(1) Ruling parties sweep all six seats in by-election
Ruling parties in three States and a Union Territory won all six seats in the by-elections for which results were declared on Friday (October 9, 2026). The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won both Assembly seats in West Bengal and wrested the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat in Assam from the Congress. In Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) won both seats it contested, while the All India NR Congress (AINRC) retained the Thattanchavady Assembly seat in Puducherry.
In Tamil Nadu, TVK candidates K. Maragatham Kumaravel and P. Sathyabama won the Madurantakam and Dharapuram Assembly constituencies, respectively. The victories marked the party’s first electoral test since its surprise victory in the Assembly elections in May, taking its strength in the 234-member House to 109. With five seats vacant, the effective majority mark stands at 115. The TVK’s ally, the Congress, has five seats.
In West Bengal, BJP candidate Shankharavh Sarkar defeated Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AUJP) candidate Golam Nabi Azad, son of party chief Humayun Kabir, by 75,816 votes in Rejinagar. The result marked the first time a non-Muslim candidate had won the constituency in Muslim-majority Murshidabad district. In Nandigram, BJP candidate Hasirani Rath defeated Congress nominee Milan Pradhan by 1,22,753 votes. The seat had been held by Adhikari since 2016.
In Assam, the BJP wrested the Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency from the Congress, which had won the seat in both the 2019 and 2024 general elections.
In Puducherry, AINRC candidate Ashok Anand defeated Congress nominee E. Vinayagam by 8,482 votes in Thattanchavady. The bypoll was necessitated by Chief Minister N. Rangasamy’s resignation from the constituency after he won the Mangalam seat in the April 9 Assembly elections.
(2) Elon Musk alleges ‘oligarch’ interference in Starlink’s India launch
After years of efforts to secure permission to operate its satellite broadband service in India, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has accused “certain oligarchs” of blocking Starlink’s launch to protect their monopolies. Mr. Musk made the allegation on X, formerly Twitter, hours after a company executive said she hoped the service would be operational in India by 2027.
Responding to a user demanding Starlink’s launch in India, Mr. Musk said, “Unfortunately, we are being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people. You can guess who they are … This is a crime against the people of India!”
Although Starlink has obtained a Global Mobile Personal Communications by Satellite (GMPCS) authorisation from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), it is yet to receive the security clearances required to begin operations. The requirements, some of which were amended in May, mandate that SpaceX disable Starlink receivers purchased outside India and terminals sold in India but operated abroad. These conditions are in addition to extensive surveillance requirements applicable to the telecommunications and broadband sectors.
On Friday (October 9, 2026), Mr. Musk escalated his public spat over Starlink’s entry into India by sarcastically addressing industrialist Mukesh Ambani as “Prime Minister Ambani”. He accused Mr. Ambani of seeking to protect a monopoly and questioned whether he would allow Starlink to compete in the Indian market.
The Ministry of Communications had rejected allegations of discriminatory treatment in a statement on Thursday (October 8, 2026). “The Government has put in place a fair and non-discriminatory authorisation framework for all telecommunication services, including satellite communication services,” it said, adding that licences had been granted to three providers of satellite communications based on non-geosynchronous satellite orbits.
Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia reiterated the Department of Telecommunications’ position on Friday, saying Starlink, Reliance Jio and Bharti-backed OneWeb were at the same stage of the licensing process.
Responding to Mr. Musk’s allegations, Mr. Scindia said India did not allow monopolies in any sector and that the DoT remained technology-agnostic. “Our job is to be able to provide the bouquet of services to every single customer. It is for the customer to choose, in a free market, which service he or she prefers, and within that service bouquet, which company’s service he or she prefers,” he said.
(3) Nobel Prize 2026
This year’s Nobel Prizes were announced from Monday, October 5, with the announcement of the laureates in Physiology or Medicine, and concluded on Monday, October 12, with the announcement of the Economics prize.
The Economics Nobel was awarded to Robert E. Hall of Stanford University and Michael Woodford of Columbia University for their work on the “microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation”, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday (October 12, 2026).
Nobel prize 2026: An interactive guide
The prestigious award, formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is the final prize to be announced this year. It carries a cash award of 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million).
The Economics prize was announced three days after South African jurist Navanethem “Navi” Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday (October 9, 2026). With the announcement of the Economics laureates, the 2026 Nobel season came to a close.
A trio of scientists — Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel — was awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries that led to the development of optogenetics, a technique that allows scientists to control specific nerve cells using light. The Nobel Assembly said the laureates’ work enabled neuroscience to move beyond observing correlations and to test how particular neurons and neural circuits are linked to different behaviours and emotions.
Two women were honoured during this year’s Nobel season: Pillay, who won the Peace Prize, and Canadian-Icelandic writer Anne Carson, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to French scientist Henri Kagan and Japanese scientist Kenso Soai, while the Physics prize went to Belgian physicist Francis Halzen.
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Francis Halzen for his contributions to IceCube, a neutrino observatory at the South Pole, and for the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.
The laureates will receive a cash award of 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million). The awards will be presented on December 10, Nobel Day, which marks the death anniversary of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. In his will, Nobel stipulated that his estate should be used to fund prizes for those who, during the preceding year, had “conferred the greatest benefit to humankind”.
(4) Trump administration freezes green cards for Microsoft, Indian IT firms
The U.S. on Thursday (October 8, 2026) suspended IT firms Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe from the Permanent Labour Certification Programme, which allows companies to apply for green cards for H-1B visa workers.
The announcement was made by U.S. Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling, with Vice-President J.D. Vance, the head of the U.S. Anti-Fraud Task Force, by his side.
Since taking office, US President Donald Trump has pursued a broad effort to reduce the number of foreign-born people in the US and curtail their pathway to residence and citizenship. Thursday’s twin actions mark the broadest strike yet against skilled-worker immigration programs — potentially cutting off a common path to permanent residency for foreign tech workers — while putting some of the country’s top research universities on notice.
Microsoft is the largest filer of PERM applications, or the permanent labor certification process, according to data from the US labor department. Under PERM, which most employment-based green cards require, employers must show a foreign hire will not hurt US workers’ wages or jobs.
The company said in a statement that about 80% of the H-1B applications it filed in the last fiscal year were to extend or change the status of current employees, not to hire new workers. In July, the company said it would cut 4,800 jobs, or about 2.1% of its global workforce.
(5) Almost 75% of buildings in Gaza damaged or destroyed
On Wednesday (October 7, 2026), which marked the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks, Israel carried out new strikes in Gaza killing at least three people. Just four days before, an airstrike on an apartment building in Gaza killed five, including four women. Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s total siege on Gaza has killed around 74,200 Palestinians, with about 60% of the Strip directly under the control of the Israeli military.
A satellite-based analysis by Conflict Ecology at Oregon State University estimates that 2,45,981 buildings, or 74.5% of Gaza’s pre-war building stock, have been damaged or destroyed between October 2023 and August 2026.
The northern governorates of North Gaza and Gaza have suffered the most extensive destruction, with 87% of buildings affected.
Despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that came into effect in October 2025, Israeli strikes have continued, with further damage reported on both sides of the Yellow Line. The analysis, based on Sentinel-1 radar imagery, documents the widespread destruction of Gaza’s built environment over nearly three years of war.