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Fake news spreads unabated on social media after LS polls

Agencies
May 26, 2019

New Delhi, Mar 26: Posts containing fake news continued to flourish on social media platforms after the end of the Lok Sabha elections that saw the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) returning to power.

Celebrations followed the results that pave the way for Modi to become the Prime Minister of the country for the second consecutive term. Some distributed ladoos to celebrate the victory. A few others spread fake news.

A post claiming that "Welcome Modi Ji" has been written on all the city buses of London soon started doing the rounds on social media platforms.

The claims were found to be fake by fact-checking platform BOOM. The images used for the posts originated in 2015, when a bus named "Modi Express" was launched by the Indians living in the UK, the fact checkers found.

Some even circulated a video on Facebook that claimed that a Gujrati man got so elated with Modi's re-election that he showered cash on people in Milton, Canada. The caption that accompanied the video claimed that the man made a lot of profit after the share market responded positively to Modi's re-election.

BOOM traced the viral video to the Instagram account of a Detroit, US based man. It found that the video, originally shot in New York, was uploaded much before the election results in India were declared and it had nothing to do with the celebration of BJP's victory.

On May 23, the day the results of the Lok Sabha polls were declared, a video that showed Modi with his mother went viral on Facebook. While social media users claimed that the video was shot after BJP's landslide victory in the elections, fact checking website Alt News traced the video to 2014.

BOOM also found that following the victory of the BJP, a quote that was falsely attributed to Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan in the past resurfaced on WhatsApp.

"I would leave India if Modi becomes the PM of this country," the actor was falsely quoted as saying in the post that demanded that the actor should now "apologise or leave the country as PM Modi is back".

BOOM traced the quote to a fake tweet and fake news report that celebrated the 2018 April Fool's Day with the false information.

These posts, however, are only the tip of the iceberg. Many more fake posts are doing the rounds on social media with some even falsely claiming that six lakh votes polled in favour of Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Kerala's Wayanad mysteriously disappeared from the records.

According to BOOM Founder Govindraj Ethiraj, the spread of fake news reached an "all-time high" in the run up to the 2019 general election.

The flow of fake news after the election results suggests that the tide of misinformation on social media is unlikely to stop any time soon.

"The biggest challenge to fighting fake new is that over 300 million of the 550 million smartphone and broadband users in the country are low on literacy and digital literacy and are especially gullible," leading tech policy and media consultant Prasanto K. Roy earlier told media.

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Agencies
May 31,2020

New Delhi, May 31: India registered its highest single-day spike of COVID-19 cases on Sunday with 8,380 new infections reported in the last 24 hours, taking the country's tally to 1,82,143, while the death toll rose to 5,164, according to the Union Health Ministry.

The number of active COVID-19 cases stood to 89,995, while 86,983 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said.

"Thus, around 47.75 per cent patients have recovered so far," a senior health ministry official said.

The total confirmed cases include foreigners.

The death toll has gone up by 193 since Saturday morning, of which 99 were from Maharashtra, 27 from Gujarat, 18 from Delhi, nine each from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, seven from West Bengal, six each from Tamil Nadu and Telangana, five in Bihar, three from Uttar Pradesh, two from Punjab, and one each from Haryana and Kerala.

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coastaldigest.com news network
August 8,2020

Kozhikode, Aug 8: A tailwind or crosswind could be the reason for the Air India Express flight mishap at Kozhikode international airport in Kerala, according to some aviation experts. 

Team of DGCA and AIE already reached the spot. With the death of the captain and co-pilot in the mishap, the investigation would be focusing mainly on the voice recorders and other technical aspects.

It is learnt that the ill-fated aircraft, IX 1344 with 190 onboard including crew, was initially planning to land on runway-28 of the airport. But later the pilot opted runway-10 which is toward the other direction. Pilots would be taking the decisions on the basis of inputs from ATC.

The questions now doing the rounds are what made the pilot opt runway-10 and whether the tabletop runway lacked adequate safety parameters.

An aviation expert, who didn't want to be quoted, said that Capt Deepak Sathe, who was commandeering the aircraft, was a well-experienced pilot and was also familiar with the terrains. Hence the chances of any error from his part was very unlikely. Hence a fair in-depth probe was required to find the exact cause.

Though the Kozhikode airport has an Instrument Landing System, it was of category-I for which pilot's visibility is very crucial toward a touchdown. Since it is a tabletop airport and rough weather prevailing in the region, the chances of tailwind was also high, said sources.

There had been safety concerns about the airport over quite some time. In 2011 aviation safety consultant captain Mohan Ranganathan reportedly gave a report citing the safety issues, especially the buffer zones at the end of the runway.

However, an AAI officer said that rectification steps were already done by last year by widening the Runway End Safety Area (RESA) from 90 metre to 240 metre. However, the length of the runway had to be reduced to 2,700 metre from 2,850. The AAI was also constantly pressing for increasing the runway length to 3,150 metres. But that was getting delayed due to land acquisition issues pending with the state government.

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News Network
April 7,2020

Jammu, Apr 7: Old habits will just no longer do, a Jammu and Kashmir administration employee found to his dismay on Tuesday when he was sent to a quarantine centre for blowing his nose and spitting on the road.

The man, who works as an accountant in the civil secretariat here, had gone to meet a relative in Paloura on the outskirts of the city when he was nabbed, officials said.

The neighbours panicked when they saw him blowing his nose and immediately called the police, which rushed to the spot with a medical team and a magistrate, they said.

He was immediately taken to a quarantine facility set up at the IIT hostel in the Janipur area and his samples taken for a coronavirus test.

Given the high levels of anxiety over the spread of COVID-19, news of his being taken by police started circulating widely. There were also some WhatsApp messages that he was trying to deliberately spread the infection and was arrested by police.

However, police officials said they had not arrested him and merely put him in a quarantine centre. It was not clear how long he would be in the centre.

The employee told police officials he had an itch in his nose and nothing more.

"Be responsible citizens and stop spreading rumours or fake news," an official said, requesting people to be more responsible.

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