Posts

Showing posts from May 17, 2019

Sri Lanka president bans NTJ, two other Islamist extremist organisations

Hindustan times Dated: May 15, 2019      Sri Lankan government has banned three Islamist extremist groups, including the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) that carried out the country’s worth terror attack on Easter Sunday in which over 250 people were killed. President Maithripala Sirisena issued an extraordinary gazette banning a number of extremist organisations on Monday. He also prohibited the use of drones in the country till further notice. According to the Gazette the National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ), the Jamaathe Millaathe Ibrahim (JMI), and the Willayath As Seylani (WAS) organisations have been banned. On April 21, nine suicide bombers, including a woman, carried out a series of devastating blasts that tore through three churches and as many luxury hotels, killing 258 people, including 44 foreigners 10 of them Indians, and injuring over 500 others. The Islamic State terror group claimed the attacks, but the government blamed local Islamist extremist gro
Image
Scroll.in Dated: May 17, 2019      Over the past five years,  the Adani Group has expanded its presence across India . Not only is it the country’s largest private port operator, coal importer, coal miner, private power producer, city gas distributor and importer of edible oils, it has also expanded into airports, urban water management, small and medium sector lending, power transmission and distribution, data centres, aerospace and defence. Other behemoths of the Indian economy such as the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Group and the Tata group of companies have firms like  Reliance Industries  and  Tata Consultancy Services  that generate large revenues, which helps them fund their expansion plans. But the Adani group lacks a similar cash engine. The Adani Group’s six listed companies, which account for almost all of its Rs 77,000 crore turnover, had operating profits of Rs 20,141 crore in 2017-’18. After accounting for interest payments, tax, depreciation and other charges,

Hafiz Saeed’s financier owns 23-storey building in London, luxury flat in Delhi: NIA

The Print Dated: May 17, 2019 New Delhi: Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali, the alleged chief financier of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) head Hafiz Saeed, allegedly owns a 23-storey building at Porchester Place, Westminster Council, London, a luxury flat at the NRI colony in south Delhi and a construction company in Dubai among a host of properties that he has allegedly bought across the country and abroad. The National Investigation Agency (NIA), probing the Jammu and Kashmir terror funding case, has made a list of these properties and is set to pass on their details to the Enforcement Directorate for further investigation. Investigative agencies believe that most of these properties have been bought with money routed through hawala channels from the UAE to carry out terror activities in India. “During the investigation in the case and after questioning a host of people, we came across several properties that were purchased by Watali, some in his name and others in different name

Technology ban escalates U.S.-China tensions

The Hindu Dated: May 6, 2019     Order prohibits purchase of equipment from companies that pose security risk China warned the U.S. on Thursday against further harming trade ties after President Donald Trump effectively barred Chinese telecom giant Huawei from the U.S. market, escalating tensions between the world’s top economic powerhouses. At the same time, Beijing’s diplomatic relations with Ottawa further soured as China formally arrested two Canadians on suspicion of snatching state secrets in a case seen as retaliation over Canada’s arrest of a Huawei executive on a U.S. extradition request. The spat over Huawei adds to the uncertainty over efforts to revive a deal that would end a bruising U.S.-China trade war after the two sides hiked tariffs n recent days. “The U.S.’s bullying and maximum pressure tactics have caused the China-U.S. economic and trade talks to suffer a serious setback,” Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng told a weekly press briefing. Mr.

Developed inexpensive lens that can be used to spot FICN, say IIT-B researchers

The Indian Express Dated: May 17, 2019       Researchers at IIT-Bombay said they have developed a robust and inexpensive technique to manufacture small lenses that have the ability to provide an in-depth look into our blood cells or identify fake currency notes. The technique, by Professor Soumyo Mukherji of Department of Bioscience and Bioengineering along with Debjani Paul and Dr Karuneshwari Karunakaran, can allow anyone to make such a lens for under Rs 2. Traditionally, lenses have been fabricated by polishing and grinding glass or moulding plastic against a template. These methods are expensive as they require skilled workmanship and costly equipment. However, we developed an alternative method using fluids,” said Mukherji. The researchers have used these lenses to develop a  “smartphone microscope” — the lens is placed on a smartphone camera. The microscope has a resolution of 1.4 micrometres, comparable to an optical microscope, and was used to detect pollen grains

Skimming: how devices at ATMs can steal data, help criminals clone cards

The Indian Express Dated: May 17, 2019       A skimmer is a device designed to look like and replace the card insertion slot at an ATM. The skimmers, which cannot be usually spotted by an untrained eye, have circuitry that read and store the data on the magnetic strip of an ATM card even as the ATM processes the same data. Last week, Delhi police found that Rs 19 lakh had been fraudulently withdrawn from 87 accounts in three ATMs in the space of seven days. This was done by skimming, a procedure in which criminals clone ATM cards with stolen data. There have been precedents in the country. The method A skimmer is a device designed to look like and replace the card insertion slot at an ATM. The skimmers, which cannot be usually spotted by an untrained eye, have circuitry that read and store the data on the magnetic strip of an ATM card even as the ATM processes the same data. Typically, fraudsters also install pinhole cameras in inconspicuous places like the top of t