WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum to quit in loss of privacy advocate at Facebook

Agencies
May 1, 2018

San Francisco, May 1: The co-founder of WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook Inc with more than 1 billion daily users, said on Monday he was leaving the company, in a loss of one of the strongest advocates for privacy inside Facebook.

Jan Koum`s plan to exit comes after clashing with the parent company over WhatApp`s strategy and Facebook`s attempts to use its personal data and weaken its encryption, the Washington Post earlier reported, citing people familiar with the internal discussions.

"It`s been almost a decade since Brian and I started WhatsApp, and it`s been an amazing journey with some of the best people," Koum, WhatsApp`s chief executive, said in a post on his Facebook page referring to co-founder Brian Acton.

"But it is time for me to move on." He did not give a date for his departure and could not immediately be reached for comment.

Acton left the messaging service company in September to start a foundation, after spending eight years with WhatsApp.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg commented on Koum`s post, saying he was grateful for what Koum taught him about encryption "and its ability to take power from centralized systems and put it back in people`s hands. Those values will always be at the heart of WhatsApp."

Facebook has battled European regulators over a plan to use WhatsApp user data, including phone numbers, to develop products and target ads. The plan is suspended, but WhatsApp said last week it still wanted to move forward eventually.

Stanford alumnus Acton and Ukrainian immigrant Koum co-founded WhatsApp in 2009. Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion in cash and stock.

WhatsApp, a pun on the phrase "What`s up?," grew in popularity in part because its encrypted messages are stored on users` smartphones and not on company servers, making the service more private.

Concerns about Facebook`s handling of personal information have grown since the social network`s admission in March that the data of millions of users was wrongly harvested by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook has taken steps to generate revenue from WhatsApp, which unlike Facebook does not have advertising.

WhatsApp`s management has fiercely opposed advertising, saying in 2012 that they did not want to be "just another ad clearinghouse" where the engineering team "spends their day tuning data mining."

Instead, WhatsApp charged a $1 annual subscription. It dropped that in 2016, moving towards a plan to charge businesses for specialised accounts.

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News Network
May 22,2020

May 22: A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight on its way from Lahore to Karachi, crashed in the area near Jinnah International Airport on Friday, according to Civil Aviation Authority officials.

Geo News reported that the plane crashed at the Jinnah Ground area near the airport as it was approaching for landing. There were more than 90 passengers on board the Airbus aircraft. Black smoke could be seen from afar at the crash site, say eye witnesses.

There were no immediate reports on the number of casualties. The aircraft arriving from the eastern city of Lahore was carrying 99 passengers and 8 crew members, news agency AP said, quoting Abdul Sattar Kokhar, spokesman for the country’s civil aviation authority.

Witnesses said the Airbus A320 appeared to attempt to land two or three times before crashing in a residential area near Jinnah International Airport.

Flight PK-303 from Lahore was about to land in Karachi when it crashed at the Jinnah Garden area near Model Colony in Malir, just a minute before its landing, Geo News reported.

Local television reports showed smoke coming from the direction of the airport. Ambulances were on their way to the airport.

News agency said Sindh’s Ministry of Health and Population Welfare has declared emergency in all major hospitals of Karachi due to the plane crash.

It’s the second plane crash for Pakistani carrier in less than four years. The airline’s chairman resigned in late 2016, less than a week after the crash of an ATR-42 aircraft killed 47 people. The incident comes as Pakistan was slowly resuming domestic flights in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg reported.

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News Network
May 29,2020

New Delhi, May 29: With the highest spike of 7,466 more COVID-19 cases and 175 deaths reported in the past 24 hours, India's COVID-19 tally reached 1,65,799 on Friday, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The number of active coronavirus cases stands at 89,987 while 71,105 people have been cured or recovered and one patient has migrated, it said. The death toll due to the infection has reached 4,706 in the country.

Maharashtra is the worst affected state with 59,546 cases. Tamil Nadu has recorded as many as 19,372 cases while Gujarat and Delhi have recorded 15,562 and 16,281 coronavirus cases respectively.

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News Network
March 4,2020

Bhopal, Mar 4: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister  Kamal Nath on Tuesday asserted that there was no threat to his government.

Nath's comments came when he was asked about reports of alleged 'poaching' attempts being made by the opposition BJP in the state.

“The legislators are telling me that they are being offered so much money. I am telling the MLAs to take it, if they are getting this free money,” Nath told reporters here on the sidelines of a programme.

Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh on Monday alleged that his party MLAs were being offered “huge money by BJP leaders” as part of the saffron party's “poaching” attempt to destablise the Kamal Nath government.

When Nath was asked about any threat to the stability of his government in Madhya Pradesh, he said, “There is nothing to worry about.”

Reacting to Nath's statement, state BJP spokesman Rajneesh Agrawal told PTI that his party has nothing to do with the allegations.

“In fact, these speculations and allegations are part of the internal bickering of among Congress leaders to get nominated for the Rajya Sabha polls,” he said.

After Digvijaya Singh's remarks on Monday, senior BJP leader and former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan accused the Congress veteran of making false statements to create sensationalism.

“Speaking lies to create sensationalism is Digvijaya's habit. Probably some of his (Digivijaya's) works were not done and he wants to create pressure on the CM to get them done,” Chouhan alleged.

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