This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

The drone strikes on Amazon Web Services data centres in the Persian Gulf, and Iran’s threats to target tech firms for their involvement in US attacks, underline the growing risks that artificial intelligence infrastructure faces in conflicts.

Iran named 18 companies including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Palantir, and G42, the lead AI firm in the United Arab Emirates, as “legitimate targets.” For AI companies with data centres in the Gulf, risk mitigation could mean shifting away from easily identifiable hyperscalers, picking safer locations, or separating military systems from civilian systems.

None of these options is easy.

Global data centre capacity could reach 200 gigawatts by 2030, doubling capacity, to meet growing demand for AI. While more than half the capacity is being added in the US, data centres are also being built in Asia, Latin America, and the Gulf. AI data centres alone will require a total capital expenditure of more than $5 trillion, according to consulting firm McKinsey....

To the Indians who Died in Africa

A man’s destination is his own village,
His own fire, and his wife’s cooking;
To sit in front of his own door at sunset
And see his grandson, and his neighbour’s grandson
Playing in the dust together.

Scarred but secure, he has many memories
Which return at the hour of conversation,
(The warm or the cool hour, according to the climate)
Of foreign men, who fought in foreign places,
Foreign to each other.

A man’s destination is not his destiny,
Every country is home to one man
And exile to another. Where a man dies bravely
At one with his destiny, that soil is his.
Let his village remember.

This was not your land, or ours: but a village in the Midlands,
And one in the Five Rivers, may have the same graveyard.
Let those who go home tell the same story of you:
Of action with a common purpose, action
None the less fruitful if neither you nor we
Know, until the judgement after death,
What is the fruit of action.

Morning at the Window

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates....

India’s top metros – Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai, home to 75 million people – rank among the world’s 10 most populous cities. However, “population scale has not translated proportionately into urban productivity, liveability or global economic influence,” the Union government’s Economic Survey 2025-26 admits.

While calling cities “engines of growth, magnets for talent, and crucibles of innovation”, the Survey also labels them “sites of daily strain: long commutes, uneven services and shared spaces that often fall short of collective expectations”.

Indian cities score low in their liveability quotient despite allocations to urban local bodies by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and the XIV and XV Finance Commissions topping Rs 8.36 lakh crore in the last decade, according to a new report by Janaagraha and the Jana Urban Space Foundation, not-for-profits working to transform the quality of life in the country’s towns and cities.

The key reason for this lapse, experts say, is the fragmentation of urban functions across urban local bodies, development authorities, state line departments and parastatal agencies. Essentially, local governments haven’t been empowered to do whatever is expected of them....

Turn the Turn

We start the morning paralysed,
Like stone.

Then something turns –

Reminds us of all the practical things,
And that becomes our day.
And the day after,
And the day after that.

Until you wake up years later

To realise you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere –
Lost your way,
So you try and start again,
Or so you say.

False Down

Six in the morning,
A bus to downtown;
Walk straight up 4th Street
To the corner of Second Avenue.

The sky deep blue,
The streets, pink.
Empty sidewalks, strewn cigarette ends,
And the bar lights off.

But I know,
As I knew twenty years ago,
That behind the drawn curtains
The ashtrays are out,
The lines cut neatly on the table,
And old friends

Laugh together
Until sleep turns
To something between dawn and dusk.

They will stay there until eight, I know,
Because where else will they go?

Never home,
Never to real nightfall,
Which only draws out all the things that remain
Hidden during the day.

You Make a Wish

Like snowflakes in July,
softly,
In case someone hears.
(It won’t come true.) ...

The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is awarded annually to women and non-binary writers for a work of fiction. The Prize is open to writers across the world but the book needs to have been published in Canada and the United States. The winning author will receive a cash prize of $150,000 and a five-night stay at Fogo Island Inn. The four finalists will be awarded $12,500 each.

The winner and four finalists will also participate in a group retreat residency in the Leighton Artist Studios, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, Canada.

Indian-origin writer Megha Majumdar’s novel, A Guardian and the Thief, has been shortlisted for this year’s Prize. The novel is set in a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine. Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children’s future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.

The jury said that “[the] harrowing yet captivating novel fills us simultaneously with horror and compassion. Set in a dystopian Kolkata battered by poverty, starvation and severe climate change, it drags readers from complacency and forces them to face what can happen to our values when our dearest ones are stalked by disaster. Through trenchant images, deft character creation, and breathtaking plot-twists, Majumdar embroils us in the lives of Ma and Boomba until we are no longer sure who is the guardian and who the thief.”...

Does eating rice cause weight gain?

The idea that eating rice causes weight gain is a common misconception. Both rice and wheat chapati are sources of carbohydrates. On its own, neither roti nor rice causes weight gain – unless you are eating copious amounts of it, and are loading it with fat. In reality, gaining or losing weight depends on the overall calorie balance – how many calories are consumed versus how many are expended throughout the day.

The real issue with rice is its portion size

No one eats just one or two spoonfuls of rice; typically, a whole bowl of rice is consumed. Eating large portions of rice increases our overall calorie intake.

Additionally, rice is often eaten with pickles, ghee, chips, papads and other accompaniments, which further increase the total calorie count.

A lot of people stop eating “rice” to lose weight, and some might even come back and tell you that they lost 2–3 kilograms simply by quitting rice. But the fact is that when they stop eating rice, they are cutting out significant calories, as they were not tracking the amount of rice they would take, plus the additional ghee, papad and pickle with it. When people stop eating rice to lose weight, they are actually reducing their total calorie intake, which leads to weight loss. ...

The protests by workers across Indian cities through early April are an urgent signal that survival is impossible on wages that hover around the bare legal minimum.

Domestic, gig and delivery workers to industrial labourers in the Delhi-National Capital Region protested demanding an increase in wages and overtime pay. Most of them are often migrant workers to India’s urban centres.

The spark was the increase in basic expenses following the shortage of cooking gas and economic uncertainty after the US-Israel launched military strikes on Iran in February, setting off a conflict which is now closing in on two months.

In Noida, protesting workers told the Indian Express that their monthly salaries ranged from Rs 13,000 to Rs 20,000 but expenses had increased, with rent costing Rs 5,000 and food Rs 4,000, and nothing to save. One factory worker in Noida told a news publication that his employer hiked his monthly pay by Rs 39. Worse still, workers report deductions as punishment for protesting and their wage demands were met with batons....

Ramaji’s house in Quetta stood on a lane that opened into a shared courtyard. The night before she and her family were to leave, the mob had reached the entrance of the courtyard. Her father had heard them approaching. While the mob was breaking down the entrance, her father took the entire family to hide in the farthest house on the street. They switched off the lights and lay face down on the terrace. Ramaji had curled up even more narrating this part of the story. Anjali, who had also learnt of this incident only the previous night, was captivated.

Thankfully, the mob that night had assumed that the houses on the lane were empty and left for the next street. It was clear to all, including Rama’s father, that staying back was not an option. They did not discuss it further. As soon as they reached home, the elders hurriedly started collecting all the cash. They gathered around Rs 22,000 (a significant amount in those days) and some precious jewellery. Rama’s mother made belts out of cotton cloth to conceal their valuables, which were worn by her elder brother and some other members of the family. They had no time or space to take more belongings. They were leaving behind a life built over decades. The men in the family, Ramaji mentioned, looked like “gore-chitte” (fair-skinned) Pathans. So they wore Pathani suits to mask their identity. Her brother hid the “Om” tattoo inscribed on his hand with an extra band of cloth. ...

For most tourists heading to the picturesque meadows of Pahalgam in Kashmir, the first stop for many years has been a stone-paved pathway built along the banks of river Lidder.

Standing in its middle, a decorative frame of wooden beams with colorful letters saying “I love Pahalgam”, serves as a popular “selfie point” for travellers.

But now, just 200 metres away, a wall of black granite competes for attention. Two tricolours flutter on top of it. As you step closer, you see etched into stone the names of 26 people gunned down by militants on April 22 last year.

The memorial has come up about 6 km from the Baisaran meadow, the site of the terror attack.

As he stood looking up at the wall in mid-April, Manu Madhavan, a tourist from Kerala, described the experience as “a bit unsettling”.

“Until now, we had just heard about the Pahalgam massacre on television or read it in the newspaper,” said Madhavan, who was visiting Kashmir with his family. “Now, it feels real.”

But not many tourists are likely to share Madhavan’s experience – very few of them have been making their way to Pahalgam after last year’s terror attack....

Among the cruel ironies of the Myanmar civil war, now in its sixth year, is that for an army that is struggling to conscript soldiers, the Myanmar junta has repeatedly bombed its own troops held as prisoners of war.

In this garrison state, it appears everything may be sacrificed to keep the military and its civilian front government – recently installed following widely discredited elections – in power.

There has been some impressive progress by the National Unity Government’s People’s Defence Force and allied ethnic armies against the military’s front organisation, the Union Solidarity and Development Party.

But after so many years, the Myanmar civil war is now at stalemate.

How did we get here?

The civil war began in February 2021 when the armed forces staged a coup against the elected civilian government headed by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

The civilian-led government had been elected in 2015, following more than five decades of military rule.

The army claimed (without evidence) there were irregularities in the 2020 elections and staged a coup months later....