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Artificial intelligence has made tremendous strides in recent years—from beating human champions at chess to revolutionizing self-driving cars and setting up life-like virtual assistants. Now, AI is putting its creative hat on and venturing into the world of content generation. While AI shows great promise for automating routine, and mundane, writing tasks and producing large volumes of content, its use also raises important questions about originality, quality and its impact on jobs. The question whether—or even when—AI will eventually replace human intervention in writing is being hotly debated even as we write this piece.

In the 1964 James Bond movie, ‘Goldfinger’, the bad guy, Auric Goldfinger, realized he could not just steal the huge amount of gold in Fort Knox, a famous US Army post in Kentucky, known primarily for housing a large portion of the USA’s gold reserves. So, he planned to use a nuclear device to irradiate it to make the gold useless, which would make his own gold more valuable.

Elon Musk announced that the first person has received a Neuralink brain implant, which is a significant step forward in the advancement of "brain-computer interface" technology. This technology has the potential to assist individuals with conditions like paralysis to interact with their environment.

On January 25, Kenneth Eugene Smith made history as the first person to be executed using nitrogen hypoxia. Smith was found guilty in 1989 for the murder of Elizabeth Sennett, the wife of an Alabama preacher, allegedly acting under her husband's instructions. Initially, Alabama attempted to execute Smith through lethal injection in November 2022, but the procedure failed. As a result, Smith opted for the untested method of nitrogen hypoxia for his execution. However, this decision has sparked controversy, as Alabama maintains that nitrogen hypoxia is a painless and swift method of death, while numerous medical experts disagree, comparing it to torture. The question remains: why did Alabama approve the use of this unproven method?

No ordinary rodent, Mickey Mouse represents an aspect of America which comic reading children grow up with and form their own ideas about a land whose residents do not find nothing beyond them. Of course, such ideas change as they grow wiser of the world around them sometimes opposing the initial ideas about a country which speaks of democracy but is often found supporting regimes which stifle the aspirations of people.

The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History by the legendary American communist historian W.E.B. DuBois argues that Africa’s great contributions to world civilization have been erased and ignored. DuBois argues that this is because of the transatlantic slave trade, which enslaved millions of Africans.

On December 24, 2024, NASA's Parker Solar Probe is set for a historic journey, edging closer to the Sun than any other man-made object before. Achieving record-breaking speeds of 195 km/s (435,000 mph), it will be the fastest artificial object in history. The probe aims to approach the Sun at a distance of just 6.1 million km (about 3.8 million miles), a feat unparalleled in human engineering. Dr. Nour Raouafi, who leads the project, told BBC that this mission is akin to virtually touching a star, highlighting its extraordinary significance.

Australian by birth, John Pilger died on December 30 2023, at the age of 84. He initially rose to fame for his international reporting on the Vietnam war, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Burma, East Timor, Australia and the Middle East.

Revolutionaries are seldom unarmed. Peter Magubane was no exception; but instead of a machine gun or a machete, he carried a camera and clicked with it to fight his cause. Like a prophet, not honoured at home, but feted worldwide, Magubane was a Black South African photographer whose snapshots cruelties and images of apartheid won plaudits worldwide. The man who caught apartheid in celluloid passed away at 91.

Famous as the first ‘Showman’ of Indian cinema, had Raj Kapoor been alive today, he would have celebrated in grand style his turning 100 this month. Facing the movie cameras after putting on the grease-paint and an attire which was a take on that of the inimitable Charlie Chaplin, he essayed the part of a hero when the country had just assumed its seat among newly independent nations.