Beirut, Dec 21: A "soldier" of the Islamic State group carried out a truck attack that killed 12 people at a Berlin Christmas market, a news agency linked to the jihadists said today.
"A soldier of the Islamic State carried out the Berlin operation in response to appeals to target citizens of coalition countries," the IS-linked Amaq news agency said in a statement posted online.
Lahore, Jul 10: The Punjab government enforced smart lockdown in seven cities of the province for 15 days with an immediate effect from Thursday night, The News International reported.
The Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department on Thursday issued a notification under the Punjab Infectious Diseases Ordinance 2020, about enforcement of lockdown in Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Gujrat and Rawalpindi, till July 24 midnight.
In Lahore, the lockdown will be enforced in A2 Block Township, EME Society, Main Bazaar Chungi Amr Sadhu, Punjab Government Servants Housing Scheme, Wapda Town, C-Block Jauhar Town and Green City.
The basic necessities of life will remain available in smart lockdown areas. "The purpose of the smart lockdown is to minimise movement of people in hotspots of positive coronavirus cases," said Capt (retd) Muhammad Usman, Secretary, Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department.
The country registered 2,751 new COVID-19 cases during the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 243,599 on Friday. The province-wise breakup includes 85,261 cases in Punjab, 100,900 cases in Sindh, 29,406 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,099 in Balochistan, 13,829 in Islamabad, 1,619 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,485 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
The death toll due to the virus reached 5,058 with 75 more deaths reported over the last 24 hours, as per data cited by Radio Pakistan.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal is far from over. New explosive details leaked by a whistleblower shows that the extent of the rot is far deeper than previously thought.
An anonymous Twitter account, @HindsightFiles, has started releasing the documents, apparently on behalf of Brittany Kaiser, a former employee of the now defunct British data analytics and consulting company Cambridge Analytica.
"Democracies around the world are being auctioned to the highest bidder. We release the documents that explain how," reads the biography of the @HindsightFiles.
The document will reveal previously unreleased emails, project plans, case studies, negotiations and more spanning over 60 countries.
"Over the past two years I have given evidence to investigators, journalists and academics to analyse what happened at Cambridge Analytica, and how our data was used to influence democracies around the world. In the name of shedding light on these dark practices, I am releasing documents and emails in full for the public good," Kaiser, who worked with Cambridge Analytica from 2014 to 208, was quoted as saying.
"I do this to strengthen the case for data rights and enforcement of our electoral laws online globally. We should all be seeking more ethical digital future for ourselves and our children," added Kaiser who starred in the Oscar-shortlisted Netflix documentary "The Great Hack".
The details released so far includes links to material on the firm's activities in Malaysia, Kenya, Brazil and Iran, an addition to the John Bolton archive.
Over the next months, more than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries are set to be released, according to a report in The Guardian.
More than one and a half year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal first became public, US regulators last month said that the now-defunct British data analytics and consulting company engaged in deceptive practices to harvest personal information from tens of millions of Facebook users for voter profiling and targeting.
According to Kaiser, the Facebook data scandal was part of a much bigger global operation designed to manipulate people in collaboration with governments, intelligence agencies, commercial companies and political campaigns.
The unpublished documents contain material that suggests the firm collaborated with a political party in Ukraine in 2017 even while under investigation as part of Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, said The Guardian report.
"There are emails between these major Trump donors discussing ways of obscuring the source of their donations through a series of different financial vehicles. These documents expose the entire dark money machinery behind US politics," Kaiser was quoted as saying.
Similar tactics were deployed in other countries that Cambridge Analytica operated in, including Britain, she claimed.
The files released by Kaiser suggest that Cambridge Analytica offered to help United Malays National Organisation (Umno), the party of Malaysia's Former Prime Minister Najib Razak, to influence the voting of 40 parliamentary constituencies in the 14th General Election (GE14) in 2013.
Umno, according to the leaks, requested the company to prepare a proposal to regain 13 seats, The South China Morning Post reported on Saturday.
In 2018, Razak claimed that he had never engaged Cambridge Analytica in any way.
Vienna, Apr 13: Top oil-producing countries agreed on "historic" output cuts to prop up prices hammered by the coronavirus crisis and a Russia-Saudi price war, sending crude prices soaring on Monday.
The US benchmark WTI climbed 7.7 percent to $24.52 a barrel in early Asian trade while Brent was up 5.0 percent at $33.08.
OPEC producers dominated by Saudi Arabia and allies led by Russia thrashed out a compromise deal via videoconference Sunday after Mexico had balked at an earlier agreement struck on Friday.
In the compromise reached Sunday they agreed to a cut of 9.7 million barrels per day from May, according to Mexican Energy Minister Rocio Nahle, down slightly from 10 million barrels a day envisioned earlier.
OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo called the cuts "historic".
"They are largest in volume and the longest in duration, as they are planned to last for two years," he said.
The agreement between the Vienna-based Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and partners foresees deep output cuts in May and June followed by a gradual reduction in cuts until April 2022.
Barkindo added that the deal "paved the way for a global alliance with the participation of the G20".
Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who chaired the meeting together with his Russian and Algerian counterparts, also confirmed that the discussions "ended with consensus".
Comments
Very hard to believe. However, this is highly regretted and condemned in strong words. If some one did it, he might be a fool or mentally disturbed.
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