Flash floods kill 8 in Nepal as Bhotekoshi River rises near China border

At least eight people lost their lives when flash floods hit Nepal on Wednesday. A sudden surge in the Bhotekoshi River caused extensive destruction in the Timure and Syafrubesi market areas. Vehicles and property were swept away in the affected zones near the Chinese border. Army personnel have been deployed to carry out rescue operations in the impacted regions. Authorities confirmed that the flooding was not triggered by rainfall.

Caltech Scientists Found AI Startup Using Neural Operators to Solve Physics Problems

Caltech researchers Anima Anandkumar and Benedikt Jenik have launched Accelerated Understanding Inc, an enterprise AI company built on neural operators rather than the Transformer architecture dominant in mainstream AI. Unlike Transformer-based models that process data as discrete tokens, neural operators work in continuous space and learn function-to-function mappings, making them better suited for physics and engineering problems. The company claims its system can process 5 trillion data points in a single prompt, compared to roughly one millionth of that for leading models like Claude or Gemini. The startup targets industries such as oil and gas, materials science, and industrial optimization, where solving differential equations and fluid dynamics problems at scale is critical. Anandkumar, a former head of NVIDIA's AI research, and Jenik, a mathematician, are betting that neural operators can handle a class of physics-heavy problems that Transformers fundamentally cannot.

Israeli Far-Right Lawmaker Smashes Palestinian Memorial with Sledgehammer

Israeli far-right lawmaker Zvi Sukkot caused damage to a Palestinian memorial using a sledgehammer in an act that has sparked widespread outrage. The incident drew condemnation from across the political spectrum, including from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Sukkot's actions were seen as deeply provocative given the sensitive nature of the memorial. The episode has intensified tensions and raised concerns about the conduct of far-right politicians within Israel's government.

HAL and Safran Sign Deal to Develop Aravalli Engine for India's Multi-Role Helicopter

India's Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and France's Safran Helicopter Engines have signed a contract to jointly develop the Aravalli engine. The engine is intended to power India's planned 13-tonne multi-role helicopter. The agreement encompasses the design, development, manufacturing, and long-term lifecycle support of the engine. The partnership is seen as a major milestone in India's push toward self-sufficiency in aero-engine technology. Beyond military use, the Aravalli engine is also expected to serve civil aviation applications.

Afghanistan Premier League relaunches with three teams, set to begin Dec 27

The Afghanistan Premier League is set to relaunch with its inaugural edition beginning on December 27. Three franchises have been confirmed for the tournament: Axcel United Kabul, Balkh Zwanan, and Kandahar Warriors. The competition is expected to be held in the UAE rather than on home soil. This marks a fresh start for the league, which aims to provide a competitive T20 platform for Afghan cricket.

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Yash's 'Toxic' Opens Strong at Rs 41 Crore, Mixed Reviews on Screenplay

Yash-starrer 'Toxic', directed by Geetu Mohandas, recorded a notable opening day at the Indian box office, collecting over Rs 41 crore net. The action drama also features Nayanthara and Kiara Advani in prominent roles. Audience responses have been mixed, with viewers appreciating the film's visuals and Yash's screen presence while criticising its screenplay. The Hindi version emerged as the top contributor to the opening day earnings. The film now heads into the weekend, which will be crucial in determining its box-office trajectory.

SQLazy Tool Simplifies Adjacent Record Search in Grouped SQL Data

SQLazy, a query tool available at sqlazy.com, allows users to retrieve records within a specified row offset of a matched value inside grouped datasets. The tool accepts business-language instructions and automatically generates equivalent native MySQL SQL using window functions. In a demonstration, records within two rows of a target Cardboard_Number value were identified across two production line groups, then merged and deduplicated. The core mechanism uses a relative-position range syntax, such as flag[-2:2], which compiles to the verbose SQL clause ROWS BETWEEN 2 PRECEDING AND 2 FOLLOWING. SQLazy is open-source, free to use without registration, and its repository is hosted on GitHub.

Japanese Scientists Test Cosmic Ray Muons as GPS Alternative for Underground Use

Japanese researchers are developing a navigation system that uses cosmic ray muons instead of traditional GPS signals. Unlike GPS, muons can penetrate dense materials, making the technology viable in underground or signal-blocked environments. The system has shown potential for guiding robots and vehicles in areas where conventional navigation fails. Scientists have successfully demonstrated the technology, though it still requires further development before it can be widely deployed.

Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train: Why Thane station is being built 12 metres above ground

DuckDuckGo's Duck.ai Offers Free, No-Signup Access to GPT and Claude Models

DuckDuckGo's Duck.ai platform allows users to access multiple AI models for free without requiring an account or payment details. The service currently supports several models including GPT-5.6 Luna, Claude Haiku 4.5, Mistral Small 4, and Gemma 4 31B, among others. By default, user chats are not stored on DuckDuckGo's servers, and requests are anonymized to protect user privacy. The platform is accessible directly at Duck.ai and is positioned as a privacy-focused alternative for those seeking quick AI assistance without registration barriers.

SL tracks 11 US-sanctioned Iranian tankers off coast

PwC stopped from washing its hands off Evergrande

OpenAI's Jalapeño chip outperforms NVIDIA on speed, throughput, and power efficiency

OpenAI has published benchmark results for Jalapeño, its first custom AI inference chip, showing it outperforms NVIDIA's GB200 and GB300 hardware across throughput, latency, and power efficiency simultaneously. Tested against the InferenceX public benchmark on three large open-weight models, Jalapeño delivered 1.5–1.9x more throughput per watt and 1.7–3.6x lower latency compared to leading NVIDIA hardware. The chip operates at or below 550W, roughly half the power draw of the GB300 at 1,400W. Designed in nine months, Jalapeño reflects OpenAI's broader strategy to co-design models, chips, and software together rather than rely on third-party GPU infrastructure. OpenAI plans to deploy the chip within its own infrastructure by end of 2025, with a second generation already in development.

Hey AI! India's shoppers have a new shopping buddy

Model Context Protocol goes stateless, unveils five-area roadmap for agentic AI

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) team published an updated roadmap this week, marking a significant architectural shift in its latest spec release dated July 28, 2026. The most notable change removes protocol-level sessions and the initialization handshake, making MCP servers stateless and sessionless by default, which enables straightforward horizontal scaling. The previous March roadmap's four goals — covering transport, agent communication, governance, and enterprise readiness — were fully delivered. The new roadmap outlines five priority areas with dedicated working groups: agentic messaging primitives, HTTP-native transport unification, agent identity and authentication, improved tool-response primitives with progressive discovery, and SDK developer experience. Notably, the agent identity workstream targets replacing API-key sharing between agents with standards-based approaches such as DPoP and Workload Identity Federation, with active participation in IETF OAuth and WIMSE bodies.

Gabbard Foresaw Iran's Retaliatory Strikes Before Trump Authorized Military Action

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had reportedly anticipated Iran's military response before President Trump approved action against the country. She warned that Tehran would target American forces and allied partners across the Middle East if provoked. Her prediction raised concerns about US credibility and the reliability of its commitments to regional allies. The assessment came ahead of the broader escalation in US-Iran tensions, drawing attention to her early strategic read of Iran's likely course of action.

Gabriel India bets big on cars that drive themselves

LangChain vs AWS Bedrock: Key Differences to Guide Your AI Framework Choice

LangChain is an open-source Python and JavaScript framework released in late 2022 that provides composable abstractions for building LLM-powered applications across 50-plus model providers. AWS Bedrock, by contrast, is a fully managed cloud service offering access to foundation models such as Claude, Llama, and Mistral, along with managed infrastructure components under its AgentCore suite. LangChain suits teams that need vendor flexibility and custom architectures but requires them to handle their own infrastructure, scaling, and security. Bedrock offers operational simplicity with auto-scaling, IAM security, and serverless deployment, though it ties teams to the AWS ecosystem and carries higher costs. Many teams adopt a hybrid approach, using LangChain to build agent logic while deploying on Bedrock AgentCore Runtime for managed production hosting.

JavaScript's Seven Primitive Data Types Explained for Beginners

JavaScript has seven primitive data types that serve as the most fundamental building blocks for handling data in the language. These include String for text, Number for integers and decimals, and BigInt for integers exceeding the safe limit of the standard Number type. Boolean holds only true or false values, while Undefined is automatically assigned to variables that have been declared but not yet initialized. Null is used to explicitly indicate the intentional absence of a value, and Symbol rounds out the seven types. Together, these primitives form the foundation of how data is stored and manipulated in JavaScript programs.