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#215 - 7110, 12
VOL 25 - ISSUE 46
SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 2026
Police investigating three separate drive-by shootings at same house in Surrey
India overtakes Japan as 4th-largest economy in the world
Police say there were three drive-by shootings at the same house in Surrey in December. The RCMP Surrey provincial operations support unit responded to shots-fired calls at the same residence in the 11000-block of 140A Street on Dec. 7 at about 8:20 a.m., on Dec. 27 at about 7:45 a.m., and on Dec. 28 just after 3 a.m. The Surrey Police Service said in a news release Wednesday that it’s believed a resident of the home was the intended target but that the shootings were not linked to extortion or the gang conflict. Police say the shots were fired from a vehicle, with bullets striking various parts of the residence. There have been no reports of injuries to residents or neighbours. The single-level home sits in a residential area in Surrey’s Guildford neighbourhood and is a short distance away from an elementary school. Some damage appearing to be bullet holes could be seen on the exterior of the home. Continued on Page 10...
India has surpassed Japan to become the world's fourth-largest economy, according to calculations in the Indian government's endof-year economic review. On current trends, India is expected to overtake Germany to become the world's third-largest economy within the next three years, the review said. The review said India's gross domestic product has already reached about $4.18 trillion (€3.55 trillion), and is projected to reach $7.3 trillion by 2030. On current trends, it said, India would trail only the United States and China in economic heft. India's real GDP grew 8.2% in the second quarter of the 2025–26 financial year, up from 7.8% in the previous quarter and marking a sixquarter high. Continued on Page 14...
Lights, camera, algorithm: Why Indian cinema is awash with AI The world's biggest film industry has a new breakout star – artificial intelligence. While Indian cinema is embracing AI far more readily than Hollywood, the use of the technology isn't pleasing everyone. When screenwriter-director Vivek Anchalia set out to pitch his next movie, producers weren't biting. However, he brought in a new kind of collaborator, and his project began to gain traction. With the help of AI tools such as ChatGPT and Midjourney, Anchalia found a way to make a film
on his own. Midjourney rendered the visuals. ChatGPT was a sounding board. It took little more than one year but he found he was able to fine-tune the AI-enhanced pipeline – one shot at a time. "I think Midjourney knows me pretty intimately by now," he jokes. Anchalia, who is also a lyricist, had been sitting on a collection of unreleased romantic songs. They were begging for a Bollywood-style canvas. "Soon, a story started to emerge," he says. The result was Naisha, a romantic film. Continued on Page 15...
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CRA says it's owed $10 billion in COVIDrelated benefits sent to ineligible recipients
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Edmonton-based country singer Patrick Masse, like millions of other Canadians, applied for relief benefits. All the gigs he'd lined up were abruptly cancelled. "I had really good projected earnings for that year, right? But then everything bottomed out when the world dropped," said Masse. From April 2020 to June 2022, Masse received more than $41,000 in government benefits — only to later get a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency saying he wasn't eligible for the money, and that he had to pay it back. Continued on Page 10...
The tech CEO richer than Microsoft's Nadella and Google's Pichai
For a long time, Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai have dominated discussions around the richest Indian-origin leaders in global technology, given their roles at some of the world’s most powerful companies. Continued on Page 10...
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