AISA President Neha Bora gives a speech during protest march in Jharkhand on Friday 7 July after a man allegedly threw ink on her. (ANI Photo/Enhanced using AI)
A man allegedly threw ink at AISA president Neha Bora during a protest march towards the Jharkhand Assembly over alleged irregularities in recruitment examinations, police said. Speaking in Ranchi after the attack, Bora said she was “not going to be scared by the throwing of ink” as she had already faced alleged pellet-gun fire and baton charge during the student protests in Delhi. She said such actions would not deter her from continuing to raise issues concerning alleged irregularities in recruitment examinations.
More than 70 people including 30 children, fell ill with diarrhoea after consuming food and water at a housewarming feast in Kharida village of Odisha’s Balasore district, officials said on Friday. The incident took place on Thursday in the Jaleswar police station area. While 50 seriously ill people were admitted to Jaleswar hospital, others received first aid.
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Cauvery dispute
Tamil Nadu CM C Joseph Vijay is defending his decision to consider direct talks with Karnataka over the Cauvery water dispute, while making it clear that his government has not abandoned the legal route. Vijay said it was him who proposed holding talks with Karnataka on the Cauvery issue hoping for a positive outcome. Responding to Leader of Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin in the Assembly, Vijay said he did not want to indulge in “cheap politics” and maintained that the Cauvery issue must be handled carefully. He said he is “prepared to bear insults” for the Tamil Nadu people, adding that even rival countries hold talks to resolve disputes.
Kerala ‘red’ alert
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Friday morning issued a red alert for seven districts in Kerala. Alappuzha, Kottayam, Ernakulam, Thrissur, Palakkad, Kannur and Kasaragod are forecasting rainfall exceeding 15 mm per hour accompanied by gusts of up to 50 kmph over the next three hours. Schools and universities are shut in Ernakulam, Thrissur, Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha, Kottayam, Wayanad, Kannur and Kasaragod. Floodwaters are gradually receding in parts of Kottayam, Pathanamthitta and Alappuzha, though the Upper Kuttanad and Kuttanad regions remain inundated.
Did Jharkhand student leader Devendra Nath Mahto end his hunger strike?
After a video call between climate activist Sonam Wangchuk and Jharkhand protesters led by student leader Devendra Nath Mahto, reports appeared suggesting that Mahto had ended his indefinite hunger strike over exam irregularities. But Wangchuk dismissed those claims in a video post on X, clarifying that the reports were incorrect. “Some media houses had mistakenly reported yesterday that Devendra Nath Mahato ji had broken his hunger strike after my video call. This is to clarify that he only agreed to take water and salt after my call. His hunger strike continues as before with no food for the fifth day,” Wangchuk said.
Exclusive: Government’s Rs 1-lakh-crore tech fund went to firms linked to its own selection panel
An Indian Express investigation has found that 15 of the 22 firms chosen to receive funding from the government’s Rs 1-lakh-crore deep-tech fund have links to seven members of the panel that selected them. Panel members say they disclosed their interests and recused themselves from relevant decisions, but an MP who flagged the issue says public money of this scale requires stronger guardrails. An explainer on who gets the fund and how lays out the full architecture of the scheme.
NEET paper leak: Experts relied on chits and memory, CBI finds
CBI investigators have found that the experts who leaked the NEET question paper did so by memorising questions and writing them down on chits — a low-tech method that evaded the sophisticated surveillance measures around the printing and distribution process, and that raises pointed questions about the human element in India’s exam security chain.
New IT rules: Social media firms get 2-hour deadline for sensitive content
The government has notified new IT rules giving social media platforms a two-hour window to remove content flagged as sensitive — a significantly compressed timeframe that platforms say is technically difficult to comply with at scale, and that press freedom groups say could be used to suppress legitimate speech in fast-moving news situations.
Prashant Kishor, fresh off Bihar win, stirs Mumbai waters with NCP meet
Days after his Bankipur victory, Prashant Kishor has met with Sunetra and Parth Pawar of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP in Mumbai — a meeting that has set off speculation about whether Kishor is building a wider political network beyond Bihar, or positioning himself as a broker between NDA-aligned and independent political forces.
Wayanad to get advanced weather radar, two years after deadly landslide
Two years after the Wayanad landslide that killed 298 people, the district is finally set to receive an advanced X-band weather radar — a piece of infrastructure whose absence was widely cited as a failure that cost lives, and whose installation now represents the most concrete institutional response to the disaster.
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