The India Decade e-paper, Friday, 9 October 2026

A Horsham district councillor has been suspended from her party group after she attempted to table a motion protecting single-sex spaces and defining a woman by biological sex.

Councillor Sam Bateman, who represents Billingshurst, is now sitting as an independent on Horsham District Council. She claims she was "silenced" by local Liberal Democrat leadership when she tried to bring the motion forward, saying she has faced "discrimination of belief".

However, the leader of the council's Lib Dem group, Martin Boffey, said Ms Bateman’s suspension was the result of two "serious breaches" of group rules. He added that she would remain suspended until she commits to following those rules.

What did the motion propose?

Ms Bateman’s proposed motion called on the council to recognise a UK Supreme Court ruling from last year, which she said defined a woman based on biological sex rather than gender identity.

She wanted Horsham District Council to take several steps, including preserving single-sex spaces and facilities, updating staff training to reflect this, and ensuring that sex, sexual orientation, and gender reassignment are recorded as separate characteristics in equality monitoring.

The proposal clashed with the wider Lib Dem party line. At the party's annual conference in Brighton, which Ms Bateman attended, members voted in favour of a motion declaring that protections for single-sex spaces are "discriminatory and unworkable".

Ms Bateman did not support that stance. "Demanding silence on this was a red line," she said. "Silence is never a neutral act. Demanding silence disrespected my beliefs and sent the message that attacks on women’s rights can continue."

Why was the motion blocked?

The council itself did not allow the motion to be debated. A council spokesman explained that the proposal was assessed under the authority's constitution and rejected.

According to the spokesman, the motion was turned down because it was considered "frivolous, offensive, vexatious or out of order," and because it would increase council spending.

Following the rejection and the party's reaction, Ms Bateman stopped paying her group tithes—financial contributions councillors pay to their party groups. She remains a member of the wider Liberal Democrat party, stating she still supports its core liberal values.

How did the Lib Dem group respond?

Mr Boffey said the group's rules exist to ensure councillors work cohesively and deliver the policies they were elected on.

"Cllr Bateman has seriously breached those rules twice," Mr Boffey said. He confirmed that the group held a disciplinary process where Ms Bateman had the chance to explain her position before the suspension was decided.

Ms Bateman argues that the issue is too important to be ignored. "Women are 51 per cent of the population," she said. "Laws in place to protect their safety, privacy and dignity and their rights to fairness ought at very least to be acknowledged."

The traditional pathway that has carried hundreds of thousands of Indian software engineers to the United States is facing its most severe disruption yet, as the Trump administration prepares a suite of dramatic fee increases and structural restrictions on the H-1B visa programme.

While previous administrations have tinkered with the visa lottery, the incoming administration is planning several overlapping changes. These include a proposal to introduce multiple $100,000 fees, a wage-weighted lottery system that favours senior, higher-paid applicants over entry-level talent, and a $70,000 fee for international students utilising the STEM Optional Practical Training (OPT) programme to work in the US.

Though some of the more extreme ideas, like scrapping the H-1B programme entirely, would require an act of Congress to bypass the Immigration and Nationality Act, immigration experts warn of a "death by restriction" strategy. By making the visas prohibitively expensive and administratively difficult to secure, the administration is effectively squeezing foreign tech talent out of the American market.

Why Indian tech workers are the main target

Indian-born professionals are the primary users of the H-1B programme. According to data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for the 2025 fiscal year, Indian nationals accounted for 283,772 of the 406,348 approved H-1B petitions—roughly 70 percent of the total.

The vast majority of these approvals are concentrated in technology. Computer-related roles accounted for 62 percent of all approved petitions, with systems analysis and programming representing over half of the total. The median annual compensation for these computer-specific roles stood at $140,000.

Under the proposed changes, senior, highly paid engineers at major US technology firms are likely to remain insulated, as the wage-weighted lottery prioritises higher salaries. However, early-career Indian professionals and the IT-services staffing model are being squeezed out. That model relies on hiring entry-level engineers at lower wage scales, which both the flat fee increases and the wage-weighting proposals heavily penalise.

The death of the outsourcing model

Indian technology firms have already started pulling back from the H-1B system. Registrations by major Indian IT providers—including TCS, Infosys, HCLTech, Wipro, LTM, and Tech Mahindra—plummeted by 92 percent for the fiscal year 2027 cycle, falling to just 1,763 from 21,919 the previous year.

The top seven Indian outsourcing firms secured fewer than 5,000 initial H-1B approvals in the most recent cycle, representing a 70 percent drop from fiscal year 2015.

This drop points to a structural shift in how Indian technology companies operate in America. The classic model of flying an Indian consultant to a client's site in the US is largely being replaced. Instead, companies are hiring local staff in the US for customer-facing project leadership, while shifting the core development and engineering work offshore to India.

Rigorous scrutiny on employers

US authorities are also intensifying their focus on the employment chain itself. Rajiv Dabhadkar, founder of the National Organization For Software and Technology Professionals, noted that the US government is actively scrutinising who sponsors the worker, who controls their day-to-day duties, and whether an American worker was displaced.

This focus on the "right to control" the worker is particularly disruptive to third-party staffing and intermediary agencies. Furthermore, investigations by the US Department of Labor have targeted foreign worker exploitation, including coercive arrangements and wage kickbacks, which authorities argue undercut American wages.

While alternative visa routes like the L-1 for intra-company transfers and the O-1 for extraordinary ability exist, they are highly selective and do not offer a scalable substitute for the H-1B. For Indian workers, the green-card backlog for the EB-2 and EB-3 categories remains so severe that all available fiscal year 2026 EB-2 visas for India were exhausted before the year even ended.

The unexpected benefit for India

The restriction on physical visas may ultimately boost India's domestic tech sector. Industry analysts expect US firms to shift remote-friendly tasks, such as software development, cloud engineering, and artificial intelligence projects, directly to India-based engineering hubs and Global Capability Centres (GCCs).

While US companies will still require a physical presence for project leaders, the bulk of high-value technical delivery is expected to remain in India, reshaping the business model rather than destroying it.

Kolkata’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport was placed on high alert on Thursday afternoon after an anonymous email claiming that explosives had been planted inside the terminal triggered an intensive security sweep.

The threat was ultimately declared a hoax after a thorough search of the premises by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) found nothing suspicious.

What happened at Kolkata Airport

The email, which arrived in the afternoon, warned that bombs had been stocked at multiple locations across the airport. Security officials immediately activated emergency protocols. While investigators suspected early on that the email was likely a prank, airport management decided to take no chances with passenger safety.

CISF jawans, who oversee security at the airport, quickly mobilised to conduct a systematic sweep of the terminal buildings, public areas, and luggage zones. The sudden surge in security personnel created a brief period of anxiety among passengers, but airport operations were not halted. Officials kept a close eye on passenger movement and flight schedules as the search progressed, ensuring that flights could continue to depart and land without major disruption.

Who is investigating the bomb threat

Cyber security experts have now been brought in to assist local police and airport officials in tracing the origin of the threatening email. At present, authorities have not released any details regarding the sender's identity or where the email was dispatched from.

Previous bomb hoaxes in West Bengal

Hoax threats of this nature have become a recurring headache for security agencies in West Bengal. Kolkata Airport itself has had to deal with several such scares recently. In February, an IndiGo flight bound for Shillong was grounded on the tarmac after a bomb threat note was found on board. Passengers were evacuated onto the runway while emergency teams searched the cabin and cargo hold, though no explosives were found.

That same month, two other flights at Kolkata were targeted on a single day. In those instances, threatening notes—including one written in lipstick—were discovered left in the aircraft toilets. Both flights had to be swept by bomb disposal squads before being cleared.

The pattern of hoax emails has also extended beyond the aviation sector. Earlier this year, multiple post offices and passport offices across several districts of West Bengal were evacuated after receiving similar bomb threats via email during business hours. In those cases, as with Thursday's incident at the airport, extensive searches by police and bomb squads revealed nothing.

Security agencies are continuing to monitor the airport premises, though officials have reassured travellers that the facility remains safe and fully operational.

President Donald Trump presented Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation on Thursday, hours after Vice President JD Vance suspended the company from a key green card programme and accused it of visa fraud.

The dual developments on 8 October 2026 exposed a sharp contradiction at the heart of the administration's policy, celebrating immigrant tech leaders while executing an aggressive crackdown on the foreign workers who power their businesses.

Why did JD Vance target Microsoft?

At a press conference on Thursday, Vance announced that Microsoft was suspended from the PERM programme, which allows employers to sponsor skilled foreign workers on H-1B visas for permanent US residency.

Vance, who leads an administration task force on immigration fraud, accused the Washington-based company of exploiting visa rules while laying off domestic staff.

"Our message to Microsoft is: You're a great American company, but you've got to hire great American workers," Vance said. He alleged that Microsoft dismissed 6,000 US employees last year while obtaining roughly 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards.

"You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants," Vance added.

How did Microsoft respond to the allegations?

Microsoft, which employs 223,000 people globally, quickly rejected the administration's description of its recruitment.

The company said in a statement that the vast majority of its US workforce are Americans. It explained that of the roughly 6,000 H-1B applications it submitted during the last fiscal year, 80 per cent were to extend or change the legal status of existing staff, rather than to import new hires.

"These were not to hire new people," Microsoft said, adding that the remaining minority of applications involved people who were already legally in the US when they were hired.

The company also defended its pay practices, stating that it pays its H-1B employees the same wages as domestic workers performing comparable roles, with salaries that are "among the highest of all H-1B filings."

An administration of mixed messages

Despite the vice president's sharp words, Trump was effusive in his praise of Nadella at the White House awards ceremony later that afternoon.

Presented during the "A New Golden Age" summit at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, Trump credited Nadella with reshaping Microsoft and pushing it into artificial intelligence.

"Satya, we are honoured to give you the National Medal of Technology and Innovation," Trump said. "It is so well deserved."

The ceremony brought together several other high-profile tech executives. Musk, who has repaired his relationship with Trump since leaving his post at the Department of Government Efficiency, received the National Medal of Science alongside Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su.

The awards highlighted an awkward reality for the administration’s nationalist economic platform: five of the six executives honoured on Thursday are foreign-born. Nadella immigrated from India, Musk from South Africa, Brin from Russia, and Huang and Su from Taiwan. Only Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell was born in the US.

White House spokesperson Liz Huston defended the selections, saying the recipients "are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation."

When asked about the apparent clash between the president's praise and his own crackdown, Vance said the administration still intended to maintain a strong relationship with Microsoft.

Akash Ambani has described the upcoming Jio IPO as a "great responsibility" and the "start of a journey" for Reliance Industries, expressing confidence that the highly anticipated float will draw massive interest from both domestic and international investors.

Speaking on the sidelines of the India Mobile Congress in New Delhi, the Reliance Jio Chairman said the company is "working very hard" towards the public listing. When asked whether the debut of Jio Platforms would secure the title of the biggest initial public offering in Indian corporate history, Ambani said he was "hopeful" of achieving that milestone.

While the telecom giant has not yet detailed its formal timeline, reports indicate that Jio Platforms is targeting an ambitious market valuation of ₹11 lakh crore. A successful share sale of this scale would represent a historic moment for its parent conglomerate, Reliance Industries, which has not floated one of its major businesses on the public markets in about three decades.

A market debut of this size would have ramifications far beyond Reliance. Brokerage firm Motilal Oswal recently noted that the offering is likely to trigger a wider re-rating for the entire Indian telecom sector, potentially boosting the valuation of its chief rival, Bharti Airtel, alongside it.

Jio enters the run-up to its IPO with immense scale. The operator recently crossed the milestone of 50 crore subscribers, cementing its position as the dominant player in India's digital ecosystem. Ambani emphasised that the company's primary driver remains delivering "extreme value" to its massive customer base and ensuring that digital services remain accessible to everyone.

"We want to democratise the technology to the last level of India," Ambani said. "Whether it be through new services and really increase their ability to consume digital services to the next level."

He also advocated for India's technological independence, stating that the country needs to develop and rely on its own "indigenous stack of technologies" as it builds out its digital infrastructure.

The comments come at a sensitive moment for the broader telecom sector. Rival operator Bharti Airtel recently raised the tariff of its postpaid plans by ₹50 across the board. In India's tightly contested telecom market, price hikes by one player have historically prompted rivals to follow suit. So far, neither Jio nor Vodafone Idea has announced corresponding increases.

When asked directly about the prospect of tariff hikes, Ambani avoided committing to any price increases, pointing instead to Jio’s history of market disruption and low pricing.

"What we want to do is ensure that we are giving disruptive value to our consumers," Ambani said. "We've always stood for the mission of inclusivity, and that comes from great affordability, and that's what we'll continue to do."

Atlas Atomics, a nuclear energy startup co-founded and backed by the US politician and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, has raised approximately $400 million in its Series A funding round, valuing the company at around $1.9 billion.

The massive capital injection, first reported by Bloomberg, represents one of the largest early-stage funding rounds in the nuclear sector this year. General Catalyst is leading the investment round, with Andreessen Horowitz also participating, according to people familiar with the transaction.

Representatives for Atlas Atomics, General Catalyst, and Andreessen Horowitz all declined to comment on the funding.

Who is behind Atlas Atomics?

Atlas Atomics has operated in deep stealth mode since its inception, keeping its specific technology, reactor design, and development timeline closely guarded. However, the startup has secured a veteran hand at the helm. It is co-founded and led by Kevin Gan, who spent more than 15 years investing in energy companies before taking on the leadership role at Atlas.

The involvement of Ramaswamy adds high-profile political and business dimensions to the venture. Ramaswamy, who rose to prominence during his run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is currently running for governor of Ohio. Before his political career, he built a reputation as a prolific company builder, most notably founding the biotechnology firm Roivant Sciences.

Why are VCs backing nuclear energy?

The enormous valuation for a stealth-mode startup reflects a broader, aggressive rush by Silicon Valley into nuclear energy. The sudden surge in interest is largely driven by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence. AI data centres require immense, uninterrupted supplies of electricity, putting unprecedented strain on local power grids.

Because solar and wind power are intermittent, tech giants and their financial backers are increasingly looking to nuclear energy as a viable source of continuous, carbon-free baseload power. In recent months, tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have signed major deals with nuclear operators to restart closed reactors or build new, advanced generation facilities.

Venture capital firms have responded by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into nuclear startups. For investors like General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz, backing Atlas Atomics aligns with a broader shift towards "hard tech" and "national resilience"—sectors like defence, space, and energy that require heavy capital up front but promise massive strategic importance.

With $400 million in fresh capital now reportedly secured, Atlas Atomics has the financial runway to recruit top engineering talent and advance its designs. It remains unclear, however, when the company plans to emerge from stealth and detail how its technology will compete in an increasingly crowded nuclear startup field.

What happened to the Galaxy S26?

Security researchers have compromised the newly released Samsung Galaxy S26 multiple times at the Pwn2Own Ireland 2026 hacking competition, exposing critical zero-day vulnerabilities in the flagship device.

On the second day of the contest, the Galaxy S26 was breached three separate times. The successful attacks were carried out by Kyeongmin Kim of the KAIST Hacking Lab, the security group PetoWorks, and a team comprising Dimitrios Valsamaras, Ken Gannon, and Tenia Valsamara from CENSUS Labs.

These breaches followed an active opening day, during which Interrupt Labs, Ikotas Labs, and Nguyen Thanh Dat of Viettel Cyber Security also managed to compromise the phone. While some of the vulnerabilities exploited on the first day were already known to Samsung, the subsequent day-two attacks relied on entirely new, unpatched security flaws.

How the competition works

The Pwn2Own contest, organised by Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), is designed to find and patch security vulnerabilities before cybercriminals can exploit them. To win, researchers must demonstrate arbitrary code execution on fully updated devices running the latest firmware.

Over the course of the event, contestants targeted devices across seven categories, including mobile phones, smart home systems, messaging apps, and printers.

Once a researcher successfully demonstrates a zero-day exploit, the details are shared privately with the manufacturer. Under Pwn2Own rules, Samsung and other affected vendors have 90 days to develop and distribute security patches before ZDI publicly discloses the technical details of the bugs.

Other major targets

The Galaxy S26 was not the only high-profile target to fall. Researchers collected a total of $232,500 on the second day of the event after exploiting 45 unique zero-day vulnerabilities across various devices.

Among the other highlights, Jack Dates of RET2 Systems demonstrated an exploit chain on a Sonos Era 300 smart speaker in less than a minute. HaeJung Yang of the Out of Bounds team secured a $40,000 reward for breaching Dynamo in the AI infrastructure category, while Ikotas Labs broke into the Oracle Autonomous AI Database using a complex seven-chain exploit.

On the smart home front, the Home Assistant Green hub was breached by several researchers, including PetoWorks, Yves Bieri of Xint, Kyeongmin Kim, and a team from Doyensec.

Google's Pixel 10 was also on the list of mobile targets, though researcher Kyeongmin Kim withdrew a planned USB-based exploit attempt before the second day's hacking sessions began.

Notably, Apple's iPhone 17 was available as a target with a $300,000 reward for a remote compromise, but no researchers registered to attempt a hack on it.

DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence company, has released an open-source model called DeepSeek-R1 that matches the reasoning capabilities of its most advanced US rivals at a fraction of the training cost.

For the past year, the AI industry has operated on the assumption that building frontier-class models requires tens of thousands of specialised chips, gigawatts of power, and billions of dollars in capital. DeepSeek-R1 has upended that narrative. By matching the performance of proprietary American systems for a tiny fraction of the expense, the release has forced a fundamental rethink of the technology's economic reality.

What is DeepSeek-R1?

Like OpenAI's o1, the new model uses a technique known as "inference-time compute" or reasoning. Instead of spitting out an answer instantly, the model generates a visible "chain of thought." It literally thinks out loud on the screen, testing hypotheses, catching its own mistakes, and refining its logic before presenting a final response to the user.

This approach makes the model exceptionally good at tasks that require structured logic, such as computer programming, advanced mathematics, and scientific problem-solving. On standard academic tests, the model performs at the very top tier. DeepSeek claims R1 achieved a 97.3 per cent score on the MATH benchmark, putting it on par with OpenAI's o1.

The shift in training economics

The most significant aspect of the release is not just what the model can do, but how it was built. While Silicon Valley firms are planning data centres costing tens of billions of dollars, DeepSeek reportedly trained its underlying model for roughly $5.6 million.

To achieve this, the company relied heavily on reinforcement learning—a process where the AI learns through trial and error, guided by rewards for correct answers—rather than relying solely on massive, expensive datasets curated by humans. This algorithmic efficiency allowed DeepSeek to squeeze maximum performance out of older, less powerful hardware, bypassing some of the physical bottlenecks that US export controls were intended to impose on Chinese tech firms.

What happens next?

By releasing the model under a permissive MIT licence, DeepSeek has effectively democratised reasoning-class AI. Developers, academic researchers, and rival businesses can now download, run, and modify the model for their own needs without paying ongoing API fees to a US provider.

It is not yet clear how American laboratories will respond. While some industry analysts suggest this breakthrough will force proprietary giants like Google and Anthropic to lower their prices, others believe it will trigger an even more aggressive push toward massive computing clusters to maintain a raw performance lead. What is certain is that the barrier to entry for world-class reasoning models has just been permanently lowered.

Why the vote was delayed

The Rapid City Council has postponed a vote on its proposed artificial intelligence policy, pausing efforts to establish formal guidelines for how municipal employees and departments use the technology.

The decision to delay the vote leaves the city's approach to artificial intelligence unresolved at a time when local governments are rushing to catch up with the rapid spread of automated systems. The council has not yet detailed the specific objections or questions that prompted the delay, nor has it announced a firm date for when the policy will be brought back to the table.

The push for municipal AI rules

Local governments are increasingly finding themselves forced to draw up rules for artificial intelligence as administrative staff independently adopt consumer generative AI tools to draft emails, summarise lengthy reports, or write code.

Without a centralised policy, cities face a patchwork of usage that carries significant legal and security risks. The primary concern for municipal IT departments is data privacy. When city employees paste public records, proprietary software code, or sensitive resident information into third-party generative AI models, that data is often absorbed into the system's training database, potentially exposing it to the public or violating privacy laws.

A standard municipal AI policy typically sets clear boundaries on what information can be shared with these models. It also usually mandates that any AI-generated content intended for public release must be thoroughly vetted and signed off on by a human supervisor to prevent the spread of false information presented as fact by the AI.

Accountability and algorithmic bias

Beyond simple office administration, more complex AI applications are forcing city councils to think about civil rights and transparency. Many cities use automated algorithms to analyse traffic patterns, predict public works maintenance needs, or assist law enforcement in analysing video footage.

Critics of these systems warn that without strict oversight, algorithms can perpetuate existing biases, particularly in hiring software or policing. A comprehensive policy usually addresses how the city audits these systems for fairness and how much transparency residents are entitled to regarding how municipal decisions are made.

By delaying the vote, the Rapid City Council joins a growing number of local governing bodies that have found drafting a balanced, future-proof AI policy to be more complicated than initially anticipated. Municipal leaders must weigh the desire to foster innovation and cut administrative costs against the duty to protect public trust and secure city data.

For now, Rapid City's departments will continue to operate without a unified code of conduct for artificial intelligence, leaving individual agency heads to manage the technology's risks and benefits on their own.

Astronomers have detected the most distant fast radio burst ever recorded, a mysterious flash of cosmic energy that travelled for more than 10 billion years before reaching Earth.

The signal, named FRB 20240304B, originated when the universe was only about three billion years old. Having travelled through roughly 80 per cent of cosmic history, the burst has more than doubled the previous distance record for such detections.

An international team of scientists first picked up the burst using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. They then used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to track the signal back to its source: a tiny, young galaxy that is forming stars at an extremely high rate, but contains very few metals.

"When this was produced, there was no Earth, there was no sun," said Dr Themiya Nanayakkara, a lead researcher on the study from the University of Sydney.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are intense pulses of radio waves. Though they last only a few milliseconds, they can discharge as much energy in that fraction of a second as our sun does over several months or even years. Since they were first discovered in 2007, astronomers have logged more than 10,000 of them, but their origins remain one of space science's great mysteries.

While some scientists once speculated about alien origins, the leading theory is that they are produced by magnetars — highly dense neutron stars with incredibly strong magnetic fields. However, the host galaxy of this new burst complicates things. Dr Nanayakkara pointed out that whatever physical process causes these bursts must be able to occur in young, metal-poor environments.

It remains unclear whether FRB 20240304B is a single, isolated event or if it will fire again. Some FRBs are one-off flashes, some repeat for a while and stop, and others recur regularly.

For astrophysicists, however, the signal is useful regardless of what created it. Because radio waves interact with the gas and dust they pass through, researchers can use them to measure cosmic matter that optical telescopes cannot see.

Professor Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University, one of the co-discoverers of FRBs, said the finding is a validation of how powerful these bursts are for probing the cosmos. He described them as "a very fundamental way of counting how many atoms there are in the universe."

Dr Sara Webb, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University who was not involved in the research, said the signal essentially provides a "line-of-sight count" of the material it had to pass through to get to Earth. The discovery, she added, suggests these energetic bursts may have been highly common in the early universe.

Major League Baseball has proposed cutting the regular season back to 154 games and radically changing the postseason format, starting in 2029. The sweeping proposals, put forward during collective bargaining talks, would revive a schedule length not seen since the early 1960s and introduce a bracket where top seeds literally pick their opponents.

But there is a major catch. The league has tied the entire package to a demand that players accept a salary cap—a red line the players' union has spent decades fighting to avoid.

Shorter season, regular rest

Under the schedule proposal, the current 162-game calendar would shrink by eight games. This would allow the league to introduce a regular weekly off-day, likely on Mondays, to give players a break. Teams playing on Mondays would get Thursdays off instead, though holidays and special events would be exempted.

MLB spokesperson Glen Caplin said the change would protect player health while creating "a new national broadcast window" to showcase star players and teams. Players would not see their base salaries cut under the 154-game model, though performance bonuses and similar contract clauses would be adjusted proportionally.

Postseason selection twist

The proposed postseason changes are even more unorthodox. The Division Series would expand from a best-of-five to a best-of-seven format. More strikingly, the league wants to introduce a selection process.

In the wild-card round, which would stay as a best-of-three series, the No. 3 seed would choose whether they want to play the No. 5 or No. 6 seed, with the choice made right after the regular season ends. In the next round, the No. 1 seed would pick which wild-card survivor they want to face in the best-of-seven Division Series.

Caplin said the selection process would "create compelling storylines, intensify existing rivalries and create new ones."

The economic stumbling block

The timeline is set for 2029 to match the start of MLB’s next national television broadcast contracts. However, the timeline is entirely academic unless the league and the players can resolve their deep economic divisions.

The MLB Players Association (MLBPA) said it is reviewing the details but made its frustration clear. "Unfortunately, the league once again made clear that all of its proposals are contingent on players' agreement to a salary cap," the union said in a statement, calling the cap "a system that guts player rights and compensation."

Until the fundamental financial framework is settled, the dream of a shorter season and hand-picked playoff opponents remains firmly on hold.

The Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Swedish Academy announced the decision on Thursday, honouring the 76-year-old for what it described as a "bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature".

The Nobel Prize, given to celebrate a writer's lifetime body of work rather than a single book, is widely regarded as the most prestigious honour in the literary world. Along with the title, Carson will receive 12 million Swedish kronor, which is worth about £900,000 or $1.2 million.

The phone call to Iceland

Ingrid Carlberg, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, revealed that she had broken the news to the writer over the telephone shortly before the public announcement. Carson was away from home when the call came through, finding herself in a remarkably fitting setting for a poet.

"She had time to tell me was that she is, for the moment, in Iceland, where she is listening to the wind," Carlberg said. She described Carson as being caught completely off guard but deeply pleased by the news: "She was taken by surprise but very happy. I could hear that in her voice."

Crossing classical and modern boundaries

Carson has spent more than 30 years working as a professor of classics, an academic background that deeply informs her creative writing. Her books frequently dissolve the lines that usually separate poetry, fiction, essays, and academic translation. She is particularly celebrated for her translations of ancient Greek literature, which she reframes for modern audiences in unexpected ways.

Her work often challenges readers by refusing to stick to one genre. A typical Carson project might pair a translation of Euripides with personal essays, or present an entire novel written in verse. This boundary-crossing style has won her a dedicated global following among both academics and casual readers of poetry.

By blending ancient myths with modern life, Carson has built a reputation as one of the most original voices in English-language literature. Born in Canada, Carson's influence extends far beyond her home country. Her unique ability to make centuries-old texts feel urgent and immediate has made her a mainstay of international literature courses and poetry festivals worldwide.

The Nobel committee's choice recognises a career dedicated to rewriting the rules of what a book can be. With this award, Carson joins a distinguished list of literature laureates, cementing her place as one of the most influential writers of her generation.

Curtis Flowers, the Mississippi man who was tried six times for the same quadruple murder before the US Supreme Court overturned his conviction in a landmark civil rights ruling, has died at the age of 56.

His family confirmed that he died on Wednesday at his home in Winona, Mississippi, according to his attorney, Rob McDuff. No cause of death has been released.

Flowers' fight against a relentless local prosecutor became one of the most notorious stories of wrongful conviction in modern American history. He spent nearly 23 years in prison, much of it on death row, before finally walking free.

The furniture store murders

The case began on a July morning in 1996, when four people were shot in the head execution-style at Tardy Furniture in the small city of Winona. The victims were the store’s owner, a bookkeeper, a delivery driver, and a 16-year-old employee.

Flowers, who had briefly worked at the store for three days that summer, was arrested several months later in Texas. He had no prior criminal record.

Prosecutors portrayed him as a disgruntled former employee seeking revenge. Yet the state’s case was incredibly thin. The murder weapon was never found, and there was no DNA or fingerprint evidence linking Flowers to the crime scene.

Six trials by the same prosecutor

For over two decades, District Attorney Doug Evans pursued Flowers with singular focus, putting him on trial six times.

The first three trials ended in convictions and death sentences, but all were overturned on appeal because of Evans' misconduct, which included misrepresenting evidence and racially profiling prospective jurors. The fourth and fifth trials ended in hung juries.

In 2010, during the sixth trial, Evans secured another conviction and death sentence. He did so by striking five Black prospective jurors, resulting in a panel of 11 white jurors and one Black juror. All 11 white jurors voted to convict.

The extraordinary case began to unravel after reporters for the American Public Media podcast In the Dark launched a deep investigation. They revealed that key prosecution witnesses had fabricated their stories, and analysed decades of local court records. The data proved Evans had a systematic history of excluding Black citizens from juries. Across all six trials, Evans had struck 41 of the 42 Black potential jurors he encountered.

The Supreme Court ruling and freedom

In June 2019, the US Supreme Court threw out Flowers' conviction in a 7-2 decision. Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh stated that Evans had engaged in a "relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals" to secure an all-white jury.

Six months later, in December 2019, Flowers was released on bail, leaving prison for the first time in more than 22 years. "I felt like I was floating," he said later.

The state of Mississippi officially dropped all charges against him in September 2020.

"Today, I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for nearly twenty-three years," Flowers said in a statement at the time. "I have been blessed with a family that never gave up on me."

In 2021, a judge ordered Mississippi to pay Flowers $500,000, the maximum allowed under state law for wrongful imprisonment. Flowers also filed a civil lawsuit against Evans and three investigators, accusing them of misconduct and witness pressure. Evans retired in 2023.

On Thursday, Flowers’ legal team said they were honoured to have called him both a client and a friend. "No matter where he was—on death row, at home on his parents’ porch with his feet up, singing in church, or fishing in a local pond—Curtis shared his light," they said.

The US Justice Department is seeking a federal criminal indictment against former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, accusing her of lying to Congress during her high-profile testimony about the events of January 6.

Prosecutors from the department's Civil Rights Division, currently led by Harmeet Dhillon, presented evidence to a federal grand jury on Tuesday, according to a report by Punchbowl News. A source familiar with the matter later confirmed to NBC News that the department is actively pursuing the charge.

The grand jury is expected to hear more evidence and testimonies from additional witnesses later this month. Hutchinson herself has not yet been subpoenaed to appear.

Why Hutchinson is being targeted

Hutchinson, who served as a chief assistant to Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, became the star witness of the House January 6 committee hearings in 2022. Her testimony offered an intimate, inside look at the final chaotic days of the Trump administration and his reluctance to call off the rioters storming the Capitol.

Her most controversial testimony involved a second-hand account of Trump physically clashing with his Secret Service detail inside his armoured presidential vehicle, nicknamed "the Beast", after being told he could not join his supporters at the Capitol. Trump and his allies have spent years aggressively disputing that story, using it to demand she be prosecuted for perjury.

Pressure on the Justice Department

The move to indict Hutchinson follows reports of deep political pressure within the newly restructured Justice Department. Last week, The Atlantic reported that both Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel have been warned that their job security depends on delivering indictments against Trump’s political foes, with Hutchinson high on the target list.

One former official told the magazine that Trump "wants indictments" and "wants people in handcuffs," regardless of how weak the evidence might be. Another source noted that investigators have spent significant resources on the inquiry, leaving staff feeling they "have to come up with something."

It remains unclear which specific elements of Hutchinson's extensive multi-day testimony the Justice Department is claiming are false. Representatives for Hutchinson have not yet publicly responded to the reports.

A 15-year-old boy has been shot dead and a 57-year-old bystander injured after a gunman opened fire outside a public housing complex in Harlem.

The shooting happened at around 6:20 pm on Wednesday outside the Martin Luther King Jr. Towers on West 115th Street, near Malcolm X Boulevard. Police officers rushed to the scene after ShotSpotter, the city's acoustic gunfire detection system, flagged at least seven shots being fired.

The teenage victim, identified by police as Jihad Pack, lived in the estate. He was shot in the stomach under a long stretch of construction scaffolding. Witnesses and police said the mortally wounded boy tried to drag himself back to his building but collapsed on the walkway just steps from his home. He was taken to Mount Sinai Morningside hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

"He was just a baby and he was loved... terribly loved," an unnamed family member said on Wednesday night.

The second victim, a 57-year-old man, was sitting nearby in a plastic chair, smoking a cigar, when the shooting started. He was shot in the right hand.

His 79-year-old father, Clarence Gaines, was inside his apartment when he heard the gunfire and ran downstairs.

"He called out, 'Daddy! I've been shot!'" Mr Gaines said. "I'm grateful they didn't get my son in the body. It's terribly sad about that little boy. He never got a chance to live his life."

The older victim was taken to hospital in a stable condition to be treated for what police described as a minor wound.

Officers detained a person of interest at the scene for questioning, but police have not yet announced any criminal charges or suggested a motive for the attack. It remains unclear whether either of the victims was the gunman's intended target.

The shooting happened against a backdrop of falling gun crime across New York City. Just a day earlier, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced that murders and shootings across the city had fallen to historic lows.

Public housing complexes have seen a particularly sharp drop in lethal violence. According to police department data, homicides in New York City Housing Authority developments fell by 33 per cent this year, dropping from 24 by this time last year to 16.

The department also reported that officers have taken more than 4,100 illegal firearms off the streets this year. Roughly a quarter of those weapons — more than 1,000 guns — were confiscated within Manhattan.

Yet for the residents of the King Towers estate, those numbers offer little comfort. Under the scaffolding that runs across three separate buildings, a pool of blood still marked the spot near the plastic chair where the older man had been sitting when the gunman started firing from east to west.

Police investigators remained at the scene late into Wednesday night, searching for bullet casings and interviewing witnesses.

Pakistan has vehemently denied a report in The New York Times claiming its air force fighter jets are being used to launch airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen. The country's Information Ministry dismissed the report as "fake and fabricated", rejecting any suggestion that Pakistani jets have joined the conflict.

The official denial comes amid a rapid escalation of tensions in the Middle East, where Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis have stepped up missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabian territory. While Islamabad insists its planes are not flying combat missions over Yemen, it has confirmed that its military personnel are on the ground in Saudi Arabia.

What the New York Times reported

The controversy began when The New York Times reported that Pakistan had stepped up its military support for Saudi Arabia, citing a senior Pakistani military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. According to the newspaper, this official confirmed that Pakistan Air Force fighter jets were actively being used in operations targeting Houthi rebels.

The report also quoted a second anonymous Pakistani official, who said Islamabad’s role would focus on countering the Houthi missile and drone threat using air support rather than deploying ground forces directly into Yemen.

Additionally, the newspaper cited estimates from Colonel David O. Smith, a former US Army attaché in Pakistan and former senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst. Smith estimated that around 8,000 Pakistani troops, including air force and air defence personnel, are currently stationed in Saudi Arabia to help protect critical oil infrastructure.

Pakistan's response and military presence

While the Information Ministry was quick to reject the claim about airstrikes, Pakistan's military has acknowledged its presence in the Gulf kingdom. Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the head of Pakistan’s military public relations wing, confirmed to CNN that Pakistani forces are currently stationed in Saudi Arabia.

Chaudhry declined to provide specific figures or details about their capabilities, citing the classified nature of the deployment.

Military analysts, including Smith, suggest that these troops are highly unlikely to engage in direct ground combat. Such a move would severely damage Islamabad's delicate diplomatic relationship with neighbouring Iran, which backs the Houthouthi movement.

The activation of the Mecca Pact

The deployment is tied to a new mutual defence agreement. In August, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey signed a collective security treaty known as the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, or the Mecca Defence Alliance.

Modelled on NATO's collective defence principle, the pact dictates that an armed attack against any one of the three member states is treated as an attack against them all.

The alliance was put into practical operation this week following an emergency meeting of the three nations' strategic political and defence committee in Riyadh. The members agreed to quickly deploy military forces and resources to Saudi Arabia to counter escalating regional threats.

A shift in Pakistan's regional role

If Pakistani forces do become directly involved in combat, it would mark a major departure from the country's historical foreign policy.

In 2015, Pakistan's parliament voted unanimously to remain neutral in the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, resisting intense pressure from Riyadh to join the coalition. Islamabad has long tried to balance its close financial and security ties with Saudi Arabia against its need to maintain peaceful relations along its border with Iran.

But the activation of the Mecca Pact is drawing Pakistan closer to the heart of the regional conflict, leaving its long-standing policy of neutrality increasingly difficult to sustain.

The Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education (RBSE) will conduct Class 10 board exams twice a year starting from the 2026-27 academic session. Rajasthan's education minister, Madan Dilawar, announced the decision, which aims to ease the intense pressure of high-stakes testing on young students.

Under the new schedule, the first and main sitting will take place in February or March 2027. A second, remedial attempt will follow in May 2027. This shift aligns Rajasthan's school assessment framework with the guidelines of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which advocates for multiple exam opportunities.

How the new system works

The new format does not replace the traditional board exam but adds a safety net. Every Class 10 student must appear for the first exam in February or March. Those who pass can then choose to sit the second exam in May to improve their scores, though they can only do so for a maximum of three subjects.

The board will assess students on the entire syllabus during both rounds. This means the second attempt will not be a watered-down version of the first; students must still cover the full course content.

For schools across Rajasthan, the change will mean adjusting academic calendars, restructuring revision schedules, and providing extra counselling to students. Families have long argued that a single, high-stakes exam is too punishing a measure for a teenager's entire year of work. This model offers a second chance to recover from a bad day, illness, or exam-day anxiety.

Best-of-two scoring and supplementary rules

The key benefit for students is the "best-of-two" scoring model. If a student decides to take the second exam to improve their marks, the board will compare the results of both sittings and count the higher subject-wise score toward the final mark sheet.

The second exam in May is also designed to help students who face setbacks. Those placed in the supplementary category can use this window to clear up to three papers. Additionally, students who missed the first exam altogether due to illness or other emergencies will be allowed to sit the May exam, provided they submit a valid medical certificate or obtain approval from their district education officer.

Because of this two-step process, the RBSE will not release final Class 10 results or issue passing certificates until the second round of exams is complete. The board will compile the final scores using the best performances across both rounds before declaring the results.

A US Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey aircraft made a hard landing and burst into flames during a training exercise in North Carolina on Thursday morning, injuring at least one service member and sparking a forest fire.

The twin-rotor aircraft, which operates out of Marine Corps Air Station New River, came down in a wooded area of the Bladen Lakes State Forest near Sweet Home Church Road. The site is routinely used by military pilots to practice takeoffs and landings.

Four Marines were on board the Osprey when the incident occurred. A statement from the Marine Corps said all four personnel were taken for medical evaluation. However, local emergency services reported more specific injuries. White Lake Fire Chief Dale Brennan confirmed that one of the Marines suffered significant burns and had to be flown by helicopter to the UNC Jaycee Burn Center in Chapel Hill. The other three crew members were not injured and remained at the scene initially, Chief Brennan said.

Fire crews secure fuel-heavy crash site

The impact and subsequent fire triggered a large emergency response in Bladen County. Bladen County Sheriff Jim McVicker confirmed that the Osprey caught fire immediately after the hard landing.

The situation was complicated by the sheer volume of highly flammable fuel on board. Chief Brennan told local reporters that the aircraft was carrying approximately 6,000 pounds of jet fuel when it came down, feeding an intense blaze that sent smoke rising above the state forest.

About six or seven local fire departments rushed to the scene alongside officers from the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. Local crews quickly established a safety perimeter around the wreckage but refrained from immediately attempting to put out the aircraft fire. Instead, they secured the surrounding forest area while awaiting the arrival of military specialists from Camp Lejeune. Local officials said they needed military commanders to determine the safest way to proceed with the firefighting operation, including whether specialist foam was required to suppress the burning jet fuel.

Investigation underway

It is not yet clear what caused the aircraft to make a hard landing. The Marine Corps has launched an investigation into the incident, and military officials have not released further details about the condition of the injured Marine.

The crash occurred during scheduled military training exercises in the region. Earlier in the week, commanders at nearby Camp Lejeune had warned local residents to expect increased military traffic, heightened security measures, and visible emergency response activity due to the planned drills.

The US government has suspended Microsoft, Adobe and several major IT outsourcing firms from the primary programme used to sponsor foreign workers for green cards.

Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced on Thursday that the Department of Labor will stop accepting or processing new applications under its Permanent Labor Certification programme for a group of prominent technology employers.

The suspension targets some of the largest users of US foreign worker visas. Alongside Microsoft and Adobe, the ban covers IT consulting giants including Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro and HCL.

Why the companies are suspended

Sonderling said the decision to block Microsoft and Adobe was driven by "multiple active federal investigations" into the companies. The government did not immediately provide further details about the nature of those investigations.

The broader crackdown is part of a concerted push by the Trump administration targeting foreign hiring schemes ahead of the November midterm elections. The administration claims the policy is designed to protect local employment.

"Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers," Sonderling said. "They've received over 230,000 H-1B visas approvals and over 100,000 permanent labour certifications. That's hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers."

The case against Microsoft

Vice President JD Vance singled out Microsoft for criticism during a press conference on anti-fraud initiatives in Washington. Vance highlighted the 6,000 layoffs Microsoft made in 2025, claiming the company subsequently replaced those redundant workers with staff on H-1B visas.

Vance said the government would continue to support Microsoft but would "deny them the ability to apply for these permanent residencies" until the company proves it will put American workers first.

The announcement coincided with an awkward piece of timing. On the same day as the suspension, President Donald Trump was scheduled to award the National Medal of Science to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella at the very same summit. Nadella, who moved to the US from India in 1988, joined the technology giant in 1992.

Microsoft and Adobe did not immediately comment on the suspensions.