Artists, writers in Kolkata decry arrest of 5 rights activists

Agencies
September 2, 2018

Kolkata, Sept 2: Intellectuals, artists and writers Sunday denounced the house arrest of five human rights activists in connection with a probe into a case of caste violence in Maharashtra, and described it as an "act of fascism" by the BJP government.

Calling for a platform of "artists, writers and conscious citizens", writer-columnist Debesh Roy said there should be protests everywhere against "the fascist regime that orders raids at anyone's residence for voicing dissent".

"They (the BJP) have branded the activists 'Urban Maoists', a term imported from the US Constitution. We need to counter them with a full-fledged movement, not tokenism. I call upon the theatre personalities of Bengal to bring back their popular anti-fascist plays on stage to mobilise opinion," the Left intellectual said.

All "anti-fascist forces", espousing the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, should join hands in the movement, Roy added.

Theatre personality Rudraprasad Sengupta said a "reign of terror is prevailing on the land".

Decrying the arrests of the five eminent personalities, he said, "It as an infringement on civil liberties. We have to keep ourselves ready to fight fascism." 

Actor Kaushik Sen, who was also a part of the intellectual meet at Shishir Mancha here, said artists should come together to voice their opinion on topical issues.

"We have to make our voices heard more emphatically as the 2019 Lok Sabha elections is nigh. We (intellectuals) need to sit together and chalk out our next action.

"This is imperative to make ourselves more acceptable and our tirade against communal and fascist forces more credible to the masses," he said.

The two-hour meet here passed a resolution against the alleged attempts to "take away the rights of protest by civil societies".

Around 200 people have signed the resolution, including eminent personalities such as writer Mandakranta Sen and poet Shankha Ghosh, Chandan sen, one of the organizers of the meet, said.

Five Left-wing activists were picked up Tuesday by the Maharashtra Police from different locations for their alleged Maoists links.

The raids were carried out as part of a probe into the violence between Dalits and the upper caste Peshwas at Koregaon-Bhima village near Pune on December 31 last year.

The Supreme Court ordered that the five activists be kept under house arrest till September 6 under police watch.

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Agencies
June 26,2020

Facebook will introduce a new notification screen on its platform that will warn users if the article they are about to share is over 90 days old, the company announced on Thursday.

“We’re starting to globally roll out a notification screen that will let people know when news articles they are about to share are more than 90 days old,” Facebook wrote in a blog post.

The social media platform had previously introduced a context button in 2018 that provides information about the sources of articles in the News Feed. Building upon that, the new feature will inform users about the timeliness of the article.

“To ensure people have the context they need to make informed decisions about what to share on Facebook, the notification screen will appear when people click the share button on articles older than 90 days, but will allow people to continue sharing if they decide an article is still relevant,” Facebook said.

The social media giant stated that timeliness is important in understanding the context of an article and curbing the spread of misinformation on the platform.

“News publishers, in particular, have expressed concerns about older stories being shared on social media as current news, which can misconstrue the state of current events. Some news publishers have already taken steps to address this on their own websites by prominently labelling older articles to prevent outdated news from being used in misleading ways,” Facebook added.

Apart from this, the platform will also be testing a similar notification screen for information related to the global Covid-19 pandemic. The notification screen will provide information about the source of the link shared in a post if the link is related to information on Covid-19. It will also direct people to its previously introduced Covid-19 information centre for “authoritative” health information, it said.

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Agencies
February 29,2020

Ahmedabad, Feb 29: The presence of two feral pigeons onboard a GoAir flight at the airport in Ahmedabad in Gujarat created a flutter among the amused passengers, even though the avian surprise did not lead to any untoward incident or delay in the flight.

The incident took place on Friday when the passengers were boarding the Ahmedabad-Jaipur flight.

"Two pigeons had found their way inside the flight G8 702 while the passengers were boarding," an airline statement said on Saturday.

"The crew immediately shooed away the birds. The flight took off at its scheduled time at 5 p.m.," it added.

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Agencies
May 14,2020

Social media platform WhatsApp assured the Supreme Court on Wednesday that it will not roll out its payment services without complying with all payment regulations and norms in the country.

A bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and comprising Justices Indu Malhotra and Hrishikesh Roy took up the matter through video conferencing. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the social media platform, said "WhatsApp Inc makes a statement on behalf of his client that they will not go ahead with the payments' scheme without complying with all the regulations in force."

The statement was made during the hearing of a petition seeking a ban on payment through WhatsApp, as it does not conform to the data localization norms. The top court took the assurance made by WhatsApp on record.

WhatsApp made the statement during the hearing of a plea seeking a ban on its payment service, for not being in line with data localization norms.

In 2018, WhatsApp was granted a beta licence to launch its payment service, but a dedicated and separate app is yet to be launched. A petition was moved in the apex court that WhatsApp's existing model for its payments service should be declared inconsistent with the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) Scheme, as a separate dedicated app has not been offered by the company.

The petitioner NGO, Good Governance Chambers, argued that the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) must change its model on the lines of the UPI payment scheme, and its operations may be suspended until these conditions are met.

The apex court today asked the Centre, Facebook and WhatsApp to file their replies within three weeks and it will take up the matter thereafter. The court noted that the government may process the applications filed by WhatsApp in accordance with the law and there is no stay on the same. Facebook was represented by senior advocate Arvind Datar.

The petitioner argued that lapses have been found in relation to WhatsApp's claims of having a secure and safe technological interface for securing sensitive user data.

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