MSDE Drives Skill-Led Growth in Border Villages Under Vibrant Villages Programme

Advancing the Government of India’s vision of transforming border villages into engines of growth and opportunity, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) today convened a Capacity Building and Review Workshop under the Vibrant Villages Programme (VVP), themed “Viksit Gaon for Viksit Bharat”, at Kaushal Bhawan, New Delhi. The workshop brought together key stakeholders including the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Ministries of Textiles, Tourism, and Rural Development, along with District Administrations, State Skill Development Missions (SSDMs) from Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Sikkim and Uttarakhand, and Sector Skill Councils (SSCs), creating a focused platform to drive convergence and accelerate skill-led development across India’s strategically important border regions.

The Vibrant Villages Programme, a flagship initiative of MHA, aims to develop 662 villages across Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Ladakh as self-reliant, well-connected “first villages” of the country. In alignment with this vision, MSDE is facilitating locally relevant, demand-driven skilling initiatives to enhance livelihood opportunities in these regions.

MDSE plays a critical role in implementing skill development proposals under VVP from receiving and examining proposals from MHA, mapping them to appropriate schemes, sanctioning projects, and ensuring robust implementation and monitoring, to facilitating assessment and certification through the Skill India Digital Hub (SIDH). To date, MSDE has sanctioned 74 skill development proposals under the programme, marking significant progress in operationalising skilling interventions in border districts.

The deliberations focused on reviewing the status of approved and ongoing VVP skill projects, identifying key implementation challenges such as trainer availability, beneficiary mobilization, and infrastructure gaps, and strengthening convergence across stakeholders. SSCs and SSDMs played an important role in providing inputs on programme design, trainer empanelment, and strengthening market linkages to ensure better outcomes.

Looking ahead, MSDE laid out a focused and action-driven roadmap to strengthen on-ground implementation. Districts will be guided to develop robust project pipelines with clearly defined timelines, training locations, trainers, and target beneficiaries ahead of proposal submission. Emphasis will be placed on rapidly operationalising in-situ training by utilising existing government infrastructure such as schools, ITIs, and community centres to enable swift rollout.

To address implementation challenges, enhanced handholding support will be provided through SSDMs and SSCs, particularly in areas such as proposal development, trainer onboarding, and compliance with scheme norms, supported by well-defined standard operating procedures. A structured coordination framework will also be institutionalised among District Administrations, SSDMs, SSCs, and MSDE to ensure continuous monitoring, effective issue resolution, and timely course correction.

The workshop also fostered peer learning among districts, highlighting innovative practices and scalable solutions. Discussions underscored the importance of institutional coordination, real-time monitoring, and responsive implementation mechanisms to ensure that skilling initiatives translate into sustainable livelihood outcomes.

Smt. Hena Usman, Joint Secretary, MSDE; Smt. Manasi Sahay Thakur, Joint Secretary, MSDE; Smt. Archana Mayaram, Economic Advisor, MSDE; senior officials from the MSDE, MHA and partner ministries, state governments, and representatives of SSDMs, District Administrations, and SSCs were also present on the occasion.

Apple Taps Hardware Chief John Ternus as New CEO, Tim Cook Moves to Executive Chairman

Apple has officially named John Ternus as its new CEO, succeeding Tim Cook effective September 1, 2026. Tim Cook will transition to the role of Executive Chairman of Apple’s Board of Directors, ensuring continuity while Ternus takes charge of the company’s next chapter.

John Ternus, Apple’s longtime hardware chief, will officially take over as CEO on September 1, 2026, while Tim Cook transitions to Executive Chairman. This marks Apple’s most significant leadership change in 15 years, with Ternus expected to steer the company into an AI-driven, hardware-centric future.

Key Details of the Leadership Transition

• New CEO: John Ternus, currently Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering
• Effective Date: September 1, 2026
• Outgoing CEO: Tim Cook (CEO since 2011)
• New Role for Cook: Executive Chairman, focusing on global policy engagement and board leadership

About John Ternus

• Background: Joined Apple in 2001, rising through engineering leadership roles
• Key Contributions: Oversaw hardware development for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and AirPods
• Reputation: Known for technical depth, design precision, and guiding Apple’s hardware innovation
• Future Focus: Expected to lead Apple through AI integration, supply chain resilience, and sustainability initiatives

Tim Cook’s Legacy

• Tenure: CEO from 2011–2026
• Achievements: Expanded Apple’s market cap to nearly $4 trillion; Oversaw growth in services (Apple Music, iCloud, App Store) and hardware dominance; Strengthened Apple’s global supply chain and sustainability commitments

Strategic Implications

• AI & Emerging Tech: Ternus expected to push Apple deeper into AI-driven experiences
• Hardware Evolution: Continued focus on device innovation (Mac silicon, AR/VR, wearables)
• Global Policy: Cook’s new role ensures Apple maintains strong ties with regulators and governments worldwide. 

Quick Comparison

Tim Cook and John Ternus at Apple Park. (Image - Apple.com)

Aspect	Tim Cook (2011–2026)	John Ternus (2026– )
Role	CEO → Executive Chairman	CEO
Background	Operations, supply chain	Hardware engineering
Key Achievements	$4T market cap, services expansion	iPhone, Mac, iPad hardware leadership
Strategic Focus	Global expansion, sustainability	AI integration, hardware innovation

Adobe Unveils AI‑Powered Brand Visibility Solution to Redefine Customer Experience

• AI interfaces and agents are becoming a primary way for customers to discover, evaluate and engage brands, creating a new imperative for businesses to optimize digital channels for both humans and AI.
• Adobe is announcing a major expansion of Adobe Experience Manager—the platform thousands of brands already rely on for end-to-end experience management—with a contextual layer that enables AI agents to help build and optimize digital experiences.
• New innovations across Adobe Commerce, Adobe LLM Optimizer and Adobe Brand Concierge will help brands improve AI visibility and deliver engaging experiences that boost engagement.

Today, at Adobe Summit—the flagship customer experience conference—Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE)—the global technology leader that unleashes creativity, productivity and customer experiences through innovative tools and platforms—announced a brand visibility solution that addresses the dual challenge every business faces today: ensuring its brand is visible, accurate and trusted across AI discovery surfaces, while deepening direct engagement with customers on owned properties.

AI-powered chat services and browsers have become a primary channel for how consumers discover, evaluate and act, elevating AI visibility into a C-suite imperative. In addition, when customers engage directly (on brand websites for example), expectations for personalization are higher than ever. Every piece of content, whether for owned properties or to inform an AI interface, must be accurate, on-brand, compliant and authorized. There is increased urgency to address this issue as well: new Adobe data shows that while AI traffic to U.S. retail sites increased 269% year-over-year (March 2026), businesses have significant gaps in AI visibility. Brands that treat AI discovery and human engagement as a connected system will build advantages that compound over time.

“There is a new intermediary between brands and their customers, and unlike every one that came before it, this has the ability to reason," said Loni Stark, vice president of strategy and product, Adobe. "For decades, brands have managed content, but now they also need to manage context to pinpoint what AI understands about their offerings and the institutional knowledge their own agents need to act—challenges that can be solved with our new solution.”

“Maintaining the trust of our clients is at the center for how we approach technology at Vanguard, especially in an AI-driven future,” said Jennifer Manry, Divisional CIO, Corporate Systems, Vanguard. “As we advance our technology to give investors the best chance for investment success, we’re embedding AI into client-facing experiences in ways that are both highly personal and deeply responsible.”

Adobe’s brand visibility solution works as a continuous operating model across four vectors including sense, generate, reach and learn—part of an experience flywheel. Brands sense how they appear across AI-driven discovery surfaces, generate content and experiences grounded in brand context, reach both human audiences and AI systems from a shared foundation, and learn from every interaction to improve performance. Powered by AI agent and human collaboration, the experience flywheel builds advantages that strengthen with every cycle.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) adds a new layer for managing the brand truth, permissions, governance, and content sources that sit behind every experience, the working context that teams and agents draw from as they build and optimize across web and owned properties. New agentic authoring capabilities also extend access across an organization, putting AI-first experience-building tools in the hands of every employee responsible for brand visibility and engagement.

Offerings that power the experience flywheel include:

• Sense: Adobe LLM Optimizer and Adobe Commerce enhancements provide businesses visibility into how they appear across AI-driven discovery, by assessing how AI systems interpret products, content and brand presence across both traditional search and LLM-powered experiences. These enhancements also help identify product visibility gaps across AI-driven shopping journeys.
• Generate: AEM Sites, the leading content management system, provides the foundation for building experiences for both humans and AI agents that are embedded directly into core workflows. New context management capabilities ensure every experience is grounded in brand truth, governed by policy and built from a shared foundation of permissions and content sources. This enables teams to create AI-ready experiences at scale. Three agents are now available, including:
  • Brand Experience Agent accelerates content production by updating existing pages, creating net-new content and modernizing legacy sites for AI-driven discovery.
  • Content Advisor Agent surfaces approved content instantly and prepares it for any channel, so teams spend less time searching and more time driving impact.
  • Brand Governance Agent enforces brand policies, tracks asset rights and manages permissions, ensuring content for customers and AI systems is always on-brand, authorized and compliant with brand policies.
• Reach: Adobe Commerce enhancements will drive product visibility across AI-driven shopping journeys through catalog enrichment and product page optimization. Updates to Adobe Brand Concierge will deliver conversational experiences that bring real-time product details and checkout into customer conversations. In addition, LLM Apps (a new capability in AEM) will enable brands to build branded experiences that run directly within LLM interfaces, extending a brand's presence across AI surfaces.
• Learn: Businesses can now measure their share of recommendations across AI surfaces and response accuracy. On owned properties, they can assess the growth of direct engagements and impact on customer lifetime value. In addition, human corrections and editorial judgments feed back throughout the system, building institutional memory that makes each cycle sharper—continuously strengthening the brand truth, governance and content foundations behind every experience.

Adobe Summit 2026

Summit 2026 is the largest conference focused on Customer Experience Orchestration, held in Las Vegas and streamed to millions of people globally online. Luminary speakers and industry leaders presenting at Summit include NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Procter & Gamble President and CEO Shailesh Jejurikar, DICK’S Sporting Goods SVP and Chief Marketing, eCommerce and Athlete Experience Officer Emily Silver, DICK’S Sporting Goods EVP and CTO Vlad Rak, Comcast/Xfinity Chief Growth Officer Jon Gieselman and NBCUniversal EVP of AI and Enterprise Innovation Ashish Desai. Comedian, actress, writer and producer Iliza Shlesinger will host Summit Sneaks, where Adobe unveils its latest research and development innovations.

To watch the Adobe Summit keynotes online, as well as explore hundreds of sessions and hands-on labs across 13 tracks, network with peers or speak live with an Adobe expert, visit the Summit web experience.

Forward-looking statements

This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including those related to Adobe’s new, enhanced or future AI and product capabilities, innovations and solutions and the expected benefits to Adobe. Each of the forward-looking statements we make in this press release involves risks, uncertainties and assumptions based on information available to us as of the date of this press release. Such risks and uncertainties, many of which relate to matters beyond our control, could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: failure to innovate effectively and meet customer needs; failure to compete effectively; issues relating to development and use of AI; damage to our reputation or brands; failure to realize the anticipated benefits of acquisitions, investments or other strategic transactions; failure to recruit and retain key personnel; service interruptions or failures in information technology systems by us or third parties; security incidents; failure to effectively develop, manage and maintain our sales channels or critical third-party business relationships; risks associated with being a multinational corporation and adverse macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions; complex sales cycles; litigation, regulatory inquiries, investigations and other actions; changes in, and compliance with, global laws and regulations, including those related to information security and privacy; failure to protect our intellectual property; changes in tax regulations; complex government procurement processes; risks related to fluctuations in or the timing of revenue recognition from our subscription offerings; fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; impairment charges; our existing and future debt obligations; catastrophic events; and fluctuations in our stock price. Further information on these and other factors are discussed in the section titled “Risk Factors” in Adobe’s most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K and Adobe's most recently filed Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. The risks described in this press release and in Adobe’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission should be carefully reviewed. Adobe undertakes no obligation, and does not intend, to update the forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

C-DOT and Ahmedabad-based Jumps Automation to Launch Gamified Cybersecurity Awareness Platform

The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) has signed a landmark MoU with Jumps Automation to jointly develop a gamified cybersecurity awareness platform, combining indigenous telecom R&D with AI-driven automation to strengthen India’s cyber resilience.

Jumps Automation LLP is a young Indian technology solutions company, founded in 2024 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, specializing in AI, automation, and enterprise software development. It focuses on delivering innovative, data‑driven solutions to solve complex business and societal challenges.

The upcoming gamification platform will feature a gaming arena, leaderboards, learning management system, discussion forums, and realistic simulation-based scenarios for creating cyber awareness and enhance cybersecurity preparedness of organisations

Key Highlights of the Collaboration

• Date & Venue: MoU signed on 20 April 2026 at C-DOT facilities in New Delhi.
• Parties Involved: C-DOT (India’s premier telecom R&D centre) and Jumps Automation LLP (AI and automation solutions provider).
• Leaders Present: Dr. Rajkumar Upadhyay (CEO, C-DOT), Mr. Rohan Chandak (Head of Technology, Jumps Automation), board members, and senior officials.

Objectives of the Partnership

• Enhancing cybersecurity awareness through interactive, gamified learning experiences.
• Strengthening preparedness and resilience against cyber threats.
• Supporting the vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat by leveraging indigenous technology.

Features of the Gamification Platform

• Gaming arena and leaderboards for engagement.
• Learning management system and discussion forums.
• Simulation-based scenarios covering phishing, social engineering, malware response, and crisis management.
• AI-driven behavioural analytics to evaluate performance and adjust challenge complexity.
• Reward and tracking system to monitor progress and drive behavioural change.

Strategic Significance

• C-DOT provides indigenous telecom and security technology expertise.
• Jumps Automation contributes AI and automation capabilities.
• Deployment planned as a commercial-grade SaaS solution with enterprise integration potential.
• Validation through end-to-end testing at C-DOT facilities in New Delhi.

Dr. Rajkumar Upadhyay (C-DOT CEO): Emphasized the platform’s role in advancing cybersecurity awareness, strengthening incident response, and aligning with global best practices.

Mr. Rohan Chandak (Jumps Automation): Highlighted the transformative potential of gamification in driving behavioural change and reducing human-related cyber risks.

About the Organizations

• C-DOT: Government of India’s premier telecom R&D centre, spearheading indigenous communication technologies and collaborative research under the CCRP framework.
• Jumps Automation LLP: Specializes in AI, automation, and enterprise AI software development, delivering innovative solutions for complex business and societal challenges.

This collaboration marks a pivotal step in India’s cybersecurity journey—blending gamification, AI, and indigenous telecom expertise to build a culture of cyber resilience across enterprises and individuals.

India's Biggest GST Fraud Mastermind Arrested at IGI Airport After ₹1,825 Crore Scam

On 19 April 2026, officers of the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI), Ahmedabad Zonal Unit (AZU) arrested Mr. Kapil Chugh, the alleged mastermind of one of India’s largest GST refund frauds, upon his arrival at IGI Airport, New Delhi from Dubai.

Scale of the Fraud

• Fraudulent Input Tax Credit (ITC) generation using fake purchase invoices of high-value tobacco products.
• Layered paper transactions across multiple shell companies to create an artificial trail of trading activity.
• Misdeclared exports from Kandla Special Economic Zone (KASEZ) with low-value tobacco billed as premium products.
• Fabricated E-way bills and repeated vehicle numbers to support fictitious transportation claims.

Financial Trail

• Negligible genuine fund movement despite large-value transactions.
• Payments routed through related entities or withdrawn in cash.
• Multiple firms shared common contact numbers, IP addresses, and accounting staff.

Wider Criminal Links

Yes Bank Fraud	Siphoned off ₹11 crore by inflating export turnover.
CBI Case	Charge-sheeted for fraudulent credit facilities using forged documents.
SEBI Action	Order dated 30 March 2026 against Vipin Sharma, MD of M/s Elitecon, for inflating valuation via bogus billing.

Significance of the Arrest

• Breakthrough in India’s fight against large-scale tax evasion and economic crime.
• Chugh identified as a habitual offender manipulating dummy firms and associates.
• His capture strengthens ongoing investigations into fraudulent exporters and financial manipulators.