New Delhi, Feb 27: The death toll in the communal violence in northeast Delhi over the amended citizenship law reached 32 on Thursday, senior officials said.
It was at 27 till Wednesday night.
"Five more deaths recorded at GTB Hospital, so death toll at that hospital has gone up to 30, taking total toll to 32," a senior Delhi Health Department official told news agency.
The Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital had reported two fatalities on Wednesday.
Several India-based firms are spoofing the World Health Organisation (WHO) by creating fake Gmail accounts and luring business leaders in disguise of informing them of latest COVID-19 announcements and hack their personal and financial information, Google has warned.
These "hack-for-hire" firms, many based in India, have been creating Gmail accounts spoofing the WHO, largely targeting business leaders in financial services, consulting, and healthcare corporations within numerous countries including, the US, Slovenia, Canada, India, Bahrain, Cyprus, and the UK.
"The lures themselves encourage individuals to sign up for direct notifications from the WHO to stay informed of COVID-19 related announcements, and link to attacker-hosted websites that bear a strong resemblance to the official WHO website," security researchers from Google's Threat Analysis Group said on Wednesday.
The sites typically feature fake login pages that prompt potential victims to give up their Google account credentials, and occasionally encourage individuals to give up other personal information, such as their phone numbers.
On any given day, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said it is tracking more than 270 targeted or government-backed attacker groups from more than 50 countries.
Last month, it sent 1,755 warnings to users whose accounts were targets of government-backed attackers.
"Our team of analysts and security experts is focused on identifying and stopping issues like phishing campaigns, zero-day vulnerabilities and hacking against Google, our products and our users," said the tech giant.
Google continues to see attacks from groups like Charming Kitten on medical and healthcare professionals, including WHO employees.
"We're seeing a resurgence in COVID-related hacking and phishing attempts from numerous commercial and government-backed attackers," said the company.
Government-backed or state-sponsored groups have different goals in carrying out their attacks: Some are looking to collect intelligence or steal intellectual property; others are targeting dissidents or activists, or attempting to engage in coordinated influence operations and disinformation campaigns.
Google said that since March, it has removed more than 1,000 YouTube channels that were part of a large campaign and behaving in a coordinated manner.
"These channels were mostly uploading spammy, non-political content, but a small subset posted primarily Chinese-language political content similar to the findings of a recent Graphika report," said the company.
Several cybersecurity firms have seen a spike in COVID-19 related scams and hacking attempts. Hackers are also creating scam sites similar to COVID-19 relief packages.
Researchers at Check Point Software Technologies revealed in mid-May that they have seen 192,000 coronavirus-related cyber-attacks per week over the past three weeks, a 30 % increase compared to previous weeks.
May 6:The Congress on Wednesday said it is "economically anti-national" to fleece Indians of Rs 1.4 lakh crore by raising taxes on petrol and diesel, and urged the Centre to share 75 per cent of this revenue with states so that people are not burdened.
Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said when the entire country is fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and its poor, including migrants, shopkeepers and small businessmen, were virtually penniless, the government of India was "fleecing" 130 crore Indians by insurmountably raising prices of petrol and diesel.
"To fleece people of India in this fashion is economically anti-national," he told reporters at a press conference through video conferencing.
Surjewala alleged that the manner in which "illegally and forcibly" this recovery is being made is "inhumane, cruel and insensitive".
"The government should transfer 75 per cent of this money so collected through raise in taxes to states. This will ensure there is no further burden on people of India, by way of more taxes on petroleum products by states," he said.
He said the issue was discussed at a meeting of the chief ministers of Congress-ruled states with party president Sonia Gandhi, where everyone besides former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi expressed deep concerns.
New Delhi, Apr 11: As India battles the Covid-19 crisis, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday held a video conference with chief ministers primarily to take their feedback on whether the 21-nation-wide lockdown be extended beyond April 14 to stem the tide of the infections.
The Central government is understood to have also obtained views on the issue from all the relevant agencies and stakeholders involved in the efforts to contain the spread of the pandemic.
The video conference, which began at 11am, comes amidst indications that the central government may extend the nationwide lockdown with some possible relaxations even as Punjab and Odisha have already announced extending the lockdown beyond April 14 when the current spell of 21-day shutdown across the country ends on Tuesday.
The Union Home Ministry has sought views of state governments on various aspects, including whether more categories of people and services need to be exempted. In the current lockdown only essential services are exempted.
This is for the second time the prime minister is interacting with the chief ministers via video link after the lockdown was imposed.
During his April 2 interaction with chief ministers, Modi had pitched for a "staggered" exit from the ongoing lockdown.
A PTI tally of numbers reported by various states as on Thursday at 9.30pm showed a total of 7,510 having been affected by the virus nationwide so far with at least 251 deaths. More than 700 have been cured and discharged. However, the last update from the Union Health Ministry put the number of confirmed infections at 7,447 and the death toll at 239.
Addressing floor leaders of various parties who have representation in Parliament, Modi had on Wednesday made it clear that the lockdown cannot be lifted in one go, asserting that the priority of his government is to "save each and every life".
According to an official statement after the Wednesday interaction, the prime minister told these leaders that states, district administrations and experts have suggested extension of the lockdown to contain the spread of the virus.
Before the lockdown was announced on March 24, the prime minister had interacted with the chief ministers on March 20 to discuss ways and means to check the spread of the novel coronavirus.
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