Hafiz Saeed can pose a serious threat to Pakistan: Defence Minister

Shanghai, Jun 13: Authorities in Beijing have temporarily shut a major wholesale agricultural market following a rise in locally transmitted novel coronavirus infections in China's capital city over the past two days.

The closure of the Xinfadi wholesale market at 3 a.m. local time on Saturday (1900 GMT on Friday), came after two men working at a meat research centre who had recently visited the market were reported on Friday as having been infected by the novel coronavirus. It was not immediately clear how the men had been infected.

Concern is growing of a second wave of the new virus, even in many countries that seemed to have curbed its spread. It was first reported at a seafood market in Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei province, in December.

Beijing authorities had earlier halted beef and mutton trading at the Xinfadi market, alongside closures at other wholesale markets around the city.

Reflecting concerns over the risk of further spread of the virus, major supermarkets in Beijing removed salmon from their shelves overnight after the virus causing COVID-19 was discovered on chopping boards used for imported salmon at the market, the state-owned Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Beijing authorities said more than 10,000 people at the market will take nucleic acid tests to detect coronavirus infections. The city government also said it had dropped plans to reopen schools on Monday for students in grades one through three because of the new cases.

Health authorities visited the home of a Reuters reporter in Beijing's Dongcheng district on Saturday to ask whether she had visited the Xinfadi market, which is 15 km (9 miles) away. They said the visit was part of patrols Dongcheng was conducting.

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China reported 11 new COVID-19 cases and seven asymptomatic cases for Friday, the national health authority said on Saturday. And all six locally transmitted cases were confirmed in Beijing.

Washington, Jun 9: The defacement of Mahatma Gandhi's statue by unknown miscreants was a "disgrace", US President Donald Trump has said, days after it was vandalised with graffiti and spray painting during the nationwide protests against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd.

The statue, which is across the road from the Indian Embassy, was vandalised on the intervening night of June 2 and 3, prompting the Indian embassy to register a complaint with the local law enforcement agencies.

The incident happened during the week of nationwide protests against the custodial killing of Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.

"It was a disgrace," Trump made the brief comment at the White House on Monday when asked about the incident.

The Indian Embassy here has taken up the matter with the US Department of State for early investigation into the matter, as also with the Metropolitan Police and National Park Service.

It is working with the US Department of State, Metropolitan Police and National Park Service for expeditious restoration of the statue at the park.

The US president and First Lady Melania Trump, during their visit to India in February, had spent considerable time at the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had personally given them a tour of the historic place.

"The First Lady and I have just had a pleasure of visiting Mahatma Gandhi's Ashram, a few miles from here, where he launched the famous Salt March," Trump had said during his address at the Namaste Trump rally at the Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad on February 24. A day later, Trump and the first lady also laid a wreath at Raj Ghat in New Delhi.

Pictures of Trump and the first lady with Gandhi's spinning wheel during their visit to the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad are seen hanging on the walls of the White House.

Last week, top US lawmakers and the Trump Campaign condemned the vandalisation of the statue.

"Very disappointing," tweeted Kimberly Guilfoyle, advisor to Donald J Trump for President Inc. and National Chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committees.

North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis said, "It's disgraceful to see the defacing of the Gandhi statue" in Washington DC.

"Gandhi was a pioneer of peaceful protesting, demonstrating the great change it can bring. Rioting, looting and vandalising do not bring us together, he said.

Senator Marco Rubio said, "more evidence that violent radicals and run of the mill crazies have hijacked legitimate protests to create anarchy or for their own purposes."

Protests against the custodial killing of Floyd turned violent in the US and prestigious monuments were damaged. In Washington DC, protestors burnt a historic church and damaged monuments like the Lincoln Memorial.

US Ambassador to India Ken Juster apologised for the incident.

"So sorry to see the desecration of the Gandhi statue in Wash, DC. Please accept our sincere apologies," he said.

"Appalled as well by the horrific death of George Floyd and the awful violence and vandalism. We stand against prejudice & discrimination of any type. We will recover and be better," he said in a tweet last week.

One of the few statues of a foreign leader on a federal land in Washington DC, the statue of Gandhi was dedicated by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000, during his state visit to the US.

Washington, Mar 1: The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed a fine of over $200 million for all major US mobile carriers for selling the location data of customers to some agencies.

The Federal Communications Commission today proposed fines against the nation's four largest wireless carriers for apparently selling access to their customers' location information without taking reasonable measures to protect against unauthorised access to that information. As a result, T-Mobile faces a proposed fine of more than $91 million, AT&T faces a proposed fine of more than $57 million, Verizon faces a proposed fine of more than $48 million, and Sprint faces a proposed fine of more than $12 million, the FCC said in a statement on Friday.

The Enforcement Bureau of FCC opened this investigation after reports surfaced that a Missouri Sheriff, Cory Hutcheson, used a "location-finding service" operated by Securus, a provider of communications services to correctional facilities, to access the location information of the wireless carriers' customers without their consent between 2014 and 2017.

"American consumers take their wireless phones with them wherever they go. And information about a wireless customer's location is highly personal and sensitive. The FCC has long had clear rules on the books requiring all phone companies to protect their customers' personal information. And since 2007, these companies have been on notice that they must take reasonable precautions to safeguard this data and that the FCC will take strong enforcement action if they don't. Today, we do just that," said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

"This FCC will not tolerate phone companies putting Americans' privacy at risk."

The FCC also admonished these carriers for apparently disclosing their customers' location information, without their authorisation, to a third party

The four major US carriers mentioned sold access to their customers' location information to "aggregators," who then resold access to such information to third-party location-based service providers (like Securus).

Although their exact practices varied, each carrier relied heavily on contract-based assurances that the location-based services providers (acting on the carriers' behalf) would obtain consent from the wireless carrier's customer before accessing that customer's location information.