EARLY this month, it was announced that India was on the verge of signing a deal with the US for acquisition of 30 high-end armed predator drones, 10 each for the army, air force and navy, at a total cost of around $3 billion (Rs 24,000 crore).

CHATGPT – the AI-powered chatbot – has taken the tech world by storm. Launched as a prototype and made available for public testing two months ago, on November 30, 2022, it has generated quite a buzz. It gathered one million subscribers in less than a week. People worldwide have been amazed and amused at its almost human responses on a wide range of topics.It has produced poetry, Shakespeare-like prose, software code and medical prescriptions. Teachers and educators have expressed alarm over the use of ChatGPT by students to complete assignments.

JOSHIMATH'S sinking recently was a disaster waiting to happen. Although cracks started appearing in buildings in late 2021, they have widened alarmingly, and new cracks appeared in more than 800 houses and roads a year later. According to images released by the National Remote Sensing Centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation, Joshimath has witnessed a rapid subsidence of nearly 5.4 cm in 12 days—between December 27, 2022, and January 7, 2023. The ISRO report also stated that a subsidence of nearly 9 cm was recorded in April-November 2022.

THE news of the opening up of China from the Covid-19 protocols and its current epidemic has overtaken the threat of two emerging SARS-CoV-2 lineages – XBB and BQ.1. China is seeing the spread of BF.7, which is much closer to the original Omicron strain. Our existing immunity, from either vaccines or infections, should therefore continue to protect us from infections partially and much better against serious infections.The threat of the Chinese variant, as the news media calls it, is much lower than that from the US and Europe.

LAWRENCE Livermore Laboratory's advance in achieving fusion energy using lasers has been splashed worldwide as a huge success. So what was the success all about? The joint press release of the US Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration states that this experiment "...will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power." In other words, there was also a weapons component to the fusion experiment.