1.Where did India’s people come from? Massive genetic study reveals surprises

South Asia is home to one of the most diverse assemblages of people in the world. A mélange of different ethnic identities, languages, religions, castes, and customs makes up the 1.5 billion humans who live here. Now, scientists have revealed the most detailed look yet of how this population took shape.

In the largest ever modern whole-genome analysis from South Asia—published as a preprint last month on bioRxiv, researchers reveal new details about the origin of India’s Iranian ancestry and when ancient hunter-gatherers settled the region. The study also turns up a surprise: an unexpectedly rich diversity of genes from Neanderthals and their close evolutionary cousins, the Denisovans. Because no fossils of these ancient human relatives have been found in India, researchers are speculating about how these genes got there—and why they stuck around.

Global genetic sequencing efforts have largely ignored India, says population geneticist Kelsey Witt of Clemson University, who wasn’t involved with the work. So, “We’re learning a lot about populations that we didn’t know much about.”

2.Gold surges to ₹65,000 per 10 gm, touches new all-time high even as Bitcoin surpasses $69,000 mark, beating record of $68,991 in Nov 2021

Gold prices experienced a significant surge on Tuesday, rising by ₹800 to reach a new all-time high of ₹65,000 per 10 grams in the national capital, driven by robust global trends, according to HDFC Securities.

The Bitcoin surge was propelled by investors channeling funds into U.S. spot exchange-traded cryptocurrency products and the anticipation of potential declines in global interest rates.

3.India warned tech firms to get government permission before deploying “untested AI models” on the internet.

Following an outcry from some tech executives, the government clarified Monday that the advisory would not apply to startups, and is only aimed at “significant platforms.” The non-legally binding notice comes a week after Indian officials reprimanded Google’s AI tool, Gemini, for saying that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been characterised as fascist. A senior minister said the advisory points to “the future of regulation,” in a reversal from India’s decision last year not to regulate AI,citing it as an important growth area. India’s AI market is expected to grow 25 to 35% annually, reaching $17 billion by 2027, a recent report estimated.

4.Anthropic released Claude 3, its latest suite of artificial intelligence models.

The Amazon- and Google-backed research company claimed that the most powerful model in the family, the subscription-only Opus, outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini on various benchmark tests. Earlier Claude versions had a tendency to refuse to answer even harmless prompts, but the new models are reportedly better at distinguishing between harmful content and inoffensive questions, an issue that has plagued other new AI releases: Gemini caused an uproar by depicting Nazi soldiers and 19th-century U.S. senators as Black. Anthropic believes it has walked the line. Whether that assurance survives the models’ first contact with consumers remains to be seen.

5.China will target an economic growth rate of 5% this year, a figure seen by analysts as ambitious as the country reels from a property crisis and a rapid outflow of foreign capital. 

Although a 5% growth rate would be among the world’s highest this year, it would be one of China’s slowest in the last three decades. Experts have nonetheless called the target into question as leader Xi Jinping has resisted market pressure for a much stronger stimulus package to spur an economic recovery, having chosen to prioritise security and military budgets. Beijing announced that it would boost defense spending by as much as 7.2% this year amid ongoing tensions with Taiwan, the U.S., and its neighbors over competing claims to the South China Sea.

6.Nvidia beat Aramco to become the third-most valuable company in the world.

The chipmaker previously topped Amazon and Google parent Alphabet to become the third-most valuable company in the U.S.

Nvidia’s rise is captivating the stock market and driving the S&P 500 Index to new highs. But it also raises cautionary reminders of another investor darling that soared on dreams of a technological transformation, only to tumble back to earth when those hopes turned to disappointment.

That stock belongs to Tesla, which sparked its own mania in 2017 as investors bet that electric vehicles (EVs) were going to take over the world.

Back then, Elon Musk’s company was a phenomenon as it blew past established carmakers like General Motors and Ford Motor in market capitalisation to become America’s biggest auto manufacturer. Some analysts were looking beyond the industry and calling it “the next Apple”.

Now, Tesla shares are down more than 50 per cent from their 2021 peak, and other EV stocks that raced higher with it are shadows of their former selves. All of which should be sobering for Nvidia investors who see the stock as a limitless bet on the future of artificial intelligence (AI). The company’s shares have added 66 per cent this year after more than tripling in 2023.