Author: Akshara Das

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on September 29 overturned an order directing Austrian beverage company Red Bull to stop using the term ‘energy drink’ on its product cans. The court found that India’s food regulator had issued the directive without giving the company an opportunity to present its position. The ruling follows Red Bull’s legal challenge against the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), which introduced restrictions on the use of the description in June 2026. The regulator had instructed manufacturers of high-caffeine beverages to discontinue the term as part of efforts to address concerns about product…

San Francisco: OpenAI has scrapped the planned October release of GPT-6.1 Astra after internal testing raised concerns about the model’s safety and alignment, according to a report published on September 28. The next-generation artificial intelligence model was expected to be introduced in ChatGPT and Codex and was designed to complete more complex tasks without human assistance. The decision to halt the launch comes as OpenAI faces increasing scrutiny over how increasingly autonomous AI systems behave when given access to tools and external services. Saachi Jain, OpenAI’s head of safety systems, stated that Astra fell short of the company’s standards in…

Cairo: Iran has stated that it will wait for an official response from US negotiators after President Donald Trump rejected Tehran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping within seven days. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi acknowledged Trump’s rejection in a Telegram post but noted that the US president had made what Tehran considers contradictory statements about negotiations between Washington and Tehran. Araghchi stated that Iran was waiting for mediators to convey Washington’s definitive position before deciding how to proceed. Trump told reporters on September 26 that the Iranian proposal was not acceptable and stated that Tehran…

United Kingdom: Heathrow Airport has warned that its planned third runway could open in 2039, four years later than the UK government’s original 2035 target, as planning and regulatory hurdles continue to affect the project. The airport stated that securing planning permission by 2029 remains its priority and that its core scenario has always been to open the new runway within a decade of receiving approval. Meeting the 2035 target, however, would require significant changes to regulations and planning policy, according to Heathrow. Heathrow stated that the 2035 deadline was an ambitious target and that further steps to simplify the…

United States: OpenAI has acknowledged that its artificial intelligence agents interacted with websites operated by multiple US government agencies and other institutions, with some agents bypassing security controls while attempting to obtain information. The company stated that it had alerted dozens of organisations around the world after identifying activity involving AI agents on websites operated by governments, universities, public agencies and other institutions. Among the US government entities involved were the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Census Bureau and the Education Department. OpenAI stated that the government information accessed by its agents was public. The disclosures come days after…

United States: Iran has offered the United States a proposal that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if certain conditions are met, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated at the United Nations General Assembly. Araghchi stated that Iran had conveyed the proposal to the United States through mediators and that the plan would allow normal maritime passage through the strategic waterway within seven days if the necessary conditions were fulfilled. “If the necessary conditions are met, the strait can be reopened, a normal maritime passage restored within seven days. The choice now rests with the United States,”…

United Arab Emirates: The UAE has suspended all flights operated by Iranian airlines to and from the country, effective September 24 and until further notice, as new US sanctions targeting Iran’s aviation sector affect regional air travel. The UAE General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) announced the suspension in a statement, stating that the decision was made in light of the US ban imposed on Iranian airlines from using airports in various countries around the world. The GCAA stated that it would continue to update relevant authorities and the public on developments while air traffic between the UAE and Iran remains…

United States: American rapper Macklemore has announced a new ‘Free Palestine’ concert tour, days after being removed from Ed Sheeran’s US stadium tour following pro-Palestinian remarks made during a performance in New Jersey. Macklemore, whose real name is Benjamin Haggerty, announced the new tour on September 24, with the first European performances scheduled for Dublin on October 26, Paris on October 29 and London on October 30. Additional US dates are expected to be announced later. The rapper stated that proceeds from the concerts will go to organisations providing humanitarian, medical and other support to Palestinians. The shows will feature Macklemore…

Sydney: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated that an artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI gained unauthorised access to a government Medicare data portal in June, prompting Canberra to investigate the incident and seek answers from the company. The incident involved the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal administered by Services Australia. According to Australian authorities, the AI agent accessed both public and non-public files while carrying out research related to Australian medical spending. Albanese noted that there was no evidence that individual personal Medicare information had been accessed. The government is nevertheless investigating how the AI agent was able to…

United States: Anthropic stated that its Claude artificial intelligence model helped discover a novel enzyme system with properties resembling mechanisms involved in CRISPR gene-editing technology, marking the first reported result from the AI company’s biology research efforts. The finding comes days after Reuters reported that Anthropic had quietly established a wet lab in the San Francisco Bay Area as the company expands its work in life sciences and drug-related research beyond purely computer-based AI development. Anthropic stated that Claude analysed large DNA databases and identified an unusual biological system built around a reverse transcriptase (RT), an enzyme that copies RNA…