Nasheman

India's largest selling Urdu weekly, now also in English

You are here: Home / Archives for Nasheman

‘Truth and Dare’: Mediocre fare and unexciting

by

Film: “Truth and Dare”; Director: Jeff Wadlow; Cast: Lucy Hale, Violett Beane, Tyler Posey, Hayden Szeto, Landon Liboiron, Sophia Ali, Nolan Gerard Funk; Rating: **1/2

Director Jeff Wadlow’s “Truth or Dare” is more of a lukewarm, predictable thriller than a horror film.

It is about a group of friends who reluctantly get drawn into a web of danger while playing a harmless game of “Truth or Dare.”

The film takes a cliched route following Olivia (Lucy Hale) who is coaxed by her best friend Markie (Violett Beane) to join their group of closest friends on a trip to Mexico during their spring break before “life tears us apart”.

While the group is having fun at a bar lounge, Olivia meets a stranger — a hunky dude named Carter (Landon Liboiron) who convinces her and her friends to accompany him to an abandoned castle.

He draws them into playing the game of Truth or Dare. The rules are simple; “Tell the truth or you die. Do the dare or you die. If you refuse to play, you die.”

Horrified, the teens confront him, after which he admits to trapping them in some strange curse. He confesses to doing this because, “I’m okay with strangers dying so that I can live.”

Back in their college campus, the group, after bouts of hallucinations realise that the game has followed them back home through some kind of supernatural evil. They realise that both the truths and the dares are tailored to the players which are designed to ruin their relationships or kill them trying.

The commands of the game are delivered by familiar faces that contort into evil smiles, looking, as one character puts it, “like a messed up Snapchat filter”.

Soon, Lucy realises, “what you see is not real only the consequences are real”. They also realise that “we are not playing it, it is playing us.”

But, by the end of it, the entire process; by-the-numbers, of trying to save themselves from being killed becomes staid, foreseeable and unintentionally silly.

While the performances are perfunctory and lacklustre, the production values inclusive of the CGI effects, definitely reek of a low-budget film.

Overall, coming from the makers who gave us horror films like “Get Out”, “Insidious”, “The Purge”, “Split”, “Paranormal Activity” “Sinister” and “The Gift”, this one is a mediocre-fare and childish diversion, which does not seem original or exciting.

(IANS)

Former Playboy model settles lawsuit, allows to speak freely about affair with Trump

by

McDougal said she was in love with Trump and the affair started not long after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron.
Former Playboy model Karen McDougal reached an agreement on Wednesday with tabloid publisher American Media Inc that will allow her to speak freely about an affair she alleges she had with US President Donald Trump, the company said in a statement.

McDougal filed suit in California last month seeking to be released from a deal reached in 2016 with AMI, publisher of the National Enquirer, that gave the company exclusive rights to her story in exchange for USD 150,000.

“AMI is pleased that we reached an amicable resolution with Ms. McDougal today that provides both sides what they wanted as a result,” the company said in a statement.

Representatives for McDougal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under the deal, AMI said it would have the right to receive up to USD 75,000 of any future profits from the sale of her story about the alleged 10-month affair, which she says started in 2006.

McDougal will also appear on the September 2018 cover of Men’s Journal magazine, which will include a feature-length article about her, the company said.

In an interview with CNN that aired last month, McDougal said she was in love with Trump and the affair started not long after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron.

The White House has said that Trump denies having an affair with McDougal.

AMI has said McDougal was permitted to speak about her relationship with Trump in response to “legitimate press inquiries.”

McDougal had argued in her lawsuit that the agreement was an illegal corporate donation from AMI to the Trump campaign that violated federal election law.

American Media head David Pecker has described Trump as a “personal friend.”

Trump has been engaged in a legal battle with adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who says she had a one-night stand with Trump in 2006.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has sued Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen to be released from a 2016 agreement not to publicly discuss the alleged sexual encounter in exchange for USD 130,000.

The White House has denied that Trump had sex with Daniels.

Punjab Sikh woman pilgrim converts to Islam, remarries in Pakistan

by

A Sikh woman pilgrim from Hoshiarpur district has reportedly converted to Islam and married a Lahore-based Pakistan national, reports reaching her family in Punjab have indicated.

Her old father-in-law, Tarsem Singh, alleged on Thursday that his daughter-in-law could have fallen into the hands of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and may have been forced to convert and remarry there.

The woman, Kiran Bala, who left for Pakistan on a pilgrimage as part of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) delegation on April 12, reportedly went missing on April 16.

She went to Pakistan on her Indian passport with Pakistan visa valid till April 21.

As per Pakistani media reports, the woman embraced Islam from Darul-Aloom Jamia Naeemia in Lahore on April 16 and later performed ‘nikah’ (marriage) with Muhammed Azam, a resident of Hanjarwal Multan Road in Lahore.

However, what is curious is that in her application for extension of the Pakistan visa, her name is typed as Amna Bibi while the signature has been done as Amina.

She has applied for extension of visa, citing “threats of assassination” to her life in India, before Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad, a report in Daily Times said.

The News also posted pictures of the woman and her visa extension application on its website.

Around 1,700 Indian pilgrims had gone to Pakistan to visit Sikh shrines, including Panja Sahib Gurdwara near Lahore and Nankana Sahib — the birth place of Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev, on the occasion of Baisakhi on April 13.

Kiran Bala, 31, a widow, is the mother of three. She was living with her in-laws at their village house in Garhshankar sub-division of Punjab, around 90 km from Chandigarh.

The children are with their aged grandparents. Their father had passed away in 2013.

“I had dropped my daughter-in-law with SGPC officials in Amritsar on April 10 for the pilgrimage in Pakistan. The ‘jatha’ is expected to return on April 21.

“I cannot believe what has happened. No one has contacted us officially from the SGPC and the foreign ministry. I want my daughter-in-law to be returned safely,” Tarsem Singh, a Sikh religious preacher in his village, told the media.

Tarsem Singh alleged that Kiran Bala could be in touch with the Pakistani man (whom she has reportedly married) through social media, particularly Facebook.

He alleged that she was using social media frequently on her mobile phone in the past one month.

The visit of the Indian pilgrims to Pakistan has been mired in controversies in the past one week with Pakistani agencies and officials denying permission to Indian embassy officials there from meeting the visiting delegation members.

Posters of Khalistan, a separate Sikh homeland, have also been put up at the places where the Indian delegation is visiting.

Air India senior pilot intimedate co-pilots with crash axe,

by

Air India has ordered a probe into the complaints that one of its senior pilots intimedate to hit his co-pilots with ‘crash axe’ at least on two flights, the sources said.

While ordering probe, India’s national carrier also directed the senior pilot not to perform his duties as an instructor till further orders.

His ‘trainership,’ however, was restored last week.

In the first incident, the pilot, who is a trainer, allegedly intimedate the use of crash axe in the presence of a safety pilot doing the route check.

According to sources, the trainer pilot who was in the cockpit of Air Indian flight AI 709 from Kolkata to Dimapur on January 18, 2018, allegedly intimedated to use the axe against the co-pilot who was doing his route check.

On January 26, 2018, the senior commander allegedly misbehaved again against his co-pilot and doled out the same threat to his trainee pilot during a Mumbai-Kolkata flight, forcing the trainee pilot to file a complaint against him, sources said.

Sources said the probe is still on and the instructor has already submitted his response on the incident.

Third-parties abusing ‘Facebook Login’ to steal users’ data

by

Several third-party trackers are abusing Facebook Login, exfiltrating users’ data including name, email address, age range, gender, locale and profile photo, a new security research report has claimed.

The unintended exposure of Facebook data to third party JavaScript trackers is not owing to a bug in Facebook’s Login feature.

“Rather, it is due to the lack of security boundaries between the first-party and third-party scripts in today’s web,” said the report prepared by Steven Englehardt, Gunes Acar and Arvind Narayanan, researchers at Freedom to Tinker — a digital initiative by Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy.

“We report yet another type of surreptitious data collection by third-party scripts that we discovered: the exfiltration of personal identifiers from websites through “login with Facebook” and other such social login APIs,” the trio wrote.

Meanwhile, Facebook told the technology website Tech Crunch that they were investigating into the security research report.

The researchers found two types of vulnerabilities: Seven third parties abusing websites’ access to Facebook user data and one third party using its own Facebook “application” to track users around the web.

British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica was found misusing users’ data collected by a Facebook quiz app which used the “Login with Facebook” feature.

“We’ve uncovered an additional risk: when a user grants a website access to their social media profile, they are not only trusting that website but also third parties embedded on that site,” the report noted.

The researchers found seven scripts collecting Facebook user data using the first party’s Facebook access.

“These scripts are embedded on a total of 434 of the top 1 million sites, including fiverr.com, bhphotovideo.com, and mongodb.com,” they wrote.

The user ID collected through the Facebook API is specific to the website (or the “application” in Facebook’s terminology), which would limit the potential for cross-site tracking.

“But these app-scoped user IDs can be used to retrieve the global Facebook ID, user’s profile photo, and other public profile information, which can be used to identify and track users across websites and devices,” the researchers warned.

“While we can’t say how these trackers use the information they collect, we can examine their marketing material to understand how it may be used,” they noted.

OnAudience, Tealium AudienceStream, Lytics, and ProPS all offer some form of “customer data platform”, which collect data to help publishers to better monetise their users.

Forter offers “identity-based fraud prevention” for e-commerce sites while Augur offers cross-device tracking and consumer recognition services.

Hidden third-party trackers can also use “Facebook Login to deanonymise users for targeted advertising”.

“This is a privacy violation, as it is unexpected and users are unaware of it,” the researchers said.

There are steps Facebook and other social login providers can still take to prevent abuse.

“API use can be audited to review how, where, and which parties are accessing social login data. Facebook could also disallow the lookup of profile picture and global Facebook IDs by app-scoped user IDs,” the report emphasised.

“It might also be the right time to make Anonymous Login with Facebook available following its announcement four years ago,” the researchers added.

(IANS)

SC dismisses plea for SIT probe in Judge Loya case

by

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a plea for a Special Investigation Team probe into the alleged mysterious death of special CBI Judge B.H. Loya.

Loya allegedly died of a cardiac arrest while in Nagpur in Maharashtra on December 1, 2014 when he was attending a wedding there.

(IANS)

Truth, torture, Trump and more: James Comey’s eventful career

by

Title: A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership; Author: James Comey; Publisher: Pan Macmillan; Pages: 305; Price: Rs 799

As an Assistant US Attorney in New York in the early 1990s, James Comey was part of the anti-mafia campaign and became well versed about how its top bosses perceived themselves, the people who worked for them and the world. As FBI chief a quarter of century later, he saw the same worldview — in newly-elected President Donald Trump.

Recounting a meeting where he seemed to have angered Trump by contradicting him, Comey tells us that the encounter had left him “shaken” for he had “never seen anything like it in the Oval Office” under the previous two presidents he had served.

“As I found myself thrust into the Trump orbit, I once again was having flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the Mob. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organisation above morality and above the truth,” he writes in his autobiography.

And as we go on to find out in the book, this is another aspect of the significant role that Comey would play in the 2016 US Presidential Election, apart from his decisions on “the matter” (the word is significant, as we learn) of Hillary Clinton’s email server being perceived as having damaged her campaign.

These interactions with Trump, where Comey’s “loyalty” was sought in the wake of the probe into Russian support/links against his campaign team and he was even purportedly told to drop the case against a recently-resigned aide (National Security Adviser Michael Flynn), could have far-reaching consequences — for the new President.

While Comey was unceremoniously fired, his claims would lead to a Special Counsel investigation that has reached uncomfortably close to Trump — Luke Harding’s “Collusion — How Russia Helped Trump Win the White House” shows how.

But while around half of Comey’s book is devoted to his decisions and experiences in the Clinton and Trump episodes, it has much more than these two major issues, and is certainly not an explosive, tell-all account — he is too principled and conscientious a lawyer and public servant to reveal what is the court’s domain to the public.

But it does clarify his position in the Clinton matter, where he seeks to explain what the issue was all about, and what lay behind him telling Congress in October 2016 — a few days prior to the election — that the probe was being reopened.

As he reveals, the decision hinged on whether to inform Congress — which could influence the election — or conceal it — which could have been as problematic for the FBI if evidence of prosecutable criminal activity emerged later. “Put that way, the choice between a ‘really bad option’ and a ‘catastrophic option’ was not that hard a call,” he argues.

This is Comey’s memoir with the parts on Clinton and Trump the highlights, but the good lawyer he is, he builds up to them, showing why he acted the way he did by detailing his formative influences and his career.

These include the childhood experience when a criminal burst into his home and threatened him and his brother, a wise boss at the department store where he worked part-time, bullies at school, and encounters with the Mafia bosses and killers as US Attorney.

Then, as Deputy Attorney General in the George W. Bush Presidency, there was the “Stellar Wind” surveillance — where he had to forestall two senior administration officials trying to obtain a hospitalised Attorney General’s concurrence — and torture of terrorists and terrorist suspects by the CIA, and being appointed FBI chief by Barack Obama in 2013.

While the comparison of the three Presidents — and their cabinet colleagues — is well brought out and extensive (say, their political styles to sense of humour — or lack thereof), the main point is their attitude to justice, or rather to those tasked with ensuring it. As we learn from history, and increasingly from the news, there is no doubt what the rankings will be.

This, along with Comey’s observations on the ethics of leadership and the pursuit of justice free from any political considerations, is what makes this book more than a political memoir.

(IANS)

Rajasthan setting up largest start-up incubation hub in the country

by

Move over Bengaluru and Pune. Udaipur in Rajasthan is aiming to set up the biggest start-up hub in the country with a capacity to accommodate 700 newcomers.
he state plans to create a strong start-up ecosystem, taking a leap to match the top tech cities in the country. The incubation centre, coming up in Udaipur, will give start-ups and entrepreneurs space, internet connections and other infrastructure facilities — all free. It will also throw in government funding.

“The incubation centre will not charge any kind of fee from start-ups as well as entrepreneurs and shall provide free facilities unlike T-Hub in Hyderabad which charges a fee for different facilities. It will be bigger than the biggest T-Hubs operational in India,” Akhil Arora, Principal Secretary, IT and Communication Department of Rajasthan, told IANS.

Arora said some of the best incubators were being invited for the hub and the management would be handled by professionals. Mentoring for start-ups would be provided by top corporates. “We will evaluate the performance of start-ups every three months to ensure that they do not turn complacent,” he said, adding that entrepreneurs can use the facilities for a maximum of two years.

An incubation centre in Jaipur is already running with 45 operating start-ups. The Udaipur one was recently inaugurated — to be operational from next month — and had already drawn “exciting response” from the start-up community, he said.

“We want to spread wings across the state to provide equal opportunity to all. Incubation Centres would be set up in Kota and Jodhpur for which work had already started,” he said.

According to Arora, the start-up ecosystem has the potential to germinate new ideas as this is being extended to even students coming out of college, who will be mentored. “We will help them to take their ideas forward, at a time when they lack sufficient capital structure,” he added.

To take care of funding needs, Bhamashah Technofund was introduced which provides seed capital without any collateral or without detailed evaluation. This was an investment decision taken by the government without expecting big returns, Arora said.

Under Technofund, seven start-ups, based on their Q-Ranking — which blends quality rating and curation — were funded. While six were given Rs 20 lakh each, the seventh one got Rs 15 lakh. The seven were chosen from over 700 applications.

Mudit Jain, founder of Qriyo, and one of the beneficiaries of the funding in Jaipur, said: “Rajasthan’s start-up ecosystem is growing and we are receiving constant support from the government. For the first time, we have seen a government expediting the processes at a fast pace.”

Arora said that for the funding process they had roped in creditable agencies empanelled with the government. “When they grant funding, we match the funds up to Rs 25 lakh, sanctioning them in five days,” he said, adding that the government had earmarked Rs 500 crore to meet the funding requirement of start-ups.

Also, the government gives a grant of Rs 2 lakh to help them try out their ideas. For those looking for expansion, equity capital and interest-free loans are provided after proposals are evaluated by an external jury.

“We are confident that entrepreneurs and start-ups will get their best in Rajasthan as we provide quality lifestyle too, which is missing in Bengaluru, Pune and other similar cities due to modern-day challenges such as traffic and pollution,” Arora said.

(IANS)

Trump ‘will walk out’ if North Korea talks not fruitful

by

US President Donald Trump has said that if his planned talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are not fruitful he will “walk out”, media reported.

He said this during a joint news conference with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the BBC reported.

Trump said if he did not think the meeting would be successful he would not go, and if the meeting went ahead but was not productive, he would walk out.

“Our campaign of maximum pressure will continue until North Korea denuclearises,” he added.

Abe is at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for talks.

Earlier, Trump had confirmed that CIA Director Mike Pompeo had made a secret trip to North Korea to meet Kim over the easter weekend.

He said Pompeo had forged a “good relationship” with Kim — whom he called the “little rocket man” in 2017. Trump said the Pompeo-Kim meeting had gone off “very smoothly”.

The visit marked the highest-level contact between the US and North Korea since 2000.

Modi’s Long Silence as Women in India Are Attacked

by

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India tweets frequently and considers himself a talented orator. Yet he loses his voice when it comes to speaking out about the dangers faced by women and minorities who are frequent targets of the nationalist and communal forces that are part of the base of his Bharatiya Janata Party.

Indians took to the streets during the weekend to protest their government’s callous response to the horrifying rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl in January in which supporters of his political party have been implicated. Mr. Modi, though, has barely spoken about this crime and other cases involving his supporters.

Until last week, he declined to address the attack on the girl, in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, by men who wanted to frighten and drive away her nomadic Muslim community, the Bakarwals, from an area that is dominated by Hindus. To read about what happened to the girl, who was held and abused at a Hindu temple, over several days is to plumb the depths of human depravity.

As Mr. Modi remained quiet as public outrage built up for weeks, state lawmakers from his party, which is part of a coalition that governs Jammu and Kashmir, attended a rally in support of a man who had been arrested for the crime and joined in demands by locals that the investigation be taken away from state officials, some of whom are Muslim, and be turned over to federal authorities. After a mob of Hindu lawyers temporarily prevented the authorities from registering charges in court, officials have formally accused eight men, including policemen and a retired government employee.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India tweets frequently and considers himself a talented orator. Yet he loses his voice when it comes to speaking out about the dangers faced by women and minorities who are frequent targets of the nationalist and communal forces that are part of the base of his Bharatiya Janata Party.

Indians took to the streets during the weekend to protest their government’s callous response to the horrifying rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl in January in which supporters of his political party have been implicated. Mr. Modi, though, has barely spoken about this crime and other cases involving his supporters.

Until last week, he declined to address the attack on the girl, in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, by men who wanted to frighten and drive away her nomadic Muslim community, the Bakarwals, from an area that is dominated by Hindus. To read about what happened to the girl, who was held and abused at a Hindu temple, over several days is to plumb the depths of human depravity.

As Mr. Modi remained quiet as public outrage built up for weeks, state lawmakers from his party, which is part of a coalition that governs Jammu and Kashmir, attended a rally in support of a man who had been arrested for the crime and joined in demands by locals that the investigation be taken away from state officials, some of whom are Muslim, and be turned over to federal authorities. After a mob of Hindu lawyers temporarily prevented the authorities from registering charges in court, officials have formally accused eight men, including policemen and a retired government employee.

Mr. Modi has also been reluctant to talk about a rape accusation against a state lawmaker from his party in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, which is governed by the B.J.P. A teenage girl says the lawmaker raped her last summer, but until recently the police have dragged their feet in bringing charges against him. He and his brother are also accused of conspiring to kill the girl’s father, who was found dead in police custody.

On Friday, Mr. Modi said that these cases had brought shame on the country and that “our daughters will definitely get justice.” But his remarks ring hollow because he waited so long to talk about the cases and spoke in broad generalities — describing the crimes as “incidents being discussed since past two days.” He has taken a similar approach in the past when addressing cases in which vigilante groups affiliated with his political movement have attacked and killed Muslims and Dalits — members of India’s lowest caste — who they falsely accused of killing cows, which are sacred to Hindus.

Mr. Modi’s silence is as perplexing as it is distressing. He seems to have failed to learn the lesson of his predecessors who did not forcefully respond to protests in late 2012 and early 2013 after a young woman was raped and killed on a public bus in New Delhi. That government, which was led by the Congress party, paid a heavy political price for its heartlessness in the 2014 parliamentary elections; the B.J.P. won the elections in large part because Mr. Modi promised to make the government more responsive to the needs of Indians who were left behind by a government dogged by corruption scandals and widely considered rudderless.

Instead, he has exhibited a pattern of silence and deflection that is deeply worrying to anybody who cares about the health of the world’s largest democracy.

Mr. Modi cannot be expected to discuss every crime committed by someone who supports him. But these cases are not isolated or random examples of violence. They are part of an organized and systematic campaign by nationalist forces that want to terrorize women, Muslims, Dalits and other underprivileged citizens.

The prime minister has a duty to safeguard and fight for all of the people of India, not just those who are allied with him politically.

KNOW US

GET INVOLVED

PROMOTE

Archives