chennai l thursday l february 06, 2025 l `9.00 l PAGES 20 l late city EDITION U.S. will ‘take over’ Gaza Strip, redevelop it: donald Trump US prez made these remarks on Tuesday during a joint press conference in the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gaza bet worth pursuing, says netanyahu Appalled U.S. allies, foes reject idea Trump said he envisions a redeveloped Gaza like “the Riviera of the Middle East.” “We’ll own it and dismantle all unexploded bombs ... level the site, create economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs.” Netanyahu, when asked about the US taking over Gaza, said, “I think it’s something that could change history. it’s worth pursuing this avenue.” ■ ■ Egypt, Jordan and other American allies rejected Donald Trump’s idea of relocating more than 2 million Palestinians from Gaza. Australia said it supports a two-state solution in the Middle East | P13 Democratic senator Chris Coons said, “This risks the world thinking we are an unreliable partner as our president makes insane proposals” 40 mins length of the presser where Trump got the gaza brainwave CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI largest Pollsters see BJP ‘Capital gain’ India is 2ndAltman AI market: its allies, 21-31 for AAP and 0-1 , for the Congress. However, two surveys — Wee Preside and Mind Brink — predicted a sweeping victory for the AAP According to WeePre. side, AAP is expected to get 4652 seats, restricting BJP to 18-23 seats. The Mind Brink survey predicted 44-49 seats for AAP and 21-25 for the saffron party . If most of the pollsters get it right, it will be a body blow for the Congress — which was hoping to rise like a Phoenix — after the reverses in Haryana and Maharashtra. The gloves were off as the Congress and the AAP both IN, DIA bloc allies, unleashed an all-out war against each other during the election campaign. However, most of the other constituents of the bloc, including the Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT) extended support to the AAP They also endorsed TMC . chief Mamata Banerjee for the leadership of the bloc. For the Congress party it is a battle for , survival in the Capital city it ruled for 15 years in a row. P r e e t h a N a i r @ New Delhi Holy dip Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Sangam during the Maha Kumbh Mela, in Prayagraj on Wednesday | PTI 18 non-Hindu TTD staff face stern action With the high-stakes assembly election in Delhi coming to a close on Wednesday, several pollsters predicted the return of the BJP to power after 27 years, with a clear majority. Exit poll predictions often go awry but if they get it right this time around, it will be a huge setback for the ruling AAP, which is seeking a third consecutive term in office. As for the voter turnout, it stood at 60.42% as of 11 pm, creeping towards the 2020 figure of 62.59%. Seven of 10 exit polls predicted anywhere between 39 and 50 seats for the BJP and 20-25 for AAP Seven pollsters predicted . not more than three seats for the Congress, which is fighting for revival in Delhi. In the 70-member Delhi assembly, 36 is the majority mark. While People’s Pulse gave a sweeping 51-60 seats for t h e B J P - l e d N DA , Chanakya Strategies predicted 39-44 for it. The P-Marq exit poll predicted 39-49 seats for the BJP and @ New Delhi People after casting votes during the Delhi Assembly elections, at Jamia Nagar in Okhla, New Delhi, on Wednesday | PTI Exit poll predictions Source AAP BJP+ Cong Chanakya Strategies 25-28 Total seats 36 Halfway mark 2-3 DV Research 70 39-44 26-34 36-44 0-0 JVC 22-31 39-45 0-2 Matrize 32-37 35-40 0-1 Mind Brink 44-49 21-25 0-1 P-Marq 21-31 39-49 0-1 People’s Insight 25-29 40-44 0-2 Peoples Pulse 10-19 51-60 0-0 Poll Diary 18-25 42-50 0-2 WeePreside 46-52 18-23 0-1 Poll Of Polls 30 39 1 TWO years after dismissing India’s AI potential as ‘hopeless’, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Wednesday acknowledged that India has grown to become the second biggest market for his firm’s flagship product, the ChatGPT, after the US. Altman, while discussing India’s progress in AI alongside Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw at an event in Delhi, said Open AI has tripled its users in India in the past year. Praising India’s rapid optimisation of the new technology, he said: “The innovation that’s happening, what people are building [in India], it’s really incredible. We’re excited to do much, much more here, and I think it’s (the Indian AI program) a great plan.” During his earlier visit to India in June 2023, Altman had termed the country’s ability to develop a foundational model similar to ChatGPT “totally hopeless”, suggesting that India would be better off without FinMin asks staff not to use ai apps The finance ministry has directed its officers not to use AI tools/ apps such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek in office devices or computers, saying they pose confidentiality risks to data and documents | P14 trying to create its own model. He later claimed his words were taken out of context. Altman now says training AI models is still expensive but it is becoming increasingly feasible, so India can take the lead in AI development. His shift in tone comes in the wake of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek creating a foundational model at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI’s offerings. The rise of DeepSeek has put pressure on OpenAI and other Western firms to lower prices to remain competitive. 80 killed in human-wildlife conflicts this FY in TN, highest in 5 years E x p r e ss N e w s S e r v i c e @ Tirumala THE Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) has barred 18 employees practising non-Hindu rituals from all religious programmes and functions of the temple body until further orders. TTD Executive Officer J Shyamala Rao instructed department heads not to assign these employees to any temple or religious programme-related work. And TTD Chairman B R Naidu reaffirmed that non-Hindu employees will be transferred out to Andhra Pradesh government departments or offered voluntary retirement. The disciplinary action, sources said, is in line with TTD’s commitment to preserving the sanctity of its temples. “It has been proved that 18 TTD employees are practicing and participating in non-Hindu religious activities, though they have taken an oath that they will follow Hindu Dharma (religion) and traditions only said Syamala Rao in a ,” memo. The 18 staff include professors, lecturers and nurses, working in colleges, hospitals and hostels run by TTD. In November 2024, the TTD Board said it would write to the N Chandrababu Naiduled NDA government for taking an appropriate decision on non-Hindus working in Tirumala. It had recommended the transfer of non-Hindu employees to other government departments. State IT and HRD minister Nara Lokesh supported the action against the TTD employees and said, “We stand by it.” S V KRI S HNA CHAITAN YA number of people killed in last 5 years 2020-21 2021-22 2022-23 2023-24 2024-25 @ Chennai 40 43 58 62 80 Three Samsung union office-bearers suspended, workers stage strike Chennai: A section of Samsung workers at the company’s Sriperumbudur unit staged a sit-in strike on Wednesday against suspension of three workers allegedly without any basis. All three were office-bearers of the CITU-backed Samsung India Workers’ Union, which was registered recently | P2 Erode East by-election concludes peacefully, 67.97% votes recorded Erode: The by-election to the Erode East Assembly constituency concluded peacefully on Wednesday. At the end of polling, the constituency recorded around 67.97% of votes. This is less than 74.79% of votes polled during the previous by-election held on February 27, 2023 | P4 h a r p r e e t b a j w a @ Chandigarh rangements were being made to send all deportees to their homes following background checks, an official said. Punjab NRI Affairs Minister Kuldeep Dhaliwal, who met some deportees at the airport, appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene on behalf of Indians facing deportation in the US. Jaspal Singh from Hardorawal in Gurdaspur reached home late in the evening and told local television channels that he had paid `30 lakh to an agent to reach the US, who took 5 months to send him there. “The agent told me he would send me legally but he used the donkey route,” he said. Tamil Nadu is witnessing a sharp increase in humanwildlife conflict, with the current fiscal year recording 80 human deaths, the highest in five years. It can be recalled that on Tuesday, a German national died after being attacked by a wild tusker at Tiger Valley near Valparai. Besides the human deaths, the state has experienced 4,235 crop damage incidents, 259 livestock deaths, 176 cases of property damage, and 138 human injuries so far in 2024-25, according to Chief Wildlife Warden Rakesh Kumar Dogra. H e reve a le d t h i s during a session on resilient forest management to combat climate change organised as part of the Tamil Nadu Climate Summit 3.0. Dogra explained that these figures show the com- month after incident express read 19 women among 104 deportees in first batch from the US arrive A US air force aircraft carrying 104 Indian immigrants from different states landed in Amritsar on Wednesday the , first such batch of Indians deported by the Donald Trump dispensation as part of the crackdown against illegal immigration in that country . Of the deportees, 33 each are from Haryana and Gujarat, 30 from Punjab, three each from Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, and two from Chandigarh, sources said. The deportees include 19 women and 13 minors. The US action comes just days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington. The C-17 Globemaster landed at the Amritsar airport at 1.55 pm, where a posse of police personnel were deployed, flanked by some anxious relatives of those who were sent back. All deportees were questioned inside the airport by government agencies, including officials from Ministry of External Affairs and Home Affairs. Ar- E x p r e ss N e w s S e r v i c e Punjab minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal interacts with deportees | PTI We were handcuffed, put on a plane where they told us we were being taken to India. Once we landed, handcuffs were removed —Jaspal Singh, A deportee 3 teachers held for raping child at govt school near Bargur E x p r e ss N e w s S e r v i c e @ Krishnagiri Six months after students were sexually assaulted at fake NCC camps in Krishnagiri district, three teachers of a government school near Bargur were arrested on Wednesday for the rape of a 13-year-old student. The girl’s relatives staged a protest in front of the school demanding capital punishment for the accused. Over 50 police personnel were rushed to the location and the protest was called off after talks with authorities. According to sources, on Monday evening, the child’s mother went to the school and asked the headmistress (HM) why no one had asked after her daughter who had been on sick leave since January 3. Following this, the HM and a teacher visited the girl at her house, where she told them she had been allegedly raped by three teachers — aged 57, 48 and 37 — on January 2 and 3. Two of the three men were her own class teachers, sources added. The next day the girl and her mother, ac, companied by the HM and teacher, lodged a complaint with the Bargur All-Women Police Station. Subsequently officials from , the Krishnagiri District Child Protection Unit visited the survivor, and sent her to the One Stop Centre at the Government Krishnagiri Medical College Hospital.  P7 2ND JUDGE blockS Trump’s BID to end birthright citizenship Two weeks after federal judge John Coughenour held it unconstitutional, district judge Deborah Boardman has ordered a pause on Trump’s plan plexity of managing an environment where thriving wildlife populations and human settlements increasingly collide. “Our growing tiger population is a positive sign for conservation, but it also poses significant challenges in terms of human-wildlife conflict,” Dogra said. He pointed out that despite TN’s forest cover being only 24.5% — below the national average — the state’s forests are among the richest in biodiversity. This has enabled the maintenance of a stable elephant population of 3,063, and a nearly four-fold increase in the tiger population from the baseline year of 2005-06, reaching a peak of 306 as per the 2022-23 census. The rising number of conflict incidents, according to Dogra, is primarily driven by severe anthropogenic pressures.  P7