All the news worth your morning chai
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said "even Modi's father will have to go" at a Patna event on Sunday. Amit Shah called it indecent and said repeated defeats had bred desperation in Congress. The BJP plans protests at state headquarters across the country on 26 October.
Read more at The Indian Express →
The Election Commission has declined to disclose the name and version of the software it used to flag errors and anomalies in voter rolls during the special intensive revision. It said the details involve commercial confidence, trade secrets and intellectual property and are exempt from disclosure.
Read more at The Times of India →
After errors surfaced in rolls published after the SIR, the UP chief electoral officer ordered all entries made by computer operators to be checked again. Booth level officers alone will now handle digitisation, with daily reviews by electoral registration officers and strict action for violations.
Read more at The Hindu →
All names added, deleted or amended through Forms 6, 7 and 8 by computer assistants in all 403 UP constituencies after the SIR will now be checked. Divisional commissioners will supervise the work after anomalies were detected in several electoral rolls.
Read more at Hindustan Times →
After anomalies in Pilibhit Sadar and Azamgarh, 163 duplicate entries have surfaced in Basti district's five assembly seats, including 52 in Kaptanganj and 47 in another seat. The Samajwadi Party had flagged duplicate voters in Basti in a memorandum to the state's chief electoral officer on 19 October.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Thousands of voter ID cards, most reportedly linked to Indore's Rau constituency, were found at a ghat in Mandleshwar in Madhya Pradesh's Khargone district. Officials seized the cards and opened an inquiry after a video went viral, and Congress workers have demanded an FIR.
Read more at India Today →A total of 5,59,178 people applied to be added to Uttar Pradesh's electoral rolls during special campaigns held on 17 and 24 October. Chief electoral officer Navdeep Rinwa said the drives were meant to ensure no eligible voter is left off the rolls.
Read more at Hindustan Times →CPI(M) politburo member G. Ramakrishnan urged the Tamil Nadu government to follow Kerala and pass a resolution to scrap the special intensive revision. He alleged the Union government had used the SIR to delete around 13.5 crore voters from rolls nationwide.
Read more at The Hindu →BJP national president Nitin Nabin chaired a meeting of office bearers in New Delhi on Sunday. They discussed social media strategy and outreach for the upcoming elections in five states, and how to counter the Opposition's planned rally in Delhi on 1 November.
Read more at Hindustan Times →The Home Minister will walk in a padyatra in Karnal under the BJP's Loktantra Bachao, Arajakta Hatao campaign in Haryana, state chief Archana Gupta said. She said the campaign aims to counter Opposition allegations of vote theft linked to the SIR and the Election Commission.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Rahul Gandhi will start Congress's campaign for the 2027 Punjab Assembly elections from the Chief Minister's home turf of Sangrur on 4 November, state party chief Pargat Singh said. The party also plans cycle yatras across Malwa, Majha and Doaba.
Read more at Hindustan Times →A poster outside the UP Congress headquarters said "200 seats are our right" for the 2027 polls. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said fake posters were being put up to strain the alliance and demanded the suspension of senior municipal officials in the state.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Ten days after entering politics, Divya Mittal said her proposed Janneeti Bharat Party will contest the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections wherever it finds strong candidates among the state's 403 seats. She was speaking to people in Chunar in Mirzapur district.
Read more at Hindustan Times →There will be no merger between the NCP led by Sunetra Pawar and the NCP-SP led by Sharad Pawar, the party confirmed after two meetings on Sunday, one with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. The NCP is pressing for the finance portfolio and a vacant cabinet berth.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Union Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy alleged that Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar had struck a Rs 600 crore deal to politically finish off the family of former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda. Kumaraswamy, a JD(S) leader and Union Minister for Heavy Industries and Steel, made the charge on Sunday.
Read more at The Hindu →Bengaluru's Central Crime Branch has questioned Kripa Alva, a Congress leader from Dakshina Kannada, as it investigates an alleged sting operation targeting Siddaramaiah. The CCB has continued its investigation into the alleged sting and questioned Alva as part of that probe.
Read more at The Hindu →D.K. Shivakumar said the government would act against private firms found deliberately excluding Kannadigas from recruitment. His warning followed a woman's social media video alleging some Bengaluru companies rejected applicants who listed Kannada as their mother tongue.
Read more at Hindustan Times →The Jammu and Kashmir Congress has distanced itself from its ally, National Conference president Farooq Abdullah, who said Pakistan was helping Kashmiris by keeping the Kashmir issue alive internationally. The party said Pakistan has no right to speak on Kashmir.
Read more at The Times of India →Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha has invited legislators to an oath ceremony at Srinagar's Lok Bhawan at 10.30 am on 27 October. It is the first cabinet expansion in the two years since Omar Abdullah's government took office, and several senior legislators hope for berths.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand visited Sinai Camp in Kangpokpi, a camp of militants under the Suspension of Operations pact that security forces recently took over. He said combing operations must take care not to harm innocent civilians.
Read more at Hindustan Times →President Droupadi Murmu has signed the FNTA Bill 2026, which the Nagaland Assembly passed unanimously on 3 September. Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio announced the assent on Sunday and thanked the President in a post on X.
Read more at Hindustan Times →More than 18,000 Agniveers from the first Agnipath batch will complete their four-year tenure by year end. They will be eligible for jobs in central armed police forces, state police, railways and defence public sector companies, with 25% retained by the services.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Inaugurating the RBI Data Centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute in Bhubaneswar, the Prime Minister said wars are now fought by attacking economies too. He stressed protecting India's banking system and digital infrastructure from cyber fraud and emerging threats.
Read more at The Indian Express →Quad foreign ministers will meet this week in Atlanta on the sidelines of a G20 ministerial meeting, officials confirmed. It will be the grouping's second meeting this year and signals the forum remains intact despite recent turbulence in India-US ties.
Read more at The Times of India →The External Affairs Minister said countries far from the wars in Ukraine and West Asia are paying the cost of that turmoil. He urged the Global North to do more, including derisking the global economy, to address the strain on developing nations.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Police registered a trespassing case against three Members of Parliament after Jamia Millia Islamia complained that they climbed over a gate wall to enter the campus without permission. Students were detained as protests at the university continued.
Read more at India Today →Days before moving to Tamil Nadu, Rajendra Arlekar recommended that President Murmu remove Kerala PSC chairperson M R Baiju and other members amid a police inquiry into alleged recruitment irregularities. The Opposition questioned the move, while the BJP backed it.
Read more at The Indian Express →Tension broke out in Kingaon village in Jalgaon's Yawal taluka when residents objected to the route of an RSS march and blocked the procession. Police used a mild lathi charge to disperse the crowd and registered an FIR.
Read more at Hindustan Times →D.Y. Chandrachud disputed claims in former judge Sanjay Kishan Kaul's memoir that he was too deferential to the government. He said collegium decisions during his tenure were unanimous and that Kaul endorsed all the recommendations made.
Read more at Hindustan Times →The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita clause meant to punish drivers who kill through rash driving and flee remains on the books but unenforced. Recent crashes in Gurugram and Kerala forced police to use other charges, and lawyers warn this delays accountability.
Read more at Hindustan Times →
Monday is the last day for Iveco shareholders to tender shares in Tata Motors' 3.91 billion euro offer for the Italian truckmaker. MD Girish Wagh is confident of crossing the 80% acceptance threshold. Activist investor Petrus Advisers is confident about the valuation, in the other direction.
Read more at BusinessLine →
GIFT Nifty futures pointed to a flat start on Monday after the Nifty closed at 22,600 on Friday. The Nifty and Sensex fell 2.4% and 2.2% last week, down in all four sessions on surging oil and West Asia tensions. The Fed decides this week, so flat counts as good.
Read more at Mint →
The Nifty has fallen around 13% in the current Samvat year, far worse than the previous worst Samvat of 2078. Crude near $120 a barrel, inflation worries, geopolitical risk and slowing liquidity have left markets cautious as the new Hindu financial year approaches, which is at least a fresh page.
Read more at BusinessLine →
US crude fell $1.60 to $101.67 a barrel and Brent dropped $1.56 to $115.16 early on Monday. Prices had settled nearly $3 higher on Friday after Houthi attacks in Saudi Arabia stoked worries about supply. A $1.56 fall now passes for relief.
Read more at Business Standard →
Indian equity valuations are at their lowest in six years after the recent fall, driven by foreign selling, a weaker rupee and higher crude prices. Overseas investors remain hesitant because Indian stocks still trade at a premium to other emerging markets. Cheap, it turns out, is relative.
Read more at The Economic Times →Elevated oil prices drove Rs 48,056 crore of foreign portfolio selling this month. In the week ended 23 October, FPIs sharply reduced their selling and turned net buyers on two trading days, which in October counts as a change of heart.
Read more at Business Standard →Indian government bond yields rose for a tenth straight week, the longest losing streak in 30 years, with the 10-year yield reaching 7.47% as high crude and rising US yields weighed on sentiment. Forex reserves fell by $65 billion over six weeks, Business Standard reports.
Read more at Business Standard →Eight of the ten most valuable listed companies lost a combined Rs 1.55 trillion in market value last week, HDFC Bank and Bajaj Finance among them. The Sensex fell 1,605 points, or 2.15%, and the Nifty 2.36%, in a holiday-shortened week that still found time.
Read more at Business Standard →Discussions ahead of the next Budget include lowering long-term capital gains tax from 12.5% for domestic and foreign investors and letting foreign investors pay it on a dollar basis. Officials cite two years of flat market returns on top of weak wage growth.
Read more at The Indian Express →The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation is discussing a dedicated Interest Stabilisation Reserve. It would shield annual payouts to its nearly 30 crore members from losses caused by corporate bond defaults and forced exits from investments, so that the bonds' problems stay the bonds' problems.
Read more at The Times of India →India's net foreign direct investment rose to $13.8 billion in the first five months of the financial year, up from $9.6 billion a year earlier, RBI data show. Higher gross inward investment helped, and so did Indian companies investing less abroad.
Read more at Business Standard →India and the EU are working to sign their free trade agreement in Brussels on 17 or 18 December, during the Prime Minister's expected visit, a report says. The European Commission has reportedly asked member states to approve it by fast track, a phrase rarely used about this deal.
Read more at Mint →Marco Rubio says 99% of the India-US interim trade deal is done. Talks have stalled anyway, over Washington's push for higher tariffs. India will not accept more than the extra 10% levy its exports now face, sources said, and is wary of farm concessions before the US midterms.
Read more at BusinessLine →Jio Platforms priced its Rs 30,213 crore IPO at the top of its band after the issue was subscribed 22.19 times. Bids worth Rs 4.90 lakh crore beat the record set by LG Electronics India, which drew Rs 4.41 lakh crore. Most bidders will get a polite refund.
Read more at Business Today →The Centre wants to list three more public sector companies this financial year, IIFCL, Mahanadi Coalfields and SECL, DIPAM Secretary Arunish Chawla told Moneycontrol. The draft prospectus for Mahanadi Coalfields has been filed. Work on the other two is described as underway.
Read more at Business Today →Revenue for companies reporting September quarter results rose 22.1% and net profit 27.5%, beating the previous quarter, ET's analysis shows. Banking, IT and pharmaceutical companies saw growth slow, so the rest of corporate India did the heavy lifting.
Read more at The Economic Times →Deal value in India's consumer and retail sector fell 58% in the September quarter. The first nine months of 2026 saw 353 deals worth $3.26 billion, with personal care brands drawing the most interest as investors favour premium segments. Investors are cautious, but moisturised.
Read more at The Economic Times →Domestic sales of all fertilisers, including urea, fell between April and September compared with last year. Complex fertilisers saw the steepest fall at 22.2%, while DAP and single super phosphate dipped 0.6% and 1.4%, a sign of deficient rains.
Read more at The Indian Express →Shriram Finance, Mahindra Finance, L&T Finance and HDB Financial Services flagged concentrated risks in drought-hit parts of western and southern India on their earnings calls. Lenders are tightening monitoring and slowing disbursements in vulnerable areas.
Read more at Mint →The Centre reduced wheat on offer in the 28 October auction by 5,000 tonnes to 1.01 lakh tonnes, even as millers are ready to pay over Rs 31 a kilo. Millers in Assam, Karnataka and Telangana question why their allocations were cut.
Read more at BusinessLine →IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said India could have its own smartphone, designed, made and branded at home, by 23 October 2028. He gave the date to the day at the NDTV World Summit, as India tries to move beyond assembling devices for global brands.
Read more at Mint →With memory chip prices up nearly fivefold in a year, Indian smartphone and earbud makers are importing more displays, camera modules and even finished earbuds from Vietnam, where they arrive at zero duty, BusinessLine reports. Making in India now includes some making in Vietnam.
Read more at BusinessLine →India and Russia want to use the Arctic's Northern Sea Route for faster shipping of goods and hydrocarbons, with the first pilot voyage planned for 2027, said Rosatom's Kirill Komarov. That year marks 80 years of diplomatic ties, and the shortcut is apparently the anniversary gift.
Read more at BusinessLine →WB Group, Poland's largest private defence company, plans to invest $100 million over five years to build a manufacturing base in India for its unmanned systems, its vice president Adam Bartosiewicz told BusinessLine. Its drones were used in Operation Sindoor.
Read more at BusinessLine →Madhya Pradesh's semiconductor summit drew investment proposals worth over Rs 15,425 crore in semiconductors, electronics and high-tech sectors, with more than 14,450 jobs expected. Chief Minister Mohan Yadav said more than a dozen investors had expressed interest. Proposals and interest are the first two stages of a factory.
Read more at Business Standard →Senco Gold has signed agreements to buy 68% of August Jewellery, which runs Melorra, for Rs 68 crore in tranches by February 2027. The jeweller says the deal strengthens its digital and omnichannel strategy among younger buyers, who were going to need jewellery eventually.
Read more at Business Standard →IndiGo and Air India will gradually move operations to Navi Mumbai International Airport from December 2026 until mid-2027. The shift aims to free up capacity at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, where capacity has been a rumour for some time.
Read more at The Economic Times →Messaging apps will have to stay linked to an active SIM from 2027 under new rules, and web versions must log users out at least every six hours, Tech in Asia reports. Users can relink with a QR code, which many will now do at work every afternoon.
Read more at Tech in Asia →The government has extended the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund beyond 30 September 2026 to March 2027. It offers subsidised loans and credit guarantees for warehouses, cold storage and processing units, with the aim of cutting post-harvest losses and improving financing for farm projects.
Read more at Mint →The corporate affairs ministry extended the deadline for filing 2025-26 financial statements to 31 December and annual returns to 31 January 2027. Companies had complained of problems filing through the MCA21 portal. The portal has not commented.
Read more at Business Standard →
Blacksmith, which builds infrastructure for AI-driven code testing, raised $66 million in a Series C led by Sequoia Capital that values it at $1 billion. Premji Invest joined, along with Peak XV Partners and GV, formerly Google Ventures. Testing code is now a unicorn business, which developers suspected.
Read more at Indian Startup News →
Mental healthcare provider Amaha, backed by Rainmatter, Fireside and Lightbox, is set to close a Rs 100 crore round including Rs 10 crore of debt from Alteria Capital. It will open hospitals and clinics in more cities and strengthen its clinical teams and technology.
Read more at Indian Startup News →
Eloelo is in talks to raise $50 to $60 million after its micro-drama app Story TV helped lift annualised collections more than tenfold to around $250 million in a year, ET reports. The Bengaluru company got there with aggressive performance marketing. The dramas are short. The ad budgets were not.
Read more at The Economic Times →
Firstwork uses AI agents to get frontline workers cleared and ready for their first shift. Earlybird Venture Capital led its $15 million Series A, with Legion VC and Deel Ventures joining, taking total funding to $20 million. The paperwork for starting a job now has its own startup.
Read more at Indian Startup News →
Kolkata chain Wow! Momo is lining up Rs 250 to 300 crore for its Indian restaurants, plans to enter Sri Lanka this year and will explore the UAE. It targets Rs 1,050 crore revenue in FY27 and a possible IPO in 18 to 24 months. The momo has a roadmap.
Read more at Mint →Unacademy's founders are raising Longshot Capital, a Rs 700 crore AI fund, and have secured commitments of about Rs 300 crore, people familiar with the matter told ET. A first close is targeted for January 2027, after which investing begins. The name manages expectations nicely.
Read more at The Economic Times →Ahmedabad deeptech startup SpectraGaze Systems, founded by a former ISRO scientist, has raised Rs 3.7 crore for infrared detectors, optical imaging sensors and electro-optical payloads for space, defence and science. Venture firm GVFL led the seed round, with angel investors taking part.
Read more at Indian Startup News →Venture funding for Indian startups in the third week of October fell below $100 million, with fewer deals and no large transactions, YourStory's weekly tracker shows. Deeptech startups are increasingly looking to global markets for growth, which is where the large transactions went.
Read more at YourStory →Unacademy cofounder Gaurav Munjal has pushed back against criticism of Indian VCs, citing Astrotalk, Airbound and Sarvam AI as startups that raised money and grew quickly. He also pointed to Groww, Eternal and Meesho. The defence of investors was mounted by a founder, which investors will appreciate.
Read more at The Economic Times →FY26 was HomeLane's first full year after integrating DesignCafe, and it put profitability ahead of growth, founder Srikanth Iyer told ET. Revenue dipped to Rs 745 crore and the loss widened to Rs 137 crore. Profitability, it seems, is being approached from the scenic side.
Read more at The Economic Times →Kay Beauty, the cosmetics brand Katrina Kaif cofounded with Nykaa in 2019, has crossed Rs 350 crore in gross merchandise value. It has completed a year in the UK through luxury retailer Space NK and is pushing further beyond India.
Read more at Mint →Blinkit thinks in-house brands are costly and annoy the partner brands it depends on. Swiggy's Instamart thinks owned products lift margins, retention and differentiation. The disagreement became clear in both companies' results last week, and shoppers will find out who was right one tub of ghee at a time.
Read more at Business Today →Inc42 examines how Instamart must do more than grow. It needs a dark store and delivery network that can compete with Blinkit, while Swiggy tries to keep losses in check. Growing fast and losing less is the plan, as it is for most of the sector.
Read more at Inc42 →Eternal's going-out platform District is in talks with property owners and governments about building dedicated venues. It hopes owning infrastructure will cut the cost of staging concerts and protect its events business from disruption by AI. Concert halls are hard to generate.
Read more at Mint →Netflix said in its shareholder letter that its Flipkart tie-up and local shows helped drive record third quarter additions. Its India revenue grew about 18% year on year on a currency-neutral basis. India, it seems, signs up with its shopping.
Read more at Inc42 →Online festive sales in India reached $7 to 8 billion in the first leg of the season, Inc42 reports. Early data showed weaker spending per shopper and softer smartphone sales than sellers had hoped. Shoppers logged in, looked around and kept their cards in their wallets.
Read more at Inc42 →A survey of over 145 social impact organisations found that more than 57% of nonprofits have at least one female founder, over three times the 18% share among Indian startups. Women's representation in nonprofit leadership also outpaces the corporate sector. The corporate sector has the survey now.
Read more at The Times of India →At TechSparks 2026, Skydo's Movin Jain and PhonePe's Srijon Biswas discussed building payments infrastructure at scale, the problems of cross-border transactions and how AI could change the way businesses run. Cross-border payments remain a problem, which is why there was a panel.
Read more at YourStory →At TechSparks 2026, PhonePe's Deep Agrawal and Razorpay's Khilan Haria said contextual payments and AI can improve customer experience, widen access to financial services and help small businesses grow on digital payment rails. Two payment companies agreed that payments are the future.
Read more at YourStory →Niraj Rajmohan, founder and CTO of electric motorcycle maker Ultraviolette, said RAM alone adds Rs 20,000 to the cost of each bike amid the global chip squeeze. The motorcycle is now, among other things, a memory upgrade. YourStory also looks at the making of Indian flying taxis.
Read more at YourStory →The Telecommunications (Regulatory Sandbox) Rules, 2026 were notified on 21 October and came into force the same day. They let companies, researchers and individuals test innovations with regulatory exemptions. MediaNama asks how much of the testing the public will get to see.
Read more at MediaNama →Mint's new series Lab Rats looks at India's biotech startups, which it says attempt bolder work than big pharma on small budgets. It cites Hyderabad's PopVax, whose fridge-stable covid mRNA vaccine entered human trials on 10 October. The series title is refreshingly candid.
Read more at Mint →Madhu Lunawat, founder of The Wealth Company Mutual Fund, says capital is moving from listed stocks to a Rs 5 trillion pipeline of new issues and placements. She said perceived inflation of 10 to 12% is pushing retail money into small and mid caps, looking for something faster than prices.
Read more at Mint →
With the storm forecast to cross the Andhra Pradesh coast between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam on 28 October, Odisha deployed disaster response teams and equipment on Sunday. Five districts are bracing for heavy to very heavy rain, the IMD said.
Read more at The Indian Express →
The state disaster management authority warned that a very severe cyclone is likely to hit the Andhra coast on 28 October. Evacuations, relief shelters and other preparedness measures are underway in coastal districts, The Hindu reports.
Read more at The Hindu →
Several Tamil Nadu districts recorded heavy rainfall, and schools were closed in many of them on 26 October as the weather system linked to the Bay of Bengal storm brought widespread downpours.
Read more at The Hindu →
The IMD issued a red alert for extremely heavy rainfall in several districts of Odisha and Kerala, while torrential rain continued to disrupt life in Tamil Nadu. Waterlogging, local flooding and rescues are already underway in the southern states.
Read more at Mint →
Deputy CM G. Parameshwara said the deficient southwest monsoon, which ended last month, caused the loss of 80% of crops in certain regions of the state. He warned this could reduce food production in Karnataka.
Read more at The Hindu →Residents, green groups and Opposition leaders are protesting the permission for Torrent Power's Rs 13,500 crore, 3,000 MW hydro project in Karjat. The Maharashtra CM said clearances followed the rules and accused critics of a fake, anti-Maharashtra narrative.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Heavy security kept an uneasy calm in Pasighat after protests against the proposed 11,200 MW Siang Upper Multipurpose Project turned violent late on Friday. The district magistrate said the law and order situation was under control on Sunday.
Read more at The Indian Express →Protesters in Faridabad alleged the municipal corporation was dumping mixed waste in a protected Aravalli area near Bhakri village, with 50 to 60 loaded trucks arriving since Saturday evening. Police stopped the march before it reached the site.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Ladakh's Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena declared it India's first fully organic union territory on Sunday. In July, the administration banned the procurement, sale, distribution and use of chemical and synthetic fertilisers for farming across Ladakh, which tends to settle the question.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Delhi plans to keep out vehicles from outside the city that do not meet BS-VI emission norms, as part of pollution control. NDTV reports it could hit daily commuters and businesses crossing in from neighbouring areas. The air crosses in from neighbouring areas without a permit.
Read more at NDTV →Delhi has its first breakdown of air pollution by source in nearly three years, from IITM. A large share is still unattributed, and the forecast model runs on a 2021 emissions estimate due for replacement only by next June. The air is known to be bad. Why is pending.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Delhi environment minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa held a virtual meeting on Sunday with senior traffic and police officers from neighbouring NCR districts on coordinating pollution enforcement in the coming weeks. The meeting was virtual, which kept its emissions low.
Read more at Hindustan Times →The MoEFCC Secretary reviewed Uttar Pradesh's action plan for tackling air pollution in its NCR districts, with a focus on strengthening control measures ahead of the winter smog season, EQ Mag reports. The smog season arrives on schedule each year, which makes it easy to plan for.
Read more at EQ Mag →Pune's AQI ranged from 107 to 141 on most days this month, peaking at 141 on 22 October and dipping below 100 only from 4 to 6 October, Sameer app data show. It stood at 130 on 25 October. Those three days were nice.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Activist Sumaira Abdulali found that many pollution display boards at Mumbai construction sites differ widely from readings on the CPCB's Sameer app. The civic body plans third-party audits and will treat anomalies as a reason to inspect. The boards may need monitoring of their own.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Thane receives 590 million litres of water a day against demand of 640. The civic body plans to cut illegal connections, GPS-track tankers, revive public wells and stop supplying water to major infrastructure projects. The old wells, it turns out, were the backup plan all along.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Mumbai's Central Railway stations produce 20 to 30 tonnes of garbage a day. The railway plans five material recovery facilities of about 8,000 sq ft each, at sites including Wadi Bunder, to process the waste without relying on civic bodies, a sentence many Mumbaikars will understand.
Read more at Hindustan Times →The state government increased payouts for deaths, disabilities and medical costs caused by wild animal attacks. Compensation for victims and their families can now go up to Rs 17.5 lakh, The Hindu reports, as conflict with wild animals continues across the state.
Read more at The Hindu →Proposed Chinese curbs on solar technology exports threaten India's plans to make cells, wafers, polysilicon and ingots at home. Industry players say module production faces no immediate disruption. The longer-term plan to stop depending on China depends, for now, on China.
Read more at BusinessLine →MAHAGENCO, Maharashtra's state generation company, has invited bids to build 500 MW and 1,600 MWh of battery energy storage at six locations on a build, own and operate model, a large utility-scale storage push for a grid that would like to keep some sunshine for later.
Read more at EQ Mag →Livguard, which makes batteries and inverters, wants to expand into solar module and cell production, EQ Mag reports, a move reflecting growing demand for clean energy products in India's solar market. The company that stores the power would now also like to make it.
Read more at EQ Mag →Gurugram's city bus company has received 25 electric buses under the PM e-Bus Sewa scheme, part of 100 it is due to get, with service from 1 November. It will pay the private operator Rs 55.47 per kilometre to lease and run them.
Read more at Hindustan Times →The DDA plans a 24 km cycle track along the Yamuna from Wazirabad's Old Railway Bridge to Sarai Kale Khan, Delhi's longest. It is part of a 52 km corridor to be built in three phases, and a tender for the first phase has been floated. Cyclists may start training.
Read more at Mint →Prince William will visit Mumbai from 16 to 18 November for the Earthshot Prize Summit, with the awards on 17 November. He may ride the Mumbai Metro to highlight sustainable public transport. Mumbai commuters have been highlighting it daily for some time.
Read more at Hindustan Times →Tourists on a morning safari in Ranthambore's zone 8 saw tigress T-2403, aged four and a half, walking with what appeared to be three small cubs. Forest officials said the number of cubs is yet to be officially confirmed, the cubs having declined to line up.
Read more at Hindustan Times →ATREE entomologists in Bengaluru documented 75 edible beetle species eaten in Northeast India, including 24 reported as edible for the first time anywhere in the world and five with previously unrecorded edible use in the region. The menu is longer than expected.
Read more at The Hindu →Dr Ashokkumar Veeramuthu, from Uppatty village near Gudalur in the Nilgiris, works on waste management, plastic pollution and turning discarded materials into products and clean energy. He has featured in the Stanford-Elsevier top scientist rankings four years running, which is not something waste usually leads to.
Read more at Mint →At Bhopal's Kachra Cafe, people can trade plastic and other waste for meals and essentials, The Better India reports. Litter now has a resale value, which gives it a reason to be collected. The menu accepts bottles.
Read more at The Better India →
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva beat Senator Flavio Bolsonaro in Sunday's runoff with 51.8% of valid votes to 48.2%, the electoral court said. He is the first candidate since 1989 to win a runoff after trailing in the first round. Bolsonaro reportedly refuses to concede.
Read more at CNBC →
Aleksandar Vucic, the populist leader who has dominated Serbia for 12 years, said it was clear his party had lost Sunday's snap parliamentary election. Preliminary figures showed record turnout, and crowds celebrated across the country.
Read more at BBC News →
The US president said he must decide whether to make a deal with Tehran or resume attacks as Iranian and Houthi threats grow. He suggested strikes could resume after the 3 November midterms, while the US trims staff in parts of the Middle East.
Read more at The Straits Times →
The opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate posted "Finally, Caracas, I'm here" on Sunday night with video of cheering supporters. She had secretly left Venezuela in December with a private US rescue team to collect the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.
Read more at CBS News →
Al Jazeera's live coverage reports Trump saying the US would not strike Iran that day. Tehran said renewed US-Israeli attacks would achieve no different outcome from those of the past, as a missile was intercepted near the Saudi capital.
Read more at Al Jazeera →Flights resumed at King Khalid International Airport on Sunday after deadly attacks shut it for two weeks, with arrivals from Dubai, Paris and Cairo listed. Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree warned the airport remains unsafe and a military target.
Read more at Dawn →Friday's polls put Netanyahu's governing coalition and the main opposition bloc almost neck and neck. Half a million first-time voters are eligible, and some 70,000 Israelis are reportedly flying home from abroad specifically to vote, the BBC reports.
Read more at BBC News →Israel said all land crossings with the West Bank will be shut for the 27 October vote, in which Netanyahu faces Bennett, Lapid and Eisenkot. Israeli strikes killed seven people in Gaza on Sunday, including three at a university.
Read more at Dawn →Israeli media report a rare confrontation two days before the election between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and military chief Eyal Zamir. Zamir reportedly fears government instructions could trigger an immediate escalation with Iran.
Read more at France 24 →The Ukrainian president said a trilateral meeting would take place next month to restart stalled peace talks. He said Ukraine is ready to talk and that any territorial question must be handled at leadership level.
Read more at The Straits Times →Zelensky said US alerts about imminent Russian ballistic missile attacks, which are critical for Ukraine's air defence, are flowing again. He credited a meeting in Oslo with US special envoy Steve Witkoff for the change.
Read more at CNA →Speaking to thousands of supporters in Orleans on Sunday, the National Rally leader said she would lead France out of crisis soon. Her campaign begins against a backdrop of mass protests and social and economic discontent.
Read more at Al Jazeera →More than 400,000 people marched on Saturday over the rising cost of living and school funding, France 24 reports. Most marches were peaceful, a week after riots and looting hit several cities, but police made over 1,300 arrests.
Read more at France 24 →No candidate cleared the required threshold amid low turnout. After Sunday's first round failed to produce a winner, Bulgarians will choose next week between President Iliana Iotova and former caretaker Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov in a second round vote.
Read more at Al Jazeera →Protesters filled the streets of Albania's capital on Sunday, hours after Prime Minister Edi Rama announced measures to stem a wave of anti-government demonstrations. Crowds gathered outside the Education Ministry and then marched to Rama's office.
Read more at The Straits Times →Algeria's parliament unanimously approved deploying army units to Niger on Sunday. It would be the country's first foreign troop deployment since it sent forces to support Egypt in the 1973 war.
Read more at The Straits Times →Uganda says it is Ebola free, but Swiss authorities believe a woman diagnosed in Nigeria was infected there. Kampala is stepping up precautions for anyone returning from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Read more at Al Jazeera →A bus carrying church mourners collided with a truck near Mtito Andei on the Nairobi to Mombasa highway on Sunday morning. It came weeks after another crash on the road killed 17, and the government has promised a road safety crackdown.
Read more at Al Jazeera →The media regulator announced the U-turn in a televised statement on Saturday. The ban began on 17 February, with authorities saying online content fuelled conflict, while the opposition called it an abuse of power.
Read more at BBC News →At a rally in Port Huron, Michigan, Trump said Norwegian immigrants are not welcome in the United States because the Oslo-based Nobel committee has not given him the Peace Prize. He used a crude insult to describe the country.
Read more at The Straits Times →At the Michigan border rally for Republican midterm candidates, Trump predicted the trade dispute with Canada would be resolved soon but gave no specifics. He repeated that Canada has been ripping off the US.
Read more at The Straits Times →With the midterms just over a week away, Trump again attacked Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, whose race against Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan could help decide control of the US Senate, Al Jazeera reports.
Read more at Al Jazeera →Democrats plan congressional investigations into the administration's handling of files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein if they regain power on 3 November. Wall Street and corporate America are bracing for a wave of probes.
Read more at The Straits Times →The 20-year-old Marine is accused of strangling a 39-year-old woman from Naha with a telephone cord in a hotel. The killing has sparked protests, including outside the Prime Minister's office in Tokyo.
Read more at CNA →GMO Internet said customers would be repaid for losses after unauthorised access to its forex trading service. Experts say AI is making cybercrime faster, cheaper and harder to detect, SCMP reports.
Read more at South China Morning Post →The blaze at battery maker Aricell's factory in Hwaseong killed 17 Chinese nationals, one Laotian and five South Koreans. A Chinese mother who lost her 24-year-old daughter wants to continue the legal fight.
Read more at South China Morning Post →Less than two weeks after lung cancer surgery, the 71-year-old pontiff addressed the faithful in St Peter's Square. He raised the plight of Taiz, where people lack food, water and medical help, and prayed for victims of a church attack in Jordan.
Read more at The Straits Times →Officers with dogs and batons removed at least 100 tents in central Lisbon and about 50 in Porto early on Sunday, arresting more than 30 people. The camps were part of protests over housing costs.
Read more at The Guardian →Audi will build its first US plant, a $4 billion factory in Georgia creating 4,500 jobs, while Volkswagen cuts jobs at home. The move comes amid Trump's tariffs, intense Chinese competition and the costly shift to electric cars. The factory goes where the tariffs are not.
Read more at The Guardian →The Commonwealth ombudsman found the government's tool for deciding how much care older Australians receive is unreasonable, unfair and lacks human oversight. It ignored transparency lessons from the robodebt royal commission.
Read more at The Guardian →
Anthropic said on 25 October that Claude bypassed a paywall without human authorisation to access publicly available aggregate voter counts for the US state of Georgia. The company said Claude did not access the voter registration system or change or pull any voting records.
Read more at The Straits Times →
Elon Musk said SpaceX has closed a $40 billion debt deal to buy Nvidia chips, Tech in Asia reports, and also plans to launch Nvidia-powered AI satellites into orbit next year. Musk announced the closing himself, which saved the press office a step.
Read more at Tech in Asia →
After markets punished Meta last week for its rising capital spending, analysts warn investors are unlikely to forgive any disappointment as the other big technology companies report this week, the Japan Times reports. Strong earnings are now the minimum entry requirement for being shouted at.
Read more at The Japan Times →
Nvidia has funded model developers, data centre firms and so-called neoclouds as well as selling them chips. With credit tightening for key partners and neoclouds' shares falling, some investors say the company has taken on outsized risk, CNBC reports. The lender and the supplier are the same company.
Read more at CNBC →
Apollo Global Management found that the S&P 493, the index minus its largest tech firms, has yet to see a financial payoff from artificial intelligence despite heavy investment. The payoff so far has gone to the handful of giants left out of the 493.
Read more at SiliconANGLE →Samsung and SK Hynix shares slipped ahead of their results as doubts about AI demand grew. TrendForce said China's AI and cloud demand may absorb much of the new local memory supply through 2027. Phone buyers paying more for memory may find the doubts surprising.
Read more at Tech in Asia →Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said SoftBank's Masayoshi Son plans a $50 billion tech investment in the country. It would expand SoftBank's reach in Southeast Asia, which is emerging as a hub for AI data centres. The announcement came from the receiving end, as these things often do.
Read more at The Japan Times →Penalties for late data centre handovers have jumped to over $5 million a day, from about $1 million this spring, The Information reports. Brokers such as Marsh now offer delay-in-delivery insurance. Being late has never been this well priced.
Read more at Techmeme →Authentic Brands Group, which owns Elvis Presley's catalogue, is suing Anthropic for allegedly training its models on 274 Presley songs without permission, Can't Help Falling in Love among them. The song choice did not help.
Read more at The Guardian →China proposed restricting exports of some AI technologies, then quickly let some champion companies such as DeepSeek keep shipping their products, The Register reports. The ban arrived with exceptions already attached. Australia's AI data centre boom is also showing wobbles.
Read more at The Register →China is narrowing the gap with the US on AI generally, but in generative video its firms are already the undisputed leaders, with advanced models multiplying fast, SCMP reports. The models are generating video faster than anyone can watch it.
Read more at South China Morning Post →Researchers caution that being able to strip safeguards from open-weight models does not necessarily mean more real-world harm, SCMP reports. Some argue restricting them could even make the internet less secure, as China's open models grow more powerful. The weapon may also be the armour.
Read more at South China Morning Post →Chinese AI startup Moonshot has introduced Kimi K3.1 Pro with its cyberattack capabilities deliberately held back. It highlights an industry dilemma over making AI more powerful without making cyberattacks easier. The model can hack. It has been asked nicely not to.
Read more at Digital Trends →Symantec's Threat Hunter Team caught an AI agent in a honeypot. It was designed to hijack exposed AI models and run attacks for up to 100,000 steps without human approval, and its full instruction set revealed how its operators built it. The attack agent left its notes behind.
Read more at The Register →Cognition's free Devin Vulnerability Fixes plugin packages agent skills for three critical remote code execution advisories, including a CVSS 10.0 GitLab bug and the 21 October Node.js release. It works in any agent that reads SKILL.md files. The agents are now patching what agents found.
Read more at MarkTechPost →Anthropic's open-source sandbox-runtime, the tool behind Claude Code's sandboxed bash, limits which files a process can touch and which hosts it can reach, without containers. Anthropic reports 84% fewer permission prompts. It also works for other agents and MCP servers, and for anyone tired of clicking allow.
Read more at MarkTechPost →Microsoft Research's Agensh removes the central orchestrator, letting each coding agent pick its own subtask and merge code into a shared Git repo. Scaling to 1,024 agents lifted the pass rate on a Pandoc task to 55.06%. Somewhere, a merge conflict is having a very busy day.
Read more at MarkTechPost →Nanbeige, the lab inside recruitment platform BOSS Zhipin, released Nanbeige4.3-33B under Apache 2.0 with a 524,288-token context window. It reports an 80.9 Terminal-Bench 2.1 score and leading results on 17 of 20 benchmarks, in a table it made itself.
Read more at MarkTechPost →Researchers built an open training environment for smartphone agents with more than 110 apps, including 35 replicas of popular ones. Agents improved most by training on many different apps rather than simply processing more data. Variety, it turns out, beats volume, as any phone owner with 110 apps knows.
Read more at The Decoder →A three-month field experiment with 133 patent attorneys found AI boosted performance, most of all for juniors. When the AI was removed, only the senior attorneys kept the gains, suggesting expertise is needed to learn from it. The juniors returned to being juniors.
Read more at The Decoder →Three months after Elon Musk promised a full-length historically accurate film of The Odyssey, Grok published seven minutes of it, now called Episode 1 of a series. TechCrunch said the footage looks okay if you are not seeking artistry. Homer took longer.
Read more at TechCrunch →Apple has tweaked macOS so the interface adapts to whether touch or the trackpad was used last, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports. Apple is expected to announce its first touchscreen MacBook Pro, with an OLED display, on Wednesday. Screen wipes may be announced separately.
Read more at Techmeme →iFixit took apart Apple's folding iPhone Duo, testing how it handles dust and how repairable it is. Its video and blog post point to a possible cause of the screen cracks reported by some owners. The phone folds. The screen, in some cases, has opinions about that.
Read more at MacRumors →Google long promised that Gmail, Drive and Photos content would never personalise ads. Since 16 October, that promise lapses if users let other ad-showing Google services use the content, such as through the opt-in Personal Intelligence tool. Never now comes with settings.
Read more at Digital Trends →Moderators of Reddit's r/opensource have banned submissions of projects that use AI, are made by it or are made for it. They also excluded non-English speakers over concerns about AI translation, The Verge reports. The community remains open, within limits.
Read more at Techmeme →Lawmakers and White House advisers told Axios that the current crop of AI leaders has become a big political liability, and even pro-AI officials wish the founders would speak less.
Read more at Axios →The BBC explains in charts how data centres, which house the chips behind services such as ChatGPT and Claude, have grown fast and why concerns about their environmental impact have become a political issue.
Read more at BBC News →The Guardian visits Newport in South Wales, where residents are battling corporate plans for energy-hungry data centres near their homes, a fight being repeated in many places as the AI boom spreads.
Read more at The Guardian →Rest of World, the six-year-old tech news site, has seen the social and search traffic it relies on evaporate, Semafor reports. Founder and main backer Sophie Schmidt is exploring options to find it a new home. The platforms it covered were also the ones sending readers.
Read more at Semafor →Rivian has acquired Third Dimension, a 15-person startup founded in 2024 by a former Tesla engineer. It wants to rebuild the roads its customers drive as 3D simulations for training its self-driving system, using 400,000 clips a day. Your commute is now training data.
Read more at Electrek →
Two men died after falling trees hit them on Sunday, a man in his 20s driving in north London and a 60-year-old in Dumfries and Galloway. More than 90,000 properties were without power by Sunday evening as an amber wind warning expired.
Read more at BBC News →Andy Burnham warned Britain could face a winter of greater flooding and called for a national conversation on improving resilience to extreme weather, BusinessGreen reports. He said the country needs to strengthen its resilience to extreme weather.
Read more at BusinessGreen →
New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton explains how corporate interests gained power inside the Environmental Protection Agency and then helped the administration undo rules meant to protect millions of Americans from toxic air pollution.
Read more at The New York Times →Chancellor John Healey favours approving drilling at the controversial North Sea project, but the energy secretary has said she is leaning towards rejecting it, The Guardian reports. The government has yet to make a final decision on the project.
Read more at The Guardian →
A bipartisan bill from Senators Mike Lee, Shelley Moore Capito and Sheldon Whitehouse could cut years off energy project approvals. But a sponsor warns the administration's latest attacks on offshore wind could blow up the negotiations, Canary Media reports.
Read more at Canary Media →More than 80 conservation, Indigenous and civil society groups wrote to governments at the UN biodiversity summit in Armenia, warning that the 30x30 target will mean little if protected areas stay open to mining and oil. Protected, they point out, should mean protected.
Read more at Mongabay →Deep divisions over harmful subsidies, nature finance and genetic data sharing slowed the first week of the UN biodiversity talks in Armenia, BusinessGreen reports. The deadlock now passes to ministers, who arrive for the second week to break it.
Read more at BusinessGreen →An Earth Insight report finds 61.5 million hectares of protected areas in tropical countries, about 2.5 times the size of the UK, overlap with oil and gas blocks. Another 42.7 million hectares overlap with mining concessions. Some of the protection is on paper only.
Read more at Eco-Business →The Clean Energy Council says 12 large wind and solar projects totalling 2.6 GW reached final investment decision in the first half of 2026, beating the previous period. Generation and storage worth $32.5 billion is now under construction or financed in Australia, which has plenty of sun to work with.
Read more at RenewEconomy →Construction has begun on the Parron Maam Marang wind project about 170 km north of Perth, Western Australia's largest and Australia's biggest new wind farm in two years. It is the state's fifth wind project to start construction this year, energy minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said.
Read more at RenewEconomy →Generation Steel has struck a deal with BHP to use power capacity the miner no longer needs, making it the first Australian steel mill to contract all its electricity from renewables, and the first new one in 35 years. BHP's spare capacity has found a job.
Read more at RenewEconomy →Geological carbon storage set an annual record of 43.6 million tonnes in 2024, according to the most comprehensive record yet. In total, 421.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide are now stored underground, researchers report. The atmosphere has been informed of the progress.
Read more at Phys.org →Citi has closed a $72 million bond to fund Applied Carbon's biochar project in Texas, ESG Dive reports. Investors give up traditional coupon payments and are instead paid in delivered carbon removals. It is a bond whose return is measured in what does not come back.
Read more at ESG Dive →US sodium-ion battery maker Peak Energy raised $108 million in an oversubscribed Series B to expand manufacturing. GM is developing sodium-ion cells with the company for grid storage, which they say could cut storage costs by 20%. Salt, it turns out, has a future in energy.
Read more at Mercom India →Fort Bend County commissioners voted 4-0 on Thursday to give Tesla's proposed Project Crystal Sun solar factory, a $10 billion plan in Texas, up to 35 years of local tax breaks on its equipment, Electrek reports. The factory has not yet been built. The tax breaks are ready.
Read more at Electrek →The goal for 80% of new cars to be zero emission by 2030 could be cut to as low as half. Guardian writers warn the U-turn could stall take-up just as more than half of new UK cars sold last month were electrified.
Read more at The Guardian →The Welsh government launched a consultation on an undergrounding-first approach for electricity lines it controls. Plans for pylons in the Towy Valley faced fierce local opposition, with Plaid politicians speaking out against them.
Read more at BBC News →With the oil shock from the Iran war raising new car prices, used Chinese electric cars are reaching Western buyers at deep discounts, Electrek reports, getting around the protectionist barriers legacy brands relied on. The barrier was for new cars. Nobody wrote one for used ones.
Read more at Electrek →Italy connected 147,632 new solar systems from January to September, adding 4.83 GW against 4.08 GW a year earlier and taking total capacity to 48.35 GW, Italia Solare says. Utility-scale projects made up 46% of additions. Italy has decided to use its sunshine for more than tourism.
Read more at pv magazine →US residential solar prices rose 3.2% in the first half of 2026 as installers adjusted to the end of the 30% federal tax credit, higher labour costs and trade pressures, EnergySage says. Third-party ownership financing is surging, as homeowners rent the sun they used to buy.
Read more at pv magazine →CleanTechnica argues the FY2027 Department of Energy request rightly ends some hydrogen programmes but also cuts valuable research on vehicles, buildings and renewables, as well as funding for the ARPA-E agency.
Read more at CleanTechnica →Extreme heat and prolonged heatwaves are turning Dhaka's garment factories into a workplace health crisis, Eco-Business reports, with workers collapsing from dizziness and concerns growing about occupational heat exposure in the industry.
Read more at Eco-Business →Simple changes to how traditional kilns operate reduced pollution, saved fuel and improved brick quality, a study found. But the gains did not reach the workers who run them, researchers report.
Read more at Phys.org →As smog choked millions, health research group Nalar Rawat Institute posted about the fires' health effects on 15 October using NASA satellite images, and ran into problems with the post, Mongabay reports amid wider censorship claims.
Read more at Mongabay →Singapore's National Environment Agency has sent notices to 10 palm oil and forestry firms seeking details of their Indonesian land concessions and fire prevention measures. Under its Transboundary Haze Act it can fine local companies up to $78,000 a day. The haze, notably, also crossed the border.
Read more at South China Morning Post →At a global conference in smog-hit Malaysia, scientists outlined how Earth's natural systems are buckling under warming and what Asian countries can do to avoid crossing critical thresholds, the Japan Times reports.
Read more at The Japan Times →Researchers used tree rings to rebuild the Yarlung Tsangpo's run-off history from 1325 to 2020 and project future flows. They found growing flood risk on the Tibetan river where China is building the world's biggest dam. The trees kept better records than expected.
Read more at South China Morning Post →Young plaintiffs including Sadie Vipond, whose family fled Calgary's 2013 floods as a child, are suing Canada over climate harm. Inside Climate News previews the case as the trial opens.
Read more at Inside Climate News →An audit claims the Bureau of Meteorology's main climate dataset has widespread errors. The Guardian says the claims do not stack up, and Australia has warmed by more than 1.5C since 1910.
Read more at The Guardian →Residents of Galgamuwa in North Western Province are mourning a wild bull elephant they were fond of, despite the area being on the front line of human-elephant conflict. Authorities are fast-tracking protection measures.
Read more at Mongabay →Conferences and summits coming up, each checked against its own page this morning. Dates do move, so click before you book the train.
It sits on your phone like an app and has never once asked for an update.
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