India Sets Guinness World Record for AI-Responsibility Pledges

1 February 2026National

Around the AI Impact Summit, India set a Guinness World Record for the most pledges received for an AI-responsibility campaign in 24 hours, with over 2.5 lakh validated pledges.

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BHASHINI and IISc Bengaluru Build Four Text-to-Speech Models for the Low-Resource Sourashtra Language

The Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD) under MeitY, working with IISc Bengaluru, developed four Text-to-Speech models for Sourashtra, a low-resource Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in Tamil Nadu. Built on the VITS architecture, the models generate speech at 22,050 Hz and offer male and female voices in both the Tamil and Sourashtra scripts. Training used a corpus from IISc's SPIRE Lab holding over 28 hours of recordings, with about 10,000 male and 11,400 female utterances. The models are published on BHASHINI's AIKosh platform, extending speech technology to a language with almost no digital footprint and advancing digital inclusion.

GK ByteBHASHINI, the National Language Translation Mission, was launched in 2022 under MeitY to build open AI-based language technology for Indian languages | AIKosh is India's national repository of AI datasets, models and toolkits, launched in 2025 | The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution lists 22 scheduled languages; Sourashtra is not among them

📅 22 Oct 2026InternationalRead complete →

Bud Rot Outbreak Hits Coconut Palms in Tiptur Taluk of Karnataka's Tumakuru District

An outbreak of Bud Rot, a fatal coconut palm disease caused by the pathogen *Phytophthora palmivora*, has struck Tiptur taluk of Tumakuru district, Karnataka, affecting villages including Mattihalli, Hosahalli and Halkurike and parts of the Nonavinakere and Kasaba hoblis. The disease rots the terminal bud and surrounding tissue; once the growing point is destroyed the palm cannot recover and must be removed. Palms of all ages are susceptible, but young palms are the most vulnerable, and the infection spreads fastest in the high humidity of the monsoon. Tumakuru is one of Karnataka's biggest coconut-growing districts and Tiptur is a major copra trading centre.

GK ByteIndia is the world's largest coconut producer, with Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh the leading states | The Coconut Development Board was set up in 1981 and is headquartered at Kochi, Kerala | Phytophthora palmivora is an oomycete or water mould and also causes black pod disease in cocoa

📅 21 Oct 2026InternationalRead complete →

US Order Removing DeepSeek AI from Federal Civilian IT Systems Takes Effect on 20 October 2026

A US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) order directing federal civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek products, and third-party services built on its AI models, took effect on publication in the Federal Register on 20 October 2026. Signed by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on 24 July 2026 and made public on 19 October, it was issued under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018. DHS cited the risk of sensitive data reaching China and possible malware in the models. Treasury, State and Justice are covered; Defense agencies are exempt, and exception requests are allowed within 60 days.

GK ByteThe US Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks and is headquartered at Washington, D.C. | The Federal Register is the official daily journal of the US federal government, and rules take legal effect on publication in it | DeepSeek is based at Hangzhou, China, and released its R1 model in January 2025

📅 20 Oct 2026InternationalRead complete →

Astronomers Identify WD J1330+6435, the First White Dwarf Found to Appear Chartreuse Green

A team led by astrophysicist Mark Hollands of the University of Warwick has identified WD J1330+6435, a white dwarf about 280 light-years away in the constellation Draco, whose spectrum implies a chartreuse-green colour to the human eye - a shade not previously recorded for a star. Its surface is about 4,000 degrees Celsius, and the colour is attributed to sodium interacting with helium in an extremely dense atmosphere. Sodium, calcium and lithium detected there are thought to be rocky planetary debris that fell onto the star. The same study reports the salmon-pink WD J1011+2845, 48 light-years away in Leo Minor, in RAS Techniques and Instruments.

GK ByteA white dwarf is the dense remnant of a low- or medium-mass star that has exhausted its nuclear fuel; it is roughly Earth-sized and is held up against collapse by electron degeneracy pressure | The Chandrasekhar limit, about 1.4 solar masses, is the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf | Sirius B, the companion of Sirius, was the first white dwarf to be identified

📅 19 Oct 2026InternationalRead complete →

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