Whistleblower Christopher Wylie believes Congress was CA client

Agencies
March 28, 2018

London, Mar 28: A former employee of Cambridge Analytica turned whistleblower said today that the company had worked extensively in India and believed it was employed by the Congress party during his evidence before a UK parliamentary committee investigating the issue of fake news.

Christopher Wylie deposed before the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee (DCMS) here amid an escalating row around alleged Facebook data breaches linked with the controversial UK-based company, which has also been linked with alleged attempts to influence elections in India.

"When you look at Facebook's biggest market, India is the top in terms of numbers of users. Obviously, that's a country which is rife with political discord and opportunities for destabilisation," said Labour MP Paul Farrelly, member of the parliamentary committee, during his questioning.

"They (Cambridge Analytica) worked extensively in India. They have an office in India," Wylie responded.

"I believe their client was Congress, but I know that they have done all kinds of projects. I don't remember a national project but I know regionally. India's so big that one state can be as big as Britain. But they do have offices there, they do have staff there," the 28-year-old added, on being probed further.

He offered to provide the committee "documentation" on India, which was welcomed by Farrelly, who said India was a country that did not need any added "tensions".

During his evidence, Wylie also said that his predecessor, Dan Muresan, Head of Elections at SCL Group, had also been working in India before he died in Kenya under mysterious circumstances. He claimed to have heard stories that Muresan, a Romanian national, may have been poisoned in a hotel room while in the African country.

Paul-Olivier Dehaye, co-founder of PersonalData.IO, a service that helps individuals regain control over their personal data, also giving evidence to the committee, added that he had heard reports that Muresan was being paid by an Indian billionaire who wanted Congress to lose elections.

"So he was pretending to work for one party but actually paid underhand by someone else," said Dehaye. He added that it would be for Indian and Kenyan journalists to get together to investigate the matter further.

At the start of today's session, it emerged that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has declined to appear before the committee amid an ongoing row over data breaches linked to the social media company.

A summons letter had been sent to Zuckerberg by Damian Collins, the chair of DCMS. In a response to Collins, Facebook's head of public policy, Rebecca Stimson, said the company would be putting forward its chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, or its chief product officer, Chris Cox.

"Facebook fully recognises the level of public and Parliamentary interest in these issues and support your belief that these issues must be addressed at the most senior levels of the company by those in an authoritative position to answer your questions," Stimson said.

"As such Mr Zuckerberg has personally asked one of his deputies to make themselves available to give evidence in person to the Committee," she said, adding that both men likely to step in the report directly to Zuckerberg and are among the longest-serving senior representatives in Facebook's 15-year history.

The DCMS, which is currently hearing oral evidence as part of its inquiry, is likely to hear from one of the Facebook executives after the Parliament's Easter recess, which ends on April 16.

"We will seek to clarify from Facebook whether he (Zuckerberg) is available to give evidence or not because that wasn't clear from our correspondence. If he is available to give evidence then we would be happy to do that either in person or by video link if that would be more convenient for him," Collins said in a statement.

Wylie has accused his former employer, Cambridge Analytica, of gathering the details of 50 million users on Facebook through a personality quiz in 2014. He alleges that because 270,000 people took the quiz, the data of some 50 million users, mainly in the US, was harvested without their explicit consent via their friend networks.

Wylie claims the data was sold to Cambridge Analytica, which then used it to psychologically profile people and deliver material in favour of Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential elections. He also criticised Cambridge Analytica for running campaigns in "struggling democracies", which he called "an example of what modern-day colonialism looks like".

"You have a wealthy company from a developed nation going into an economy or democracy that's still struggling to get its feet on the ground and taking advantage of that to profit from that," he told MPs.

Cambridge Analytica denies any of the data acquired was used as part of the services it provided to the Trump campaign.

As the controversy continues to escalate, Zuckerberg took out full-page advertisements in several UK and US Sunday newspapers to apologise. "This was a breach of trust, and I am sorry," the back-page ads said.

In an undercover report last week, Cambridge Analytica executives had been caught boasting that they, along with parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories, had worked in more than 200 elections around the world, including India, Nigeria, Kenya, the Czech Republic and Argentina.

The recordings were made during a series of meetings at London hotels between November 2017 and January 2018.

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Agencies
March 13,2020

Amid the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), which has infected 73 people in India and killed more than 4,500 individuals globally, doctors have advised that in addition to regularly washing hands, one should also disinfect their smartphone every 90 minutes with alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Ravi Shekhar Jha, Head of Department at Fortis Escorts Hospital in Faridabad said the best method to disinfect your smartphone is to use regular doctor spirit or the alcohol-based hand sanitizer at least every 90 minutes.

"Avoid touching your eyes, mouth, or nose. The best option is to use a phone cover or a Bluetooth device and try to touch your phone as less as possible. We would also recommend cleaning your phone at least twice a day," Jha told IANS.

According to research, published in 2018 by Insurance2Go, a gadget insurance provider, revealed that smartphone screens have three times more germs than a toilet seat.

One in 20 smartphone users was found to clean their phones less than every six months, said the study.

"In the time of fear of coronavirus, smartphones should also be disinfected with alcohol-based sanitizer rub. Pour few drops of sanitizer on a tiny clean cotton pad and rub it safely on your entire phone," said Jyoti Mutta, Senior Consultant, Microbiology, Sri Balaji Action Medical Institute in New Delhi.

"You can repeat this process every evening coming back home after an entire day out at work and once in the morning before going out," Mutta added.

"Maintain basic cleanliness, and try to avoid using other's phones especially if suffering from respiratory illness or flu-like symptoms as there is no other way to disinfect these regular gadgets," she stressed.

Another study from the University of Surrey in the UK, also found that the home button on your smartphone may be harbouring millions of bacteria - some even harmful.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus as a global pandemic on Wednesday. The death toll of COVID-19 has crossed the 4,500 marks and confirmed cases globally have touched one lakh as per the reports.

According to Suranjeet Chatterjee, Senior Consultant in Internal Medicine Department of Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals in New Delhi, "We should frequently wash our hands, cover our coughs and it is important to adapt to other good hygiene habits that are most important in such a situation."

"Coronavirus and other germs can live on surfaces like glass, metal or plastics and phones are bacteria-ridden. It is necessary that we sanitize our hands frequently and make sure that our hands are clean all the time," Chatterjee told IANS.

"The emphasis should be laid on sanitising our hands rather than sanitizing the phone - once in a while the phone can be sanitized under the guidance of the makers of the phone," Chatterjee stressed.

According to the global health agency, the most effective way to protect yourself against coronavirus is by frequently cleaning of your hands with alcohol-based hand rub or washing them with soap and water.

The WHO's report showed the virus infects people of all ages, among which older people and those with underlying medical conditions are at a higher risk of getting infected.

People should eat only well-cooked food, avoid spitting in public, and avoid close contact, the WHO said, adding that it is important for people to seek medical care at the earliest if they become sick.

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News Network
March 4,2020

New Delhi, Mar 4: The Supreme Court on Wednesday revoked the ban of cryptocurrency imposed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 2018.

Pronouncing the verdict, the three-judge bench of the apex court said the ban was 'disproportionate'.

The bench included Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman, Justice S Ravindra Bhat and Justice V Ramasubramanian.

The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), whose members include cryptocurrency exchanges, and others had approached the top court objecting to a 2018 RBI circular directing regulated entities to not deal with cryptocurrencies.

Advocate Ashim Sood, appearing for IAMI, submitted that Reserve Bank of India lacked jurisdiction to forbid dealings in cryptocurrencies. The blanket ban was based on an erroneous understanding that it was impossible to regulate cryptocurrencies, Sood submitted.

The petitioners had argued that the RBI's circular taking cryptocurrencies out of the banking channels would deplete the ability of law enforcement agencies to regulate illegal activities in the industry.

IAMAI had claimed the move of RBI had effectively banned legitimate business activity via the virtual currencies (VCs).

The RBI on April 6, 2018, had issued the circular that barred RBI-regulated entities from "providing any service in relation to virtual currencies, including those of transfer or receipt of money in accounts relating to the purchase or sale of virtual currencies".

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Agencies
January 9,2020

Noida, Jan 6: A fire broke out at the ESIC Hospital in Noida on Thursday morning and firefighting was underway, officials said.

The blaze broke out in the basement of the seven-storey hospital building located in Sector 24, a police official said.

Fire tenders were rushed to the spot after the Fire Department was alerted about it around 8 am, the official said.

After that, a search was done to see if anyone was trapped in the building, he said.

The cooling process is now underway.

He said the fire had engulfed the ground, first and second floors of the building, except the basement.

Police said they received information about fire at Kaveri printing press at 2:45 am, when the manager Yogesh called them. The press owners have been identified as Atul and Anuj Goyal, residents of Sukhdev Vihar, they said.

The man who died in the fire has been identified as Phool Dev, from Bihar, who used to work as a help there. Dev went inside the building in the night to sleep before the fire started and died due to suffocation, the fire department official said.

The body has been kept at Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital and the post-mortem will be done once the family reaches here, police said.

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