AP Sports SummaryBrief at 5:57 p.m. ESTFive months ago, deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis offered to resign, saying he was assuming full responsibility for BJP ’s dismal performance in the Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra, where its tally dropped from 23 in 2019 to just 9. “No matter how many statistics I present, since I was leading the party in the state, I take full responsibility," Fadnavis said. Assembly Election Results Live Updates Maharashtra Election Results Jharkhand Election Results Bypoll Election Results The same holds true now. The BJP-led Mahayuti is leading on 219 seats, well past the majority mark of 145 for total 288 seats in Maharashtra assembly. The BJP is emerging as the single-largest party by far: it's leading on 125 seats, followed by Shiv Sena on 58 and NCP on 36. Behind the BJP's impending victory are a range of factors including allies, the RSS and, of course, the Delhi leadership, the credit will go to Fadnavis since he was leading the BJP into polls and was the chief strategist. The BJP's superlative performance in the state makes Fadnavis the strongest contender for the top job. An old video of Fadnavis has come up in which he is speaking in the assembly after becoming the deputy chief minister. "Mera paani utarta dekh mere kinare pe ghar mat basa lena. Main samandar hun laut kar wapis aaunga (don't build a house on my shore after seeing my water receding. I am an ocean, I will come back0," he said in the video. The return of Deva Bhau The return of Deva Bhai, as Fadnavis is known popularly in the state, seems highly possible because due to a strong performance by allies Shiv Sena and the NCP, the BJP will be able to form the government with the support of just one of the two allies. This will erode the bargaining power of both the allies. In such a scenario, Fadnavis is the strongest contender for the top post. 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Though Fadnavis hasn't laid his claim to the top post, his mother Sarita Fadnavis is confident he will be the next chief minister. "Of course, he will become the chief minister. There is absolutely no doubt on this. 100% he will become the chief minsiter. As a mother, it is a moment of happiness and a big day for me as my son has become a big leader of the state. He worked hard 24X7 for this victory," Sarita Fadnavis has said. What also works in favour of Fadnavis is the backing of the RSS for his candidature. Just hours after voting for assembly polls had concluded, Fadnavis had met RSS head Mohan Bhagwat. Though he dismissed any political connotations to his visit, his approximately 15-minute meeting with the RSS chief triggered curiosity among political analysts with many perceiving it as an attempt to get Sangh's endorsement for the top post. However, incumbent chief minister Eknath Shinde, who remains a strong contender for the top job after leading his party Shiv Sena to an impressive performance as well as steering the government's pre-poll push, has said there was no pre-poll agreement to suggest that the party with maximum number of seats will get the chief minister's post. When asked about the claims of some BJP leaders citing the party's numbers, Shinde said " We have had no such agreement. Let the final results come in after which three senior leaders of the three parties will sit together and take a decision together, in the same way as we fought elections." The NCP, which is the third partner of the ruling Mahayuti, had also pitched for Ajit Pawar as the next chief minister in the run up to the elections. But the nub of the situation is that neither Shiv Sena nor the NCP has the numbers to get the top post despite good performance by each. The BJP's stellar win will give it most of the chips, yet they can't be ignored. Senior BJP leaders Chandrakant Patil and Pravin Darekar have already voiced support for Fadnavis as the CM. A few months ago, there was speculation that Fadnavis will be appointed to the top post of the BJP replacing JP Nadda, who is now a Union minister in the third term of the Narendra Modi government. However, Fadnavis had dismissed the speculation. Fadnavis said, "These talks have been started by the media and are restricted to the media alone." How Fadnavis shot to the top of Maharashtra politics Fadnavis is now known for his political craftsmanship and many think he is second only to Amit Shah in the party in managing elections. 54-year-old Fadnavis belongs to a political and ideological family but has seen a lot of the rough and tumble of grassroots politics. A Deshastha Brahmin from Chandrapur in Vidarbha, Devendra’s aunt, Shobha Fadnavis, was a former minister and represented the Mul constituency for a long time. At Dharampeth in Nagpur, his family, comprising his wife Amruta, mother Sarita and daughter Divija, lives in a modest two-storeyed house that also houses his office. Right opposite his house is a playground named after his father Gangadharrao, a prominent RSS leader who later became a Jan Sangh member in the state legislative council. As a child Devendra is said to have refused to go to a certain Ïndira Convent because it had the name of a leader who had jailed his father during the Emergency. Devendra lost his father when he was 17. Devendra’s political career started in the early nineties, when he joined the BJP as a ward president of its youth wing. He became the youngest corporator of the Nagpur Municipal Corporation at the age of 21 and the second youngest elected mayor in 1997, at the age of 27. Fadnavis is said to have brought to the limelight by Gopinath Munde who saw him as a promising leader. He replaced Nitin Gadkari’s aide, Sudhir Munganthiwar as the BJP State president in 2013 and became the chief minister in 2013. Despite rumours of disagreements between him and Gadkari, Fadnavis is said to share a good equation with the union minister. In 2019, Fadnavis formed a government with the help of Ajit Pawar of NCP which lasted only for a few days. In 2022, Fadnavis had to accept the post of Deputy CM when Eknath Shinde faction of Shiv Sena allied with the BJP and Shinde became the CM. Becoming the Deputy CM after having been the CM was seen as a demotion for Fadnavis. That's when Fadnavis had vowed to return to the top. (WIth inputs from TOI) Assembly Election Results Live Updates Maharashtra Poll Results Highlights 2024 Jharkhand Poll Results Highlights 2024 (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel )

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Supes approve five year CIPOpenAI and military defense technology company Anduril Industries said Wednesday that they would work together to use artificial intelligence for "national security missions." The ChatGPT-maker and Anduril will focus on improving defenses against drone attacks, the companies said in a joint release. The partnership comes nearly a year after OpenAI did away with wording in its policies that banned use of its technology for military or warfare purposes. Founded in 2017, Anduril is a technology company that builds command and control systems and a variety of drones, counting the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom among its customers, according to its website. OpenAI said in October that it was collaborating with the US military's research arm DARPA on cyber defenses for critical networks. "AI is a transformational technology that can be used to strengthen democratic values or to undermine them," OpenAI said in a post at the time. "With the proper safeguards, AI can help protect people, deter adversaries, and even prevent future conflict." The companies said the deal would help the United States maintain an edge over China, a goal that OpenAI chief Sam Altman has spoken of in the past. "Our partnership with Anduril will help ensure OpenAI technology protects US military personnel, and will help the national security community understand and responsibly use this technology to keep our citizens safe and free," Altman said in Wednesday's release. Anduril was co-founded by Palmer Luckey, after Facebook bought his previous company Oculus VR in a $2 billion deal. The new partnership will bring together OpenAI's advanced AI models with Anduril systems and software, according to the companies. "Our partnership with OpenAI will allow us to utilize their world-class expertise in artificial intelligence to address urgent Air Defense capability gaps across the world," Anduril co-founder and chief executive Brian Schimpf said in the release. Schimpf said the collaboration would allow "military and intelligence operators to make faster, more accurate decisions in high-pressure situations." gc/aha

With 13 newcomers, South Carolina Senate may tackle tough issuesBECAUSE of the rapidly changing times, traditional values that harp on integrity as a core pillar of personal conduct may be going out of fashion. Still, they hold self-evident truths that society can only trifle with or abandon at its own peril. In particular, the saying that honesty is the best policy illustrates the primacy of plainness in societal dealings, as the story of former Hearts of Oak midfielder Joe Tagoe, popularly known as Bobby Short, brings out most poignantly. Now in retirement, the Ghanaian football great recently admitted to falsifying his age during his football career, relating how his actions cost him so dearly. As Tagoe revealed during a television interview, in a bid to escape the poverty trap, he had reduced his age from 35 to 19 in 2017 to secure a spot with an Egyptian under-19 team. Indeed, in a desperate bid to hide his age, the midfielder dyed his grey hair daily, but as it turned out, he could not withstand the intense pressure of the game, and had to quit. Hear him: “I was home and received a call from Francis Martey (a fellow footballer) about an offer for an under-19 player. Looking at my height, I said okay. At that time, I was about 34 or 35 years old. Poverty can make you do such things, and the system isn’t fair to us. I would have died if I hadn’t taken care of myself. I trained with both the senior team and U-20s, but the running with the U-20s always left me dizzy. Many players like me face similar situations.” Around the world, age cheating in football is almost as old as the sport. That is why for Nigerians in particular, Tagoe’s story sounds eerily familiar. For instance, ahead of the 2009 Under-17 World Cup at which the Golden Eaglets emerged runners-up, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) almost got on a collision course with the world soccer-governing body, FIFA, over the use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to flush out age cheats. The test had already weeded out 15 age cheats from the Nigerian team, but the then NFF president, Sani Lulu, put up a stiff resistance, declaring that the federation would not use the FIFA-sanctioned method in detecting over-aged players. He said: “I will not use the MRI to disqualify my players. When we came on board to serve Nigerian people, we promised to eradicate age cheats in cadet championships. FIFA has not given us information on the MRI but I can only use it as a guide.” It took the intervention of the then Minister of Sports and Chairman of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Sani Ndanusa, to restore sanity. Pooh-poohing the NFF leadership’s decision to invite the parents of the players in camp to validate their ages, Ndanusa said: “We will not deviate from FIFA’s requirement in terms of ascertaining players’ age. The whole world has gone digital and we are following suit. We are no longer in the era of analog, so we are going to adhere to FIFA’s standard in ascertaining the ages of the players we are going to parade. FIFA has indicated the use of MRI, and we are going to just adhere to that, simple.” Actually, the MRI, although not without drawbacks, has been fairly effective in weeding out overage players over the years. In 2007, the Asian Football Confederation discovered that 10 players were above the age of 16 during an Under-15 tournament. Ahead of the 2009 FIFA Under-17 tournament, the Gambia Football Association found that a few players that had just failed the MRI scan had actually participated at the 2009 African Under-17 championship. According to FIFA, over the years, “over-age players had been wrongly entered into various youth competitions, often benefiting from an unfair advantage due to their greater physical maturity compared to players of the proper age.” That was why the body introduced the mandatory use of MRI during the 2009 Under-17 World Cup in order to determine the actual ages of the players presented by the various national teams. Back to Joe Tagoe’s confession. It is quite easy to join the football veteran in laughing at himself, but the issue he engages is an extremely serious one. Until recently, age cheating was a big problem in African football, particularly in cadet competitions, and the number of players who embarrassed themselves in Europe after getting signed by various clubs was considerable. Indeed, the malaise still goes on in the footballing world as many players, their agents and their parents seek to make cool cash through fraud. As Tagoe’s story demonstrates very clearly, age cheats in sports, or indeed any other field of human endeavour, are unfair even to themselves. They put their bodies through undue strain in order to gain advantage over others, and end up making cruel mockery of themselves. Tagoe’s self-deprecating story has taken some courage to tell, and its lessons are clear: age cheating is anathema in sports. Of course, the problem starts from the home front where undisciplined parents teach their children to lie, cheat and rob others at a very young age. And the situation is not helped by the actions of members of the political leadership, many of whom have biographies riddled with questionable claims. There have been instances where political leaders supposedly graduated from schools that did not even exist as of the time they claimed to have graduated from them. Such deception has a way of seeping through the pore of society and contaminating many people, including those down the pecking order. Any society that wants a massive turnaround must enthrone a transparent, honest and patriotic political leadership. Joe Tagoe’s story is instructive. It is hoped that up and coming athletes will learn from the experience of this veteran footballer and not see his story as mere comic relief. That would be quite tragic. Get real-time news updates from Tribune Online! Follow us on WhatsApp for breaking news, exclusive stories and interviews, and much more. Join our WhatsApp Channel nowNEW DELHI: Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, on Saturday inaugurated India's first bio-bitumen-based National Highway stretch on NH-44 in Mansar, Nagpur, Maharashtra. This stretch has been developed using lignin-based bio-bitumen technology by Praj Industries, in collaboration with CSIR - Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), and Oriental. The use of lignin as a sustainable binder marks a significant breakthrough in flexible pavement technology, addressing the challenge of bitumen scarcity and reducing India's dependency on imports, which currently constitute 50 per cent of the total supply. This innovation contributes to global sustainability goals by generating revenue for bio-refineries, mitigating stubble burning, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 70 per cent compared to fossil-based bitumen. Leveraging India's abundant lignocellulosic biomass, this development aligns with the nation's vision for sustainable industrial growth. Speaking on the occasion, Gadkari emphasised that fostering advancements in green technologies and promoting industrial sustainability aligns with Hon'ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi Ji's vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat. He highlighted that this initiative paves the way for large-scale domestic production and a self-reliant, sustainable future for India. Speaking to the media after the event, Gadkari said, "There are 400 projects in the country to make CNG from biomass...CNG is much cheaper than petrol, and the pollution caused by CNG is also less than petrol... CNG saves a lot of money...farmers will benefit a lot from this." Earlier, the Union Minister, speaking in Jaipur informed that currently, 400 projects are in process, and 40 of them are already completed. CNG is being produced from parali in these projects and this has resulted in the use of a total of 60 lakh tonnes of parali, which has helped reduce pollution, he stated. He further added that due to the burning of stubble in Punjab and Haryana, there is a problem of pollution in Delhi. "Now we are making CNG from the rice straw...Now the farmers, who are the 'annadata' and 'urjadata,' will become 'bitumendata'... This will help in creating value from waste and benefit the farmers also," he added.

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