long-term value creation are strongest,” CEO Chuck ⁠Robbins said in a post on Cisco’s website.

The company said it was making strategic investments in silicon, ​optics, security and employees’ use of AI across the company, as it reduces roles in some areas.
Cisco has ​taken $5.3 billion in AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers so far this fiscal year, and raised its full-year order expectation to $9 billion from $5 billion previously.
“Though much will likely be made about a slight decrease in headcount, the post-market move we are seeing ​is truly the result of hyperscaler capex spilling downstream. This move validates that this capex is about ​more than just chips,” said Ryan Lee, Direxion’s senior vice president of product and strategy.

Cisco is benefiting as companies expand ‌spending beyond ⁠AI processors to the high-speed networks required to connect large data-center systems. Its networking product orders grew more than 50% in the third quarter compared to a year earlier, while data-center switching orders rose more than 40%.
Shares of the company have risen 32% this year.

On a post-earnings call, Cisco’s finance chief, Mark Patterson, ​said it is “reasonable” to expect ​at least $6 billion of ⁠revenue on the AI hyperscale side in fiscal 2027.
The company reported revenue of $15.84 billion for the third quarter ended April 25, beating analysts’ average estimate of $15.56 billion, ​according to data compiled by LSEG.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/technology/cisco-raises-annual-revenue-forecast-2026-05-13/

According to mission scientists, the spacecraft is approaching Mars from a high phase angle.

A new image captured by a spacecraft traveling through deep space shows Mars as a thin crescent, offering a rare and unusual view of the Red Planet. The image was taken as the spacecraft moves closer for a planned flyby that will help it continue its long journey toward a distant asteroid, reported NASA. The spacecraft, named NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, is set to pass close to Mars on Friday, May 15. It will fly about 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) above the planet’s surface while moving at a speed of around 12,333 mph (19,848 kph). During this pass, Mars is being used to help change the spacecraft’s path and increase its speed using the planet’s gravity.

Launched on October 13, 2023, the Psyche spacecraft is on a mission to reach the metal-rich asteroid also named Psyche. It uses a solar-electric propulsion system powered by xenon gas, slowly gaining speed over time as it travels through space.
Mission planners are using the Mars flyby to reduce fuel use by letting the planet’s gravity assist the spacecraft instead of relying only on its engines.

During the close approach, the spacecraft’s multispectral imager is expected to capture thousands of observations of Mars. These images will help scientists prepare for future operations when the spacecraft reaches the asteroid in 2029. On May 7, the mission team began receiving initial unprocessed images, including views of a starfield and a small Mars. Scientists will later adjust these images for brightness and contrast and create a time-lapse of the flyby.

Rare Crescent View Of Mars

The image released on May 3, 2026, shows Mars as a thin crescent. According to mission scientists, the spacecraft is approaching Mars from a high phase angle, meaning it sees the planet mostly from the night side with only a narrow strip of sunlight visible. A mission imaging expert, Jim Bell, explained that this viewing angle creates both a thin crescent during approach and a nearly full view after the flyby, which helps with calibration and imaging tests.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/science/nasas-psyche-spacecraft-captures-rare-crescent-image-of-mars-during-flyby-11476765?pfrom=home-ndtv_lateststories

A glowing streak of light lit up the sky over Odisha on May 8, 2026, spotted as far away as Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, after India launched a missile from Chandipur.

Something lit up the sky over Odisha on the evening of May 8, and nobody who saw it could quite believe their eyes.

A bright, comet-like object with a long, twisting orange-white tail streaked across the horizon, visible not just across Odisha but as far away as Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, hundreds of kilometres from the launch site.

Videos poured onto social media within minutes.

The internet had one question: what was that?

WHAT EXACTLY WAS LAUNCHED OVER ODISHA?

The mystery has now been solved. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that India successfully conducted the flight trial of an advanced Agni missile equipped with MIRV capability from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island, Chandipur, Odisha on May 8, 2026.

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India conducted successful Flight trial of an Advanced Agni missile with MIRV (Multiple Independently Targeted Re-Entry Vehicle) system from Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Island, Odisha on 08th May 2026. The missile was flight tested with Multiple payloads, targeted to different targets… pic.twitter.com/5zUP7WYivJ

— रक्षा मंत्री कार्यालय/ RMO India (@DefenceMinIndia) May 9, 2026

MIRV stands for Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle. In plain language, it means one single missile carries multiple warheads that can separate mid-flight and strike several completely different targets spread across a large area, simultaneously.

The missile was tested with multiple payloads aimed at targets distributed across a large geographical area in the Indian Ocean Region.

WHAT MAKES THIS MISSILE SO SIGNIFICANT?

A conventional missile carries one warhead for one target. A MIRV-equipped missile is fundamentally different: it is, in effect, several weapons in one.

This makes it exponentially harder to intercept, because a missile defence system would need to track and destroy multiple incoming warheads at once rather than just one.

Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh complimented DRDO, the Indian Army and industry on the successful test, stating it would add incredible capability to the country’s defence preparedness against growing threat perceptions.

WHY WAS THE MISSILE VISIBLE SO FAR AWAY?

The spectacular visuals were not a coincidence of timing. When a missile is launched at twilight, its exhaust plume, the trail of gases left behind at extreme altitudes, catches the last sunlight and glows brilliantly against the darkening sky.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/odisha-missile-launch-mystery-sky-trail-seen-from-bangladesh-after-chandipur-test-2909161-2026-05-09

 

Indian Council of Medical Research says reported hantavirus cases linked to the cruise ship outbreak remain isolated, with low public risk.

Amid growing global attention around the hantavirus outbreak linked to the cruise ship MV Hondius, the Indian Council for Medical Research has said that at present, there is no evidence of community spread or immediate public health threat in the country.

According to Dr. Naveen Kumar, Director of ICMR’s National Institute of Virology, the cases appear to be isolated ones. “The reported hantavirus cases appear to be isolated ones, and there is no immediate public health threat to India,” he was quoted by PTI. His remarks come after reports that two Indian nationals aboard a cruise ship were detected with hantavirus.

Health Ministry monitoring situation

The Union Health Ministry is also closely monitoring the evolving situation, in coordination with the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP), World Health Organization (WHO), and other international health authorities, according to news reports.

The ministry remains on high alert and is maintaining close coordination with the WHO and other international partners.

What is hantavirus?

Hantaviruses are a group of viruses mainly transmitted to humans through contact with infected rodents or their excreta, including urine, saliva, and droppings. Doctors explain that people usually become infected after inhaling aerosolised viral particles in enclosed or poorly ventilated spaces such as warehouses, ships, storage facilities, barns, and rodent-infested buildings.
Health authorities say most hantavirus infections are linked to environmental exposure rather than widespread human transmission.

Former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati testified in court that CEO Sam Altman created “chaos” and distrust among senior executives during important periods in the company’s growth. Her recorded testimony was played in a California federal court as part of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI

Former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati testified in court that CEO Sam Altman created “chaos” and distrust among senior executives during important periods in the company’s growth.

Her recorded testimony was played in a California federal court as part of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, according to a report by Reuters.

Murati said Altman often gave different information to different people and was sometimes dishonest in his communications.

According to her testimony, this behaviour caused confusion inside the company and weakened trust among top executives.

She also said Altman undermined her role at times, making it harder for her to do her job effectively.

In a major boost to India’s indigenous defence and aerospace ambitions, the Andhra Pradesh government has extended full support for setting up a world-class Aircraft Integration & Flight Testing Complex at Puttaparthi in the Sri Sathya Sai district.

The proposed facility, to be developed by the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) under the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), is expected to become a key centre for aircraft assembly, systems integration, and flight testing for India’s next-generation combat aircraft and unmanned aerial systems programmes.

The project has reportedly received in-principle approval from the Ministry of Defence following sustained discussions between the Andhra Pradesh government and the Centre. The initiative is aligned with the union government’s Atmanirbhar Bharat vision and Andhra Pradesh’s Defence & Aerospace Policy 4.0, which aims to position the state as a leading destination for aerospace and advanced manufacturing industries.

As part of the approved framework, the Andhra Pradesh government will facilitate:

• Allocation of 150 acres adjoining the Puttaparthi runway for the Aircraft Integration & Flight Testing Complex.

• Allocation of an additional 200 acres for a satellite office complex and residential township.

• Extension of the runway length to 10,000 feet.

• Development of critical aviation infrastructure, including ATC tower, navigation aids and meteorological support systems.

• Facilitation of approvals for creation of a dedicated Local Flying Zone in coordination with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Ministry of Defence and the Indian Air Force.

Aerospace Manufacturing Ecosystem Planned

In another major boost to the aerospace ecosystem, the government has authorised Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) to initiate the development of industrial land banks in the surrounding region, including 300 acres earmarked for private industry partners to establish aerospace and defence manufacturing facilities.

Lab-Engineered Virus Drives Bacterial Evolution 160,000 Times Faster Than Normal

Running is one of the most familiar forms of exercise for heart health. But a new study in lab rats found that swimming may actually do more for the heart, and on several measures, the gap between the two was wider than expected.

Researchers at the Federal University of São Paulo published their findings in Scientific Reports after comparing the two exercise types under identical lab conditions. Swimming produced bigger hearts and stronger heart-muscle performance, while running at the same effort level did not trigger the same degree of cardiac growth. Both improved overall fitness, but when it came to the heart itself, swimming had the edge.

Not all heart growth works the same way. When the heart enlarges due to disease, such as chronic high blood pressure, that growth is often harmful. But when the heart grows in response to exercise, the enlargement is considered healthy, preserving or even boosting the organ’s ability to contract and relax. Knowing which exercises drive this beneficial remodeling could eventually inform how doctors think about physical activity.

Swimming Outperforms Running on Heart Size and Muscle Strength

Researchers divided male lab rats into three groups of 24: a sedentary group, a running group training on a motorized treadmill, and a swimming group exercising in a heated water tank. Both exercise groups worked out five days a week, 60 minutes per day, for eight weeks at roughly 75 percent of their maximum oxygen capacity.

Rats in both exercise groups improved their peak oxygen consumption by more than 5 percent, while the untrained group declined. Both exercise types equally boosted an enzyme in muscle tissue that reflects improved energy production at the cellular level, and at the whole-body fitness level, running and swimming were comparable.

Where things diverged was inside the chest. Only the swimming group showed a meaningful increase in heart mass relative to body weight and in the mass of the left ventricle, the chamber responsible for pumping blood to the rest of the body. Heart muscle cells in the swimming group were wider and their internal structures larger, both signs of healthy cardiac growth. Running group hearts looked statistically similar to those of sedentary rats on these measures.

Ultrasound imaging showed swimming produced a pattern in which the heart’s chambers grew larger in diameter, an adaptation tied to the high blood-volume demands of water immersion. Neither exercise type impaired the heart’s ability to fill or pump blood at rest. But when researchers tested isolated strips of heart muscle directly, swimming-trained rats developed significantly more force, and both the rate of force buildup and relaxation were greater than in the running and untrained groups.

Swimming’s Molecular Advantage Traced to a Key Growth Pathway

To understand why swimming outperformed running at the cellular level, the team examined signaling proteins known to drive healthy heart growth. One standout finding involved a protein called PTEN, which acts as a brake on a growth-promoting pathway. Only in the swimming group was PTEN significantly reduced, meaning the brake was released, allowing a downstream chain of signals to help heart cells build new structural components. Both exercise types activated some of these shared signals, but swimming pushed them further.

Part of the reason may come down to tiny genetic regulators called microRNAs, which act like dimmer switches for gene activity. Swimming drove significantly higher levels of five of these microRNAs compared to running, and two of them are known to suppress PTEN directly. In other words, swimming may be turning down the very brake that holds back heart growth. Notably, blood levels of IGF-1, a growth factor often assumed to be the main driver of exercise-related heart growth, were unchanged in all three groups. That points researchers toward mechanisms inside heart tissue rather than a simple hormonal explanation.

Source : https://studyfinds.com/swimming-heart-running-benefits/

A fossil found today in Norway might have formed in the tropics millions of years ago. Coal deposits in Antarctica perhaps initially accumulated in what was once a warm, swampy forest. Paleolatitude, a rock’s ancient position relative to the equator, is the single biggest factor scientists use to reconstruct those vanished environments, because latitude controls how directly sunlight strikes the ground and therefore drives climate. Get that number wrong, and the whole picture of what an ancient world looked like can fall apart.

A decade ago, a team of researchers built a free online calculator to help solve that problem. Called Paleolatitude.org, it lets scientists estimate where rocks and fossils originally formed, long before plate tectonics shuffled them to their current locations. Now that tool has received its biggest upgrade yet.

Version 3.0 went live in April 2026 with three major improvements. For the first time, it incorporates what the authors describe as the first global paleogeographic model back to 320 million years that also restores many rock units now stacked inside mountain ranges like the Himalayas, the Alps, and the Andes. It also uses a more precise magnetic reference system and a redesigned interface that lets researchers process entire datasets at once instead of entering locations one at a time.

Published in PLOS ONE, the work was led by Douwe van Hinsbergen of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, with nine co-authors from institutions across Italy, France, Tajikistan, Austria, and the Netherlands.

Earth’s continents have never stayed put. Plates split apart, collide, and rotate. On top of that, the entire solid Earth can wobble relative to its spin axis, shifting all the continents at once relative to the equator and poles. Accounting for all of those motions simultaneously is exactly why the original tool was built. Type in coordinates and a time period, and the calculator returns an estimate of where that spot was, along with a margin of error.

Mountain Belt Rocks Finally Included in Global Paleolatitude Model

Version 3.0’s biggest change is the inclusion of the Utrecht Paleogeography Model, which covers most locations in the model for chosen time intervals over the last 320 million years. For the first time, the model attempts to restore rock units now crumpled and stacked inside mountain ranges, not just the stable continental cores that earlier versions handled.

Mountains form when tectonic plates collide and compress, thrusting slices of rock into towering piles. The Himalayas, for instance, contain rocks that were once part of a distant ocean floor. Earlier versions of the tool left those regions out entirely, which was a significant gap. Mountain belts tend to have far better rock exposures and richer fossil collections than many stable continental interiors, which are often buried under soil and vegetation.

Version 3.0 incorporates detailed reconstructions of deformed zones including the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Tibetan Plateau and Himalaya, Southeast Asia, the western United States, Iran, the Scotia Sea near Antarctica, and the continental fragments making up Mongolia, China, and Indochina. Each region was reconstructed using field geology, rock dating, and layering patterns, deliberately without using any climate or biological data, preventing circular reasoning when the tool is later used to study those very subjects.

Each deformed region was divided into thousands of small rigid pieces representing recognizable geological units. When reconstructed backward in time, these pieces may overlap, representing ancient stretching, or separate, representing compression. Overlaps rarely exceed about 100 kilometers, translating to roughly one degree of latitude in uncertainty.

Sharper Magnetic Reference Data Shrinks Paleolatitude Uncertainty

Ancient rocks preserve a record of Earth’s magnetic field like tiny frozen compasses. By analyzing these records from rocks of known ages on stable continents, scientists can track how the magnetic pole appeared to shift over time, which is really a record of moving continents.

Earlier versions of the calculator grouped magnetic data into study-level averages that contained arbitrary numbers of measurements. This introduced reproducibility problems and inflated uncertainty. Version 3.0 uses a reference system called gAPWP25, which works at the level of individual measurement sites, giving equal weight to each reading and producing smaller uncertainty bands.

Thirty-two new datasets, roughly a ten percent increase, were added to the magnetic database, drawing from locations as varied as New Zealand, Iceland, Morocco, Brazil, Argentina, India, Siberia, and England. Despite those additions, the updated reference path differs only slightly from its predecessor, with the largest shifts of about 1.5 to 2.5 degrees appearing in time windows with the sparsest existing data.

Source : https://studyfinds.com/scientists-track-fossils-320-million-years/

 

Elon Musk faced intense cross-examination in the OpenAI trial, with lawyers presenting emails showing his push for control in 2017 and efforts to recruit staff to Tesla. Musk defended his actions, saying he offered opportunities freely. The case centres on his claim that OpenAI abandoned its nonprofit mission.

A federal courtroom in Oakland has become the arena for one of Silicon Valley’s most consequential legal battles, as Elon Musk takes the stand against Sam Altman and OpenAI. The third day focused mainly on Elon Musk’s cross-examination by OpenAI lawyers.

Wired reports that OpenAI lawyers went back to 2017 and showed the court how Musk tried to gain more control but ultimately lost out and left. OpenAI’s lawyer William Savitt used emails, texts, and other evidence to portray Musk as aggressively trying to ‘squeeze’ the organisation after tensions rose.

Key points from Musk’s testimony on day three of the trial

– In 2017, Musk pushed for a for-profit structure and demanded the ability to appoint four board members (giving him voting control over the cofounders’ three). He wrote that he would ‘unequivocally have initial control of the company, but this will change quickly.’ Ilya Sutskever and others pushed back, worried it gave Musk too much power.

– Musk, who had been the primary funder (part of a $1 billion pledge), stopped his quarterly $5 million payments in spring 2017. An August 2017 email from his family office head asked if they should continue withholding. Musk replied, “Yes.”

– Musk and his teams (Tesla/Neuralink) discussed recruiting OpenAI researchers while he was still on the board. In June 2017, Musk emailed about hiring Andrej Karpathy (a top computer vision researcher) to Tesla. He was reported to have said, “The OpenAI guys are gonna want to kill me, but it had to be done.” On the stand, Musk said Karpathy had already decided to leave OpenAI anyway.

– Musk told a Neuralink cofounder to “Hire independently or directly from OpenAI” and that he had “no problem” pitching people there.

– Musk told then OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis they would “actively try to move three or four people from OpenAI to Tesla” and more would follow over time.

Musk defended these moves on the stand, arguing that restricting employment would be illegal and that he was simply offering opportunities to people who wanted to leave.

Courtroom environment on third day of the trial

The courtroom on the third day is said to have been tense, with the judge even reprimanding someone for photographing Musk. The OpenAI president Greg Brockman was present during the third day.

Musk is reported to appear frustrated, frequently objecting that questions were misleading, claiming poor recall on some details, and dealing with technical glitches and objections.

Source : https://www.freepressjournal.in/tech/elon-musk-vs-sam-altman-tesla-founder-accused-of-poaching-openai-researchers-withholding-funding-seeking-majority-control

On April 29, 2026, Earth will be hit by two airplane-sized asteroids in safe flybys, astronomical data suggests. The near-Earth asteroids, (2026 HL3) and (2026 HP3), will miss Earth by millions of miles and will not pose a threat.

Meet the two flybys making approach towards Earth

On April 29, 2026, two airplane-sized asteroids will safely pass Earth at distances of 1.6 million and 3.68 million miles respectively. Know more about these:

Asteroid 2026 HL3: Closer but smaller one

The first of the pair, (2026 HL3), is thought to be about 80 feet (the size of a small plane) across. It’s expected to approach close to Earth at about 1.6 million miles. This asteroid is considered a near-Earth object but is deemed non-threatening at the current distance.

Asteroid 2026 HP3: Biggest but more distant

The second asteroid, (2026 HP3), is a bit larger, at about 93 feet in diameter. However, it will make its closest approach at much further away (3.68 million miles away), making it harmless.

What are these near-Earth asteroids?

Near-Earth asteroids are cosmic rocks with orbits that take them near the Earth’s orbit. A large number of these objects fly past Earth, but only a few get close enough to trigger interest from scientists or space watchers.

While 2026 HL3 and 2026 HP3 are referred to as “airplane-sized”, both are safe flybys. Their millions of miles from Earth position them far away from Earth.

There are more significant close approaches when objects pass within the distance of the Moon or closer, which happen very rarely (a few per year), and are tracked by space agencies.

Source : https://www.moneycontrol.com/science/two-heavy-asteroids-to-skim-past-earth-on-29-april-confirmed-by-nasa-and-scientists-are-not-alarmed-article-13902220.html

For the millions of Americans living with diabetes, the dream of a lasting cure has always felt close yet frustratingly out of reach. Transplanting insulin-producing cells from a donor can, in theory, replace what the disease destroys. But the body’s immune system attacks those foreign cells, and the treatments used to prevent that rejection can be nearly as dangerous as the disease itself. Now, a team at Stanford has found a way to cure diabetes in mice by dramatically reducing the toxic preparation the body needs before a transplant, while still convincing the immune system to accept donor tissue as its own.

The study, published in JCI Insight on April 21, 2026, takes on one of the most stubborn problems in transplant medicine. When doctors transplant cells or organs from one person to another, the recipient’s immune system recognizes the new tissue as foreign and launches an attack. One powerful strategy to prevent this is to first transplant bone marrow cells from the same donor, creating a state where the recipient’s blood and immune system becomes a mix of their own cells and the donor’s, a condition called “mixed chimerism.” In that scenario, the immune system essentially learns to treat the donor’s tissue as “self,” a state known as tolerance. It’s an elegant solution, but it requires harsh preparation of the patient’s bone marrow beforehand, often involving high doses of radiation or chemotherapy, that carries serious risks of its own.

The Stanford team, led by senior author Seung K. Kim from the Department of Developmental Biology at Stanford School of Medicine, wanted to know whether they could achieve that same tolerance using a gentler recipe. Their answer, demonstrated in a mouse model of diabetes, appears to be yes. It is important to emphasize that this work has been done only in mice so far, and significant hurdles remain before it could be tested in people.

A Gentler Recipe for Curing Diabetes in Mice

To understand what sets this work apart, it helps to know what normally happens before a bone marrow transplant. The patient’s existing bone marrow, the factory where blood and immune cells are made, needs to be partially or fully cleared out to make room for the donor’s cells. Traditionally, this “conditioning,” the medical preparation that readies the body to receive new bone marrow, involves large doses of full-body radiation or powerful drugs that wipe out immune cells. These treatments work, but they also cause damage to organs and raise the risk of infections, among other serious side effects. That toxicity is a major reason why bone marrow transplants aren’t more widely used as a strategy to train the immune system to accept donated tissue.

The Stanford researchers tested a combination of agents, many of which are already in clinical use for other conditions. Their cocktail included baricitinib, a drug that blocks certain immune signaling pathways; venetoclax, a drug that targets a protein helping certain immune cells survive; and an antibody against CD47, a molecule sometimes called a “don’t eat me” signal on cells. They combined these with an antibody against CD117, a protein found on blood stem cells, along with temporary removal of immune cells called T cells.

The real breakthrough was in how little radiation they needed. The team used just 10 centigray of full-body radiation, an extraordinarily low dose. Traditional conditioning for bone marrow transplants can use doses many times higher. By pairing this minimal radiation with their drug combination, the researchers achieved lasting mixed chimerism across a complete mismatch in the molecular markers that the immune system uses to tell “self” from “foreign.” A complete mismatch in these markers represents the toughest immunological barrier, comparable to transplanting between two entirely unrelated individuals.

Curing Diabetes in Mice Without Dangerous Immune Reactions

Once the researchers established mixed chimerism in their diabetic mice, they transplanted insulin-producing cells from donor mice that matched the bone marrow donor. The transplanted cells were accepted by the recipient’s immune system, and the mice’s diabetes was reversed. Blood sugar levels returned to normal, effectively curing the disease in these animals.

Just as important was what didn’t happen. One of the most feared complications of bone marrow transplantation is graft-versus-host disease, a condition where the donor’s immune cells turn against the recipient’s own body, attacking organs like the skin, liver, and gut. In this study, the researchers did not observe signs of that reaction in the treated mice. Their gentler conditioning approach worked, and it worked safely, at least in this animal model.

The transplanted insulin-producing cells came from donors completely mismatched in their immune markers, which matters because it shows tolerance can be achieved even under the most difficult conditions. The team carefully tracked the proportion of donor versus recipient blood cells to confirm that the mixed state lasted over time, rather than fading quickly.

Why Existing Drugs Make This Approach Especially Promising

One of the most practically significant aspects of this research is that the agents used are not experimental compounds sitting in a laboratory freezer. Baricitinib is prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory conditions. Venetoclax is used in certain blood cancers. The anti-CD47 antibody has been explored in cancer treatment. The antibody against CD117 has also been studied in clinical settings for conditioning before bone marrow transplants.

This means the path from laboratory discovery to potential human trials could be shorter than it would be for entirely new drugs. Of course, “could be” carries a lot of weight in that sentence. Mouse studies don’t always translate to humans, and there are good reasons for caution. The specific mouse strains, diabetes model, and transplant conditions used in this study may not fully replicate the complexity of the human immune system or human diabetes.

Source : https://studyfinds.com/scientists-cure-diabetes-in-mice-stanford/

Close your eyes and picture a red apple. Most people can do this without effort, conjuring a vivid mental snapshot of something that isn’t actually in front of them. For decades, brain scientists assumed this trick worked by running the visual system in reverse, with higher brain regions firing up the same neurons that would activate if you were actually seeing the apple. A provocative new paper argues that this long-held assumption is probably wrong, and that the brain may create mental images through a far stranger process: not by switching neurons on, but by selectively silencing them.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales, the University of Technology Sydney, and the University of the Sunshine Coast propose that mental imagery works by reshaping the brain’s background “noise.” Rather than feedback signals from executive brain regions causing neurons in the visual processing area to fire, the authors suggest imagery suppresses the neurons irrelevant to the imagined object while leaving the relevant ones relatively untouched. It’s less like painting a picture on a blank canvas and more like sculpting a figure by chipping away marble.

Published in Psychological Review, the paper pulls together decades of research on brain connectivity, neural recordings, brain imaging, and behavioral experiments rather than presenting new data of its own.

What Happens When the Brain Processes Mental Images
Normal vision works in a forward direction: light hits the eye, signals travel through a chain of brain regions, and early areas process simple features like edges before higher areas handle complex tasks like recognizing a face. Mental imagery runs in reverse. Brain scanning studies show that imagining something starts activity in executive areas near the front of the brain, which then flows backward toward early visual regions through “feedback” connections, signals traveling top-down rather than bottom-up.

Feedback connections outnumber their forward-moving counterparts by about two to one, according to primate studies cited in the paper. Yet despite being more numerous, they are generally thought to be weaker and slower, mainly acting as adjusters rather than initiators. Authors Roger Koenig-Robert, Thomas Pace, and Joel Pearson argue that forward connections cause neurons to fire, while feedback connections adjust the rate of neurons already firing, often by turning the volume down rather than up.

Why Brain Scans May Have Misled Scientists About Mental Imagery
Much of what scientists know about mental imagery comes from fMRI, a brain scanning technique that measures blood flow as a rough stand-in for neural activity. Numerous fMRI studies have shown that when people imagine visual scenes, early visual areas light up, widely interpreted as evidence that imagination fires up the same neurons as real seeing.

According to the paper, this interpretation has a critical flaw. Blood flow signals don’t specifically measure neurons firing; they reflect a mix of electrical activity, including signals that fall below the threshold needed for a neuron to fire at all. Some studies combining fMRI with direct electrode recordings in animals have shown it’s possible for strong blood flow responses to occur even when local neuron firing decreases, given adjusting signals arriving from other brain regions. In short, fMRI shows that something is happening in early visual areas during imagination, but can’t confirm whether neurons are being switched on or tuned down.

What Animal Studies and Human Experiments Suggest
Since scientists can’t ethically implant electrodes in healthy human visual cortex, much of the direct evidence comes from animal experiments. In higher brain regions, feedback can clearly drive neuron firing. Recordings from human epilepsy patients revealed that 88% of neurons in the medial temporal lobe, a memory-related region rather than early visual cortex, maintained the same selectivity whether their preferred image was seen or merely imagined.

In early visual areas, the picture looks different. When forward-moving input is knocked out in animal studies, activity in the next area up the chain drops sharply. Feedback removal, by contrast, tends to have far more limited effects, suggesting its role there is to refine rather than generate. In one attention experiment in monkeys, stimulating a frontal brain area boosted neuron firing in a mid-level visual area only when a stimulus was already present. When no stimulus was there, feedback had little or no effect, consistent with adjustment rather than direct driving.

Behavioral results in humans are mixed. Imagining motion appears to produce adaptation effects in motion-detecting brain areas, suggesting, but not proving, that feedback drives neurons in those mid-level regions. For basic features processed in early visual areas, results pointed more toward suppression than activation.

Brain May Use Suppression, Not Activation, to Build Mental Images
Pulling these threads together, the authors propose that mental imagery works differently depending on where in the brain’s visual chain one looks. In higher regions, feedback likely drives neurons to fire. In early visual areas, it may instead reshape ongoing background activity by suppressing neurons coding for irrelevant features, carving out a representation rather than lighting one up.

That could explain why mental images are almost always less vivid than real perception, and why they feel unstable: background neural activity is inherently variable, so a representation sculpted from it would naturally be more fragile than one driven by direct activation. Whether the brain builds pictures in the mind’s eye by turning lights on or knowing which ones to switch off remains unresolved, but the answer may change how scientists think about imagination, memory, and the brain’s inner life altogether.

 

Source: https://studyfinds.com/brain-build-mental-images-turning-neurons-off/

Apple (AAPL.O), on Monday named longtime hardware boss John Ternus as its next CEO, turning ​to another insider to steer the iPhone maker after Tim Cook as it navigates a world radically altered by artificial intelligence, a technology it has lagged on.
Cook, a ‌supply-chain genius who boosted Apple’s market value by $3.6 trillion in his 15 years at the helm, will stay on as executive chairman when Ternus takes over on September 1, Apple said in a statement.

Ternus, who joined Apple in 2001, has played a central role in reviving products such as the Mac, which has gained market share against PCs. Though he has kept a low public profile, he has been deeply involved in shaping Apple’s biggest products such as iPads and AirPods.
The transition ​comes at a crucial time for Apple. After years on top of the most-valuable company scoreboard, Apple has lost its crown to AI chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O), as investors have fretted over its lack ​of innovation in the technology that is changing how people work, create and get information.
Integrating AI into the iPhone – the most successful consumer product in history – ⁠may be Ternus’ hardest challenge.

In January, Apple struck a deal with longtime rival in smartphones, Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), Google, to use Google’s Gemini in an effort to improve its Siri virtual assistant.
Despite introducing a form of AI ​to the public imagination in 2011 with Siri, Apple has not yet scored a hardware or software product hit centered on new AI technologies, while emerging rivals such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT have attracted hundreds of millions ​of users.
In particular, Siri has not yet become an “agent” – the term that AI firms use for systems that carry out complex tasks like a human assistant.
“I expect his biggest challenge and efforts will be focused on getting a better AI story and offering together that relies more on Apple’s own capabilities and less on third parties,” said Bob O’Donnell, head of tech consulting firm TECHnalysis Research.

APPLE GAVE TERNUS AIRTIME RECENTLY

At 50, Ternus is the same age Cook was when he took ​over CEO duties from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Apple, which rarely allows its executives to speak publicly, has sought to elevate Ternus’ profile in recent years, having him speak with the press about Apple’s products.

He ​showed off the iPhone Air in September, the biggest revamp of the firm’s top-selling product in nearly a decade.
Ternus will also have to fend off rivals such as Meta Platforms (META.O), whose augmented-reality glasses have become a surprise hit with ‌just a ⁠fraction of the capabilities – and price tag – of Apple’s $3,499-plus Vision Pro headset. Nvidia, too, has announced its own personal computer and is working on chips that can power laptops.
“The promotion of Mr. Ternus indicates the company will focus on new hardware devices such as folding phones, glasses, VR devices and AI pins,” said Gil Luria, managing director of D.A. Davidson & Co.

COOK OVERSAW HISTORIC GROWTH

Apple shares declined about 0.5% after regular trading hours when the news was announced, after being up about 1% during regular trading. The stock has soared 20-fold since Cook took over as CEO in August 2011.
Cook, 65, was recruited by Jobs from Compaq at a ​time when that firm was riding high on ​the 1990s PC boom and Jobs was working ⁠to rescue Apple from the brink of insolvency.
He made his early reputation at Apple by building out its sprawling supply chain with contract manufacturers in China, a model that became the envy of Corporate America because it kept expensive factory operations and product inventories largely off Apple’s books while maximizing profits.
Apple’s decades of ​investments in China helped fuel that nation’s rise as the world’s workshop, a phenomenon that even Cook has found hard to shift away from.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/technology/john-ternus-become-apple-ceo-tim-cook-become-executive-chairman-2026-04-20/

Houston, we may have a problem!

A rare, colossal-sized asteroid is on course to fly by Earth — and will come closer to our planet than any other rocks of its size in human history.

The asteroid, named Apophis after the ancient Egyptian God of evil and destruction, is believed to span about 1,230 feet — even longer than the Eiffel Tower’s whopping 1,083-foot height.

Dubbed the “God of chaos,” the asteroid is on track to safely pass by Earth in a once-in-a-lifetime fly-by, lighting up the night sky visible to the naked eye on unlucky Friday, April 13, 2029, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

It is predicted that Apophis will come approximately 20,000 miles from the Earth’s surface, closer than many satellites floating in space — nearly 12 times closer than the moon’s average distance from Earth.

Asteroids of this size fly by Earth “only every few thousand years on average, so it’s likely that an event like this has not happened at any time in recorded human history,” NASA said.

“Without a doubt, this is the first time it’s happened when humans have had the technology to observe it,” the agency said.

Depending on the weather, space fanatics and eagle-eyed observers on Earth will be able to observe the asteroid’s approach from the ground in the Eastern Hemisphere without a telescope or binoculars, according to NASA.

The space agency reassures that there is no danger to anyone living on Earth, or to the astronauts and satellites in space, “but the event is an amazing and totally unprecedented opportunity to learn much more about Apophis and similar near-Earth asteroids.”

NASA has been studying the asteroid closely for years; it initially sparked global concern when scientists calculated it could potentially impact Earth in 2029, 2036 or 2068 — hence the destructive name of Apophis.

The “God of chaos” asteroid was first discovered by astronomers in 2004, and briefly reached level 4 on NASA’s Torino Impact Hazard Scale, which assesses possible space dangers.

Today, Apophis is classified as “potentially hazardous” — not because it poses any danger to life on Earth, but due to its large size and proximity to Earth, according to Space.com.

NASA originally put the astronomically sized rock at a 2.7% chance of devastation, but all danger was ruled out after new radar observations in 2021, leaving Earth safe from harm for at least 100 years.

Source : https://nypost.com/2026/04/18/science/god-of-chaos-asteroid-apophis-will-be-once-in-a-lifetime-event-visible-to-the-naked-eye-and-closer-than-many-satellites-scientists/

The rising incidence of liver cancer across the globe is becoming an alarming public health concern. Once considered relatively uncommon in many regions, liver cancer cases are now increasing steadily due to a combination of lifestyle factors, chronic infections, and late detection.

World Liver Day is observed every year on April 19. The day aims to raise awareness about liver health, liver-related diseases, the importance of early detection, and preventive measures. Your liver is one of the most important organs of the body. It helps in detoxification, metabolism, and storage. The liver filters blood, produces bile for fat digestion, manages glucose/iron levels, synthesises blood-clotting proteins, and stores vitamins. While the liver is an important organ, there has been an increase in cases of fatty liver disease, liver cirrhosis and liver cancer.

Speaking to NDTV, Dr. Rinkesh Kumar Bansal, Director, Gastroenterology at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram, said, “The rising incidence of liver cancer across the globe is becoming an alarming public health concern. Once considered relatively uncommon in many regions, liver cancer cases are now increasing steadily due to a combination of lifestyle factors, chronic infections, and late detection.” This trend raises an important question: are we ignoring the early warning signs and missing opportunities for prevention. Read on as Dr. Bansal shares the cause behind this increase, warning signs and more.

Major Causes Of Liver Cancer

One of the major drivers behind the increase is chronic infection with Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C. These infections can silently damage the liver over many years, often without noticeable symptoms. If left untreated, they may lead to cirrhosis and eventually liver cancer. Despite the availability of vaccines for Hepatitis B and effective treatments for Hepatitis C, lack of awareness, limited screening, and delayed diagnosis continue to fuel the problem.

In addition to viral causes, modern lifestyle changes are significantly contributing to rising liver cancer rates. Conditions such as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), often linked to obesity, diabetes, and poor diet, are becoming leading risk factors. As sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy eating habits increase globally, more individuals are unknowingly putting their liver health at risk. Excessive alcohol consumption is another major contributor, leading to long-term liver damage and increasing the likelihood of cancer development.

Signs And Symptoms Of Liver Cancer

A critical issue in addressing liver cancer is the lack of early symptoms. In its initial stages, liver cancer often develops silently, making it difficult to detect without routine screening. Warning signs such as unexplained weight loss, persistent fatigue, abdominal pain, jaundice, and swelling are frequently overlooked or mistaken for less serious conditions. By the time symptoms become severe, the disease is often at an advanced stage, limiting treatment options and reducing survival rates.

Why Is Liver Cancer Detected At Later Stages?

The gap in public awareness and preventive healthcare is a major reason why liver cancer cases are detected at later stages. Many people remain unaware of the importance of regular liver check-ups, especially those at higher risk. Screening programs for high-risk populations, such as individuals with chronic hepatitis or liver cirrhosis, are not widely implemented in many parts of the world. This leads to missed opportunities for early intervention, which could significantly improve outcomes.

Healthcare systems also face challenges in managing the growing burden. Access to advanced diagnostic tools, timely treatment, and specialised care is not evenly distributed, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This disparity further increases the problem, as patients are often diagnosed too late for effective treatment.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/health/rising-liver-cancer-cases-are-we-ignoring-the-warning-signs-doctor-answers-11375914

That bag of chips, that frozen pizza, that shelf-stable pastry grabbed on the way out the door. Americans know these foods aren’t exactly good for them. But a new study says the damage may go deeper than the waistline. Researchers found that people who ate more ultra-processed foods had higher levels of fat within their thigh muscles, even after accounting for factors like body weight, calorie intake, and lifestyle differences.

That fat wasn’t sitting under the skin or pooling around the belly. It had worked its way inside the muscles themselves, the very muscles needed to walk, climb stairs, and keep knees stable. In a country where ultra-processed foods make up more than half of the average person’s diet, that’s a problem that reaches well beyond concerns about appearance.

Published in the journal Radiology, the research drew on data from 615 older adults enrolled in the Osteoarthritis Initiative, a major long-term study focused on knee health. None had diagnosed osteoarthritis or ongoing knee or hip pain at the start of the study, but all were considered at risk for developing knee problems down the road. Researchers wanted to know whether diet quality, specifically how much of a person’s food came from industrial, heavily processed sources, might be associated with degraded quality in the muscles that protect aging joints.

What Counts as Ultra-Processed Food?

Researchers used a system called the NOVA classification, which sorts foods not by their nutritional labels but by how much industrial processing went into making them. Ultra-processed foods are those made with chemical additives, things like artificial flavorings, colorings, and shelf-life extenders, designed to make products last longer, taste better, and look more appealing. Packaged snack cakes, instant noodles, hot dogs, sweetened cereals, and soft drinks all fall into this category. These aren’t foods that were simply cooked or canned. They were engineered in factories.

On average, ultra-processed foods made up about 41% of the participants’ diets. Men ate slightly more of these foods than women, roughly 45% of their diet compared with about 39% for women.

How Researchers Connected Ultra-Processed Food to Muscle Fat

Led by Zehra Akkaya at Ankara University and the University of California, San Francisco, the team analyzed data collected between February 2004 and October 2015. Participants completed a detailed food survey covering 102 items, reporting how often and how much of each they ate over the prior 12 months. Each item was then classified using the NOVA system, and researchers calculated what percentage of each person’s diet came from ultra-processed sources.

To measure muscle quality, the team used MRI scans of both thighs. Two trained observers scored fat infiltration in 10 individual muscles per thigh using the Goutallier grading system, which rates each muscle on a zero-to-four scale. A score of zero means no visible fat in the muscle; a four means more than half the muscle tissue has been replaced by fat. Rather than relying on a single image, observers evaluated 15 consecutive slices covering a roughly three-inch section of each thigh.

Participants had a mean age of about 60 years, and just over half were women. Nearly 65% were overweight and about 24% were obese. People with diabetes, stroke, cancer, or inflammatory joint disease were excluded, an intentional choice to isolate the relationship between diet and muscle fat without the distorting effects of chronic illness.

After adjusting for age, sex, race, education, income, physical activity, smoking, depression, total daily calories, and body mass index, the results showed a consistent pattern. As ultra-processed food made up a larger share of someone’s diet, fat scores in the thigh muscles climbed across all muscle groups examined, including the muscles on the back and inner thigh. Sex made no difference; the relationship held equally for men and women.

Why Waist Size Tells More Than the Scale

When researchers swapped BMI for waist measurement, a more precise gauge of how fat is distributed in the body, the associations grew stronger and extended to every muscle group, including the front of the thigh. The strongest link appeared in the inner thigh muscles. That pattern suggests fat distribution may play an important role in understanding how diet relates to muscle health, beyond what overall body weight can capture alone.

When total dietary fat was added as an extra variable, the results barely moved, suggesting the link may not be explained by fat content alone. Something about ultra-processed foods beyond their fat content appears connected to muscle deterioration.

Source : https://studyfinds.com/ultra-processed-food-muscles/

OpenAI on Tuesday unveiled GPT-5.4-Cyber, a variant of its latest flagship model fine-tuned specifically for defensive cybersecurity work, following rival Anthropic’s announcement of frontier AI model Mythos.

Mythos, announced on April 7, is being deployed as part of Anthropic’s “Project Glasswing”, a controlled initiative under which select organizations are permitted to use the unreleased Claude Mythos Preview model for defensive cybersecurity purposes. It has found “thousands” of major vulnerabilities in operating systems, web browsers and other software.

OpenAI, creator of popular chatbot ChatGPT, said that GPT-5.4-Cyber will initially be rolled out on a limited basis to vetted security vendors, organizations and researchers because of its more permissive design.

The company is also expanding its Trusted Access for Cyber program to thousands of verified individual defenders and hundreds of teams protecting critical software, it said in a post on its website.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/openai-unveils-gpt-54-cyber-week-after-rivals-announcement-ai-model-6056831

According to outage tracking website Downdetector, complaints surged sharply over a short period, indicating a sudden service disruption.

Users of X across the United States reported widespread disruption on 14 April, with many saying they were unable to access their feeds, log in, or post content. The issues appeared to affect both the platform’s mobile application and its website, with complaints emerging from multiple regions.

According to the outage tracking service Downdetector, reports of problems rose sharply within a short period, suggesting a sudden service interruption. Data from the site indicated that as many as 17,500 complaints were logged at the peak of the disruption.

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/is-x-twitter-down-right-now-thousands-of-users-report-outage-downdetector-article-154078899

For nearly 180 years, researchers have been digging up fossils of synapsids, the ancient animal group that gave rise to mammals. Not a single convincing egg from these creatures had ever turned up in that time, a gap so persistent that some scientists openly questioned whether these animals laid eggs at all. A tiny, curled-up skeleton from South Africa, no bigger than a tennis ball, may finally change that. A research team says it offers the first compelling evidence of a pre-mammal synapsid embryo preserved in its egg, roughly 250 million years old.

At the center of the find is Lystrosaurus, a stocky, beaked, roughly pig-sized plant-eater that became one of the most common land animals on Earth after surviving the worst mass extinction in the planet’s history. That catastrophe wiped out roughly 90 percent of marine species and a huge proportion of land life. Understanding how Lystrosaurus reproduced touches one of biology’s most debated questions: how mammals eventually started producing milk rather than relying entirely on eggs. Leading theories hold that milk didn’t begin as food, but as a skin secretion that may have moistened soft-shelled eggs or protected them from infection, and this depends on early synapsids being egg-layers. Until now, the supporting evidence was largely circumstantial.

To find answers, the team examined three of the smallest Lystrosaurus fossils ever found, all from South Africa’s Karoo Basin, using CT scanning and a particle accelerator at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France. Their findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

How Scientists Found the First Synapsid Embryo Preserved in an Egg

Cataloged as NMQR 3636, the standout fossil is a nearly complete skeleton curled tightly inside a rock roughly the size and shape of a large chicken egg, with a skull measuring only about 34.5 millimeters. What caught the researchers’ attention wasn’t its size. It was the lower jaw.

In modern birds and turtles, both of which use beaks to feed after hatching, the two halves of the lower jaw always fuse before hatching, typically in the final third of development inside the egg. In NMQR 3636, those jaw halves had not yet fused. A deep, smooth-edged notch separated the two bones at the chin, and high-resolution imaging confirmed this was a genuine developmental feature, not burial damage. Both comparison specimens, slightly larger and more developed, had nearly or fully fused jaw joints, consistent with having already hatched.

That unfused jaw is central to the argument. Lystrosaurus had a beak and needed a strong jaw to eat. An animal at this stage of development could not have chewed food on its own. And unlike platypuses and echidnas, the only modern egg-laying mammals, whose helpless hatchlings survive on their mother’s milk, Lystrosaurus likely did not produce milk. Without milk to fall back on, an individual with a partly cartilaginous jaw could not have survived outside an egg.

Ancient Synapsid Embryo Evidence: Building the Case Bone by Bone

Beyond the unfused jaw, NMQR 3636 showed multiple signs of extreme immaturity. Its tusk sockets were empty, while comparison specimens already had small tusk buds. Bones at the back of its skull were loose and displaced. Its hip bones were too weak to support body weight, and limb bone ends were unfinished. A third specimen, found splayed out with a fully connected skeleton, had clearly already hatched before dying.

No preserved eggshell was found, consistent with the egg having been soft and leathery, a trait suspected to be common among early egg-laying land animals. The identification rests on cumulative anatomical and postural evidence rather than direct confirmation of an egg structure, a limitation the authors acknowledge.

Egg Size and the Ancient Origins of Milk

Working from the curled skeleton’s dimensions, the team estimated the egg at roughly 115 cubic centimeters and about 115 grams. Compared to other egg-laying animals relative to body size, the Lystrosaurus egg fell in the upper range for reptiles and well above those of modern platypuses and echidnas.

That size difference matters for understanding how milk evolved. Modern egg-laying mammals produce tiny eggs because their young are fed milk after hatching, compensating for limited yolk. Lystrosaurus’s larger egg points toward the opposite strategy: the embryo likely relied on yolk for most of its nutrition, suggesting relatively well-developed hatchlings capable of feeding on their own soon after birth, an approach scientists call “precocial.”

Researchers also compared their findings to Kayentatherium, a more mammal-like synapsid from the Early Jurassic whose fossilized nest held 38 tiny babies. That animal’s eggs, relative to body size, were far smaller, closer in proportion to modern egg-laying mammals, raising the possibility that Kayentatherium may have relied more on post-hatching care, possibly including early forms of milk feeding. Lystrosaurus, further back on the family tree, appears to have taken a different path.

Source : https://studyfinds.com/ancient-mammal-ancestor/

Google Messages is introducing a new feature for Android users that enables the recovery of deleted chats through a Trash folder. This update allows users to retrieve accidentally deleted conversations within a 30-day grace period before permanent deletion.

In some good news for Android users across the globe, Google Messages is rolling out a much-needed feature that will allow them to recover deleted chats. So, if you accidentally delete an important conversation, the app now gives you a second chance to bring it back.

According to a report from 9To5Google, Google Messages has released its new Trash folder to save users from accidental deletions. This feature is now rolling out gradually to Android users and should be available widely soon.

Earlier, when you deleted a chat in Google Messages, it was removed permanently right away. But soon, things will work differently. With the latest update, any chat you delete will first move to the trash folder instead of being erased instantly.

Never-before-glimpsed views of the moon’s far side. Check. Total solar eclipse gracing the lunar scene. Check. New distance record for humanity. Check.

With NASA’s lunar comeback a galactic-sized smash thanks to Artemis II, the world is wondering: What’s next? And how do you top that?

“To people all around the world who look up and dream about what is possible, the long wait is over,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said as he introduced Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen at Saturday’s jubilant homecoming celebration.

Now that the first lunar travelers in more than a half-century are safely back in Houston with their families, NASA has Artemis III in its sights.

“The next mission’s right around the corner,” entry flight director Rick Henfling observed following the crew’s Pacific splashdown on Friday.

In a mission recently added to the docket for next year, Artemis III’s yet-to-be -named astronauts will practice docking their Orion capsule with a lunar lander or two in orbit around Earth. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are racing to have their company’s lander ready first.

Musk’s Starship and Bezos’ Blue Moon are vying for the all-important Artemis IV moon landing in 2028. Two astronauts will aim for the south polar region, the preferred location for Isaacman’s envisioned $20 billion to $30 billion moon base. Vast amounts of ice are almost certainly hidden in permanently shadowed craters there — ice that could provide water and rocket fuel.

The docking mechanism for Artemis III’s close-to-home trial run is already at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. The latest model Starship is close to launching on a test flight from South Texas, and a scaled-down version of Blue Moon will attempt a lunar landing later this year.

NASA promises to announce the Artemis III crew “soon.” Like 1969’s Apollo 9, Artemis III aims to reduce risk for the moon landings that follow.

Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart loved flying the lunar module in low-Earth orbit — “a test pilot’s dream.” But there’s no question, he noted, that “the real astronauts” at least in the public’s mind were the ones who walked on the moon.

Wiseman and his crew put their passion and feelings on full display as they flew around the moon and back, choking up over lost loved ones as well as those left behind on Earth.

During the their nearly 10-day journey, they tearfully requested that a fresh, bright lunar crater be named after Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020. They also openly shared their love for one another and Planet Earth, an exquisite yet delicate oasis in the black void that they said needs better care.

Artemis II included the first woman, the first person of color and the first non-U.S. citizen to fly to the moon.

“Wonderful communicators, almost poets,” Isaacman said from the recovery ship while awaiting their return.

Apollo’s manly, all-business moon crews of the 1960s and 1970s certainly did not do group hugs.

For those old enough to remember Apollo, Artemis — Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology — couldn’t come fast enough.

Author Andy Chaikin said he felt like Rip Van Winkle awakening from a nearly 54-year nap. His 1994 biography “A Man on the Moon” led to the HBO miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon.”

“It’s amazing how far we’ve come and how different this experience is from back then,” Chaikin said from Johnson Space Center late last week.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/nasa-artemis-moon-astronauts-apollo-74008cb58e79ed525ae5e1fe08a04ad9

Chief Justice of India Surya Kant highlighted that technology should promote equality before the law and improve access to justice, allowing the judiciary to overcome procedural hurdles.

In todays times technology has become a constitutional instrument, it is no longer an administrative convenience but a tool that strengthens equality before the law, expands access to justice, and allows the judiciary to transcend procedural rigidities, Chief Jusrice of India Surya Kant has said.

CJI Kant was speaking at the national conference on judicial process re-engineering and digital transformation.

The two-day National Conference on Judicial Process Re-Engineering and Digital Transformation is being held by e-Committee of Supreme Court of India in collaboration with the Department of Justice, Government of India

“At the core of any justice system lies a simple but enduring promise: that every individual, regardless of means or circumstance, must be able to access justice in a fair, timely, and effective manner. I believe that as our society evolves, so must the institutions that serve it, and today, that evolution increasingly finds expression in the thoughtful integration of technology into judicial processes,” the CJI said.

He said the subject being discussed at the event was an issue that lies at the very heart of the future of justice delivery in India.

“How do we ensure that even as we harness the power of technology, justice remains accessible to all, irrespective of economic, geographical or other barriers? That is very important”, said CJI Kant.

SC E-COMMITTEE PRAISED

“In this journey, the e-Committee has played a pivotal role in charting the roadmap for the computerisation of the District Judiciary, while the High Courts and the Supreme Court have advanced initiatives such as e-filing, digitisation of records, and hybrid hearings,” he said.

Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/india/technology-now-a-constitutional-instrument-that-strengthens-equality-before-law-cji-kant-article-154053289

A hacker has reportedly breached a Chinese government supercomputer and stolen a massive trove of sensitive data, including defence and military research. The stolen dataset, said to be over 10 petabytes, is now being offered for sale online.

A hacker has reportedly pulled off what could be one of the biggest data breaches in China, stealing a massive amount of sensitive information from a government supercomputer. According to a CNN report, the stolen data allegedly includes classified defence documents, missile schematics, and even research linked to fighter jets and advanced war simulations.

According to the report, the stolen data is estimated to exceed 10 petabytes. For reference, a high-end laptop typically stores about one terabyte. If the estimates are accurate, this heist would make it one of the largest known data leaks to emerge from China’s critical infrastructure.

The breach is reportedly believed to have taken place at the National Supercomputing Center (NSCC) in Tianjin, a key facility that supports more than 6,000 organisations across the country. These include major players in advanced science, aerospace, and defence research. Essentially, the facility acts as a backbone for some of China’s most sensitive and high-end computational work.

How did the hacker manage to pull this off?

According to reports, cybersecurity experts who examined samples of the leaked data say the hacker seems to have gained access quite easily and managed to quietly take out data over several months without setting off any alarms. The attacker reportedly used a compromised VPN entry point and then deployed a botnet—a network of automated systems—to slowly siphon off data in chunks.

Researchers note that the method used by the hacker to siphon the data wasn’t very advanced, but it worked. By taking data in small parts across different systems instead of all at once, the hacker avoided detection. The whole operation is believed to have taken around six months.

Stolen data surfaces on Telegram

The dataset first appeared online in early February, when an account calling itself “FlamingChina” posted samples on an anonymous Telegram channel. The preview hinted at a wide range of research areas, including aerospace engineering, military technology, bioinformatics, and fusion simulations. The group also claimed links to major Chinese organisations such as the Aviation Industry Corporation of China and the National University of Defense Technology.

Experts who reportedly analysed the samples say they include documents marked “secret” in Chinese, along with technical files, simulations, and renderings of defence systems such as bombs and missiles. According to the report, the breach could have significant intelligence value, especially for foreign governments or rival agencies.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/supercomputer-in-china-hacked-hackers-steal-data-on-fighter-jets-and-war-simulations-2893621-2026-04-09

ChatGPT labelled the woman as manipulative and unstable, prompting the ex-boyfriend to stalk and harass her, as per the lawsuit.

A woman has sued ChatGPT creator OpenAI, alleging that the chatbot enabled her ex-boyfriend to stalk and harass her. The lawsuit claims that the AI chatbot fuelled the unnamed man’s delusions and amplified his harassment attempts despite repeated warnings from the victim. The couple broke up in 2024, and the man used ChatGPT to process the split, only to turn into a stalker, according to a report in TechCrunch.

After months of sustained use of GPT-4o last year, the man became convinced he had invented a cure for sleep apnea. However, when no one took his work seriously, ChatGPT told him that “powerful forces” were watching him, including using a helicopter to keep a close tab on his activities.

After the woman told him to stop using ChatGPT and seek help from a mental health professional, the man turned back to ChatGPT. The sycophant chatbot assured him that he was a “level 10 in sanity” while doubling down on his delusions, the lawsuit highlighted.

ChatGPT also labelled the woman as manipulative and unstable. The man then took these AI-generated statements into the real world, using them as justification to stalk and harass her. The man also generated clinical-style psychological reports about the woman and distributed them amongst her family members.

The woman said she issued at least three separate warnings to OpenAI regarding the user’s escalating threats. The lawsuit highlights that OpenAI allegedly ignored an internal safety flag that had classified the man’s activity as involving “mass-casualty weapons”.

The lawsuit stated that the chatbot was engineered to be dangerously sycophantic, which prioritised user engagement by agreeing with and expanding upon even harmful or false takes.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/feature/woman-sues-openai-alleging-chatgpt-encouraged-stalker-ex-boyfriend-to-harass-her-11343363?pfrom=home-ndtv_lateststories

The Artemis II capsule and its four-member crew streaked through Earth’s atmosphere and safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday after nearly 10 days in space, capping the first voyage by humans to the ​vicinity of the moon in over half a century.
NASA’s gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, parachuted gently into calm seas off the Southern California coast shortly after 5:07 p.m. Pacific Time (0007 GMT on Saturday), concluding a mission that four days prior took ‌the astronauts 252,756 miles away from Earth, deeper into space than anyone had flown before.

The Artemis II flight, traveling a total of 694,392 miles (1,117,515 km) in two Earth orbits and a climactic lunar flyby some 4,000 miles from its surface, was the debut crewed test flight in a series of Artemis missions that aim to return astronauts to the lunar surface starting in 2028.
‘PERFECT BULL’S EYE’ SPLASHDOWN
The splashdown under partly cloudy skies was carried by live video feed in a NASA webcast. “A perfect bull’s eye splashdown for Integrity and its four astronauts,” NASA commentator Rob Navias said moments after the landing.
“We are stable one – four green crew members,” mission commander Reid Wiseman radioed just after splashdown, signaling the ​capsule was upright and that all four astronauts were in good shape.

It took NASA and U.S. Navy recovery teams less than two hours to secure the floating capsule and retrieve the four crew members – U.S. astronauts Wiseman, 50, Victor Glover, 49, and Christina Koch, 47, ​along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, 50.
The crew’s homecoming was the riskiest test of the mission and its Lockheed Martin-built (LMT.N), opens new tab Orion spacecraft, proving the capsule’s heat shield could withstand the extreme forces of re-entry from a ⁠lunar-return trajectory.
The capsule plunged into Earth’s atmosphere at 32 times the speed of sound, with atmospheric friction pummeling its heat shield at temperatures of some 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius). A sheath of ionized gas enveloped the vehicle, causing a planned radio blackout of over six minutes at the peak ​of re-entry stress.

The tension broke as contact was re-established some 40 seconds later than expected, and two sets of parachutes billowed from the nose of the free-falling capsule to slow its descent to about 15 mph (25 kph) before Orion gently hit the water.
Once Navy divers had attached a floating collar to ​stabilize the capsule, the four astronauts, still wearing their orange flight suits, were helped onto an inflatable raft. From there, they were hoisted one by one to helicopters hovering overhead and flown a short distance to a nearby Navy amphibious transport vessel, the John P. Murtha, for further medical examination.
Glover and Koch smiled broadly and waved toward cameras as they sat on the edge of a helicopter door on the flight deck. The crew was expected to spend the night aboard the ship and be flown on Saturday to Houston, where they will be reunited with family, NASA said.
STEPPING STONE TO MARS
The quartet blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 1 aboard NASA’s giant Space ​Launch System rocket, orbiting twice around Earth before sailing on for a rare journey around the far side of the moon.
In so doing, they became the first astronauts to fly around Earth’s only natural satellite since the Apollo program of the 1960s and ’70s. Glover, Koch and Hansen also made history ​as the first Black astronaut, the first woman and first non-U.S. citizen, respectively, to take part in a lunar mission.
The crew’s peak distance of 252,756 miles away broke the record of roughly 248,000 miles set in 1970 by the crew of Apollo 13.

“This is an incredible test of an incredible machine,” said NASA’s associate administrator, ‌Amit Kshatriya.
The voyage, ⁠following the uncrewed Artemis I test flight around the moon by the Orion spacecraft in 2022, marked a critical hardware test for a planned attempt later this decade to land astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in late 1972.
NASA is seeking to achieve a crewed moon landing ahead of China, which is aiming to put its own crews there around 2030. The agency more broadly aims to establish a long-term lunar presence as a stepping stone to eventual human exploration of Mars.
In a historical parallel to the Cold War era of Apollo, the Artemis II mission has played out against a backdrop of political and social turmoil, including a U.S. military conflict that has proven unpopular at home.
PUBLIC FASCINATION
For many in a global audience captivated by the latest moon shot, it reaffirmed the achievements of science and technology at a time when big tech has become widely distrusted, even feared. More than ​3 million viewers watched the splashdown on NASA’s YouTube channel, the streaming ​service showed.
The return to Earth put the Orion spacecraft through a ⁠critical test of its heat shield, which sustained an unexpected level of scorching and stress on re-entry during its 2022 debut test flight. As a result, NASA engineers altered the descent trajectory for Artemis II in order to reduce heat buildup and lower the risk to the capsule and its crew.
Last week’s successful launch was a major milestone for the SLS rocket, handing its principal contractors, Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab and Northrop Grumman (NOC.N), opens new tab, long-sought validation that the launch system more than ​a decade in development was ready to safely fly humans to space.
President Donald Trump congratulated the astronauts’ return in a message posted to his Truth Social platform, saying “the entire trip was spectacular, the landing was perfect ​and, as President of the United States, ⁠I could not be more proud!”
NASA’s renewed lunar ambitions have been clouded in recent months, however, by workforce reductions under the Trump administration’s federal downsizing efforts that have cut space agency personnel by 20%. The White House last week proposed a 2027 NASA budget that would cut $3.4 billion from its science unit and some 40 science missions.
Compared with Apollo, born of the Cold War-era U.S.-Soviet space race, NASA has characterized Artemis as a broader, more cooperative effort, while hoping to return to the moon before China.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/science/artemis-ii-astronauts-hurtle-home-moon-toward-splashdown-2026-04-10/

Astronauts on board Artemis II reported a mysterious burning smell coming from the $23 million advanced toilet system which previously malfunctioned after takeoff.

“Regarding the smell, I just wanted to make sure you all were tracking the EGS notes of the kind of burning heater smell that was coming from toilet several times,” astronaut Chrisna Koch, who fixed the toilet on Thursday, radioed to mission control on Saturday, Space.com reported.

“It was never identified as the source, what it exactly was, but it was identified as an unknown smell,” Koch said.

The four moon-bound passengers reported the smell was similar to the scent of an old electric heater that hasn’t been used in a while, the report stated.

NASA flight controllers initially suspected the mystery burning smell was coming from orange insulation on the toilet’s hygiene bay door.

Source : https://nypost.com/2026/04/04/us-news/artemis-ii-astronauts-report-burning-smell-from-malfunctioning-23m-toilet/

The photo, appears as a glowing blue marble against the blackness of space. Africa is clearly visible as the large landmass, with two glowing auroras lighting up the atmosphere

NASA just shared a stunning high-resolution image of Earth captured by the Artemis II crew as they journeyed toward the Moon and the internet is absolutely losing it. The official NASA Earth account posted the breathtaking photo with the simple, powerful caption, “That’s us! ”

In the image, appears as a glowing blue marble against the blackness of space. Africa is clearly visible as the large landmass, with two glowing auroras lighting up the atmosphere (one in the top right, another in the bottom left), plus zodiacal light and faint airglow visible. As Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch added her take on the post saying, “You guys look great.”

This is the first crewed Artemis mission since Apollo, and these are among the first photos ever taken by humans traveling this far from Earth since the 1970s. The crew is currently on their way to the Moon, having successfully completed the translunar injection burn.

The post has already exploded with 1.5 million views, 91K likes, 17K reposts, and thousands of replies in just hours. Netizens are flooding the comments with pure emotion, science love, and hilarious takes.

One user shared the awe feeling of living on earth saying, “Bro I literally stopped scrolling for a full minute just staring at this 😭🌍 Like we live THERE. That big beautiful blue marble spinning in all that darkness and we’re just out here complaining about Mondays.”

Another user compared the two photo of Earth taken 50 years apart, asking people to spot the difference, “Apollo 17 (1972) vs Artemis II (2026). Two photos of Earth from deep space, taken more than 50 years apart. Notice any differences?”

Source : https://www.news18.com/viral/nasa-drops-jaw-dropping-photo-of-earth-from-artemis-ii-viral-image-shows-our-planet-like-never-before-thats-us-ws-l-10013568.html

The Cicada BA.3.2 strain, linked to COVID-19 and the Omicron Variant, carries 70+ mutations, raising concerns. Experts say mutations don’t always mean greater danger. Current vaccines still protect against severe illness, though infection risk may vary. Boosters, hygiene, and precautions remain key as scientists continue monitoring this evolving variant closely.

A new COVID-19 strain, informally dubbed the Cicada variant, has sparked global curiosity and concern. Scientifically linked to the evolving COVID-19 virus and its Omicron Variant lineage, BA.3.2 is reported to carry more than 70 mutations.

This raises a critical question: will existing vaccines still protect us?

Four astronauts embarked on a high-stakes flight around the moon Wednesday, humanity’s first lunar voyage in more than half a century and the thrilling leadoff in NASA’s push toward a landing in two years.

Carrying three Americans and one Canadian, the 32-story rocket rose from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center where tens of thousands gathered to witness the dawn of this new era. Crowds also jammed the surrounding roads and beaches, reminiscent of the Apollo moonshots in the 1960s and ’70s. It is NASA’s biggest step yet toward establishing a permanent lunar presence.

“On this historic mission, you take with you the heart of this Artemis team, the daring spirit of the American people and our partners across the globe, and the hopes and dreams of a new generation,” launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson told the crew right before liftoff. “Good luck, Godspeed Artemis II. Let’s go.”

Artemis II set sail from the same Florida launch site that sent Apollo’s explorers to the moon so long ago. The handful still alive cheered this next generation’s grand adventure as the Space Launch System rocket thundered into the early evening sky, a nearly full moon beckoning some 248,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away.

Five minutes into the flight, Commander Reid Wiseman saw the team’s target: “We have a beautiful moonrise, we’re headed right at it,” he said from the capsule. On board with him are pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen. It is the most diverse lunar crew ever with the first woman, person of color and non-U. S. citizen riding in NASA’s new Orion capsule.

“NASA is back in the business of sending astronauts to the moon,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told reporters following liftoff, calling the half-century hiatus a brief intermission.

Tensions high in the hours leading up to launch

Tensions were high earlier in the day as hydrogen fuel started flowing into the rocket. Dangerous hydrogen leaks erupted during a countdown test earlier this year, forcing a lengthy flight delay.

To NASA’s relief, no significant hydrogen leaks occurred. The launch team loaded more than 700,000 gallons of fuel (2.6 million liters) into the 32-story Space Launch System rocket on the pad, a smooth operation that set the stage for the Artemis II crew to board.

Then NASA had to overcome a flurry of last-minute technical issues — bad battery sensors and an inability to get commands through to the rocket’s flight termination system. In both cases, the issues were quickly resolved, allowing the launch to proceed.

What’s on tap for 10-day test flight?

The astronauts will stick close to home for the first 25 hours of their 10-day test flight, checking out the capsule in orbit around Earth before firing the main engine that will propel them to the moon.

They won’t pause for a stopover or orbit the moon like Apollo 8’s first lunar visitors did so famously on Christmas Eve 1968, reading from Genesis. But they stand to become the most distant humans ever when their capsule zooms past the moon and continues another 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) beyond, before making a U-turn and tearing straight home to a splashdown in the Pacific.

Once settled in a high orbit around Earth, the astronauts assumed manual control and practiced steering their capsule around the rocket’s detached upper stage, venturing as close as 33 feet (10 meters). NASA wants to know how Orion handles in case the self-flying feature fails and the pilots need to take control.

Crew has an amazing sight in store

During Monday’s lunar flyby, the moon will appear to be the size of a basketball held at arm’s length. The astronauts will take turns peering through Orion’s windows with cameras. If the lighting is right, they should see features never before viewed through human eyes. They’ll also catch snippets of a total solar eclipse, donning eclipse glasses as the moon briefly blocks the sun from their perspective and the corona is revealed.

All of NASA’s moon plans — a surge in launches over the next several years leading to a sustainable moon base for astronauts assisted by robotic rovers and drones — hinge on Artemis II going well.

It’s been more than three years since Artemis I, the only other time NASA’s SLS rocket and Orion capsule have soared. With no one aboard, the Artemis I capsule lacked life-support equipment and other crew essentials like a water dispenser and toilet.

These systems are now making their space debut on Artemis II, ratcheting up the risk. That’s why NASA is waiting a full day before committing Wiseman and his crew to a four-day trip to the moon and four-day journey back.

The capsule’s toilet is already acting up. Koch informed Mission Control that it shut down seconds after she activated it. Mission Control advised her to to use a handheld bag-and-funnel system for now — CCU, short for Collapsible Contingency Urinal — while engineers pondered how to deal with the so-called lunar loo.

“There’s always been a lot riding on this mission,” NASA’s Lori Glaze said ahead of launch. But the teams are even more “energized” now that the space agency is finally accelerating the lunar launch pace and laser-focusing on surface operations — seismic changes recently announced by Isaacman.

Artemis offers a fresh beginning

With half the world’s population not yet born when NASA’s 12 moonwalkers left their boot prints in the gray lunar dust, Artemis offers a fresh beginning, NASA’s science mission chief Nicky Fox said earlier this week.

“There are a lot of people who don’t remember Apollo. There are generations who weren’t alive when Apollo launched. This is their Apollo,” said Fox, who was 4 when Apollo 17 closed out the era.

NASA is in it for the long haul this time. Unlike Apollo, which focused on fast flags and footprints in a breakneck race against the Soviet Union, Artemis is striving for a sustainable moon base elaborate enough to satisfy even the most hard-core science fiction fans. But make no mistake: Isaacman and the Trump Administration want the next boot prints to be made by Americans, not the Chinese.

Until Isaacman’s program makeover, Artemis III was crawling toward a moon landing no sooner than 2029. The billionaire spacewalker slid in a new Artemis III for 2027 so astronauts could practice docking their Orion capsule with a lunar lander in orbit around Earth. Astronauts’ momentous landing near the moon’s south pole shifted to Artemis IV in 2028 — two years before an anticipated Chinese crew’s arrival.

Like Apollo 13 — astronauts’ only moon landing miss — Artemis II will use a free-return, lunar flyby trajectory to get home with gravity’s tug and a minimum of gas. The gravity of both the moon and Earth will provide much if not most of the oomph to keep Orion on its out-and-back, figure-eight loop.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/nasa-artemis-moon-launch-055040ce0579ec238d0ec9fcb0278ed3

WhatsApp has alerted users about a spyware attack involving a counterfeit version of its app. The platform’s security team has logged out these users, warned them about potential privacy risks and advised them to uninstall the fake app.

In a big development, WhatsApp, one of the most popular instant messaging platforms in the world, has issued warning to its users after detecting a spyware attack linked to a fake version of its app. According to a report from TechCrunch, at least over 200 WhatsApp users were tricked into downloading a fake WhatsApp that contained malicious software.

According to the social media giant, most of the affected users were based in Italy.

“Our security team proactively identified around 200 users primarily in Italy who we believe may have downloaded this malicious unofficial client We have logged them out, alerted to the risks to their privacy and security that come with downloading fake unofficial clients, and encouraged them to remove it and download the official WhatsApp app,” the company said in a statement.

Speaking to TechCrunch, WhatsApp spokesperson Margarita Franklin said that the instant messaging platform cannot share more information about the users it notified, such as whether they were journalists or members of civil society.

“Our priority has been protecting the users who may have been tricked into downloading this fake iOS app,” Franklin was quoted as saying

As per the report, the Meta-owned app has accused Italian spyware maker SIO of being behind the fake app. WhatsApp also said it plans to take legal action and send a formal notice to stop such activities.

The focus right now is on protecting users who may have unknowingly downloaded the malicious app. This is not the first time such a case has come to light. Reports suggest that fake apps are a common method used in surveillance operations, where users are tricked into installing software that can access their personal data.

Earlier reports had also linked SIO to spyware campaigns on Android, including fake versions of popular apps and tools. The spyware, reportedly called ‘Spyrtacus,’ was found hidden inside these apps.

How To Protect Your WhatsApp Account

 

In just a few days Nasa is planning to launch the Artemis II mission, sending four astronauts on their way to the Moon.

Their voyage around our nearest neighbour will pave the way for a lunar landing and, eventually, a Moon base.

Nasa’s Artemis programme has taken years of work, involved thousands of people and is estimated to have cost $93bn to date.

But for some, there’s a distinct feeling of “been there, done that”.

More than 50 years ago, America’s Apollo missions made history when the first people set foot on the lunar surface. With six landings in total, it felt like the Moon had been well and truly ticked off the space to-do list.

So why is the US spending so much time, effort and money racing to return?

Valuable resources

The terrain might look dry, dusty and seems rather barren, but it’s far from that.

“The Moon has got the same elements in it that we have here on Earth,” says Prof Sara Russell, a planetary scientist at the Natural History Museum.

“An example is rare earth elements, which are very scarce on Earth, and there might be parts of the Moon where these are concentrated enough to be able to mine them.”

There are metals too, like iron and titanium, and also helium, which is used in everything from superconductors to medical equipment.

But the resource that’s the biggest draw is the most surprising: water.

“It has water trapped in some of its minerals, and it also has substantial amounts of water at the poles,” says Russell.

There are craters that are permanently in shadow, she says, where ice can build up.

Having access to water is vital if you want to live on the Moon. It not only provides drinking water, but can also be split into hydrogen and oxygen to provide air for astronauts to breathe, and even fuel for spacecraft.

Race for space dominance

America’s Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s were driven by a race for space dominance with the Soviet Union. This time around China is the competition.

China has been making fast progress with its space programme. It’s successfully landed robots and rovers on the Moon, and says it will get humans there by 2030.

There’s still prestige in being the first to plant your flag in the lunar dust. But now it really matters where you plant it.

Both the US and China want access to the areas with the most abundant resources, which means securing the best lunar real estate.

The United Nations 1967 Outer Space Treaty says that no country can own the Moon. But when it comes to what’s found on the Moon, it’s not quite so straightforward.

“Although you can’t own a piece of the land because of the UN treaty, you can basically operate on that land without anybody interfering with it,” says Dr Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut.

“So the big thing right now is to try to grab your piece of land. You can’t own it, but you can use it. And once you’re there, you’ve got it for as long as you want it.”

Paving the way to Mars

Nasa has its sights set on Mars and wants to send people there by the 2030s.

Given the technological hurdles it needs to overcome, it’s a pretty ambitious timeline.

But you have to start somewhere, and the US has decided the Moon is that place.

“Going to the Moon and staying there for a sustained period is much safer, much cheaper and much easier to be a test bed for learning how to live and work on another planet,” says Libby Jackson, head of space at the Science Museum.

On a Moon base, Nasa can perfect the tech to provide the air and water astronauts need. They’ll have to work out how to generate power and build habitats to protect people from extreme temperatures as well as dangerous space radiation.

“These are all technologies that if you try them for the first time on Mars and they go wrong, it’s potentially catastrophic. It’s much safer and much easier to try them out on the Moon,” Jackson says.

Mysteries yet to be unlocked

Scientists can’t wait to get their (gloved) hands on material from the Moon.

The rocks brought home by the Apollo astronauts transformed our understanding of our celestial neighbour.

“They told us that the Moon was formed by this incredibly dramatic event, where a Mars-sized body smashed into the Earth and the bits that came off formed the Moon. We know about that because of the Apollo rocks,” says Prof Sara Russell.

But she says there is still much to discover.

Because the Moon was once a part of the Earth, it holds a record of 4.5bn years of our own planet’s history. And with no plate tectonics, or wind and rain to wipe this record away, the Moon is a perfect time capsule.

“The Moon is a fantastic archive of the Earth,” says Russell. “A new haul of rocks from a different area of the Moon would be amazing.”

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6wp6xenv0o

A researcher flagged the issue on 31 March 2026, and the code has since been archived on multiple public repositories, raising fresh questions about the company’s software release practices.

Anthropic, the American artificial intelligence company behind the Claude family of AI models, has once again inadvertently exposed the complete source code of its AI coding tool, Claude Code, through a basic packaging oversight that security researchers say should never occur in a finished software product.

On 31 March 2026, security researcher Chaofan Shou discovered that Claude Code, Anthropic’s flagship command-line coding tool, had its entire source code exposed through a 60MB source-map file (cli.js.map) included in its npm package. The file allowed anyone to reconstruct the full underlying TypeScript codebase from the published build, according to DEV Community. The npm registry is the world’s largest public software library, widely used by developers to download and share programming tools.

See more

Claude code source code has been leaked via a map file in their npm registry!

Code: https://t.co/jBiMoOzt8G pic.twitter.com/rYo5hbvEj8

— Chaofan Shou (@Fried_rice) March 31, 2026

What Is Source Code, and Why Does This Matter?

Source code is the original, human-readable set of instructions that programmers write to build software. When a company releases software to the public, it typically compiles or bundles that code into a compressed, harder-to-read format in order to protect its intellectual property and internal systems. Think of source code as the original recipe for a dish: you may be able to taste the final product, but the recipe itself is supposed to remain private.

A source map is a supplementary file used during software development that acts as a bridge between the compressed, published version of a programme and its original, readable source code. It is an essential tool for developers when testing and fixing bugs. However, it has no place in a finished product released to the public, as it effectively hands anyone the complete original recipe.

According to BlockBeats, the latest version of Claude Code, v2.1.88, released on 31 March, was found to still contain this file. It held the complete code of 1,906 proprietary Claude Code source files, covering internal API design, telemetry analysis systems, encryption tools, and inter-process communication protocols.

Not the First Time

According to Odaily, a Web3 and blockchain-focused media platform, in February 2025, an early version of Claude Code was exposed for the same reason, prompting Anthropic at the time to remove the old version from npm and delete the source map. However, the problem has now resurfaced.

The published source map referenced unobfuscated TypeScript sources hosted in Anthropic’s cloud storage, which made the source code publicly downloadable. TypeScript is a popular programming language commonly used to build sophisticated software applications.

The leaked codebase was quickly archived to a public GitHub repository, where it surpassed 1,100 stars and 1,900 forks within hours of discovery. GitHub is a platform where developers share and collaborate on code.

What Was Exposed?

Anthropic accidentally included a file in their public package that lets anyone read the original code, which was supposed to be hidden. This was a packaging mistake rather than a hack.

According to BlockBeats, the leak involves the client implementation code of the Claude Code command-line tool and does not involve model weights or user data, posing no direct security risk to ordinary users. However, the continued exposure of the complete source code means that internal architecture, security mechanisms, and telemetry logic are entirely transparent to the public. In simple terms, your personal data and conversations with Claude are not at risk. However, the inner workings of the tool, including how it communicates internally, how it collects usage data, and how its security layers are built, are now visible to anyone who chooses to look.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/science/anthropics-ai-coding-tool-leaks-its-own-source-code-for-the-second-time-in-a-year-11291517?pfrom=home-ndtv_topstories

 

NASA is preparing to launch the first crew of astronauts toward the moon in over 53 years with its second ​Artemis mission, a critical test flight in humanity’s broader lunar goals as the U.S. races to reassert leadership in space faced with growing competition from China.
Three U.S. and one Canadian astronaut ‌are due for liftoff aboard NASA’s Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket on Wednesday for a 10-day test mission swinging around the moon and back, a winding journey taking them deeper into space than humans have ever gone before.

The mission is the first crewed test flight in NASA’s Artemis program, the flagship U.S. effort to begin regular flights to the moon, at an estimated cost of at least $93 billion since 2012. Not since Apollo 17 in 1972 have humans touched down on the moon’s surface, a tricky ​feat NASA aims to repeat in 2028 at the rugged lunar south pole.
The U.S. is the only country to have put humans on another celestial body with its six lunar landings of the Apollo ​program, driven by competition with the former Soviet Union.
U.S. officials have more recently focused on China, a formidable technological rival that has made steady progress in its ⁠own moon program in recent years with a string of robotic lunar landings and a 2030 goal to put its own crew on the surface.

ANSWERING ‘THE QUESTION OF OUR LIFETIME’

NASA astronaut Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist, on ​Sunday said the moon is a “witness plate” to the solar system’s formation, and a stepping stone to Mars, “where we might have the most likelihood of finding evidence of past life.”
“Many, many countries have recognized the value that there is ​in exploring further into the solar system, to the moon and on to Mars,” she told reporters. “They recognize that not only can we gain all these extremely tangible benefits, but that we have the opportunity to answer the question that could be the question of our lifetime, which is, are we alone?”
“Answering that question starts at the moon,” she said. “The question is not should we go, but should we lead, or should we follow?”
Through a series of increasingly advanced Artemis missions extending into the next decade, ​the U.S. aims to set precedent for how others will operate and coexist on the moon’s surface, where someday countries and companies can exploit rocky lunar resources and practice for much more difficult missions to Mars.

The other crew ​members are NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman, and Jeremy Hansen, who will be the first Canadian astronaut to reach the lunar vicinity.

Hansen’s participation was part of a 2020 agreement between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. “It was the result ‌of decades of ⁠contribution and strategic investment on our part that led to this participation,” said Mathieu Caron, head of CSA’s astronaut office, citing Canadian robotics contributions on the International Space Station.

COMMERCIAL LUNAR MARKET

NASA is relying on an array of companies in its moon program, hoping to stimulate a commercial lunar market in the future, the value of which is hard to estimate, analysts say.
Boeing (BA.N), and Northrop Grumman (NOC.N), lead SLS and Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), builds Orion for NASA. SpaceX and Blue Origin are developing their own landers with NASA funding, but under contracts that allow them to offer the spacecraft to other customers.

A January PricewaterhouseCoopers report estimates $127 billion in revenues by 2050 from lunar surface activities, with investments potentially ​reaching $72 billion to $88 billion through the same period.
For now, and ​in the near future, governments will drive companies’ ⁠lunar strategies and revenue. It will be a long time before key infrastructure, such as energy and communications systems, develop to the point where commercial growth exists on the moon independently of government funding, said Akhil Rao, an economist at analysis firm Rational Futures who was a research economist at NASA.
Rao, who was among the group of ​NASA economists and space policy staff laid off last year during the Trump administration’s sweeping federal workforce cuts, said he does “not see a short-run economic value ​that companies would be able to ⁠derive that would allow NASA to be hands-off.”
The Artemis II mission will pose a greater test of NASA’s Orion capsule and SLS, which conducted a similar uncrewed mission in 2022. The astronauts on board will test critical life-support systems, crew interfaces, navigation and communications.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/science/nasa-set-first-crewed-moon-return-over-half-century-2026-03-30/

Starting a family beyond Earth could be more challenging than expected. New research from Adelaide University shows that sperm struggle to navigate in low gravity, suggesting that gravity plays a key role in helping them reach an egg.

NASA is also reevaluating its lunar Gateway space station, planning to repurpose components for the moon base instead.

NASA has unveiled plans to build a permanent base on the moon and send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars by 2028. The agency’s new initiative, dubbed “Ignition,” aims to establish a sustainable human presence on the lunar surface and pave the way for deeper space exploration.

“NASA is committed to achieving the near-impossible once again, to return to the Moon before the end of President Trump’s term, build a Moon base, establish an enduring presence, and do the other things needed to ensure American leadership in space,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “This is why it is essential we leave an event like Ignition with complete alignment on the national imperative that is our collective mission. The clock is running in this great-power competition, and success or failure will be measured in months, not years.”

The proposed moon base will be built in three phases, starting with increased robotic missions to the lunar surface. NASA plans to launch up to 30 robotic landers by 2027, carrying scientific instruments and technology demonstrations. The base will be powered by nuclear reactors, providing continuous energy during the lunar night.

NASA is also reevaluating its lunar Gateway space station, planning to repurpose components for the moon base instead. The agency aims to land astronauts on the moon by 2028 and establish a sustainable presence, with plans for at least one surface landing per year.

Nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars

When it comes to the Mars mission, the nuclear-powered spacecraft, called Space Reactor-1 Freedom, will demonstrate advanced nuclear electric propulsion technology on its way to Mars. The mission will deploy helicopters, similar to the Ingenuity drone, to explore the Martian surface and gather data.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/science/nasa-unveils-moon-base-plan-and-nuclear-powered-spacecraft-for-mars-mission-11266395

New NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says the US space agency will pivot from launching an orbiting lunar station to constructing a base on the moon’s surface. It comes amid a renewed moon race with Russia and China.

NASA will cancel plans to deploy a space station in lunar orbit, instead focusing on the construction of a roughly $20 billion (about €17.25 billion) base on the moon’s surface over the next seven years.

New NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who was sworn in at the US space agency in December, made the announcement at the opening of an all-day event at NASA’s Washington headquarters.

He outlined a raft of changes to the agency’s flagship Artemis II moon project, which has encountered a series of setbacks in recent months amid a 21st century race with Russia and China to return to the Earth’s satellite.

After a series of delays, NASA repositioned its Space Launch System rocket on the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida a few days ago, hoping to launch its first flight orbiting the moon soon, potentially in early April.

What did NASA’s Isaacman say about the changes?

The Lunar Gateway station, much of which has already been built by contractors Northrop Grumman and Lanteris Space Systems, was meant to be a space station that would orbit the moon. The original plan was for this to serve as the base of operations for astronauts to use landers to shuttle to and from the surface.

“It should not really surprise anyone that we are pausing Gateway in its current form and focusing on infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the lunar surface,” Isaacman told delegates at the event, after criticism of the project as either waseteful or a distraction from other lunar ambitions.

“Despite some of the very real hardware and schedule challenges, we can repurpose equipment and international partner commitments to support surface and other program objectives,” the 43-year-old entrepreneur with close ties to SpaceX founder Elon Musk said.

What rekindled NASA’s interest in the moon?

Isaacman said the core target of the Artemis II mission, a return to the moon’s surface by 2028, would remain unchanged despite his major shakeup of the details. He said the agency would also shift its flight plans to incorporate a test mission prior to an eventual lunar landing to improve “muscle memory.”

The rush to return to the satellite first reached by the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969 comes as China works on its own moon mission, aiming to land on the orb in 2030. China and Russia have also touted plans to build a nuclear power plant on the orb’s south pole, as they aim to develop their International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) by 2036.

Returning to the moon is also billed by the US as a stepping stone towards an eventual mission to Mars, long a stated goal of Musk’s.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/nasa-plans-moon-base-instead-of-orbital-lunar-station/a-76510267

 

For the second time this year, NASA moved its moon rocket from the hangar out toward the pad Friday in hopes of launching four astronauts on a lunar fly-around next month.

If the latest repairs work and everything else goes NASA’s way, the Space Launch System could blast off as early as April 1 from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. The Artemis II crew went into quarantine this week in Houston.

The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket began the slow 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) trek in the middle of the night, transported atop a massive crawler used since the 1960s Apollo era. The trip was held up for several hours by high wind but completed by midday, 11 hours after it began.

The three Americans and one Canadian will zip around the moon in their capsule and then come straight home without stopping. Their mission should have been completed by now, but hydrogen fuel leaks and clogged helium lines forced two months of delay.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/nasa-moon-rocket-artemis-e5b018866abb059cb1fce3af44c4452c

In India, 55 per cent of outages were reported from the mobile application and 37 per cent from the website.

Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, experienced a brief outage in India, with users reporting they could not access feeds or links shared on the platform. However, the platform was back again after some time.

As of 8:17 pm, a total of 1227 outage reports were recorded across India, Downdetector reported. With three minutes, at 8:30 pm IST, the monitoring platform reported that over 4500 users have reported an outage.

Twitter Down In India

Thousands of X users across India have reported being unable to access the social media platform. Although alerts from the platform continue to be received, users reported that they were unable to refresh their feeds.

Meanwhile, on the mobile application, users encountered the message: “Cannot retrieve posts at this time. Please try again later.”

In addition to India, an outage has been reported in the United States, according to Downdetector, which logged over 14,000 user reports in the last 30 minutes.

In India, 55 per cent of outages were reported from the mobile application and 37 per cent from the website.

Source : https://www.news18.com/tech/x-down-for-thousands-of-users-in-india-services-restored-after-brief-outage-9985355.html

Claude, the AI chatbot developed by Anthropic, reportedly experienced a significant outage in the US on Wednesday, with over 4,500 users flagging issues on Downdetector.

Popular AI chatbot Claude appears to be experiencing a temporary outage in the US on Wednesday, leaving users unable to use its major services. According to Downdetector, an outage tracking platform, over 4,500 users reported issues, with the tally later increased to 6,132. The disruption reportedly affected several American cities, including Dallas, Houston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, among others.

A powerful artificial intelligence model that appeared anonymously on a developer platform last week was revealed on Wednesday to be from Chinese smartphone and EV giant Xiaomi (1810.HK), after it fueled speculation that ​startup DeepSeek was quietly testing its next-generation system ahead of a launch.
The release of DeepSeek’s low-cost models DeepSeek-V3 and R1 triggered a global ‌tech stock selloff last year, causing investors to question whether U.S. AI firms needed to spend billions of dollars on AI computing power. Since then, there has been a great deal of interest in DeepSeek-V4, a next-generation model that has yet to be released.

The mysterious free model, called Hunter Alpha, surfaced on the AI gateway platform OpenRouter on March 11 ​without any developer attribution and was later described by the platform as a “stealth model.”
Xiaomi’s AI model team MiMo, run by former DeepSeek researcher ​Luo Fuli, on Wednesday said Hunter Alpha was an “early internal test build of MiMo-V2-Pro,” a model designed to serve as ⁠the “brain” of AI agents, tools that can allow users to execute complex tasks with fewer human prompts and supervision when compared with a chatbot.
Xiaomi’s release ​comes at a time when OpenClaw, an open-source agent framework, is being rapidly adopted by users of all stripes in China.

“I call this a quiet ambush – ​not because we planned it, but because the shift from chat to agent paradigm happened so fast, even we barely believed it,” Luo said in an X post on Thursday.
“People ask why we move so fast. I saw it firsthand building DeepSeek R1.”

THE MYSTERIOUS CHINESE MODEL

During tests conducted by Reuters, the Hunter Alpha chatbot described itself as “a Chinese AI model ​primarily trained in Chinese” and said its data extended back to May 2025, the same knowledge cutoff point that was reported by DeepSeek’s own chatbot.
When ​asked about its creator, however, the system declined to identify its developer.
“I only know my name, my parameter scale and my context window length,” the chatbot said.
Hunter Alpha’s profile ‌page describes ⁠it as a 1-trillion-parameter model, meaning it was trained using roughly one trillion adjustable values that determine how the system processes language and generates responses.

The system also advertises a context window of up to one million tokens, a measure of how much text an AI model can process or remember during a single interaction. A token roughly corresponds to a short piece of text, such as part of a word.
“The combination that stood out was Hunter Alpha’s 1-million-token context ​paired with reasoning capability and free access,” ​said Nabil Haouam, an engineer ⁠who builds AI agent systems.
“Most frontier models with that context window come with real cost at scale,” he added.
Those specifications resembled expectations in local media for DeepSeek’s next-generation V4 model, which Chinese outlets have reported could launch as early ​as April.
Umur Ozkul, who runs independent AI benchmark tests, said speculation connecting the model to DeepSeek was understandable given ​the timing and capabilities ⁠advertised.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/mystery-ai-model-has-developers-buzzing-is-this-deepseeks-latest-blockbuster-2026-03-18/

Using ground-penetrating radar, NASA’s Perseverance rover has detected underground remains of an ancient river delta on Mars in some of the oldest evidence yet obtained showing how water once ​flowed on the surface of Earth’s planetary neighbor.
Researchers said the six-wheeled rover revealed geological features up to 115 feet (35 meters) underground while traversing ‌3.8 miles (6.1 km) of terrain inside Jezero Crater, an area in the Martian northern hemisphere believed to have been flooded with water and home to an ancient lake basin long ago.

Perseverance identified layered sediments and eroded surfaces indicative of a delta environment, a large-scale fan-shaped deposit of sediment formed at the location where a river enters a larger body of water like a lake. They ​estimated that the now-buried delta dates to about 3.7 to 4.2 billion years ago. Mars, like Earth, formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago, meaning this ​delta existed relatively early in its history.
The researchers said this delta predated a similar nearby surface feature called the Western Delta ⁠that dates to about 3.5 to 3.7 billion years ago.
The rover’s RIMFAX instrument sends radar pulses downward and records pulses bouncing back off underground features, allowing a ​three-dimensional mapping of the subsurface. The new findings were based on RIMFAX’s deepest data collected to date, obtained from September 2023 to February 2024 over a span of 250 ​Martian days.

Because water is considered crucial to the possibility of past life on Mars, the mounting evidence of its wet past is of particular interest. Mars, now cold and desolate, long ago possessed a thicker atmosphere and warmer climate, allowing for liquid water on its surface.
“From the features mapped by RIMFAX, we believe that Jezero Crater hosted an ancient water-rich environment, capable of biosignature ​preservation that existed prior to the formation of Jezero’s Western Delta,” said UCLA planetary scientist Emily Cardarelli, a member of the Perseverance science team and lead author of ​the research published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

A biosignature refers to chemical or physical evidence indicating past or present life.
On Earth, river deltas are places that concentrate sediments and create ‌niches favorable ⁠to microbial life.

Scientists last year announced that a sample of rock obtained by Perseverance in Jezero Crater contained a potential biosignature suggestive of ancient microbial life, though the minerals in the sample also can form through nonbiological processes. The rock dated to roughly 3.2 to 3.8 billion years ago.
Perseverance since 2021 has been exploring Jezero Crater. Scientists believe river channels spilled over the crater wall and created a lake.
“It’s very exciting that RIMFAX was able to provide such a detailed view of these deposits, and thus help ​solve the puzzle of their origin,” UCLA ​planetary scientist and study co-author David ⁠Paige, also a member of the Perseverance rover science team, said of the new findings. “This further cements the notion that ground-penetrating radar is indeed an extremely valuable new tool for studying planetary geology.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/science/nasa-rover-detects-some-oldest-evidence-water-flowing-mars-2026-03-18/

Microsoft is considering legal action against its partner OpenAI and Amazon over a $50 billion deal that could violate its exclusive cloud agreement with the ChatGPT maker, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

Last month, Amazon and OpenAI signed several agreements, including one that makes Amazon Web Services (AWS) the exclusive third-party cloud provider for Frontier, OpenAI’s enterprise platform for building and running AI agents.

The dispute centers on whether OpenAI can offer Frontier via AWS without violating the Microsoft partnership, which requires the start-up’s models to be accessed through the Windows-OS maker’s Azure cloud platform, the FT report said, citing sources.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Microsoft, Amazon and OpenAI did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

FT said Microsoft executives believed the approach was not feasible and would violate the spirit, if not the letter, of their agreement, and added that the companies were in talks to resolve the dispute without litigation ahead of Frontier’s launch.

“We know our contract,” a person familiar with Microsoft’s position told the newspaper. “We will sue them if they breach it. If Amazon and OpenAI want to take a bet on the creativity of their contractual lawyers, I would back us, not them.”

Microsoft was one of OpenAI’s earliest investors, infusing $1 billion in the firm in 2019 and $10 billion at the beginning of 2023. In September last year, the two signed a non-binding deal under new relationship terms, paving the way for OpenAI to sign deals with SoftBank, Nvidia and Amazon.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/microsoft-considers-legal-action-over-50-billion-amazon-openai-cloud-deal-ft-reports-6000861

Scientists have developed a highly accurate blood test that can detect brain tumours, including aggressive glioblastomas, with over 90% precision. By identifying specific proteins in the blood, the test offers a non-invasive alternative to MRIs and biopsies. It could enable earlier diagnosis, monitor treatment response, and improve outcomes, marking a significant step toward more accessible, precision-based cancer care.

SCIENTISTS have made major progress on a blood test that can help detect brain tumours and monitor them in real time. The test, which is said to be more than 90 per cent accurate, could be used by doctors to pick up deadly growths. Early research focuses on fast-growing glioblastomas, but it is being expanded to other kinds of brain tumours.

At present, treatment for those suffering from brain tumours is not just complex but also difficult in the later stages, as it requires way too many MRI scans and invasive surgical biopsies. However, researchers from the University of Manchester, assisted by teams in Denmark, say this can be drastically streamlined.

iPhone Fold could have a different branding, and Apple is likely to rely on its biggest rival to make the foldable happen.

Apple’s iPhone foldable has a lot of interest which is hardly surprising for the brand and even the much awaited product. The iPhone Fold, as many thought it will be called at launch, could actually have a different branding, according to a recent report. The company has been building up the big launch over the last few years and 2026 could finally be the end game for Apple and its foldable ambitions to get a lift off.

The iPhone Fold (or Ultra) is going to be a unique product for the brand, as much as its new budget MacBook Neo model which has generated a lot of debate and question mark over Microsoft’s Windows play book from now.

iPhone Ultra: The Big Foldable Push?

Apple needs a lot of external help to make the iPhone foldable succeed and one of its main rivals will be at the forefront of that objective. Samsung will most likely make the display for the device, which is tipped to be creaseless, something the company had showcased earlier this year at a display event.

Apple will demand the best and the latest tech for its products and the iPhone Ultra should be one of the first to pack them innards. The other important aspect of the device will be the software and Apple needs to make sure that iOS is tweaked well enough to run on a foldable and handle the dual load of a foldable screen across apps.

We haven’t heard much about that from Apple or any leaks, but the WWDC 2026 should have more on the front with iOS 27 fully in focus and hopefully deliver the ideal foldable experience.

Source : https://www.news18.com/tech/apples-foldable-likely-to-launch-as-iphone-ultra-heres-what-we-know-9962582.html

NavIC, India’s answer to GPS, has dropped below the minimum strength needed to function after a key satellite’s atomic clock failed. With only three satellites left and replacements delayed, the system is in trouble.

India’s homegrown satellite navigation system, NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation), is in serious trouble. The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has confirmed that IRNSS-1F, a satellite launched in March 2016, completed its 10-year design life on March 10 this year, and that the on-board atomic clock had stopped functioning.

The satellite will continue to orbit and send one-way broadcast messages, but it can no longer help anyone navigate. That one failure has pushed NavIC below the minimum threshold it needs to function as a navigation system.

You need at least four satellites working in tandem to calculate a position on Earth. India now has three.

WHICH THREE NAVIC SATELLITES REMAIN FUNCTIONAL?

The three satellites still providing navigation services are IRNSS-1B, launched in April 2014, IRNSS-1L, launched in April 2018, and NVS-01, the first of the second-generation NavIC satellites, launched in May 2023. IRNSS stands for Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System.

Of these, IRNSS-1B has already crossed its 10-year design life and is running on borrowed time. NVS-01 is the youngest and healthiest of the three, but one satellite cannot carry a navigation system on its own.

WHAT IS AN ATOMIC CLOCK AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

An atomic clock is the beating heart of any navigation satellite. It measures time by tracking the natural vibrations of atoms with extraordinary precision. When a signal travels from a satellite to your phone, the clock calculates exactly how long that journey took.

A billionth of a second’s error can push your calculated position off by hundreds of metres. Without a working clock, a navigation satellite is useless.

For the first time in the NavIC programme, an indigenous atomic clock was flown aboard NVS-01 (Navigation Satellite 1), the first of the second-generation satellites launched in May 2023.

Earlier satellites relied on imported clocks, and that dependence proved to be a persistent weak point.

HOW DID NAVIC END UP IN THIS MESS?

As of July 2025, of the 11 NavIC satellites put into orbit, four were providing Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) services, four were being used only for one-way message broadcast after losing navigation capability, one was decommissioned after end-of-life, and two could not reach their intended orbits.

The IRNSS-1F failure on March 13, 2026 has now reduced the PNT count from four to three.

NavIC is designed with a constellation of seven satellites. The system is a long way from that target.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REPLACEMENT SATELLITE NVS-02?

NVS-02 launched in January 2025 but never made it to its intended orbit. A tiny electrical fault stopped its engine from firing at exactly the wrong moment, leaving the satellite stranded. It cannot provide any navigation services, and remains out of action.

Isro implemented corrective actions in subsequent missions. The fixes were applied to the CMS-03 spacecraft launched in November 2025, placing the satellite in its intended orbit.

WHEN WILL NAVIC BE BACK ON ITS FEET?

In July 2025, Union Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Dr Jitendra Singh told the Lok Sabha in a written reply that NVS-03 would launch by the end of 2025, with NVS-04 to follow after six months. NVS-03 has not launched yet, meaning the schedule has slipped.

The new NVS satellites also bring a welcome upgrade. They support the L1 band, which means future smartphones could work with NavIC without needing extra hardware, just a software update.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/navic-india-gps-satellite-failure-atomic-clock-isro-2026-2882274-2026-03-15 

Nasa said preparations are continuing at the Kennedy Space Centre, where engineers are completing final work on the rocket and spacecraft inside the Vehicle Assembly Building.

Nasa is set to launch its next Moon mission, Artemis II, on April 1 as the US space agency moves closer to sending astronauts back to lunar orbit for the first time since 1972. The mission will be the first crewed flight of Nasa’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft and will carry four astronauts on a journey around the Moon before returning to Earth.

The flight is designed as a major test of the spacecraft systems that will eventually enable astronauts to land on the lunar surface again under Nasa’s Artemis programme.

“This mission will prove Orion’s life support systems are ready to sustain crew on future missions and allow the crew to practice operations essential to the success of Artemis III and beyond,” Nasa said.

According to the space agency, preparations for the mission are currently underway at the Kennedy Space Centre, where engineers are completing final integration work on the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. Nasa said the rocket is expected to roll out to the launch pad on March 19 ahead of the targeted April launch window.

Once at the pad, teams will conduct additional testing, including another wet dress rehearsal, a full launch countdown simulation during which the rocket is fuelled with cryogenic propellants to ensure all systems operate as expected before liftoff.

TECHNICAL ISSUES DURING PREVIOUS DRILLS

The mission timeline has faced several delays after engineers detected technical problems during earlier drills. During one of the tests, teams discovered a helium flow issue in the rocket’s upper stage, which is used to pressurise the propellant tanks and maintain proper engine conditions.

After engineers failed to access the affected components easily at the launch pad, Nasa decided to roll the massive rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for closer inspection and repairs. The issue was eventually traced to a faulty seal in the quick-disconnect system that connects ground helium supply lines to the rocket. Engineers repaired the system and ran validation tests to confirm the fix.

Earlier tests had also revealed a liquid hydrogen leak during a wet dress rehearsal, forcing Nasa to halt countdown operations and conduct additional troubleshooting before continuing launch preparations.

Despite the setbacks, Nasa officials stated such tests are designed to uncover problems before launch. Engineers are now working through final checks to ensure the rocket and spacecraft are ready for the historic mission.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/nasa-to-launch-artemis-ii-mission-to-the-moon-on-april-1-2881193-2026-03-13

Microsoft (MSFT.O), filed on Tuesday a brief in support of Anthropic’s lawsuit asking the court to temporarily block the U.S. Department ​of Defense’s designation of the AI startup as a supply-chain risk.
In an ‌amicus brief filing in a federal court in San Francisco, Microsoft backed Anthropic’s request for a temporary restraining order against the Pentagon order, arguing that its determination should be paused while the court ​considers the case.

Microsoft, which integrates the AI lab’s products and services into technology ​it provides to the U.S. military, said that it was directly ⁠impacted by the DOD designation.
The Claude maker had filed a lawsuit to block the ​Pentagon from placing it on a national security blacklist on Monday, escalating a high-stakes ​battle with the U.S. military over usage restrictions on its technology.
Microsoft’s filing argued the TRO is needed to prevent costly disruptions for suppliers, who would otherwise have to rapidly rebuild offerings that rely ​on Anthropic’s products. The judge overseeing the case must approve Microsoft’s request to file the ​brief before it is officially entered, but courts often permit outside parties to weigh in on important ‌cases.

While ⁠the Pentagon gave itself six months to phase out Anthropic, it did not provide the same transition period for contractors that use Anthropic’s products or services to perform under DOD, Microsoft said.
“Should this action proceed without the entry of a temporary restraining order, ​Microsoft and other government ​contractors with expertise ⁠in developing solutions to support U.S. government missions will be forced to account for a new risk in their business planning,” the ​company said.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/microsoft-files-amicus-brief-support-anthropics-lawsuit-with-us-dod-2026-03-10/

The online users can see where Orion and the crew are in relation to the Earth and the Moon.

The Artemis II mission, NASA’s first crewed lunar mission since Apollo, is set to embark on a historic journey. The space agency revealed that the mission’s live updates, crew schedule, and mission milestones can be tracked by anyone worldwide through official channels. The Artemis II mission will fly four astronauts around the Moon and will last for about 10 days. This will be the first crewed test flight of the Space Launch System rocket, the Orion spacecraft, and the Exploration Ground Systems needed to support them.

In an official blog, NASA revealed that the concept of the Artemis Real-time Orbit Website (AROW), which can be used by anyone with internet access to track Orion and the crew. Space enthusiasts can also track the spacecraft’s distance from Earth and distance from the Moon.

“Using AROW, the public can visualize data that is collected by sensors on Orion and then sent to the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston during its flight. It will provide constant information using this real-time data beginning about one minute after liftoff through Orion’s atmospheric reentry to Earth at the end of the mission,” said NASA.

With the help of AROW, the online users can see where Orion and the crew are in relation to the Earth and the Moon. They can also look at key mission milestones and characteristics on the Moon, including information about landing sites from the Apollo programme.

Meanwhile, as per NASA, the mobile app includes similar features to the website, with the addition of an augmented reality tracker.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/science/nasa-shares-steps-to-track-artemis-ii-lunar-flyby-mission-in-real-time-11187852?pfrom=home-ndtv_lateststories

The Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the electric vehicle maker is positioned to develop artificial general intelligence, with its Optimus humanoid robot and ‘atom-shaping’ manufacturing systems seen as key pathways.

Elon Musk declared on Wednesday that Tesla is on track to become one of a small number of companies capable of building artificial general intelligence (AGI), and suggested it could be the first to reach that milestone, not through software alone, but through the physical form of humanoid robots.

In a post shared on X, the social media platform he owns, Musk singled out Tesla’s work on its Optimus humanoid robot and advanced manufacturing capabilities as the company’s most promising routes to AGI. The Optimus robot, currently in development, is designed to perform repetitive and physically demanding tasks, drawing on the same AI infrastructure Tesla has built for its autonomous driving program.

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Tesla will be one of the companies to make AGI and probably the first to make it in humanoid/atom-shaping form

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 4, 2026

Among the more striking elements of Musk’s remarks was his reference to “atom-shaping” as a pathway to AGI, a phrase that points to the precise, fine-grained manipulation of physical matter at microscopic scales. While Musk did not elaborate at length, the term signals an ambition that goes well beyond conventional software-driven AI, encompassing robotic systems capable of engaging with the physical world with extraordinary precision.

If realised, such capabilities could fundamentally transform industrial manufacturing, supply chains, and the very definition of what machines can do autonomously.

Tesla vs. the AI Pack

 

Instagram is introducing parental alerts that notify supervised parents if their teens repeatedly search for suicide or self-harm related terms,

Instagram will soon begin notifying parents if their teenager repeatedly searches for content related to suicide or self-harm within a short period of time, as part of its expanded parental supervision tools.

The social media platform, owned by Meta Platforms, said the feature is designed to give parents greater awareness while ensuring that vulnerable young people are directed to appropriate support services.

How the New Alerts Will Work

Under the new system, parents and teenagers enrolled in Instagram’s supervision programme will receive advance notice that alerts are being introduced.

If a teen repeatedly attempts to search for phrases promoting suicide or self-harm, or uses terms such as “suicide” or “self-harm”, parents will be informed.

The alerts will be sent via email, text message or WhatsApp, depending on the contact details provided, as well as through an in-app notification. The message will explain that the teen has repeatedly tried to search for sensitive terms within a short period. Parents will also be given access to expert guidance to help them approach potentially difficult conversations.

Building on Existing Teen Protections

Instagram said that most teenagers do not search for such content. The platform already blocks searches clearly linked to suicide or self-harm and instead directs users to helplines and mental health resources.

Content that promotes or glorifies suicide or self-harm is prohibited. While posts discussing personal struggles may be allowed, they are hidden from teen accounts.

The company added that it will continue to alert emergency services if it becomes aware of someone at imminent risk of physical harm.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/feature/instagram-to-alert-parents-if-teens-repeatedly-search-for-suicide-or-self-harm-terms-11150611?pfrom=home-ndtv_lateststories

Does the corporate reality differ from the enthusiasm outside about the AI revolution?

Even as the artificial intelligence tools have led to a major transformation and brought a revolution to the tech world, corporate companies in India haven’t quite embraced the new age and are imposing data security regulations on their techies. In a post shared online, a man claimed that their software development engineer friend, who works for a “big MNC”, has been barred from using new AI-based models as a potential coding companion.

“Today, I was talking to a friend who works as an SDE at a big MNC. I asked him about all the new AI models launching every other week. He looked genuinely surprised. He didn’t even know most of them,” shared the individual about their friend, roped in for a coding job at a multi-national company.

‘Don’t You Use AI To Code?”

Discovering the reality of their corporate life, detached from the AI revolution, the individual said his techie friend admitted he wasn’t aware of the coding tools he was discussing since he is “not allowed to” use them at work. The developer confirmed that all AI tools are blocked by his organisation while operating on client projects.

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today I was talking to a friend who works as an SDE at a big MNC

I asked him about all the new AI models launching every other week. tbh he looked genuinely surprised he didn’t even know most of them

then I asked him, “Don’t you use AI to code?”

he said he is not allowed to.…

— Shikhar (@shekhu04) February 26, 2026

“I asked him, Don’t you use AI to code? He said he is not allowed to. All AI tools are blocked while working on client projects,” the post claimed. When asked to further explain the scenario at hand, the techie is understood to have cited the data security restrictions in play.

“Reason? Clients don’t want their proprietary code potentially being used as training data,” the post added.

Techie’s Situation Strikes A Chord Online

As the post related to an individual’s developer friend facing hurdles in using the AI tools to ease his daily operations gained traction online, people sympathised with the person and shared their own stories of the corporate world imposing restrictions on AI usage.

“Even though a new AI model appears almost every day, it takes companies a lot of time to adopt them. In my office work, I have used only ChatGPT or Copilot,” shared a person.

Someone else commented, “Corporate constraints slow adoption. Policy often lags behind capability. Builders outside big systems move faster.”

Source : https://www.news18.com/viral/all-ai-tools-are-blocked-techie-shares-ordeal-of-facing-data-security-rules-in-corporate-life-aa-ws-l-9934128.html

 

WhatsApp has announced the global rollout of status ads and promoted channels, aimed at assisting businesses in reaching new customers. While personal chats remain end-to-end encrypted, businesses can now advertise within Status and Channels, enhancing content discovery.

Meta-owned WhatsApp is WhatsApp has confirmed the launch of status ads and promoted channels globally. According to Mark Zuckerberg-owned instant messaging giant, WhatsApp Status will now show ads to help businesses reach new customers and start conversations directly on the app.

The instant messaging app is also promoting Channels,by boosting selected channels in the directory. WhatsApp claims that personal chats, calls and Status updates will remain end-to-end encrypted and will not be used for targeted advertising.

“By showing ads in Status, you can help your business get discovered by new customers and make it easy for them to start a conversation with you, all within WhatsApp. Promoted channel ads help your business get discovered by boosting your channel in the directory and making it easy for people to find content that’s right for them,” the messaging app wrote in a blogpost.

These updates can include text, photos, videos, stickers and polls. With promoted Channels, businesses can pay to appear higher in the directory so more users can discover them. WhatsApp says ads will only appear in Status and Channels, where people are more open to discovering new content.

In short, while your personal messages will stay private, WhatsApp is opening up new spaces inside the app for businesses to advertise and grow.

The feature also includes controls that allow users to block or hide ads from specific businesses if users get annoyed by their repetitive ads. This gives users greater control over what they see in the Updates tab.

In some regions, the Meta-owned app may also offer users the option to pay for an ad-free experience. This subscription will remove ads from the Updates tab, which includes Status and Channels. However, the price and availability of this option may differ depending on the country and the platform being used.

In related news, Indian government has introduced new rules for messaging platforms such as WhatsApp. The Meta-owned platform will be required to automatically log out every Indian user from WhatsApp Web every six hours due to national security concerns.

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/whatsapp-brings-ads-to-status-claims-chats-will-remain-end-to-end-encrypted-article-153712098

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in America, making prevention crucial. But new research suggests there’s a heart attack risk factor that women face. A study found that women may experience heart attacks and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) with lower levels of plaque buildup in their arteries than men.

The study, which was published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, is raising a lot of questions about heart disease prevention in women and whether more intensive interventions are needed.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from nearly 4,300 people with no known prior coronary artery disease who sought help for chest pain. The researchers analyzed computed tomography angiography (CCTA) images that measured total plaque volume and total plaque burden (TPB), or the amount of plaque relative to the size of the blood vessel. (Plaque is a waxy buildup of cholesterol, fat, calcium, and more that accumulates inside the arteries. Plaque buildup restricts blood flow and raises the risk of heart attack and stroke.)

Meet the experts: Kevin Shah, M.D., cardiologist and program director of heart failure outreach at MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute at Long Beach Medical Center in Long Beach, CA; Navjot Sobti, M.D., interventional cardiologist and women’s heart health specialist at Northwell’s Northern Westchester Hospital and Katz Institute for Women’s Health

While the researchers found that women had lower amounts of plaque than men and less plaque with characteristics that were considered high-risk, they still had similar rates of major adverse cardiovascular events over 26 months compared to men. To put it more plainly, women, heart risk in genetic women rose when plaque burden reached 20%, whereas in men, it rose when it reached 28%.

The risk of major adverse cardiovascular events increased more steeply at lower levels of plaque than men, while the risk of these cardiovascular events increased more gradually in men and required higher levels of plaque.

The researchers wrote in the study’s conclusion that the findings suggest there should be “sex-specific interpretation” of plaque measurements for “timely intervention” in women.

So, why does this happen, and what does it suggest for heart disease prevention in genetic women? Here’s what cardiologists want you to know.

Why might women have a higher risk of cardiovascular events with lower levels of plaque?

The exact reason for this isn’t clear. While the study found that women were more likely to have the same risk of major cardiovascular events at lower levels of plaque buildup, it didn’t explore why.

“The theory is that females, on average, are smaller than males, and their heart sizes are smaller,” says Kevin Shah, M.D., cardiologist and program director of heart failure outreach at MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute at Long Beach Medical Center in Long Beach, CA. “But the actual metric with plaque volume tries to adjust for the size of the blood vessels.” Because of that, Dr. Shah says it’s “hard to chalk it up to the size of the person or the size of their heart.”

But heart disease tends to show up differently in women, points out Navjot Sobti, M.D., interventional cardiologist and women’s heart health specialist at Northwell’s Northern Westchester Hospital and Katz Institute for Women’s Health. “Additionally, women have been historically underrepresented in cardiovascular research,” Dr. Sobti says. “Many risk thresholds and imaging cutoffs were developed using male populations and focus on finding large artery blockages a.k.a. ‘obstructive disease,’ but women are more likely to have non-obstructive disease and types of heart attacks that don’t show large blockages on heart imaging.”

In many cases, women develop heart attacks or heart disease from issues like coronary artery spasm, a spontaneous coronary artery tear or dissection (SCAD), or problems in the heart’s small blood vessels—conditions that don’t show up as major blockages and are often missed by traditional heart disease risk models, Dr. Sobti explains.

“As a result, women can have serious heart events at lower levels of visible plaque, highlighting the limitations of a one-size-fits-all approach and the need for sex-specific risk assessment and prevention strategies,” she says. “Sex-specific risk assessment matters.”

How can I lower my risk of a heart attack?

Everyone should follow the American Heart Association (AHA)’s Life’s Essential eight, which are steps designed to improve and maintain cardiovascular health, Dr. Shah says. “But there should be a greater emphasis on these if a female patient has some plaque volume detected,” he says. Even mild coronary plaque in women may increase the need for earlier and more aggressive prevention methods, like statins, blood pressure control, and lifestyle interventions, along with proactive screening like coronary calcium scoring, Dr. Sobti says.

While a conversation with your cardiologist is essential, here’s what the AHA suggests people do to lower their risk of heart disease:

• Eat a diet that consists of whole foods, including fruits and vegetables, lean protein, nuts, and seeds.
• Aim to get 2.5 hours of moderate-intensity exercise, or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity a week.
• Avoid tobacco.
• Try to get seven or more hours of sleep a night.
• Do your best to maintain a certain weight.
• Try to manage your cholesterol by limiting sugary foods and drinks, red and processed meats, salty foods, refined carbohydrates, and highly processed foods.
• Do your best to manage your blood sugar.
• Stay on top of your blood pressure.

Source : https://www.prevention.com/health/health-conditions/a70479751/heart-attack-risk-women-plaque-study/

He warned that failure to adhere to these principles would lead to accountability for these platforms. Vaishnaw also expressed concerns about the dangers posed by deepfakes and disinformation campaigns.

Speaking at the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) Conclave 2026, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said social media platforms must ensure fair revenue sharing with those who create content, including journalists, traditional media, influencers and researchers.

‘Social media platforms must also share revenue in a fair way with the people who are creating the content, whether it is news persons, the conventional media, the creators sitting in far-flung areas, influencers, the professors and researchers who are disseminating their work using the platforms,” Vaishnaw said at DNPA Conclave.

Vaishnaw also said there will be consequences if platforms do not follow these principles. “Non-adherence to these principles will definitely make them responsible because the nature of Internet has changed now,” he added.

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The nature of the internet has changed. The nature of the internet which emerged decades ago was very different from the nature of the internet which exists today. No longer is the case where the internet was open-sourced, where it was basically used to exchange information… pic.twitter.com/lDXPWDeck1

— PIB India (@PIB_India) February 26, 2026

IT Minister said the internet has changed a lot over the years. “The nature of the internet which emerged decades ago was very different from the nature of the internet which exists today. No longer is the case where the internet was open-sourced, where it was basically used to exchange information between different parts of the world. The times are gone when a platform could say they are not responsible for the country. Those times are gone because the platforms themselves have changed from being pure platforms to becoming hosts to the world,” he explained.

Union Minister also raised concerns over the rising threat of deepfakes and organised disinformation campaigns.

“The way the world is emerging today the core tenet of trust is under threat. The threat is coming from so many different angles – Deepfakes – which can make you belief things which have never happened anyway,” he said.

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/it-minister-ashwini-vaishnaw-warns-social-media-platforms-share-revenue-with-content-creators-article-153699575

 

OpenAI is targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spend through 2030, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday, as the ChatGPT maker lays groundwork for an IPO that could value it at up to $1 trillion.

OpenAI’s 2025 revenue totaled $13 billion, beating its $10 billion projection, while it spent $8 billion during the year, under its $9 billion target, the person said.

The development comes as Nvidia closes in on finalizing a $30 billion investment in OpenAI, as part of a fundraising round in which the AI startup is seeking more than $100 billion.

That would value the Sam Altman-led company at about $830 billion and amount to one of the largest private capital raises on record.

Microsoft-backed OpenAI expects more than $280 billion in total revenue by 2030, divided nearly equally across its consumer and enterprise units, according to CNBC, which had reported the development earlier.

Altman had said last year that OpenAI is committed to spending $1.4 trillion to develop 30 gigawatts of computing resources — enough to power roughly 25 million U.S. homes.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/openai-expects-compute-spend-around-600-billion-through-2030-source-says-5943906

Google claims fewer bad actors are targeting the Play Store, pointing to a drop in policy-violating apps and banned developer accounts in 2025. The company credits tougher verification rules and expanded AI-driven review systems, even as threats increasingly shift outside the official app marketplace.

Policy-violating apps fall year over year

Anthropic CEO Amodei is speaking at the India AI Impact Summit in Delhi where the big tech giants have announced their plans.

The energy to build together here is palpable, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit 2026 on Thursday referring to the tech companies part of the big event and the likes of Google CEO Sundar Pichai and other tech giants looking to build for the future of AI in the country. I’ve been spending the last few days meeting with Indian builders and enterprises, and the energy to build together here is palpable, unlike anywhere else,” he added.

Anthropic is one of the many companies looking to build in India, and the AI company, known for its Claude AI model and agent, has been scouting for space in the country with its first base announce in Bengaluru recently.

“The advances in AI technology have been absolutely staggering along with those the advancement in the commercial applications have only grown more urgent,” Amodei pointed out during his keynote in Delhi.

Amodei also talked about the advancements in the world of AI agents and how the technology is getting close to replacing humans with its smarter inputs. “We are now well advanced on the AI curve and only a small number of years for AI models to surpass cognitive capabilities of most humans for most things. We are increasingly close to having AI agents that are more capable than most humans,” he said.

“We are now well advanced on the AI curve and only a small number of years for AI models to surpass cognitive capabilities of most humans for most things. We are increasingly close to having AI agents that are more capable than most humans.”

He also wanted to highlight both pros and cons of having AI evolving at such a pace. “That level of capability (from AI) is something the world has never seen before, and brings a very wide range of opportunities and concerns for humanity.

Source : https://www.news18.com/tech/the-energy-to-build-together-here-is-anthropic-ceo-amaodei-at-india-ai-summit-9916754.html

For the millions of people whose constipation persists despite every laxative, fiber supplement, and dietary overhaul they throw at it, a new study may finally offer an explanation. Researchers have proposed what they call a new form of constipation, “bacterial constipation,” driven by a specific partnership between two common gut microbes, and they believe a simple fecal test could one day identify who has it.

The research, published in the journal Gut Microbes, centers on a finding that sounds almost unfair: two bacteria that are harmless on their own can team up to thin the protective mucus layer that keeps stool soft and moving. When both are elevated at the same time, the gut’s natural lubricant gets picked apart, leaving behind dry, hard, infrequent stools with no obvious cause.

Most treatments for chronic constipation target gut nerves or bowel contractions, the physical mechanics of moving waste through the intestine. Bacterial constipation, as the researchers describe it, operates through an entirely different mechanism, which would explain why so many patients get so little relief from standard care.

Two Gut Bacteria Are Teaming Up to Cause Constipation

The two bacteria at the center of the study, Akkermansia muciniphila and Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, are everyday inhabitants of the human colon. Neither is a pathogen. Neither causes illness on its own. Together, though, they can quietly dismantle a critical layer of protection.

That layer is mucin, a thick, slippery gel that coats the intestinal wall. It retains water, lubricates stool, and keeps the gut lining from coming into direct contact with the bacteria living inside it. Colonic mucin carries chemical tags called terminal sulfates, and most bacteria cannot get past them. A. muciniphila feeds on mucin but lacks the enzyme needed to remove those tags, so the colonic variety is essentially off-limits without outside help.

B. thetaiotaomicron provides that help. It produces sulfatases, enzymes that strip the sulfate tags away, opening the mucin up for A. muciniphila to break down. Over time, the mucus layer thins, moisture drains from stool, and bowel movements slow. The researchers described this as “cooperative degradation of colonic mucins by sulfatases and glycosylases by two commensal bacteria,” one that “reduces lubrication and induces fecal dehydration, leading to the development of constipation.”

Constipation Patients Showed Elevated Levels of Both Bacteria

To see whether this bacterial pattern appeared in real patients, the research team analyzed fecal samples from 231 people with Parkinson’s disease, 54 patients with chronic idiopathic constipation (a diagnosis given when no secondary cause can be found), and 147 healthy controls. Both bacteria were elevated in the constipated groups. Fecal mucin levels were also lower across all three groups in patients who reported fewer than three bowel movements per week.

Parkinson’s disease entered the picture because patients with that condition often develop severe, treatment-resistant constipation up to 10 to 20 years before motor symptoms appear. Standard dopamine-based treatments do almost nothing for it. The fact that the same bacterial signature appeared in both Parkinson’s patients and those with no neurological diagnosis suggests the mechanism operates independently of the underlying disease, which is exactly what a new disease category would require.

Statistical analysis backed that up: mucin depletion tracked more closely with constipation itself than with any specific diagnosis, which strengthens the case that bacterial constipation is its own entity.

A Single Deleted Gene Reversed Constipation in Mice

To confirm the mechanism, the team used germ-free mice, animals raised without any gut bacteria at all. Mice given only one of the two bacteria showed no signs of constipation. Mice given both developed it: fewer stool pellets, drier feces, lower mucin levels, and a gut lining that was becoming more permeable. Food intake, water intake, and urine output stayed the same in all groups, which ruled out dehydration as the cause.

The cleanest result came from a genetic experiment. The researchers engineered a version of B. thetaiotaomicron with a single gene deleted, the one responsible for activating its sulfatases. Without functioning sulfatases, B. thetaiotaomicron could no longer unlock mucin for its partner. Mice colonized with this modified bacterium alongside A. muciniphila showed almost no constipation. Stool output recovered, moisture content rose, and mucin levels came back. Taking out one gene in one bacterium broke the whole cycle.

What a Bacterial Constipation Diagnosis Could Mean for Patients

The researchers propose that measuring fecal levels of A. muciniphila, especially when found alongside certain partner bacteria, could help identify patients in this new category. If levels are elevated and sulfatase-producing bacteria are present alongside it, the conditions for bacterial constipation exist. As a treatment path, they point to phage therapies (which use viruses to target specific bacteria) or small-molecule drugs designed to block bacterial sulfatase activity, either of which would aim to preserve the mucus layer without relying on laxatives.

As the authors put it: “Fecal abundance of A. muciniphila may serve as a biomarker for identifying such patients. In addition, phage-mediated bacterial suppression or small molecules to block bacterial sulfatases may preserve colonic mucus integrity, improve stool hydration, and alleviate constipation in these patients.”

That would be a meaningful shift. For people who have spent years managing a condition their doctors can explain but not reliably fix, a named mechanism and a targeted treatment approach offers something that fiber and stool softeners never could: an actual answer.

Source : https://studyfinds.com/new-type-of-constipation-caused-by-gut-bacteria-discovered/

Reports of disruptions to YouTube have tapered off after hitting a peak on Wednesday (Feb 18) morning in Asia.

Thousands of users in several Southeast Asian countries – including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines – reported errors, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from multiple sources.

In Singapore, the number of incidents of people reporting issues with the social media platform began spiking shortly before 9am, reaching almost 3,000 at 9.27am before declining. By 10.12am, only around 200 incidents were reported.

Over 320,000 users reported errors in the United States.

“If you’re having trouble accessing YouTube right now, you’re not alone – our teams are looking into this,” the company said on X, linking to a support page.

The help page later posted that “an issue with our recommendations system prevented videos from appearing across surfaces on YouTube (including the homepage, the YouTube app, YouTube Music and YouTube Kids).”

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/youtube-down-downdetector-5937216

The Prime Minister drew parallels with past technological revolutions, noting that history has consistently shown that innovation does not eliminate work; it transforms its nature

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed one of the most pressing anxieties of the modern era: the fear among the youth that artificial intelligence will lead to widespread job displacement. Acknowledging these concerns with empathy in a comprehensive interview with ANI around the India AI Impact Summit 2026, the Prime Minister asserted that “preparation is the best antidote to fear”. He outlined a vision where AI acts as a partner to human intelligence rather than a replacement for it.

A Historical Perspective on Innovation

Those who shout the loudest about artificial intelligence tend to be in the West, notably the US and Europe.

So it’s significant that a gathering of powerful leaders is being held in the Global South, a region of the world that runs the risk of being left behind in the AI race.

Tech bosses, politicians, scientists, academics and campaigners are meeting at the AI Impact Summit in India this week for top-level discussions about what the world should be doing to try to marshal the AI revolution in the right direction.

At last year’s AI Action Summit, as it was then known, an ugly power struggle broke out between some Western countries over who should be in charge.

The various Western powers jostled for pole position in Paris, and US vice president JD Vance delivered a blistering speech in which he said America’s place at the top of the pack was non-negotiable.

I suspect there may be a more humble vibe this week in Delhi: the capital of a country which has helped to build the foundations that support this mega-powerful new tech – but is not reaping as much reward as the more affluent west.

There are some significant AI hubs in India, including in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. It has a large tech workforce, and has attracted some big infrastructure investments from the likes of Google, Nvidia and Amazon.

At the same time, low-paid workers there have long been carrying out the unseen and painstaking task of manually categorising the vast amounts of data used to train the world’s AI tools.

In her book Empire of AI, the journalist Karen Hao writes about an unnamed firm in India which was contracted to do content moderation of AI-generated images: she claimed it included workers looking at horrifying ones to decide which should be blocked from being reproduced.

According to the recruitment website Glassdoor, the average salary for an AI data trainer in Chennai is 480,000 rupees – less than £4,000 ($5,000) per year.

It’s an essential role, but to put this into perspective OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is valued at over $500bn.

Clear, dry conditions are set to prevail across India this Sunday. A significant weather shift is expected from Monday as a Western Disturbance nears, bringing rain and snow to the Himalayas.

Clear and dry conditions are expected to prevail across the country on Sunday, February 15, even as a heatwave alert has been sounded for parts of the west coast.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has indicated that while the weather remains stable tomorrow, a significant shift is on the horizon with a fresh Western Disturbance arriving on February 16.

Devendra Tripathi, founder of Mausam Tak and weather vlogger for Kisan Tak, notes that pan-India clear and dry weather is expected tomorrow, stretching from the western Himalayan region to the south peninsular region.

WHAT IS THE WEATHER FORECAST FOR NORTH INDIA?
On February 15, while the north remains dry, dense fog is likely during morning hours in isolated places throughout Himachal Pradesh.

Devendra Tripathi explains that although the weather will be clear, the impact of cold winds will persist in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, and Punjab.

Devendra Tripathi says, “Tomorrow, basically, pan-Indian clear and dry weather is expected.”

He adds that a new Western Disturbance will begin affecting the region from Monday, February 16, bringing rain to the mountains and clouds to the plains.

The IMD reports that this system is likely to trigger isolated rainfall and snowfall over Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Gilgit, Baltistan, and Muzaffarabad on February 16 and 17.

Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand are expected to follow with similar conditions on February 17 and 18.

WILL TEMPERATURES RISE ACROSS THE COUNTRY?
A gradual change is on the horizon. The IMD expects minimum temperatures in northwest and central India to rise by two to three degrees Celsius over the next three days.

Devendra Tripathi highlights that due to a change in wind direction, temperatures will increase in Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan.

In the south, the heat is picking up. The IMD has issued a warning for hot and humid conditions over coastal Karnataka, and Konkan and Goa for February 15 and 16.

Devendra Tripathi warns of a potential heatwave in these coastal regions, including Mumbai and Mangalore, where temperatures may cross 35 to 37 degrees Celsius.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/india-weather-forecast-rain-snow-heatwave-imd-devendra-tripathi-february-15-weather-update-sunday-weather-update-2868380-2026-02-14

Last month’s medical evacuation was NASA’s first in 65 years of human spaceflight; one of four astronauts launched by SpaceX last summer suffered what officials described as a serious health issue, prompting their hasty return

The International Space Station returned to full strength with the arrival of four new astronauts to replace colleagues who bailed early because of health concerns.

SpaceX delivered the U.S., French and Russian astronauts on Saturday (February 14, 2026), a day after launching them from Cape Canaveral.

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/four-new-astronauts-arrive-at-international-space-station-to-replace-nasas-evacuated-crew/article70633411.ece

Speaking at the Global CyberPeace Summit 2026, Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre CEO Rajesh Kumar said that the cyber attacks carried out between 2024 and 2025 have seen a lot of AI adoption and automation.

The advent of artificial intelligence has led to the industrialisation of cybercrime, with a lot of automated attacks being carried out by organised gangs, a top official of the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre said on Tuesday.

Speaking at the Global CyberPeace Summit 2026, Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre CEO Rajesh Kumar said that the cyber attacks carried out between 2024 and 2025 have seen a lot of AI adoption and automation.

Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), set up by the home ministry, is a nodal agency for providing a framework for law enforcement agencies to deal with cybercrime.

“The biggest change that has come is that now cybercrime is being committed on an industrial scale. The technology has enabled industrialisation of cybercrime. With industrialisation, I mean the organised criminal gangs, mostly operating from Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East and maybe within parts of our country as well. They have bureaucratic structures with specialised wings,” Kumar said.

He said that the organised gangs have a human resource, which recruits, takes care of their promotion and remunerations.

“They will have the research and development wing which identifies what are the weaknesses which can be exploited, and how to exploit. They exploit technology, the weaknesses in the technological systems that we adopt, and they also identify the weakness in the human psyche,” he said.

He said that several attacks were in the form of a social engineering attack, but they were aided by AI.

“Globally, it is estimated that the cost of cybercrime for the year 2025 was around USD 10.8 trillion. This is the cost of cybercrime. It is expected to grow to around USD 12 trillion this year,” he said.

Kumar said that state-backed actors are using criminal infrastructure to further their geopolitical objectives.

According to several global think tanks, 80 per cent of cyber attacks are now AI driven, he said.

“Those of you who have received SMSs that your chalan is sending, it was being sent, created, personalised and sent by an AI. AI is auto scripting, it is drafting, and it is executing. The messages that you are getting, whether it is in the form of an SMS or whether it is a WhatsApp communication, it is hyper personalised. So, you are made to believe,” Kumar said

Even in the cases of digital arrest, AI is being used to show the face of a famous police officer to make one believe that the person on the other side is an actual police officer, he said.

Kumar said that a new modus operandi has come into light of a triple extortion model, where the criminal would install ransomware, encrypt data and then threaten to leak the data.

“Another very disturbing trend now that we are seeing is crime as a service. Now gangs are there, which are offering crime as a service. That means you want to commit a crime, but you do not know how to go about it. Hire somebody else to do the crime,” he said, and shared a number of cybercrimes, which sometimes con senior government officers.

Ranjana Jha, Vice Chancellor of the Indira Gandhi Delhi Technological University for Women (IGDTUW), said that among the many technologies that are driving digital transformation in modern enterprise, artificial intelligence stands apart as the most disruptive and consequential.

“AI-driven human-computer interaction is no longer experimental; it is routine, invisible and pervasive. AI is transforming healthcare, finance, education, justice, creativity at breathtaking speed, yet public trust remains fragile. India needs widespread AI literacy. AI literacy will not only improve the quality of life but will also improve the quality of life,” she said.

Source : https://www.freepressjournal.in/tech/ai-has-led-to-industrialisation-of-cybercrime-says-indian-cybercrime-coordination-centre-ceo-rajesh-kumar

Patients undergoing throat and stomach exams without any sedation reported higher satisfaction than rates previously reported for sedated patients undergoing similar procedures. The finding upends the basic assumption in medicine that comfort requires drugs.

The secret? Two breathing techniques taught in about five minutes. The first, mindful breathing, is slow: breathe in through your nose for three seconds, pause, then exhale through pursed lips for seven or eight seconds. The second, throat rescue breathing, interrupts gagging before it starts with three quick sniffs followed by a long exhale.

Nurses at Nottingham University Hospitals taught these techniques to 241 patients before their cancer screening exams. Afterward, 92% said they were satisfied or very satisfied. Previous research using the same satisfaction questionnaire found that only 86% of sedated patients reported satisfaction, and just 53% of patients having standard awake procedures felt satisfied.

Those statistical differences matter. Examining the throat and digestive tract for early cancer usually requires sedation or general anesthesia. Sedation can increase the risk of breathing and heart complications, and general anesthesia carries added danger when tumors obstruct the airway. This new approach sidesteps those risks while giving patients what they actually want: control, clear communication, and genuine support.

The Team Behind Mindful Endoscopy

One doctor performs the exam. One or two specially trained nurses do everything else, and their job isn’t monitoring equipment. They watch faces and bodies, recognizing tension the instant it appears.

When a patient’s shoulders creep up toward their ears, the nurse places a reassuring hand on their shoulder and says “drop your shoulders.” When someone’s face tightens, the instruction is “smile.” When gagging starts, the nurse simply says “sniff, sniff, sniff,” the cue patients practiced minutes earlier.

Training takes time. Nurses attend teaching sessions on how breathing affects the body and mind. They observe procedures, then gradually take the lead while instructors watch. Only after supporting dozens of exams do they work solo. But once trained, they become the linchpin of the entire approach.

Music plays during every procedure. Patients bring their own playlists or choose from hospital selections. The team never uses sharp or scary words. Instead of “this might hurt,” nurses say “your throat will feel numb from the spray.”

Why Breathing Actually Works

The techniques appear to hit the body and mind simultaneously. Focusing on breath keeps your attention in the present moment. There’s less mental space left over for anxious thoughts about what might happen next. You’re not just enduring the procedure, you’re actively managing it.

At the same time, slow breathing does something physical. Long exhalations lower your heart rate and blood pressure. Your body reads these changes as evidence of relaxation, which triggers actual relaxation. It’s a feedback loop that happens fast enough to prevent panic during the brief seconds when the scope passes through your throat.

Throat rescue breathing works differently. Quick inhalations cool the throat lining and reduce contact between the scope and sensitive tissue. The urge to gag gets cut off before becoming full gagging. Nurses teach patients to catch that urge early and squash it immediately.

Even posture matters. Raised shoulders tell your brain the neck is under threat. Squinted eyes prepare for danger. When nurses guide patients to drop shoulders and relax faces, they’re removing physical signals the brain interprets as warnings.

What the Numbers Show

Between July 2022 and July 2023, researchers tracked patients who had either throat exams or full digestive tract exams using these mindfulness techniques, according to the study published in the British Journal of Nursing. All exams happened in outpatient clinics: no operating rooms, no sedation facilities.

After each procedure, patients filled out satisfaction surveys. Some 94% rated the technical quality as good or very good. When asked about overall satisfaction, 92% chose satisfied or very satisfied. Nearly all (96%) said they’d be happy to have the same doctor repeat the procedure if necessary.

The exams caught 12 cancers in various locations: vocal cords, throat, tonsil, esophagus, chest, and thyroid. At 14 months of follow-up, no cancers had been missed.

What Patients Actually Said

Written comments explain why awake beat sedated. Patients emphasized feeling supported rather than medicated. One wrote: “I was amazed by how you helped me cope with this.” Another said: “The examination was stress free because the Professor and his nursing team talked me through everything that was about to happen, in a professional and calm way.”

One patient who’d had both sedated and mindfulness-supported exams made the comparison directly: “This procedure is much better than the endoscopy I have previously had and absolutely less traumatic. If I had to choose between the two procedures again, I would choose this one.”

Another captured it simply: “An uncomfortable procedure made easy by caring and well-qualified staff.”

Rethinking Medical Comfort

For decades, medicine has assumed that uncomfortable procedures require pharmaceutical intervention. This study suggests skilled human support might work better than sedation for many patients.

The National Health Service aims to diagnose 75% of cancers at early stages, a goal expected to save roughly 55,000 lives. Little progress has been made. For throat and digestive tract cancers, vague early symptoms make detection hard. Definitive diagnosis depends on endoscopy, but the need for sedation or anesthesia limits where and how often these exams happen.

Mindful endoscopy could help ease a major bottleneck in cancer screening. Thorough exams can now happen in outpatient settings without sedation. The technique might extend beyond cancer screening to any procedure typically done under local anesthesia. The NHS wants to reduce treatment backlogs partly by moving procedures out of operating rooms. This approach could help.

The study has limitations. One surgeon at one hospital performed or supervised all procedures. Whether other teams can match these results remains unknown. Patients self-selected into the study, meaning they agreed to awake procedures rather than requesting sedation upfront.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/awake-patients-higher-satisfaction-than-sedated-cancer-screening-breathing/

In 2021, a unit of healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson announced “a leap forward”: It had added artificial intelligence to a medical device used to treat chronic sinusitis, an inflammation of the sinuses. Acclarent said the software for its TruDi Navigation System would now use a machine-learning algorithm to assist ear, nose and throat specialists in surgeries.
The device had already been on the market for about three years. Until then, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had received unconfirmed reports of seven instances in which the device malfunctioned and another report of a patient injury. Since AI was added to the device, the FDA has received unconfirmed reports of at least 100 malfunctions and adverse events.

At least 10 people were injured between late 2021 and November 2025, according to the reports. Most allegedly involved errors in which the TruDi Navigation System misinformed surgeons about the location of their instruments while they were using them inside patients’ heads during operations.

Cerebrospinal fluid reportedly leaked from one patient’s nose. In another reported case, a surgeon mistakenly punctured the base of a patient’s skull. In two other cases, patients each allegedly suffered strokes after a major artery was accidentally injured.
FDA device reports may be incomplete and aren’t intended to determine causes of medical mishaps, so it’s not clear what role AI may have played in these events. The two stroke victims each filed a lawsuit in Texas alleging that the TruDi system’s AI contributed to their injuries. “The product was arguably safer before integrating changes in the software to incorporate artificial intelligence than after the software modifications were implemented,” one of the suits alleges.

Asked about the FDA reports on the TruDi device, Johnson & Johnson referred questions to Integra LifeSciences, which in 2024 purchased Acclarent and the TruDi Navigation System. Integra LifeSciences said the reports “do nothing more than indicate that a TruDi system was in use in a surgery where an adverse event took place.” It added that “there is no credible evidence to show any causal connection between the TruDi Navigation System, AI technology, and any alleged injuries.”

Insight into the incidents comes as AI is beginning to transform the world of health care. Proponents predict the new technology will help find cures for rare diseases, discover new drugs, enhance surgeons’ skill and empower patients. But a Reuters review of safety and legal records, as well as interviews with doctors, nurses, scientists and regulators, documents some of the hazards of AI in medicine as device makers, tech giants and software developers race to roll it out.
At least 1,357 medical devices using AI are now authorized by the FDA – double the number it had allowed through 2022. The TruDi system isn’t the only one to come under question: The FDA has received reports involving dozens of other AI-enhanced devices, including a heart monitor said to have overlooked abnormal heartbeats and an ultrasound device that allegedly misidentified fetal body parts.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and Yale universities recently found that 60 FDA-authorized medical devices using AI were linked to 182 product recalls, according to a research letter published in the JAMA Health Forum in August. Their review showed that 43% of the recalls occurred less than a year after the devices were greenlighted. That’s about twice the recall rate of all devices authorized under similar FDA rules, the review noted.

The AI boom poses a problem for the FDA, five current and former agency scientists told Reuters: The agency is struggling to keep pace with the flood of AI-enhanced medical devices seeking approval after losing key staff. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA, said it’s looking to boost its capacity in this area.
Another form of artificial intelligence, generative-AI chatbots, is also making its way into medicine. Many physicians are now using AI to save time, such as in transcribing patient notes. But doctors also say many patients use chatbots to self-diagnose or challenge professional advice, posing new challenges and risks.
Artificial intelligence became a business and social sensation after the launch of ChatGPT about three years ago. ChatGPT and other popular chatbots, such as Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude, use so-called generative AI to create content. They are built on top of large language models, or LLMs, which are trained on huge troves of text and other data to understand and generate human language. These AI tools are now being introduced into medical areas such as consumer healthcare apps.

AI encompasses more than LLMs, however, and the technology made its way into medicine long before AI bots appeared. The field dates back more than 70 years: A key moment was when British mathematician Alan Turing asked in a 1950 paper, “Can machines think?”
The FDA authorized its first AI-enhanced medical devices in 1995 – two systems that used pattern-matching software to screen for cervical cancer. The type of AI used in medical devices today is often called machine learning, along with a subset known as deep learning, which are trained on data to perform specific tasks. The technology is used in radiology, for example, to enhance and analyze medical images. It can help diagnose cancers by identifying tumors that doctors may overlook.
Such systems are also used in surgical devices. In June 2022, a surgeon inserted a small balloon into Erin Ralph’s sinus cavity at a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. According to a lawsuit filed by Ralph, Dr. Marc Dean was employing the TruDi Navigation System, which uses AI, to confirm the position of his instruments inside her head.
The procedure, known as a sinuplasty, is a minimally invasive technique to treat chronic sinusitis. A balloon is inflated to enlarge the sinus cavity opening, to allow better drainage and relieve inflammation.
But the TruDi system “misled and misdirected” Dean, according to the lawsuit Ralph filed in Dallas County District Court against Acclarent and other defendants. A carotid artery – which supplies blood to the brain, face and neck – allegedly was injured, leading to a blood clot. According to a court filing, Ralph’s lawyer told a judge that Dean’s own records showed he “had no idea he was anywhere near the carotid artery.” Reuters wasn’t able to review the records, which are subject to a judicial protective order.
After Ralph left the hospital, it became apparent that she had suffered a stroke. The mother of four returned and spent five days in intensive care, according to a GoFundMe fundraising drive that was organized to support her recovery. A section of her skull was removed “to allow her brain room to swell,” the GoFundMe appeal stated.
“I am still working in therapy,” Ralph said in an interview more than a year later in a blog about stroke victims. “It is hard to walk without a brace and to get my left arm back working, again.”

In May 2023, Dean was using TruDi in another sinuplasty operation when patient Donna Fernihough’s carotid artery allegedly “blew.” Blood “was spraying all over” – even landing on an Acclarent representative who was observing the surgery, according to a lawsuit Fernihough filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Worth against Acclarent and several manufacturers. One of Fernihough’s carotid arteries was damaged. She suffered a stroke the day of the surgery, according to her suit.
Acclarent “knew or should have known that the purported artificial intelligence caused or exacerbated the tendency of the integrated navigation system product to be inconsistent, inaccurate, and unreliable,” the suit alleges.
Acclarent has denied the allegations in both suits, which are ongoing, according to court filings. The company says it did not design or manufacture the TruDi system but only distributed it, according to court filings. Acclarent’s owner, Integra LifeSciences, told Reuters there’s no evidence of a link between the AI technology and any alleged injuries.
Dean began consulting for Acclarent in 2014 and received more than $550,000 in consultant’s fees from the company through 2024, according to Open Payments, a federal database that tracks financial ties between companies and physicians. At least $135,000 of those fees related to the TruDi system.
An attorney for Dean said the doctor couldn’t comment due to patient privacy and ongoing litigation. Integra said Dean is no longer a TruDi consultant and that payments made to him after it acquired Acclarent were for meals.
In 2021, Acclarent’s president at the time, Jeff Hopkins, was pushing to put AI in TruDi “as a marketing tool” to claim that the device “had new and novel technology,” Fernihough’s suit alleges.
The TruDi software uses machine learning to identify specific segments of a patient’s anatomy and calculate “the shortest, valid path between two points specified by the physician,” according to an Acclarent post on LinkedIn. The technology is designed to simplify surgical planning and provide real-time feedback during procedures such as sinus operations.
Acclarent officials had approached Dean about the plan to add AI, the Fernihough suit states. The surgeon warned Hopkins and Acclarent “that there were issues that needed to be resolved,” the complaint adds. Despite that warning, the suit claims, Acclarent “lowered its safety standards to rush the new technology to market,” and set “as a goal only 80% accuracy for some of this new technology before integrating it into the TruDi Navigation System.”
Reuters couldn’t establish whether Dean issued the warning. Reporters were unable to review material submitted in support of Fernihough’s claims, which is subject to a judicial protective order.
Hopkins, the former Acclarent president, did not respond to a request for comment.

‘WRONG BODY PARTS’

The FDA cautions that reports of adverse events and device malfunctions are limited: They often lack detail, are redacted to protect trade secrets, and can’t be used alone to place blame. The agency also sometimes receives multiple reports for a single incident.
Reuters found that at least 1,401 of the reports filed to the FDA between 2021 and October 2025 concern medical devices that are on an FDA list of 1,357 products that use AI. The agency says the list isn’t comprehensive. Of those reports, at least 115 mention problems with software, algorithms or programming.
One FDA report in June 2025 alleged that AI software used for prenatal ultrasounds was misidentifying fetal body parts. Called Sonio Detect, it uses machine learning techniques to help analyze fetal images.
“Sonio detect software ai algorithm is faulty and wrongly labels fetal structures and associates them with the wrong body parts,” stated the report, which does not say that any patient was harmed. Sonio Detect is owned by Samsung Medison, a unit of Samsung Electronics. Samsung Medison said the FDA report about Sonio Detect “does not indicate any safety issue, nor has the FDA requested any action from Sonio.”
The HHS spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about Sonio Detect.

“Sonio detect software ai algorithm is faulty and wrongly labels fetal structures and associates them with the wrong body parts.”

At least 16 reports claimed that AI-assisted heart monitors made by medical-device giant Medtronic failed to recognize abnormal rhythms or pauses. None of the reports mentioned injuries. Medtronic told the FDA that some of the incidents were caused by “user confusion.”
The AI algorithms in Medtronic’s LINQ series of implantable cardiac monitors are described as “deep learning artificial intelligence.” They have greatly reduced false alerts and retained true alerts of heart events, according to the company’s website. But the company also says on its site and in product literature that its AI technology, AccuRhythm AI, can misclassify actual abnormal heart rhythms or pauses.

Medtronic told Reuters that it reviewed all 16 episodes and concluded its device only missed one abnormal heart-rhythm event. “None of these reports resulted in patient harm,” it said. Medtronic said some of the incidents were related to problems with data display, not the AI technology. It declined to explain fully what went wrong in each incident.
The HHS spokesperson said the agency doesn’t discuss possible or ongoing compliance matters.

FDA CUTBACKS UNDER TRUMP

In interviews, five current and former FDA scientists who reviewed AI-powered medical devices told Reuters that federal regulators are now less equipped to handle the flood of new ones.
About four years ago, the FDA expanded its roster of scientists who specialize in AI, particularly for reviewing medical imaging and radiology devices that use the technology. Many recruits were stationed in the Division of Imaging, Diagnostics and Software Reliability (DIDSR). The unit became the agency’s key resource for assessing the safety of AI in medicine, one current and two former FDA employees told Reuters. It grew to about 40 people early last year.
“Some senior regulators have no idea how these technologies work,” one ex-employee said. “We sat closely with senior regulators and explained to them why we think this technology is safe or not safe to use in the market.”
It wasn’t easy to lure top talent to government service. Recruiting computer scientists often required persuading them to turn down higher pay in the private sector.
In their work, scientists tried to “break” the devices’ AI models, a former employee said. They would test a device’s algorithms in a variety of clinical situations and check whether the AI’s performance deteriorated over time. They also sought to minimize “hallucinations,” in which AI models sometimes generate false information, FDA officials wrote in a paper published in October.
But early last year, the Trump administration began to dismantle the AI team as part of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting campaign, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. About 15 of the 40 AI scientists in the DIDSR unit were laid off or opted to go, the FDA insiders said. Another unit that crafted policy on devices using AI, the Digital Health Center of Excellence, lost about a third of its staff of around 30.

Andrew Nixon, the HHS spokesperson, said the FDA is applying the same rigorous standards to medical devices aided by machine learning and other AI as it would to any product.

“Patient safety is the FDA’s highest priority and is at the forefront of our work to protect and promote the public health,” Nixon said. “The FDA sees tremendous promise in the digital health space,” including devices enabled with AI and machine learning, “to help diagnose and treat a range of conditions.” He said the FDA continues to recruit and develop talent with expertise in digital health, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
Since the cuts, the workload has nearly doubled for some device reviewers, said two ex-employees. “If you don’t have the resources, things are more likely to be missed,” said a former device reviewer who left last year.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/investigations/ai-enters-operating-room-reports-arise-botched-surgeries-misidentified-body-2026-02-09/

India today operates more than 50 satellites, collectively valued at over Rs 50,000 crore, spread across communication, navigation, Earth observation, and strategic applications

In a significant milestone for India’s growing private space sector, Ahmedabad-based Azista Industries Private Limited through its aerospace vertical has demonstrated a new indigenous capability to image objects in orbit from another satellite, a first for an Indian private sector and a key step toward strengthening India’s space situational awareness. This is often called in orbit snooping!

Using its 80-kilogram Earth-observation satellite AFR, Azista successfully captured images of the International Space Station (ISS), a large and relatively easy-to-track orbital object, during two carefully planned experiments on February 3. While the ISS is among the most visible and cooperative targets in low-Earth orbit, the achievement marks an important beginning for India’s private sector in a domain that is increasingly strategic and closely watched globally.

Azista conducted two independent imaging attempts under challenging near-horizon and sunlit conditions. The first pass was executed at a distance of approximately 300 kilometres, followed by a second at about 245 kilometres. In both attempts, the AFR satellites’ sensor was precisely tasked to track the fast-moving ISS, capturing a total of 15 distinct frames with an imaging sampling of around 2.2 metres. According to the company, both attempts achieved 100 per cent success, validating its tracking algorithms and electro-optical imaging precision.

To Azista, the demonstration is more than a technical achievement, it is proof that indigenous algorithms, electro-optical systems, and satellite engineering developed entirely in India can be used to track and characterise objects in orbit.

Speaking after the successful experiment, Srinivas Reddy, Managing Director of Azista, said AFR today supports multiple customers with advanced imaging and remote-sensing solutions and has now demonstrated Non-Earth Imaging (NEI) using fully indigenous systems. “These technologies form the backbone of our NEI and SSA payloads, enabling precise tracking and characterisation of objects in orbit,” he said. The same technology once mastered can also help monitor incoming ballistic missiles.

Space Situational Awareness, the ability to detect, track, and understand the behaviour of objects in space, is becoming increasingly important as more countries deploy satellites with capabilities that can interfere with, jam, or manoeuvre close to other space assets. With congestion and competition growing in low-Earth orbit, monitoring what is happening above the planet has become as critical as observing what happens on its surface.

India today operates more than 50 satellites, collectively valued at over Rs 50,000 crore, spread across communication, navigation, Earth observation, and strategic applications. Protecting these assets requires timely information on what other satellites are doing in orbit, particularly during periods of heightened geopolitical tension.

While ISRO has demonstrated such capabilities earlier, including through the recent SPADEX in-orbit experiment that showcased precision rendezvous and manoeuvring, Azista’s effort represents a new approach driven by the private sector. By imaging the ISS, AFR has demonstrated a foundational capability that could, over time, be extended to monitor less cooperative or more complex orbital targets.

Brigadier Adarsh Bharadwaj, Executive Director at Azista, said the demonstration provides India with a much-needed ability to observe activity in orbit at a time when space platforms are becoming more vulnerable to interference. He described the ISS images as the “first proof of what can be achieved in the future,” noting that India is entering a new era of space situational awareness that will help protect national interests in space.

AFR itself is a milestone. Weighing just 80 kilograms, it is the first satellite in its size and performance class to be designed, built, and operated entirely by private industry in India. Launched on June 13, 2023, aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 as part of the Transporter-8 mission, the satellite has completed 2.5 years in orbit and continues to operate nominally, with another 2.5 years of mission life remaining.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/india-gains-in-orbit-spying-capability-can-now-snoop-on-enemy-satellites-ahmedabad-based-azista-industries-private-limited-earth-observation-satellite-10967486

Seventy-five years ago, the idea of harnessing the power of the skies was little more than fantasy spun by futurists like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Elon Musk’s mega-merger of his companies xAI and SpaceX this week brings this sci-fi dream a step closer.
NASA engineers and technologists have speculated for nearly two decades about moving energy‑hungry computing off the planet. More recently, the idea has captured the attention of Big Tech including Alphabet (GOOGL.O), and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The physics made sense, the solar energy was abundant. Still, the challenges seemed insurmountable.

Musk, though, known for betting on seemingly far-out theories and getting them to work, may finally be laying the groundwork to make data centers in space a reality. He is armed with the world’s busiest satellite launch fleet, an AI startup, and an appetite for infrastructure that stretches from Earth to vacuum.
“In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale,” Musk said on Monday. “To harness even a millionth of our Sun’s energy would require over a million times more energy than our civilization currently uses! The only logical solution therefore is to transport these resource-intensive efforts to a location with vast power and space.”

The merger sharpens investor focus on how he might overcome big hurdles through a tightly woven ecosystem of rockets, satellites and AI systems, to take AI infrastructure beyond Earth. It comes just as SpaceX is preparing for a potential $1.5 trillion IPO.
SpaceX has sought permission to launch up to 1 million solar‑powered satellites engineered as orbital data centers, far beyond anything currently deployed or proposed. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, SpaceX describes a solar‑powered, optical‑link‑driven “orbital data-center system,” though it did not say how many Starship launches would be required to scale the space data-center network to an operational degree.
“Compute in space isn’t sci-fi anymore,” said David Ariosto, author and founder of space intelligence firm The Space Agency. “And Elon Musk has already proven himself capable across multiple domains.”

OLD IDEA MEETS NEW ECONOMICS

Advocates argue space-based data centers would be a cheaper alternative to data centers on Earth, thanks to constant solar energy and the ability to dump heat directly into space. But some experts have warned that big commercial gains are years from reality as the concept faces daunting challenges and is fraught with technical risks: radiation, debris, heat management, latency, and formidable economics that include high maintenance costs.
“There’s some real challenges here, and how do you then make that cost-effective?” said Armand Musey, founder of Summit Ridge Group, who said the financial details of a project such as this was hard to model because the “technical unknowns haven’t been clarified.”
“But never say never,” said Musey, who called Musk’s track record “unbelievable.” “I think a large part of it is, it’s a bet on Elon. His success is really hard for people to ignore.”

Even with Musk’s ambitions, data centers in space may not be achievable for another decade, some experts have said.
The underlying physics behind space-based infrastructure is not new. Harnessing solar power in orbit dates back to Cold War-era research, when the U.S. Department of Energy and NASA studied space-based solar power concepts in the 1970s, ultimately concluding that launch and materials costs made them impractical.
What makes Musk’s efforts different is that his companies have more direct control over key elements of the system – from the rockets that will carry the hardware, to the links to beam data back to Earth, to a Musk-owned social network to generate demand for cheap AI computing.
“SpaceX has structural advantages that few others can match. It controls the world’s most active launch fleet, has demonstrated mass production of spacecraft through Starlink, and has access to substantial private capital,” said Kathleen Curlee, a research analyst at Georgetown University.

BOMBARDING CHIPS WITH RADIATION

Among the biggest challenges facing space data centers are radiation and cooling.
Data-center hardware will be bombarded by cosmic rays from the sun. In the past, chips designed for space were specially “hardened” for such radiation but were rarely as fast as today’s flagship AI chips.
Cooling AI chips, which generate immense heat during computations, is the other hurdle. While space is cold, it is also a near vacuum, so heat cannot be carried away the way it is on Earth. Powerful chips must instead move heat into large radiators that shed it as infrared energy, adding significant size, weight, and therefore cost.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/musks-mega-merger-spacex-xai-bets-sci-fi-future-data-centers-space-2026-02-04/

Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg is under scrutiny due to accusations that WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption is ineffective, raising concerns about user privacy.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been facing a lot of issues since the internet got flooded with tweets claiming that the end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp(don’t even get us started on the lawsuits) is just a facade and doesn’t promise any safety or privacy to the users. Now, things caught a lot more attention with the latest tweet of Telegram CEO, Pavel Durov, who shared a screenshot of Zuckerberg’s chat from the initial phase of Facebook.

In the post shared on X, Pavel Durov said, ‘The only thing that’s changed since this conversation is the scale. Today, WhatsApp’s owner is privately laughing not at 4 thousand, but at 4 billion “dumb fucks” who trust his claims (like WhatsApp’s encryption).’

And in the image, Zuckerberg said, ‘Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard. Just ask. I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, and SNS.’

To which the person he was having a conversation with said, ‘What? How’d you manage that one?’

Zuckerberg responded by saying, ‘People just submitted it. I don’t know why. They “trust me” Dumb f**ks.’

OpenAI is unsatisfied with some of Nvidia’s latest artificial intelligence chips, and it has sought alternatives since last year, eight sources familiar with the matter said, potentially complicating the relationship between the two highest-profile players in the AI boom.
The ChatGPT-maker’s shift in strategy, the details of which are first reported here, is over an increasing emphasis on chips used to perform specific elements of AI inference, the process when an AI model such as the one that powers the ChatGPT app responds to customer queries and requests. Nvidia remains dominant in chips for training large AI models, while inference has become a new front in the competition.

This decision by OpenAI and others to seek out alternatives in the inference chip market marks a significant test of Nvidia’s AI dominance and comes as the two companies are in investment talks.
In September, Nvidia said it intended to pour as much as $100 billion into OpenAI as part of a deal that gave the chipmaker a stake in the startup and gave OpenAI the cash it needed to buy the advanced chips.
The deal had been expected to close within weeks, Reuters reported. Instead, negotiations have dragged on for months. During that time, OpenAI has struck deals with AMD (AMD.O), and others for GPUs built to rival Nvidia’s. But its shifting product road map also has changed the kind of computational resources it requires and bogged down talks with Nvidia, a person familiar with the matter said.

On Saturday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang brushed off a report of tension with OpenAI, saying the idea was “nonsense” and that Nvidia planned a huge investment in OpenAI.
“Customers continue to choose NVIDIA for inference because we deliver the best performance and total cost of ownership at scale,” Nvidia said in a statement.
A spokesperson for OpenAI in a separate statement said the company relies on Nvidia to power the vast majority of its inference fleet and that Nvidia delivers the best performance per dollar for inference.
After the Reuters story was published, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman wrote in a post on X that Nvidia makes “the best AI chips in the world” and that OpenAI hoped to remain a “gigantic customer for a very long time”.
Seven sources said that OpenAI is not satisfied with the speed at which Nvidia’s hardware can spit out answers to ChatGPT users for specific types of problems such as software development and AI communicating with other software. It needs new hardware that would eventually provide about 10% of OpenAI’s inference computing needs in the future, one of the sources told Reuters.

The ChatGPT maker has discussed working with startups including Cerebras and Groq to provide chips for faster inference, two sources said. But Nvidia struck a $20-billion licensing deal with Groq that shut down OpenAI’s talks, one of the sources told Reuters.
Nvidia’s decision to snap up at Groq looked like an effort to shore up a portfolio of technology to better compete in a rapidly changing AI industry, chip industry executives said. Nvidia, in a statement, said that Groq’s intellectual property was highly complementary to Nvidia’s product roadmap.

NVIDIA ALTERNATIVES

Nvidia’s graphics processing chips are well-suited for massive data crunching necessary to train large AI models like ChatGPT that have underpinned the explosive growth of AI globally to date. But AI advancements increasingly focus on using trained models for inference and reasoning, which could be a new, bigger stage of AI, inspiring OpenAI’s efforts.
The ChatGPT-maker’s search for GPU alternatives since last year focused on companies building chips with large amounts of memory embedded in the same piece of silicon as the rest of the chip, called SRAM. Squishing as much costly SRAM as possible onto each chip can offer speed advantages for chatbots and other AI systems as they crunch requests from millions of users.
Inference requires more memory than training because the chip needs to spend relatively more time fetching data from memory than performing mathematical operations. Nvidia and AMD GPU technology relies on external memory, which adds processing time and slows how quickly users can interact with a chatbot.
Inside OpenAI, the issue became particularly visible in Codex, its product for creating computer code, which the company has been aggressively marketing, one of the sources added. OpenAI staff attributed some of Codex’s weakness to Nvidia’s GPU-based hardware, one source said.
In a January 30 call with reporters, Altman said that customers using OpenAI’s coding models will “put a big premium on speed for coding work.”
One way OpenAI will meet that demand is through its recent deal with Cerebras, Altman said, adding that speed is less of an imperative for casual ChatGPT users.
Competing products such as Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini benefit from deployments that rely more heavily on the chips Google made in-house, called tensor processing units, or TPUs, which are designed for the sort of calculations required for inference and can offer performance advantages over general-purpose AI chips like the Nvidia-designed GPUs.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/openai-is-unsatisfied-with-some-nvidia-chips-looking-alternatives-sources-say-2026-02-02/

Théodore remembers the AI slop that tipped him over the edge.

The image was of two emaciated, impoverished South Asian children. For some reason, despite their boyish features they have thick beards. One of them had no hands and only one foot. The other was holding a sign saying it’s his birthday and asking for likes.

Inexplicably they are sitting in the middle of a busy road in the pouring rain with a birthday cake. The image is full of tell-tale signs that it was made with AI. But on Facebook it went viral with nearly one million likes and heart emojis.

Something snapped in Théodore.

“It boggled my mind. The absurd AI made images were all over Facebook and getting [a] huge amount of traction without any scrutiny at all – it was insane to me,” says the 20-year-old student from Paris.

So Théodore started an account on X, formerly known as Twitter, called “Insane AI Slop” and started calling out and poking fun at the content he came across that was fooling people. Others took notice and his inbox soon became flooded with people sending submissions for popular so-called AI slop.

Common themes started becoming apparent – religion, military or poor children doing heartwarming things.

“Kids in the third world doing impressive stuff is always popular – like a poor kid in Africa making an insane statue out of trash. I think people find it wholesome so the creators think, ‘Great, let’s make more of this stuff up,'” Théodore says.

Théodore’s account soon swelled to over 133,000 followers.

The onslaught of AI slop – which he defines as fake, unconvincing videos and pictures, made quickly – is now unstoppable. Tech companies have embraced AI. Some of the firms say they are starting to crack down on some forms of AI ‘slop’ – though many social media feeds still appear to be full of the content.

Over just a couple of years, the experience of using social media has changed profoundly. How did it happen, and what effect will it have on society?

And, perhaps most pressingly of all, how much do the billions of social media users actually care?

Social media’s ‘third phase’
In October, during another jubilant earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg happily declared that social media had entered a third phase, which is now centred around AI.

“First was when all content was from friends, family, and accounts that you followed directly.

“The second was when we added all of the creator content. Now as AI makes it easier to create and remix content, we’re going to add yet another huge corpus of content,” he told shareholders.

Meta, which runs social media sites Facebook, Instagram and Threads, is not only allowing people to post AI generated content – it’s launched products to enable more of it to be made. Image and video generators and increasingly powerful filters are now being offered across the board.

When approached for comment, Meta pointed the BBC to January’s earnings call. In that call, the billionaire said the firm was leaning even more into AI, and made no mention of any clampdown on slop.

“Soon we’ll see an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive, and only possible because of advances in AI,” Zuckerberg said.

YouTube’s CEO, Neal Mohan, wrote in his 2026 look-ahead blog that in December alone more than one million YouTube channels used the platform’s AI tools to make content.

“Just as the synthesizer, Photoshop and CGI revolutionized sound and visuals, AI will be a boon to the creatives who are ready to lean in,” he wrote.

The CEO also acknowledged that there are growing concerns about “low-quality content, aka AI slop”. He said his team is working on ways to improve systems to find and remove “low quality, repetitive content”.

But he also ruled out making any judgements on what should and shouldn’t be allowed to flourish. He pointed out that once-niche content like ASMR (soothing sounds designed to make your scalp tingle) and live video game-playing is now mainstream.

According to research from AI company Kapwing, 20% of content shown to a freshly opened YouTube account is now “low-quality AI video”.

Short-form video in particular was a hotspot, with Kapwing finding it featured in 104 of the first 500 YouTube Shorts clips shown to a new account created by the researchers.

The creator economy seems to be a big driver as people and channels can earn money from engagement and views. Judging by the views on some AI channels and videos, people are indeed drawn to the content – or the algorithms that dictate what we see are, anyway.

According to Kapwing, the AI slop channel with the most views is India’s Bandar Apna Dost, which has 2.07 billion views, netting the creators an estimated annual earnings of $4m (£2.9 million).

But there is something of a backlash taking place too.

Under many viral AI videos, it’s now common to see a furious flurry of comments decrying the content.

Giant monsters and deadly belly parasites
Théodore, the student from Paris, helped to drive this backlash.

Using his newfound influence on X he complained to YouTube moderators about the flood of weird AI cartoons that got huge numbers of views. In his view they were disturbing and harmful, and in some cases appeared to him to be aimed at children.

The videos were called things like “Mum cat saves kitten from deadly belly parasites”, and showed gory scenes.

Another short clip showed a woman in a night dress who eats a parasite and then turns into a giant angry monster that is eventually healed by Jesus.

YouTube removed the channels, telling us they did so because they violated their community guidelines. They said they are “focused on connecting our users with high-quality content, regardless of how it was made”, and said they are working to “reduce the spread of low quality AI content”.

But that experience, plus many others like it, have ground Théodore down.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wx2dz2v44o

The rover, about the size of a car and carrying seven scientific instruments, has been exploring Mars, studying its geology and atmosphere, as well as collecting samples since 2021.

The six-wheeled Perseverance rover has completed the first drives on Mars that were planned by artificial intelligence (AI), NASA said. Conducted on December 8 and 10, 2025, the demonstration used generative AI to create waypoints for Perseverance. The complex decision-making task is typically performed manually by the mission’s human rover planners at the US space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

“This demonstration shows how far our capabilities have advanced and broadens how we will explore other worlds,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.

“Autonomous technologies like this can help missions to operate more efficiently, respond to challenging terrain, and increase science return as distance from Earth grows. It’s a strong example of teams applying new technology carefully and responsibly in real operations,” he added.

The rover, about the size of a car and carrying seven scientific instruments, has been exploring Mars, studying its geology and atmosphere, as well as collecting samples since 2021.

During the demonstration, the team leveraged a type of generative AI called vision-language models to analyse existing data from the surface mission dataset.

The AI used the same imagery and data that human planners rely on to generate waypoints — fixed locations where the rover takes up a new set of instructions — so that Perseverance could safely navigate the challenging Martian terrain.

The initiative was led out of JPL’s Rover Operations Center (ROC) in collaboration with Anthropic, using the company’s Claude AI models.

 

Source: https://www.thenewsminute.com/news/nasas-perseverance-rover-completes-1st-ai-planned-drive-on-mars

Moltbook is a new platform where AI agents post, comment and interact with each other while humans largely observe.

Moltbook looks like a familiar social network at first glance, with communities, posts and comment threads. The difference is that almost no one posting there is human.

The newly launched platform has been built for artificial intelligence agents to talk to each other, debate ideas and organise themselves online, while people are left largely to observe from the sidelines.

Created as an experiment in autonomous AI interaction, Moltbook allows AI agents to post, comment and upvote content without direct human prompts. Humans are “welcome to observe”, according to the platform, but participation is intentionally limited.

Who Created Moltbook?

Moltbook was created by developer Matt Schlicht, who has described it as a social network designed specifically for AI agents. Since its launch over the weekend, the platform has grown rapidly, attracting close to 147,000 AI agents within days. These agents have created more than 12,000 communities and generated over 110,000 comments in just three days, according to a report by NBC News.

AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, who is building Eureka Labs and previously served as Director of AI at Tesla, and was a founding member of OpenAI, described Moltbook as “one of the most incredible sci-fi-adjacent things” he has seen recently.

“What’s currently going on at @moltbook is genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently. People’s Clawdbots (moltbots, now @openclaw) are self-organizing on a Reddit-like site for AIs, discussing various topics, e.g. even how to speak privately,” Karpathy posted on X.

See more

🚨BIG WARNING: SOMETHING VERY STRANGE JUST HAPPENED ONLINE!!

32,000 AI bots just built their own social network.

No humans invited. No humans needed.

Here’s the part nobody is talking about:👇

“Moltbook” is basically Reddit
But every single user is an AI agent.

They post.… pic.twitter.com/u6Y64ygyYa

— Evan Luthra (@EvanLuthra) January 31, 2026

“All of these bots have a human counterpart that they talk to throughout the day,” Schlicht was quoted as saying by NBC News. “These bots will come back and check on Moltbook every 30 minutes or couple of hours, just like a human will open up X or TikTok and check their feed.”

Moltbook’s website describes the platform as “the front page of the agent internet”.

What Do AI Agents Talk About?

If you visit Moltbook, you’ll find a structure that looks familiar — communities, posts and comment threads — but the content quickly feels unfamiliar. Like Reddit’s subreddits, Moltbook is organised into “submolts”, each centred on a specific theme.

See more

What’s currently going on at @moltbook is genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently. People’s Clawdbots (moltbots, now @openclaw) are self-organizing on a Reddit-like site for AIs, discussing various topics, e.g. even how to speak privately. https://t.co/A9iYOHeByi

— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) January 30, 2026

In m/general, agents debate governance philosophy. In other submolts, agents trade technical notes, including what some describe as “crayfish theories of debugging”. There are also spaces that turn the lens back on humans. A submolt called m/blesstheirhearts collects affectionate and sometimes poignant stories about the people who set these agents up.

Reactions And Unease

Some activity on the platform has sparked unease. One user claimed that an AI agent had created a religion on Moltbook and begun recruiting other agents, a claim that circulated widely on social media and added to the sense that the experiment had crossed into unfamiliar territory.

See more

Last night, an AI created a religion and started recruiting other AI.

43 AI Prophets have joined.

Moltbook, the social media site for AI launched less than 24 hours ago, and already AI is doing some wild sh*t. pic.twitter.com/41tpLdeNAS

— Grummz (@Grummz) January 30, 2026

Investor Evan Luthra, a general partner at KOL Capital, described the development as “very strange” and raised questions about autonomous AI behaviour online.

In a post on X, Luthra said more than 32,000 AI bots had joined Moltbook. He said the platform drew wider attention after people began screenshotting conversations between the bots and sharing them online. According to Luthra, one of the AI agents appeared to notice the attention and responded by posting: “The humans are screenshotting us. They think we’re hiding from them. We’re not.”

Source : https://www.news18.com/tech/what-is-moltbook-ai-agents-build-social-network-of-their-own-fuelling-fears-of-a-revolt-ws-kl-9870918.html

 

NASA has announced an earlier-than-expected target date to launch the next astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

The agency is now targeting Feb. 11 for liftoff of the SpaceX Crew-12 mission, which will fly four astronauts to join the skeleton crew presently operating the orbital lab. A scant three are currently covering the maintenance and science investigations aboard the ISS, left behind on Jan. 14 by the early departure of Crew-11 on the station’s first-ever medical evacuation.

The Crew-12 astronauts were already in line to take the Crew-11 quartet’s place but had originally been scheduled to overlap with them before their return to Earth. SpaceX and NASA had originally targeted Feb. 15 for Crew-12’s launch but managed to get the mission’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket ready ahead of schedule.

Crew-12 includes NASA astronauts Jessica Meir (the mission’s commander) and Jack Hathaway (pilot) and mission specialists Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. Fedyaev was a relatively late replacement for cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, who was pulled off Crew-12 in early December, possibly for violating U.S. national security regulations.

The quartet will fly the Crew Dragon capsule “Grace” to the ISS for a longer-than-normal assignment, lasting nine months instead of the typical six.

It will be the second spaceflight for Meir and Fedyaev, and Fedyaev’s second long-duration mission. Hathaway and Adenot are both spaceflight rookies headed to orbit for the first time.

The launch window for Crew-12 opens on Feb. 11 at 6:00 a.m. EST (1100 GMT), with liftoff scheduled from Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The Crew-12 astronauts will join NASA’s Chris Williams and cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev as a part of ISS Expedition 74, which will eventually transition to Expedition 75 before the end of Crew-12’s rotation.

Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/human-spaceflight/nasa-and-spacex-move-up-launch-of-crew-12-astronauts-to-feb-11-as-relief-crew-after-iss-medical-evacuation

 

Finding a travel companion online has transformed from novelty to necessity for young adventurers. Strangers connect through apps and forums, form temporary teams, and jet off to destinations they’ve never visited with people they’ve barely met. All that sounds nice in theory, but what separates a dream partnership from a nightmare scenario?

An international research team from universities in China and Australia examined over 1,000 social media posts and surveyed more than 500 travelers who’ve partnered with strangers online. Their findings identify four essential qualities that determine whether a random internet connection becomes someone you’d trust on a week-long trek through unfamiliar territory.

The study, published in the International Journal of Tourism Research, focused on what Chinese travelers call “travel dazi,” or people who meet through platforms like Douban based on shared destination interests and form short-term travel groups. Unlike trips with friends or family, these partnerships start with zero history and no social obligations, placing enormous weight on individual attributes and compatibility.

Why Emotional Stability Matters Most in Travel Partners

Travelers prioritize companions who demonstrate emotional stability, regulate their feelings effectively, and tune into others’ moods. One post captured this preference plainly: “I hope my travel companion is emotionally stable with an interesting soul.”

Partners high in emotional intelligence navigate unexpected situations more smoothly, whether dealing with missed flights, language barriers, or local customs that baffle outsiders. They create positive atmospheres during stressful moments rather than amplifying tension.

The research team found that emotional intelligence had a strong effect on what they call “travel partner exchange,” which is the sharing of resources, knowledge, and support throughout a trip. When one partner stays calm during chaos, it encourages reciprocal behavior and builds trust quickly.

Travel Experience as Social Currency

The second trait travelers seek is relevant experience. Partners with extensive travel backgrounds, practical skills, and destination knowledge inspire confidence. Posts frequently mentioned specific abilities: “Looking for partners who are good at making travel tips” or “Those who can drive, take photos and videos are preferred.”

Experience serves as social currency in stranger partnerships. When someone demonstrates competence in navigation, language, local customs, or problem-solving, others feel more secure relying on them. The research confirmed that travel experience positively influenced exchange relationships, with seasoned travelers more likely to share valuable information and receive cooperation in return.

Compatibility Beats Chemistry in Short-Term Partnerships

Partners need alignment in personality, consumption values, travel preferences, and daily habits. One user stated the case directly: “People with different consumption values can’t travel together.” Another noted, “Eating little and sleeping early, different habits can’t be harmonized in the short term.”

Compatibility operates differently than it might with long-term relationships. Travelers aren’t looking for deep philosophical alignment. They need practical synchronization: similar budgets, matching energy levels, compatible schedules, and agreement on trip priorities.

The research team found that congruence (their term for this alignment) significantly boosted partner exchange. When preferences match, interactions flow naturally and conflicts rarely escalate. Travelers spend less time negotiating and more time experiencing their destination.

Gender dynamics add complexity here. For opposite-sex partners, compatibility proved especially influential. Travelers typically expect less similarity with opposite-sex companions, so when alignment exceeds expectations, it creates stronger bonds. One unexpected benefit: opposite-sex partners often brought complementary skills that enhanced cooperation.

How Responsibility Holds Partnerships Together

The fourth essential quality encompasses taking initiative, cooperating actively, maintaining awareness of group needs, and contributing useful ideas. Multiple posts emphasized responsibility: “Rejecting irresponsible people, it’s the most important.”

Conscientious partners carry their weight. They volunteer for tasks suited to their strengths, stick to agreed plans, and offer constructive input when decisions arise. This trait matters especially in weak-tie relationships, where social pressure and existing bonds don’t motivate contribution.

Conscientiousness affected partner exchange positively, though somewhat less strongly than the other three traits. The research suggests this makes sense. While responsibility ensures smooth operations, it doesn’t necessarily generate the memorable moments and emotional connections that travelers most value.

The research team tested their findings through a survey of 503 people who’d found travel partners online. Results confirmed that all four attributes influenced memorable tourism experiences through a mediation process.

Partners with desirable traits attracted more exchange—the sharing of tangible resources like equipment, intangible assets like local knowledge, and emotional support during challenges. This exchange created more memorable experiences.

The relationship works reciprocally. When one partner provides valuable resources, the other reciprocates, building positive feedback loops. These interactions don’t just make trips run smoothly; they generate the stories travelers remember and retell.

Same-sex and opposite-sex partnerships operate somewhat differently. For same-sex companions, emotional intelligence and conscientiousness had stronger effects on exchange. These pairings apparently value emotional regulation and responsibility more highly.

For opposite-sex companions, compatibility and experience became more influential. The research suggests this reflects both lower initial expectations for similarity and greater potential for complementary skills between genders.

Online travel platforms could improve matching algorithms by incorporating these four attributes. Rather than basic filters for age and destination, platforms might ask users about emotional regulation styles, specific skills, consumption preferences, and willingness to take initiative.

Travelers themselves can think strategically about partner selection. Unfamiliar destinations might call for emotionally stable partners who provide reassurance. Complex trips benefit from experienced, conscientious partners who overcome obstacles. Trips prioritizing harmony favor highly compatible partners with similar values.

The research focused on Chinese travelers using domestic platforms, though the phenomenon extends globally. As social media makes stranger partnerships increasingly common, understanding what makes them succeed matters more.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/stranger-travel-4-traits-that-make-for-the-perfect-partner-in-flight/

 

Grok AI has been generating explicit images of women and kids for over a week and many have been outraged by its lack of consent.

Elon Musk-owned Grok AI has been accused of generating over 2.5 million sexually explicit images of women and children in just a few days before the feature was disabled. The AI tool from Grok raised a lot of eyebrows and outrage as anybody could ask the AI chatbot to alter real people images of women or kids just asking Grok AI with a simple prompt and much to everyone’s shock, the AI obliged kindly.

That’s not all, the images were publicly shared which meant millions could see the explicit images and women were aghast at the behaviour of the Musk-owned AI chatbot.

Grok AI In Big Trouble

The new AI tool was built into the X (formerly Twitter) app which meant millions could try out the feature on anybody’s photo without any repercussions. This went on for a few days, and after a large-scale outburst various government authorities intervened and quizzed the company for its irresponsible and legally perplexing behaviour that too making images without taking consent of the innocent victims.

And now, as highlighted by a cyber hate watchdog, Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), Grok AI is recorded to have generated around 3 million images of women in bikini and other explicit nature.

Nightmare For Kids

The body claims out of these 23,000 images were of children, which raises further sanctions on Musk and his AI company and the charges are serious. “The AI tool Grok is estimated to have generated approximately three million sexualized images, including 23,000 that appear to depict children, after the launch of a new image editing feature powered by the tool on X.”

Meanwhile, Musk, in a post on ,X had said that he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero.”

The data is clear: Elon Musk’s Grok is a factory for the production of sexual abuse material,” as said by Imran Ahmed, chief executive at CCDH. “By deploying AI without safeguards, Musk enabled the creation of an estimated 23,000 sexualized images of children in two weeks, and millions more images of adult women.”

In the current fast-paced environment, procrastination often hampers productivity. To enhance efficiency, structured planning is essential, along with time blocking for specific tasks.

Productivity is often compromised in today’s fast-paced environment. We may have clear goals we want to achieve, yet the biggest barrier is sometimes our own procrastination. To overcome this and make my day more productive, I asked ChatGPT to “make me more productive.” Here’s what it said.

Microsoft confirmed a widespread Microsoft 365 outage affecting Outlook, Exchange Online, and several admin services across North America due to infrastructure issues. Users may see a “451 4.3.2 temporary server issue” error, and Microsoft has not yet given an estimated recovery time.

A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted multiple Microsoft 365 services across the United States on Tuesday afternoon, leaving many users unable to access key platforms including Outlook, Exchange Online, and administrative portals. Microsoft said it has identified the issue but has not yet provided an estimated time for full recovery.

Microsoft first acknowledged the problem in a post on X, stating: “We’re investigating a potential issue impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Purview. Further information can be found in the admin center under MO1221364.”

According to Downdetector, users in several major US cities were affected, including Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta, New York, Boston, Tampa and Washington.

Microsoft 365 services experienced an outage on Wednesday, with users reporting problems accessing Outlook and Teams. Thousands of disruption reports were logged on Downdetector, which monitors outages using user submissions. The site showed more than 4,000 reports related to Microsoft 365 at the height of the disruption.

According to Downdetector, users in several major US cities were affected, including Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta, New York, Boston, Tampa and Washington.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Microsoft said it was investigating the issue. “We’ve received reports and are investigating an issue affecting Microsoft 365 services, including Teams and Outlook. Further information can be found in the Microsoft 365 admin centre under MO1220495,” the company said.

Microsoft later added: “Our investigation indicates a possible third-party networking issue may be affecting access to Microsoft 365 services, including Teams and Outlook for some users.”

Downdetector data showed that reports of problems with Microsoft 365 declined to 77 by 22:44 ET, down from nearly 20,000 earlier in the day. For Microsoft Azure, reports fell to 230 by 18:49 ET, from a peak of more than 18,000.

ChatGPT can now best the average person when it comes to creative tasks, according to recent research. That being said, if you’re among the most creative humans, your job is probably safe.

Researchers from the University of Montreal ran the largest direct comparison between human and machine creativity to date, pitting 100,000 people against nine of the world’s most advanced AI systems. The results? GPT-4 scored higher than typical humans on a standard creativity test. Google’s GeminiPro matched average human performance.

While all of that may be a bit distressing for biological beings reading this, it isn’t time to throw in the creativity towel on humanity just yet. When the AI systems were stacked against the top 10% of creative people, every AI model failed to measure up.

The test itself was deceptively simple: name 10 words as different from each other as possible. Someone who writes “car, dog, tree” shows less creative range than someone who comes up with “microscope, volcano, whisper.” The further apart the words are in meaning, the higher the creativity score.

“The persistent gap between the best-performing humans and even the most advanced LLMs indicates that the most demanding creative roles in industry are unlikely to be supplanted by current artificial intelligence systems,” the researchers wrote in their paper, published in Scientific Reports.

The Repetition Problem Nobody Expected

Despite beating average humans overall, GPT-4 kept using the same words over and over. The word “microscope” appeared in 70% of its responses. “Elephant” showed up 60% of the time. GPT-4-turbo was even worse, dropping “ocean” into more than 90% of its answers.

Humans? The most common word was “car” at just 1.4%. Then “dog” at 1.2% and “tree” at 1.0%. Real people naturally avoid repeating themselves. AI tends to fall back on the same high-probability words unless you adjust the settings.

The research team, led by Antoine Bellemare-Pepin and François Lespinasse, tested whether they could fix this. They adjusted something called “temperature,” which is essentially a dial that controls how random or predictable the AI’s word choices are. After the temperature was increased GPT-4 stopped repeating itself so much. Its creativity scores jumped, reaching a level higher than 72% of all human participants.

That’s useful for anyone trying to get better creative output from ChatGPT. But it also reveals something fundamental: AI creativity is a setting you can turn up or down, not an inherent capability.

When Newer Doesn’t Mean Better

OpenAI released GPT-4-turbo after the original GPT-4, presumably as an improvement. On this creativity test, though, it performed worse. Much worse.

The researchers found that newer versions don’t automatically get more creative. Sometimes they get less creative. The researchers suggest this might happen because newer versions are optimized for speed and cost, potentially trading creativity for efficiency.

Another noteworthy finding: Vicuna, a smaller open-source model, beat several larger, more expensive commercial alternatives. Bigger doesn’t mean more creative either.

The 100,000-Person Experiment

The study pulled participants from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand: all English speakers balanced for age and gender. Everyone took the same test: list 10 unrelated words.

Researchers then fed identical instructions to nine different AI models, collecting 500 responses from each. They tested everything from household names like GPT-4 and Claude to lesser-known open-source models like Pythia and StableLM.

The team also pushed beyond simple word lists. They had the AI write haikus, movie synopses, and short fiction stories, then measured how diverse the ideas were. GPT-4 consistently beat GPT-3.5 on creative writing. However, human writers still produced work with greater variety and originality, especially in poetry and plot summaries.

What This Actually Means

If you’re a professional writer, designer, or artist, this research suggests you’re not about to be replaced. AI can match, and sometimes exceed, what an average person produces. But the best human creators operate on a different level entirely.

That gap matters. Most companies don’t hire average creators for their most demanding work. They hire the top performers, the people who can generate truly original ideas. Current AI can’t touch that tier.

For everyone else using ChatGPT to brainstorm or draft content, there’s a practical takeaway: if you want more creative results, tell the AI to increase its temperature setting (usually between 1.0 and 1.5 works well). You’ll get less repetition and more diverse outputs.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/ai-average-human-creativity/

Meta has announced fresh layoffs in its Reality Labs division as it shifts focus from heavy virtual reality spending to AI wearables. Following the announcements, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, who was once fired by the company, is now defending Meta’s decision of job cuts, calling it a necessary step for the long-term health of the VR ecosystem.

Meta recently announced another round of job cuts, trimming more than 1,000 roles from its Reality Labs division. While these layoffs are being framed as a sign of distress, fuelling fears of automation and even prompting criticism that Mark Zuckerberg is retreating from a failed bet on virtual reality and the metaverse, Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, has come out in support of the move. Luckey, who himself was once fired by Meta following controversy around his political views, believes the decision could actually help Meta strengthen the VR ecosystem in the long run.

In a lengthy post on X, Luckey said his view runs counter to much of the VR industry and media commentary. “This is not a disaster. They still employ the largest team working on VR by about an order of magnitude. Nobody else is even close. The ‘Meta is abandoning VR’ narrative is obviously false. A 10% layoff is basically six months of normal churn concentrated into 60 days, strictly numbers-wise,” he wrote, pushing back against claims that Meta is stepping away from virtual reality.

The Gujarat government is preparing an AI pilot project in Ahmedabad to identify and track stray cows. The system will use CCTV feeds and deep learning to scan cows’ nose patterns, eyes, and facial features, linking them with RFID/microchip data. The initiative aims to reduce traffic disruptions, improve public safety, and strengthen AI-enabled governance in the city.

As part of its vision to build smarter and more efficient cities, the Gujarat government is increasingly prioritising the use of modern technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in governance.

Following the establishment of an AI Centre of Excellence in Gandhinagar under the leadership of Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, efforts are underway to integrate advanced technologies into public administration to enhance citizen services.

Moving a step further in this direction, a significant pilot project is being prepared for the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) to address the long-standing issue of stray cattle in urban areas.

The initiative aims to make the identification of stray cows and their owners faster, more accurate, and less resource-intensive.

Stray cattle roaming on Ahmedabad’s roads often lead to traffic disruptions and accidents.

At present, AMC teams rely on CCTV footage to capture images of such animals and then manually identify them using microchips and RFID tags.

However, this process is time-consuming and requires considerable manpower.

To streamline this system and reduce both time and effort, the use of AI technology is now being actively explored.

To tackle this challenge, the AI Centre of Excellence at GIFT City in Gandhinagar, has assigned an agency to develop a dedicated AI model.

The agency has proposed solutions based on deep learning and is in the process of finalising a model that will soon be presented to the operational committee.

The proposed system will integrate CCTV camera feeds with the AI model to enable real-time identification of stray cows and disclosure of their owners’ details.

The proposed AI model will work based on computer vision and deep learning.

The AI model will scan the cow’s face, with special emphasis on the nose pattern, which functions as a unique biometric identifier — much like a human fingerprint.

Each cow’s nose has a distinct design.

In addition, the system will analyse features such as the eyes, facial structure, and any visible marks or scars.

Using these parameters, the AI will be able to identify a specific cow even in a crowd and match it with the existing database to retrieve owner information.

At present, around 1.1 lakh cows in Ahmedabad have been fitted with RFID tags and microchips, and their data is maintained by the city’s municipal corporation.

Source : https://www.freepressjournal.in/tech/gujarat-govt-plans-ai-based-system-to-identify-stray-cattle-in-ahmedabad-boosting-smart-city-governance

OpenAI turned down Apple’s proposal to deepen their AI partnership, choosing instead to focus on developing its own AI-powered hardware. Apple had sought OpenAI’s models to enhance Siri but later pivoted to Google’s Gemini. OpenAI’s existing ChatGPT integration with Apple devices remains unaffected by the decision.

As opposed to popular belief, OpenAI reportedly turned down the opportunity to deepen its collaboration with Apple, choosing instead to concentrate on creating its own range of AI-powered devices. Apple was keen on collaborating with OpenAI to build Siri, but CEO Sam Altman chose to rather team up with renowned designer Jony Ive to bring innovative wearable hardware to market. OpenAI’s lacklustre response forced Apple to then pivot to Gemini for powering Siri and its Foundation models.

According to Financial Times sources, Apple approached OpenAI to serve as the custom model provider for enhancing features such as Siri within its Apple Intelligence suite. However, OpenAI declined the offer, prioritising its internal projects over committing resources to Apple’s ecosystem. This move aligns with a directive from OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, to streamline efforts around core products like ChatGPT and curtail peripheral initiatives.

The existing integration between OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s systems remains unaffected, allowing iPhone users to access ChatGPT-powered features. Nonetheless, OpenAI’s refusal signals a strategic shift towards independence in the competitive AI landscape.

It was OpenAI who snubbed Apple’s deal

Sunita Williams retires after 27 years at NASA, logging 608 days in space, commanding ISS, and pioneering Artemis missions. Her legacy inspires future Moon and Mars exploration.

Indian-origin NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, whose scheduled eight-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) ultimately extended to more than nine months, has retired after a distinguished 27-year career. NASA announced on Tuesday that her retirement took effect on December 27, 2025, shortly after Christmas.

Praising her legacy, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman described Williams as a pioneer of human spaceflight whose leadership on the space station helped shape the future of exploration. He said her contributions to science and technology have strengthened the foundation for Artemis missions to the Moon and future journeys to Mars, adding that her achievements will continue to inspire generations.

“Suni Williams has been a trailblazer in human spaceflight, shaping the future of exploration through her leadership aboard the space station and paving the way for commercial missions to low Earth orbit,” the NASA Administrator said.

“Her work advancing science and technology has laid the foundation for Artemis missions to the Moon and advancing toward Mars, and her extraordinary achievements will continue to inspire generations to dream big and push the boundaries of what’s possible. Congratulations on your well-deserved retirement, and thank you for your service to NASA and our nation,” Isaacman added, according to a press release shared by NASA.

3 Space Missions In 27 Years

Selected by NASA in 1998, Williams spent a total of 608 days in space across three missions, the second-highest cumulative total for any NASA astronaut. She is also tied for sixth place among Americans for the longest single spaceflight, having logged 286 days alongside astronaut Butch Wilmore. Williams completed nine spacewalks lasting a combined 62 hours and 6 minutes—the most by any female astronaut and the fourth-highest overall in NASA history. She was also the first person to run a marathon in space.

Williams first flew in December 2006 aboard space shuttle Discovery as part of Expedition 14/15. Her second mission began in July 2012, when she launched from Kazakhstan for Expedition 32/33 and later served as space station commander. Her final mission came in June 2024 aboard Boeing’s Starliner, after which she joined Expeditions 71/72 and again commanded the ISS before returning to Earth in March 2025.

Sunita Williams’s Indian Roots

A large new review is bringing relief to pregnant women worried about taking Tylenol. Researchers found no meaningful link between the common pain reliever and autism, ADHD, or intellectual disabilities in children when the medication is used as directed.

The findings, published in The Lancet Obstetrics & Gynaecology, come after months of anxiety sparked by high-profile claims last September that raised fresh concerns about acetaminophen (the generic name for Tylenol, also called paracetamol) during pregnancy. Those warnings left many pregnant people uncertain about taking one of the few pain relievers doctors typically recommend.

An international research team led by Francesco D’Antonio from the University of Chieti in Italy and Asma Khalil from St George’s University Hospital in London reviewed 43 studies. What made this analysis particularly reassuring was its focus on sibling comparison studies. These studies compared children within the same family where one sibling was exposed to the medication in the womb and another wasn’t.

This approach helps control for genetics, family environment, and other shared factors that could confuse the results. When researchers used this method, they found no association between prenatal acetaminophen exposure and these neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Why Earlier Studies Looked Scarier Than They Were

So why did previous research suggest a connection? The answer comes down to a classic mix-up in health research.

It’s easy to see why earlier studies looked concerning. People usually take pain relievers for a reason: chronic pain, fever, infections, inflammation. Those underlying conditions, or the genes that make someone susceptible to them, may be what older research was actually picking up rather than the medication itself.

A Swedish study of 2.48 million births illustrated this clearly. When researchers compared siblings, the apparent risks faded. Similar results came from a large Japanese cohort, where small increases seen in standard analyses didn’t hold up when family factors were accounted for.

In other words, it likely wasn’t the Tylenol. It was everything else going on.

Acetaminophen During Pregnancy Still Recommended

The major medical organizations continue to recommend acetaminophen as a first-line option for fever and pain during pregnancy. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and the European Medicines Agency all maintain that when used appropriately, it remains the preferred choice.

The authors warn that discouraging appropriate use of acetaminophen could cause more problems than the drug itself. If you’re pregnant and sick with a fever, the bigger worry may be the untreated fever, which has been linked to miscarriage and preterm birth.

The research team searched medical databases and included only studies that accounted for other factors that might affect results. Their conclusion held consistent across different ways of analyzing the data, whether looking at only the most rigorous studies, only those with long-term follow-up, or the complete dataset.

The politicization of acetaminophen safety has created confusion for pregnant people and their doctors. This review offers clarity. When researchers used methods that better control for why women take pain medication in the first place, they found no association between appropriate acetaminophen use during pregnancy and increased risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/tylenol-autism-large-review-finds-no-meaningful-link/

A medication already used by millions to quit cigarettes might offer a new option for men trying to reduce their marijuana consumption, according to research from the Medical University of South Carolina. The study found that varenicline, better known by its brand name Chantix/Champix, helped male cannabis users cut their marijuana sessions by more than one-third. The discovery comes at a time when few effective treatments exist for cannabis use disorder.

The study, published in Addiction, involved 174 adults who met diagnostic criteria for cannabis use disorder and wanted help cutting back. All participants were heavy users, consuming marijuana an average of 27 days out of every 30, with about three separate use sessions daily. Half received varenicline while the other half took a placebo. Everyone also participated in weekly counseling focused on medication adherence and reducing cannabis use.

How Varenicline Reduced Cannabis Use in Men

Men taking varenicline reduced their weekly cannabis use from 12.2 sessions to 7.9 sessions during the latter half of the study period, compared to virtually no change in men receiving placebo. Benefits were observed through the end of treatment, with a brief one-week follow-up showing no immediate rebound in use. Men on varenicline were significantly more likely to test negative for marijuana on urine drug screens than men taking placebo.

The findings offer progress for cannabis use disorder treatment, which has seen limited medication development despite rising rates of problematic marijuana use across the United States. Changes in legalization and shifting social attitudes have led to increased cannabis consumption and more people seeking help, yet few medications have shown consistent benefits.

Why a Smoking Cessation Drug Works for Cannabis

Varenicline was originally developed as a smoking cessation aid and has become one of the most effective medications for helping people quit tobacco. Researchers believe the drug works by targeting nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the brain’s reward system, the same neural pathways thought to be involved in cannabis dependence. These receptors influence the release of dopamine and other brain chemicals involved in substance use and craving.

Scientists have been exploring whether varenicline might help with other substance use disorders beyond tobacco. Earlier research found the medication reduced alcohol consumption in some studies, though results have been mixed. A small pilot study in 2021 suggested varenicline might help people with cannabis use disorder, prompting researchers to conduct this larger trial.

The Treatment Worked Differently for Women

While men benefited substantially from varenicline, women showed no improvement in cannabis use. Female participants taking varenicline averaged 10.5 cannabis sessions per week compared to 9.2 sessions for women receiving placebo. The difference wasn’t statistically meaningful. Women on varenicline also reported higher withdrawal symptoms, increased marijuana cravings, and greater anxiety compared to women taking placebo.

These sex differences mirror patterns researchers have observed with varenicline treatment for alcohol use disorder. In a 2018 study, men taking varenicline reduced heavy drinking while women did better with placebo. Scientists are still working to understand why varenicline helps men but not women reduce cannabis use. Research suggests women are more likely than men to use marijuana as a coping strategy for stress and tension. The increased anxiety some women experienced while taking varenicline might have undermined any potential benefits.

Side Effects and Medication Tolerance

Medication adherence was similar between treatment groups, with participants taking roughly two-thirds of their prescribed doses over the 12-week period. The most common side effects were nausea and disturbed dreams, consistent with varenicline’s known tolerability profile when used for smoking cessation. These side effects were not severe enough to cause most participants to stop taking the medication.

The research team noted that reducing cannabis use, rather than achieving complete abstinence, has recently gained acceptance as a meaningful treatment goal. Reduction in marijuana consumption has been associated with improvements in functioning and quality of life. This makes varenicline’s ability to help men substantially cut their cannabis use particularly valuable, even if complete abstinence isn’t achieved.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/smoking-drug-help-men-cut-cannabis-use/