National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, along with senior officials from the National Security Council Secretariat, met with Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), in Tehran.

The duo mulled bilateral trading in the local currencies, besides discussing economic, security and political issues. They also shared mutual concerns over international events.  The visit comes days after Iranian Defence Minister Mohammad Reza Gharaei Ashtiani called on Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi.

India and Iran share close economic and diplomatic ties and both have been propagating the use of Chabahar Port for trade and also the International North-South Transit Corridor. Doval’s visit to Iran comes ahead of a foreign ministerial meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Goa this week. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amirabdollahian are likely to attend the summit.

Iran is set to formally become a member of the SCO in July during the SCO Summit. Iran on March 17 strongly pitched for faster implementation of the Chabahar Port as well as the use of the facility by India to send various shipments saying the key transit hub will benefit both countries.

Iranian Ambassador to India Iraj Elahi also sought the resumption of the export of crude oil to India – which is under U.S. sanctions. India stopped procurement of crude oil from Iran after the U.S. did not continue with sanction waivers to India and several other countries. 

In the process to take India-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) relationship to the next level Admiral R Hari Kumar, Indian Navy chief, reached Singapore on May 1  to participate in the Inaugural ASEAN India Maritime Exercise (AIME-2023).

The AIME-2023, scheduled to be held in two phases from May 2 -8 and two Indian Naval Ships (INSs) Satpura and Delhi also reached Singapore on May 1 , to participate in the exercise.

The ships, during their port call at Singapore, will also participate in the International Maritime Defence Exhibition (IMDEX-23) and International Maritime Security Conference being hosted by Singapore.

INS Delhi, India’s first indigenously-built guided missile destroyer and INS Satpura, an indigenously-built guided missile stealth frigate are a part of Indian Navy’s Eastern Fleet based at Visakhapatnam.

Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Branch has filed a case against Aam Admi Party Gujarat President Isudan Gadhvi on May 1 .

The complaint came after Gadhvi’s comments on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Mann Ki Baat,” in which he claimed that 100 episodes of the monthly radio show cost Rs 830 crore.

Gadhvi is the third political leader after Congress’ Rahul Gandhi and RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav to face to complaints in Gujarat.

The Prime Minister completed the 100th episode of 'Mann Ki Baat' on Apr 30  which was broadcast across the country and various parts of the world.

A computer scientist often dubbed "the godfather of artificial intelligence" has quit his job at Google to speak out about the dangers of the technology.

Geoffrey Hinton, who created a foundation technology for AI systems, told The New York Times that advancements made in the field posed "profound risks to society and humanity."

Hinton said that competition between tech giants was pushing companies to release new AI technologies at dangerous speeds, risking jobs and spreading misinformation.

In 2022, Google and OpenAI -- the start-up behind the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT -- started building systems using much larger amounts of data than before.

Hinton told the Times he believed that these systems were eclipsing human intelligence in some ways because of the amount of data they were analyzing.

While AI has been used to support human workers, the rapid expansion of chatbots like ChatGPT could put jobs at risk.

The scientist also warned about the potential spread of misinformation created by AI, telling the Times that the average person will "not be able to know what is true anymore."

In March, tech billionaire Elon Musk and a range of experts called for a pause in the development of AI systems to allow time to make sure they are safe.

An open letter, signed by more than 1,000 people including Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, was prompted by the release of GPT-4, a much more powerful version of the technology used by ChatGPT.

Hinton did not sign that letter at the time, but told The New York Times that scientists should not "scale this up more until they have understood whether they can control it."

A bodyguard shot and killed a government minister in Uganda early May 2  in an apparent private dispute.

The victim, Charles Engola, served in the government of President Yoweri Museveni as the junior minister in charge of labour. He was a retired army colonel.

The attacker, who has not been publicly identified, then shot himself.

The shooting took place inside Engola's home in a suburb of the Ugandan capital, Kampala. The motive was not immediately clear, but the local press said there had been an apparent dispute over the guard's wages.

The incident is likely to send shockwaves in a country where other high-profile officials have been killed in gun attacks over the years.

In 2021, a former army chief in Uganda was wounded and his daughter killed when gunmen shot at their vehicle in Kampala.

Paraguayans on Apr 30  elected a president from the rightwing party in power for nearly eight decades, rejecting a center-left challenger who had railed against endemic institutional corruption.

Economist and former finance minister Santiago Pena, 44, took the election with more than 42 percent of the vote to continue the hegemony of the conservative Colorado Party, results showed.

Sixty-year-old challenger Efrain Alegre of the Concertacion center-left coalition garnered nearly 27.5 percent despite having gone into the vote with a narrow lead in opinion polls.

The outcome bucked a recent anti-incumbency trend in Latin American elections with voters repeatedly punishing establishment parties, often in favor of leftist rivals.

The Colorado Party has governed almost continually since 1947 -- through a long and brutal dictatorship and since the return of democracy in 1989, but has been tainted by corruption claims.

Pena's political mentor, ex-president and Colorado Party leader Horacio Cartes, was recently sanctioned by the United States over graft.

Around 4.8 million of Paraguay's 7.5 million inhabitants were eligible to vote for a replacement for President Mario Abdo Benitez, who is leaving office after a constitutionally limited single five-year term.

They also voted for new lawmakers, with the Colorado Party winning the highest share of the upper house Senate votes at 43 percent.

Voting is mandatory in Paraguay, though only 63 percent turned out.

India’s exports to the UAE will reach $50 billion by 2026 because of the implementation of the free trade agreement last year in May, Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal said. While India’s exports to the UAE in FY23 grew by nearly 12% to $ 31.3 billion, imports registered a growth of 18.8% to $53.2 billion in the same year.

Non-oil imports from the country grew by only 4% since last year.

“There has been significant growth in the India-UAE trade after the FTA was signed between both countries last year. We are hoping that we will be able to reach $50 billion in exports by 2026-27,” the commerce secretary said.

During FY23, growth in India’s overall exports was 5.3%; excluding the UAE, India’s global exports surged at 4.8%. Some of the key sectors, including labour-intensive sectors, which registered impressive export growth due to the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) include mineral fuels, electrical machinery (particularly telephone equipment), gems & jewellery, automobiles (transport vehicles segment), essential oils/perfumes/cosmetics (beauty/skincare products); other machinery; cereals (Rice), coffee/tea/spices, etc.

Under the India-UAE CEPA, the UAE eliminated duties on 97.4% of its tariff lines corresponding to 99% of goods imported from India. India has obtained immediate duty elimination on over 80% of its tariff lines corresponding to 90% of India’s exports in value terms. Most of these tariff lines correspond to labor-intensive industries/sectors like oil seeds & oils, beverages, cotton, fish & fish products, textiles, clothing, gems and jewellery, leather, footwear, pharma and many engineering products. Meanwhile, in the services domain, India has offered 100 sub-sectors (out of 160) to the UAE and the UAE has offered 111 sub-sectors to India.

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma on May 1  took up a visiting professor position at a Japanese university, another new academic role for the founder of tech giant Alibaba.

Tokyo College, part of the prestigious University of Tokyo, said Ma would "share his rich experience and pioneering knowledge on entrepreneurship, corporate management and innovation" in seminars for students and staff.

The 58-year-old has kept a low profile since his fall from grace during a Chinese government crackdown on the tech industry over two years ago.

But he recently accepted an honorary professorship from the University of Hong Kong's business school, reportedly for a three-year term ending in March 2026.

Before launching Alibaba -- whose operations span e-commerce, cloud computing, media and AI -- Ma taught English for eight years at Hangzhou Dianzi University in eastern China.

He was one of the most high-profile targets of a crackdown on alleged anti-competitive practices by some of China's biggest names in tech from late 2020.

Ma has largely been absent from public view over the past two years, but was spotted on a Spanish island and was reportedly living in Japan for much of 2022.

He made a rare public appearance in China in March, when he visited a school founded by Alibaba partners in the city of Hangzhou.