Whitestone Warriors emerge Saudi Premier League-2018 champions

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".

Bengaluru, May 29: A cost-effective state of the art glove box testing booth for swab collection was inaugurated by Karnataka Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar at Victoria hospital.

Inaugurating the specially designed booth for safer, easier and quicker testing, Medical Education Minister Dr Sudhakar said that the portable booths can be used at border check posts and hot spots.

"The testing method involves the collection of samples from inside a box of aluminium and glass. The suspected corona virus-infected individual, whose samples are being taken, has to walk up to the booth and stand in front of the glass exterior. The healthcare worker inside the kiosk collects the sample and then, follows the sanitisation process before proceeding to take the next sample. The collection process, fully contactless, gets over in five minutes," the Minister said.

Dr Sudhakar also said: "This booth significantly reduces manpower requirement and the need for PPE kits. The main advantages of this procedure are that it needs fewer healthcare workers and strictly adheres to the norms of social distancing. 

The booth is low-cost. Each model costs about Rs 15,000-20,000."
It is also portable and can be mounted on a vehicle and transported to any location.

It can be particularly useful for collecting samples in hot spots and border checkpoints, he added. 

Riyadh, Jun 17: Saudi Arabia is expected to scale back or call off this year's hajj pilgrimage for the first time in its modern history, observers say, a perilous decision as coronavirus cases spike.

Muslim nations are pressing Riyadh to give its much-delayed decision on whether the annual ritual will go ahead as scheduled in late July.

But as the kingdom negotiates a call fraught with political and economic risks in a tinderbox region, time is running out to organise logistics for one of the world's largest mass gatherings.

A full-scale hajj, which last year drew about 2.5 million pilgrims, appears increasingly unlikely after authorities advised Muslims in late March to defer preparations due to the fast-spreading disease.

"It's a toss-up between holding a nominal hajj and scrapping it entirely," a South Asian official in contact with Saudi hajj authorities said.

A Saudi official said: "The decision will soon be made and announced."

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, withdrew from the pilgrimage this month after pressing Riyadh for clarity, with a minister calling it a "very bitter and difficult decision".

Malaysia, Senegal and Singapore followed suit with similar announcements.

Many other countries with Muslim populations -- from Egypt and Morocco to Turkey, Lebanon and Bulgaria -- have said they are still awaiting Riyadh's decision.

In countries like France, faith leaders have urged Muslims to "postpone" their pilgrimage plans until next year due to the prevailing risks.

The hajj, a must for able-bodied Muslims at least once in their lifetime, represents a major potential source of contagion as it packs millions of pilgrims into congested religious sites.

But any decision to limit or cancel the event risks annoying Muslim hardliners for whom religion trumps health concerns.

It could also trigger renewed scrutiny of the Saudi custodianship of Islam's holiest sites -- the kingdom's most powerful source of political legitimacy.

A series of deadly disasters over the years, including a 2015 stampede that killed up to 2,300 worshippers, has prompted criticism of the kingdom's management of the hajj.

"Saudi Arabia is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea," Umar Karim, a visiting fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, told AFP.

"The delay in announcing its decision shows it understands the political consequences of cancelling the hajj or reducing its scale."

"Buying time"

The kingdom is "buying time" as it treads cautiously, the South Asian official said.

"At the last minute if Saudi says 'we are ready to do a full hajj', (logistically) many countries will not be in a position" to participate, he said.

Amid an ongoing suspension of international flights, a reduced hajj with only local residents is a likely scenario, the official added.

A decision to cancel the hajj would be a first since the kingdom was founded in 1932.

Saudi Arabia managed to hold the pilgrimage during previous outbreaks of Ebola and MERS.

But it is struggling to contain the virus amid a serious spike in daily cases and deaths since authorities began easing a nationwide lockdown in late May.

In Saudi hospitals, sources say intensive care beds are fast filling up and a growing number of health workers are contracting the virus as the total number of cases has topped 130,000. Deaths surpassed 1,000 on Monday.

To counter the spike, authorities this month tightened lockdown restrictions in the city of Jeddah, gateway to the pilgrimage city of Mecca.

"Heartbroken"

"The hajj is the most important spiritual journey in the life of any Muslim, but if Saudi Arabia proceeds in this scenario it will not only exert pressure on its own health system," said Yasmine Farouk from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"It could also be widely held responsible for fanning the pandemic."

A cancelled or watered-down hajj would represent a major loss of revenue for the kingdom, which is already reeling from the twin shocks of the virus-induced slowdown and a plunge in oil prices.

The smaller year-round umrah pilgrimage was already suspended in March.

Together, they add $12 billion to the Saudi economy every year, according to government figures.

A negative decision would likely disappoint millions of Muslim pilgrims around the world who often invest their life savings and endure long waiting lists to make the trip.

"I can't help but be heartbroken -- I've been waiting for years," Indonesian civil servant Ria Taurisnawati, 37, told AFP as she sobbed.

"All my preparations were done, the clothes were ready and I got the necessary vaccination. But God has another plan."