USA

Walmart has signed a deal for a second office space in the southern Indian city of Chennai, which is fast emerging as a major technology center after being known for years as a manufacturing hub.

Global companies are increasingly setting up local hubs in India to support their daily operations, research and development and cybersecurity, which has benefitted commercial real estate developers in cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune.

Chennai, traditionally known for being a manufacturing hub, is now seeing global corporate interest in setting up tech hubs, from major companies such as AstraZeneca, UPS and Pfizer.

Walmart has leased an area of over 465,000 square feet – roughly the size of eight football fields – for an initial period of five years, starting this November, according to a document seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

Although Walmart does not run supermarkets in India yet, it has tech offices in cities such as Chennai and Bengaluru. The Bengaluru office, which employs 8,000 workers, is its biggest tech hub globally.

Walmart did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

US President Donald Trump is promoting an “America first” approach, strict border policies and AI policies against intense global competition, but more than half of the top privately-held AI companies based in the US have at least one immigrant founder, an analysis by Institute for Progress says so, per a report by Axios.

An IFP analysis shows that 25 out of 42 companies in the top AI-related startups in the Forbes AI 2025 list, or 60% of the list, were founded or co-founded by immigrants. 

Moreover, the founders of these companies come from 25 countries. India is leading the list with nine founders, followed by China with eight founders, then comes France with three founders. Australia, UK, Canada, Israel, Romania, and Chile have two founders each.

When it comes to OpenAI, the co-founders are Elon Musk who hails from South Africa, Ilya Sutskever, born in Canada and Databricks, whose co-founders come from Iran, Romania and China.

The analysis shows the role played by foreign born scientists and engineers to shape the US tech industry and more.

“A critical part of the historic story about U.S. AI leadership, and technological leadership in general, is that we’re able to draw on the best and brightest from around the world,” says Jeremy Neufeld director of immigration policy at IFP.

“If we’re going toe-to-toe in a competition with China, they have a much bigger population than we do. They graduate far more STEM grads these days than we do.”

According to Neufeld, the US has two major problems when it comes to recruiting and retaining high-skilled workers. First, the UK, China, Canada are more aggressively recruiting them, and second, the barriers for immigration that Trump has created.

Last year, the Trump faction found itself divided in two when Musk spoke in support of H-1B visas for high-skilled workers, as opposed to other Trump supporters who said US should focus on training their own citizens and prioritise them over foreign workers.

The National Science Board, which advises the White House and Congress on science and engineering research and education policy, has said that “foreign-born talent has been, and remains, key to U.S. strength in STEM” and that they should invest more in training domestic STEM workers.

Pope Francis on Wednesday thanked members of the medical team who saved his life during a five-week hospital stay for a serious case of double pneumonia, speaking softly but breathing without oxygen at the meeting in the Vatican.

The 88-year-old pontiff is gradually making more public appearances as he recovers from the biggest health crisis in his 12 years in the role. On Wednesday morning, he met with about 70 doctors and staffers from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, where he was treated for 38 days.

“Thank you for your service in hospital,” the pope said in a soft, raspy voice. “It is very good. Keep going like this.”

As during his last public appearance, on Sunday, the pope did not use oxygen.

The pope’s medical team have urged him to take two months’ rest after leaving hospital to allow his body to fully heal. Francis initially remained out of view after returning home but has now made several brief public appearances.

The Vatican on Thursday will start its busiest holiday season, with at least six religious celebrations in four days, including Easter, the most important Christian holiday, on Sunday.

It is still not known how much the pope will participate in the events. The Vatican has delegated senior cardinals to lead each of the celebrations in the pope’s place.

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Britain’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday the legal definition of a “woman” is based on a person’s sex at birth, a landmark decision with far-reaching implications for the bitter debate over trans rights.

In a win for Scottish gender-critical campaigners who brought the case to the UK’s highest court, five London judges unanimously ruled “the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman, and biological sex”.

However, the court underlined that the Equality Act also protected transgender people from discrimination.

The act “gives transgender people protection” through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also protecting against discrimination in their acquired gender, Justice Patrick Hodge said handing down the verdict.

It is the culmination of a years-long battle between the Scottish government and campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS) — which launched an appeal to the Supreme Court after losing pleas in Scottish courts over an obscure legislation aimed at hiring more women in public sector bodies.

Dozens of FWS and other gender critical campaigners, who argue that biological sex cannot be changed, cheered with joy after the ruling, hugging and crying outside the court.

“This has been a really, really long ride,” said Susan Smith, co-director of For Women Scotland, adding the campaigners were “enormously grateful for this ruling”.

“Today, the judges have said what we always believed to be the case: that women are protected by their biological sex,” she said, adding “women can now feel safe that services and spaces designated for women are for women”.

Ahead of the verdict, trans rights activists raised concerns that a ruling in favour of FWS could risk discrimination against trans people in their chosen gender.

“The court is well aware of the strength of feeling on all sides which lies behind this appeal,” Hodge said, recognising the fight of women against sex discrimination, as well as a “vulnerable” position of the trans community.

Single-sex spaces 

At the heart of the legal battle were clashing interpretations of the Equality Act.

While the Scottish government argued that the Equality Act (EA) afforded trans women with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) with the same protections as a biological female, FWS disagreed.

In its judgement, the Supreme Court ruled that the devolved Scottish government’s “interpretation is not correct” and that the Equality Act was inconsistent with the 2004 Gender Recognition Act which introduced GRC certificates.

According to the judges, allowing for the Scottish government’s interpretation would “cut across the definitions of man and woman” in the Equality Act “in an incoherent way”.

And, single-sex spaces and services including changing rooms, hostels and medical services “will function properly only if sex is interpreted as biological sex”, the judgement added.

Despite underlining protections from discrimination, the ruling will be a blow for transgender women and their ability to access single-sex spaces — a significant contention in the polarised debate on trans rights.

 Online discourse 

The debate has been particularly vicious in the UK, pitting gender critical activists against trans rights campaigners and often resulting in bitter, even hateful discourse.

One of the most prominent supporters of gender critical campaigns is “Harry Potter” author JK Rowling, who lives in Scotland and has been the target of hate but also been accused of transphobia.

The ruling also comes at a time when transgender rights are under threat in the United States under President Donald Trump.

Since retaking office, Trump has declared the federal government would recognise only two sexes, male and female, sought to bar trans athletes from women’s sports and curbed treatments for trans children.

The latest UK ruling could pile pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government — which has remained largely silent on trans issues since coming into power last July — to further clarify legislation.

The opposition Conservative administration had blocked Scottish legislation to make gender change easier in 2022 and has supported the clarification of sex as biological sex rather than assumed gender.

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Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal met a delegation from Elon Musk-owned satellite internet services company Starlink. The Starlink delegation comprised Vice President Chad Gibbs and Senior Director Ryan Goodnight.

“Discussions covered Starlink’s cutting-edge technology platform, their existing partnerships & future investment plans in India,” Minister Goyal wrote on X, post the meeting.

Recently, Airtel and Jio have partnered with Starlink to bring latter high-speed satellite internet services to its customers in India.

Satellite telecom in India will help the country provide much-needed services to remote interior places where conventional telecom services tend to be costly.

Met a delegation from @Starlink, comprising of Vice President Chad Gibbs & Senior Director, Ryan Goodnight.

Discussions covered Starlink’s cutting-edge technology platform, their existing partnerships & future investment plans in India. pic.twitter.com/mX66Y6Ltsn

— Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) April 16, 2025

The Starlink’s entry into India had gained currency lately, with Donald Trump winning the US presidency for the second term. Elon Musk is a close aide of President Trump.

As per its website, Starlink is the world’s first and largest satellite constellation using a low Earth orbit to deliver broadband internet capable of supporting streaming, online gaming, video calls and more.

Starlink delivers high-speed, low-latency internet to users all over the world. Starlink says its satellites are constantly updated with the newest technology.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

French prisons are being hit by mystery arson.

In the early hours of Wednesday, a magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan, according to the National Centre for Seismology (NCS).

The tremor occurred at 04.43 a.m. IST (local time), with the epicentre located at latitude 35.83 degrees North and longitude 70.60 degrees East, at a depth of 75 kilometres.

The NCS shared the details on X, stating: “EQ of M: 5.9, On: 16/04/2025 04:43:58 IST, Lat: 35.83 N, Long: 70.60 E, Depth: 75 Km, Location: Hindu Kush, Afghanistan.”

There are no immediate reports of casualties or structural damage, but authorities and humanitarian agencies are closely monitoring the situation.

The Hindu Kush mountain range, which stretches across northeastern Afghanistan, is part of a highly seismically active zone where earthquakes are frequent due to the region’s complex tectonic setting.

Afghanistan lies along the collision zone between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, which makes it especially prone to seismic activity.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reiterated the country’s extreme vulnerability to natural disasters, noting that frequent earthquakes disproportionately impact communities already weakened by decades of conflict and chronic under-development.

According to the Red Cross, powerful earthquakes are an annual occurrence in Afghanistan, particularly in geologically volatile areas such as the Hindu Kush.

The western province of Herat also sits on a significant fault line, further adding to the country’s seismic risk profile.

In October 2023, a series of powerful earthquakes, including one measuring 6.3 magnitude, devastated western Afghanistan, particularly Herat, killing over 1,000 people and displacing thousands more. That tragedy underscored the pressing need for strengthened disaster response systems and long-term resilience planning across the region.

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Donald Trump believes it is up to China, not the United States, to come to the negotiating table on trade, the White House said Tuesday, after the US president accused Beijing of reneging on a major Boeing deal.

“The ball is in China’s court. China needs to make a deal with us. We don’t have to make a deal with them,” said a statement from Trump read out by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at a briefing.

“There’s no difference between China and any other country except they are much larger,” she added.

Leavitt’s comments came after Trump accused China of going back on a major deal with US aviation giant Boeing — following a Bloomberg news report that Beijing ordered airlines not to take further deliveries of the company’s jets.

The report also said that Beijing requested Chinese carriers to pause purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from US firms.

“They just reneged on the big Boeing deal, saying that they will ‘not take possession’ of fully committed to aircraft,” said Trump in a Truth Social post, referring to China.

He did not provide further details on the Boeing agreement he was referring to.

Trump has slapped new tariffs on friend and foe since returning to the presidency this year, but has reserved his heaviest blows for China — imposing additional 145 percent levies on many Chinese imports.

– ‘Zero respect’ –

Trump took aim at Beijing again on Tuesday, saying on Truth Social that China did not fulfill its commitments under an earlier trade deal. He appeared to be referencing a pact that marked a truce in both sides’ escalating tariff war during his first term.

The US president said China bought only “a portion of what they agreed to buy,” charging that Beijing had “zero respect” for his predecessor Joe Biden’s administration.

Trump also vowed to protect US farmers in the same post, noting that they were often “put on the Front Line with our adversaries, such as China,” when there were trade tussles.

Later on Tuesday, Leavitt maintained that Trump remained open to a deal with Beijing.

She stressed, however, that it was China that needed to step forward first, pointing to the strength of the US consumer market as leverage.

Since the start of the year, Trump has imposed steep duties on imports from China, alongside a 10 percent “baseline” tariff on many US trading partners.

His administration recently widened exemptions from these tariffs, excluding certain tech products like smartphones and laptops from the global 10 percent tariff and latest 125 percent levy on China.

Many Chinese imports still face the total 145 percent additional tariff, or at least an earlier 20 percent levy that Trump rolled out over China’s alleged role in the fentanyl supply chain.

In response, Beijing has introduced counter-tariffs targeting US agricultural goods, and it later retaliated with a sweeping 125 percent levy of its own on imported US products.

China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to AFP queries on the aircraft deliveries, and Boeing has declined to comment on the Bloomberg report.

Boeing shares were around 1.7 percent lower on Tuesday afternoon.

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Iran must completely halt its uranium enrichment as part of any nuclear deal, US envoy Steve Witkoff said Tuesday, after suggesting it could continue doing so at a low level.

“Any final arrangement must set a framework for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Middle East — meaning that Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program,” Witkoff said on X.

The previous day, he appeared to stop short of calling for a complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, saying in a Fox News interview that “this is going to be much about verification on the enrichment program.”

“They do not need to enrich past 3.67 percent,” the real estate magnate said, referencing the maximum level allowed under the prior nuclear agreement that Trump exited during his first term, in 2018.

The multi-party 2015 deal that Trump abandoned aimed to make it practically impossible for Iran to build an atomic bomb, while at the same time allowing it to pursue a civil nuclear program.

The latest International Atomic Energy Agency report said Iran had an estimated 274.8 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, nearing the weapons grade of 90 percent.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt meanwhile told journalists Tuesday that President Donald Trump had spoken with Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq, thanking him for hosting talks on a deal with Tehran.

Trump has threatened to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities if no deal was reached, calling Iranian authorities “radicals” who should not possess nuclear weapons.

Tehran denies seeking an atomic bomb, saying its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, especially energy production.

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Columbia University said it was holding “good faith” negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to regain federal funding, hours after Harvard rejected the administration’s demands to audit the “viewpoint diversity” of its students and faculty, among other overhauls.

Columbia’s interim president, Claire Shipman, on Monday night said the private New York school would not cede ground on its commitment to academic freedom during talks with the administration.

Beginning with Columbia, the Trump administration has threatened universities across the country over their handling of pro-Palestinian protests that roiled campuses last year following the 2023 Hamas-led attack inside Israel and the subsequent Israeli attacks on Gaza. 

The Trump administration has said antisemitism flared amid the protests. Demonstrators say their criticism of Israel and U.S. foreign policy has been wrongly conflated with antisemitism. 

In a Monday letter, Harvard President Alan Garber rejected the Trump administration’s demands that Harvard end diversity efforts and take other steps to secure funding as unprecedented “assertions of power, unmoored from the law” that violated the school’s constitutional free speech rights and the Civil Rights Act.

He wrote that the threatened funding supported medical, engineering, and other scientific research that has led to innovations that “have made countless people in our country and throughout the world healthier and safer.” 

Hours after Garber released his letter, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said it was freezing contracts and grants to Harvard, the country’s oldest and richest university, worth more than $2 billion, out of a total of $9 billion.

Later on Monday, Shipman, a Columbia trustee, said Columbia will continue with what it viewed as “good faith discussions” and “constructive dialog” with the U.S. Justice Department’s antisemitism task force, which began with the government’s announcement in early March that it was terminating Columbia grants and contracts worth $400 million.

“Those discussions have not concluded, and we have not reached any agreement with the government at this point,” Shipman wrote. She wrote that some of the things the Trump administration has demanded of universities, including changes to shared governance and addressing “viewpoint diversity,” were “not subject to negotiation.”

“We would reject any agreement in which the government dictates what we teach, research, or who we hire,” she wrote.

She also wrote that Harvard, in Massachusetts, had rejected demands by the government that “strike at the very heart of that university’s venerable mission.” 

Shipman did not address the assertions by Harvard and some Columbia professors, who are suing the Trump administration through their labor unions, that the government’s actions are illegal. 

Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by recipients of federal funding based on race or national origin, federal funds can be terminated only after a lengthy investigation and hearings process, which has not happened at Columbia.

One of Columbia’s most famous alumni, former US President Barack Obama, praised Harvard’s response to an “unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom.”

“Let’s hope other institutions follow suit,” Obama, a Democrat, wrote in a Monday night statement.

Trump, a Republican, said in a social media post on Tuesday he was mulling whether to seek to end Harvard’s tax-exempt status if it continued pushing what he called “political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?'” 

The standoff between the Trump administration and universities comes as he faces court challenges to his immigration policies, and pushback from state attorneys general trying to block his firing of government workers and suspension of trillions of dollars in federal grants, loans and financial support.

Later on Tuesday, one of the immigration cases that has raised questions about whether the administration will respect judges and the constitutional order could come to a head as U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis considers her next steps on what she called Trump’s failure to update her on efforts to return a man illegally deported to El Salvador. 

The US Supreme Court last week upheld an order from Xinis that the administration facilitate Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador, where he is being housed in a high-security prison. The Trump administration has said it is powerless to bring Abrego Garcia back.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)