In less than 48 hours, Suruchi Inder Singh and Kamaljeet staged an incredible redemption story at the Asian Games in Nagoya. Shaking off the heartbreak of two consecutive disappointing outings, the duo bounced back on Friday to secure India’s first shooting gold medal of the Games.

Suruchi had a disastrous women’s 10m air pistol qualification round on Wednesday, missing out on both the individual and team medals while Kamaljeet’s heartbreak came a day later when he shot 580 in the men’s qualification, finished ninth and missed the final by a solitary point.

Moving on to a big win in the tech world, Akamai Technologies has secured an $11.6 billion, seven-year cloud computing deal with AI developer Anthropic. 

The contract could scale to $20 billion with an additional $9 billion expansion option. The massive agreement underscores the accelerating global demand for heavy-duty computing infrastructure to power enterprise artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, the debate over merchant discount rate (MDR) continues. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the proposed MDR on select high-value UPI transactions is neither a tax, cess nor a surcharge, and the collections will not accrue to the government. 

The Finance Minister said the MDR is a charge within the digital payments ecosystem and is being levied by entities facilitating UPI transactions, including payment service providers, the merchant’s bank, and other ecosystem participants, PTI reports. The proposed 0.4% merchant fee on UPI transactions above Rs 2,000 will not be passed on to consumers, government sources had said on Thursday.

Here’s your trivia for today: What robotic lander became the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars and transmit surface images in 1976?

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