AI taps Ex- Ethiopian Airlines Group chief as new CEO Ethiopian national Tewolde Gebremariam will replace New Zealander Campbell Wilson, who had announced his resignation in April. Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran said after completing the initial phase of stabilisation, integration, and fleet commitments under Wilson, the airline is now entering a critical era of execution and expansion. Air India cited Gebremariam’s experience spearheading a major expansion that transformed Ethiopian Airlines into Africa’s largest and most profitable carrier | P13 mangaluru l Thursday l august 06, 2026 l `9.00 l PAGES 16 l city EDITION 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 Meta apologises to Chemical leak kills 3 workers in Yadgir govt for removing PM modi’s video R amakr i sh n a Ba d sesh i @ Yadgir/Kalaburagi ing certain types of content. They apologised and regretted US tech giant Meta on Wednes- the mistake.” day apologised for promoting Sources said Meta officials ‘biased’ and anti-government will be summoned again. posts on Instagram and FaceMeta-owned platforms Instabook and admitted to being gram, Facebook and WhatsApp paid “a lot of money” to boost have been under the governcertain types of content, gov- ment’s radar over allegations ernment sources said. of algorithmic bias. Sources The firm also expressed re- said the platform promoted gret for briefly removing Prime one-sided content during the Minister Narendra Modi’s vid- recent student protests. eo posted on Facebook, which it Another major issue flagged claimed was due to an erwas the presence of ror by automated content CSAM on Instagram. The filters. move followed a BBC reEarlier in the day Me, port which found that Inta’s Chief Global Affairs stagram displayed paid Officer Joel Kaplan and ads containing ter ms members of his team such as “rape video” and met Ministry of Elec- Mark Zuckerberg “child video”. tronics and Information Meta officials were Technology (MeitY) Secretary summoned after Facebook S Krishnan for about 45 min- briefly removed a video posted utes. The delegation later met by Prime Minister Narendra Union minister Ashwini Modi addressing the youth durVaishnaw. ing the student protest. In a statement, Kaplan said: The Parliamentary Standing “I apologised to the minister on Committee on Communicabehalf of Meta for the error re- tions and IT, headed by BJP MP stricting PM Modi’s post.” Nishikant Dubey, asked ZuckHowever, Meity sources erberg to apologise within claimed the apology came from three days. The panel also the Meta CEO. “Mark Zucker- warned that Meta could lose berg sent his apologies for the the safe harbour protection, CSAM (child sexual abuse ma- which shields platforms from terial) content, deepfake con- liability for user-generated content and errors in operating the tent, if it uses algorithms to cuplatform. They admitted that a rate content instead of merely lot of money was paid for boost- hosting third-party material. R A K E S H K U M A R @ New Delhi Three workers suffocated to death, while two others fell ill after a chemical leak at a pharmaceutical manufacturing unit in Kadechur-Badiyal Industrial Area here on Wednesday . The deceased have been identified as Vikram Singh (25), Sanjay Singh (25) and Ganesh (23). Ganesh hailed from Telangana, while Vikram and Sanjay were from Madhya Pradesh. Police outside the pharmaceutical manufacturing unit in Yadgir on Wednesday The two who fell ill, Manchal Hemanth and Manchal Shivakumar from Andhra Pradesh, are being treated at the Rai- express read Political party prevails over legislature party: SC NEW DELHI: A political party retains control over its MPs and MLAs and the party’s official directives prevail over the will of the elected members, the Supreme Court observed on Wednesday. The remark came while hearing a plea against the Maharashtra Speaker’s decision not to disqualify Shinde faction MLAs under the anti-defection law P10 Over 1.1 cr voters in ASDDO list; 3 days for corrections E x p ress Ne w s S er v i c e @ Bengaluru Data from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Karnataka till August 5 showed that there are 1.11crore electors listed under the Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate and Others (ASDDO) category in Karnataka, of whom over 45% are from Bengaluru’s four districts. Further, 34,17,428 electors have not included their 2002 mapping data while submitting their enumeration forms as part of the SIR exercise. CEO Karnataka, V Anbukkumar, said these voters will get a notice seeking further information. Voters who have not signed the forms and submitted them to booth level officers (BLOs) will not be included in the electoral rolls, he said. Citizens have three days till August 8 to check if their names are in the ASDDO list. They can roll back the forms and make corrections. After August 8, the digitisation app with BLOs will freeze and no corrections can be done later. P7 chur Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS). All five are labourers. The chemical leak occurred at a unit of CIL Labo- ratory Pvt Ltd, which manufactures phar maceutical products. The deceased and the two who fell ill were mixing dimethylamine with thionyl chloride to increase the temperature from 5 degrees Celsius to 10 degrees Celsius when sulphur dioxide, a poisonous gas, got released, sources said. The three died on the spot. The condition of one of the two admitted at the hospital is serious, while another is recovering. P7 Shah to speak on FCRA bill in LS: Rijiju to Rahul Pree t ha Na i r @ New Delhi AS the deadlock in Parliament persists, the Centre is likely to introduce the contentious Bill to amend the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act in the Lok Sabha during the ongoing session, sources privy to the development said. Union Home Minister Amit Shah is expected to reply to the discussion on the Bill, sources said. The proposed tabling comes amid repeated disruptions in both Houses, with the Opposition insisting that Shah make a statement in Parliament on the alleged police action against protesting students. In a bid to break the logjam, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju met Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and sought his cooperation in passing crucial bills, said sources. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Congress MP K C Venugopal said the Opposition will not allow the bill to pass in its current form. “The Leader of the Opposition has strongly expressed his concerns, and the party and Opposition’s stand is also very clear. They cannot bring the FCRA bill in its old format. We will oppose it very strongly We are not going to al. low them to pass such a draconian bill,” he said. Though the bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 25 this year, the Centre deferred its passage after facing fierce objections from the Opposition parties and various civil society organisations. P9 country calling Hasina sticks to Dec return, wants ban on party gone J aya n t h J a c o b @ New Delhi Bangladesh’s ousted PM Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday reiterated that she would return to her country in December despite facing criminal convictions and the prospect of imprisonment or worse, while demanding that the ban on her Awami League be lifted. In her first interaction with the media since being ousted from power in August 2024, Hasina addressed journalists remotely at an event hosted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia in New Delhi. Although she was expected to appear on video, she delivered only an audio message. “I will return to my people,” she said, adding that she would announce the exact date “when the time is right”. “They may try to implicate me with fabricated cases, but fear cannot decide my duty to the people, my life or beyond,” she said. The remarks come two years after protests that forced her from office and months after Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal sentenced her to death in absentia for allegedly ordering a crackdown on protesters during the 2024 uprising. “I know they may put me in jail or kill me. I will go back home to be with my people,” she said, adding that she had chosen December because it is their “victory month.”