Gujarat held local body polls on April 26 for municipalities, talukas, zilla parishads and panchayats, which the BJP swept. Of concern is that 730 candidates won unopposed and 1,572 withdrew, around 400 of them just four hours before polling. Add to this the Samras scheme, introduced by as Gujarat CM, where villages receive a cash incentive for choosing consensus over voting in panchayat elections, and there are real questions about the health of grassroots democracy in the state.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, of partial Indian origin, has said he would urge Charles III to return the to India during the Brit monarch's ongoing state visit to the US. Whether he actually raised it in their meeting is not known.

Nearly 2.8 million Indians lost around Rs 23,000 crore to digital frauds in 2025, including fake speeding challans and so-called digital arrests. The scale of the problem has pushed the to act. A discussion paper released earlier this month suggests measures including a one-hour wait time on high-value UPI transactions.

FIFA's rule making panel has approved two optional new rules ahead of the 2026 World Cup in June. One of them would allow referees to penalise players who cover their mouths while verbally confronting another player. The rules are not mandatory but both are likely to make headlines once the tournament kicks off.

OpenAI founder Sam Altman's ID project, World, has signed up Zoom, Tinder and Docusign as customers, even as some governments investigate it for privacy violations while others have banned it outright. The project scans irises to assign a "proof of humanity", aiming to distinguish real users from bots and reduce deepfakes and other digital scams. Think of it as a private Aadhaar, backed by Silicon Valley.

Note: We will be off tomorrow on May 1. Regular quizzing will resume on Monday.