Junior Digest

Moscow, Sep 23,2025: Russia is prepared to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), entered into with the United States in 2010, for one more year beyond February 5, 2026, when it is scheduled to expire, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

‘’In order to prevent the emergence of a new strategic arms race and preserve an acceptable degree of predictability and restraint, we consider it reasonable to maintain at this turbulent time the status quo established under New START. Accordingly, Russia is prepared to continue observing the Treaty’s central quantitative restrictions for one year after February 5, 2026,’’ President Putin said.

In a meeting with permanent members of the Security Council in Kremlin, President Putin said Russia’s initiative, if implemented, could make a substantial contribution to creating the conditions necessary for a substantive strategic dialogue with the United States – provided that the grounds for its full resumption are secured and that broader steps are taken to normalise bilateral relations and remove core security contradictions.

The New START Treaty entered into force on February 5, 2011. Under the Treaty, the United States and Russia had seven years to meet the Treaty’s central limits on strategic offensive arms (by February 5, 2018) and were then obligated to maintain those limits for as long as the Treaty remains in force. Those limits are: 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments; 1,550 nuclear warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments (each such heavy bomber is counted as one warhead towards this limit); 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.

The New START Treaty will expire on February 5, 2026, signalling the imminent end of the last international accord directly limiting nuclear missile capabilities. A complete renunciation of this Treaty’s legacy would be a grave and short-sighted mistake. It would also have adverse implications for the objectives of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, President Putin said.

He said that for nearly 15 years, this agreement has played a constructive role in maintaining balance and predictability in the sphere of strategic offensive weapons.

‘’Based on a careful assessment of the situation, we will make a definite decision on whether to uphold these voluntary self-limitations. We believe that this measure is only feasible if the United States acts in a similar spirit and refrains from steps that would undermine or disrupt the existing balance of deterrence,’’ he said.

He directed the agencies to maintain close oversight of American activities related to the START arsenal in the first place. Particular attention must be directed towards US plans to expand strategic components of its missile defence system, including preparations for the deployment of interceptors in outer space.

‘’We believe that the practical implementation of such destabilising measures could nullify our efforts to maintain the status quo in the field of strategic offensive arms. We will respond appropriately in this case,’’ he added.

He said Russia’s plans to strengthen the country’s defence capability are being developed with full regard to the evolving international situation, and they are being implemented in a comprehensive and timely manner.

‘’We are confident in the reliability and effectiveness of our national deterrent forces. At the same time, we are not seeking to further escalate tensions or fuel an arms race. Russia has consistently upheld the primacy of political and diplomatic methods for maintaining global peace, based on the principles of equality, the indivisibility of security, and mutual respect for interests,’’ President Putin said.

‘’Let me remind you that the last major political and diplomatic achievement in the field of strategic stability was the conclusion of the New START in 2010. However, owing to the profoundly hostile policies of the Biden administration, which undermined the fundamental principles on which this Treaty was built, its full implementation was suspended in 2023,’’ President Putin added.

He, however, said both parties have declared their intention to continue voluntarily observing the central quantitative limits of the strategic offensive arms Treaty until its expiry.

Washington, Dec 4,2025: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that radical Islam’s ambition to “control more territories and people” poses an “imminent threat” to the world.
He also announced that the US will restrict visas for those who “direct, authorize, fund, or support violence against Christians” in Nigeria and globally.
In an interview with Fox News, Rubio described radical Islamists as the greatest threat to the United States, claiming they view the country as “the chief source of evil on earth.”
“The idea that radical Islam would be content simply controlling some province in Iraq or Syria is not borne out by history. Radical Islam has shown that their desire is not just to occupy one part of the world and be satisfied with their own little caliphate, they want to expand. It is revolutionary in nature, seeking to control more territories and more people. Radical Islam has designs, openly, on the West, on the United States, on Europe. They are prepared to conduct acts of terrorism—in the case of Iran, nation-state actions, assassinations, murders, you name it—whatever it takes to gain influence and ultimately dominate different cultures and societies,” Rubio said.

Nov 2,2025: The Indian women’s cricket team beat South Africa by 52 runs to win their first-ever ICC Women’s ODI World Cup in Navi Mumbai last night. Deepti Sharma and Shafali Verma starred with both bat and ball to help India secure a tense win after South Africa had won the toss and elected to bowl.
Chasing 299, South Africa looked well set at one stage to get to the target, but Deepti Sharma’s breakthrough sparked a dramatic collapse. After she dismissed Annerie Dercksen, the Proteas crumbled from 209 for 5 to 246 all out. Deepti Sharma had turned the tide for India with a brilliant spell that yielded three crucial wickets, including that of South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt. Deepti bagged 5 wickets for 39 runs from 9.3 overs.
Shafali Verma created memories of a lifetime by scoring 87 in India’s 298 for 7 and then grabbed a couple of crucial wickets to restrict the Proteas Women to 246. Shafali was declared the Player of the Match, while Deepti Sharma won the Player of the Tournament award.

The victorious Indian team was given an all-time high prize money of around 37.3 crore rupees, which indicates a 239 per cent growth over the last time. The tournament’s success and India’s championship win have tremendously boosted the visibility and growth potential of women’s cricket nationwide and internationally.

President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have congratulated Team India on their remarkable victory in the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2025 Final.

In a social media post, the President said this watershed moment will take women’s cricket to even higher performances. Praising the players for their determination and inspiring performance, she said, the girls have made India proud.

In his message, the Prime Minister described it as a spectacular victory that will motivate future champions to take up sports. Mr Modi said their performance in the final was marked by great skill and confidence. The Prime Minister said the team showed exceptional teamwork and tenacity throughout the tournament.

Oct 15,2025: The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was jointly awarded to Joel Mokyr (Netherlands), Philippe Aghion(Paris), and Peter Howitt(Canada) for explaining innovation-driven economic growth and how societies must counter stagnation to sustain development.
Laureates and Core Contribution:
Joel Mokyr received one-half of the prize for identifying prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress.
Mokyr used historical data to reveal why sustained technological innovation is vital for continuous economic growth.
Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt shared the other half of the theory of sustained growth via creative destruction.

Aghion and Howitt developed a mathematical model describing “creative destruction,” where new products and technologies replace outdated ones, propelling economic expansion.
Significance of the Research:

The work explains why the past two centuries experienced consistent global economic growth, improving living standards and well-being worldwide.
It disrupts the assumption that economic growth is automatic, emphasizing the fragility of progress and the necessity to maintain innovation-driven mechanisms.

Implications and Policy Insights:

Their research highlights the importance for regions like Europe to integrate competition with proactive industrial policy, learning from examples like the US and China.
The theory underscores the need for economies to encourage continuous innovation and adaptation for sustained prosperity

TOKYO, Oct 4,2025: Japan’s ruling party picked conservative nationalist Sanae Takaichi as its new head on Saturday, putting her on course to become the country’s first female prime minister.
The Liberal Democratic Party elected Takaichi, 64, to regain trust from a public angered by rising prices and drawn to opposition groups promising big stimulus and clampdowns on foreigners.
A vote in parliament to choose a prime minister to replace Shigeru Ishiba is expected to be held on October 15.
PARTY IN CRISIS
The new LDP president is likely to succeed Shigeru Ishiba as leader of the world’s fourth-biggest economy because the party, which has governed Japan for almost all the postwar period, is the biggest in parliament. But this is not assured as the party and its coalition partner lost their majorities in both houses under Ishiba in the past year.
Takaichi, the only woman among the five LDP candidates, beat a challenge from the more moderate Shinjiro Koizumi, 44, who was bidding to become the country’s youngest leader in the modern era.
A former internal affairs minister with an expansionary economic agenda, Takaichi inherits a party in crisis.
Takaichi, who says her hero is Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister, offered a starker vision for change than Koizumi and is potentially more disruptive.
An advocate of late premier Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” strategy to jolt the economy with aggressive spending and easy monetary policy, she has previously criticised the Bank of Japan’s interest rate increases.
Such a policy shift could spook investors worried about one of the world’s biggest debt loads.

Takaichi has also raised the possibility of redoing an investment deal with U.S. President Donald Trump that lowered his punishing tariffs in return for Japanese taxpayer-backed investment.

Her nationalistic positions – such as her regular visits to the Yasukuni shrine to Japan’s war dead, viewed by some Asian neighbours as a symbol of its past militarism – may rile South Korea and China.

She also favours revising Japan’s pacifist postwar constitution and suggested this year that Japan could form a “quasi-security alliance” with Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by China.

If elected, Takaichi said she would travel overseas more regularly than her predecessor to spread the word that “Japan is Back!”

WASHINGTON, Sept 26,2025: U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday unveiled sweeping new import tariffs, including 100% duties on branded drugs and 25% levies on heavy-duty trucks, set to come into force next week.
The latest salvo, which Trump said was to protect the U.S. manufacturing industry and national security, follows wide-ranging duties on trading partners of up to 50% and other targeted levies on imported products such as steel.
Trump’s announcement on Truth Social did not say whether the new levies would be on top of existing national tariffs. Recent trade deals with Japan, the EU, and Britain include provisions that cap tariffs for specific products like pharmaceuticals.
A non-binding preliminary trade deal between the EU and the U.S. agreed to limit tariffs to 15%. Trump hasn’t yet signed an executive order confirming the agreement.
The European Commission said on Friday the agreement was “clear” that there was an all-inclusive 15% tariff ceiling, which represented “an insurance policy that no higher tariffs will emerge” for European companies.

New Delhi, Nov24,2025: Justice Surya Kant today took oath as the 53rd Chief Justice of India at a ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath, which was taken in Hindi by Justice Kant.As the CJI, Justice Kant will have a tenure till February 9, 2027. Vice-President CP Radhakrishnan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal and several ministers from his cabinet attended the swearing-in.
Over his tenure in the Supreme Court, Justice Kant has been associated with a series of significant constitutional rulings, including those on the abrogation of Article 370, the revision of Bihar’s electoral rolls and the Pegasus spyware case.
Who is Justice Surya Kant?

Born on February 10, 1962, in Petwar village in the Narnaud region of Hisar, Justice Kant studied at local village schools before earning his degree in law from Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, in 1984. He began his legal practice at the Hisar district court the same year and later shifted to Chandigarh, where he built a thriving practice at the Punjab and Haryana High Court, specialising in constitutional, service and civil law. Three decades later, while serving as a judge, he obtained a master’s degree in law from Kurukshetra University with first-class first.

His rise in the legal profession was swift. At 38, he became the youngest advocate general of Haryana in 2000, was designated a senior advocate the following year, and was elevated as a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2004. In October 2018, he took charge as chief justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court before his elevation to the Supreme Court in May 2019.

Over the past six years in the top court, Justice Kant has authored more than 300 judgments, including in several high-profile constitutional matters. He was part of the Constitution bench that upheld the abrogation of Article 370, the bench that delivered the verdict on Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, and the bench that granted interim bail to former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal while affirming the legality of his arrest. Most recently, he was also part of the bench that delivered its ruling in the presidential reference on setting timelines for assent to state bills by governors and President.

As executive chairman of the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA), he launched the Veer Parivar Sahayata Yojana 2025 to provide free legal assistance to soldiers, veterans and their families.
New CJI’s top priorities

A day before taking charge, the CJI-designate had spoken to Hindustan Times about his judicial philosophy, his administrative priorities, and the “farmer’s patience and poet’s empathy” that shape his approach to justice.

Acknowledging that he was taking the helm at a time when the Supreme Court faces nearly 90,000 pending cases, Justice Kant identified this as a challenge central to his tenure. “One of my foremost challenges is the arrears in the Supreme Court…My immediate focus is on the optimum utilisation of judicial force, ensuring that the court’s full strength is channelled towards reducing pendency,” he said.

“Many matters can’t be taken up before the high courts and lower courts because related issues are pending here. I will find those matters, ensure benches are constituted, and have them decided. I will also try to see the oldest matters,” said the judge, adding that healthy practices of approaching lower courts first need to be revived.

Justice Kant had also spoken about the human dimension of judging, the institutional discipline he hopes to strengthen, and the immediate priorities he has set for the Supreme Court.

In the interview, Justice Kant reflected on how his formative years on a farm in Petwar village shaped his judicial temperament. “A farmer’s patience taught me that true growth requires time, care and resilience… Justice, like a harvest, cannot be forced; it must be cultivated with diligence and respect for the natural rhythm of due process,” he said.

He added that a “poet’s empathy” allows him to see beyond the facts on paper and understand the human stories behind every dispute. This blend, he said, ensures that his decisions remain both legally sound and humane. The law may supply the framework, he noted, but “the human side of judging is both inevitable and essential.”

Justice Kant described his judicial philosophy as “humanistic,” rooted in the belief that the law must ultimately serve people while maintaining fairness and consistency. Judges, he believes, must primarily function as neutral interpreters, but remain conscious of the broader social context.

As a former chief justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court and a judge known for strong administrative stewardship, Justice Kant further stressed that a court’s credibility depends on its collective discipline. “Courts are not merely individual judges but collective bodies whose credibility depends on consistency, discipline and efficiency,” he said, adding that reform is a “continuous process” he intends to carry forward.

He emphasised the need to streamline case management, deploy technology to speed up disposals, and ensure punctuality and preparedness across judicial and administrative ranks. “Even small changes, such asprocedural guidelines, infrastructure upgrades, digital adoption, can have a transformative impact,” he said. Empathy and communication, he added, are indispensable to effective leadership.

Apart from pendency, Justice Kant identified mediation as a central plank of his reform agenda. “We must identify a solution, and one of the easiest solutions, which can be a game changer, is mediation,” he said. He noted that the judiciary must encourage government agencies to adopt mediation more readily and relieve pressure on courts.

Nov 8,2025: James D. Watson, the brilliant but controversial American biologist whose 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA, the molecule of heredity, ushered in the age of genetics and provided the foundation for the biotechnology revolution of the late 20th century, has died at the age of 97.
In his later years, Watson’s reputation was tarnished by comments on genetics and race that led him to be ostracized by the scientific establishment.
Even as a younger man, he was known as much for his writing and for his enfant-terrible persona – including his willingness to use another scientist’s data to advance his own career – as for his science.

His 1968 memoir, “The Double Helix,” was a racy, take-no-prisoners account of how he and British physicist Francis Crick were first to determine the three-dimensional shape of DNA. The achievement won the duo a share of the 1962 Nobel Prize in medicine and eventually would lead to genetic engineering, gene therapy and other DNA-based medicine and technology.

Crick complained that the book “grossly invaded my privacy” and another colleague, Maurice Wilkins, objected to what he called a “distorted and unfavorable image of scientists” as ambitious schemers willing to deceive colleagues and competitors in order to make a discovery.

In addition, Watson and Crick, who did their research at Cambridge University in England, were widely criticized for using raw data collected by X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin to construct their model of DNA – as two intertwined staircases – without fully acknowledging her contribution. As Watson put it in “Double Helix,” scientific research feels “the contradictory pulls of ambition and the sense of fair play.”

In 2007, Watson again caused widespread anger when he told the Times of London that he believed testing indicated the intelligence of Africans was “not really … the same as ours.”

Accused of promoting long-discredited racist theories, he was shortly afterwards forced to retire from his post as chancellor of New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). Although he later apologized, he made similar comments in a 2019 documentary, calling different racial attainment on IQ tests – attributed by most scientists to environmental factors – “genetic.”
‘TOUGH IRISHMAN’

James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago on April 6, 1928, and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947 with a zoology degree. He received his doctorate from Indiana University, where he focused on genetics. In 1951, he joined Cambridge’s Cavendish Lab, where he met Crick and began the quest for the structural chemistry of DNA.

Just waiting to be found, the double helix opened the doors to the genetics revolution. In the structure Crick and Watson proposed, the steps of the winding staircase were made of pairs of chemicals called nucleotides or bases. As they noted at the end of their 1953 paper, “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.”

That sentence, often called the greatest understatement in the history of biology, meant that the base-and-helix structure provided the mechanism by which genetic information can be precisely copied from one generation to the next. That understanding led to the discovery of genetic engineering and numerous other DNA techniques.

Watson and Crick went their separate ways after their DNA research. Watson was only 25 years old then and while he never made another scientific discovery approaching the significance of the double helix, he remained a scientific force.

“He had to figure out what to do with his life after achieving what he did at such a young age,” biologist Mark Ptashne, who met Watson in the 1960s and remained a friend, told Reuters in a 2012 interview. “He figured out how to do things that played to his strength.”

That strength was playing “the tough Irishman,” as Ptashne put it, to become one of the leaders of the U.S. leap to the forefront of molecular biology. Watson joined the biology department at Harvard University in 1956.

“The existing biology department felt that molecular biology was just a flash in the pan,” Harvard biochemist Guido Guidotti related. But when Watson arrived, Guidotti said he immediately told everyone in the biology department – scientists whose research focused on whole organisms and populations, not cells and molecules – “that they were wasting their time and should retire.”

That earned Watson the decades-long enmity of some of those traditional biologists, but he also attracted young scientists and graduate students who went on to forge the genetics revolution.

In 1968 Watson took his institution-building drive to CSHL on Long Island, splitting his time between CSHL and Harvard for eight years. The lab at the time was “just a mosquito-infested backwater,” said Ptashne. As director, “Jim turned it into a vibrant, world-class institution.”
GENOME PROJECT

In 1990, Watson was named to lead the Human Genome Project, whose goal was to determine the order of the 3 billion chemical units that constitute humans’ full complement of DNA. When the National Institutes of Health, which funded the project, decided to seek patents on some DNA sequences, Watson attacked the NIH director and resigned, arguing that genome knowledge should remain in the public domain.

In 2007 he became the second person in the world to have his full genome sequenced. He made the sequence publicly available, arguing that concerns about “genetic privacy” were overwrought but made an exception by saying he did not want to know if he had a gene associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Watson did have a gene associated with novelty-seeking.

His proudest accomplishment, Watson told an interviewer for Discover magazine in 2003, was not discovering the double helix – which “was going to be found in the next year or two” anyway – but his books.

“My heroes were never scientists,” he said. “They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood – you know, good writers.”

Watson cherished the bad-boy image he presented to the world in “Double Helix,” friends said, and he emphasized it in his 2007 book, “Avoid Boring People.”

Married with two sons, he often disparaged women in public statements and boasted of chasing what he called “popsies.” But he personally encouraged many female scientists, including biologist Nancy Hopkins of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“I certainly couldn’t have had a career in science without his support, I believe,” said Hopkins, long outspoken about anti-woman bias in science. “Jim was hugely supportive of me and other women. It’s an odd thing to understand.”

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 27,2025: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sharply denounced Western countries on Friday for embracing Palestinian statehood, accusing them of sending the message that “murdering Jews pays off.”

Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly, the Israeli leader pushed back in his harshest terms yet against a flurry of diplomatic moves by leading U.S. allies that deepened Israel’s international isolation over its conduct of a nearly two-year-old war in Gaza.

“This week, the leaders of France, Britain, Australia, Canada and other countries unconditionally recognized a Palestinian state,” he said. “They did so after the horrors committed by Hamas on October 7 — horrors praised on that day by nearly 90% of the Palestinian population.”

Calling it a “mark of shame,” Netanyahu said: “You know what message the leaders who recognize the Palestinian state this week sent to the Palestinians? It’s a very clear message: murdering Jews pays off.”

With more countries joining the list of those endorsing Palestinian independence, the most right-wing government in Israeli history has made its strongest declaration in years that there will be no Palestinian state as it pushes on with its fight against Hamas following the militants’ October 7, 2023, rampage in Israel. Hamas-led fighters killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s military response has killed more than 65,000 people in Gaza, according to local health officials, and left much of the territory in ruins.
SCORES OF DELEGATES WALK OUT AHEAD OF SPEECH
Scores of delegates exited the hall as Netanyahu took the stage while some attendees in the balcony gave him a standing ovation. At the same time, thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters blocked traffic near Times Square in New York.

“Over time, many world leaders buckled. They buckled under the pressure of a biased media, radical Islamist constituencies and antisemitic mobs. There’s a familiar saying, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Well, for many countries here, when the going got tough, you caved,” Netanyahu said.

“Behind closed doors, many of the leaders who publicly condemn us privately thank us. They tell me how much they value Israel’s superb intelligence services that have prevented, time and again, terrorist attacks in their capitals.”

The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said in a statement that Netanyahu’s speech was “filled with lies and blatant contradictions” and condemned it as a “desperate attempt to justify the war crimes and acts of genocide.”

Frustration over Israel’s military siege and U.S. President Donald Trump’s unwillingness to rein Netanyahu in has spilled into the open at the annual New York gathering where, in a dramatic shift, Australia, Britain, Canada and France and several other nations embraced a Palestinian state.

They said such action was needed to preserve the prospect for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and help bring the war to a close.

Netanyahu followed to the rostrum Arab and Muslim leaders who, one after another, strongly condemned Israel’s military assault in Gaza.

Addressing the U.N. shortly after Netanyahu, Prime Minister Micheal Martin of Ireland, which recognized Palestine last year, called Israel’s actions in Gaza “an abandonment of all norms, all international rules and law.”

The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in the Gaza war. Israel rejects the court’s jurisdiction and denies committing war crimes. Netanyahu rebutted on Friday what he called “the false charge of genocide.”

Hamas has offered to release all remaining hostages – only about 20 of whom are said to be alive out of a total of 48 — in exchange for Israel agreeing to end the war and withdrawing from Gaza.

Item 1 of 6 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at U.N. headquarters in New York City. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

“Much of the world no longer remembers October 7. But we remember,” Netanyahu said. Speaking in Hebrew, the Israeli leader directed his remarks to the hostages still held in Gaza: “We’ve not forgotten you — not even for a second.”

Netanyahu said he had loudspeakers placed at the Israeli side of the Gaza border to broadcast the address into the Palestinian enclave in hopes that hostages would hear his vow that his government will not rest until they are free.

On Friday, Trump told reporters for the second straight day that a deal to end the war and bring the remaining hostages home was close – though he offered no explanation for his optimism about overcoming months of impasse in negotiations.

A senior White House official told Reuters that Trump will meet Netanyahu on Monday in Washington with the aim of reaching a framework for a deal.

The right-wing Israeli leader is under mounting pressure from the hostages’ families and, according to public opinion polls, a war-weary Israeli public.

Netanyahu, who has insisted the fight must go on until Hamas is completely dismantled, said the group’s “final remnants” are holed up in Gaza City and vowed to “finish the job” as quickly as possible. Israel’s army chief, Eyal Zamir, told troops: “We have collapsed its governing capacity.”

Netanyahu is wary at the same time of losing the backing of far-right members in his fragile governing coalition if he softens his approach.

He has retained the staunch support of the U.S., Israel’s most important ally and main arms supplier. Trump told the U.N. on Tuesday that moves to recognize a Palestinian state risked rewarding Hamas for “horrible atrocities” and could encourage continued conflict.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said in a posting on X that “instead of stopping the diplomatic tsunami – Netanyahu worsened Israel’s situation today.”

Still, no matter how many countries recognize Palestine, full U.N. membership would require approval by the Security Council, where the United States has a veto.

Speaking by video after the U.S. denied him a visa, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza as “a war of genocide.” He thanked countries that recognized Palestinian statehood, pledged that his Palestinian Authority would be ready to govern post-war Gaza and called for Hamas to be disarmed and have no role.

Some of Netanyahu’s hardline ministers have said the government should respond to growing recognition of Palestinian statehood by formally extending Israeli sovereignty over all or parts of the occupied West Bank to snuff out hopes for Palestinian independence.

On Thursday, however, Trump said he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, which the Palestinians want for their state, along with Gaza and East Jerusalem. “It’s not going to happen,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump’s pronouncement could create tensions when he meets Netanyahu at the White House, their fourth time face-to-face since the president returned to office in January.

Analysts say Israeli annexation of the West Bank could unravel the landmark Abraham Accords, a signature foreign policy achievement brokered by Trump’s first administration in which several Arab countries forged diplomatic ties with Israel.

In his speech, Netanyahu made no mention of the annexation issue but went out of his way to praise Trump’s self-described crackdown on what he sees as antisemitism in the U.S.

The Trump administration has withheld billions of dollars in funding from major universities it accuses of failing to protect Jewish students from pro-Palestinian protesters.

Oct 8,2025: Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 is out, and the winners are John Clarke, Michel H Devoret, and John M. Martinis, all three working in the USA, “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.”
This is the second time in three years — after 2022 — that the Physics Nobel has been given for work in the field of quantum mechanics.
John Clarke
University of California, Berkeley, USA
Michel H. Devoret
Yale University, New Haven, CT and
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
John M. Martinis
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA and Qolab, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Their experiments on a chip revealed quantum physics in action
A major question in physics is the maximum size of a system that can demonstrate quantum mechanical effects. This year’s Nobel Prize laureates conducted experiments with an electrical circuit in which they demonstrated both quantum mechanical tunnelling and quantised energy levels in a system big enough to be held in the hand.

Quantum mechanics allows a particle to move straight through a barrier, using a process called tunnelling. As soon as large numbers of particles are involved, quantum mechanical effects usually become insignificant. The laureates’ experiments demonstrated that quantum mechanical properties can be made concrete on a macroscopic scale.

In 1984 and 1985, John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis conducted a series of experiments with an electronic circuit built of superconductors, components that can conduct a current with no electrical resistance. In the circuit, the superconducting components were separated by a thin layer of non-conductive material, a setup known as a Josephson junction. By refining and measuring all the various properties of their circuit, they were able to control and explore the phenomena that arose when they passed a current through it. Together, the charged particles moving through the superconductor comprised a system that behaved as if they were a single particle that filled the entire circuit.

This macroscopic particle-like system is initially in a state in which current flows without any voltage. The system is trapped in this state, as if behind a barrier that it cannot cross. In the experiment the system shows its quantum character by managing to escape the zero-voltage state through tunnelling. The system’s changed state is detected through the appearance of a voltage.

The laureates could also demonstrate that the system behaves in the manner predicted by quantum mechanics – it is quantised, meaning that it only absorbs or emits specific amounts of energy.

“It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that century-old quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises. It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation of all digital technology,” says Olle Eriksson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

The transistors in computer microchips are one example of the established quantum technology that surrounds us. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics has provided opportunities for developing the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors.

CANTERBURY, England, Oct 3,2025: The Church of England named Sarah Mullally on Friday as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, the first woman to hold the 1,400-year-old office, prompting criticism from conservative Anglicans mainly based in Africa who oppose women bishops.

Mullally will also become the ceremonial head of 85 million Anglicans worldwide and, like her predecessors, faces a tough challenge in bridging the divide between conservatives – especially in Africa, where homosexuality is outlawed in some countries – and generally more liberal Christians in the West.

Making her first address in Canterbury Cathedral, the 63-year-old former career nurse condemned the sexual abuse scandals and safeguarding issues that have dogged the Church and also antisemitism following an attack on a synagogue in Manchester on Thursday which killed two men.
NEW ARCHBISHOP HAS SUPPORTED LIBERAL CAUSES
GAFCON, a grouping of conservative Anglican churches globally, immediately criticised Mullally’s appointment, saying it showed that the English arm of the Church had “relinquished its authority to lead”.

Bishop of London since 2018, she has previously championed several liberal causes within the Church, including allowing blessings for same-sex couples in civil partnerships and marriages.

Asked by Reuters in an interview on Friday about same-sex relationships, Mullally said: “The Church of England and the Anglican Communion have a long history of having to wrestle with … difficult issues.”

“It’s really hard for us because we’re in the middle of it, and I recognise the anxiety… that is caused when difficult issues are discussed… It may not be resolved quickly.”

Reforms introduced more than a decade ago have made it possible for a woman to become the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury. It is one of the last British institutions to have been run until now only by men.

In her address in Canterbury Cathedral, Mullally spoke of the difficulties of an era which “craves certainty” and a country which is wrestling with complex moral and political questions around migration and communities feeling overlooked.

“Mindful of the horrific violence of yesterday’s attack on a synagogue in Manchester, we are witnessing hatred that rises up through fractures across our communities,” she said, adding that it was her Christian faith that gave her hope in a world which often feels “on the brink”.
SAFEGUARDING IMPROVEMENTS NEEDED

The Church of England has been without a leader since last November when Justin Welby resigned over a child abuse cover-up scandal, and Mullally said she would focus on improvements in that area.

“My commitment will be to ensure that we continue to listen to survivors, care for the vulnerable, and foster a culture of safety and well-being for all,” she said.

‘IT’S ALL ABOUT PEOPLE’

Mullally is a former cancer nurse who worked as England’s Chief Nursing Officer in the early 2000s, while also being ordained as a priest in 2002. She became one of the first women to be consecrated as a bishop in the Church of England in 2015.

“There are great commonalities between nursing and being a priest. It’s all about people, and sitting with people during the most difficult times in their lives,” she once told a magazine.

Mullally, who is married to Eamonn and has two adult children, has been an outspoken opponent of legislation that would allow assisted dying which is currently progressing through Britain’s parliament.

She has called the plan to allow terminally ill people to choose to end their lives with medical help “unworkable and unsafe” and has said it poses a risk to the most vulnerable in society.

Reflecting the Church of England’s status as England’s established church, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office announced Mullally’s appointment on Friday with the formal consent of King Charles.

As monarch, Charles is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, a role established in the 16th century when King Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church.

Oct 2,2025: OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has reached a valuation of $500 billion, following a deal in which current and former employees sold roughly $6.6 billion worth of shares, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
This represents a bump-up from its current valuation of $300 billion, underscoring OpenAI’s rapid gains in both users and revenue. Reuters reported details of the stock sale earlier in August.

As part of the deal, OpenAI employees sold shares to a consortium of investors including Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, Abu Dhabi’s MGX and T. Rowe Price, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The company had authorized sales of $10-billion-plus worth of stock on the secondary market, the source added.
Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer, MGX and T. Rowe Price did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
The share sale adds to SoftBank’s earlier investment in OpenAI’s $40 billion primary funding round.
The company generated around $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2025, about 16% more than it generated all of last year, the Information reported earlier this week.
The sale comes at a time when tech giants are competing aggressively for AI talent with lucrative compensation packages.

Oct 9,2025: Scientists, spanning continents, win Chemistry Prize for bridging metals and organics.
An Australian, a Japanese and a Jordanian-American scientist were announced winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering and creating a class of materials, called metal-organic frameworks (MOF).

Metallic and organic substances are as far apart in the chemical world as Australia and the United States geographically, and it was inconceivable that stable, useful products could be made out of materials formed by integrating them. But beginning with Richard Robson’s initial conception of them in the mid 70s, sparked from a science project for his Melbourne University students; to Susumu Kitagawa’s dogged determination, in Kyoto University, at creating porous molecules — despite knowing that they were “useless” — but tinkering with them until he created the right kind of structures that were useful enough to work as a filter whilst remaining flexible and pliant; to finally Omar Yaghi at the University of California, Berkley, making a variety of metal-organic frameworks, as he named them, that were — among other things — capable of drawing water vapour out of desert air at night and releasing them as water in the day.

The three will equally shared the prize of 11 million Swedish kroner, about ₹1 crore.

Following the laureates’ groundbreaking discoveries, chemists have since built tens of thousands of different MOFs. Some of these may contribute to solving some of humankind’s greatest challenges, with applications that include separating PFAS (a family of chemicals that are believed to be toxic) from water, breaking down traces of pharmaceuticals in the environment, capturing carbon dioxide or harvesting water from desert air, a press statement noted.
Researchers have developed a molecular kit with a wide range of different pieces that can be used to create new MOFs. These have different shapes and characters, providing incredible potential for the rational — or AI-based — design of MOFs for different purposes.
First of the block and inspired by a project to make wooden block representations of chemical bonds, Mr. Robson began by testing the inherent properties of atoms in a new way. He combined positively charged copper ions with a four-armed molecule; this had a chemical group that was attracted to copper ions at the end of each arm.

When they were combined, they bonded to form a well-ordered, spacious crystal. It was like a diamond filled with innumerable cavities.

Mr. Robson immediately recognised the potential of his molecular construction, but it was unstable and collapsed easily. However, Mr. Kitagawa and Mr. Yaghi provided this building method with a firm foundation; between 1992 and 2003, they made, separately, a series of revolutionary discoveries. Mr. Kitagawa showed that gases can flow in and out of the constructions and predicted that MOFs could be made flexible. Mr. Yaghi created a very stable MOF and showed that it can be modified using rational design, giving it new and desirable properties.

Initially, it was challenging for the broader scientific community to appreciate MOF, as they didn’t seem to be much better than a class of materials called zeolites. But things changed when they succeeded in developing soft MOFs — a step up over zeolites that were hard. One of those who was able to present a flexible material was Kitagawa himself. When his material was filled with water or methane, it changed shape, and when it was emptied, it returned to its original form. The material behaved somewhat like a lung that can breathe gas in and out, changeable but stable.

Oct 9,2025:Scientists Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi have won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for “their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance”, the award-giving body said on Monday.

The winners for medicine are selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university and receive a prize sum of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.7 million), as well as a gold medal presented by Sweden’s king.
Scientists Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi have won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for “their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance”, the award-giving body said on Monday.
“Their discoveries have laid the foundation for a new field of research and spurred the development of new treatments, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases,” the prize-awarding body said in a statement.
Ms Brunkow and Mr Ramsdell are based in the United States, and Mr Sakaguchi in Japan.

Oct 10, 2025: The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 to Maria Corina Machado, leader of the democracy movement in Venezuela.
‘’The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a brave and committed champion of peace – to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid growing darkness,’’ the Nobel Committee said in a press release.
US President Donald Trump had been demanding Nobel Peace Prize for ‘’stopping seven wars.’’
Maria Corina Machado will receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy, the release said.
As the leader of the democracy movement in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado is one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times.
She has been a key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided – an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government. This is precisely what lies at the heart of democracy.
As a founder of Súmate, an organisation devoted to democratic development, Ms Machado stood up for free and fair elections more than 20 years ago. In political office and in her service to organisations since then, Ms Machado has spoken out for judicial independence, human rights and popular representation. She has spent years working for the freedom of the Venezuelan people.
Ahead of the election of 2024, Ms Machado was the opposition’s presidential candidate, but the regime blocked her candidacy. She then backed the representative of a different party, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, in the election.