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A letter to the Press Council of India on Hyderabad blasts coverage

[email protected] (Shehzad)
February 27, 2013

To,

Hon'ble Justice Markandey Katju,

Chairman,

Press Council of India,

New Delhikatju

Sir,

Sub: Hyderabad Bomb blasts - Issue direction to the Media houses to stop Media Investigation and Trial – To stop terrorizing Muslim community and hatred among people – Reg.

With the reference to the subject cited above in the evening of 21st February 2013 an unfortunate incident of bomb blast took place in Dilsukhnagar area of Hyderabad in which almost 16 people were killed and hundreds injured. The dead belonged to all the religions and sections.

Immediately after the blast, electronic media both regional (Telugu) and national (Hindi & English) reached the spot and started live coverage along with their expert comments. Telugu channels which telecast both Telugu and Urdu news bulletin are completely different. In the Telugu bulletins they spread hatred against Muslims where in Urdu bulletin they are very cautious in reporting such hatred. So, the Telugu and Urdu news bulletin are completely different from each other. When the whole city was under shock, media and people arising out of their caste & religion were enquiring the safety of each other. The common people came into immediate action and were trying to help injured and dead to shift to the nearby hospitals. The thought of who carried the blasts never came to the minds of the common people but they were very much concerned about saving the lives of the blast victims. But the media without showing any such concern was carrying out their own style of reporting.

At the same time, media was reporting live along with speculations which diverted towards one community and as usual that was nothing but towards Muslims. The media started investigation and jumped on the conclusions and media room trial started. By giving their own sources they named the organizations behind the blast and also the names of Muslim youths. They even said that the planning of these blasts took place in October itself. The media is diverting and linking these blasts to the revenge of Afzal Guru and Ajmal Kasab. The media also said that it is the revenge of Akbaruddin Owaisi's arrest.

Before the state investigating agencies and central investigating agencies reached the spot, the media and Hindutva elements gathered due to which the evidence of bomb blasts lost. Though the police personnel reached there but did not try to control the Hindutva elements and media mob. The Hindutva elements raised the slogans of anti-Muslim slogans.

The first thing which the media announced is that the actual target of bomb blast was not the present place but it was the Saibaba Mandir (how media got this report no one knows). Then the media started explaining how the preparations of bomb blast took place. They even said that two days before the blasts the bomb planters were roaming in that area. Media even declared the names of the persons involved in the blast. The number of channels, that number of investigation and trial was going on and all the channels had same conclusions. The target of all these channels was Muslims. The matter of concern is that the media houses do not have any evidence or any information of this incident but had only speculations. But with the type of their reporting it seemed that they knew everything in advance. The media is even showing an injured Muslim youth in the blast as main suspect and unfortunately this person named Mirza Abdul Wasey became the victim of bomb blast for the second time. He was injured even in the Makkah Masjid blast as well. A person injured two times in the blast i.e. in Makkah Masjid bomb blast and Dilsukhnagar bomb blast became a crime, only because he is a Muslim.

The common people wondered that if at all the media houses knew all the facts then why didn't they inform the police? And if they did not alert the police then it means that they have indirectly helped the terrorists. Without any evidence targeting of one particular community is to increase their TRP ratings then that is nothing but helping the terrorists. Because in this country where plural society exists, these type of incidents are carried out only to propagate the hatred and division among the people and in the society. Such type of reporting of media is making the plans of terrorists easier. This type of reporting is nothing but act of terror. Because of this type of reporting, one particular community is completely isolated, traumatised and terrorized.

This committee wants to draw your attention towards this type of reporting of media houses which is propagating hatred among the people and isolating the Muslim community. The majority community is seeing them with suspect in every walk of life. The attitude of media has become the biggest threat to Muslim community and their life and liberty is at stake.

Dear sir, we want to say clearly that at this time, Muslims are the victims of bomb terror, police terror, media terror and mob terror. This is the ground reality.

Therefore, we request you to issue the direction to the media houses to stop their own investigation and media room trial against the Muslim community which is aimed at targeting Muslim community.

We request you to collect all the reporting of the media both electronic and print and investigate the news on this issue by forming a team of experts. Take against those media houses that have not spared a single minute to show and target Muslim community as terrorists.

Dear Sir, you are the chairman of Press Council of India, on behalf of common Muslims of India I question you, don't Muslims have right to life with dignity which is guaranteed by the constitution and is it crime to live this country as Muslims with their identity.

At this high time, I want to ask you, the media houses telecasting such news just to increase their TRP ratings in not an act of terror? As far as we know there are some rules and regulations to be followed by Media in reporting the news. But that is not applied while reporting on terror issues.

Hope this will be taken seriously, positively. We request you to intervene and stop it immediately so that our plural society of India can exist without any threat.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,

Lateef Mohammed Khan,

Gen. Secretary

Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee

Hyderabad

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Agencies
January 10,2020

Indian enterprises were flooded with a whopping 14.6 crore malware threats in 2019 - a growth of 48 per cent (year-on-year) compared to 2018, a new report said on Friday.

Manufacturing, BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), education, healthcare, IT/ITES, and the government were the most at-risk industries in the country, said the report from Seqrite, the enterprise arm of Pune-based IT security firm Quick Heal Technologies.

Interestingly, almost a quarter (23 per cent) of the threats were identified through 'Signatureless behaviour-based' detection by Seqrite, indicating how a growing number of cybercriminals were deploying new or previously unknown threat vectors to compromise enterprise security.

"With the latest Seqrite annual threat report, we want to empower CIOs, CISOs, business leaders and all key public stakeholders with the insights they need to combat the growing complexity of the threat landscape," said Sanjay Katkar, Joint Managing Director and CTO, Quick Heal Technologies.

The most prominent trend was the drastic increase in the volume, intensity, and sophistication of cyber-attack campaigns targeting Indian enterprises in 2019.

The rapid integration of IoT devices, BYOD (bring your own device), and third-party APIs into enterprise networks has created newer security vulnerabilities that might go unnoticed until a major breach occurs.

Threat researchers at Seqrite observed several large-scale advanced persistent threats (APT) attacks deployed against organisations in the government sector.

"The entry of nation-states and organised cybercrime cells into the fray is expected to add more complication to this situation and will require Indian government bodies and corporate enterprises to shore up their cyber defence strategies in 2020 and beyond," the report noted.

More alarming, however, was the continued lack of security awareness amongst enterprises and government organisations.

"Unsecured Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and Server Message Block (SMB) protocols continued to be targeted through brute-force attacks," said the report.

Spear phishing attack campaigns leveraging Office exploits and infected macros were also used extensively by cybercriminals to gain access to enterprise networks and steal critical data.

"India's digital journey depends on ensuring robust cybersecurity for all stakeholders within the enterprise ecosystem," said Katkar.

The sharp spike should be a cause of concern for CIOs and CISOs in the country, especially given the growing digital penetration within their enterprise networks.

"With network vulnerabilities and potential entry points increasing at a rapid pace, threat actors are expected to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to power their malware campaigns in the future to capitalise on newer attack vectors," the report added.

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Agencies
January 20,2020

Washington D.C., Jan 20: An American bride asked for money from her invitees so that they can be on the 'exclusive guest list'.

Weddings can be surely expensive. But is it feasible for one to charge the guests to make up for the expenses?

According to Fox News, that is exactly what happened in a recent American wedding. A 19-year-old shared on Reddit that her cousin was getting married on Sunday and announced that she would charge 50 dollars to those who wanted to attend her wedding.

"She said that they can Venmo her money so there won't be no [sic] problems and everyone who paid will be added onto the 'exclusive guest list' which basically means you won't have to wait in line while other guests pay," wrote the user named DaintySheep.

While she refused to pay for entry into her cousin's wedding the bride-to-be contacted the elders in the family which ended up in an embarrassing situation.

"She wanted to get the money she spent on her special day back. I told her I wouldn't be able to come because this was outrageous and that I wish her well on her special day. She contacted my aunt and my aunt called me cheap and rude. My parents offered to pay for my entry, but I refused," continued the disheartened girl.

While in almost every nook and cranny of the world gifting the bride-groom with money is a tradition, asking for money from friends and family to replenish the money spent on a wedding is can be said to be a rare scenario.

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Agencies
July 4,2020

Twitter has joined efforts to do away with racially loaded terms such as master, slave and blacklist from its coding language in the wake of the death of African-American George Floyd and ensuing Black Lives Matter protests.

The project started even before the current movement for racial justice escalated following the death of 46-year-old George Floyd in police custody in May.

The use of terms such as "master" and "slave" in programming language originated decades ago. While "master" is used to refer to the primary version of a code, "slave" refers to the replicas. Similarly, the term "Blacklist" is used to refer to items which are meant to be automatically denied.

The efforts to change these terms in favour of more inclusive language at Twitter were initiated by Regynald Augustin and Kevin Oliver and the microblogging platform is now backing their efforts.

"Inclusive language plays a critical role in fostering an environment where everyone belongs. At Twitter, the language we have been using in our code does not reflect our values as a company or represent the people we serve. We want to change that. #WordsMatter," Twitter's engineering team said in a post on Thursday.

As per the recommendations from the team, the term "whitelist" could be replaced by "allowlist" and "blacklist" by "denylist".

Similarly, "master/slave" could be replaced by "leader/follower", "primary/replica" or "primary/standby".

Twitter, however, is not the first to start a project to bring inclusivity in programming language.

According to a report in CNET, the team behind the Drupal online publishing software started using "primary/replica" in place of "master/slave" as early as in 2014.

The use of the terms "master/slave" was also dropped by developers of the Python programming language in 2018.

Now similar efforts are underway at Microsoft's Github and LinkedIn divisions as well, said the report.

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