Iconic Dubai and Abu Dhabi buildings go Tricolour to mark PM Modi's second visit

News Network
February 10, 2018

Dubai, Feb 10: PM Narendra Modi is the only Indian premier to have officially visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and is set to return to the Gulf state for a second time. Little wonder then that massive renditions of the Indian Tricolour dominated the cityscapes of the UAE's two biggest cities. Iconic structures in both cities lit up in saffron, white and green on Friday night, in preparation for PM Modi's arrival.

The largest display of the Indian flag, obviously, was on the façade of the colossal Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. At 828 metres tall, this could just easily be the largest display of the Indian flag ever.

But the Burj Khalifa was hardly the only building in Dubai decked out for Modi arrival. The city's latest attraction, the Dubai Frame, too displayed the Tricolour on, well, its frame.

The Dubai Frame is a structure that was dubbed the 'biggest picture frame on the planet'. And it is simply that - a frame that's 150 metres tall and 105 metres wide, and nothing in the middle. Look through it from one side, and it's a view of the new Dubai - gleaming and towering skyscrapers glitzing out the skyline, including the Tricolour-draped Burj Khalifa. Look at from the other side, and it's a view of the older parts of Dubai, some of which feature centuries old souks and homes.

That you could look from one Dubai to another through a frame that's dressed up in the Indian Tricolour is perhaps a fitting metaphor for the place Indians occupy in the present and the history of the city.

Not just Dubai, UAE capital Abu Dhabi too tipped its hat to the visit of the Indian PM. The prominent ADNOC Headquarters building on the city's seafront became a massive flagpole of sorts.

The building is the headquarters of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and is a slim skyscraper that offers a flat façade to the city. It's nowhere close to the Burj Khalifa in height, but at 342 metres tall, it was still a pretty huge Indian flag. And these were hardly the only structures in these cities that were Tricoloured up.

It is not the new-age architecture of these cities that have displayed excitement over the second visit of PM Modi. Newspapers and media houses in the confederation of city states have also pulled more than a few stops, carrying huge advertisements, articles and interviews to build up the buzz surrounding the visit.

PM Modi's first visit to UAE was in August 2015. As the first serving Indian PM to make a state visit, he was received at the airport by Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in a departure from protocol. India had reciprocated by inviting the Crown Prince to be the chief guest at the Republic Day parade in 2017.

The rising governmental exchanges between India and the UAE are built on decades-old and extensive people-to-people exchanges, and have now expanded to not just trade but also strategic exchanges. PM Modi's visit is expected to take these developments forward.

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coastaldigest.com news network
July 14,2020

Udupi, Jul 14: Kundapura police in Karnataka have booked a case against a businessman who had violated home quarantine rules as many as 163 times.

Accused Sahab Singh had arrived at his rented house at Koteshwara from Mumbai on June 29. He was asked to remain quarantined in his house till July 13. 

However, he was found loitering and visiting hotels in Udupi. Officials tracked his movement through mobile GPS. He breached the quarantine period 163 times. 

Following the violation, Flying Squad officer N G Bhat filed a complaint against Singh in Kundapura Police Station under IPC Sections 269, and 270.

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News Network
February 19,2020

Hubli, Feb 19: The Karnataka Police on Wednesday registered a case against unknown persons for assaulting three Kashmiri students in the court premises here.

A suo motu FIR has been registered at Vidyanagar police station of Hubli in which assault charges have been filed against 10 to 15 unknown people.

It can be recalled that on February 17 these three Kashmiri students were attacked in court premises after they were produced in court on charges of sedition.

The Kashmiri students were arrested here on February 15 after their video in which they are seen allegedly raising pro-Pakistan slogans went viral.

The students were studying at the KLE Institute of Technology on a central government scholarship.

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Agencies
February 20,2020

New Delhi, Feb 20: Microsoft has begun testing its free open-source software called "ElectionGuard" in a small Wisconsin town in the US that aims to make voting more secure, verifiable and efficient.

"ElectionGuard" will enable end-to-end verification of elections, open results to third-party organisations for secure validation, and allow individual voters to confirm their votes were correctly counted.

It enables government entities, news outlets, human rights organisations or anyone else to build additional verifiers that independently can certify election results have been accurately counted and have not been altered, according to the company.

The software would create a paper trail and assure voters their votes were properly tallied.

"On Tuesday, Fulton residents are using the technology while choosing who will join the local school board and hold a seat on Wisconsin's state Supreme Court," reports CNBC.

With the test, the company aims to see if voters like the experience and make sure everything works fine.

In May last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced "ElectionGuard".

According to Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President, Customer Security and Trust, voting system manufacturers will be free to build ElectionGuard into their systems in a variety of ways.

"These are exciting steps that enable individual voters to confirm their vote was properly counted, and assures those voters using an ElectionGuard system of the most secure and trustworthy vote in the history of the US," Burt said in a recent blog post.

"ElectionGuard" is not intended to replace paper ballots but rather to supplement and improve systems that rely on them, and it is not designed to support internet voting.

The software provides each voter a tracker with a unique code that can be used to follow an encrypted version of the vote through the entire election process via a web portal provided by election authorities.

During the process of vote-casting, voters have an optional step that allows them to confirm that their trackers and encrypted votes accurately reflect their selections.

But once a vote is cast, neither the tracker nor any data provided through the web portal can be used to reveal the contents of the vote.

After the election is complete, the tracker codes can be used by voters to confirm that their votes were not altered or tampered with and that they were properly counted, said Microsoft.

On the security front, "ElectionGuard" uses something called homomorphic encryption - which enables mathematical procedures "like counting - to be done with fully encrypted data".

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