KOZHIKODE l wednesday l october 07, 2026 l `10.00 l PAGES 12 l city EDITION belgian scientist wins physics nobel for work on neutrinos tracking the omnipresent ghost particles Neutrinos are tiny particles with no electric charge, making them tough to detect. Scientists can’t see these zooming on their own, so they track what happens when the particles collide with matter. Neutrinos bump into other particles rarely, so scientists build large detectors to catch collisions. Halzen’s idea was to turn the Antarctic ice into such a large detector Francis Halzen won the Nobel for his efforts to demystify a rare group of neutrinos, cosmic particles offering clues on how universe evolved 400 scientists from 14 countries ■ ■ Halzen’s idea to create the neutrino detector under a mile of ice has led to a remarkable multinational scientific collaboration and a fundamental shift in how humans think about the universe | P9 The IceCube Neutrino Observatory operated by Wisconsin-Madison varsity in the US involves more than 400 scientists in 14 countries 11th hallzen is the 11th belgian to win the nobel prize 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 KIIFB spent `100 crore on LDF govt’s PR drive M S V i d ya n a n d a n @ T’Puram Straying from its core mandate, the previous Pinarayi Vijayan regime’s flagship Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB), set up to fund critical public infrastructure projects, spent over Rs 100 crore in 2025-26 on the ‘Ente Keralam’ promotional exhibition marking the LDF government’s anniversary and the ‘CM With Me’ citizen-connect initiative. The audited accounts of KIIFB for 2025-26 show that Rs 96.44 crore was spent on ‘Ente Keralam’, the exhibition-cum-marketing fairs held across districts 11 Indian seafarers injured in Hormuz hit in April-May 2025 to mark the government’s fourth anniversary Another Rs 6.14 crore went to . ‘CM With Me’. Both expenditures were incurred under government orders to meet infrastructure-related costs of the programmes and booked as direct project costs. Development economist K P Kannan said there was, prima facie, no link between KIIFB’s main job of mobilising resources for infrastructure development and its spending on what he termed as political campaigns. “There is an issue of impropriety, and possibly, a misuse of funds,” he said. Ente Keralam (exhibitioncum-marketing fairs) CM With Me (citizen connect initiative) C96.44 cr C6.14 cr Total D102.58 cr Both booked as direct project costs, on government orders Kannan said KIIFB’s funds were largely borrowings, apart from government grants, and should not be spent on advertise- ments or campaigns. “Even if it is government money, you cannot spend it on advertisements and campaigns. They are supposed to be extremely cost-conscious,” he said. He urged the gover nment to examine the spending and take prompt action, particularly after KIIFB was brought under the finance department’s supervision. “The government should take all these things very seriously he said. ,” The board’s statutory auditor, M/s Suri & Co, drew attention to the spending on both programmes, but did not modify its opinion on the accounts over them. The auditor, however, gave ‘Represent the people’ p r e e t h a n a i r & u d aya n k i s h o r e @ New Delhi A nine-hour sit-in by Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and other Opposition leaders at the ‘All India Radio’ premises ended in forcible detention by Delhi Police on Tuesday night, after the INDIA bloc’s march to the Election Commission headquar ters turned into a prolonged standoff in the heart of the capital. The Gandhis and several other protesters were brought to the Kingsway Camp police lines after being taken into custody and were released around 10.15 pm. “To save the traitors of democracy the remnants of democracy , have been dragged through the mud. There will be a reckoning — not a single traitor will be spared,” said Rahul Gandhi. Rahul had earlier said the pro- Rahul Gandhi questioned why the poll panel was not meeting the nearly 300 Opposition MPs who had marched from Parliament to its office. “Why is the CEC not meeting us? Why are they stopping us? We represent the people,” Rahul said testers were prepared for a long haul until Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar meets them. In the evening, the ECI said it did not receive any request from any political party seeking a meeting with its officials. Delhi Police moved in to detain the protesters as several Opposition leaders including TMC, the Left parties, SP MPs and others joined the protest late evening. The dramatic standoff began with the march being stopped soon after it started from Parliament House around 10 am, following which the opposition MPs sat in front of Akashwani Bhavan just about 200 metres from the EC office. While most of the leaders including SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee and Derek O’Brien, and CPI(M) MP John Brittas, were detained and taken away in buses, Rahul and Priyanka pulled off a surprise by alighting from the bus and entering the All India Radio premises. The Gandhis and other leaders sat under a tree as police personnel asked them to vacate the premises. MPs from the Biju Janata Dal, which has not been part of the INDIA bloc, also joined the march. However, erstwhile INDIA bloc members DMK and AAP leaders kept away from the protest. New Delhi: IAF Vice Chief Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit, the force’s senior-most air marshal, has been appointed as the next IAF chief. He will take over from Air Chief Marshal AP Singh, who retires on October 31, the government said on Tuesday.P7 ED summons Mann kin in L5cr bribery case Chandigarh: A day after the Punjab and Haryana HC directed the CBI to probe ED’s allegations against people linked to CM Bhagwant Mann’s office, the agency on Tuesday summoned Mann’s brother-in-law for questioning in an alleged J5 crore bribery case. P8 DI PA K M O NDA L @ New Delhi Rahul Gandhi waves the Tricolour as he climbs atop the barricade during INDIA bloc protest on Tuesday | Sayantan ghosh WITH GST Council meeting on October 8 set to take up major process reforms, businesses would be able to get refunds within a maximum of 17 days. Refund claims are proposed to be acknowledged within 10 days, and payments would be made in seven days, sources said. At present, refunds take 21-35 days. “If a refund claim is not acknowledged in 10 days, it will be deemed to have been acknowledged,” a source said. According to the finance ministry from now on, any , tax changes will happen once a year and they will come into effect from 1 April. This is to ensure tax certainty . The GST Council meeting will consider a broad package of process and structural reforms, with the focus shifting from rate changes to easing compliance, improving input tax credit, simplifying refunds and widening the scope of services and e-commerce under the indirect tax regime. Another key reform is getting businesses registered without delays. According to sources, 61% taxpayers are granted registrations within three days without an officer, the efforts are to cover 100% of taxpayers. “A GST registration suspended for a procedural lapse would be restored automatically once the lapse is rectified,” said the source. Closing a business is also proposed to be made as simple as starting one. The GST Council meeting, on October 8, is happening after more than a year. The last GST Council meeting was in September 2025. Keralam women spend 3 times nat’l average on work commute S O V I V IDYADHARAN @T’Puram HC quashes KAAPA detention of Sugathan Ashutosh Dixit to become 29th IAF chief GST Council to halve time taken for refunds High drama as protest march to poll panel results in 9-hour standoff E X P RESS RE A D Kochi: The High Court on Tuesday quashed the preventive detention of BJP Thiruvananthapuram Corporation councillor R Sugathan under the KAAPA and ordered his release from the Viyyur Central Jail. P4 a qualified opinion over another Rs 79.98 crore that KIIFB spent on publicising its projects through outside agencies hired by its media cell. A qualified opinion means the auditor accepted the accounts as a whole, but could not vouch for this part of the spending. KIIFB’s rules require bills from media houses carrying out publicity work to be collected for scrutiny and processing. But for Rs 62.39 crore, KIIFB could not produce the media houses’ bills. For another Rs 7.45 crore, the auditor said the bills from the last service provider in the chain ● More on P4 were missing.  Rahul, other INDIA leaders hit street, briefly detained J aya n t h J a c o b @ New Delhi THE Ministry of External Affairs on Tuesday condemned the targeting of commercial shipping and seafarers after two separate attacks on merchant vessels in the Black Sea and Strait of Hormuz. Eleven Indian seafarers were injured in the latest incident when the Panama-flagged MT On Peace was struck by a projectile while transiting the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Oman. Of its 19-member crew, 17 are Indian nationals. Among the 12 injured in the attack, 11 are Indians. The injured were evacuated with the assistance of Oma n i a u t h o r i t i e s a n d a re receiving treatment in Khasab. Condemning the attack, the MEA, in a statement, said: “The targeting of commercial shipping, seafarers and civilian infrastructure in the region must end, and navigation and commerce through international waterways must be restored at the earliest.” In the Black Sea, the MV Royad Mammadov came under attack on Monday, with two foreign seafarers dying and some crew members sustaining injuries. The three Indians on the crew are safe. Romanian authorities rescued the injured. “India views these attacks on commercial shipping and seafarers with grave concern... We continue to call for dialogue and diplomacy to bring an end to the ongoing conflicts,” the MEA said. KIIFB funds for publicity campaigns (2025-26) on the ball Uruguay’s Nahitan Nandez and India’s Ashique Kuruniyan fight for the ball during the international friendly at the Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata on Tuesday. Uruguay won the match 6-1 | AFP For many women, the workday starts well before they reach the workplace and ends only after they make the journey home. In Keralam, the journey to work is taking a sizeable bite out of women’s monthly budgets. Women workers travelling to a fixed workplace in the state spend an average Rs 1,489 a month on commuting, according to the first National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) conducted by the Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. That is the second-highest average among states and union territories and almost three times the all-India average of Rs 533 for women workers. The numbers become even Travel challenge Commute costs for women Keralam avg Buses matter monthly cost Women using — L1,489 bus as primary mode — 46.8% All-India average All-India figure — L533 — 21.7% Rural women spend more time getting to work Keralam’s average — 30 min All-India average — 23 min (Source: National Household Travel Survey 2025-26, MoSPI) more striking when buses enter the picture. Nearly one in two urban women workers (46.8%) in Keralam who travel more than 1 km to work use a bus as their primary mode of transport. The corresponding national figure for urban women is just 21.7%. The NHTS defines travel as movement of at least one km and identifies the primary mode as the mode covering the longest distance of a trip. Its workplace figures cover workers aged 15 years and above who undertook such trips to a fixed workplace. B G Sreedevi, former director of the National Transportation Planning and Research Centre (Natpac), said the higher commuting cost in Keralam could be attributed to the large number of working women who use two-wheelers. “This is primarily due to the absence of public transport, especially from the outskirts to cities,” ● More on P4 Sreedevi said. D i g i t a l s af e t y a w a r e n e s s Students, retired hands... state enlists grassroots army to fight cybercrime U n n i k r i s h n a n S @T’Puram Faced with a sharp surge in digital offences — with over 41,000 cybercrime complaints annually, thousands of registered fraud cases, and financial losses exceeding Rs 760 crore — the state government is assembling a grassroots army to spread online safety awareness. The SafeTech, or Cyber Jagratha Campaign, organised by the Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM), is being designed as an evolving, permanent safety framework to tackle rapidly changing online threats. Under the initiative, a grassroots army comprising college students, retired professionals, and local community members, who will serve as ‘SafeTech Ambassadors’, will be deployed to directly train families, students, and senior citizens in their own neighbourhoods. The campaign — to be launched officially on October 7 — will bring together more than 1,000 community ambas- The SafeTech Campaign Aim: to educate two lakh people -- specifically targeting one lakh students and one lakh other citizens — on digital security sadors as wells as 600 student volunteers from computer science and engineering disci- Academic volunteers: 600 student ambassadors (3rd-year college students) Grassroots volunteers: Over 1,000 community ambassadors, including retired teachers, police officers, veterans, and bankers, working alongside Kudumbashree, ASHA, and anganwadi networks. plines. “We are selecting thirdyear students in engineering, BCA, BSc computer science, or those with IT-related exposure,” said Muraleedharan Manningal, CEO of ICT Academy of Kerala (ICTAK), the knowledge management and training partner. “We will offer student volunteers a Cyber Security InterUniversity Certificate Programme. This gives them a distinct advantage during campus placements while motivating them to contribute to a vital public cause, he said. In return, each student ambassador will be tasked with providing end-to-end training to at least 250 students across multiple batches in high schools, higher secondary schools, and colleges. The educational outreach specifically targets individuals aged 13 and above as they see a significantly higher exposure to mobile phone use,he said. On the community front, retired teachers, former police officers, military veterans, IT professionals, and retired bankers will lead local drives across ● More on P4 all 14 districts.