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Punjab Sikh woman pilgrim converts to Islam, remarries in Pakistan

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Preliminary Analysis of Candidates Announced by BJP, INC and JD(S) for Karnataka 2018 Assembly Elections

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by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR India)

The National Parties, BJP, INC and Karnataka’s Regional Party, JD(S) announced the list of candidates for Karnataka Assembly Elections, 2018 recently.

A total of 154 candidates have been announced by BJP in their two lists released so far. First list for Karnataka was released on 8th April and second list on 16th April, 2018. Out of these, 111 candidates had contested (including the 44 re-contesting MLAs) assembly elections in 2013.

A first list of 218 candidates was announced by INC for Karnataka. Out of these, 148 candidates had contested (including the 112 re-contesting MLAs) assembly elections in 2013.

A first list of 126 candidates was announced by JD(S) for Karnataka. Out of these, 58 candidates had contested (including the 27 re-contesting MLAs) assembly elections in 2013. Association for Democratic Reforms and Karnataka Election Watch analyzed the affidavits of these candidates submitted by them during elections to Karnataka State Assembly and any subsequent bye-elections later. The latest information regarding assets as well as criminal charges if any, would be available once the candidates file their affidavits for 2018 Karnataka Assembly Elections.

Please visit https://adrindia.org/content/preliminary-analysis-candidates-announced-bjp-inc-and-jds-karnataka-2018-assembly-elections for full report.

For complete information related to upcoming Karnataka Assembly elections, 2018, please visit:  https://adrindia.org/content/assembly-election-karnataka-2018

Candidates Announced by INC, BJP and JD(S)

Party No. of Candidates Announced in the First List No. of Candidates Announced in the Second List Total Candidates Announced
BJP 72 82 154
INC 218 – 218
JD(S) 126 – 126

Analysis of candidates announced by BJP, INC and JD(S) as on 18th April 2018

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Party No. of Candidates Announced (Total) No. of re-contesting candidates No of re-contesting Candidates with Criminal Cases No. of re-contesting Candidates with Serious Criminal Cases % of re-contesting Candidates with Criminal Cases % of re-contesting Candidates with Serious Criminal Cases No of re-contesting Crorepati Candidates % of re-contesting Crorepati Candidates Average Assets of re-contesting candidates (in Rs.)
BJP 154 111 30 19 27% 17% 97 87% 8,92,67,255
8 Crore+
INC 218 148 48 23 32% 16% 134 91% 28,23,51,893

28 Crore+
JD(S) 126 58 17 9 29% 16% 46 79% 14,91,14,815

14 Crore+

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Recommendations

The current analysis of the candidates fielded by the major party shows that political parties continue to give tickets to candidates with serious criminal cases. The Association for Democratic Reforms recommends that political parties should refrain from giving tickets to candidates with a serious criminal background. The political parties should take a stand against misuse of money power, bribing of voters and distribution of freebies. Further, the political parties should move towards transparency and disclose the criteria for selection of candidates during elections.

Castro era to end in Cuba as Raul set to step down

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The Castro family has ruled the socialist nation since a revolution ushered in the rule of Fidel Castro in 1959 [AP]

by Al Jazeera

Cuba will open a session of its National Assembly on Wednesday that will mark the end of an era in the socialist nation.

President Raul Castro, 86, is expected to step down after two five-year terms during the assembly, marking the completion of Castro rule on the socialist nation.

First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel is expected to assume the position of Cuba’s president as the handpicked successor after a party vote on Thursday.

The Castro family has ruled the socialist nation since a revolution ushered in the rule of Fidel Castro in 1959.

The expected transfer of power comes at a precarious time in Cuba’s history. Cuban allies in Latin America have been voted out of government positions across the region in recent years.

A detente between the US and Cuba, longtime adversaries, has slowed after right-wing Donald Trump became president in 2017.

Cuba is also facing economic difficulties after Castro initiated market-style reforms that were agreed to in 2011. Though the reforms caused a boom in the Cuban economy, they have since slowed.

“Despite the errors and insufficiencies recognised in this plenary, the situation is more favourable than a few years ago,” Castro, 86, was quoted as saying by party newspaper Granma.

Political campaigning is outlawed in Cuba, so little is known about Diaz-Canel’s plans to navigate these challenges.

However, there is reason to believe the presumed president will continue with liberalising social policies, given his past support for LGBT rights, expanded internet access and loosening government controls on media.

Still, Diaz-Canel is not known to support changing Cuba’s government from the one-party system in place since the revolution, a demand from ant-Castro politicians in Washington.

According to Ted Piccone, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, the Trump administration will most likely “double down” on its “embrace of punitive regime change” in Cuba after Diaz-Canel assumes power.

Castro will remain the head of the ruling Communist Party until 2021 and is expected to continue to play a big role in policy decisions.

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