Congress on edge as SP, Trinamool meet

April 20, 2012
Mamatha

New Delhi, April 20: With just over a month left for the close of nominations for the presidential elections, the ruling Congress is focusing all its energies on zeroing in on a candidate who will secure the approval of its allies in the United Progressive Alliance.

The UPA holds around 40 per cent of the votes, approximately 10 per cent ahead of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance. But given the unpredictability of its allies, particularly the erratic Trinamool Congress, the Congress would prefer not to risk a contest.

There are, of course, “friendly” non-NDA, non-UPA parties such as the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, both of which support the UPA from outside: however, their support cannot be taken for granted either.

Not surprisingly, therefore, an hour-long meeting between Trinamool chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and SP supremo Mulayam Singh's emissary, Kiranmoy Nanda, on Tuesday in Kolkata on the possibility of the two parties joining hands for the presidential polls is causing unease in the Congress camp.

The two parties are apparently keen on a Muslim candidate and the name of the former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam — who is also well regarded by the BJP — is being taken in this connection. The Congress would be happy with a Muslim president, but is not keen on Mr. Kalam's candidature, sources said.

The choice of Mr. Nanda as mediator is interesting as he was a minister in successive Left Front governments in West Bengal, while Mr. Singh enjoyed — and continues to enjoy — a good relationship with the CPI(M)'s national leadership.

Of course, after this meeting, Mr. Nanda was at pains to publicly state that his association with the Left Front in West Bengal was a “closed chapter”. The meeting is significant for another reason: earlier this year, there was speculation in political circles that the SP might replace the Trinamool in the UPA.

If the SP and the Trinamool band together, they could play a role in deciding who the next President is. It is also learnt that the SP has been in touch with the AIADMK.

The SP, whose strength has gone up substantially since the recent Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, is clearly in a mood to effectively deploy its newly acquired clout. There is even talk that senior SP leader Ramgopal Yadav, Mr. Mulayam Singh's cousin, is being pushed by his party for the post of Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha.

Meanwhile, Lutyens's Delhi is awash with names for potential presidential candidates: Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, senior Congress leader and former Maharaja of Kashmir Karan Singh, Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi, Union Non-Conventional Energy Minister Farooq Abdullah, the former West Bengal Governor and Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Gopalkrishna Gandhi and Vice-President Hamid Ansari.

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Agencies
May 26,2020

In a startling revelation, cybersecurity researchers have claimed that a hacker has posted personal details of nearly 2.9 crore Indian job seekers at one of the hacking forums on the Dark Web for free.

As part of the regular sweep over the Deep Web and Dark Web, researchers from cybersecurity firm Cyble came across an interesting item, where a threat actor posted 2.3GB (zipped) file on one of the hacking forums.

"The leak actually has a lot of personal details of millions of Indians Job seekers from different states," Cyble said in its blog on Friday.

This breach includes sensitive information such as email, phone, home address, qualification and work experience etc from job seekers spanning across states, from New Delhi to Mumbai and Bengaluru. 

Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for such personal information to conduct various nefarious activities such as identity thefts, scams, and corporate espionage.

"It appears to have originated from a resume aggregator service given the sheer volume and detailed information," it added.

Cyble indexed this information at ‘AmIbreached.com; – Cyble's data breach monitoring and notification platform.

Cyble researchers have identified a sensitive data breach on the dark web where an actor has leaked personal details of nearly 29 million Indian job seekers from various states. 

"Cyble's team is still investigating this further and will be updating their article as they bring more facts to the surface,” it said in a statement.

Cyble said it has acquired the leaked data. 

The same cyber security firm earlier exposed that Bengaluru-based edtech firm Unacademy was hacked.

According to Cyble researchers, nearly 22 million Unacademy user accounts were affected and the data was dumped and sold on Dark Web.

'We would like to assure our users that no sensitive information such as financial data or location has been breached," said Hemesh Singh, Co- Founder and CTO, Unacademy, in a statement.

In April, hackers sold personal data of a whopping 267 million Facebook users for just Rs 41,500 (approximately 500 Euros) that includes email addresses, names, Facebook IDs, dates of birth and phone numbers.

No passwords of the 267 million Facebook users were exposed by the hacker, according to Cyble.

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Agencies
May 17,2020

New Delhi, May 17: With the highest-ever spike of close to 5,000 cases in the past 24 hours, the COVID-19 count in India has crossed 90,000 on Sunday.

With an increase of 4,987 COVID-19 cases being reported in the last 24 hours, the count has reached 90,927, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The total number of active cases in the country stands at 53,946 today, while 2,872 deaths have been recorded due to the infection so far, with one patient having migrated. 120 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.

However, on the positive side, close to 4,000 patients have also been cured and discharged in the past 24 hours, taking the tally of cured patients to 34,108.

With 30,706 confirmed cases, Maharashtra remains the worst-affected by the infection in the country.

It is followed by Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, with 10,988 and 10,585 cases, respectively.
The national capital, with 9,333 cases, is also one of the regions which is badly affected by the infection.

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Bloomberg
July 27,2020

New Delhi, Jul 27: India’s coronavirus epidemic is now growing at the fastest in the world, increasing 20% over the last week to more than 14 lakh confirmed cases, according to Bloomberg’s Coronavirus Tracker.

Infections in the South Asian nation of 130 crore people have reached 14.3 lakh, including 32,771 deaths, India’s health ministry said, with daily cases close to a record 50,000 on Monday. India is only trailing the US and Brazil now in the number of confirmed infections, but its growth in new cases is the fastest.

Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are among the states where the maximum number of daily cares are being reported. The world’s second-most populous country has been ramping up testing, with 515,472 samples taken on Sunday, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Still, India and Brazil have some of the world’s lowest testing rates, with 11.8 tests and 11.93 tests per 1,000 people respectively, compared to the US with 152.98 tests per 1,000 and Russia with 184.34, according to Our World in Data, a project based at the University of Oxford in the UK.

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