Archives for September 2023

Congress MLA Bharat Singh

Kota: Congress MLA Bharat Singh on Tuesday shaved his head as a mark of protest against Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot whom he accused of protecting a corrupt minister and ignoring his advice.

The incident took place four days after state Sports and Youth Affairs Minister Ashok Chandana staged a ‘dharna’ on electricity issues against his own government at Bundi district headquarters.

The Sangod MLA and his supporters also burned an effigy of Ravan on Tuesday outside his residence in the Gumanpura area in Kota city.

He shaved his head in the morning as the inaugural of Chambal Riverfront was underway with fanfare.

Singh also sent a letter to Gehlot earlier accusing him of protecting state Mining Minister Pramod Jain Bhaya, whom he referred to as ‘Bhaya.’

Singh in his letter accused Gehlot of trading off his integrity and principles to protect the minister as he “offered” him his hair to mark his capitulation.

“It is a mark of protest against the CM,” Singh told reporters.

Mumbai: Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray called on Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar here on Tuesday on the eve of the first meeting of the coordination committee of the opposition alliance INDIA.

The meeting between Thackeray and Pawar lasted for about 90 minutes and took place at the latter’s ‘Silver Oak’ residence in south Mumbai.

Talking to reporters, NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) state unit chief Jayant Patil, who was part of the meeting along with Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut, said discussions took place on the INDIA bloc’s coordination panel gathering and the current political situation in Maharashtra.

The INDIA coordination committee’s meeting will take place in New Delhi on Wednesday (September 13).

Patil said seat-sharing arrangements in Maharashtra, which sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha, the second highest after Uttar Pradesh, among opposition allies in the state will be concluded soon.

Thackeray, Pawar and Congress leaders Nana Patole, Balasaheb Thorat and Ashok Chavan will discuss the seat-sharing, said the former state minister.

He said the 25 seats won by the BJP or its allies in the last Lok Sabha polls will be distributed properly among the three Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) partners.

The constituents of the MVA, a Maharashtra-level arrangement between the Shiv Sena (UBT), the NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) and the Congress, will soon finalize schedule for ‘Vajramuth’ (iron fist) rallies, said Patil.

All the three parties are also members of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), which has more than two dozen anti-BJP political outfits.

The first meeting of the opposition front was held in Patna in June followed by the second gathering in Bengaluru in July. The third conclave of the bloc was held nearly two weeks ago in Mumbai which led to the formation of a coordination committee.

Jaipur: Eleven people from Gujarat were killed and at least 15 injured when a trailer rammed into their bus from behind in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district early on Wednesday, police said.

The bus was on its way from Gujarat to Mathura in Uttar Pradesh when the accident occurred around 4.30 am, they said.

The bus had halted at Antra flyover in the Lakhanpur area when the trailer rammed into it from behind. Five men and six women died on the spot, the police said.

According to the police control room, Antu, Nandram, Lallu, Bharat, Lalji, his wife Madhuben, Ambaben, Kambuben, Ramuben, Anjuben and Madhuben — the wife of one Arvind — died in the accident.

They were from Dihor in Gujarat’s Bhav Nagar.

Washington (AP): Google has exploited its dominance of the internet search market to lock out competitors and smother innovation, the Department of Justice said on Tuesday at the opening of the biggest US antitrust trial in a quarter century.

“This case is about the future of the internet and whether Google’s search engine will ever face meaningful competition,” said Kenneth Dintzer, the Justice Department’s lead litigator.

Over the next 10 weeks, federal lawyers and state attorneys general will try to prove Google rigged the market in its favour by locking in its search engine as the default choice in a plethora of places and devices.

US District Judge Amit Mehta likely won’t issue a ruling until early next year. If he decides Google broke the law, another trial will decide what steps should be taken to rein in the Mountain View, California-based company.

Top executives at Google and its corporate parent Alphabet Inc., as well as those from other powerful technology companies are expected to testify. Among them is likely to be Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who succeeded Google co-founder Larry Page four years ago. Court documents also suggest that Eddy Cue, a high ranking Apple executive, might be called to the stand.

The Justice Department filed its antitrust lawsuit against Google nearly three years ago during the Trump administration, alleging that the company has used its internet search dominance to gain an unfair advantage against competitors.

Government lawyers say Google protects its franchise through a form of payola, shelling out billions of dollars annually to be the default search engine on the iPhone and on web browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox.

“Google pays more than
10 billion per year for these privileged positions,” Dintzer said.

“Google’s contracts ensure that rivals cannot match the search quality ad monetization, especially on phones,” he said. “Through this feedback loop, this wheel has been turning for more than 12 years. It always turns to Google’s advantage.”

Google counters that it faces a wide range of competition despite commanding about 90 per cent of the internet search market.

Its rivals, the company argues, range from search engines such as Microsoft’s Bing to websites like Amazon and Yelp, where consumers can post questions about what to buy or where to go.

“There are lots of way users access the web other than default search engines, and people use them all the time,” said attorney John Schmidtlein, a partner at the law firm Williams and Connolly which is representing Google.

But the more searches Google processes, the more data it collects, data that can be used to improve future searches and give it an even bigger advantage over its rivals, Dintzer said. “User data is the oxygen for a search engine,” he said. Because of its market dominance, “Google search and ad products are better than its rivals can hope to be”.

That is why, he said, Google pays so much for its search engine to be the default option on products from Apple and other companies.

Google “began weaponising defaults” more than 15 years ago, Dintzer said, citing an internal Google document calling its arrangements an “Achilles Heel” for rival search engines offered by Yahoo and MSN.

He also alleged that Google strong-armed Apple into giving its search engine a default position on its devices as a condition for revenue sharing. “This is not a negotiation,” Dintzer said. “This is Google saying: Take it or leave it.”

Litigators argue the company’s anticompetitive tactics prevented Apple from developing a search engine of its own.

And Dintzer said Google deleted documents to keep them out of court proceedings and sought to hide others under attorney-client privilege.

“They destroyed documents for years,” Dintzer said. “They turned history off, your honor, so they could rewrite it in this court.”

While questioning Google chief economist Hal Varian the trial’s first witness Dintzer produced a July 2003 memo in which Varian urged Google employees to be cautious about how they discussed competition with Microsoft, lest they raise antitrust concerns. “We should be careful about what we say in both public and private,” Varian wrote. References to “cutting off their air supply” and similar comments, for instance, “should be avoided”.

From Google’s perspective, perpetual improvements to its search engine explain why people almost reflexively keep coming back to it, a habit that long ago made “Googling” synonymous with looking things up on the internet. Schmidtlein said Google’s tweaks simply made its search better than key rival Bing. “At every critical juncture,” he said, “they were beaten in the market.”

The trial begins just a couple weeks after the 25th anniversary of the first investment in Google a USD 100,000 check written by Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim that enabled Page and Sergey Brin to set up shop in a Silicon Valley garage.

Today, Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet, is worth USD 1.7 trillion and employs 182,000 people, with most of the money coming from USD 224 billion in annual ad sales flowing through a network of digital services anchored by a search engine that fields billions of queries a day.

The Justice Department’s antitrust case echoes the one it filed against Microsoft in 1998. Regulators then accused Microsoft of forcing computer makers that relied on its dominant Windows operating system to also feature Microsoft’s Internet Explorer just as the internet was starting to go mainstream. That bundling practice crushed competition from the once-popular browser Netscape.

Several members of the Justice Department’s team in the Google case including Dintzer also worked on the Microsoft investigation.

Google could be hobbled if the trial ends in concessions that undercut its power. One possibility is that the company could be forced to stop paying Apple and other companies to make Google the default search engine on smartphones and computers.

Or the legal battle could cause Google to lose focus. That’s what happened to Microsoft after its antitrust showdown with the Justice Department. Distracted, the software giant struggled to adapt to the impact of internet search and smartphones. Google capitalised on that distraction to leap from its startup roots into an imposing powerhouse.

Udupi: The Bengaluru CCB Division police on Tuesday detained two persons, including Chaitra Kundapura, Hindu activist known for her provocative speeches, in Udupi, on charges of duping a businessman from Byndoor and a BJP leader of crores of rupees after promising to get them BJP tickets in the last Karnataka Assembly elections.

A letter, stating that Chaitra Kundapura and her accomplices, who convinced a businessman that he would be given a BJP ticket and duped him of Rs 7 crore, had gone viral on social media. The businessman had allegedly filed a complaint in Bengaluru, and the CCB Police in the state capital detained Kundapura, who had been absconding since the incident, in the parking area of the Shri Krishna Mutt in Udupi.

The police have also detained Shrikanth Nayak Pelattur in relation to the incident. Both Nayak and Kundapura were taken to a remote area for questioning by the police team. The police had earlier detained up to six people, including Gagan Kadur and Prasad, in the case.

 2 deaths Kerala’s Kozhikode district were caused by Nipah virus, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya confirmed on Tuesday.

A central team of experts has also been dispatched to Kerala to take stock of the situation and assist the state government in the management of the Nipah virus infection, the minister said.

The minister said he has spoken with the Kerala Health Minister Veena George on the matter.

He also said samplesto be infected with the Nipah virus, a zoonotic virus, which can be transmitted from animals to humans, from Kerala have been sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune for testing.

But, he said, as the authorities have prior experience of tackling the disease they will not let the virus spread.

This is the third time Kerala’s Kozhikode has reported deaths due to the Nipah virus. It was earlier reported in the state in 2018 and 2021.

Mandaviya said the Nipah virus cases are reported during this season.

Guidelines have also been issued on safety measures so that the virus could be prevented from spreading in humans as well as among animals, he added. 

Mandaviya also said the centre has also dispatched safety gears like PPE Kits to the state.

In a survey, the Indian Council of Medical Research’s National Institute of Virology (ICMR-NIV) has found evidence that the Nipah virus is in circulation in the bat population across nine states and one Union Territory in the country.

Apart from Kerala, the presence of Nipah viral antibodies in bats was also found in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam Meghalaya and Pondicherry.

Earlier, the state authorities had declared the two suspected deaths as ‘unnatural deaths’. Relatives of one of the deceased have also been admitted to the ICU, the Kerala health department has said. 

Following the deaths, the health department sounded an alert in the district.

The Kerala government has also set up a control room in Kozhikode and advised people to use masks as a precautionary measure.

In a Facebook post, Chief Minister said his government is viewing the two deaths seriously.

He, however, said there is no need to worry as most of those who were in close contact with the deceased are under treatment.

The Kerala health minister chaired a high-level meeting to evaluate the situation in Kozhikode and said that the entire health machinery in the district is on alert. 

JAIPUR: Fuel pumps will remain closed from 10 am to 6 pm on Wednesday and Thursday across the state, as the Rajasthan Petroleum Dealers Association has called for a strike to protest the high value-added tax (VAT) rate on fuel.

The Association has called for a two-day symbolic strike on September 13 and September 14.

The pumps will remain closed till evening. On Thursday also fuel pumps will remain closed from 10 am to 6 pm, he said.

He said that the call for a fuel pump strike was taken against high VAT rates on fuel in the state.

More than 5,700 privately operated fuel pumps across the state are participating in the strike.

A large crowd was seen at many petrol pumps on Wednesday morning, as people were not aware of the strike.

Bhati threatened an indefinite strike from September 15, if the state government failed to act on the issue.

China has once again released, a few days back, a land-border map targeting our sovereignty and integrity. It has claimed our Ladakh in the north and Arunachal Pradesh in the east as its own. There are two exaggerated lies in this narrative.

Firstly, there has never been a land border between India and China. The two countries that act as buffers between us and China are Tibet and East Turkestan. The Great Ranges of Karakoram and the Himalayas divide us and Tibet and East Turkestan.

Tibet emerged as a strong State which defeated China for two centuries but became a vassal now and then after that (like present-day Vietnam, North & South Koreas), and which was (and continues to be) the spiritual capital of the Mongols who defeated China and ruled over it, was captured by the Chinese Army after killing thousands of Buddhist monks in c. 1951. Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal head of Tibet, escaped from the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, in March 1959 and took asylum in India, where he has lived since then with his followers and a Tibetan Government in exile. 

Tibetans emerged as a great force in 7 CE. The Chinese Tang Dynasty initially took no notice of them. Tang realised the grave danger when the Tibetans easily captured Chinese territories in the west and the north. Realizing that it is impossible to fight the Tibetans in the Tibet plateau, located at an average of 16000 feet, which is true even today, the Chinese decided to enter into a peace treaty with the Tibetans by paying vassalage and marrying off their princesses to Tibetan Kings. 

Ladakh, which is part of our Jammu & Kashmir, is situated between Tibet and East Turkestan states. China is interested in Ladakh because neither Tibet nor East Turkestan have fully integrated with Mainland China, and there are continuing separatist movements in these two places. Other reasons are the invaluable water resources (great rivers like the Indus, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Salween, and Irrawaddy originate in Tibet; the innumerable glaciers make Tibet the third Pole after the North and the South Poles) and the availability of other natural resources (metals, oil and gas).

Therefore, China has unleashed suppression to keep its control there. It built a highway (G-219) to link these two disturbed places through the Aksai-Chin part of Ladakh without our permission as early as c. 1953, even when India-China relations were good. As the relationship deteriorated in c. 1962, it occupied even more of Ladakh. At every opportunity, it incrementally occupies our land there. This is known as salami-slicing. As part of this approach, it entered into an agreement t with Pakistan in c. 1963 and took over our Shaksgam Valley in Gilgit, an area of 5000 sq. km. for its security needs. It continues to aggress our Ladakh. The May 2020 attacks by China at Galwan, Depsang, Pangong Tso and Demchok were part of this strategy. 

Tibet is a very vast and aggressed part of China. It alone constitutes one-eighth of the entire land mass of China. Like East Turkestan, it was aggressed and occupied 70 years ago. As we have already seen, its natural resources, like water, which can satisfy one-fourth of the entire water needs of China, are badly needed by China. China can dominate several lower-riparian states by becoming the upper riparian of those big rivers mentioned earlier. These reasons prompted China to occupy Tibet.

In 8 CE, the Abbassid army sent by the Caliph of Baghdad established Islam in China’s northwest, where the Turkic people lived in East Turkestan. Uyghurs, as we know them today, speak Turkish and came from Central Asia. Even though the Qing Emperor captured East Turkestan in the 18th century, his rule in this faraway peripheral land of the Chinese Empire was tenuous. East Turkestan was functioning as an independent state in the early 20th century. After the Communist party took power in China on October 1, 1949, it integrated the peripheral lands such as Yunnan, Tibet, East Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria more tightly with the Mainland by aggressing them. Only in c. 1955 East Turkestan was fully integrated, when its name was changed to Sinkiang. The Uyghurs have ever since opposed Chinese rule.

Therefore, in the accompanying map, all these areas have been shown as independent states but under occupation by China. China has border disputes not only with us but with many others. It has land borders with fourteen countries. Even though it settled all the border disputes (except with India and Bhutan) by the 1990s, it continues to chafe that its lands continue to be under illegal occupation by these countries. For example, it claims the entire Siberia of its closest ally, Russia.

Apart from land border disputes, China has maritime boundary disputes with all its maritime neighbours. It claims Indonesia’s Natuna Sea, which is 1500 nautical miles from the nearest Chinese shore, as its own. Historically, China never had a name for itself. Only others call it China. Similarly, China used to notify the seas around it as the East Sea and South Sea. It was the Portuguese who, in the 16th century, renamed the South Sea as ‘South China Sea’. That stuck. Because of that name, China wants to assume total control of that sea by randomly marking nine dashes and claiming possession of that waterway. It uses its powerful Navy, Coast Guard and the unofficial Maritime Militia to enforce its control over other littorals. It has occupied islands, converted reefs into islands, stationed its Navy in these places and built missile launchers and radars. It has junked the 2016 -Award of the UN Arbitral Tribunal under the UN’s UNCLOS.

While so, India has influenced this region for over 2000 years in many ways. Without wars and aggression, India had influenced many Empires that flourished richly in this region through its religion, language, literature, epics, science, sea trade, unique products, and diplomacy. Particular examples of such great Empires are Funan in the Mekong delta of South Vietnam and Cambodia between 1 and 6 CE, the Champa in Central Vietnam between 2 and 18 CE, the Sri Wijaya of Sumatra between 7 and 12 CE, and the Majapahit in neighbouring Java between 13 and 16 CE. These thalassocracies reigned this area for 2000 years as anchors of sea trade and culture. They functioned based on the Hindu and Buddhist precepts, Sanskrit as lingua franca, the Indian Luni-Solar calendar, the ‘Chakravartin’ concept of rulership, Indian philosophical thoughts, architecture, and town planning.

The Indian influence extended up to today’s Papua-New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean. The Indian ports were natural trans-shipment points for traders from the west and the east. The ocean-sailing Indian dhows traded between the Chinese seas and the Indian provinces known today as Bengal, Orissa, Tamilnadu, Kerala, Maharashtra and Gujarat. As Indian sailors were experts in predicting monsoon and trade winds, the sea trade prospered.

On the contrary, only in the 10th CE did the Song Empire allow the Chinese to trade across far seas. But this stopped when the Song Empire fell in the early 12th CE. Even though the Ming Empire allowed Chinese traders to cross oceans once again in the 15th CE, it did not continue for long. The French archaeologists who explored these areas from the 18th CE, aptly named them ‘Indo-Chine’ because of the deep and wide Indian influence. The aggressive and coercive behaviour of China now demands that this area be referred to as ‘Indo-China’. 

The sea around Vietnam had been known for a long time as the ‘Champa Sea’. The Filipinos have always referred to the sea to their west as the ‘West Philippines Sea’. The remainder of the sea must, therefore, for the reasons above, be rightly renamed as the ‘Indo-China Sea’. India and China have equally influenced this region for over 2000 years. This should also be a lesson taught to China, which wants to do cartographic aggression by renaming places and then claiming possession of these renamed places. 

The accompanying map reflects the changed names for these reasons.