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1) Antimatter embraces Earth, falling downward like normal matter: Study reveals gravity's effect on matter's elusive twin :by University of California - Berkeley

This graphic shows antihydrogen atoms falling and annihilating inside a magnetic trap, part of the ALPHA-g experiment at CERN to measure the effect of gravity on antimatte

For those still holding out hope that antimatter levitates rather than falls in a gravitational field, like normal matter, the results of a new experiment are a dose of cold reality. Physicists studying antihydrogen—an anti-proton paired with an antielectron, or positron—have conclusively shown that gravity pulls it downward and does not push it upward.

At least for antimatter, antigravity doesn't exist.

The experimental results have been reported in the Sept. 28 issue of the journal Nature by a team representing the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA) collaboration at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland.

The gravitational acceleration of antimatter that the team comes up with is close to that for normal matter on Earth: 1 g, or 9.8 meters per second per second (32 feet per second per second). More precisely, it was found to be within about 25% (one standard deviation) of normal gravity.

"It surely accelerates downwards, and it's within about one standard deviation of accelerating at the normal rate," said Joel Fajans, a UC Berkeley professor of physics who, with colleague Jonathan Wurtele, a theoretician, first proposed the experiment more than a decade ago. "The bottom line is that there's no free lunch, and we're not going to be able to levitate using antimatter."

The result will not surprise most physicists. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, though conceived before antimatter was discovered in 1932, treats all matter identically, implying that antimatter and matter respond the same to gravitational forces. All normal matter, such as protons, neutrons and electrons, have anti-particles that bear the opposite electrical charge and, when they encounter their normal matter counterpart, annihilate completely.

"The opposite result would have had big implications; it would be inconsistent with the weak equivalence principle of Einstein's general theory of relativity," said Wurtele, UC Berkeley professor of physics. "This experiment is the first time that a direct measurement of the force of gravity on neutral antimatter has been made. It's another step in developing the field of neutral antimatter science."

Fajans noted that no physical theory actually predicts that gravity should be repulsive for antimatter. Some physicists claim that, if it were, you could create a perpetual motion machine, which is theoretically impossible.

Nevertheless, the idea that antimatter and matter might be affected differently by gravity was enticing because it could potentially explain some cosmic conundrums. For example, it could have led to the spatial separation of matter and antimatter in the early universe, explaining why we see only a small amount of antimatter in the universe around us. Most theories predict that equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been produced during the Big Bang that birthed the universe.An artist's conceptual rendering of antihydrogen atoms falling out the bottom of the magnetic trap of the ALPHA-g apparatus. As the antihydrogen atoms escape, they touch the chamber walls and annihilate. Most of the annihilations occur beneath the chamber, showing that gravity is pulling the antihydrogen down. The rotating magnetic field lines in the animation represent the invisible influence of the magnetic field on the antihydrogen. The magnetic field does not rotate in the actual experiment. Credit: Keyi "Onyx" Li/U.S. National Science Foundation

Gravity is incredibly weak

According to Fajans, there have been many experiments, all indirect, that strongly suggest that antimatter gravitates normally, but these experiments have been relatively subtle.

"You might ask, why not do the obvious experiment and drop a piece of antimatter, a sort of leaning tower of Pisa experiment? You know, the experiment that Galileo didn't actually do—it was apocryphal—where he supposedly dropped a lead ball and a wooden ball from the top of the tower and proved that they both reached the ground at the same time," he said.

"The real problem is that the gravitational force is incredibly weak compared to electrical forces," Fajans added. "So far, it has proved impossible to directly measure gravity with a drop-style measurement with a charged particle, like a bare positron, because any stray electric field will deflect the particle much more than gravity will."

In fact, the gravitational force is the weakest of the four known forces of nature. It dominates the evolution of the universe because all matter—theoretically—is affected by it over immense distances. But for a tiny piece of antimatter, the effect is minuscule. A 1 volt/meter electrical field exerts a force on an antiproton that is about 40 trillion times larger than the force of gravity exerted on it by planet Earth.

The ALPHA collaboration at CERN suggested to Wurtele a new approach. By 2010, the ALPHA team was trapping significant quantities of antihydrogen atoms, and in 2011, Wurtele insisted to Fajans that since antihydrogen is charge neutral, it would not be affected by electric fields, and they should explore the possibility of a gravity measurement.

Fajans dismissed the idea for many months, but was eventually persuaded to take it seriously enough to perform some simulations that suggested Wurtele's ideas had merit. UC Berkeley lecturer Andrew Charman and postdoctoral fellow Andrey Zhmoginov became involved and realized that a retrospective analysis of prior data could provide very coarse limits on antimatter's gravitational interactions with Earth.

With help from their ALPHA colleagues, this led to a paper that concluded that antihydrogen experiences no more than about 100 times the acceleration—in the up or down direction—due to Earth's gravity, compared to regular matter.

UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Danielle Hodgkinson, right, running the ALPHA-g experiment from the control room at CERN in Switzerland

That underwhelming start nevertheless convinced the ALPHA team to build an experiment to make a more precise measurement. In 2016 the collaboration began to construct a new experiment, ALPHA-g, which conducted its first measurements in the summer and fall of 2022.

The results published in Nature are based on simulations and a statistical analysis of what the team observed last year and puts the gravitational constant for antimatter at 0.75 ± 0.13 ± 0.16 g, or, if you combine the statistical and systematic errors, 0.75 ± 0.29 g, which is within error bars of 1 g. The team concluded that the chance of gravity being repulsive for antimatter is so small as to be meaningless. At least a dozen UC Berkeley undergraduate physics majors participated in the assembly and running of the experiment, Fajans and Wurtele said, many of them from groups not well represented in the field of physics.

"It's been a great opportunity for many Berkeley undergraduates," Fajans said. "They're fun experiments, and our students learn a lot."

A balance

The plan for ALPHA-g that Wurtele and Fajans proposed was to confine about 100 antihydrogen atoms at a time in a 25-centimeter-long magnetic bottle. ALPHA can only confine antihydrogen atoms that have a temperature less than half a degree above absolute zero, or 0.5 Kelvin.

Even at this extremely low temperature, the antiatoms are moving at speeds averaging 100 meters per second, bouncing hundreds of times per second off the strong magnetic fields at the ends of the bottle. (The magnetic dipole moment of an antihydrogen atom is repelled by the pinched 10,000 Gauss magnetic fields at each end of the bottle.)

If the bottle is oriented vertically, the atoms moving downward will accelerate due to gravity, while those moving upward will decelerate. When the magnetic fields at each end are identical, that is, balanced, those atoms moving downward will have, on average, more energy. Thus, they will be more likely to escape through the magnetic mirror and hit the container, annihilating in a flash of light and producing three to five pions. The pions are detected to determine whether the antiatom escaped upward or downward.

The experiment is like a standard balance used to compare very similar weights, Fajans said. The magnetic balance makes the relatively tiny gravitational force visible in the presence of much larger magnetic forces, much the same way that a normal balance makes visible the difference between 1 kilogram and 1.001 kilograms.

The mirror magnetic fields are then very slowly ramped down, so that all the atoms eventually escape. If antimatter behaves like normal matter, more antiatoms—about 80% of them—should escape out the bottom than the top.

"The balancing allows us to ignore the fact that the antiatoms are all of different energies," Fajans said. "The lowest energy ones escape last, but they're still subject to the balance, and the effect of gravity is enhanced for all antiatoms."

The experimental setup also allows ALPHA to make the bottom magnetic mirror stronger or weaker than the top mirror, which gives each antiatom a boost in energy that can cancel or overcome the effects of gravity, allowing equal or greater numbers of antiatoms to go out the top than the bottom. "This gives us a powerful experimental knob that allows us, basically, to believe the experiment actually worked because we can prove to ourselves that we can control the experiment in a predictable manner," Fajans said.

The results had to be treated statistically because of the many unknowns: The researchers couldn't be certain how many antihydrogen atoms they'd trapped, they couldn't be sure they detected every annihilation, they couldn't be sure there were not some unknown magnetic fields that would have affected the antiatom trajectories, and they couldn't be sure they'd measured the magnetic field in the bottle correctly.

"ALPHA's computer code simulating the experiment could be subtly wrong because we don't know the precise initial conditions of the antihydrogen atoms, it could be wrong because our magnetic fields aren't correct, and it could be wrong for some unknown unknown," Wurtele said. "Nonetheless, the control provided by adjusting the balance knob lets us explore the extent of any discrepancies, giving us confidence that our result is correct."

The UC Berkeley physicists are hopeful that upcoming improvements to ALPHA-g and to the computer codes will improve the instrument's sensitivity by a factor of 100.

"This result is a group effort, although the genesis of this project was at Berkeley," Fajans said, "ALPHA was designed for spectroscopy of antihydrogen, not gravitational measurements of these antiatoms. Jonathan's and my proposal was completely orthogonal to all the plans for ALPHA, and the research would likely not have happened without our work and years of lonely development."

And while the null result could be dismissed as unexciting, the experiment is also an important test of general relativity, which to date has passed all other tests.

"If you walk down the halls of this department and ask the physicists, they would all say that this result is not the least bit surprising. That's the reality," Wurtele said. "But most of them will also say that the experiment had to be done because you never can be sure. Physics is an experimental science. You don't want to be the kind of stupid that you don't do an experiment that explores possibly new physics because you thought you knew the answer, and then it ends up being something different."

Undergraduate students who participated include Josh Clover, Haley Calderon, Mike Davis, Jason Dones, Huws Landsberger, Nicolas Kalem James McGrievy, Dalila Robledo, Sara Saib, Shawn Shin, Ethan Ward, Larry Zhao and Dana Zimmer.

2) Study clarifies how 'junk DNA' influences gene expression :by Jennifer Welsh, Stanford University Medical Center

 (A) Schematic of enhancers, motifs, and STRs. (B) Schematic of TFs and DNA libraries tested in this study. (C) Favorable STRs alter energetic landscapes by directly binding TF DNA-binding domains. (D) Favorable STRs maximize potential preferred sites and contribute additively to binding energies. (E) STR binding by TFs is widespread. Credit: Science (2023).

For decades, scientists have known that, despite its name, "junk DNA" in fact plays a critical role: While the coding genes provide blueprints for building proteins, which direct most of the body's functions, some of the noncoding sections of the genome, including regions previously dismissed as "junk," seem to turn up or down the expression of those genes.

But it's been unclear how certain noncoding regions influence gene-expression levels—that is, the number of times a gene is copied into RNA and used to make proteins.

Now, a new study by Polly Fordyce, Ph.D., associate professor of bioengineering and of genetics, and her colleagues has unraveled some of the mystery. Their discovery may help researchers understand complex genetic conditions, including autism, schizophrenia, cancer and Crohn's disease.

"We've known for a while that short tandem repeats, or STRs, aren't junk because their presence or absence correlates with changes in gene expression," Fordyce said. "But we haven't known how they exert these effects."

Authors of the study, published Sept. 22 in Science, believe it's the first to offer a roadmap to understanding how STR changes can impact gene expression.

An evolving view of 'junk DNA'

STRs make up about 5% of the human genome. "Starting in the 1980s, researchers noticed that changes to these repetitive sequences can affect gene expression," said the study's lead author, Connor Horton, who was a technician in Fordyce's lab. "That's the trail of breadcrumbs we've followed."

For the study, the researchers looked at how STRs interact with proteins called transcription factors. Transcription factors attach to noncoding DNA, regulating the expression of protein-coding genes.

"Researchers have spent a lot of time characterizing these transcription factors and figuring out which sequences—called motifs—they like to bind to the most," Fordyce said. But current models don't adequately explain where and when transcription factors bind to noncoding DNA to regulate gene expression. Sometimes, no transcription factor is attached to something that looks like a perfect motif. Other times, transcription factors bind to stretches of DNA that aren't motifs.

"To solve the puzzle of why transcription factors go to some places in the genome and not to others, we needed to look beyond the highly preferred motifs," Fordyce said. "In this study, we're showing that the STR sequence around the motif can have a really big effect on transcription factor binding, providing clues as to what these repeated sequences might be doing."

To better understand the role of short tandem repeats in gene expression, the researchers stripped the mechanisms down to their basics: transcription factors and naked DNA. They used specialized assays designed in the Fordyce lab to run thousands of tiny experiments side by side, saving time and money.

The experiments compared how tightly transcription factors attached to thousands of DNA sequences—those with a preferred motif, those without one, and those surrounded by random sequences or by a wide variety of STRs.

"In the experiment we asked, 'How do these changes impact the strength of transcription factor binding?'" Fordyce said. "We saw a surprisingly large effect. Varying the STR sequence around a motif can have up to a 70-fold impact on the binding."

To discover how the DNA and transcription factors interacted, Horton made hundreds of mutated transcription factors. He saw that changes to the transcription factor's DNA binding domain affected whether it recognized the motif and the STRs. The researchers concluded that the transcription factors directly interact with the repetitive genetic code, attaching to it and the motif with the DNA binding domain. Models to help understand polygenic diseases

The large number —over 6,000—of experiments the team ran made it possible to develop a model of the rules governing transcription-factor binding. Their findings could even help researchers understand and model interactions between other transcription factors and noncoding regions of DNA that regulate gene expression.

"We set out to study short tandem repeats. But the models we developed apply broadly to the entire regulatory landscape," said Horton, now a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. "It helps us better understand how transcription factors bind to regulatory DNA, even when short tandem repeats aren't involved."

Models of how noncoding regulatory regions impact transcription factor binding can help researchers understand the role of these sequences in polygenic diseases. "It's been known for some time that short tandem repeats are associated with increased or decreased risk of certain diseases," Horton said.

"We hypothesize that changes in the short tandem repeats between individuals lead to different amounts of transcription factor binding, which leads to changes in gene expression, which might be linked to these diseases."

Through the years, genome-wide association studies have linked changes in STRs to various diseases. "But it wasn't clear what to do with that information," Horton said. "Our models can suggest experiments to understand how those short tandem repeats affect progression or risk of the disease."

3) We carry DNA from extinct cousins like Neanderthals. Science is now revealing their genetic legacy : by LAURA UNGAR and MADDIE BURAKOFF

Neanderthals live on within us. These ancient human cousins, and others called Denisovans, once lived alongside our early Homo sapiens ancestors. They mingled and had children. So some of who they were never went away—it's in our genes. And science is starting to reveal just how much that shapes us.

Using the new and rapidly improving ability to piece together fragments of ancient DNA, scientists are finding that traits inherited from our ancient cousins are still with us now, affecting our fertility, our immune systems, even how our bodies handled the COVID-19 virus.

"We're now carrying the genetic legacies and learning about what that means for our bodies and our health," said Mary Prendergast, a Rice University archeologist.

In the past few months alone, researchers have linked Neanderthal DNA to a serious hand disease, the shape of people's noses and various other human traits. They even inserted a gene carried by Neanderthals and Denisovans into mice to investigate its effects on biology, and found it gave them larger heads and an extra rib.

Much of the human journey remains a mystery. But Dr. Hugo Zeberg of the Karolinska Insitute in Sweden said new technologies, research and collaborations are helping scientists begin to answer the basic but cosmic questions: "Who are we? Where did we come from?"

And the answers point to a profound reality: We have far more in common with our extinct cousins than we ever thought.

NEANDERTHALS WITHIN US

Until recently, the genetic legacy from ancient humans was invisible because scientists were limited to what they could glean from the shape and size of bones. But there has been a steady stream of discoveries from ancient DNA, an area of study pioneered by Nobel Prize winner Svante Paabo who first pieced together a Neanderthal genome.

Advances in finding and interpreting ancient DNA have allowed them to see things like genetic changes over time to better adapt to environments or through random chance.

It's even possible to figure out how much genetic material people from different regions carry from the ancient relatives our predecessors encountered.

Research shows some African populations have almost no Neanderthal DNA, while those from European or Asian backgrounds have 1% to 2%. Denisovan DNA is barely detectable in most parts of the world but makes up 4% to 6% of the DNA of people in Melanesia, which extends from New Guinea to the Fiji Islands.

That may not sound like much, but it adds up. "Half of the Neanderthal genome is still around, in small pieces scattered around modern humans," said Zeberg, who collaborates closely with Paabo.

It's also enough to affect us in very real ways. Scientists don't yet know the full extent, but they're learning it can be both helpful and harmful.

For example, Neanderthal DNA has been linked to auto-immune diseases like Graves' disease and rheumatoid arthritis. When Homo sapiens came out of Africa, they had no immunity to diseases in Europe and Asia, but Neanderthals and Denisovans already living there did.

"By interbreeding with them, we got a quick fix to our immune systems, which was good news 50,000 years ago," said Chris Stringer, a human evolution researcher at the Natural History Museum in London. "The result today is, for some people, that our immune systems are oversensitive, and sometimes they turn on themselves."

Similarly, a gene associated with blood clotting believed to be passed down from Neanderthals in Eurasia may have been helpful in the "rough and tumble world of the Pleistocene," said Rick Potts, director of the human origins program at the Smithsonian Institution. But today it can raise the risk of stroke for older adults. "For every benefit," he said, "there are costs in evolution."

In 2020, research by Zeberg and Paabo found that a major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals. "We compared it to the Neanderthal genome and it was a perfect match," Zeberg said. "I kind of fell off my chair."

The next year, they found a set of DNA variants along a single chromosome inherited from Neanderthals had the opposite effect: protecting people from severe COVID.

The list goes on: Research has linked Neanderthal genetic variants to skin and hair color, behavioral traits, skull shape and Type 2 diabetes. One study found that people who report feeling more pain than others are likely to carry a Neanderthal pain receptor. Another found that a third of women in Europe inherited a Neanderthal receptor for the hormone progesterone, which is associated with increased fertility and fewer miscarriages.

Much less is known about our genetic legacy from Denisovans—although some research has linked genes from them to fat metabolism and better adaptation to high altitudes. Maanasa Raghavan, a human genetics expert at the University of Chicago, said a stretch of Denisovan DNA has been found in Tibetans, who continue to live and thrive in low-oxygen environments today.

Scientists have even found evidence of "ghost populations"—groups whose fossils have yet to be discovered—within modern humans' genetic code. SO WHY DID WE SURVIVE?

In the past, the tale of modern humans' survival "was always told as some success story, almost like a hero's story," in which Homo sapiens rose above the rest of the natural world and overcame the "insufficiencies" of their cousins, Potts said.

"Well, that simply is just not the correct story."

Neanderthals and Denisovans had already existed for thousands of years by the time Homo sapiens left Africa. Scientists used to think we won out because we had more complex behavior and superior technology. But recent research shows that Neanderthals talked, cooked with fire, made art objects, had sophisticated tools and hunting behavior, and even wore makeup and jewelry.

Several theories now tie our survival to our ability to travel far and wide.

"We spread all over the world, much more than these other forms did," Zeberg said.

While Neanderthals were specially adapted to cold climates, Potts said, Homo sapiens were able to disperse to all different kinds of climates after emerging in tropical Africa. "We are so adaptable, culturally adaptable, to so many places in the world," he said.

Meanwhile, Neanderthals and Denisovans faced harsh conditions in the north, like repeated ice ages and ice sheets that likely trapped them in small areas, said Eleanor Scerri, an archeologist at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology. They lived in smaller populations with a greater risk of genetic collapse.

Plus, we had nimble, efficient bodies, Prendergast said. It takes a lot more calories to feed stocky Neanderthals than comparatively skinny Homo sapiens, so Neanderthals had more trouble getting by, and moving around, especially when food got scarce.

Janet Young, curator of physical anthropology at the Canadian Museum of History, pointed to another intriguing hypothesis—which anthropologist Pat Shipman shared in one of her books –- that dogs played a big part in our survival. Researchers found the skulls of domesticated dogs in Homo sapiens sites much further back in time than anyone had found before. Scientists believe dogs made hunting easier.

By around 30,000 years ago, all the other kinds of hominins on Earth had died off, leaving Homo sapiens as the last humans standing.

'INTERACTION AND MIXTURE'

Still, every new scientific revelation points to how much we owe our ancient cousins.

Human evolution was not about "survival of the fittest and extinction," said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It's about "interaction and mixture."

Researchers expect to learn more as science continues to advance, allowing them to extract information from ever-tinier traces of ancient lives. Even when fossils aren't available, scientists today can capture DNA from soil and sediment where archaic humans once lived.

And there are less-explored places in the world where they hope to learn more. Zeberg said "biobanks" that collect biological samples will likely be established in more countries.

As they delve deeper into humanity's genetic legacy, scientists expect to find even more evidence of how much we mixed with our ancient cousins and all they left us.

"Perhaps," Zeberg said, "we should not see them as so different."

Correction note: This story was first published on Sept. 25, 2023. It was updated on Sept. 27, 2023 to remove the estimated number of Neanderthals that ever lived, which was erroneously reported to be 100,000. Most scientists believe it was far more than 100,000.

4) Nearly all mammals will go extinct in 250 million years as Earth warms: By Michael Le Page:

If humans still exist millions of years from now, they will face inhospitably warm conditions on a supercontinent centred at the equator. Most land mammals won't be able to survive Almost all land mammals on Earth will die out in 250 million years, according to computer modelling of how the planet’s continents and climate will change in the very long term.

If anything resembling the human species still exists on Earth at this time, they could survive with the help of technology, says Alexander Farnsworth at the University of Bristol, UK, but the planet would be much more inhospitable. “You’d hope that we’d be a space-faring civilisation by that point,” he says.

This future doom is nothing to do with the human-driven climate change we are facing today. Instead, it is an extrapolation of two very long-term trends. The first is that the sun is gradually getting hotter. In 250 million years, the amount of heat reaching Earth’s surface will be around 2.5 per cent higher. Secondly, all the continents will probably come together to form a single large one centred on the equator, called Pangaea Ultima – a reference to the similar supercontinent that existed during the time of the dinosaurs. The temperatures in the interior of such a large land mass will be extreme, and there will probably be no land left near the poles to provide cool refuges.

As a result of these two trends, carbon dioxide levels in the air are likely to climb. On scales of millions of years, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere depends on the balance between the emissions of the gas from volcanoes and its removal by chemical reactions with newly exposed rocks. In the dry interior of the supercontinent, less CO2 will react with rocks. “It’s a triple whammy,” says Farnsworth.

He and his colleagues used a geochemical model to calculate what future CO2 levels might be like when Pangaea Ultima forms, and then plugged these values into a climate model. They found that in almost all scenarios, conditions in the vast majority of the supercontinent would exceed the upper limits of survivability for mammals, such as a wet bulb temperature of 35°C  – a value that reflects conditions in which we can no longer cool naturally to prevent dangerous overheating, for example by sweating.

“We do have this upper limit with our core body temperatures that we’re not very easily able to increase,” says Farnsworth. During warm periods in Earth’s past land mammals adapted by, for instance, evolving smaller bodies that can lose heat more easily, but the upper limit didn’t change.

It is possible some land mammals might cling on around the edges of Pangaea Ultima, but the extreme weather in these places would make life very tough, says Farnsworth. “You might still get some which can still survive this, but whether they come out as the dominant species again is a very open question.”

Birds would have a better chance, he says. Many already migrate long distances and their higher body temperatures of around 41°C means their upper limit is higher. In fact, it was recently found that the body temperature of red-billed quelea can get as high as 48°C without any apparent ill effects. As birds are descended from dinosaurs, it is possible dinosaurs will once again take over the world – or perhaps it will be too hot even for them. “Maybe reptiles might come back again,” says Farnsworth.

“I think the modelling is reasonable and the results look plausible,” says Ravi Kopparapu at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, who studies the habitability of exoplanets. “Perhaps some mammals could adapt, but it would be really detrimental to many.”

Any life on Earth that survives even longer term – beyond the break-up of Pangaea Ultima – will eventually face much bigger challenges. According to one study, the warming of the sun could result in the loss of oxygen from the atmosphere in around a billion years from now, leaving only microbes that don’t depend on it.

In a few billion years, the increase in the sun’s output will trigger a runaway greenhouse effect, as happened on Venus. The final end will come when our planet is destroyed – the sun will turn into a red giant and Earth will fall into it. Of course, there are always other planets, but eventually even the universe may end.

5) ‘Mind-boggling’ sea creature spotted off Japan has finally been identified: BYERIK STOKSTAD:

Tiny, flittering swimmer wasn’t a worm, a mollusk, or a crustacean. What was it?

When Ryo Minemizu, a professional underwater photographer, posted photos of an elegant ladybug-size flittering creature off Okinawa, Japan, in 2018, biologists were baffled. It wasn’t a worm, a mollusk, or a crustacean. What was it? No one knew.

One of those intrigued was Igor Adameyko, a developmental neurobiologist at the Medical University of Vienna. (A fellow enthusiast of marine biology, he spotted the pictures on Instagram, where he has his own account dedicated to marine zooplankton.) Adameyko asked Minemizu whether he had taken a specimen, and, if so, whether he might share it. Not long after, a package arrived at the Karolinska Institute, where Adameyko also works.

Inside was a vial containing the specimen, no bigger than a pea. As Adameyko carefully dissected it, he noticed billowy outer parts, which Minemizu’s footage captured propelling the strange creature, attached to the flat side of a brown hemisphere. They were like “snake hair on the Gorgon’s head,” Adameyko and colleagues report today in Current Biology. At first, Adameyko thought they were appendages, but looking closer, he noticed it wasn’t a single creature, but many individual organisms, each just a few millimeters long. There were 20 of these swimmers—dubbed “sailors” by Adameyko—in total.

The hemisphere they were all attached to was even weirder. It was essentially a glob of hundreds of sperm-shaped organisms with heads about the size of a pencil point and tails much thinner than a human hair. The tails were tangled together in a center knot, with heads all pointed outward. There are fewer passengers at the top, where the sailors hold on, which may have flattened that side of the spherical mass.

Still, the bizarre conglomerate creature’s identity eluded Adameyko. He consulted other experts, but no one could solve the mystery behind these tiny creatures. It was “absolutely mind boggling,” Adameyko recalls. With his training in neuroimmunology, Adameyko tried staining the organisms with various antibodies to better reveal their internal anatomy. This helped, some. The pattern of cells in the nervous system suggested the animals belong to a vast group called the lophotrochozoans, which includes mollusks, corallike animals called bryozoans, brachiopods, and flatworms. At this stage, co-authors Darya Krupenko and Aleksei Miroliubov, invertebrate zoologists at Saint Petersburg University, suspected this enigmatic conglomerate might be a parasite.

Next, the team turned to DNA. This was a challenge because the specimen had been preserved for too long in formalin, which destroys genetic material. But using techniques developed to recover badly degraded ancient DNA, the scientists at last put a family name to this mystery swimmer: It belonged to a group of parasitic flatworms called digenean flukes.

Digenean flukes are part of a large and diverse group of parasites known as trematodes. Adults live inside a vertebrate host—fish, cats, or people, for example—and then release eggs into the environment. Some flukes have evolved a behavior in which the larvae join into shapes that mimic small organisms. In doing so, they entice a fish to eat the larvae, so they can continue their life cycle inside the host. What’s interesting about this new digenean parasite is that the larvae cooperate using two different forms. The DNA confirmed that both the sailors and tiny passengers inside the hemisphere belong to the same species. These passengers, it seems, act as the infectious agents, waiting to infiltrate the gills or intestines of a fish that swallows them. The sailors, meanwhile, do the hard work of moving the blob through the water—but they sacrifice their own opportunities to reproduce.

This phenomenon, in which one member of a species forgoes its own chance to reproduce so that another can, is called kin selection. And this, says Robert Poulin, a parasitologist at the University of Otago who was not involved, is “a really cool case of kin selection pushed to the extreme.”

Scientists have studied the phenomenon in other kinds of trematode parasites while they are living inside their hosts. The “remarkable” new study shows that this division of labor happens in free-living larval forms as well, says Ryan Hechinger, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “This finding highlights that trematodes are unique among all animal life.”

The discovery also hints that the wider world of digenean trematodes may be even stranger than thought. More than 20,000 species have been discovered as adult worms living inside vertebrates, but their juvenile larval forms are unknown, Poulin says. “Some of the most fascinating aspects of these parasites’ biology, and some of their most striking adaptations, may be found in their yet-to-be-discovered juvenile stages.”

For the strange Medusa’s head in his lab, Adameyko would like to learn more about how its component larvae decide to cooperate and how they control the motion of the colony. The sailors have eye spots that can detect light, which may play a role. He hopes to collaborate with scientists in Okinawa to find more specimens. “These are our night science projects, because we want to have fun in the lab,” he says. “The idea is that there are no limits. And if you want to do something cool, you can.”

6) Scientists reveal half-billion-year-old ‘last supper’ : BYRODRIGO PÉREZ ORTEGA:

New analysis of trilobite fossil gives clues about ancient creature’s feeding behavior

About 465 million years ago, an armored critter resembling a sea roach died near what is now Prague. The final meal of this animal—a trilobite—still sat in its guts as sediment buried its body in the sea floor of an ancient Paleozoic sea. There, it remained entombed for ages. Now, scientific sleuths have deduced the contents of this meal, providing the first direct evidence of the diet and lifestyle of this primal and iconic group of arthropods.

A private collector first discovered the trilobite fossil more than a century ago—or at least the small sphere of ancient sediment that contained it. Such balls, called siliceous nodules or “Rokycany Balls,” are weathered out of the shales of the Šárka Formation. The rock deposit—famed for its fossils—is all that remains of an ancient sea that once covered the Prague Basin in the Czech Republic. The nodules formed when sediment hardened very quickly around animals at very shallow depths. The process, similar to how amber trapped animals millions of years ago, froze organisms in time, keeping their 3D structure nearly intact.

When the nodule was cracked open, an exquisite, fossilized specimen of the trilobite Bohemolichas incola emerged. The fossil eventually made its way to the Dr.  Bohuslav Horák Museum, where Petr Kraft—now a paleontologist at Charles University—saw it for the first time as a little boy. “His whole life, he kept coming back to this specimen,” says Valéria Vaškaninová, also a paleontologist at Charles University. Decades later, something unusual caught both researchers’ eyes: tiny, visible shells in the middle of the fossil, right where the exoskeleton was a bit broken. The duo decided to study the 3-centimeter object with a medical imaging technique known as synchrotron microtomography, which is a bit like a CT scan, but with much better resolution.

That’s when Kraft and Vaškaninová spotted the final meal, revealed by tiny, fossilized shells of the animals the trilobite munched on. Vaškaninová then spent about 1.5 years analyzing the scan.

The meal, she discovered, consisted of ostracods, tiny crustaceans with vaulting shells. The shells were preserved so well that she and colleagues could figure out that some of them belonged to a now-extinct species, Conchoprimitia osekensis, a tiny animal that was abundant in the region at that time. The gut also held a conical conch belonging to a hyolith, a small, now-extinct bottom dweller; the remains of an extinct echinoderm, an animal related today’s starfish and sea urchins; and fragments of bivalves like today’s clams and oysters, the researchers report today in Nature. From the way the shells were preserved, the scientists can tell this specimen was a bottom dweller and most probably a scavenger. Predators are usually selective and eat mainly the soft parts of prey, so the fact that the guts were filled with a variety of shell remains means “they were not picky,” Vaškaninová says. “They were just like vacuum cleaners, eating everything.”

It’s very unusual for scientists to find traces of soft organs, like the guts, in fossilized animals, notes paleobiologist Melanie Hopkins of the American Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the study. “But to have remains that are more direct evidence of what the organism was actually consuming … that’s rarer, still.”

Scientists have debated whether trilobites were mostly predators or scavengers, Hopkins says. The new evidence, she says, tips scales toward them being scavengers. “That’s where I would put my money today.”

The scientists also found that karma caught up with the trilobite: Fossilized tunnel structures surrounding the animal suggest other scavengers most likely attempted to eat its dead body. The researchers found most of these tunnels in the head area, but not many around the guts, indicating the dead trilobite’s digestive system may still have had some enzymatic activity that made it noxious to scavengers.

Although the guts themselves were not preserved in the fossil, their contents reveal important information about the physiology of the trilobite. The shells from its final meal are made of calcium carbonate, which dissolves in acidic conditions, so the researchers think the animal’s gut had a neutral or alkaline pH. And because the shells left an imprint of the shape of the digestive tract, the researchers could tell the animal had two stomachs.

These two features likely evolved very early in arthropod evolution, because they are also found in other living arthropods—a group that includes crustaceans like lobsters and shrimp, as well as chelicerates like horseshoe crabs, sea spiders, and arachnids.

Paleontologists aren’t sure how exactly trilobites relate to either chelicerates or crustaceans, but most scientists consider them closely related to both, Vaškaninová says. The new findings strengthen these suspicions. “And now with this knowledge, we can say, ‘Yes, this is the right direction.’”

1) India’s external debt rises to $629.1 billion at end-June 2023: RBI:

The external debt to GDP ratio declined to 18.6% at end-June 2023 from 18.8% at end-March 2023, the RBI said. India’s external debt at end-June 2023 was placed at $629.1 billion, recording an increase of $4.7 billion over its level at end-March 2023 according to data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on September 28.

The external debt to GDP ratio declined to 18.6% at end-June 2023 from 18.8% at end-March 2023, the RBI said.

India's external debt-service ratio at 5.3% within comfort zone, says Finance Minister

Valuation effect due to the appreciation of the U.S. dollar vis-à-vis the major currencies such as yen and SDR2 amounted to $3.1 billion. Excluding the valuation effect, external debt would have increased by $7.8 billion instead of $4.7 billion at end-June 2023 over end-March 2023.

At end-June 2023, long-term debt (with original maturity of above one year) was placed at $505.5 billion, recording an increase of $9.6 billion over its level at end-March 2023.

Balance of Payments

Meanwhile, India’s current account deficit (CAD) narrowed to $9.2 billion (1.1% of GDP) in Q1:2023-24 from $17.9 billion (2.1% of GDP) in Q1:2022-23 but it was higher than $1.3 billion (0.2% of GDP) in the preceding quarter, according to the RBI’s data.

The widening of CAD on a quarter-on-quarter basis was primarily on account of a higher trade deficit coupled with a lower surplus in net services and decline in private transfer receipts.

Net services receipts decreased sequentially, primarily due to a decline in exports of computer, travel and business services, though remained higher on a year-on- year (y-o-y) basis.

Net outgo on the income account, primarily reflecting payments of investment income, declined to $10.6 billion in Q1:2023-24 from $12.6 billion in Q4:2022-23, though higher than a year ago.

In the financial account, net foreign direct investment decreased to $5.1 billion from $13.4 billion a year ago. International Investment Position

Net claims of non-residents on India increased by $12.1 billion during Q1:2023-24 and stood at $379.7 billion as at end-June 2023.

The rise in net claims of non-residents during the quarter was on account of higher rise in foreign-owned financial assets in India ($36.2 billion) when compared with Indian residents’ overseas financial assets ($24.1 billion) according to data released by the RBI.

Increase in reserve assets ($16.6 billion) was the largest contributor to the rise in Indian residents’ foreign assets during April-June 2023, followed by direct investment, loans and trade credit.Inward portfolio investment ($15.0 billion) and foreign direct investment ($8.9 billion) together accounted for two thirds of the rise in foreign liabilities of Indian residents.

2) Nijjar killing: What did Canada's Trudeau say before S Jaishankar-Antony Blinken meeting in US?:

Neither S Jaishankar nor Antony Blinken spoke on Hardeep Singh killing row that has disrupted Canada-India ties in very brief comments to reporters.

Hours before S Jaishankar and US secretary of state Antony Blinken met in Washington DC amid tensions between New Delhi and Ottawa over the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had been told that Blinken would address the matter and encourage his Indian counterpart to cooperate with an investigation into the June 28 incident.

The Americans have been with us in speaking to the Indian government about how important it is that they be involved in following up on the credible allegations that agents of the Indian government killed a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil,” Trudeau told reporters in Montreal on Thursday.

“This is something all democratic countries, all countries that respect the rule, need to take seriously and we are moving forward in a thoughtful, responsible way anchored in the rule of law with all partners, including in our approach with the government of India,” the Canadian PM said. On ties with India, Trudeau said Canada was still committed to building a closer relationship, despite “credible allegations” of the Indian government’s involvement in the killing of the Khalistani terrorist, Canada-based National Post reported.

Pointing to the increasing influence of India worldwide, Trudeau said it is "extremely important" that Canada and its allies continue to engage with India.

“India is a growing economic power and important geopolitical player. And as we presented with our Indo-Pacific strategy, just last year, we are very serious about building closer ties with India,” he told reporters.

“At the same time, obviously, as a rule of law country, we need to emphasise that India needs to work with Canada to ensure that we get the full facts of this matter,” National Post quoted Trudeau as saying.

Trudeau's stunning allegations

On September 18, Trudeau told the Canadian House of Commons that Canadian security agencies had been actively pursuing “credible allegations of a potential link” between agents of the government of India and the killing of Nijjar. Trudeau also claimed that he had brought those concerns directly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the G20 Summit and that India’s top intelligence and security officials were informed of Canada’s “deep concerns", National Post reported.

Trudeau then urged the Indian government to cooperate with Canada “to get to the bottom of this matter.”

However, India has outrightly rejected the allegations, calling them "absurd" and “motivated”.

India has suspended its visa services in Canada, following Trudeau's allegations of Indian involvement in the killing. Amid strained ties, India issued an advisory for its citizens and those who are travelling to Canada to exercise “utmost caution in view of growing anti-India activities and politically-condoned hate crimes and criminal violence" in the country.

Neither Jaishankar nor Blinken spoke to the controversy that has disrupted Canada-India relations in very brief comments to reporters, but a US official said the topic was raised, news agency AP reported. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks, said Blinken encouraged India to cooperate with the Canadian probe.

"Great to meet my friend US Secretary of State @SecBlinken at State Department today. A wide ranging discussion, following up on PM @narendramodi’s June visit. Also exchanged notes on global developments. Laid the groundwork of our 2 2 meeting very soon," Jaishankar posted on X on Friday.

After the meeting, Miller said in a statement that Blinken and Jaishankar had “discussed a full range of issues, including key outcomes of India’s G20 presidency, and the creation of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor and its potential to generate transparent, sustainable, and high-standard infrastructure investments.” They also covered “the continued importance of cooperation ahead of the upcoming 2 2 Dialogue, in particular in the areas of defence, space, and clean energy,” Miller said. The G20 refers to the Group of 20 summit that was recently held in New Delhi and was attended by President Joe Biden. The “2 2” dialogue is a format for meetings between the U.S. and Indian foreign and defence ministers.

3) Manipur simmers as protests over students’ killings heat up:

At least 25 students were injured in Imphal on Wednesday as large crowds clashed with police in Manipur during protests over the killing of a 20-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl who went missing two months ago. At least 25 students were injured in Imphal on Wednesday as large crowds clashed with police in Manipur during protests over the killing of a 20-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl who went missing two months ago, two days after photographs of their apparently lifeless bodies went viral on social media.

The developments came on a day the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act or Afspa was extended for another six months in the state, barring 19 police stations in the Imphal valley. A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team, led by special director Ajay Bhatnagar, reached Imphal on Wednesday afternoon to investigate the case even as chief minister N Biren Singh appealed for calm. “This is a sad incident and it is highly condemnable that what the Kuki militants have done is the highest level of crime...I want to promise to the people of Manipur that we will make sure the culprit is given maximum punishment,” Singh said.

The 20-year-old man and the 17-year-old girl – both residents of Imphal – were last seen together on July 6. Manipur Police said an initial probe revealed that the missing duo may have got trapped in an area dominated by the Kuki community while fleeing, after which they were allegedly abducted and murdered. The probe also revealed that a day after the two went missing, a new SIM card was inserted in the man’s mobile phone that was activated in Lamdan, a Kuki-dominated area, on July 7, a police officer said, asking not to be named.

On September 25, two days after the state government restored internet services, photos of the couple surfaced on social media. One showed them sitting on the ground in what appears to be a forest with two armed men in the background, and another showed them apparently lying dead on the ground. The man’s head appeared to be missing in the photograph and the woman’s face is not visible. The two are wearing the same clothes as seen in the first photograph. Their faces are not visible in the second photograph. HT could not independently verify the authenticity of the photographs.

Hours after the photos went viral on social media and stoked unrest, the state government suspended mobile internet and data services through VPN for five days on Tuesday evening.On Wednesday, hundreds of students spilled out on to the streets of Imphal, protesting against the killing. Several were injured in tear-gas shelling and lathi charge by police and Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel at Moirangkhom in Imphal West. Officials in Imphal said protesters also pelted stones. Similar protests were witnessed in other areas such as Thangmeiband and Kanglapat.

Protests rocked Imphal East, Imphal West, Bishnupur, Thoubal and Kakching, all located in the Meitei-dominated Imphal Valley.

“I am very saddened by the injuries suffered by numerous students and some others who were expressing their shock, anger, helplessness against the brutal killing of their fellow students...I appeal to all students to trust the government and carry on with their studies, despite all odds, so that an academic year is not lost,” Manipur education minister T Basanta Kumar Singh said. A team of 20 representatives of protesting students met Singh later and submitted a memorandum of demands, including the arrests of those responsible for the killings within 30 days and the lifting of the ban on mobile internet. A mob burnt down an office of the Bharatiya Janata Party at Khongjam in Thoubal district but district officials said no one was injured.

“Yesterday, Union home minister Amit Shahji directly called me and told me that he is sending a CBI team to investigate the case,” Singh said, “This case has to be dealt with seriously and those culprits have to be booked as per law of the land and no one will be spared.”

Authorities also tightened the curfew in Imphal East and Imphal West districts, rolling back an earlier order relaxing prohibitory orders. “In supersession of earlier order...it is hereby informed to the general public that curfew relaxation in respect of Imphal East district from 5 am to 9 pm...is hereby cancelled with immediate effect,” said the order issued by K Diana Devi, district magistrate of Imphal East district. A similar order issued by N Johnson Meetei, additional district magistrate of Imphal West, said the relaxation of curfew was cancelled “due to developing law and order condition in the district and to prevent untoward incidents and loss of life and property”. The Manipur government also decided to maintain status quo on the existing disturbed area status and extended Afspa for another six months with effect from October 1. “The state government is of the opinion after analysing the prevailing law and order situation in the state that it is not expedient to have detailed assessment on the ground as sister security agencies are preoccupied in maintenance of law and order,” the notification issued by home commissioner T Ranjit Singh read.

The police station areas outside the purview of the stringent law are Imphal, Lamphel, City, Singjamei, Sekmai, Lamsang, Patsoi, Wangoi, Porompat, Heingang, Lamlai, Iribung, Leimakhong, Thoubal, Bishnupur, Nambol, Moirang, Kakchin and Jirbam – all dominated by the majority Meitei community. This means the Army and Assam Rifles cannot operate in these areas without the consent of the state police. Clashes in Manipur first broke out on May 3 in Churachandpur town after tribal groups called for protests against a proposed tweak to the state’s reservation matrix, granting Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the Meitei community.

At least 175 people have died and another 50,000 displaced.

“It is unfortunate. Be it Meitei or Kuki-Zo, both sides have suffered high casualties. Violence should be condemned,” said Ginza Vualzong, spokesperson of the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum, an umbrella body of tribal groups. “The government should announce President’s rule to save lives in Manipur.”

3) Amit Mitra raises alarm over wilful defaults in scheduled commercial banks:

My question is, who will pay for the wilful defaulters? Some have run away and they will never pay. Will it be the middle class people whose deposits will be used for writing off loans with a small recovery?'

Amit Mitra, principal chief adviser to Bengal chief minister and the state finance department, on Thursday expressed concern about recovery prospects from wilful defaults in scheduled commercial banks in India, which have ballooned to Rs 87,295 crore for the top 50 defaulters as of March 31.

While citing the RBI’s draft master direction on treatment of wilful defaulters announced last week, Mitra said there is a need for more clarity on how the default amount will be recovered. The RBI in its draft master direction on September 21 said that lenders will have to examine the wilful default aspect in all accounts with an outstanding amount of Rs 25 lakh and above and complete the process of declaring the borrower as a wilful defaulter within six months of the accounts being classified as a non-performing asset.

“Total wilful default by top 50 wilful defaulters in scheduled commercial banks was Rs 87,295 crore as of March 31. Total aggregate amount of wilful default is Rs 3.46 lakh crore up to December 2022. My question is, who will pay for the wilful defaulters? Some have run away and they will never pay. Will it be the middle class people whose deposits will be used for writing off loans with a small recovery?” Mitra said at banking colloquium organised by the CII. The new RBI circular allows wilful defaulters and companies involved in fraud to go for a compromise settlement and technical write-offs. What happens when you start negotiating? Who pays for the haircut? Latest RBI circular says that banks should declare wilful default within six months of NPA. It is a good notification. But the question is what happens after that,” he said.

State Bank of India Writes Off Rs1.45 Lakh Crore Bad Loans of Big Defaulters since FY14; Refuses To Share Names

The RBI master direction has broadly outlined certain measures that the banks can take against wilful defaulters. These include publishing photographs of wilful defaulters, debarment from institutional finance, ineligibility for restructuring, initiation of legal action among others.

Mitra also cited data disclosed by the government in Parliament in August, which showed that the write-offs have increase from Rs 1.75 lakh crore in 2021-22 to Rs 2.09 lakh crore in 2022-23. He said that there has been a write-off of Rs 14.56 lakh crores over last 9 years.

“Out of this Rs 14.56 lakh crore, how much has been recovered? Rs 2.04 lakh crores. That means Rs 12.5 lakh crores are hanging as write-offs which will never be recovered. If not recovered, who would pay for it? Will it come out of our deposits?” Mitra said.

“Government cant say we have nothing to do with this and this is all RBI,” the former finance minister of the state said.

Principal chief advisor to West Bengal chief minister Amit Mitra said on Thursday that massive write-offs in the last nine years and low recovery is presently ailing the banking sector of the country.

Speaking at a CII banking session here, Mitra said that in the last nine years from 2014-2023, Rs 14.56 lakh crore has been written off from the books of the banks. During 2021-22, the written-off amount was Rs 1.75 lakh crore, and subsequently Rs 2.09 lakh crore in the succeeding fiscal.

Mitra, also the former finance minister of the West Bengal government, said that union minister of state for finance Bhagwat Karad had informed Parliament that out of the total written-off amount of Rs 14.56 lakh crore, Rs 7.40 lakh crore are for large industry and services segments.He said, however, the recovery had been low to the tune of Rs 2.04 lakh crore out of Rs 14.56 lakh crore, which means more than Rs 12 lakh crore is yet to be recovered.

According to him, the amount of write-offs in the preceding last nine years (2005-2014) was Rs 2.20 lakh crore. "Even if this write-off amount of Rs 2.20 lakh crore is indexed to inflation, the increase in subsequent write-offs is very large", he said.

Regarding wilful defaulters, he said that the top 50 in this list owes Rs 87,295 crore to scheduled banks as on March 31, 2023. Describing wilful defaulters as those people not willing to pay despite having the capacity to pay, Mitra said it is needed to find out why these defaults and write-offs were happening.

"Are the bankers at fault or the present method of assessment? For whose fault is this happening", he asked. Referring to West Bengal, he said that the total credit deployed in the state in 2022-23 was Rs 4.68 lakh crore. Only for the MSME sector, the total credit deployed was Rs 1.28 lakh crore during 2022-23.

Mitra said 37 jobs are created for every Rs one crore invested in the MSME sector. "The MSME sector has a massive impact on GDP growth through the multiplier effect. Rs 1.28 lakh crore will translate into Rs 4 lakh crore additional GDP for West Bengal. In the first five months of the current financial year, the MSME sector has received credit worth Rs 87,029 crore," he added.

4) How will BJP-JD(S) alliance impact Karnataka?:

The JD (S)’s decision to join the NDA comes just about six months before the 2024 general elections. On Friday, former Karnataka chief minister and Janata Dal (Secular) leader H D Kumaraswamy announced that his party is now part of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The JD (S)’s decision to join the NDA comes just about six months before the 2024 general elections and after the Congress’s victory in the Karnataka assembly elections. What are the likely political implications of the BJP-JD (S) alliance in Karnataka? Here are three charts which try to answer this question.

How does it change the caste-calculus in Karnataka?

The BJP and JD (S) are parties with a historic core-support base among Lingayats and Vokkaligas respectively. Lingayats and Vokkaligas are the two numerically dominant social groups in the state. If one looks at social-group wise vote share projections by Axis My India Exit poll for Karnataka – they got the vote shares and seat shares right – even in the 2023 assembly elections, the BJP and JD (S) had a big lead vis-a-vis the Congress among these two social groups and their coming together will further consolidate this advantage. However, the Congress had a massive advantage among Kurubas, Muslims and Dalits and was almost neck and neck with even the combined vote share of BJP and JD (S) among Scheduled Tribe (ST) voters.

How does it impact sub-regional politics in the state?

The JD (S) has mainly been a party in the southern part of Karnataka which is exactly the area where it has a long-standing rivalry with the Congress. There was not much of a BJP presence in the region until the 2018 Karnataka assembly elections. However, this changed in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when the Congress and the JD (S) fought in an alliance and the BJP won 25 out of the 28 Lok Sabha constituencies. The 2023 assembly elections only added to the JD(S)’s problems as their vote share even in the regional stronghold saw a two-way erosion -- to both the BJP and the Congress. Seen in this backdrop, the JD(S)’s decision to align with the BJP seems like a survival strategy.

Will it bring electoral gains for the BJP-JD(S) alliance?

Simple arithmetic suggests that it will. If one were to add the vote shares of BJP and JD (S) across all 224 assembly constituencies (ACs) in the 2023 Karnataka elections, the Congress’s tally of 135 would fall to 90. However, it is important to underline the fact that political alliances seldom result in a simple addition of votes of alliance partners. The Congress and the JD(S) learnt this the hard way in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when they could win only 47 out of the 224 AC segments whereas a simple addition of 2018 vote shares would have given them 152 ACs.

5) Unanimous decision’: AIADMK pulls out of BJP-led National Democratic Alliance:

AIADMK leader K P Munuswamy said the party will lead an alliance with other parties to face the 2024 Lok Sabha elections Tamil Nadu’s main opposition, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) on Monday exited the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and decided to contest next year’s Lok Sabha elections with other state specific allies.

A resolution to this effect was passed at the meeting led by AIADMK’s general secretary Edappadi Palaniswami (EPS) with his party’s MPs, MLAs, district secretaries and top leadership in Chennai on Monday evening.

To respect the sentiments of our two-crore cadre, from today the AIADMK is leaving the BJP and the NDA,” AIADMK’s deputy general secretary K P Munuswamy said, reading out the resolution after the meeting amidst celebrations and bursting of crackers at the party headquarters in Chennai.

The relation between the AIADMK and the BJP had been frosty for some time with immediate provocation being the BJP’s Tamil Nadu state present K Annamalai’s alleged comments on C N Annadurai, one of the pillars of the Dravidian movement after whom the AIADMK is named, the party said. The AIADMK alleged that the BJP leadership in the state has been insulting them for the past one year. Annamalai, who tried some damage control a few days ago by saying that all is fine between the allies, on Monday refused to speak on the AIADMK’s major decision. “The BJP national leadership will speak on AIADMK’s decision,” Annamalai told reporters in Coimbatore. “I will speak about it later.”

The AIADMK decision came after senior party leaders met BJP national president J P Nadda in Delhi over the weekend and were unable to find resolution of their grievances, party leaders said.

‘For the past one year, the BJP’s state unit has been insulting Annadurai, EPS and late J Jayalalithaa, criticised their ideology and also belittled the mega conference held in Madurai in August after courts upheld EPS’ elevation in the party and O Panneerselvam’s ouster,” Munuswamy said. “The AIADMK will lead an alliance to face the 2024 elections with other allies. This is a unanimous decision. Even one person did not oppose this resolution,” he added. The AIADMK and the BJP came together ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with the former leading the NDA alliance in Tamil Nadu with a coalition of parties- Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) and smaller parties such as the Puthiya Tamizhagam (PT) and Puthiya Needhi Katchi. The DMDK exited the NDA ahead of the 2021 assembly elections unhappy over seat allocation.

The decision has been seen as a jolt for the BJP as the national party was banking on the strength of the AIADMK in the southern state where unlike other parts of the country, the saffron party has not yet been able to find a foothold.

BJP leaders said that their strategy was to contest 2024 Lok Sabha polls together while continuing to build their party to be able to contest the 2026 assembly elections on their own in Tamil Nadu. “In the state, obviously the AIADMK is the larger party and EPS is the strongest leader of the party. This decision will only favour the DMK. We will have to see what the central leadership decides,” said a senior state BJP leader on condition of anonymity. The BJP had also been working to get the trio of Panneerselvam, TTV Dhinakaran, and V K Sasikala expelled by EPS to come into the NDA’s fold. The BJP found a way into the state by uniting the warring factions of the AIADMK soon after J Jayalalithaa’s death in office in December 2016. Since then, the alliance has far too often been strained.

AIADMK’s internal assessment has consistently shown that being with the BJP is a baggage particularly because of alienating Tamil Nadu’s minorities. The party has also lost every election since the alliance – the 2019 parliamentary polls, 2021 assembly elections and 2022 local body elections.

The ruling DMK’s Secular Progressive Alliance has swept each of these elections and they will face 2024 polls in the INDIA bloc. The DMK and Congress in the state have consistently criticised the AIADMK of being subservient to the BJP for being afraid of facing the ire of federal agencies in alleged graft cases against EPS and his second line of leaders.

While AIADMK’s leadership remained friendly with the BJP’s central leadership including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and national party president J P Nadda, back home EPS has flexed muscle to put the saffron party’s state unit in their place.

In the recent spat too, after Annamalai quoted an anecdote from 1956 about DMK founder Annamadurai, AIADMK’s organising secretary D Jayakumar first issued a warning on September 18 and said the party has decided to call off the alliance. Despite that, on September 22, five AIADMK leaders met with Nadda in Delhi for Annamalai to be reigned in. “AIADMK was suffocating in the alliance,” a senior leader close to EPS said.

6) BJP fields 3 Union ministers in second list of candidates for Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh Polls: Among the central ministers who have been given tickets are union Minister for agriculture, Narendra Singh Tomar. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made room for three Central ministers and several MPs, including Union Minister for agriculture Narendra Singh Tomar and Prahlad Patel, minister of state for food processing, in its second list of candidates for the upcoming assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh.

Tomar will contest from Dimani and Patel from Narsinghpur, according to the list released on Monday. The decision to field senior leaders who are ministers in the union council of ministers and lawmakers was taken by the party high command to bolster the party's chances at the hustings, according to a party functionary.

Minister for state for rural development Faggan Singh Kulaste will fight the elections from Niwas, a seat reserved for STs.

MPs such as Ganesh Singh, Rakesh Singh, Riti Pathak, and national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya have also been given tickets to contest. Hoshangabad MP Uday Pratap Singh will contest from Gadarwara.

The second list includes 39 candidates of whom six are women. There are five SC seats and 10 ST seats in this lot. The BJP announced the first list with 39 names in August.

"The party high command had sounded off MPs and ministers to be ready for elections. Some of the ministers who are Rajya Sabha members have also been asked to prepare for elections," the party functionary cited above said on condition of anonymity.

Another BJP leader said the party is also hopeful that it will buck anti-incumbent and the fatigue factor against its legislators by fielding senior ministers and lawmakers. "It will also reinforce collective leadership and address the concerns of caste balance, as well now have representation from various groups.”

7) Heavy rain in Kerala, yellow alert issued in 10 districts of state:

Thunderstorms accompanied by gusty winds were likely in many places for the next two days in Kerala, the IMD said. Heavy rainfall caused waterlogging and traffic snarls in several parts of Kerala on Friday. The India Meteorological Department issued yellow alerts in 10 districts of the state including Pathanamthitta, Idukki, Ernakulam, Thrissur, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Alappuzha, Kottayam, Kannur, and Kasaragod in the wake of heavy rainfall on Thursday night. A ‘yellow alert’ indicates heavy rains between 6-11 cm.

Thunderstorms accompanied by gusty winds were likely in many places for the next two days in the state, IMD sources said. Taking to X, the weather department wrote, “From 28th to 29th Sept, Kerala received heavy to very heavy rainfall. Cherthala leads with 15 cm, followed by Vadakkancherry 12cm, Thycauttussery 12cm, Alappuhza 11cm and Vaikom 11cm. Stay informed, stay safe!”

Kerala has been witnessing heavy rain for the past few days. Photos and videos that surfaced on social media showed visuals of incessant rain in the state.

Meanwhile, other parts of the country, including Goa, too received incessant rainfall in the past 24 hours. “From 28th to 29th Sept, heavy rain poured in! Dabolim got soaked with 12 cm followed by Margao 11cm, Mormugao 10cm, Ela and Panaji 8cm each. Stay safe, everyone!” the IMD posted on X.

The Andaman & Nicobar Islands are also likely to experience substantial rainfall, thunderstorms, and lightning till Sep 30. Additionally, squally conditions with wind speeds ranging between 45-55 km/h, and gusts reaching up to 65 km/h, are expected to hit the islands. Earlier the weather department reported that a low-pressure area brewing over the Bay of Bengal was likely to cause rainfall across Gangetic West Bengal during the weekend. The Regional Meteorological Centre, Bhubaneswar issued a yellow alert for heavy rainfall at isolated places in the districts of Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Balasore, and Bhadrak on Friday.

The IMD noted that the conditions were becoming favourable for the withdrawal of Southwest Monsoon from some more parts of Northwest and adjoining Westcentral India during the next two to three days.

7) Rahul Gandhi shows 'remote control' at Chhattisgarh event, says PM Modi also has one:

PM Modi in Madhya Pradesh called Congress a party like ‘rusted iron’. Rahul Gandhi in Chhattisgarh called BJP the party with a secret remote control. As Rahul Gandhi on Monday launched Mukhyamantri Gramin Awas Nyay Yojana in poll-bound Chhattisgarh through a remote control, he said PM Narendra Modi also has a remote control, but he presses it 'secretly'. "We press the button of the remote control in the open. But the BJP presses it secretly and Adaniji gets Mumbai airport -- public sector becomes private," Rahul Gandhi said. "And when I questioned PM Modi on Adani in the Lok Sabha, I got the reply, my Lok Sabha membership got cancelled," Rahul Gandhi added. The attack comes as PM Modi addressed a rally in the poll-bound Madhya Pradesh and called the Congress a party with "rusted iron" which would push back Madhya Pradesh into the BIMARU category. Both Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh will be going to the polls in a few months.

"During its erstwhile rule, Congress had pushed MP, which has rich resources, into a BIMARU (laggard) state whereas more than 13.5 crore people came out of poverty under the BJP rule in the last five years in the country," the prime minister said. "The Congress and its allies in the Ghamandia bloc supported the Women's Reservation Bill out of compulsion and hesitation as they understood the power of nari shakti. Its passage became possible as 'Modi hai to Mumkin hai'. Modi means the guarantee of fulfilling guarantees," the PM said.

Repeating what he said in the Lok Sabha during his intervention on the women's reservation bill that there are only three OBC bureaucrats working for the government of India, Rahul Gandhi said caste census is the X-ray of Hindustan. "It will determine how many Dalits, OBCs, SC/STs are there. But the government is running away from the caste census. The Congress government will do a caste census. It is my promise," Rahul Gandhi said,

"In all Congress-ruled states, the public is at the helm. Our governments are not run by Adaniji. And all our remote controls are for the public to see," Rahul Gandhi said.

At a media enclave on Sunday, Rahul Gandhi said the Congress is certainly winning both Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and probably also Telangana. In Rajasthan, the fight would be close, Rahul Gandhi predicted.

Rahul Gandhi's another reach-out exercise. This time at Delhi's Kirti Nagar furniture market:

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi visits Kirti Nagar furniture market, interacts with carpenters and tries his hand at building furniture. In another reaching out exercise in the national capital, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday visited the famous furniture market of Kirti Nagar and interacted with the carpenters at work. During his visit, Gandhi heard the problems of the carpenters associated with their daily lives and also tried his hand at building some furniture items.

"Today I went to Asia's largest furniture market located in Kirti Nagar, Delhi and met the carpenter brothers. Apart from being hard workers, they are also amazing artists – experts at carving durability and beauty," Gandhi said in a post on X. We talked a lot, got to know a little about their skills and tried to learn a bit," the former Congress chief also said.

The Congress party also shared pictures of Rahul Gandhi's visit to the Kirti Nagar market in a social media post on X, in which he is seen trying his hand with some furniture tools.

"The Bharat Jodo Yatra is still on," the party said. This was Gandhi's third such reaching-out exercise in Delhi in the recent past. He met fruit and vegetable vendors in Azadpur Mandi in August after a video of a tearful vendor struggling with inflation went viral, and more recently spoke to the porters at the Anand Vihar railway station.

"Had met Rameshwar ji (a vegetable vendor) a few days ago. As soon as the news of this was received, some coolie brothers requested me to meet them. And as soon as I got a chance, I reached Anand Vihar Terminal in Delhi. I met them and interacted for long during which got to know their lives closely and understood their struggles," Gandhi was quoted as saying by a statement released by the party. Coolies are among the most hardworking people of India. From generation to generation, they spend their lives helping millions of travellers in their journey. That badge on the arm of many people is not just an identity, it is also a legacy they have received. There is a share of responsibility for them, but there is very little progress for themselves," Gandhi said.

8) Ujjain rape: Auto driver arrested, 3 detained, girl walked 8 km looking for help:

The police have arrested an auto driver in connection with the rape case of a minor in Madhya Pradesh's Ujjain. Three others have also been detained. Police said there were blood stains on the auto. An auto driver was arrested, while three others were detained after a 12-year-old girl was raped and found bleeding on a street in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain city. The police said they retrieved the CCTV footage of the 8 km stretch where the survivor walked while pleading for help.

According to the details, the arrested auto driver was identified as Bharat Soni. The CCTV footage shows the minor girl walking on a street, asking for help. The police said the survivor had boarded an auto at Jeevan Kheri, a CCTV video of which was also retrieved.

The police also found blood stains on the auto. A forensic examination is underway.

According to Sachin Sharma, Police Superintendent, Satna, a missing report for the minor girl was filed a day before the incident came to light.The girl met five people at different locations, police said, adding all were being questioned.One of the three others detained in the case was also an auto driver.The identity of those detained in the case was not revealed.

UJJAIN HORROR

The 12-year-old girl, who was raped and found bleeding on a street in Ujjain city, was on Wednesday operated upon by a team of specialist doctors and her condition is critical but stable, an official told news agency PTI.

The incident came to light after a video of the bleeding girl walking on the street went viral on social media.A First Information Report (FIR) was registered at Mahakal police station in connection with the rape of the minor girl and an investigation into the incident was underway.

Meanwhile, amid massive public outrage, MP Home Minister Narottam Mishra said that a special investigation team (SIT) has been formed to probe the shocking crime.

1) India vs Australia 2nd ODI Highlights: Australia crash to 99-run loss despite lower-order fightback:

 Australia were all out for 217 while chasing a revised target of 317 in 33 overs.

India vs Australia 2nd ODI Highlights: India beat Australia by 99 runs in the rain-interrupted second ODI to take an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series here on Sunday. Batting first, India amassed 399 with centuries from Shubman Gill and Shreyas Gill after being asked to bat first. Leading the team in the first two games of the three-match series, KL Rahul made 52 off 38 balls, Ishan Kishan contributed an 18-ball 31, while Suryakumar Yadav needed just 37 balls to score 72 after reaching his half-century in 24 deliveries. Set a revised target of 317 in 33 overs after the day's second rain interruption, Australia were all out for 217 in 28.2 overs.

2) India vs Australia 3rd ODI Highlights: India crash to 66-run loss:

 Australia scored 352/7 and India collapsed in the run chase after a good start.

India vs Australia 3rd ODI Highlights: Australia managed to end their run of defeats with a comprehensive 66-run victory over India. They however lost the series, with India having won the previous two ODIs. Chasing a massive 353 to win, India were restricted by Australia to 286 in 49.4 overs. India however won the three-match series 2-1. The Aussies motored to 352 for 7 after Mitchell Marsh (96), Steve Smith (74), Marnus Labuschagne (72) and David Warner (56) made impact knocks. Jasprit Bumrah took three for 81 and emerged the most successful among Indian bowlers. India made a fist of chase through captain Rohit Sharma (81) and Virat Kohli (56), but soon fizzled against the off-spin of Glenn Maxwell.

3) India Women vs Sri Lanka Women,: Asian Games 2023 final: IND W beat SL W to clinch historic Asiad cricket gold:

ND W beat SL W by 19 runs to win historic Asiad Gold. India Women successfully defended 116 to beat Sri Lanka Women by 19 runs and win a historic gold medal in cricket. Oshadi Ranasinghe kept Sri Lanka alive for the longest time in chase but her wicket has Sri Lanka with too much to get as they eventually finished on 97.8. Titas Sadhu orchestrated a dream start with the ball for India women picking up three wickets in two overs and finished with astonoshing figures of 3/6 from 4 overs. At 14/3, Sri Lanka women were lifted by a 36-run partnership between Hasini Perera and Nilakshi de Silva. Rajeshwari Gayakwad gave India a much-needed breakthrough through the wicket of Perera but the job was done done. India then tightened the screws in the last five overs, keeping their nerves and win the first ever gold medal in cricket for India.

This was after India Women endured another batting collapse and posted a total of 116/7 against Sri Lanka Women in the cricket gold medal final. From 89/1, the team lost six wickets for just 27 runs in the last five overs. While the pitch wasn't exactly a batting paradise, IND W should have aimed for a higher total. Batting was challenging on this pitch, but Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues displayed admirable resistance against the Sri Lankan spinners. They formed a solid half-century partnership, adding 73 runs for the second wicket.

After IND W captain Harmanpreet Kaur, Shafali Varma and Mandhana both found the early boundaries. But Shafali was soon out stumped. After a promising partnership, Mandhana fell just four runs short of her fifty, as Sri Lanka struck in quick succession to dismiss her and Richa Ghosh. From that point, Indai women faced a downhill slide, with the wickets of Harmanpreet, Pooja Vastrakar, Rodrigues, and Amanjot Kaur going down rapidly.

4) India win equestrian dressage gold at Asian Games:

Sudipti Hajela, Divyakriti Singh, Vipul Hriday Chheda and Anush Agarwalla became the first Indians in over four decades to win an Asian Games gold in equestrian

India's equestrian dressage team of Sudipti Hajela, Divyakriti Singh, Vipul Hriday Chheda and Anush Agarwalla ended the country's 41-year wait for an Asian Games medal in the sport.

5) Shooters take India's medal count to 32 on Day 6:

Two teenaged dreamy-eyed shooters, Palak Gulia and Esha Singh, set ablaze the shooting range by powering to a gold-silver finish in 10m air pistol event for India at the Asian Games. In one of the most trailblazing efforts seen by Indian shooters, the duo challenged each other for the top podium finish until 17-year-old Palak clinched the gold medal and Esha the silver to swell the country's tally in the sport to 17 -- six of them gold. Pakistan's Talat Kishmala settled for a bronze after giving a tough fight to Esha. This is the first major individual medal for Palak in an international competition after she came on the shooting scene just last year. She shot 242.1 in the finals for an Asian Games record. Esha, who had won the individual silver in 25m pistol on Wednesday and was part of the triumvirate that won the 10m air pistol team silver along with Palak and Divya TS earlier on Friday, settled for silver, scoring 239.7. Medals continued to rain for India in the shooting arena with the country clinching a gold in men's 50m rifle three-positions team event with a world record, while the Esha Singh-led women's 10m air pistol trio bagged a silver. The men's 50m rifle 3-positions team, comprising the young trio of Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar (591), Swapnil Kusale (591) and Akhil Sheoran (587), overcame the Chinese challenge with ease with a score of 1769 to take the top podium finish, while the hosts were a clear six points adrift with 1763 points.

6) Asian Games 2023 Day 6 Live Updates: Aishwary takes shooting medal count to 18; India in action in badminton, TT:

 India began Day 6 with Vikash Singh, Priyanka coming 5th, 6th respectively in men's, women's 20km race walk, at the ongoing Asian Games 2023 in Hangzhou on Friday. Meanwhile, the Indian shooting team, consisting of Palak, Esha Singh and Divya Thadigol, bagged silver in the 10m air pistol women's team event. Palak and Esha also bagged gold and silver respectively in the women's 10 air pistol final. Also, the Indian contingent (Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, Swapnil Suresh Kusale, Akhil Sheoran) clinched gold in the men's 50m air rifle 3P team event. Aishwary Pratap Singh clinched silver for India in the men's 50m rifle 3P event. Meanwhile tennis stars Saketh Myneni, Ramkumar Ramanathan lose in their men's doubles final, taking the silver medal. Also, Rohan Bopanna and Rutuja Bhosale won their mixed doubles semi-final.

In the 2018 Asian Games, athletics had contributed 20 medals (8 gold, 9 silver, 3 bronze) out of India's total of 70. Rachna Kumari and Tanya Chaudhary are the two Indians who will feature in the women's hammer throw final on Friday while Manpreet Kaur and Kiran Baliyan can hope for minor medals if they produce their best. A total of 48 gold medals will be at stake during seven days of competition. Hosts China have topped the athletics medal tally at every Asian Games since 1986.

Meanwhile, the Indian women's hockey team face Malaysia later in the day while world champion boxer Nikhat Zareen will face Hanan Nassar of Jordan in the women's 50kg quarterfinals.

Shooting: India clinch SILVER in 10m air pistol women's team event

Palak wins GOLD in women's 10m air pistol final

Esha Singh gets SILVER in women's 10m air pistol final

India win GOLD in 50m rifle 3P men's team

Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar bags SILVER in men's 50m rifle 3P event

Tennis: Saketh Myneni, Ramkumar Ramanathan clinch SILVER in men's doubles

Squash: India bag BRONZE in women's team event

7)  AS ON  29/9/2023 INDIA BECAME 4TH COUNTRY AFTER CHINA, KOREA AND JAPAN WITH 8 GOLD AND TOTAL 32 MEDALS:

 Charlie Chopra & The Mystery of Solang Valley (Hindi)

'Chopra and The Mystery of Solang Valley' boasts a star-studded cast featuring Wamiga Gabbi, Priyanshu Painyuli, Naseeruddin Shah, Lara Dutta, and Neena Gupta in pivotal roles, supported by Ratna Pathak Shah, Gulshan Grover, Paoli Dam, Vivaan Shah, and Imaad Shah. The series draws inspiration from Agatha Christie's renowned crime novel, ‘The Sittaford Mystery’.

Agent (Telugu)...

Premiering on SonyLiv on September 29

'Agent' follows the journey of a spy tasked with uncovering the truth about a dangerous terrorist organization, all while grappling with the haunting secrets of a mysterious past. The OTT release date for 'Agent' has seen several delays, but it is finally set to debut on SonyLiv this week. The movie features Akhil Akkineni, Mammootty, Dino Morea, Sakshi Vaidya, and Vikramieet Virk.

KING OF KOTHA

Exclusively on Disney+ Hotstar starting September 28

'King Of Kotha' centres around Kannan bhai and his gang, who wield considerable power in a crime-ridden town. However, Inspector Shahu hatches a clever plan to bring back the 'King' and challenge their dominion while seeking vengeance. Dulquer Salmaan takes the lead role, supported by Shabeer Kallarakkal, Prasanna, Gokul Suresh, Aishwarya Lekshmi, and more.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

September 27, 2023 | Netflix

The upcoming Netflix movie is an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved story about a man (Benedict Cumberbatch) who teaches himself to see without using his eyes. He uses his powers for good, winning a fortune in the world’s casinos and using the money to fight poverty.

Angshuman MBA:

September 29, 2023 | ZEE5

The MBA graduate Angshuman begins a break-up consultancy with close friend Gupi. However, he soon finds himself in love with a girl named Labonyo who believes in old-school romance. He now has to find a way to hide his profession.

Kushi:

October 1, 2023 | Telugu | Netflix

Starring Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Vijay Deverakonda, the film is about a couple who belong to different religious ideologies. The film was released in theatres on September 1, 2023.

MOVIE RELEASE :The Vaccine War:

Nana Patekar is outstanding but the film reduces itself to being a government mouthpiece parading as a medical drama. Based on the book ‘Going Viral’ by Prof Balram Bhargava, Director General – Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the film hopes to acknowledge the efforts of India’s scientific community, the unsung heroes who managed to create India's indigenous COVID-19 vaccine ‘Covaxin’ within in a span of seven months.

book of this week:

Holly : by Stephen King (Author,)

Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.

Stephen King’s Holly marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly’s gradual transformation from a shy (but also brave and ethical) recluse in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges’s partner in Finders Keepers to a full-fledged, smart, and occasionally tough private detective in The Outsider. In King’s new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries.

When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.

Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.

Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.

Stephen King:

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His first crime thriller featuring Bill Hodges, MR MERCEDES, won the Edgar Award for best novel and was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award. Both MR MERCEDES and END OF WATCH received the Goodreads Choice Award for the Best Mystery and Thriller of 2014 and 2016 respectively.

King co-wrote the bestselling novel Sleeping Beauties with his son Owen King, and many of King's books have been turned into celebrated films and television series including The Shawshank Redemption, Gerald's Game and It.

King was the recipient of America's prestigious 2014 National Medal of Arts and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for distinguished contribution to American Letters. In 2007 he also won the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He lives with his wife Tabitha King in Maine.