Indian millionaire beats girlfriend, but ducks jail

April 26, 2014

Millionaire_beats_girlfriendWashington, Apr 26: Gurbaksh Chahal, India-born CEO of Radium One, a Silicon Valley company focusing on real-time advertising across web, mobile and Facebook, has dodged jail time even after beating his girlfriend 117 times.

Chahal, 31, pleaded guilty to misdemeanour, domestic violence and battery charges last week, dodging 45 felony counts for the videotaped 30-minute beating of his girlfriend, The Huffington Post reported, according said.

But the tech millionaire, who was arrested last August after police responded to a 911 domestic violence call at his San Francisco penthouse apartment, was sentenced to only three years' probation, 52 weeks in a domestic violence training programme and 25 hours of community service.

His girlfriend told arriving officers that she was unable to breathe and that Chahal had told her four times, “I'm going to kill you”, San Francisco officer Anh Nguyen was quoted as telling the San Francisco Business Times in March.

“She stated she was in fear for her life.” According to the Post, home security footage reportedly showed Chahal beating and kicking his girlfriend 117 times during the 30-minute attack. Prosecutors said Chahal lashed out at his girlfriend upon learning that she had cheated on him with another man during a trip to Las Vegas, according to court documents.

Soon after Chahal posted his $1-million bail and hired former federal prosecutor James Lassart as his attorney, his girlfriend stopped cooperating with the investigation and refused to testify against him, the Post said.

During a preliminary hearing, Lassart did not deny that Chahal repeatedly struck his girlfriend, but insisted the physical damage was overblown.

In a crippling blow to the prosecution, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Brendan Conroy ruled that the surveillance video could not be used as evidence because police seized it illegally from Chahal's apartment, the Post said.

The prosecution argued it likely would have been erased if police had waited for a warrant. RadiumOne is Chahal's third company. Once named one of America's “most eligible bachelors” by ExtraTV, Chahal sold his first online-ad network, ClickAgents.com to ValueClick at the age of 16 for $20.5 million in stock, the Post said.Seven years later, he sold BlueLithium, which also he founded, to Yahoo for $300 million in cash.

In 2009, he authored a book about himself called ‘The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions'.

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News Network
March 21,2020

Beijing, Mar 21: China reported no domestically transmitted coronavirus cases for the third consecutive day even as seven more fatalities have been confirmed, taking the death toll in the country to 3255.

No new domestically transmitted cases of COVID-19 were reported on the Chinese mainland for the third day in a row on Friday, China's National Health Commission (NHC) said on Saturday.

The overall confirmed cases on the mainland had reached 81,008 by the end of Friday, which included 3,255 who died, 6,013 patients still undergoing treatment, 71,740 patients who had been discharged after recovery, the NHC said.

The NHC said 41 new confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported on the Chinese mainland on Friday from the people arriving from abroad, taking the total number of imported cases to 269.

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Agencies
February 25,2020

Kuala Lumpur, Feb 25: The government party led by Interim Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has rejected his resignation, urging him to continue leading it and the country, now shrouded in political uncertainty.

During an extraordinary meeting held on Monday night, the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (Bersatu) unanimously rejected the 94-year-old Prime Minister's decision, reports Efe news.

Mahathir, the world's oldest head of government, presented his resignation on Monday, later accepted by King Abdullah Pahang, on condition that he continue as Interim Prime Minister until a new government is formed.

That decision caused a domino effect that broke the Patakan Harapan (Alliance of Hope) alliance, formed in 2018 by four political parties that prevailed in that year's general elections.

Bersatu and 11 Popular Justice Party deputies announced their departure from the coalition, although they reaffirmed their confidence in Mahathir as Malaysia's political leader.

"We remain intact and prepared to build a party to face the difficulties," Marzuki Yahya, Bersatu Secretary-General, said after the meeting.

Confusion reigns in the country, with some local media claiming Bersatu and the 11 deputies Justice Party deputies intended to form a new government with opposition parties, including the historic Barisan Nasional coalition, under Mahathir's leadership.

Lim Guan Eng, Finance Minister and coalition member, said in a statement that the chief executive himself had informed him he had no intention of forming a coalition with Barisan, which suffered a historic defeat in the last elections.

A future government will need at least 112 of 222 parliament votes.

Mahathir returned to politics in 2018 heading the Patakan Harapan coalition to defeat his predecessor Najib Razak, marred by the corruption suspicions offenses.

To that end, Mahathir joined Anwar Ibrahim, a former political ally who fell out of favour in 1999 and was imprisoned five years on charges of corruption and sodomy, whom he promised to be his successor in power.

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News Network
June 2,2020

Oakland, Jun 2: Facebook employees are using Twitter to register their frustration over CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision to leave up posts by President Donald Trump that suggested protesters in Minneapolis could be shot.

While Twitter demoted and placed a warning on a tweet about the protests that read, in part, that “when the looting starts the shooting starts,” Facebook has let it stand, with Zuckerberg laying out his reasoning in a Facebook post Friday.

“I know many people are upset that we've left the President's posts up, but our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Trump's comment evoked the civil-rights era by borrowing a phrase used in 1967 by Miami's police chief to warn of an aggressive police response to unrest in black neighborhoods.

On Monday, Facebook employees staged a virtual “walkout” to protest the company's decision not to touch the Trump posts according to a report in the New York Times, which cited anonymous senior employees at Facebook.

The Times report says “dozens” of Facebook workers “took the day off by logging into Facebook's systems and requesting time off to support protesters across the country." “I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we're showing up.

The majority of coworkers I've spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard,” tweeted Jason Toff, a director of product management at Facebook who's been at the company for a year.

Toff, who has a verified Twitter account, had 131,400 “likes” and thousands of retweets of his comment. He did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Monday.

“I don't know what to do, but I know doing nothing is not acceptable. I'm a FB employee that completely disagrees with Mark's decision to do nothing about Trump's recent posts, which clearly incite violence. I'm not alone inside of FB.

There isn't a neutral position on racism,” tweeted another employee, design manager Jason Stirman.

Stirman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. Sara Zhang, a product designer at the company, tweeted that Facebook's “decision to not act on posts that incite violence ignores other options to keep our community safe.

The policy pigeon holes us into addressing harmful user-facing content in two ways: keep content up or take it down.” “I believe that this is a self-imposed constraint and implore leadership to revisit the solution,” she continued. Zhang declined to comment to The Associated Press.

Representatives for Facebook did not immediately respond to messages for comment.

Twitter has historically taken stronger stances than its larger rival, including a complete ban on political advertisements that the company announced last November.

That's partly because Facebook, a much larger company with a broader audience,targeted by regulators over its size and power, has more to lose. And partly because the companies' CEOs don't always see eye to eye on their role in society.

Over the weekend, Twitter changed the background and logo if its main Twitter account to black from its usual blue in support of the Black Lives Matter protesters and added a #blacklivesmatter hashtag. Facebook did the same with its own logo on its site, though without the hashtag.

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