Karnataka: Father, brothers held for killing 19-yr-old girl over affair with lower-caste boy

Mangaluru: In a significant development, Mescom has proposed a phased electricity tariff hike starting with Rs 0.70 per unit for the fiscal year 2025-26. The proposal has been submitted to the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) for approval, signaling a potential increase in electricity costs for consumers.

Mescom emphasized that the current tariff structure is insufficient to meet operational expenses and manage revenue effectively. To address this, the company has invited public objections to the proposed hike.

Currently, the electricity supply cost is Rs 9.23 per unit, while the consumer tariff stands at Rs 8.53 per unit, leading to a shortfall of Rs 0.70 per unit. For the financial year 2023-24, Mescom reported revenue of Rs 5,924.73 crore against an expenditure of Rs 6,310.39 crore, resulting in a deficit of Rs 367.66 crore. For the 2025-26 fiscal year, projected revenue is Rs 5,850.81 crore, with an actual requirement of Rs 5,961.63 crore, creating a deficit of Rs 110.82 crore.

In a first, Mescom has submitted a multi-year tariff revision proposal to KERC. The plan outlines a hike of Rs 0.70 per unit for 2025-26, followed by Rs 0.37 per unit for 2026-27 and Rs 0.54 per unit for 2027-28.

"An increase in electricity tariff is inevitable," stated Jayakumar R, Managing Director of Mescom. "Mescom has submitted a proposal in this regard to KERC."

Israel’s Unit 8200 is a secretive cyber warfare team that is said to be building the artificial intelligence (AI) systems that helped the regime commit the genocide against Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. According to a report, Unit 8200 is building AI systems for global tech and AI companies.

Former Unit 8200 members who specialize in AI, machine learning and big data are working for Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Open AI and Nvidia, which is an AI company determined to be the biggest in the world, the ¡Do Not Panic! website reported on Friday.

Former Unit 8200 spies specializing in AI are based worldwide, from San Francisco to New York, Spain to Switzerland, and London to Jerusalem al-Quds.

The report also said that AI leaders from Unit 8200 are now working for AI start-ups or heralded by corporate media as the next generation of AI.

The report revealed that most of these AI people have expressed support for Israel’s genocidal war against the people in Gaza. It was also exposed that not a single person from these people ever voiced opposition to Israel’s mass murder in Gaza.

Advocacy groups have also said AI and machine learning is central to the architecture of occupation and apartheid established before the genocidal Gaza campaign, from the use of facial recognition technology, and AI-directed guns at checkpoints, to spy apps known as ‘Blue Wolf’ and ‘Red Wolf’.

According to another report published in November last year, Israel has been employing an AI firing system jointly manufactured by an Indian arms company during its genocide in Gaza.

Citing documents and news reports, the Middle East Eye (MEE) news portal reported on November 20 that the occupation forces have been using the Arbel system since the beginning of the Israeli regime’s bloody war on Gaza.

Arbel was unveiled at a defense expo in Gandhinagar in the Indian state of Gujarat in October 2022 as a co-venture between Israeli Weapons Industries (IWI) company and India’s Adani Defense & Aerospace.

At the time, several Indian media described it as “India’s first AI-based firing system.”

In April 2024, IWI introduced Aber as a new “computerized small arms system” designed to increase combat lethality.

India, which is the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons, has in recent years become a major co-producer of Israeli weapons.

Israel unleashed its bloody Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance group carried out its historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

The Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 46,788 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 110,453 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Another Palestinian journalist has been killed in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip, taking the death toll to 205 since early October 2023 when the occupying Tel Aviv regime launched its all-out onslaught against the blockaded coastal sliver.

Local organizations identified the new victim as Ahlam al-Nafed, who recently reported from the besieged Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza for Drop Site News and other media outlets.

She was killed on Tuesday as she was walking to al-Shifa Hospital – the largest medical complex and central hospital in the Gaza Strip, and located in the neighborhood of northern Rimal in Gaza City.

“For the past 100 days, Ahlam chronicled the genocide in northern Gaza, capturing evidence of Israeli war crimes from the besieged Indonesian Hospital.

“Through her words and images, she ensured that atrocities which might have been silenced were brought to light, allowing the world to witness the brutal reality unfolding there,” Drop Site News wrote in a statement published on its X account on Tuesday.

It underlined that Ahlam’s work documenting the attacks on the Indonesian Hospital was irreplaceable.

“She was one of the last remaining voices in northern Gaza — a voice the world desperately needed. Without her, the full extent of Israel’s actions might never have been known,” the statement also read.

For its part, the Indonesian Hospital said, “Ahlam courageously documented the genocide in north Gaza, residing in the medical facility during its siege, taking evidence of war crimes and bearing witness to tell the story with her pictures and her words, many of which we shared with you.”

Journalists working within the Palestinian territory face heightened risks while covering the genocidal war, particularly in light of Israeli ground assaults and airstrikes, as well as challenges such as disrupted communications, shortages of supplies, and power outages.

In the face of these difficulties, Palestinian journalists have continued to document the atrocities of the war, acting as the global community's eyes and ears throughout one of the most deadly wars of the 21st century.

Backed by the United States and its Western allies, Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the Israeli regime in response to its decades-long campaign of oppression against Palestinians.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed at least 46,645 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 110,012 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.

On November 21 last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.