McDonald's backs $99.1M in grants to conserve 100,650 acres of US grasslands

McDonald's and its partners have committed funding toward conservation easements across more than 100,000 acres of grasslands in the United States. The grants, totaling $99.1 million, aim to preserve critical habitats and wildlife migration corridors. The initiative also extends support to ranching communities that depend on these lands. Additionally, the program promotes sustainable practices in beef cattle production. The effort reflects a broader push to align agricultural supply chains with environmental conservation goals.

‘Do you feel you are a lord?’ Bombay HC slams FDA, clears reopening of 5 eateries

Yash's 'Toxic' surpasses Rs 171 crore India net in four days

Yash and Kiara Advani starrer 'Toxic: A Fairytale For Grown-Ups', directed by Geetu Mohandas, has crossed Rs 171 crore net at the Indian box office by its fourth day of release. The gangster drama had already surpassed Rs 221 crore worldwide within its first three days. The film outpaced Ranveer Singh's 'Dhurandhar' in opening-day collections within hours of its release. Having built strong momentum through the opening weekend, the film is now heading into its weekday run with sights set on even larger milestones.

No TikTok LIVE API Exists — Engineers Must Build or Buy Their Own Data Pipeline

TikTok's official developer platform offers no API for its LIVE ecosystem, which includes streams, gifts, diamonds, and agency rankings. A developer behind a TikTok LIVE data platform called RnG detailed the engineering challenges of collecting this data programmatically after spending a year building their own pipeline. Key pitfalls include relying on a creator's room ID to confirm live status — which persists after a stream ends — and double-counting diamonds during gift streaks due to how TikTok reports running totals. Other common errors involve missing freshness timestamps on records and using offset pagination on a rapidly changing dataset, which causes rows to be skipped or duplicated. The developer recommends cursor-based pagination and strict status-field checks as minimum standards for anyone building or consuming TikTok LIVE data.

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: A Practical Beginner's Guide to Building Webpages

A new beginner's guide outlines how every website is built on three core technologies: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. HTML defines a page's structure using tags and elements, while CSS handles visual styling such as colors, fonts, and layout. JavaScript adds interactivity and logic on top of the static foundation. The guide walks learners through each technology individually before combining them in a hands-on project — a personal task tracker. Only a free text editor like VS Code and a web browser are needed to follow along.

Developer Builds Free All-in-One Platform With 108 Online Utility Tools

A developer has launched Amoztools, a free platform consolidating 108 commonly used online utilities into a single website. The project was motivated by frustration with having to visit multiple sites for basic tasks such as generating QR codes, formatting JSON, or resizing images. Many existing tools were cluttered with ads or required user sign-ups for simple functions. The developer has made all 108 tools freely accessible without such barriers. Feedback is being sought from the developer community regarding missing tools and potential improvements.

Ather Konarc launched at ₹99,999 with 200 km range

2,600-Year-Old Wooden Beams from First Temple Destruction Unearthed in Jerusalem

Archaeologists in Jerusalem have discovered ancient wooden beams dating back approximately 2,600 years to 586 B.C., the period of the First Temple's destruction. The preserved sycamore beams were found coated in melted plaster, suggesting they once supported the roof of an inner courtyard. Researchers used dendrochronology — the study of tree growth rings — to accurately determine the age of the timber. The find is considered a rare and significant archaeological link to one of Jerusalem's most historically important periods.

Nepal: 20 yrs of satellite images expose a reality

JPMorgan Launches $1.5T Security Initiative Amid Dimon's Defence Tech Concerns

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon expressed frustration over narratives suggesting the United States is falling behind in defence technology. In response, the bank unveiled a $1.5 trillion Security and Resiliency Initiative aimed at bolstering national security industries. The program extends beyond the US to include Canada, Europe, and the United Kingdom. It targets key sectors such as aerospace, defence, manufacturing, energy, and health technology. JPMorgan is committing substantial capital and workforce resources to support the initiative.

Engineer Builds Hybrid Agentic RAG System Combining FAISS and BM25 for Smarter LLM Retrieval

A developer has designed and documented an Agentic Hybrid Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture that merges dense semantic search via FAISS with exact keyword matching using BM25, aiming to overcome limitations of traditional static RAG pipelines. The system uses an autonomous LLM agent built on the smolagents framework, enabling dynamic decision-making about when and how to retrieve information. During development, the engineer encountered significant challenges running the model locally on CPU, including import errors, latency exceeding 213 seconds per step, and model hallucinations. These issues were resolved by switching to a cloud-hosted model, Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct, and applying dynamic score normalization with a weighted fusion parameter. The research also outlines a future roadmap for scaling the architecture toward knowledge graphs, multi-agent consensus systems, and automated valuation frameworks.

Utah mountain hides enough ice to fill about 600 Olympic swimming pools

Pakistan in the dark again as power crisis deepens

Bangladesh confirms J-10CE jet deal with China

Goldman Sachs exec cautions banks on over-reliance on AI models like OpenAI, Anthropic

A senior Goldman Sachs executive has raised concerns about the financial industry's growing dependence on AI models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. He warned that delegating reasoning tasks to AI systems could lead to cognitive atrophy among banking professionals. Junior employees, in particular, risk missing out on critical hands-on experience and the development of intuitive analytical skills. This over-reliance could ultimately weaken the capabilities of future financial leaders. The executive stressed that human judgment must remain at the core of high-stakes decision-making in banking.

China removes 2 top generals from top military body

How to Structure Figma Variables for Scalable UI Design Systems

Figma variables store reusable design values such as colors, spacing, and typography that can be applied consistently across components and prototypes. Organizing these variables into structured collections — including design tokens, global primitives, language, and private primitives — helps teams manage complexity as projects scale. Figma supports six variable types: color, number, string, boolean, timing, and easing, each serving a distinct design or prototyping purpose. Unlike styles, which store fixed sets of design properties, variables enable dynamic changes such as switching between light and dark modes or adapting layouts for different devices. A well-structured variable system reduces redundancy, simplifies updates, and ensures design consistency across an entire product library.

AIMIM Expels MLC Mirza Rehmath Baig Over Viral Video Controversy

The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) has expelled its Member of the Legislative Council, Mirza Rehmath Baig, from the party. The decision follows a viral video and related allegations that surfaced and spread on social media. The BJP has responded to the expulsion, stating that the action does not amount to justice in the matter. The controversy has drawn significant political attention, with opposition parties weighing in on the party's handling of the situation.

Study Suggests Three Unrecorded Assyrian Kings May Rewrite Ancient Chronology

New research suggests that ancient Assyrian king lists may have deliberately left out several short-lived rulers. Evidence has emerged pointing to three monarchs who briefly held power during periods of political instability. Historians believe their reigns were intentionally excluded from official records. This omission raises serious doubts about the accuracy of the traditionally accepted timeline of ancient Assyria.

Semantic vs. Prompt Caching: Finding the Cost Break-Even Point for LLM Apps

A technical analysis published on DEV Community argues that rising LLM API costs are fundamentally an architecture problem rather than a prompt engineering issue. Two main caching strategies are compared: provider-side prompt caching, which reuses repeated input prefixes at 10% of normal token cost, and semantic caching, which uses embedding similarity to skip LLM calls entirely for near-duplicate queries. The study uses a reproducible benchmark of 1,200 queries across four repetition patterns to measure where each approach becomes cost-effective. Prompt caching suits workloads with long, repeated system prompts, while semantic caching eliminates redundant calls but risks returning wrong answers on false-positive matches. The analysis concludes that neither technique touches prompt content directly, making them complementary to — not substitutes for — prompt optimization.