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Latin American researchers are developing a new artificial intelligence model — one that aims to speak the region’s languages and reflect its cultures.

The model, known as Latam-GPT, is under construction in Chile and led by the country’s National Center for Artificial Intelligence (CENIA) in Santiago. It’s being trained on local data — from academic archives and news stories to oral histories documented on paper — with contributions from over 30 organizations across the region.

The initiative is part of a broader movement in the Global South to reduce dependence on foreign-built AI systems, most of which are developed in the United States, China or Europe. 

Advocates view Latam-GPT as a step toward digital sovereignty: giving Latin American countries more control over how AI is built, governed and applied.

For Alexandra García, a project specialist at CENIA, the need for a culturally grounded model became clear through everyday interactions with commercial AI tools.

A few years ago, she asked a chatbot, “How do you eat sopaipillas in Chile?”

In Chile, sopaipillas are fried discs of pumpkin-based dough, typically served with mustard, chili sauce or syrup. But the AI responded with a different recipe — fried bread with honey.

“It may sound like a small thing, but the model got it wrong — and that says a lot about who it was built for,” García said.

She also noticed factual errors, or hallucinations, when asking about Latin American women authors. Even as AI tools improve, she said, they often fall short when the training data doesn’t reflect regional experiences.

Unlike most commercial models, Latam-GPT is being built using open-source tools and training data from local institutions — including universities, libraries, newsrooms and Indigenous communities. All the data is used with explicit permission, García said.

“We wanted a model where you know where the data comes from,” García said. “That level of transparency just doesn’t exist in most commercial systems.”

García says the team’s goal is not to compete with major global models, but to build a tool “from and for Latin America.”

Some researchers warn that simply localizing an AI model isn’t enough to prevent deeper structural problems.

“It’s not enough to replicate large language models with local data,” said Ulises Mejías, a researcher at the State University of New York who studies digital inequality and data colonialism. “If you’re reproducing the same economic and political structures, the result will be the same.”

Mejías highlights the way commercial AI models centralize power, prioritizing dominant narratives and overlooking marginalized voices. Even in regional projects, he says, there’s a risk, even unintentional, of erasing communities that are underrepresented in media or academia.

He also raised concerns about the environmental impact of large-scale AI. 

A 2023 study estimated that training GPT-3 consumed more than 700,000 liters of water, much of it for server cooling.

CENIA plans to host Latam-GPT on Amazon Cloud temporarily, before migrating to a solar-powered data center in Chile’s Atacama Desert — one of the driest and sunniest places on Earth.

But the region has also seen tensions between Indigenous communities and mining companies over lithium extraction and water use.

“We’re very aware of those issues,” García said. “That’s why transparency and public dialogue are essential to the project.”

The Global South has long contributed labor to the AI industry, often invisibly. Latin American workers are frequently hired to label data or moderate content, often in low-wage roles with little job security.

Sebastián Lehuedé, a Chilean researcher at King’s College London, said those workers — and the communities they come from — are rarely part of decision-making.

“Latin America already supplies the raw materials, minerals, energy and labor,” he said. “Now we need to ask how those same groups can benefit.”

For Lehuedé, the real test is whether regional AI models, such as Latam-GPT, address Latin America’s structural challenges.

“We should be asking how these tools help us deal with inequality, human rights, climate change and democratic decline,” he said. 

Despite concerns, researchers see hope in how communities across Latin America are already using AI for their own needs.

In Brazil, one initiative helps connect homeless individuals with services and shelters through AI-driven platforms. Also, environmental activists are using algorithms to detect illegal logging. 

In Mexico, feminist collectives have developed autonomous digital infrastructures, known as feminist servers, to host websites, coordinate activism and safeguard data outside of major corporate platforms. These servers aim to disrupt reliance on big tech while promoting digital self-determination for marginalized groups. 

And the grassroots agency La Vía Campesina, a network of smallholder farmers in Colombia, has been actively discussing technology sovereignty, working to adapt the digital tools used in agriculture so they support local autonomy instead of reinforcing dependence on multinational tech firms.

“These are grassroots examples of how AI can serve the public good,” said Lehuedé. “The question is whether projects like Latam-GPT will support those efforts.”

The team behind Latam-GPT anticipates releasing the initial version of the model in late 2025, primarily for use by developers and institutions across Latin America. A second phase — aimed at making the tool accessible to the general public — is planned for later, once the infrastructure and governance framework are fully in place.

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North Korea has a secret army of workers applying for remote IT jobs around the world. They collect paychecks, sometimes steal company data and answer to a boss who isn’t at company headquarters, he’s sitting in Pyongyang. We hear about one named Kyle.

Dina Temple-Raston, the host of the “Click Here” podcast from Recorded Future News and PRX, brings us his story.

An earlier version of this story appeared on the “CLICK HERE” podcast from Recorded Future News and PRX. Additional reporting by Sean Powers.

Click on the blue player to hear the story.

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Isabel Cristina de Camargo, a retired teacher living in Carapicuíba, in the São Paulo metropolitan area, was excited when she received a message on the social media platform WhatsApp in May. It said she had a lot of points to redeem on her credit card. 

She clicked on the link, but couldn’t redeem the points. 

The next day, she got a WhatsApp call showing her bank’s logo, and a woman identified herself as Marilia, her bank manager’s name.

“She told me, ‘If you want to redeem your points, I can take care of it for you now,’” Camargo said. 

Camargo was told to log into her bank account, and the woman guided her through the steps. “She said, ‘Click here,’ and I did. And then she said, ‘Now, you type your password,’” she said.

Camargo was told to do the same with another account. But then, in only a few minutes, she lost $3,800 reais, or about $700, more than her monthly pension. 

Camargo became so distressed that she was admitted to the hospital. “I changed a lot, I’m even afraid of my cell phone. I put it on silent and I don’t pick up calls anymore,” she said.

Online crime has become rampant in Brazil. In July, police arrested a suspect behind the largest cyberattack against financial institutions in the country. At least $100 million was stolen from several banks. Almost 1 in 4 Brazilians have been victims of cybercrime, and the country is number one in the world for phishing via WhatsApp.

“On Whatsapp, there are a hundred types of different schemes,” said Wanderson Castilho, the CEO of the cybersecurity firm Enetsec, which has offices in Brazil and in Boca Raton, Florida. He said that for any business that exists, there is a way to create a scheme for it.

One of the reasons cybercrime is so big in the country is because Brazilians are huge internet users. More than 90% of households here are connected to the web. 

And online banking is extremely popular. Digital transactions account for 80% of total banking operations in Brazil, particularly using Pix, an instant payment system similar to Zelle. 

Castilho said criminals have moved from the physical to the digital space. “It’s cheaper, it’s less dangerous for them and when they get caught, the jail time is much shorter than the physical one.”

Even Castilho’s cousin, Lucienne Cohene, has been a victim of a scam recently. She’s a holistic therapist who lives in Itapoá, in Santa Catarina state. 

“I follow my cousin on TikTok, on Instagram,” she said. “I knew a lot about schemes. I shouldn’t have been a victim.”

Cohene fell for two consecutive schemes via WhatsApp in April — with hackers impersonating her daughter and her bank. She lost $28,000 reais, or $5,000. That’s the equivalent of 18 times the monthly minimum wage in Brazil. 

“It was particularly hard because of how I was treated,” she explained. “The police didn’t care, I filed a report just to show it to the bank. The bank didn’t care either.”

The Cybercrime Police Division, located in São Paulo’s downtown area, was created in 2020. 

It has about 60 officers and only deals with organized cybercrime. 

Guilherme Gueiros, a lawyer with the legal services firm Opice Blum, was sitting in the waiting area of the police station in early July. “At least once a week, I’m here clocking in and clocking out,” he said.

The firm represents companies that have lost tens of millions of dollars through cybercrime and he said schemes are only increasing at a dizzying pace.

“We see that the attacks are getting more complex, more targeted,” he said. “The hackers are getting better prepared and the challenge for us is escalating.”

Gueiros said some investigations can take years, and only 30 to 50% of the firm’s clients get some money back. 

“There are a huge number of schemes, and the police can’t investigate them all,” said Renato Topan, one of the deputy-police-chiefs of the cybercrime division. 

They have about 1,000 cases being investigated at any given time, and he said that about 60% lead to indictments — lower than other crimes.

Topan said it’s easy to open a bank account in Brazil, and there are many online banks. He explained that organized crime gangs often hire poor people to open accounts for them.

“The stolen money passes through hundreds of those small accounts, making it harder for us to track the money,” he said.

Cybercrime in Brazil exploded in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic, as people started doing everything online.

“The user is the weak link,” said Carlos Afonso Gonçalves da Silva, the director of IT at the Department of Intelligence at the São Paulo Civil Police. “Ideally, people should get permits to do different things with their cell phones. Category A: just for phone calls. Category B: for calls and texts. Category C: to access your bank and shop online,” he said.

The police’s cybercrime division doesn’t deal with most small thefts. Those are investigated by local precincts. But there are just 20,000 police officers to cover the whole state of São Paulo, and they receive 3 million police reports a year, Silva added.

“Twenty thousand men to investigate rape, domestic violence, highjacking. Digital crime ends up being last,” he said.

Meanwhile, many believe things will only get worse. Cybercrime doesn’t have borders, and experts say that many of the gangs in Brazil have connections with other criminals in the United States and across Africa. 

The post How Brazil became one of the epicenters of cybercrime appeared first on The World from PRX.

Digital services are fundamental to smooth-running modern societies, but some countries are utilizing them better than others.

Estonia is a digital pioneer, with 100% of its government services available online. But Germany — not so much.

Ben Bathke from our partners DW, Deutsche Welle, reports on what Germany and the rest of Europe could learn from Baltics Best Practice.

Click on the blue player above to hear the story.

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In the Netherlands, church bells still chime on Sundays, a tradition that’s echoed through the centuries. But attendance in the country has declined dramatically over the past 50 years.

The Netherlands was once a society where Protestants and Catholics lived in distinct but parallel worlds known as “pillars” — each with their own schools, political parties and newspapers. But those pillars began to crumble after World War II.

“The decline became huge — of church attendance,” said Ronelle Sonnenberg, an associate professor at the Protestant Theological University in the Dutch city of Utrecht. “It was not connected to your social bubble anymore, so it was even less relevant.”

By the late 1960s, nearly 70% of Dutch people identified as religious. Today, the reverse is true: About 60% of Dutch people say they have no religion at all.

But beneath the surface of this secular landscape, spirituality seems to be stirring. Last year marked the first in decades to see a reversal of this downward trend. Though modest, there was a 2% increase in the number of people identifying as religious in the country, according to government statistics. While Islam has been the fastest growing religion in recent years, the bump was seen in Christian denominations, particularly among Protestants.

And while church attendance is still down, independent research has found one potential source of the increase: Gen Z.

“Which is surprising in a way… and now [we’re trying] to understand this trend,” Sonnenberg said.

She pointed out similar phenomena elsewhere in Europe, in the UK and Finland for example.

“In absolute numbers it’s still not a big change but the trend is no longer declining,” she added.

Sonnenberg pointed to the study “God in the Netherlands,” which has been tracking religious trends in the country since the 1960s. It found that more members of Gen Z identify as Christian compared to millennials.

“Young people have a lot of stress, a lot of possibilities, but also a lot of uncertainties — and that is growing,” Sonnenberg explained. “Does that make the tradition of faith — with a long history, with proven rituals — attractive to them?”

For 20-year-old Sophie van der Berg, the answer is yes.

“If I feel uncomfortable, I know that He is with me,” she said. “You feel just fine knowing that He is with you, even if you feel alone or unwanted. You know that He is there with you.”

Van der Berg was attending Opwekking, which means “Revival” — a massive four-day Christian festival held each year in the Netherlands. The event drew 60,000 people in-person and over 300,000 more online. Traditional worship services and prayer meetings are accompanied by live music, multimedia presentations and even Christian electronic dance music.

One of the performers this year was Roberto Rosso, a Christian DJ and missionary who mixes his faith with EDM. Hundreds of young people packed in under a massive tent to watch his performance on the conference’s opening night.

“This young generation is open-minded,” Rosso said. “They don’t go to church — they can find everything on social media, on YouTube or on Spotify, for example, through my music. And so, they discover a new way of being a church.”

This year, nearly half the attendees at Opwekking were under the age of 30, according to organizers. For many, like 16-year-old high school student Barni, who did not want to give his full name, the journey to faith began in a time of anxiety and stress.

“I always went out with friends. I have a lot of different hobbies. I always enjoyed doing [them] but there was still a hole in my heart,” Barni said. “The moment I went to a church I just felt my heart being filled and I knew I didn’t have to look any further.”

But he said he found his faith deepened through social media.

“When I try to learn new things about Christianity, I could read the Bible, but where else should I look?” he asked. “Then I went on social media and saw a lot of people preaching or talking about faith and how it changed their lives. So, that really was a motivation to look further into the religion.”

Social media is teeming with influencers offering Christian content — from sermons and testimonies to faith-based fashion advice. Among the most prominent in the Netherlands is Zara Goedemans, a 22-year-old Pentecostal Christian and TikTok personality with over a million followers.

“I just love a good lip combo,” she says in one video, before seamlessly transitioning into a discussion about faith in Dutch. In another, she offers seven tips to “get back to God.” Tip number one: Remember what you’re grateful for.

“Even if you don’t believe, this is always a good one,” she says in the video.

Get ready with mee english version again #grwm #zaargoedemans #38weekspregnant

Goedemans is part beauty influencer, part “God-fluencer,” as she calls herself.

“I do influence people about God, about what God is saying,” she said. “The responsibility that God has given me at this young age, it’s the biggest gift he could give me — next to my daughter, of course.”

At 19, Goedemans became a mother — a moment that prompted her to re-evaluate her life. She turned away from a youth of partying and discovered stability in the Pentecostal church, in which she was raised. At the same time, she found a following online as she began to open up about motherhood and faith in the videos she posted.

“We are all searching for identity, searching for a place to be welcomed in, a place to fit in and also say that you are something,” she said. “And I think that the best identity and actually the only real identity that we can get as a human is the identity in Christ.”

She’s hoping more people her age will find their place in Christianity — even if it’s a small bump, it does seem to be happening.

And maybe, she says, God is at work making it happen.

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Record-breaking heat is rolling through parts of Europe this week. Authorities in France have declared heat warnings that, for the first time, cover nearly all of the country’s mainland; temperatures are projected to range from the mid-90s to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit over the next couple days.

Climate change is turning extreme heat into the new normal. Paris is now trying to adapt by expanding its district cooling system, a network of underground pipes that pump cold water throughout the city. The World’s Host Carolyn Beeler spoke with Raphaelle Nayral, head of Fraicheur de Paris, the company operating the network.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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At a free technology workshop on basic circuitry in Barcelona, Spain, teacher David Prieto broke out a box of simple components: LED light strips, transformers and switches.

Two ninth graders had already built something. “We made a working stoplight, in miniature,” Carla Fernandez, one of the students, said. “When the walklight turns green, the stoplight turns red, and vice versa.”

This session at the Sant Andreu de Palomar public library is part of Barcelona’s American Space program, which tries, among other things, to attract girls and young women to technology, according to library director Gemma Domingo, since high-tech tends to be a bastion for boys.

But programs like this one, which also include English-language classes and workshops on how to study in the US, have been in danger of disappearing.

Since coming into office, US President Donald Trump has made it a priority to eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, not only across the United States, but also overseas. The White House put this program and other private companies on notice, and warned businesses working with US embassies and consulates to renounce their inclusion policies. But many of these groups are resisting and fighting back.

The American Space program has about 150 chapters around the world.

“It’s about sharing American culture and language,” Domingo said. “But also helping prepare young people for jobs, especially in technology. The whole idea [is] of inclusiveness, and equality, looking out for the most vulnerable.”

The Trump administration targeted the program in March, sending a letter through the US embassy in Madrid, threatening to pull funding.

“Trump’s executive order, first of all, is directed at a public library,” Barcelona Mayor Jaume Collboni said. “We have responded that we have no intention whatsoever of abandoning our DEI programs.”

The US made good on its ultimatum, and after eight years of cooperation, it severed ties with the program.

The city of Barcelona ended up stepping in to fill the $20,000 a year funding gap. But director Domingo said that, even with the money, one part of the program could still disappear.

“We’ve been offering free workshops on how to study in the US,” she explained, “from scholarships to the permissions you need, visas and so on.”

Now she worries that they may no longer be worth it since the Trump administration is also trying to ban foreign students from studying at American colleges and universities, even though judges have so far blocked these efforts.

Carla Lopez, one of the other students at the library workshop, said she still wants to try doing an online American high school diploma program.

Her partner in the stoplight project, Fernandez, added that she thinks Trump is making a mistake, “because the more people who can learn and study technology, the better it is for scientific progress.”

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COVID-19 is still with us, and there’s a new variant accounting for about a third of cases in the US. Referred to as “Nimbus,” the NB 1.8.1. comes from the omicron variant.

“It has been spreading into the United States now from the Mediterranean area in Europe,” Michael Mina, an independent epidemiologist and immunologist based in Boston, told The World.

“It is likely going to dominate, is my guess — although another variant could come around — similar to omicron and other variants since the beginning of the pandemic. It has some fitness advantages, meaning it can spread in the background of the immunological memory pool that humans now have.”

Some people who have experienced Nimbus report that one of the quite painful symptoms is a very sore throat, which has earned the variant the name “razor blade throat.”

The World Health Organization, however, has not yet rated it as a variant of concern.

These viruses spread by mutating a bit and evading the pre-existing immunity, which is normal for viruses in general, according to Mina.

“And so, this one seems to have done a decent job at developing some mutations that allow it to get around our protective immunity, at least in our upper respiratory tract,” he explained. “And I expect that this is going be the summer wave, as we’ve seen each year during the pandemic, and this virus will probably be a dominant virus as we move into July and August.”

Mina discussed the implications of the variant further with The World’s Host Marco Werman.

Parts of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.

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Recently, 25 people — including six minors — were charged in Paris over a series of kidnappings and attempted abductions targeting France’s top crypto entrepreneurs and their families.

From our partners at Deutsche Welle, DW, John Laurenson investigates this bizarre and brutal crimewave.

Click on the blue player above to hear the full report.

The post A bizarre crimewave is taking place in the French capital appeared first on The World from PRX.

Editor’s note: This story is the culmination of a two-part series. To hear the first part, click on the audio player above, and listen to part two below.

For Merina Yasmin and her husband and 5-year-old daughter, who live in a one-room home in an informal settlement on the edge of Delhi, sleepless nights have become all too common in the summer. 

Her home is made of tin sheets that heat up under the scorching sun all day and remain warm even after sunset. The room doesn’t have windows or a refrigerator, and the only source of relief is a desert cooler — a device with a fan and a water tank that blows cool air by evaporating water. 

But even that is unreliable because of frequent power cuts. 

Yasmin said that she looks forward to going to work, because it’s her only escape from the heat. She is a domestic worker for families who have air conditioning. But after washing their dishes and mopping their floors all day, she can’t even catch some rest because of the heat in her own home.

“Sometimes, I don’t feel like I am a human being,” she said. 

Summer is in full swing in India, and many cities are experiencing scorching heat. And in India’s bustling cities, as the sun goes down and the worst of the day’s heat is over, an insidious threat looms: high nighttime temperatures. But some low-tech solutions may help address the problem. 

Avikal Somvanshi, a researcher who studies heat stress in urban India, said that India has always been hot but this kind of heat is not normal. 

“Climate change is actually fueling the heat waves,” he said.

It’s making them longer and more frequent, he said.

This year, heat waves in India began occurring as early as February, and many states are experiencing temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Last June, Delhi recorded its hottest night in over 50 years with a low of 95 degrees. 

Across Indian cities, nighttime temperatures are higher than they were 15 years ago, according to a 2024 analysis by the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi, of which Somvanshi was a contributor. 

Cities tend to be hotter than their surrounding rural areas even in the day, because of the way they’re built. The concrete, urban environment traps and radiates heat, and there’s less green cover to offset it. 

But even greener parts of Delhi are seeing elevated nighttime temperatures.

“Having tree cover can help you get shade during the daytime temperature, but it seems to be totally ineffective in cooling down things at night,” Somvanshi said.

To make things worse, urban India’s densely packed homes offer little ventilation.

“We’re really starting to reach the temperatures and humidity levels that we associate with a potential unlivable situation,” said Caroline Buckee, an epidemiologist at Harvard University who is studying the health effects of extreme heat in India.

“Even if the temperature outside comes down, the housing itself absorbs the heat in the day, and then, it doesn’t cool down at night,” Buckee said. “And so, the temperature is remaining essentially constant throughout the day and night.” 

The situation is especially detrimental for people like Yasmin, one of the millions of women who are part of India’s informal economy. They face grueling temperatures and yet, how it affects their health isn’t fully understood, Buckee said.

“Really, there are some glaring gaps when it comes to the physiological impacts of heat on women, on the reproductive health of women, and most importantly, of people who live in places most affected by climate change, where extreme heat is becoming more and more of a problem,” Buckee said.

To bridge this data gap, she and her colleagues are conducting a study in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. They have given Fitbits to hundreds of female workers there to monitor their physical stress. 

They’ve also put microsensors in their homes and workplaces to see how hot it gets throughout the day. Their study is ongoing but the initial findings are worrying.

“Compared to official meteorological department temperature readings, what we’re seeing in the homes of the participants of the study is that they are often 10-15 degrees hotter than the readout from the weather station,” Buckee said.

She and her colleagues hope that this granular data can be used to improve India’s adaptation strategies, like heat action plans, which direct cities to issue early warnings, train doctors about heat-related illness and plant trees. 

Ahmedabad’s heat action plan helped prevent over a thousand additional deaths, according to a 2018 study. 

Although dozens of Indian cities have adopted similar plans, they don’t have any legal basis, according to Tamanna Dalal, an expert on heat adaptation at Sustainable Futures Collective, an independent research organization. 

Dalal said that India needs laws in place to mandate action on heat. 

She and her colleagues recently assessed heat action plans in nine Indian cities most at risk of extreme heat. 

“All of the cities were doing short-term actions like drinking-water provisions,” to make drinking water more accessible, Dalal said. “But there was a very scant focus on the long term.” 

Measures like reviving water bodies or expanding green cover were either absent or poorly targeted, the report found. One area that particularly requires long-term planning is the increasing demand for cooling. 

“The challenge really is about thermal comfort,” said Sumedha Malaviya, an expert at the World Resources Institute India’s energy program. “And there you actually, interestingly, see two Indias emerging.” 

That is, those who can afford air conditioning and those who cannot.

A new report from the India Energy and Climate Center at the University of California, Berkeley, estimates that India will add up to 150 million room air conditioners in the next decade, driven by rising incomes and rising temperatures. 

This is expected to put tremendous pressure on India’s power grid and could lead to shortages as early as 2026, the report notes. It’s a vicious cycle because ACs contribute to climate change and also pump hot air outside.

“That sort of warms up the entire neighborhood, which also has these communities which don’t have access to ACs,” Malaviya said. “So, it’s creating this big cooling divide.”

To help bridge the gap, some experts say that low-tech solutions to extreme heat can go a long way — like earthen terracotta pots, which have been used in India for centuries to cool water naturally.  

“The beauty of the terracotta is that it retains water and moisture … and remains naturally cool,” said Monish Siripurapu, an architect and founder of a company called CoolAnt, which designs nature-based cooling solutions using terracotta. 

Near the entrance of his design studio in a converted horse stable on the outskirts of Delhi, water trickles down a wall of terracotta cones.

The structure was inspired by a beehive, Siripurapu said as he demonstrated how it works. The hollow, clay cones absorb the water, cooling them.  

“As the air passes through [the cones] and comes out, it becomes naturally cool,” Siripurapu said.

Structures like this can be installed in windows or added to building facades. Some use clay tiles instead of cones. The only energy they need is to run the water once in a while. The design harnesses the power of evaporative cooling and natural ventilation, which is often missing in modern buildings, Siripurapu said.

“When a building doesn’t have windows or when you actually keep it closed, the heat gets trapped inside,” he said. 

People use air conditioners to get rid of it, he said. 

His terracotta installations cannot replace air conditioners, but they can complement them. They can cool a living room passively so that people only need to switch on the AC during the hottest times of the day.

“The whole idea is how consciously we can reduce the pressure on energy consumption because of these mechanical systems and how we can reduce the dependence on air conditioners,” Siripurapu said. 

His team has completed around 70 installations across the country — in homes, public spaces and factories. 

Other simple solutions include curtains made of khus, the dried roots of vetiver grass. These are typically hung in doorways or windows and sprayed with water. 

As hot air passes through the damp vetiver screen, it cools down. Some bus stops in Ahmedabad have recently been fitted with khus curtains to bring relief to commuters.

“It is really important that we take the old traditional wisdom that has existed and combine it with some of the latest advancements in science and technology,” Siripurapu said.

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