Detecting media bias is crucial, specifically in the South Asian region. Despite this, annotated datasets and computational studies for Bangla political bias research remain scarce. Crucially because, political stance detection in Bangla news requires understanding of linguistic cues, cultural context, subtle biases, rhetorical strategies, code-switching, implicit sentiment, and socio-political background. To address this, we introduce the first benchmark dataset of 200 politically significant and highly debated Bangla news articles, labeled for government-leaning, government-critique, and neutral stances, alongside diagnostic analyses for evaluating large language models (LLMs). Our comprehensive evaluation of 28 proprietary and open-source LLMs shows strong performance in detecting government-critique content (F1 up to 0.83) but substantial difficulty with neutral articles (F1 as low as 0.00). Models also tend to over-predict government-leaning stances, often misinterpreting ambiguous narratives. This dataset and its associated diagnostics provide a foundation for advancing stance detection in Bangla media research and offer insights for improving LLM performance in low-resource languages.

THE co-founder of a social-impact tech startup has warned the government against overregulating technology in the country. "A lot of us are worried about overregulation," Connected Women Chief Executive Officer Gina Romero said in an interview on "Business and Politics," a weekly program hosted by The Manila Times Chairman Dante "Klink" Ang 2nd, and aired on SMNI Saturday evening. "Because this is a booming opportunity for the country, overregulating will potentially cause it to contract. We do not want to lose our potential there." Romero, a 2022 TOWNS (The Outstanding Women in Nation's Service) Awardee in Women Empowerment through ICT, emphasized that "technology allows us to impact more people and create more scale."

India’s National strategy for AI has formulated the way forward to harness the power of AI in various fields especially in healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities and infrastructure, and smart mobility and transportation, according to Union Minister Devusinh Chauhan.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The Justice Department is improving language access to its programs to help people with limited English proficiency better report crimes. The Interior Department is providing technical assistance to Native American tribes to help them apply for grants. The Energy Department is helping low-income households access programs to weatherize their homes and save energy.

The government is running artificial intelligence (AI)-based pilot projects in six Union territories in the field of health care, and such projects in education, agriculture, social justice, criminal justice as well as investigation are also being worked out, Electronics and IT Secretary Ajay Sawhney said on Tuesday. McKinsey Head (Global Analytics) Noshir Kaka said the development in the field of AI in India can add around USD 500 billion to the economy over the next four-and-a-half years based on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's aspiration to make the country a USD 5-trillion economy. Speaking at the RAISE 2020 summit, Sawhney said AI is moving towards being an ecosystem that includes the database, authorised service provider, authorised service agency and authorised registrar, among others. "We are trying to move forward to make this happen in all the important domains in the economy, starting with health care. It's not just announced but being rolled out in pilot phase in six Union territories," Sawhney said.

Vedantu, a pioneer in LIVE online learning platform in India, is assisting the Ministry of Health (Govt of Karnataka) to impart COVID training and communication to doctors across the State. To assist the Karnataka State Government & Doctors in the ongoing battle against Covid-19, Vedantu has volunteered to offer its WAVE platform. This initiative is helping the ministry to reach out to 250 doctors across Karnataka and train them LIVE using Vedantu's platform to improve their understanding on the following – This training is led by senior officials – Dr. Ravi Kumar, Senior Regional Director at Ministry of Health & FW, Govt of India and Dr Mahamood Shariff, Research officer, NVBDCP, Directorate of H&FW, Govt of Karnataka. Speaking on the partnership, Dr. PC Jaffer (IAS), Secretary to Govt (Expenditure), Finance Department, Karnataka Govt Secretariat, said, "In the current times, taking the risk of face to face training was out of question for us. It was imperative to find a solution that mirrors, but also has the same impact as the face to face training. Hence, we decided to choose Vedantu's platform, given its rich and interactive platform capabilities, to train and converse online with our COVID warriors across the state. We are glad as our training sessions are happening smoothly now and we continue our fight against COVID. "It is Vedantu's great honour to support doctors who are in the front line of the fight against the pandemic.

To stop spread of disinformation leading to widespread public disorder, the government is exploring use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to remove such content automatically from social media platforms. The Centre is to "take up the issue with representatives of various international social media platforms operating in the country and monitor their compliance to instructions issued by lawful authorities under Information Technology Act." Sources said, "The introduction of Artificial Intelligence to remove objectionable content automatically from social media platforms needs to be explored." This step was proposed after the government witnessed widespread public disorder because of spread of rumours in mob lynching cases. The Ministry of Home Affairs has taken up the matter and is exploring ways to implement it. On the rise in sharing of fake news over social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad had said in Lok Sabha that "With a borderless cyberspace coupled with the possibility of instant communication and anonymity, the potential for misuse of cyberspace and social media platforms for criminal activities is a global issue."

Prof Ashutosh Sharma, secretary to the government (Ministry of Science and Technology) reportedly said that the government has initiated a project to digitally map the country with a resolution of 10 centimetres, using drones and technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data. The Survey of India, a part of the Department of Science and Technology, started on the project a few months ago and has chalked out a five-year plan to complete the project. The survey has started the exercise in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Haryana. "The project will be extended to other states but the respective government should show interest and also provide some financial support," Sharma said. The project, which is expected to cost INR 1000 Cr, is also mapping the entire Ganga basin from the beginning to the end, 25 km from either sides of the banks with an accuracy of 10 cm.

More than three budgets presented in the parliament had mentioned about the Artificial Intelligence (AI) provisions. But the much-talked-about AI project has not moved forward in the last two years. The project seems to have been stuck between government departments NITI Aayog and the ministry of electronics and IT (Meity). Meity, in a last inter-ministerial meet, has raised apprehension over the numerous overlaps committed by the NITI Aayog related to AI road map. Now, the ministry has sought the intervention of finance ministry to look into it and resolve it, said ET report quoting govt official aware of the development.

NASSCOM along with Government of Karnataka today launched the Centre of Excellence for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (CoE – DSAI) in Bengaluru. Supporting the government's National Strategy for AI, NASSCOM will facilitate collaboration between NITI Aayog and CoEs and will include NITI Aayog as a knowledge partner. Also, leveraging their skilling platform FutureSkills, NASSCOM and Niti Aayog will together accelerate innovation and cultivate skilling in India. The CoE initiative is a nationwide program on innovation focusing on solutions in smart manufacturing, automotive, healthcare, agriculture, energy, IoT, banking & financial services, retail, telecom, and host of emerging technologies. NASSCOM has partnered with Intel and IBM as its founding members and technology advisors for augmenting and accelerating the Data Science & Artificial Intelligence ecosystem in the country.