Taylor Swift Wows Singapore with Surprise Album Announcement and Magical Performances!

In a dazzling display of talent and surprise, Taylor Swift, 34, captivated an audience of approximately 55,000 fans at the Singapore National Stadium. Amidst her performance, she stunned her admirers with an unexpected revelation.

Seated gracefully at her piano during her second show in Singapore, Swift unveiled the fourth and final rendition of her upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department. A snapshot shared by a fan on X showcased the album’s new iteration displayed on stage, unveiling a bonus track titled “The Black Dog,” accompanied by previously unreleased artwork featuring Swift elegantly running her fingers through her hair.

Taking to Instagram, the pop icon shared the news alongside an image mirroring the artwork showcased during her live performance. “‘Old habits die screaming…’ File Name: The Black Dog ���,” she expressed, urging fans to pre-order the ultimate edition of THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, inclusive of the exclusive bonus track “The Black Dog” available on her website.

Included in her post was another snapshot revealing the album’s track listing, featuring a distinct image of Swift with the phrase “Old habits die screaming” emblazoned across it.

This performance marked the second of six shows scheduled in the country, with Swift set to grace the Eras Tour stage once again for three consecutive nights following a two-day hiatus.

Prior to her enchanting Singaporean performances, Swift shared her profound connection to the city, particularly emphasizing its significance due to her mother, Andrea Swift, who spent a significant part of her childhood there. Recounting fond memories, Swift reminisced about her mother driving her past their old family home and school during previous tours, weaving Singapore’s narrative into her life story.

Before her Singaporean rendezvous, Swift delighted audiences in Sydney, Australia, cherishing what she described as “magical” moments in an Instagram post reflecting on her time down under. Despite facing a weather-related setback that led to the cancellation of her supporting act Sabrina Carpenter’s set, Swift graced her fans with a heartfelt mashup of her songs “White Horse” and “Coney Island.”

Throughout her Sydney performances, Swift continued to surprise her fans with inventive mashups, blending classics like “Haunted” with newer hits like “Exile” from her 2020 album folklore. Additionally, she seamlessly fused the vault track “Is It Over Now?” from the 2023 release 1989 (Taylor’s Version) with another gem from the same album, “I Wish You Would.”

Swift’s presence in Sydney drew a constellation of celebrities, including Katy Perry, Rebel Wilson, and her beau Travis Kelce, the 34-year-old Super Bowl champion tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. Notably, Kelce, stepping into a role traditionally reserved for Swift’s father, Scott, distributed guitar picks to ecstatic fans during her inaugural Sydney performance.

Dr. Samir Shah Appointed Chair of BBC: First Person of Indian Origin to Hold Prestigious Position

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has announced the appointment of Dr. Samir Shah as its chair, effective from March 4, 2023, for a four-year term. The UK government disclosed his nomination for this significant role in December 2023.

Dr. Shah, a seasoned professional with over four decades of experience in the broadcasting media, has become the first individual of Indian origin to be selected for this prestigious position. Prior to assuming this role, he had been the CEO of Juniper, an independent television and radio production company, since 1998. Furthermore, Dr. Shah had previously served as the head of current affairs and political programs at the BBC.

In recognition of his outstanding contributions to journalism, Dr. Shah was honored with the Lifetime Achievement award by the Royal Television Society in 2022. His impressive career also includes being a non-executive director of the BBC from 2007 to 2010. Additionally, he held the position of chair at the Museum of the Home from 2014 to 2022 and served as a trustee and deputy chair of the V&A from 2004 to 2014. Dr. Shah also chaired the Runnymede Trust from 1999 to 2009 and One World Media from 2020 to 2024. His involvement extended to being a member of the arts and media honors committee from 2022 to 2024.

Queen Elizabeth II recognized Dr. Samir Shah’s remarkable contributions to television and heritage by awarding him the Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2019. He had previously received an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the New Year’s Honors list in 2000.

Elected as a fellow of the Royal Television Society in 2002, Dr. Shah was appointed as a visiting professor of creative media at Oxford University in 2019. The University of Nottingham also honored him with a special professorship in the Department of Post Conflict Studies.

Born in Aurangabad, India, in 1960, Dr. Shah migrated to England. Expressing his thoughts on the appointment, he remarked, “The BBC is, without doubt, one of the greatest contributions we have made to global culture and one of our strongest calling cards on soft power.” He emphasized the BBC’s significant role in British life, stating, “The BBC has a great place in British life and a unique duty to reach a wide audience right across the country, and I will do all I can to ensure it fulfills this in an increasingly competitive market.”

In his capacity as the chair of the BBC’s board, Dr. Samir Shah will be responsible for upholding and safeguarding the BBC’s independence. His role extends to ensuring the BBC fulfills its mission to inform, educate, and entertain, especially in the face of challenges posed by an increasingly competitive media landscape.

Adani Group Acquires Stakes In News Agency IANS

Adani Enterprises, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s flagship firm, said on Saturday it had acquired a majority stake in news agency Indo-Asian News Service or IANS as the conglomerate tries to consolidate its media presence.

The Adani group said in a statement that upon acquiring a 50.5% stake for 510,000 rupees ($6,140), it would assume full operational and management control of IANS.

The news agency reported a revenue of over 118.6 million rupees in the 2022/23 financial year.

Adani entered the media industry in March last year by acquiring Quintillion Business Media, which operates business and financial news digital media platform BQ Prime. Later in December 2022, it acquired almost a 65% stake in the broadcaster NDTV. ($1 = 83.0200 Indian rupees)

Indica News Honored By San Francisco Press Club With Three Awards

A news and analysis outlet for India and Indian American community-related news — indica News — was honored yet again at the 46th annual San Francisco Press Club Awards. Among its many wins is the first place in ‘Digital Media: Business/Technology Story’ category.

Considered one of the most prestigious awards in San Francisco, the Journalistic Excellence Awards gala was held December 13 at the San Francisco Elks Lodge, California. These three awards take indica‘s tally at the San Francisco Press Club awards to four

Jha won first place in Digital Media: Business/Technology for her story headlined: “California 10th-grader develops AI system to help specially-abled people safely cross roads.”

“Such honors are gratifying and give hope, no matter whether you are a startup or a small media outlet. Real impactful stories are always recognized,” said Jha. She thanked the jury members, the community, and indica’s supporters.

In second place for the same category was Bloomberg’s Ian King, Debby Wu for, ‘The Chip War’. Julie Zigoris was honored with third place for her story, ‘The Gap, One of SF’s Iconic Businesses, Has Come Undone’ in The San Francisco Standard. An Honorable Mention was given to MarketWatch‘s Jeremy Owens and Therese Poletti for their story ‘Corporate profit is at a level well beyond what we have ever seen, and it’s expected to keep growing’.

Jha, an experienced reporter and editor, says her work in various areas of reporting has helped her stay aware and being able to remain prepared to deal with any situation whether it is politics, election coverage, business, technology, immigration, student issues, or community stories.

She won two other awards. Under the ‘Digital Media: Profile’ category, she won second prize for the story headlined: ‘Indian American teen Indeever Madireddy on how he sequenced the angelfish genome’.

She also won third prize in Digital Profile category for a story headlined, ‘Can’t have caste denial and bigotry in the U.S. anymore: Dalit rights activist Thenmozhi’.

The San Francisco Press Club had announced in November that it had received a record 544 entries for its 46th annual awards gala. This is the third time in a row the SF Press Club broke its previous record.

Competing media outlets include:

National/International: Associated Press, The Athletic, BBC, Bloomberg, CBS News, El Tecolote, Epoch Times, Financial Times, Fox News, Gizmodo, Indica News, Insider, LinkedIn News, MarketWatch, Mashable, Politico, Re/Code, Reuters, The Nation, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Univision, USA Today, VentureBeat

Local print/online: Contra Costa Times, Mission Local, Oakland Tribune, Palo Alto Daily Post, Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, SF Gate, San Francisco Business Journal, San Francisco Bay Times, San Francisco Standard, San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley Business Journal, Bay City News. TV: KBWB, KCSM, KICU, KGO, KNTV, KOFY, KPIX, KRON, KSTS, KTVU. Radio: KALW, KFTY, KHMB, KPFA, KQED, KSFO, Sing Tao Chinese Radio

UK Government Nominates Samir Shah as New BBC Chairman Amid Financial Challenges and Strategic Shifts

The UK government, on Wednesday, revealed its selection for the new BBC chairman, a decision prompted by the departure of the previous chair earlier this year due to involvement in a loan to then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The Conservative government nominated seasoned TV executive Samir Shah to succeed Richard Sharp, who resigned in April as the head of the publicly funded broadcaster.

This appointment is expected to receive approval from a parliamentary committee and is crucial for the BBC, currently grappling with heightened funding challenges. With the goal of achieving £500 million in savings, the corporation recently announced cutbacks to its flagship “Newsnight” program.

Samir Shah, aged 71, will be entrusted with the task of negotiating an increase in the license fee, the primary source of funding for the BBC. Recent reports from UK media suggest that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak intends to block a proposed nine percent increase in the annual fee, currently set at £159 ($200) per household.

With a career spanning over 40 years in television, including various roles at the BBC such as head of current affairs, Samir Shah expressed his delight at being named the government’s preferred candidate in a statement. A BBC spokesperson welcomed the announcement, stating, “We welcome the announcement that Samir Shah has been selected as the Government’s preferred candidate to take up the role of BBC chair and look forward to him joining the board once the formal process has been complete.”

The backdrop to this appointment is the departure of Richard Sharp, a former executive at investment bank Goldman Sachs. Sharp resigned after it was revealed that he acted as an intermediary in facilitating an £800,000 ($1 million) loan for Boris Johnson.

In essence, the UK government, facing the aftermath of Sharp’s resignation, has chosen Samir Shah to take the helm of the BBC. Shah’s extensive experience in television, particularly at the BBC, positions him to lead the broadcaster through a challenging period marked by financial constraints and the need for strategic decision-making.

As the new chair, Shah is poised to play a pivotal role in negotiations with the government regarding an increase in the license fee. This fee, constituting a significant portion of the BBC’s funding, is under scrutiny as reports circulate that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak plans to oppose a proposed nine percent hike, challenging the broadcaster to navigate financial uncertainties.

Shah’s career trajectory, spanning four decades, underscores his wealth of experience, including key roles in current affairs at the BBC. His statement expressing delight at the government’s preference for him as the new chair reflects his readiness to assume this responsibility.

The BBC, through a spokesperson, conveyed its anticipation of Shah officially joining the board, emphasizing the importance of completing the formal process. This signals a degree of alignment between the government’s choice and the broadcaster’s outlook on the future leadership.

The departure of Richard Sharp, who had a background in investment banking, added a layer of complexity to the dynamics surrounding the BBC. Sharp’s resignation was tied to his involvement in facilitating a substantial loan for Boris Johnson. The transition to Samir Shah marks a shift in leadership and a potential course correction for the BBC in light of recent challenges.

The appointment of Samir Shah as the new BBC chairman comes at a critical juncture for the broadcaster. His role in negotiating the license fee increase, navigating financial pressures, and steering the organization through cutbacks will be closely watched. As the government’s preferred candidate, Shah brings a wealth of experience to the position, and the outcome of this transition will shape the future trajectory of one of the UK’s most prominent media institutions.

Ajay Ghosh Honored With Excellence In Media & Journalism Award

Ajay Ghosh, the Chief Editor and co-publisher of The Universal News Network (www.theunn.com) was awarded with the prestigious Kerala Center Annual Award for Excellence in Journalism during the 31st Annual Awards Banquet held on October 28, 2023 at The Indian American Kerala Cultural and Civic Center in Elmont, New York. New York State Senator Kevin Thomas presented the Award to Ajay Ghosh, during the awards ceremony that was attended by nearly 200 people from across the United States and Canda, including several elected officials, community and business leaders.

Ajay was among the eight distinguished honorees from across the United States and Canada, who were bestowed with the prestigious awards with Excellence Awards for their outstanding accomplishments in their respective fields of specialization and contributions to the larger society. Others who were honored included: Dr. Shyam Kottilil (Baltimore, MD) – Life Time Achievement Award; Sajeeb Koya (Pickering, Ontario, Canada) – Entrepreneurship; Dr. Anna George (Long Island, NY) – Nursing; Shelby Kutty (Baltimore, MD) – Medicine; Lata Menon (Mississauga, Ontario, Canada) – Legal Services; Jayant Kamicheril (Reading, PA) – Pravasi Malayalam Literature; and, Gopala Pillai (Dallas, Texas) – Community Service.

In his response, Ajay shared with the audience his close association with the Kerala Center since his arrival in New York 2019. While referring to the importance of the media, Ajay said, “Media serves as the link that connects people, and is the mirror that reflects the world that we call our home.” He pointed to the challenges faced by the journalists around the world. “In much of the world, press freedom is either limited or virtually nonexistent. Reporters are often thrown in jail, beaten, subdued, intimidated, or even killed for doing their jobs. All of these things are of great concern to professional journalism.” He dedicated his award to the brave journalists who are at the front lines, endangering their own lives, while reporting and speaking, standing up for truth.

Ajay graduated with a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI in 1998. Prior to coming to the United States, Ajay was the Chief Editor of The Voice Delhi and contributed articles to several national publications in India.

Starting his journalistic career as a reporter in 1999 for India Post, Ajay had worked as the New York Bureau Chief of Indian Reporter and World News, and he served as the New York Bureau Chief of India Tribune, a weekly newspaper published from Chicago. Ajay was the Executive Editor of NRI Today, and the Bureau Chief of The Indian Express, North American Editions. He was the Chief Editor of The Asian Era, a monthly publication from New York since its launch in 2005 to 2018.

Since 2014, Ajay has been serving as the Media Coordinator of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), the largest ethnic medical organization in the United States, representing 100,000 physicians of Indian origin. In 2023, he was appointed as the Media Consultant for Public Relations for ITServe Alliance, the largest association of IT Solutions and services organizations in the United States, with over 2,200 small and medium sized member companies of Information Technology.

The Universal News Network is an online publication, launched in 2012, focusing on possibility-oriented storytelling that fuels hope and sparks innovative ideas and actions; seeking to lead discussions, creating, disseminating, and using news and information that serves us all, and providing a platform for diverse voices, forms, and continually engaging everyone.

Prior to coming to the United States, Ajay had graduated with a Master’s Degree in Social Work from Delhi University in 1989. Ajay served as an Adjunct Faculty, teaching Social Work Seminar and guiding MSW students at the Fordham Graduate School of Social Work in New York City from 2006 to 2016. He was an Adjunct Professor at Bridgeport University, where he taught Psychology.

Ajay works as a Psychiatric Social Worker at Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital from 2017 onwards, and currently serves as a full-time Licensed Clinical Social Worker at Bridgeport Hospital. He worked as a Social Worker at Hartford Health at Home from 2019 to 2022. Ajay served as the Administrator of the Mental Health Clinic at St. Dominic’s Home, Bronx, NY from 1999 to 2015.

In 2019, Ajay was part of a nearly 200-member expedition to Antarctica, the 7th Continent on Earth. Ajay served as the founder President of the Indo-American Press Club (IAPC) in 2014. He currently serves as the Secretary of the Borad of Directors of IPAC.

Ajay was honored with the Excellence in Reporting Award by AAPI for several years. In 2018, Ajay received the Excellence in Journalism Award from NAMAM, a North American Community Organization. In October 2023, Ajay received the prestigious Excellence in Journalism & Media Award by The Kerala Center in New York. Ajay is married to Mini, and the couple are blessed with three adorable daughters, Archana, Navya, and Ahana.

Arundhati Roy Charged Over Kashmir Comments Made 13 Years Ago

Indian authorities have filed charges against the acclaimed author Arundhati Roy for public statements she made over a decade ago regarding the tumultuous Kashmir region, marking the latest development in the Indian government’s increasingly restrictive stance on free speech under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership.
Suman Nalwa, a spokeswoman for the New Delhi police, stated that the government had given approval for charges to be brought against Ms. Roy and Kashmiri law professor Sheikh Showkat Hussain. The charges encompass various sections of Indian law, including those related to provocative speech and the incitement of enmity between different groups.

The Lieutenant Governor of the Delhi region indicated that the government had contemplated pursuing a more severe sedition charge against Ms. Roy and Mr. Hussain in connection with a case originating from a complaint lodged in October 2010 by a right-wing Kashmiri Hindu activist against speakers at a conference on Kashmir.
However, no such sedition charge was filed, as India’s highest court is currently deliberating the validity of the colonial-era sedition law, which critics assert has been misused for decades to stifle dissent. The reason for the police’s decision to act on the activist’s complaint over a decade after its filing remains unclear.

Picture: NYT

The action taken against Ms. Roy, a prominent critic of Prime Minister Modi, and Mr. Hussain occurred shortly after New Delhi police conducted raids on the residences and offices of numerous journalists associated with an online news portal recognized for its critical stance on the Indian government.

Previously, the authorities had also targeted the organization NewsClick. However, their crackdown escalated following the publication of an article in The New York Times that revealed connections between an American tech mogul financing the website and the Chinese government.

On Tuesday, a New Delhi court denied bail to the founder of NewsClick and another individual linked to the website, ordering their detention for ten days. Both individuals, who deny any wrongdoing, face charges under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, an anti-terrorism law. Many individuals charged under this law have spent years in detention awaiting trial.

Regarding the Kashmir conference-related case, Mr. Hussain, speaking from Kashmir, informed The New York Times that he had not received any formal communication regarding the charges. When asked for comment, Ms. Roy stated that she needed to consult with her lawyer before discussing the case.

Two other individuals accused in the activist’s complaint, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a prominent figure in Kashmir’s separatist movement, and Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani, a former university professor, have since passed away. The two men were not related.

The conference, titled “Freedom — the Only Way,” took place in New Delhi on October 21, 2010. During that period, tensions in Muslim-majority Kashmir were running high after the death of a 17-year-old boy who was struck by a tear gas canister fired at close range by Indian security forces as he returned from a tutoring session.

The year saw a cycle of unrest in Kashmir that resulted in the deaths of approximately 120 demonstrators.

In a guest essay published in The New York Times that autumn, Ms. Roy described the turmoil, noting, “Since April, when the army killed three civilians and then passed them off as ‘terrorists,’ masked stone throwers, most of them students, have brought life in Kashmir to a grinding halt. The Indian government has retaliated with bullets, curfew, and censorship.”

In the complaint filed by the Kashmiri Hindu activist, it was alleged that several speeches at the conference, including Ms. Roy’s, had “endangered public peace and security” and that the speakers had advocated for the “separation of Kashmir from India.”

In her speech, Arundhati Roy, the Booker Prize-winning author of “The God of Small Things,” recounted an incident in which she was accosted by a television reporter who repeatedly asked her, “Is Kashmir an integral part of India?”

She responded, “Kashmir has never been an integral part of India. However assertively and frequently you ask me, even the Indian government has acknowledged that it is not an integral part of India.”

The Modi government, which assumed power four years after these events, has taken measures to bring the Kashmir region under direct control, revoking its limited autonomy and suppressing democratic principles and opposing voice

Indo American Press Club announces Lifetime Achievement Awards.

IAPC is celebrating its Tenth Anniversary and the Ninth International Media Conference at Hilton Stamford Convention Center, Connecticut during Oct 7-9th, 2023.

The prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award Winners will be recognized during the gala closing event commencing at 6:00 P M on Sunday 8th, October 2023.

VINAY MAHAJAN (Entrepreneurial Excellence)

Vinay Mahajan, the current national President of ITServeAlliance Inc., an association of 2100 + SME US IT companies. Has been chosen to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Indo-American Press Club.

An Engineering Graduate and MBA from premier institutes, Mahajan is a serial entrepreneur with over 40 years of industry experience in leadership, marketing, finance, and engineering, creating, and building multiple entities. Entrepreneurial expertise through 100+ communication/IVR/Call center software projects across India and Healthcare Practice Management Software in the United States.

Dr. H.R.SHAH (Media & Arts)

Padma Shri Dr. H.R. Shah, Chairman & CEO of TV Asia Group, the first Non- Resident Indian to operate and telecast a 24/7 TV Channel, TV ASIA, coast-to-coast throughout North America since 1993,

Dr. Shah immigrated to the United States on March 21, 1970. A successful businessperson and media leader, Dr. Shah has worked relentlessly and tirelessly, contributing generously of his time, energy, and resources as a pillar for the Indian American community. He has been a major philanthropic supporter and has strongly supported many worthy causes across the US and India.

For his exemplary work in the media and arts, the Indian Government bestowed him with the Padma Shri in 2017. He is also the recipient of the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

IAPC proudly bestows Dr. H R Shah with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award.

MEERA GANDHI (Philanthropist)

Meera Gandhi has lived many roles in her life as a philanthropist, a mother, a businesswoman, a television show host, an author, and a spiritual yogi who believes that we are very much a part of the universal spirit. We all must live in the flow of the ether that guides and propels us through our life journey!

She is a recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor (2015), Marc Anthony Maestro Cares Humanitarian Award (2016), Children Hope Humanitarian Award (2013) and many more. Meera Gandhi established The Giving Back Foundation in 2010. By supporting education, mental health, and wellness, tackling malnutrition and illness, and addressing the causes of poverty, we can empower and uplift people to be the agents of change in this process.

Dr. SAMPAT SHIVANGI (Philanthropist)

Dr. Sampat Shivangi, a physician, an influential Indian American community leader, and a veteran leader of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), has been chosen to receive the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award by the Indo-American Press Club.

Dr. Sampat Shivangi was awarded the highest civilian honor, the Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas Sanman Award, in 2016 in Bengaluru by the Hon. President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee. He was awarded the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor in New York 2008.

Dr. Shivangi, for Community Service, Medicine, and philanthropy, IAPC herewith proudly presents its prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award.

SHAJAN SKARIAH (Excellence in Journalism)

Shajan Skariah, promoter and editor of the online portal “Marunadan Malayali” has been nominated for the Excellence in Media Award by the Indo-American Press Club (IAPC).

His courageous actions of being the mouthpiece of the public have resulted in the confiscation of his newspaper, his arrest, and his exile from the country. As part of the media world at IAPC, we consider that it is our legal and moral duty to support Shajan Skariah and his news media platforms.

Dr. RENU ABRAHAM VARUGHESE (Excellence in Elder Care)

Dr. Renu Abraham Varughese is an Associate Professor at the School of Health and Natural Sciences, Mercy University, NY. She is the founder and director of the Travancore Foundation Education and Research Center on Aging (TFERCA). She is the Recipient of the Founders Excellence Award (2022)- Association for Senior Living India (ASLI) for exemplary contributions to the senior care sector in the country.

And for her many accomplishments in Exemplary service, Visionary leadership, dedication, commitment, and innovation to promote quality care for elders and the eldercare industry in India, IAPC is proudly recognizing Dr. Renu Abraham Varughese with IAPC SATHSEVANA AWARD 2023.

IAPC was formed to unite the media groups and the Indian diaspora media fraternity across North America under one umbrella to work together, support one another, and provide a unified voice to the mainstream media world and the larger community. Every year IAPC hosts similar media conferences bringing together renowned journalists and media professionals from different countries, and hosts workshops and seminars.

Rupert Murdoch Resigns As Chairman Of Fox And News Corp

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has announced he is stepping down as chairman of Fox News and News Corp.

In a statement, he said that he had “decided to transition to the role of Chairman Emeritus at Fox and News,” with his son Lachlan to “ become sole Chairman of both companies.”

The 92-year-old informed colleagues in a letter on Thursday of his decision, noting that he would officially make the transition in November.

“I am writing to let you all know that I have decided to transition to the role of Chairman Emeritus at Fox and News,” Murdoch wrote. “For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change.

“But the time is right for me to take on different roles, knowing that we have truly talented teams and a passionate, principled leader in Lachlan who will become sole Chairman of both companies.

“Neither excessive pride nor false humility are admirable qualities. But I am truly proud of what we have achieved collectively through the decades, and I owe much to my colleagues, whose contributions to our success have sometimes been unseen outside the company but are deeply appreciated by me.

“Whether the truck drivers distributing our papers, the cleaners who toil when we have left the office, the assistants who support us or the skilled operators behind the cameras or the computer code, we would be less successful and have less positive impact on society without your day-after-day dedication.

“Our companies are in robust health, as am I. Our opportunities far exceed our commercial challenges. We have every reason to be optimistic about the coming years – I certainly am, and plan to be here to participate in them.”

Vinay Mahajan To Receive Lifetime Achievement Award

Vinay Mahajan. the current national President of ITServe Alliance Inc, an association of 2100 + SME US IT companies. has been chosen to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award by The Indo-American Press Club during the 9th annual International Media Conference in Stamford, CT on October 8th, 2023.

Under his able leadership, ITServe has grown and strengthened in its mission in protecting members interest, enhancing membership benefits, empowering local employment, empowering local community through various CSR programs including STEM education, and empowering ecosystem of innovation and thus maintaining the leadership of US in Technology.

Travelling to all the 21 Chapters across the United States in 8 months after he assumed office, Mahajan was instrumental in achieving membership to newer heights with more than 700+ New members added in 2023. Two new Chapters were launched under his leadership. In his words, “IT Serve Alliance is led by highly talented individuals, phenomenally successful entrepreneurs, and Innovators who are enthusiastic about giving back to the community.” He strengthened STEM Education program by adding STEM Training and Internship programs and enhancing STEM scholarships program.

Vinay Mahajan is the President & CEO of NAM Info Inc, a software services firm dealing in software consulting and ongoing software development projects, As the head of this multi-national company, Mahajan led the development team for approval of two patents for SAFE, a fire safety APP for high rise buildings. Current projects under development are AI application APAR and browser based universal communication. He recently acquired a company in Telecom Services space.

An Engineering Graduate and MBA from premier institutes, Mahajan is a serial entrepreneur with over 40 years of industry experience in leadership, marketing, finance, and engineering, creating and building multiple entities. Entrepreneurial expertise through 100+ Communication/IVR/Call Centers software projects across India, and Healthcare Practice Management Software in the United States.

AI Disinformation Regulation And Its Global Implications

In the aftermath of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s third indictment, which includes accusations of spreading “pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud,” the inevitable surge of disinformation looms large. Trump has been fervently fanning the flames as the upcoming election season looms. In May, he disseminated a fabricated video depicting CNN host Anderson Cooper castigating President Joe Biden for ceaselessly perpetuating untruths.

Yet, Trump is not solitary in his imaginative storytelling. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, contending with Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination, has also joined the ranks of creative spinners. DeSantis’ presidential campaign took to Twitter with a video advertisement showcasing AI-generated visuals of Trump engaging in affectionate gestures with Anthony Fauci, the former chief medical advisor and a polarizing figure on the far right. A separate counterfeit video, now viral, features former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing admiration for DeSantis, “He’s just the kind of guy this country needs, and I really mean that.”

Picture : Nature

The rise of disinformation has acquired a fresh impetus from artificial intelligence (AI), enabling the democratization of deceptive content creation. The advent of novel generative AI tools like DALL-E, Reface, and FaceMagic has effectively democratized political content generation. This phenomenon was further amplified by Meta’s recent revelation regarding its forthcoming generative AI technology for public utilization, potentially fueling an exponential surge in such “creative” disinformation.

The democratization of the disinformation process poses a profound menace to the already vulnerable U.S. democracy, a concern shared even by AI industry luminaries. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt cautioned against placing trust in visual or auditory information during elections due to AI manipulation. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, expressed his disquiet about AI’s potential impact on the trajectory of democracy.

Reacting to these concerns, legislators are taking decisive steps. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer proposed an innovative framework for AI regulation aimed at averting a potential democratic erosion. Representative Yvette Clarke introduced legislation mandating politicians to disclose their use of AI in campaign ads, a proposal paralleled by similar bills under consideration in the Senate. Several states, including Michigan and Minnesota, are contemplating legislation that would criminalize the deliberate dissemination of false election-related information, and some lawmakers are even receptive to the notion of establishing an entirely new federal agency tasked with overseeing AI regulation.

However, the conundrum remains: the prospect of regulating AI to safeguard U.S. democracy could inadvertently imperil democracies on a global scale. This paradox becomes conspicuous when considering the potential repercussions of more strident regulatory efforts emanating from influential markets such as the United States and the European Union. The more stringent the regulations on disinformation in these regions, the higher the likelihood of unbridled dissemination elsewhere.

Multiple factors contribute to this complex paradox. The major social media platforms, the chief conduits of disinformation, have been progressively downsizing their disinformation detection teams. This has resulted in limited resources being primarily allocated to address concerns in the U.S. and EU. Consequently, there is a dearth of resources available for monitoring content in other regions, exacerbated by the platforms’ preoccupation with other exigencies. This challenge coincides with the tumultuous year of 2024, marked by a plethora of elections far beyond the confines of the United States.

Contemplating the electoral landscape of 2024 underscores its pivotal role in testing democratic systems worldwide. Nations across Asia, including India, Indonesia, and South Korea, grapple with their own disinformation-driven political campaigns. In Africa, over a dozen countries brace for elections, where disinformation frequently exerts significant influence. Similarly, Latin American nations like Mexico and Peru confront rampant disinformation challenges in the run-up to their forthcoming elections.

Against this backdrop, one might naturally expect social media platforms to establish dedicated election war rooms and robust disinformation identification mechanisms. However, the reality paints a different picture. Companies within the tech sector are grappling with pressing profitability concerns, prompting workforce reductions and streamlining of non-revenue-generating divisions. The focus inevitably shifts towards user attraction and enhancing engagement, relegating disinformation monitoring to a secondary concern.

The ascendancy of AI-propelled disinformation presents a multifaceted dilemma. While the urgency to regulate AI for safeguarding domestic democracy is apparent, the inadvertent consequence of inadvertently facilitating disinformation propagation elsewhere demands equal consideration. The delicate equilibrium between domestic security and global ramifications underscores the intricate challenges confronting lawmakers and regulators in addressing this pressing issue. As the world navigates the turbulent electoral landscape of 2024, achieving this balance becomes an imperative of unprecedented magnitude.

Meta’s App Threads Experiences Explosive Growth, Challenges Twitter’s Dominance

Meta’s new application Strings saw a blast of new clients in its initial not many days, unparalleled by some other organization meaning to equal striving web-based entertainment stage Twitter — or practically any application in the previous ten years. According to data from Quiver Quantitative, more than 100 million users are thought to have joined Threads in less than five days.

The app, widely regarded as a competitor to Twitter, had already been downloaded by 2 million individuals within two hours of its launch on July 5. According to internal company data, users had already posted more than 95 million posts and received 190 million likes by the beginning of July, as reported by The Verge. By the morning of July 7, recruits had outperformed 70 million, a figure President Imprint Zuckerberg said was “far past our assumptions.”

Twitter and its owner, Elon Musk, have not forgotten the company’s early success, as evidenced by his criticism of the app on the platform on Thursday evening. In response to Threads, Twitter’s legal team reportedly sent a letter claiming that Meta had engaged in “unlawful misappropriation” of its trade secrets.

Twitter Tested

Disregard the expected enclosure battle between Imprint Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. The genuine clash erupted for the current week when Zuckerberg’s Meta carried out Strings, a Twitter rival that is intended to take advantage of Instagram’s now immense crowd.

“The two men are great at setting sparkling items before our eyes,” composed media pundit David Zurawik. ” They are adept at the art of disorientation and distraction, just like politicians. Consider the concept of a cage fight.

“We largely ignore the much larger societal questions, like how it is that Musk — who re-tweets conspiracy theories and posts antisemitic tropes — now controls such an important cultural space, a channel that once served as a platform for foreign meddling in the 2016 election, as we direct our gaze toward that ridiculous and exhibitionist proposition.”

“Zuckerberg’s Facebook also played a shameful role in the 2016 election by publishing misinformation produced by what we now know to be a Russian troll farm,” reads the statement.

Who Has Joined Strings?

Sensor Tower and data.ai provided the media with data indicating that on its launch day, Threads was the most downloaded non-game app in a decade. As of July 6, it had amassed around 40 million overall downloads, as per Sensor Pinnacle.

While data.ai says Nintendo’s Mario Kart Visit was the quickest truly developing application, Strings came in second and its send off outperformed those of well known applications like Pokemon Proceed to Important mission at hand Portable. Zuckerberg revealed that Strings arrived at 30 million clients in under 24 hours.

According to data.ai, it took Instagram 15 months to reach 30 million downloads, whereas TikTok did so in just under two years. ChatGPT’s application, delivered toward the finish of last year, is barely short of 18 million downloads, data.ai says. The Business of Apps says that 368 million people visit to Twitter every day, so the early numbers still pale in comparison.

A significant piece of the stage’s allure is the way that for the vast majority, the networks they’ve fabricated online are promptly open — clients can without much of a stretch sign up through their current Instagram records and move over their following from photograph based application. Additionally, a significant number of well-known accounts were granted early access to Threads in order to assist in populating the platform prior to its launch. Bill Gates, Shakira, and Oprah Winfrey were among the early adopters, as were brands like Netflix.

Being a household name gives Threads Meta an advantage because it already has a lot of the social media infrastructure in place. It’s a benefit to be related with a major brand,” Darrell West, senior individual at the Brookings Foundation’s Middle for Innovation Development, told TIME beforehand. ” Strings won’t be a specialty player.”

Already, Threads is making you feel nostalgic. A few clients have contrasted the experience on the application with Twitter in its initial days.

It is not yet clear assuming String’s prosperity will proceed, Kevin Driscoll, colleague teacher at the College of Virginia’s Division of Media Studies, gave the current time. ” The fact that these highly centralized platforms’ primary focus is growth, scale, and early user acquisition means that there is less discussion of long-term sustainability, which is one of the issues that has plagued both Twitter and Facebook.

Some essential features, like a search function, hashtags, and a following feed, are still missing from the app. The organization got some pushback for a strategy that would require clients attempting to erase their Strings record to likewise erase their Instagram profile. In a Threads post, Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth stated that the business is working on fixing it.

Due to regulatory concerns, Meta also faces difficulties launching Threads in European Union countries. The district is a major market for Meta. Europe represented generally 22% of Meta’s $28 billion in promoting income during the principal quarter of 2023, as per the Money Road Diary.

Twitter’s Reaction

In the midst of the application’s initial achievement, Meta’s President Imprint Zuckerberg, didn’t avoid taking swipes at Strings’ fundamental rival. Zuckerberg stated in a post that Threads would be “focusing on kindness,” implying that Twitter had been lacking in this regard. That is one motivation behind why Twitter never prevailed however much I figure it ought to have, and we believe should do it any other way,” he said.

Many have described the new app as a “Twitter-killer,” posing a serious threat to X-Corp, which Musk founded and merged with Twitter earlier this year. Only hours after String’s send off, X-Corp’s lawful group sent a letter to Zuckerberg-communicating “serious worries that Meta has taken part in orderly, will, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s proprietary advantages and other protected innovation” Semafor covered Thursday.

A spokesperson for Meta reportedly responded by posting: Nobody in the Strings designing group is a previous Twitter representative — that is simply not a thing.”

Musk criticized the app in a series of tweets on Thursday night, describing it as a “closed source, algorithm-only system,” implying that the “manipulation of what information people see is essentially undetectable” is possible. He wrote, “Any social media monopoly is despair,” in response to a tweet about Meta’s social media dominance.

After a string of high-profile scandals and missteps in recent years, Meta is currently riding a win. These include mass layoffs and criticism from activists and regulators regarding the company’s failure to protect users from harm on its platforms and mishandling of user data.

“This is as great of a beginning as we might have expected!” Zuckerberg posted on Strings. ” It feels like the beginning of a special thing.”

US Authors Sue OpenAI, Meta Over Copyright Infringement

Comedian and author Sarah Silverman, along with authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey, have sued Sam Altman-run OpenAI and Mark Zuckerberg-owned Meta over dual claims of copyright infringement.

The lawsuits alleged that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s LLaMA (a set of large language models) were trained on illegally-acquired datasets containing their works.

Their works were allegedly acquired from “shadow library” websites like Bibliotik, Library Genesis, Z-Library, and others, noting the books are “available in bulk via torrent systems,” reports The Verge.

“When ChatGPT is prompted, ChatGPT generates summaries of plaintiffs’ copyrighted works — something only possible if ChatGPT was trained on Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works,” the lawsuit claimed.

The lawsuit alleged that chatbot never bothered to “reproduce any of the copyright management information Plaintiffs included with their published works.”

In a separate lawsuit against Meta, it alleged the authors’ books were accessible in datasets Meta used to train its LLaMA models.

“Many of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted books appear in the dataset that Meta has admitted to using to train LLaMA,” it read.

Silverman owns a registered copyright in one book, called The Bedwetter while Golden owns registered copyrights in several books, including Ararat.

Kadrey owns registered copyrights in several books, including ‘Sandman Slim’.

In both lawsuits, the authors said that they “did not consent to the use of their copyrighted books as training material” for the companies’ AI models.

Each lawsuit contains six counts of copyright violations, negligence, unjust enrichment, and unfair competition.

The authors are looking for statutory damages, restitution of profits, and more.

The suits alleges, among other things, that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s LLaMA were trained on illegally-acquired datasets containing their works, which they say were acquired from “shadow library” websites like Bibliotik, Library Genesis, Z-Library, and others, noting the books are “available in bulk via torrent systems”. (IANS)

Maneesh Media Honors Indo-Canadian 50 Under 50 Trailblazers and Next Gen Leaders!

Global publishing house Maneesh Media has recently launched its latest compilation, 50 Under 50: Young and Aspiring Indo-Canadians in Toronto amid great fanfare. A resounding success, this exceptional book was presented to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at his visit earlier this week to BAPS temple in Toronto, followed by a gala event held in the honor of all remarkable achievements of dynamic young Indo-Canadians featured in the book.

Picture : Asian Media USA

The grand event, on 30 June 2023 at the Courtyard by Marriott in Brampton, was held under the auspices of chief guest H.E. Sanjay Kumar Verma, the High Commissioner of India to Canada; guest of honor Hon’ble Apoorva Srivastava, the Consulate General of India; and distinguished guests, the illustrious Dr. Vaikuntam Iyer Lakshmanan, recently bestowed with Order of Canada; Dr. Sankar DasGupta, the Co-Founder & CEO of Electrovaya and Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Lalita Malhotra, an eminent obstetrician and philanthropist from Prince Albert; Chandra Arya, Member of Parliament – Nepean; and Colin Carrie, Member of Parliament – Oshawa also graced the occasion with their presence along with other dignitaries like business leaders Kuldeep Sharma, Chairman & CEO of Crown Group of Hotels, and Norton Kothari, Chairman – Kothari Group.

MP Arya said, “As a growing community in Canada, with over two-million strong Indians, I believe we play an integral role in shaping the present and future of this county. With the global technology-based economy, you young achievers are positive role models for your peers and for generations to come.”

Picture : Asian Media USA

Hon’ble Apoorva Srivastava said that it was a privilege to be present on such a momentous occasion and added, “Today, we celebrate these 50 young individuals who have made India and Canada proud. But let us also acknowledge their families as their support has been instrumental in their success. The featured individuals in this book will continue to inspire the younger generation and make a lasting impact.”

H.E. Sanjay Kumar Verma echoed Srivastava’s sentiments. “It’s not just your individual journey that is being acknowledged but that of your entire family. Many of you have pursued professional excellence without seeking recognition, making both the Indo-Canadian community and both countries proud.”

Other dignitaries that spoke at the gala evening included Dr Vaikuntam Iyer Lakshmanan and Dr. Lalita Malhotra. Dr Lakshmanan paid a glowing tribute to the 50 individuals who he said had accomplished much more at 50 that he had in his 83 years. Dr. Malhotra highlighted the importance of healthcare and education in India and Canada and lauded the technological advancements in both nations in this regard. She added, “However, in both healthcare and education, the human factor is essential. While intelligence and artificial intelligence have their place, I, as a physician, believe that human touch and eye contact are essential. We must decipher moments not just in black or white, but also in shades of grey.”

The man of innovation, Dr. Sankar DasGupta said, “In science, aerodynamics signifies forward motion, and similarly, we look at these 50 achievers, who will inspire and propel others forward.” Indeed, the 50 visionaries, featured in 50 Under 50: Young and Aspiring Indo-Canadians, are true inspirations and icons, who are redefining success and making significant contributions to Canada’s growth and its multicultural fabric.

These narratives chronicle the remarkable odysseys of these exceptional individuals, bridging their ancestral homes in India to a new land, igniting a flame of motivation for future generations.

Maneesh Media’s Chairman Chandmal Kumawat said, “We at Maneesh Media understand the profound impact of inspiration and motivation on the lives of individuals. With a firm belief in uplifting our nation and its people, especially the young generation, Maneesh Media aims to inspire through the extraordinary success stories of those, who have triumphed over immense challenges.”

About Maneesh Media

Founded in 1999 in Jaipur, India, Maneesh Media has expanded its operations to Canada and the US. As a distinguished book publishing house, it specializes in capturing the intricacies of the Indian diaspora, weaving inspiring narratives that Connect Beyond Boundaries. Maneesh Media’s vision is rooted in fostering heart-to-heart communication and bridging gaps, enabling a global bond. With a global presence and esteemed reputation, it is recognized for its exclusive publications and has had the privilege of collaborating with illustrious figures who have added to our glory, including accomplished industrialists, influential politicians and distinguished leaders.

How India’s Modi Has Extended Hindu Nationalist Sway Over The  Media

(RNS) — The format of a segment that aired last month on India’s Republic News Service, commenting on a recent documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in a massacre of Muslims two decades ago, would have been familiar to American cable news viewers: The talking heads in Zoomlike boxes were arrayed around the show’s host, Arnab Goswami, dapper in a suit and fashionable glasses, as he excoriated Modi’s critics for “attempting to spread misinformation by willfully spreading falsehoods.”

The increasingly authoritarian Modi government’s latest proposal is a fact checking unit that will strike social media content deemed ‘fake or misleading,’ causing fears that the scope of government censorship on news organizations is expanding.

The segment, spurred by a local nongovernmental organization’s lawsuit against the BBC, the documentary’s producer, was titled, “BBC Gets Notice over PM Modi Documentary: A Lesson For Western Media?”

Under Modi, however, India’s TV news channels have readily followed the lead of their American counterparts, devoting hours of prime-time coverage to politicized coverage. Republic is not alone in adopting a Hindu nationalist line, in accord with Modi’s policies. Minorities are depicted as causing problems for the broader population and facts are twisted to fit the narrative.Hate speech is so pervasive on TV news that India’s Supreme Court said in September 2022 that it was poisoning the fabric of the country and needed to be regulated.

The Modi government, on the other hand, is rarely criticized, and anchors, like Goswami, go out of their way to condemn anyone who does so.

Seema Chisti, editor of one of India’s most prominent independent news websites, The Wire, told Religion News Service, “All values cherished by journalists, of either journalism or even basic democracy and accountability, have been pushed aside in the current environment.”

Since Modi came to power in 2014, press freedom has taken a turn for the worse, with India slipping to 161 out of 180 countries in the 2023 World Press Freedom Index report compiled by Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. In 2016 India ranked 133rd.

In this March 7, 2021, file photo, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses a public rally ahead of West Bengal state elections in Kolkata, India. (AP Photo/Bikas Das, File)

News organizations and journalists critical of the government have seen raids on their offices and homes by income-tax authorities, including the New Delhi offices of the BBC after the release of the documentary. Other journalists have been arrested under colonial-era sedition laws.

More recently, the Modi government has proposed setting up a fact checking unit that will force social media platforms to take down content deemed to be “fake or misleading.” Many journalists have expressed concerns that it would expand the scope of government censorship on news organizations.

News organizations have pulled back on their reporting as a result and even cut reporting staff. Hartosh Singh Bal, editor of The Caravan magazine, one of the few publications that has continued to report despite harassment from the government, said that in India today, “There is no mainstream media that is independent.”

Modi himself avoids talking to the press and has held no news conferences since taking office. He instead communicates directly with the public via statements and announcements on social media platforms such as Twitter. The government often uses its posts to troll and abuse journalists, particularly minority and women journalists. Access to government functionaries has been completely cut off for those media outlets not considered favorable to the government.

Indian media do not enjoy the kind of protections afforded the press in the West. Kalyani Chadha, an associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School, explained that unlike in the U.S., where the First Amendment grants an absolute freedom of the press, “the Indian Constitution has a more qualified framework.”

The media are also financially susceptible to government control, as outlets rely heavily on advertising revenue from the government. What that means is that, in a way, the media in India are subsidized by the government, explains Chadha.

Under Article 19 (1) (a) of the Indian Constitution that came into force in 1950, press rights were accorded as part of free speech guarantees. That was amended a year later to include “reasonable” restrictions, which included national security concerns. This has allowed governments in the past to muzzle the press. In the most infamous case, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi clamped down on the media in 1975, arresting hundreds of journalists.

Successive governments have used these restrictions in their own way. Abhinandan Sekhri, co-founder and CEO of Newslaundry, an independent news website, said he faced several roadblocks with the Manmohan Singh regime, which preceded Modi. “No government is fond of a truly independent media.”

Adding to the challenges is the increasing corporatization of media as well as shrinking profits and ownership changes. In 2014, India’s largest company, Reliance Industries, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, took over one of India’s largest media companies, Network18 Media, which co-owns CNN-IBN with Warner Bros., and other channels.

More recently, Gautam Adani, India’s richest man, acquired a majority share in the TV news network NDTV that was long respected for its balanced journalism. Many senior journalists were forced to leave.

But Modi has put the most pressure on television; though he avoids meeting the press, he seems to realize that no politician can exist without television. He also uses it to reach his supporters directly. Sandeep Bhushan, a television journalist and author of “The Indian Newsroom,” said Modi knows the power of the medium and weighs his attire and even his demeanor carefully when appearing on TV. “He knows the camera is a performance driven medium,” said Bhushan, “and he also knows that previous governments have lost elections as a result of media coverage.”

Modi’s friends in television, whether wealthy media barons or popular hosts, know that Modi’s message can deliver viewers. As in the U.S., they have been complicit in muddying the concepts of objectivity and truth in televised journalism.

The result is what some journalists say is the worst period for press freedoms in memory, and by implication for freedom in the country as a whole. “We claim to be a democracy but the ability to express views in the media has taken a big hit,” said Chisti, whose news organization has faced difficulties with the Modi government. “Media is the only institution that can be a check on the government and tell people clearly all that is going wrong or the government is getting wrong, but it has been muzzled. Any sort of government criticism can lead to a vicious backlash.”

Institutional Framework & Press Freedom In India Under Threat : Rahul Gandhi

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that there was definite capture of institutions in India, while speaking to the media at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on June 2nd, 2023.

Rahul Gandhi who is on a three-city tour in the US said, “There is a clampdown on the institutional framework that enabled conversations between many cultures and social groups,” adding that “press freedom is crucial for a democratic society”.

Opening up on the issue during a free-wheeling conversation with scribes in the US capital, Mr Gandhi said press freedom is very critical for a functional democracy and one should be open to criticism. He alleged that there was a clampdown on the institutional framework, which enabled the national discourse.

“There is definitely a weakening of press freedom in India. It is apparent in India and the rest of the world can see it too. Press freedom is very critical for a democracy. One should be open to criticism. There is a clampdown on the institutional framework that allowed India to talk and Indian people to negotiate. I view India as a negotiation between its people, between different cultures, languages and histories. Mahatma Gandhi set up the framework to enable that negotiation fairly and freely. That structure, which allows this negotiation, is coming under pressure,” he said.

He alleged further that was a “definite capture of institutions and press” back home.”I don’t believe everything I hear. I walked across India and spoke to millions of Indians, they didn’t seem very happy to me. They agreed that there were serious issues such as inflation,” Rahul Gandhi said.

At his first public appearance after landing in the United States, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told an invite-only audience at the University of Santa Cruz’s Silicon Valley campus in Santa Clara, California that India is like an ocean facing a storm, and that this too shall pass. He was responding to specific question on what is often viewed as social engineering in the country, led by the governing BJP’s Hindutva principles.

“India is like a huge ocean,” Gandhi said. “And all oceans will have storms. When the storm comes, one way of looking at it is that this is a huge disaster, and it’s the end of the road. I think the correct way of looking at it is, India is facing a storm, and the storm is going to pass. Let us face the storm bravely and effectively. And let us make sure that when the storm passes, we have a new India, a forward-looking India, in place.”

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that a country must have independent institutions which are not pressurized by anyone, at a media interaction in Washington. He arrived in the US on May 30 for a three-city tour.

Citing his Bharat Jodo Yatra, he said that when he walked across the country, there was angst among the people. “I walked across India, from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, and spoke directly to millions of Indian people. They didn’t seem happy to me; there were serious issues with rising unemployment and inflation. There was angst among the people,” he said.

Hitting out at the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, he said that the BJP was promoting a polarising vision in the country which was damaging India. On a question about the Opposition in India, Rahul said that opposition parties in the country are pretty united. “We’re having conversations with all the Opposition. I think quite a lot of good work is happening,” he said. “It’s a complicated discussion because there are spaces where we have competing also with (other) Opposition (parties). So, it’s a little bit of give and take as required. But I’m confident that that will happen,” he said.

Last week, Indian Overseas Congress chairperson Sam Pitroda said Rahul Gandhi’s visit is aimed at promoting shared values and a vision of “real democracy”. “The purpose of his (Gandhi’s) trip is to connect, interact and begin a new conversation with various individuals, institutions and media, including the Indian diaspora that is growing in numbers in the United States and abroad to promote the shared values and vision of the real democracy with a focus on freedom, inclusion, sustainability, justice, peace and opportunities world over,” Pitroda said in a statement.

Rahul Gandhi is an Indian politician and leading figure of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party). He was born the son of Rajiv Gandhi, a grandson of Indira Gandhi, and a great grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, all of whom served as prime ministers of India. His mother, Sonia Gandhi, also played a leading role in the Congress Party after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

Rahul Gandhi entered politics in 2004 when he was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time. In 2013 he was named the Congress Party’s vice president and became its de facto (though never official) candidate for prime minister in the 2014 polls.

He became head of the Congress Party in late 2017 after Sonia Gandhi decided to retire from leadership. The Congress party’s poor performance in the 2019 elections in the Lok Sabha, prompting him to step down from leading the party. In March 2023 Gandhi was convicted of defamation and sentenced to two years in prison for his comment that referred to people with the surname “Modi” as thieves—the same surname as the India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A day after his conviction, Gandhi was disqualified as the member of the Indian parliament.

Rahul Gandhi arrived in the United States on May 30 on a three-city visit. He is slated to conclude his trip with a public gathering in New York on June 4. The interaction would take place at the Javits Center in New York.

USAID Launches Program To Protect Journalists From Legal Threats And Defamation Lawsuits

News media across the globe, operating under both authoritarian and democratic systems, are constantly subjected to fierce assaults and political interference.

“Press freedom serves as the bedrock of democracy and justice, providing us with the information we need to form opinions and challenge authority. However, press freedom is under siege worldwide,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on World Press Freedom Day, May 3. Journalists and media personnel face direct threats both online and offline as they conduct their crucial work, enduring routine harassment, intimidation, detention, and imprisonment.

In 2022, a staggering 67 media workers lost their lives – a 50% increase compared to the previous year. The UN reports that nearly three-quarters of female journalists have encountered online violence, while one in four has faced physical threats. Additionally, non-physical attacks are on the rise, such as defamation lawsuits aimed at undermining media organizations’ legitimate right to free expression.

Last week, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) introduced Reporters Shield, an innovative membership program designed to safeguard journalists worldwide who report in the public interest from defamation lawsuits and legal intimidation. Established by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice as a U.S.-based nonprofit organization, Reporters Shield is hailed as a “first-of-its-kind global program that defends investigative reporting around the world from legal threats intended to muzzle critical voices.”

USAID, which boasts an extensive history of nurturing independent media globally, intends to collaborate with Congress to allocate up to $9 million in seed funding for this groundbreaking initiative supporting media outside the United States, as stated in a May 2 press release. According to a statement released last week by USAID, investigative journalists and civil society organizations that report in the public interest increasingly face lawsuits aimed at silencing and harassing them by burdening them with the expenses and time associated with legal defense until they abandon their stories or go out of business entirely.

Reporters Shield aims to mitigate risks by offering training, pre-publication review, and funding for legal representation to combat lawsuits and other legal actions meant to intimidate and financially strain journalists. To maintain sustainability, member organizations participating in Reporters Shield will pay reasonable annual fees based on various factors, such as the outlet’s location and annual story output.

Membership in Reporters Shield requires organizations to be legally registered, focus primarily on news, public interest, and/or investigative reporting; publish in print and/or online; maintain non-profit status or transparent ownership; remain independent from political, commercial, or other undue influence; and adhere to professional editorial standards with editorial independence. Reporters Shield is accepting applications globally and will review them in phases, with some regions receiving benefits in the coming months and others added later this year and in 2024. Organizations interested in applying can visit reporters-shield.org for more information.

Reporters Shield’s development has been supported by pro bono legal assistance from law firms Proskauer, Primmer Piper Eggleston & Cramer PC, and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. Mandeep S. Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations (CSOs), remarked that media freedoms are facing challenging times due to disinformation, attacks on civic space, deepening authoritarianism, populism, and oligarchic wealth consolidation.

Investigative journalists and civil society activists are finding it increasingly dangerous and costly to expose serious human rights violations and high-level corruption. “This initiative comes at a critical time when few companies are willing to sign the Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) pledge, and cunning politicians are undermining the independence of judiciaries,” Tiwana declared.

According to Global Citizen’s Anti-SLAPP pledge, SLAPPs are not a legitimate business strategy. Functioning democratic societies respect freedom of expression, allowing everyone to express their views without fear. Lawsuits and legal tactics aimed at silencing civil organizations and human rights defenders harm societies and companies alike. Companies that stifle free expression limit their ability to manage risk related to operations and global supply chains.

Committed to operating in societies where people can exercise fundamental rights, Global Citizen pledges to define SLAPPs as lawsuits and legal tactics designed to silence critics and abridge citizens’ rights; refrain from engaging in SLAPPs against human rights and environmental defenders and supporting civil society organizations; recognize the crucial role of civil society organizations and human rights defenders in creating a profitable business environment; and encourage partners and suppliers within their value chain to abstain from engaging in SLAPPs to suppress legitimate activism.

Sue-Lin Wong and David Rennie Win Osborn Elliott Journalism Prize

Asia Society is pleased to announce that the 2023 Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia is being awarded to Sue-Lin Wong and David Rennie of The Economist for their China coverage. The $10,000 cash award is presented annually by an independent jury to the best example of journalism about Asia during the previous calendar year.

In announcing the award, the Osborn Elliott Prize Jury issued the following statement: “We are pleased to award the 2023 Osborn Elliott Prize to The Economist’s Sue-Lin Wong and David Rennie for their deeply reported, engagingly accessible coverage of China. In an eight-part podcast, ‘The Prince,’ Wong explained how Xi Jinping skillfully navigated his way to power, drawing on the personal history and circumstances that shaped his world. Rennie’s definitive primer on what Xi’s rising, sometimes righteous, often resentful Communist Party-led China wants offers insight into looming geopolitical and economic challenges.”

“Rennie and Wong recognize China’s many recent historical achievements, but also have experienced the limits of life under Xi. Wong, who also poignantly reports on how Beijing has shorn once-freewheeling Hong Kong of its autonomy, has had to leave the city. Rennie, who writes about Xi’s drive for absolute command of society, spent nearly two years separated from his wife and child by China’s draconian COVID lockdowns.”

The two will be honored at an awards ceremony and discussion at Asia Society in New York, on Tuesday, June 6.

Sue-Lin Wong is The Economist’s South-East Asia correspondent. She was previously China correspondent and host of “The Prince”, a podcast about Xi Jinping. Prior to joining The Economist, she was South China correspondent at the Financial Times covering politics, business and technology in Hong Kong and mainland southern China. Before that, she was a correspondent at Reuters with beats including the Chinese economy and North Korea. She opened the Shenzhen bureaus of the Financial Times and Reuters. She is a graduate of the Australian National University.

David Rennie is Beijing bureau chief of The Economist. He is the author of its weekly “Chaguan” column on China and co-host of the “Drum Tower” podcast. He joined The Economist in 2007. From 2007-10 he was the EU correspondent and “Charlemagne” columnist, based in Brussels. From 2010-12 he was British political editor and “Bagehot” columnist, in London. In the summer of 2012 he moved to Washington DC. He was “Lexington” columnist 2012-17, and Washington bureau chief 2013-18. In May 2018 he moved to China as Beijing bureau chief, launching “Chaguan” that year. He has written special reports for The Economist on China and the world order, on the China-U.S. relationship, on Hispanics in America, and on the enlargement of the EU to take in formerly communist countries.

Previously, he was on the foreign staff of the Daily Telegraph, with postings in Sydney, Beijing, Washington DC and Brussels. From 2006 until he joined The Economist he was also a contributing editor to the Spectator. He is a contributing panelist on the “1A” program on NPR/WAMU. He is a graduate of Cambridge University.

The Jury praised a number of other entries this year. Their citations follow:

“Uditha Jayasinghe and Devjyot Ghoshal of Reuters, reporting from Sri Lanka, dispassionately captured the country’s tragic descent into economic crisis, as a nepotistic government made a series of bad decisions that left farmers without fertilizer, hospitals without life-saving drugs, and petrol stations without fuel. They then covered the massive protests that eventually overturned the government, leading to a China vs. India rivalry for influence that emerged in the revolution’s wake.”

“Nikkei Asia’s Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li, two of the world’s most knowledgeable tech reporters, delivered an extraordinarily detailed package of coverage that demonstrated the futility of efforts to shorten and nationalize semiconductor supply chains, a critical national-security and economic question for many countries.”

The People’s Archive, from India, published a detailed, important look at the difficulties many of the 200 million Indians living in Uttar Pradesh have accessing healthcare, often because of reasons of caste or socioeconomic status.”

The jury for the Osborn Elliott Prize is chaired by Marcus Brauchli, managing partner of North Base Media and the former top editor of both The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. Jurors for the 2023 prize are: Barbara Demick, journalist, author, and 2006 Osborn Elliott Prize winner; Dorinda Elliott, Executive Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and formerly with Newsweek; Nisid Hajari, author, member of the Bloomberg editorial board and a former top editor at Newsweek; and Norman Pearlstine, media executive and advisor and former top editor at the Los Angeles Times, Time Inc., and The Wall Street Journal.

The Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia, affectionately referred to as the “Oz Prize,” honors the late Osborn Elliott, legendary journalist, author and former editor-in-chief of Newsweek. Elliott was a leading figure in the field of journalism who became one of the earliest practitioners of “civic journalism”—the deliberate focusing of the journalistic enterprise on urgent issues of public policy.

Find out more about the Oz Prize at AsiaSociety.org/OzPrize.

India Slips To 161 Position Out Of 180 In World Press Freedom Index

India’s ranking has fallen to 161 in the World Press Freedom Index-2023 in the list 180 countries. It is for the second year India is slipping in the ranking. According to the report by global media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) alias Reporters without Borders, India is down 11 points in the index this year. The situation has gone from “problematic’’ to ‘very bad’ in three countries, including India and Tajikistan, it added.

World Press Freedom Index 2023 is revealed by the overseer of Media Industry, Reporters Without Borders (RSF). This is the 21st edition of the annual report, according to which, Norway acquired the topmost position whereas the lowest was North Korea. Norway has a self-regulated press and it is for the 7th time that this Northern European Country remained dominant.

Reporters Without Borders is a non-profit organisation that examined 180 nations across the world and highlighted their working conditions in terms of Journalism and Mass Media. India has shown a disheartening performance in the index as it got a poor global score of 36.62.

Picture : Human Rights Watch

In its annual report, the Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) assessed the state of freedom for media countries. In 2021, India’s ranking was 150, down from a ranking of 142 on the press freedom index. The report also stated that violence against journalists, the politically partisan media and the concentration of media ownership all demonstrate that press freedom is in crisis in the world’s largest democracy.

The RSF released the report on Wednesday with details of media freedom collected from across 180 countries. Pakistan is ranked at 150, seven points up, while Nepal is at 95. Sri Lanka is up 11 points at 135, while Myanmar at 173 has moved 3 points higher. The report has stated that the Indian media landscape is like India itself–huge and densely populated–and has more than 1,00,000 newspapers including 36,000 weeklies, and 380 TV channels.

“Originally a product of the anti-colonial movement, the India press sued to be seen as fairly progressive, but things changed radically when Narendra Modi became prime minister and engineered a spectacular rapprochement between his party, the BJP and the big families dominating the media.”

In 2022, India reached the 150th rank and now it lost 11 positions to get down to 161 which is quite bad for the journalism environment. RSS is of the view that the situation is worse than it seems. The organisation evaluated the situation as “very serious” in 31 countries and “difficult” in 42.

Not only this, the status of the press is termed as “problematic” across 55 nations and “good” or “satisfactory” in 52. Only 3 out of 10 nations reveal satisfactory results in the worldwide record of 2023.

The report said that Mukesh Ambani owns more than 70 media outlets across India that are followed by at least 800 million Indians. “Indian journalists who are too critical of the government are subjected to all-out harassment and attack campaigns”, the report stated.

It further said: “At the national level, the Central government has seen that it can exploit this to impose its own narrative, and is now spending more than 130 billion rupees a year on ads in the print and online media alone.”

The list focuses on the quality of the mass media environment around the globe which has declined in the past few years. It explains disturbances and changes that are simultaneously occurring in the Media Industry. These revolutions can be social, political and technological considering today’s scenario.

World Press Freedom Day was held on May 03 (Wednesday) this year and the report of the global rankings was also published on the same day. India got the 161st position out of all 180 countries that were given global scores as well.

Acknowledging False Claims, Fox News Agrees To Pay $787.5 Million In Dominion’s Defamation Lawsuit

Fox News settled Dominion Voting Systems’ blockbuster defamation lawsuit just as it was about to go to trial, agreeing to pay it $787.5 million, media reports stated. “The parties have resolved this case,” Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis said in court Tuesday afternoon.

It is the largest publicly disclosed settlement for a defamation lawsuit in US history. Davis, who has been presiding over the case, previously decided to push back the start of the case one day, giving lawyers for both sides an extra day to devote to settlement discussions.

Dominion CEO John Poulos criticized Fox for broadcasting lies about the company and thanks election officials throughout the US. “Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees, and the customers that we serve,” he said. “Nothing can ever make up for that.”

In a statement, Fox News said it was “pleased to have reached a settlement” which it claimed represented a commitment to journalistic standards. “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” a Fox spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

The settlement is a victory for Dominion, which no longer has to contend with the prospect of a six-week trial and potentially years of grueling appeals if it had won. But it also means that Fox News’s many detractors won’t get to see the right-wing media network’s biggest executives and stars — including Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity — grilled on the witness stand.

Fox News hosts will not be required to issue retractions or many any other statements under the terms of the agreement, a person familiar with its terms told Insider. In a press conference after Davis announced the settlement, Justin Nelson, an attorney for Dominion, said the $787.5 million payout represented “vindication and accountability.”

“People across the political spectrum can and should disagree on issues even of the most profound importance,” he said. “For our democracy to endure for another 250 years and hopefully much longer, we must share a commitment to facts.”

Settlement talks have been brewing

On Sunday night, Davis pushed back the trial’s start from Monday to Tuesday. Several outlets reported that both sides were in settlement discussions.

At the same time, on the court docket, each side slung filings arguing over technical issues that could determine how much Dominion would be able to claim in damages in the trial.

On Tuesday morning, the case still seemed headed to trial as Davis completed jury selection. Dominion and Fox each had about two dozen lawyers present in court.

But Davis extended the jurors’ lunch break by more than two hours as he retreated to his chambers — beckoning attorneys from both parties to join him — and gave rise to more speculation among the journalists assembled in court that a settlement was imminent.

Dominion filed its lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., in March 2021. It alleged the network defamed it when its hosts Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and Lou Dobbs brought on conspiracy theorist lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell as guests.

Trump hired Giuliani and Powell to challenge his loss in the 2020 election. The two spun a fantastical, false tale claiming Dominion — in cahoots with rival election technology company Smartmatic — rigged the election by switching votes from Trump to now-President Joe Biden.

Fox News hosts, Dominion alleged, either endorsed or didn’t sufficiently push back against those claims when they invited Powell and Giuliani on their shows.

Davis had already ruled it was “CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” and that Dominion only had to prove Fox acted with “actual malice” — the legal standard for defamation cases involving public figures. Fox, for its part, claimed it was simply reporting the news and that its broadcasts were protected by the First Amendment. First Amendment experts overwhelmingly believed it was Dominion’s case to lose.

In brief remarks on Tuesday afternoon, Davis thanked the jurors for their service and praised attorneys from both Fox and Dominion for their professionalism and the quality of their legal briefs. “I’ve been on the bench since 2010, and I think this is the best lawyering I’ve ever had — ever,” he said.

Fox News’s secrets have already been spilled

Two years of litigation have already dealt Fox heavy blows. In court filings leading up to the trial, Dominion shared excerpts from numerous depositions, texts, and emails from Fox’s executives, hosts, and producers. They depicted a newsroom desperately trying to stay on Trump’s good side while fending off competition from Newsmax, a further-right media network that more explicitly embraced his election lies. Fox News was more interested in protecting its viewership ratings than reporting the news, Dominion argued.

Internal messages showed that Powell shared an email demonstrating her claims of election fraud relied in part on someone claiming to be a time-traveling headless ghost. Carlson, Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and multiple producers all privately believed she had taken leave of her senses, though they didn’t say as much on air and were slow to accept Biden’s electoral victory anyway. People close to Murdoch believed Giuliani, for his part, was frequently drunk. Ingraham called him an “idiot.”

Carlson — the Fox News host with the highest primetime ratings — said in texts that he “passionately” hated Trump and thought him a “demonic force” who nonetheless had the capacity to “destroy” the network. He and Hannity tried to get a Fox News reporter fired when she fact-checked Trump on Twitter.

“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson wrote as he lost the 2020 election. “I truly can’t wait.” Murdoch had recognized that Fox News’s audience was in Trump’s thrall and said it “would have been stupid” to alienate them. After the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, he said it was time to make Trump a “non-person.”

Throughout this period, Dominion sent Fox 3,600 fact-checking messages, which it said were widely circulated throughout the network. One executive “received Dominion’s fact check so many times that on November 14 he wrote a colleague: ‘I have it tattooed on my body at this point,'” Dominion lawyers wrote in a filing.

After being told that Dobbs ran false information about election fraud on one of his shows, one producer responded, “Jesus Christ. Does anyone do a fucking simple google search or read emails?” according to a filing. A top executive said “the North Koreans do a more nuanced show” than Dobbs.

As for airing ads from Mike Lindell — the MyPillow CEO who shared an even more outlandish conspiracy theory about Dominion and Smartmatic than the one pushed by Powell and Giuliani — Murdoch agreed in a deposition that he was happy to take his money.

The case has also been beset by late twists. The judge has admonished Fox’s lawyers for withholding certain discovery evidence until right before the start of the trial. And Abby Grossberg, a former producer for Carlson and Bartiromo, alleged that Fox’s attorneys coached her answers in a deposition given for Dominion’s lawsuit. “They’re activists, not journalists,” Grossberg said of Fox News producers in court filings.

It was a common sentiment on Twitter: Fox News has disgraced American democracy by pushing lies that the 2020 election was stolen, Fox’s detractors say. A reckoning in a courtroom, where a judge has no patience for falsehoods, is an important way to bring a reckoning, these people say. A settlement — on the eve of a trial, no less — would let Fox News escape accountability once again, the argument goes.Fox is not out of the woods

The prospect of shareholder lawsuits may complicate any payout to Dominion. One such lawsuit, already working its way through Delaware Chancery Court, alleges Fox Corp. breached its fiduciary duties by allowing Fox News to broadcast election lies and expose it to litigation from Smartmatic and Dominion.

A settlement, First Amendment experts say, may also make Fox the target of future defamation lawsuits from plaintiffs who believe they’ll get a payout. Murdoch already has a record of settling lawsuits: A Washington Post analysis found his companies paid out nearly $750 million over the past 13 years to settle legal claims, including sexual harassment and hacking allegations.

potentially greater risk is a case from Smartmatic, which asks for $2.7 billion in damages. That lawsuit, filed in New York state court, also names Giuliani as a defendant. (The company’s lawsuit against Powell is progressing through a court in Washington, DC, for jurisdictional reasons.) Court filings indicate that Smartmatic has drawn on some of the evidence in the Dominion lawsuit for its own case.

“Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign. Smartmatic will expose the rest,” Smartmatic attorney J. Erik Connolly said in a statement Tuesday. “Smartmatic remains committed to clearing its name, recouping the significant damage done to the company, and holding Fox accountable for undermining democracy.”

India’s Supreme Court Blasts Government For Denying People’s Rights

A media outlet cannot be muzzled just because it criticizes the government, India’s Supreme Court said on April 5th, as it lifted curbs on a Malayalam news channel, ordered by the centre on “national security” grounds. “National security can’t be raised to deny people their rights… it was raised by the Home Ministry in a cavalier manner in this case,” the Supreme Court said.

The court said that the channel MediaOne’s criticism of the government’s policies and actions cannot be construed as anti-national or anti-establishment, and that an independent press is essential for a vibrant democracy.

Scrapping an order by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting that refused to renew the channel’s broadcast license for want of security clearance, the Supreme Court pulled up the Home Ministry for raising national security claims out of “thin air”.

“National security can’t be raised to deny people their rights… it was raised by the Home Ministry in a cavalier manner in this case,” the court led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud said, overruling the Kerala High Court which had upheld the centre’s decision.

The judges said the center had failed to show any material facts or evidence to justify its decision to impose the broadcast ban on MediaOne, which was one of the few channels that reported extensively on the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests in 2020 and the riots in Delhi that it spawned.

“There is nothing to show terrorist links. National security claims cannot be made on the basis of thin air. It is seen that none of the material is against national security or threatens public order,” the court said.

The court observed that the government cannot be allowed to have a stand that the press must support the government. It said criticism of the government cannot be a ground to revoke the license of a TV channel.

Coming down heavily on the center’s attempt to keep its rationale under wraps, and file them under “sealed cover”, the court said, “Sealed cover proceedings cannot be adopted to avoid the harm caused by public immunity proceedings. We are of the opinion that public immunity proceedings are a less restrictive means to safeguard the public interest.”

“There cannot be a blanket immunity to the government for disclosure of information to the other parties in a proceeding before the court… All investigation reports cannot be termed secret as these affect the rights and liberty of the citizens,” the Supreme Court said.

MediaOne, which had several run-ins with the BJP-led government at the centre, had gone off the air last year on January 31 after its name was removed from the list of permitted channels by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. On March 15 last year, the Supreme Court had put the Kerala High Court order, which had backed the center’s decision, on hold.

Modi Is Trying To Silence The Media

India’s tax crackdown on the BBC, weeks after it aired a documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has made news around the world. But foreign correspondents based in the country say this is not the first act of hostility by the Modi government.

Privately, since 2019, they allege they have been facing visa uncertainty, denial of travel permits, even deportation threats, prompting them to conduct internal surveys to capture the extent of the harassment.

These surveys, which Scroll has seen, paint a picture of growing intimidation, which many respondents attributed to their critical reporting of the government. They said the government wanted to suppress coverage of the persecution of religious minorities in India and regions such as Kashmir and Assam.

Many left anonymous comments in the surveys stating that they had been “summoned” by officials and ministers and shown “files” and “spreadsheets” detailing their “negative coverage”.

A journalist working for a European news organisation recounted an instance of the Indian embassy in their home country emailing the publication, asking it “not to cover Muslim persecution”. (Scroll has reviewed this email sent by a senior Indian diplomat to the news organisation in 2020. Identifying details are being withheld on request.)

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Delhi has shared the findings of these surveys with the Ministry of External Affairs, officials on the board of the club said. “The discussions are ongoing,” one of them said, requesting anonymity. “The ministry has told us they will be taking up the issues with the relevant authorities.”

Scroll has sought a response from the ministry to the allegations made by the foreign journalists in the surveys. The ministry is yet to respond.

Restricting access

The surveys were conducted by journalists based in Delhi, who are members of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, among foreign correspondents all over the country. The first survey was carried out among 40 journalists in January 2020, in the aftermath of major upheavals in Jammu and Kashmir and Assam.

In August 2019, the Indian government revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. As foreign journalists prepared to travel to report on the impact of the move, they were told by the external affairs ministry that they had to seek prior permission to travel anywhere in Jammu and Kashmir, including the capital, Srinagar.

Picture : Digital Photo Pro

Until then, only “parts of Jammu and Kashmir” were included in the government’s list of restricted and protected areas for which foreign journalists require travel permits from the home ministry. Even the partial restriction on travel to J&K had gone largely unenforced, barring a brief period in 1990, according to journalists who have been in the country for decades.

The noose, however, had started tightening since 2016. In May that year, the external affairs ministry sent an email to foreign correspondents “reiterating” that travel permits were required for visiting Nagaland, Sikkim, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and parts of Manipur, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir. Two years later, it sent another reminder on similar lines.

But in August 2019, it extended the restrictions to the whole of Jammu and Kashmir, which has resulted in a near-total ban on foreign reporting from the former state that is now directly governed by New Delhi. No foreign correspondent has since independently gone on a reporting trip to the Kashmir valley.

In October, the Indian government arranged a Kashmir tour for select members of a European Union parliamentary delegation. Photo: PTI

Around the same time, Assam was updating its National Register of Citizens – a highly contentious exercise that critics said targeted religious and linguistic minorities. Although Assam was not officially on the list of places that foreign correspondents required a permit to visit, a foreign journalist was allegedly put back on a plane by state authorities in September 2019.

The January 2020 survey attempted to capture the extent of this clampdown. Of the 30 foreign journalists who had applied for travel permits in 2019 – most to report from Kashmir and Assam – 21 never heard back. (https://scroll.in/article/1044558/modi-is-trying-to-silence-the-foreign-press-heres-how)

Karthik Subramaniam Wins National Geographic’s 2023 ‘Pictures Of The Year’ Award

Karthik Subramaniam of Indian descent, hobbyist photographer is winner of National Geographic’s “Pictures of the Year” Contest. His photo, titled ‘Dance of the Eagles,’ shows a trio of bald eagles battling for a spot on a branch in Alaska’s Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve. Subramaniam told National Geographic about how he camped out near the shore of the preserve for a week in order to capture the perfect shot.

“Every year in November, hundreds of bald eagles gather at Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve near Haines, Alaska to feast on salmon. I visited there last two Novembers to photograph them,” he said. Subramaniam began experimenting with wildlife photography during the pandemic, when he explored local nature reserves and city parks while businesses and travel were halted.

Selected from nearly 5000 entries, Subramaniam’s winning image, “Dance of the Eagles” depicts a bald eagle battling its fellows for a prime spot on a tree in the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve in Alaska, the magazine announced in a Feb 17 press release.

Subramaniam told National Geographic how he camped out near the shore of this preserve for a week to capture the perfect shot.

Picture : Digital Photo Pro

“Wherever there’s salmon, there’s going to be chaos,” he said. On the last day of Subramaniam’s week-long trip, he watched as bald eagles “swooped in and out of the fishing ground.”

Subramaniam chose a spot near a log where a few birds lingered — and trained his lens on a nearby branch. He was in the right place when he caught an incoming eagle sweep in to bump his bird buddy out of a prime spot on a branch.

He captured the maneuver and named it “Dance of the Eagles,” after George R.R. Martin’s novel “A Dance with Dragons.”

“Every year in November, hundreds of bald eagles gather at Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve near Haines, Alaska, to feast on salmon. I visited there last two Novembers to photograph them,” Subramaniam said.

“Studying their behavior patterns helped me anticipate some of their actions. For example, when an eagle drags salmon to a dry spot, other eagles in the area would inevitably fly there to claim their share, and that leads to chaotic action.”

“They also seemed to have some favorite spots to hang out, and usually, commotion ensues when an eagle wants an already occupied spot. This photo was taken during one such commotion.”

Subramaniam first began experimenting with wildlife photography while sequestered in his San Francisco home during the coronavirus pandemic. During that time he explored local nature reserves and walked city parks to search for birds and other wildlife.

In recognition of his work, Subramaniam will have his photo featured in the May issue of National Geographic magazine, alongside Nat Geo’s leading photographers, and receive a six-month digital subscription to the magazine.

Nine additional photos were selected as honorable mention winners: Alex Berger, An Li, Bruce Taubert, Eric Esterle, Rhez Solano, Riten Dharia, Tayfun Coskun, Tihomir Trichkov and W. Kent Williamson.

The honorable mention winners will be showcased on National Geographic’s Your Shot Instagram page to more than 6.5 million followers, in addition to receiving a six-month digital subscription to the magazine.

Subramaniam’s “Dance of the Eagles” photo was named grand-prize winner after a rigorous vetting process by a team of seasoned Nat Geo photo editors, it said.

Tied to the brand’s annual Pictures of the Year list featuring National Geographic’s top images of the year — 118 out of more than 2 million total — the photo contest invited aspiring photographers from across the country to submit their own favorite image captured in 2022, broken into four categories: Nature, People, Places and Animals.

India’s Supreme Court Denies Gag Order For Media On The Adani Issue

The Supreme Court of India has rejected a plea seeking to gag the media from reporting on the Adani-Hindenburg issue till the court pronounces its order. Rejecting the petition filed by advocate M L Sharma, a bench headed by CJI DY Chandrachud said, “We are not going to issue any injunction to the media.”

The apex court had reserved its order on February 20 on a batch of PILs on the recent Adani Group shares crash triggered by Hindenburg Research’s fraud allegations.

Significance

The top court on February 17 had refused to accept in a sealed cover the Centre’s suggestion on a proposed panel of experts for strengthening regulatory measures for the stock market.

Observing that it wants to maintain full transparency in the interests of investors, it said it would rather not accept the Centre’s suggestion in a sealed cover.

Investors’ interests

On February 10, the top court had said the interests of Indian investors need to be protected against market volatility in the backdrop of the Adani Group stock rout and asked the Centre to consider setting up a panel of domain experts headed by a former judge to look into strengthening the regulatory mechanism.

Till now, four PILs have been filed in the top court on the issue. Adani Group stocks have taken a beating on the bourses after the Hindenburg Research made a litany of allegations, including fraudulent transactions and share price manipulation, against the business conglomerate.

The Adani Group has dismissed the charges as lies, saying it complies with all laws and disclosure requirements.

Survey Or Raid Has No Difference To BBC

The word survey means “to examine and record the area and features of a place so as to construct a map, plan, or description”. It also means “to collect data over a period in order to assess them and reach a conclusion”.

The word raid means “a rapid surprise attack on an enemy by troops, aircraft, or other armed forces”. In the civil context, it means sending a large number of officers to an office or home to collect evidence, without giving time to the people concerned to hide or camouflage wealth or data”.

The Income Tax Department says it did not conduct a “raid” on the offices of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in Delhi and Mumbai. What it conducted was a “survey”. What exactly did the department do? It did not give any advance notice to the BBC about the “survey”.

What happened was that a large number of Income Tax officers descended on the two buildings and started searching the offices. The staff, including journalists, were not allowed to make telephone calls, hold meetings or leave the offices. Their computers were opened and they were asked so many questions. The “survey” continued for two days.

How can this be called a survey when it resembles a “raid”? The government wanted to give the impression that what it did was a routine “survey” of the two offices and there was nothing more than met the eye in the action. Let it be made clear that only fools can be misled in this manner.

There was a report circulated by Hindenburg Research, which the mainstream media tried to ignore when it came out. But when it became viral on social media, the media was compelled to take notice of it. What did the report say?

It said that the Adani Group, headed by Gautam Adani, was using devious means to achieve its growth rate. It mentioned how it saved money on tax, how it parked money abroad and how it used the parked money to re-invest in the company and how the company used the expansion process to become richer and richer, day by day.

Adani was just a small company when, in 2014, he gave Narendra Modi his commodious helicopter to campaign all over the country. He is a good investor and he knew that the investment he made in providing a helicopter with full tank aviation fuel and staff throughout the period of the campaign would fetch him rewards.

What a proud moment it was for Adani when Modi arrived in Delhi to take over as the Prime Minister of India in his aircraft! Modi was very grateful to him. Whenever he went abroad, he took with him a group of businessmen in his special aircraft.

He stopped the practice of letting journalists travel with him. Among the businessmen who accompanied him on such trips was Gautam Adani. Neither JRD Tata nor Dhirubhai Ambani had the privilege of travelling with Prime Minister.

Adani used the connections so well that he began to outstep every company in the country. The Tatas, the Birlas, the Ambanis and the Mahindras were all overtaken by the Adani Group in no time. When Covid struck the nation and the government imposed a lockdown on the country, millions of people lost their livelihood.

We saw tens of thousands of people leaving cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad and walking all the way to their villages in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, etc. It was the period when even middle class people were dipping into their savings to manage their day-to-day affairs, as many companies were closed or could not pay salaries.

One extraordinary thing was happening in the country during this period. The Adani Group was growing by leaps and bounds. Everyday its assets were increasing by about Rs 1700 crore. Did Adani invent a new product like a car which can run 10,000 miles on a single litre of petrol?

No, he was doing what a good trader always does. He was fleecing the customer, in this case, the Indian state. He was bypassing every law of the land to become richer. The government helped him in the process by letting him have the contracts for new airports and new seaports.

Suddenly, Gautam Adani became the richest person in India, richer than Mukesh Ambani. What’s more, he became the richest person in Asia that includes China. He also became the third richest person in the world, overtaking Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Speculations already began when he would become the world’s richest person. That is when the Hindenburg Research report came. It was just a prick for the over-aired Adani balloon. Within days, he came down from the position of the third richest person to the 24th richest person!

Social media is full of stories of how he cheated investors and the government to become so rich. All his wealth was based on cooked-up figures. The Group tried to brave the challenge by going forward with its follow-on-public offer worth Rs 20,000 crore.

As was required, some shares were earmarked for the employees of Adani. Who knows the company better than the employees? Is it, therefore, any surprise that only 50 per cent of the shares earmarked for the staff were sold? Only 11 per cent of the shares meant for the general public were lifted?

It means that the people believe in the Hindenburg Research report that the Adani Group used “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud”. What the report said was known to everyone who matters in the country. If one searches Parliament records, he will know how Opposition MPs had pointed their accusing finger at the Adani Group.

The company was forced to withdraw its follow-on-public offer. It offered to return the money invested to the investors. If the investors were various outfits of the same Group, it could be treated as a coincidence.

As the controversy over the Adani saga filled the minds of the people, one person remained silent. He is Narendra Modi. Even when he was asked specific questions in Parliament, he preferred to attack the Congress for what it did in the hoary past.

A sensible government would have ordered a check of all the institutional mechanisms to ensure that if the Adani Group went down the Sabarmati River, it would not affect the general public, especially those whose money is deposited in banks like the State Bank of India and public sector companies like the Life Insurance Corporation of India.

Instead, a raid-like survey of the BBC was ordered. Ideally, the Income Tax authorities should have conducted the raid on the Adani Group offices to find out the truth contained in the Hindenburg Research report that the people in general believe. Why did it choose BBC, instead?

Let there be no mistakes. It is a retaliation in the context of the two-part documentary the BBC broadcast on the Gujarat riots of 2002 and later developments in the country titled “India: The Modi Question”. Officially what the IT Department said was that the BBC was indulging in “transfer pricing” and “diversion of profit”.

In these days when the Income Tax Department has access to all the banking transactions of a person or a company, it is not difficult to find out if there are any suspicious transactions. In any case, the BBC is a public broadcaster which runs on the licence fee every British citizen pays to listen to or watch its programmes.

Its offices in Delhi do not have transactions which are worth even a fraction of the transaction of the Adani Group which is now under a cloud. The BBC is not new to India.

Former Defence Minister A.K. Antony’s son was so perturbed over the BBC documentary that he even risked his membership in the Congress to attack the BBC.

He asked rhetorically whether the BBC had not shown the Indian map, showing Kashmir as a disputed territory? Did he not know that Britain and the US did not give Modi a visa to visit their countries when he was the chief minister of Gujarat?

Did he not know that the BBC has been reporting India even before his father was born, i.e., when the Rashtrapati Bhavan was known as the Viceroy’s House and the Union Jack received the salute of the Indian Army. If tomorrow India occupies what the Pakistanis call Azad Kashmir and what we call Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, the BBC will show the map differently to indicate that Muzaffarabad and Gilgit are now part of India.

I would have been happy to know Antony Junior’s response to the raid on the BBC, which Rajiv Gandhi tuned into to confirm whether the Intelligence Bureau report about her mother’s assassination was correct or not. Modi was once an unabashed admirer of the BBC when All India Radio was known as All Indira Radio! It is a different matter that Modi evaded arrest and went abroad when the Emergency was clamped on the country.

Even a child knows that the IT survey was related to the BBC documentary which critically examined the riots in Gujarat in 2002, even giving the views of the ruling party. The overall impression it gave to the viewers was that the leadership in Gujarat at that time had a lot to explain for its acts of omission and commission. Modi was the chief minister at that time.

The commentary was a compilation of facts, figures, videos and statements that could be left to the people to reach their own conclusions. The aggrieved parties like the BJP could have come out with their own version of how and why the “pogrom” happened, particularly when the Union Home Minister Amit Shah himself claims credit for the achievements that flowed from the riots.

Even before the second part of the documentary was released, the Government ordered online media platforms to disable the links they had given to the first part of the documentary under rules which should not have been invoked at all.

It also ordered blocking of all tweets that had links to the documentary. Such a hyper-active reaction was unwarranted. It only raised doubts about the government’s own credibility. It is against this backdrop that the people in general have reservations about the IT Survey.

Nobody argues that if the BBC violated Indian tax laws, it should be let off simply because it is a multinational broadcaster with enormous clout. However, there are established ways in which its transgressions, if any, could have been dealt with. The survey was certainly not the way.

It is not the first time that government agencies like the CBI, the IT Department and the Enforcement Directorate have been used to pressurise media organisations which had either critically examined government policies or exposed some wrong-doing.

Organisations like NDTV, NewsClick, the Dainik Bhaskar Group of Publications and the organisation that funds the Centre for Policy Research have over the last few years experienced the high-handedness of such agencies. What the BBC has been undergoing is a similar kind of treatment.

Perhaps, the government wants to proclaim that it can get even with any organisation that embarrasses it, even if it is by way of espousing the truth. Revenge has now become a state policy!

A few years ago, the BBC did a documentary on the Uighars of the Xinjiang province of China, which was not to the liking of the government there. It brought to limelight the problem of missing Muslims. The broadcaster was condemned for what it did.

However, there is a fundamental difference between India and China. While it is a dictatorial regime that rules China, India takes pride in the fact that it is the largest democracy in the world.

A nation cannot be considered democratic, if it does not have a vibrant media that can critique the government. The media serves the purpose of a watchdog and if it is bridled, it will cease to be a democracy.

Ask any media person in Delhi and he will tell you how the government has stopped journalists from visiting the Central hall of Parliament to interact with political leaders. He will also tell you how the government has imposed more restrictions on journalists covering Parliament.

In short, the media has become “unwanted” in the country. Modi believes that he can communicate directly with the people through his tweets and Mann Ki Baath, little realising that a controlled media can play havoc, as it would give credence to rumours. Indira Gandhi realised the danger of controlling the media. Modi too will realise it, sooner than later.

See how the secrecy that surrounded the Adani companies finally brought it down when a mirror was shown to it by Hindenburg Research. (Courtesy: The Indian Currents)

India’s Supreme Court Intervenes On BBC Film Ban Case

The Supreme Court of India has directed the Central Government led by Narendra Modi to produce original records relating to its decision to block a BBC documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots. However, it turned down a plea for an interim order to direct the government to make public its gag order and said the matter would be examined on the next date of hearing.

Petitions

The top court issued notices to the government and others on pleas filed by veteran journalist N Ram, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan and lawyer M L Sharma.

Emergency powers

The SC asked the petitioners why they did not approach the high court in the matter. Senior advocate CU Singh, appearing for Ram and the others, submitted that the government has invoked the emergency powers under the Information Technology (IT) Rules to block the documentary. The Supreme Court said it is also a fact that people have been accessing the documentary.

‘Arbitrary & unconstitutional’

One of the petitioners has also alleged that the ban on the documentary ‘India: The Modi question’ was “malafide, arbitrary and unconstitutional”.

Freedom of press

Ram and others, in their pleas, have sought a direction to restrain the government from curbing their right to “receive and disseminate information” on the documentary.

The contents of the BBC documentary are protected under Article 19(1)(a) (freedom of speech and expression) of the Constitution, the plea said, adding that the contents of the series do not fall under any of the restrictions specified in Article 19(2).

Reacting strongly after Ram filed his plea, India’s Law Minister Kiren Rijiju had tweeted, “This is how they waste the precious time of Hon’ble Supreme Court where thousands of common citizens are waiting and seeking dates for justice.”

The Top 50 Most Visited Websites In The World

If we were to rank all of these websites according to their traffic numbers, we would see a classic power law distribution. At the low end, the vast majority of these websites would be inactive, receiving little to no traffic. On the upper end of the ranking though, a handful of websites receive the lion’s share of internet traffic.

Estimates vary, but there are upwards of two billion websites in existence in 2023. This visualization, using data from SimilarWeb, takes a look at the 50 websites that currently sit at the top of the ranking.

Which Websites Get the Most Traffic?

Topping the list of most-visited websites in the world is, of course, Google. With over 3.5 billion searches per day, Google has cemented its position as the go-to source for information on the internet. But Google’s dominance doesn’t stop there. The company also owns YouTube, the second-most popular website in the world. Together, Google and YouTube have more traffic than the next 48 websites combined.

The power of YouTube, in particular, is sometimes not fully understood. The video platform is the second largest search engine in the world after Google. As well, YouTube has the second highest duration-of-visit numbers in this top 50 ranking. (First place goes to the Chinese video sharing website, Bilibili.)

But Google and YouTube aren’t the only big players on the internet. Other websites in the top 50 ranking include social media giants Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. In particular, TikTok has seen a surge in popularity in recent years and is now one of the most popular social media platforms in the world.

Here’s the full top 50 ranking table form:

Rank Website Monthly Traffic Category Country
#1 google.com 85.1B Search Engines U.S.
#2 youtube.com 33.0B Streaming & Online TV U.S.
#3 facebook.com 17.8B Social Media Networks U.S.
#4 twitter.com 6.8B Social Media Networks U.S.
#5 instagram.com 6.1B Social Media Networks U.S.
#6 baidu.com 5.0B Search Engines China
#7 wikipedia.org 4.8B Dictionaries & Encyclopedias U.S.
#8 yandex.ru 3.4B Search Engines Russia
#9 yahoo.com 3.3B News & Media Publishers U.S.
#10 whatsapp.com 2.9B Social Media Networks U.S.

Showing 1 to 10 of 50 entries

Notable companies that have fallen out of the top 50 since our last version of this visualization are Walmart and PayPal. Notable entrants into the top 50 are Samsung and the New York Times.

The Geography of the 50 Most-Visited Websites

The United States is still home base for many of the world’s biggest websites, taking up 30 spots on this ranking. Of these 30 websites, half are operated by Big Tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Netflix.

Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea round out the top five.

Things get interesting in the “other” category, which includes six websites. Two spots are taken up by Aaj Tak and Globo, which are large media publications in India and Brazil, respectively.

The remaining four websites—XVideos, PornHub, XHamster, and XNXX—specialize in adult content, and are located in a variety of countries. These are often referred to as “tube sites” since they are built on the YouTube model.

Realsrv, the only adult-oriented site in the top 50 located in the U.S., is interesting to delve into as well, since it’s far from a household name. The website essentially supports advertising efforts by redirecting users away from the content they were viewing over to another page (generally premium adult content). This is one of the key ways that adult websites earn revenue.

Parveen Chopra’s Wellness And Spirituality Magazine Launched In New York

Renowned Indian American media personality, Parveen Chopra’s new wellness and spirituality magazine was launched in a ceremony hosted by the Indian Consulate in New York on January 21, 2023.

The new venture, Lotus in the Mud, offers insights and inspiration for people to be healthy, happy and peaceful, a news release noted. The online site, alotusinthemud.com offers insights and inspiration for people to be healthy, happy and peaceful, according to a press release from Chopra, who explained that the name, ‘Lotus in the mud’ is a key concept in Hinduism and Buddhism, signifying that one may get caught up in problems, but that people have an inherent capability to emerge in full bloom.

At the launch event, India’s Consul General Randhir Jaiswal called the initiative “another slice of India in America promoting wellness through yoga, right food habits, etc, and which people should benefit from.”

Consul General Randhir Jaiswal unveiled the website during the ceremony, describing it as “another slice of India in America promoting wellness through yoga, right food habits, etc, and which people should benefit from.”

Chopra said Lotus In The Mud carried the collective wisdom  of many like-minded writers, experts and advisers. “We tap the world’s religious and spiritual traditions for wisdom as well as modern medical and scientific research to present content for people to be fully productive and successful and yet be healthy, happy and centered,” he explained.

Picture : TheUNN

Subjects covered on the site range from ‘The big questions of life as answered by Hinduism, ‘The 4 happy hormones and how to boost them’, ‘Practical uses of faith – a Zoroastrian perspective’, and ‘Beware  the frozen food convenience’ etc. It also offers short meditations,  personality quizzes and space for visitors to share their experiences of healing and personal/spiritual growth.

Guest speakers at the event included Nitin Ajmera, chairman of the Parliament of the World’s Religions; Arvind Vora, founder of Shanti Fund that promotes Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals among school children in Long Island, NY; Reverend Tom Goodhue, emeritus Executive Director of Long Island Council of Churches; and Dr Bhaswati Bhattacharya, author of the bestselling book Everyday Ayurveda.

Chopra’s biography describes him as a trained teacher of meditation, founder of  Life Positive, India’s first body-mind-spirit magazine from New Delhi in 1996. In the United States, he has edited The South Asian Times for more than a decade and One World Under God interfaith journal. The web magazine is published by American Center for Wellness & Spirituality Inc, a non-profit established by Chopra.

The Lotus launch at the Consulate followed felicitation of The South Asian Times (TSAT) Person of the Year 2022, Anil Bansal, former president of the Federation of Indian Associations NYNJCT.

Journalist Angad Singh Blacklisted For Role IN BBC Documentary On Modi

The Indian Government led by the Hindu nationalist Party, Bharatiya Janata Party has informed the Delhi High Court that Angad Singh, a US-based journalist with Vice News, has been blacklisted despite being an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card holder.

On December 7, 2022, a bench of Justice Prathiba M. Singh had directed the Central government to file a response in a suit filed by Singh against his deportation from Delhi to New York in August last year. He has also challenged the refusal to grant him a Special Permit.

Appearing for the Centre, advocate Anurag Ahluwalia told the court that as Singh has violated Section 11A of the Foreigners Order, 1948, which prohibits a foreigner from producing any picture, film or documentary without permission in writing from the Centre, he is a blacklisted subject. He had allegedly depicted India in a negative manner in the “India Burning” documentary.

Singh has covered important issues in his documentaries, including the Shaheen Bagh protests, the farmers’ protests and the Covid-19 pandemic in India, among others. Ahluwalia submitted that Singh was entering India on his journalist visa for a personal visit but he wasn’t issued a visa for that.

The FRRO, in an affidavit, told the court that Singh was blacklisted at the instance of the Consulate General of India in New York.

On January 7, Ahluwalia had said that the affidavit will explain why the petitioner was denied entry into the country. Advocate Swathi Sukumar, representing Singh before the court said that Singh’s OCI card is still valid and has not yet been cancelled.

To this, Ahluwalia sought time to obtain instructions and file a response on whether any show cause notice or proceedings were started against Singh for the cancellation of his OCI card.

The court then granted two weeks’ time to Ahluwalia to file the affidavit. In his plea, Singh has mentioned that his fundamental right under the Citizenship Act, 1955, is being violated by not letting him into India. He has also asked the court to restrain the government from violating his rights.

Earlier, Singh’s counsel had sought a declaration that his deportation from the government was illegal and disclosure of all the materials and data available with the government related to him.

His mother, through a Facebook post, had claimed that he had come to India to meet his family in Punjab and it was because of his journalism that he was deported.

India’s Use Of Emergency Laws Banning BBC Documentary On Modi Sheds Light On Fragile And Fractious Media Freedom

Days after a BBC documentary examining the role that Narendra Modi, now prime minister of India had played in 2002 communal riots in Gujarat was released, India’s Information Ministry announced that all links to the footage were to be banned on social media.

The BBC has said its documentary was “rigorously researched according to highest editorial standards”.

India’s federal government described the two-part documentary India: The Modi Question as “propaganda” and invoked an emergency law to block it on YouTube and Twitter. The response by the Indian government was quick and draconian. Emergency laws brought in by the Modi government just two years ago were used to enforce the ban.

Both Twitter and YouTube quickly complied with the government’s censorship requests. Posts on about 50 Twitter accounts were removed, with activists, politicians and even Hollywood actors among those affected, as well as an unspecified number of YouTube channels. Widely shared clips of the documentary, which alleged that Modi, in his role as chief minister of Gujarat at the time, had enabled and then did nothing to stop the violence in which almost 1,000 Muslims were killed, quickly disappeared from Indian social media.

It is not the first time the Modi government has used the 2021 information technology rules to censor online content critical of the administration. However, the action taken over the BBC documentary is among the most high-profile use of the legislation and sheds light on the fragile and fractious place that social media such as Twitter now occupy in India and directly pits the vow of the platform’s new billionaire owner, Elon Musk, to be a “free speech absolutist” against increasingly authoritarian laws governing the country’s online sphere.

Widely criticized by human rights groups and digital activists, the 2021 IT rules give the government power to remove any content it deems to threaten “the unity, integrity, defense, security or sovereignty of India”.

Even before the passing of the legislation, legal demands made by the Modi government to remove content from Twitter increased by 48,000% between 2014 and 2020, according to the analysis of the company’s transparency reports.

The two-part BBC series documenting the rise of Modi has proved highly controversial in India, despite it only being released in the UK, prompting allegations from the Indian foreign ministry that it was “biased propaganda” that showed a “blatant colonial mindset.”

Kanchan Gupta, a spokesperson for the information ministry, called the documentary “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage” and students who arranged a screening at a university in Kerala this week were accused of being “treasonous”.

At Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University, students who tried the same were hit with an electricity and internet blackout and had stones thrown at them by others from rightwing groups. New Delhi police, clad in riot gear and equipped with tear gas, arrested nearly a dozen students at Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) university ahead of a planned screening. Authorities at the University of Hyderabad are also investigating a screening of the documentary on Saturday.

A local branch of the opposition Congress Party in the southern state of Kerala screened the banned BBC documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, NDTV reported.

The documentary aired Jan. 17 and charts Modi’s political rise through the ranks of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and becoming chief minister of the western state of Gujarat.

It focuses at length on the 2002 Gujarat riots—one of the worst outbreaks of religious violence in India’s recent history—that took place while he led the state. After a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was set on fire in the state, and 59 people were killed, grieving citizens blamed Muslims. Revenge attacks led to over 1,000 deaths.

The documentary highlighted an unpublished report from the U.K. Foreign Office that claims Modi was “directly responsible” for the “climate of impunity” that enabled the violence. Modi denies accusations of personal responsibility for the riots, and his supporters cite a 2013 Supreme Court ruling of there being insufficient evidence to prosecute him.

The BBC also uncovered memos showing that Modi’s conduct was criticised at the time by western diplomats and the British government, including in a government report which found that the riots had “all the hallmarks of an ethnic cleansing”.

Modi has been haunted for decades by allegations of complicity in the violence that took place during the Gujarat riots, which broke out after 59 Hindu pilgrims died on a train that had been set on fire. The fire was blamed on the state’s Muslim population.

Many have cited their compliance with the online censorship of the documentary as an example of how Twitter and YouTube are helping to further erode freedom of speech in India, in order to appease the Modi government and not compromise access to the vast and increasingly online Indian population. There are over 40 million Twitter users in India, making it their third largest market after Japan and the US.

“This use of an emergency law as a censorship mechanism is a very worrying development but it’s far from the first time this has happened,” said Prateek Waghre, the policy director at the advocacy group the Internet Freedom Foundation in India. According to a statement to parliament in July, action was taken against 94 YouTube channels, 19 social media accounts and 747 URLs on the government’s request since the IT rules were passed.

Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter had pushed back – though somewhat inconsistently – against the Modi government’s increasingly heavy-handed approach towards social media. Twitter had restored some of the accounts the administration had demanded the removal of and in July last year filed a lawsuit in Indian courts alleging New Delhi had abused its power by ordering the company to arbitrarily and disproportionately take down accounts belonging to government critics.

Yet for all his protestations to be a crusader for free speech, there are indicators that Musk’s Twitter might be far less bullish in standing up to the Modi government. When Musk was trying to back out of the deal to buy the platform, he made it clear in the court filings that he was unhappy with the lawsuit against the Indian government, saying he believed moderation should Media/Technology“hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates.”

“We’re talking about pressures on freedom of speech in the world’s largest democracy,” Waghre said. “Musk’s pledge has rung hollow everywhere, but in India the impact will certainly be larger.”

The decision to block the documentary comes amid an increasingly challenging environment for media and freedom of the press under the Modi government, with critical journalists and media subjected to state and judicial harassment. Last year, India slipped eight places in the press freedom index to 150 out of 180 counties, its worst position on record. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/25/india-ban-on-bbc-modi-film-elon-musk-twitter-free-speech-emergency-laws)

AAPI’s 17th Global Healthcare Summit Announced During Curtain Raiser in Delhi

(New Delhi, India: January 11, 2023) “After the highly successful Global Healthcare Summit in Visakhapatnam last weekend, I am happy to announce that the 17th annual Global Healthcare Summit will be held in New Delhi from January 2nd to 4th, 2024,” Dr. Anjana Samadder, President-Elect of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) announced here during a Curtain Raiser held at the prestigious Constitution Club in New Delhi on January 9th, 2023.

Organized under the leadership of Dr. Udaya Shivangi, Women’s Forum Chair of AAPI, the kickoff event and press conference was attended by nearly 50 journalists from the nation’s capital and several leaders of APPI, who had come all the way from the United States to be part of this important ceremony. Prominent among those who attended the event included Dr. Seema Arora, past BOT Chair of AAPI, Dr. Raghu Lolabhattu, vice chair of AAPI BOT, Dr. Sreeni Gangasani, Dr. Gautam Samadder, past president of AAPI, Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, Dr. Raj Bhayani, and Dr. Joseph Chalil. Dr. Sampat Shivangi, Chair of AAPI’s Legislative Chair joined the meeting through a message of felicitation sent to the media and AAPI leadership.

In her address, Dr. Anjana Samadder said, the theme for the next global healthcare summit will be “Maa Bachao,” meaning, protecting the mother, which will be a great way to strengthen families and humanity as a whole.

Dr. Sushi Singh, chief guest at the event said, saving the mother and giving her due respect and honor is essential today more than ever. She pointed to the high infant mortality rate in India and urged all sections of society to work together to save girl children.

Picture : TheUNN

Shri. Karthikeyan, a decorated former IPS Officer, in his keynote address,  shared of the many sacrifices and contributions by the fraternity of doctors, and lauded them for their services to humanity, especially during the covid pandemic. He shared with the audience his personal experiences working with the most vulnerable people across society and urged everyone to work compassionately towards the poor and help uplift their lives.

In a message, Dr. Ravi Kolli, president of AAPI said, “The Global Healthcare Summit held annually in India across several states, has become a major contributing factor, where Indian American Doctors focus on various programs and policies in their efforts to make a huge difference in the delivery of healthcare in India.”

“Coming from a nation that has given us so much, today Physicians of Indian origin have become a powerful influence in healthcare across the world,” said Dr. Shivangi.  “Nowhere in the world is their authority more keenly felt than in the United States. The overrepresentation of Indians in the field of medicine is striking – in practical terms, one out of seven doctors in the United States is of Indian Heritage. We provide medical care to over 40 million of the US population.”

During an interactive session with the media persons who had filled the meeting venue, the leaders of AAPI shared with them of the numerous initiatives taken up by AAPI during the course of the past four decades in India as well as in the United States.

“We the physicians of Indian origin are proud of our great achievements and contributions to our motherland, India, our adopted land, the US, and in a very significant way to the transformation of Indo-US relations and help India to have a cost-effective, efficient and advanced healthcare delivery benefitting India’s 1.4 billion people,” they pointed out.

The Global Health Summit held annually in India has been a major contributing factor by Indian American Doctors, focusing on various programs and policies, and making a difference in the delivery of healthcare in India.

In addition to educational seminars/workshops on current topics, the GHS includes a well-organized CEO forum with a panel of eminent healthcare leaders from the US and India, reinforcing the need for preventive care rather than disease management, to control the non-communicable diseases which are the biggest silent killers.

Areas of ongoing skill training, investment in infrastructure, modernizing healthcare delivery, and private-public collaboration specific to each state in the healthcare sector are discussed and specific plans laid out, which are sent in a White Paper report for follow up in the coming months.

Over the past 17 years and beyond, AAPI leadership has been able to establish Collaboration and multiple medical organizations – ACP – FSMB – ECFMG – NMC (India) – IMA (India)  GAPIO – UNICEF – Red Cross Society – CWC – Lifestyle Medicine – MDTok – Apollo Groups, only to name a few. These connections and collaborations are vital for us to stay connected and make a powerful impact on our communities.

Picture : TheUNN

Through AAPI’s charitable activities with service to our motherland as the motto, AAPI has several programs in India and the United States.  Despite the Covid challenges of Delta and Omicron waves, in spite of limited resources, AAPI blood donation drives were done in several cities with several of them organizing multiple events. .

Among several other initiatives, AAPI’s “Adopt a village” Rural Preventive Healthcare Screening Initiative in India, where free health screening camps with free physician consultations were done in several Indian rural villages in the middle of Covid pandemic.

Continuing the efforts towards the Covid-19 Fund – Post-Covid Relief Activities, AAPI has raised over $5 million during the delta wave in India. The ongoing Covid-19 relief work in India is in progress, donating lifesaving equipment to support critically ill patients – Biochemical Analyzers, Ventilators, Oxygen Flow Meters, and Oxygen Plants. The funds will continue to support Covid patients in rural hospitals.

Since its inception 40 years ago, AAPI has served as a link to foster stronger US-India relations and has been lauded by the governments of both nations for their great achievements and contributions.

While proposing vote of thanks, Dr. Gautam Samadder, former President of AAPI said, “Thank you very much for attending the press conference . We appreciate all the efforts media does to promote awareness including health care.
we do hope you will be a integral part of the actual conference next year.”

“We urge you to be part of this event in January 2024 and help create awareness and reach our services to the neediest in India and the United States,” said Dr. Anjana Samadder. For more details about AAPI and its many noble initiatives, please visit: www.aapiusa.org

Fox News Leads Cable Ratings For 7th Consecutive Year

Fox News Channel was the most-watched cable television network in the nation for the seventh consecutive year in 2022, according to Nielsen Media Research data, in a year competitors saw their viewership fall. In total day viewers during the year, Fox averaged 1.4 million compared to 733,000 who watched MSNBC and 568,000 who watched CNN, according to Nielsen Media Research figures.

In the advertiser-rich weekday prime-time slot, Fox came in first with an average of 2.3 million viewers in 2022, with MSNBC netting 1.2 million and CNN coming in third with an average of 730,000.

Each of the three top cable networks experienced a decline in prime-time viewership in 2022, but Fox made up a slight dip in prime time from 2021 with high ratings for “The Five,” which earned cable news’ largest audience in 2022 with an average of 3.4 million viewers and nearly half a million daily in the key 25-54 age demographic.

Picture : Yahoo Fiance

The three cable networks made a number of programming and personnel moves this year in hopes of growing their audience ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. Fox gave pundit Jesse Watters, who is also a co-host of “The Five,” his own prime-time show in January and has heavily promoted comedian and commentator Greg Gutfeld’s late-night show, which finished the year as the second highest rated late-night program in the country.

MSNBC has gone through significant changes in prime time, rehiring Alex Wagner to host a show four days a week during its 9 p.m. hour in place of longtime pundit Rachel Maddow and tapping anchor Stephanie Ruhle to host a news and analysis program during its 11 p.m. hour.

CNN has gone through the most change of any of the networks in 2022, with new President Chris Licht moving pundit Don Lemon out of prime time to host a revamped morning program. Licht has also used a rotating cast of fill-in hosts to occupy the 9 p.m. time slot vacated by Chris Cuomo after his firing late last year.

The most-watched cable show was Fox’s The Five, which had an audience of 3.4 million viewers and is the first non-primetime program to rank first in total viewers for the year.

Fox is just one part of billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s media empire that also includes the The Wall Street Journal and The Times of London. Australian-born Murdoch inherited a newspaper in Adelaide, Australia, at age 22 when his father, a former war correspondent, died. Murdoch acquired smaller outlets across Australia and New Zealand before expanding into the U.K. and the U.S. Murdoch founded Fox News in 1996. His publications are known for having a conservative tilt. Murdoch’s son, Lachlan Murdoch, is the CEO of Fox Corporation.

Prannoy, Radhika Roy Resign As RRPR Directors After Adani Acquires NDTV

New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV.NS) said late on Tuesday founders Radhika Roy and Prannoy Roy had resigned as directors on the board of the promoter group vehicle RRPR Holding Private Ltd.

This comes hours after RRPR Holding, the promoter entity of NDTV, transferred 99.5% of its equity share capital to Vishvapradhan Commercial Pvt. Ltd. (VCPL), which is owned by AMG Media Network Ltd. (AMNL), the media arm of the Adani group, taking the billionaire Gautam Adani-led conglomerate a step closer to taking over the media firm.

Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy, founders and promoters of NDTV, resigned as directors on the board of RRPR Holdings Private Limited. RRPR, which was founded by the Roys and bears their initials in its name, was acquired by the Adani Group, along with the company’s 29.18 per cent stake in NDTV recently, media reports stated. 

NDTV, founded in 1988 and owned by husband-and-wife team Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy, had previously said the takeover move “was executed without any input from, conversation with, or consent of the NDTV founders”.

The promoter group vehicle, which owns 29.2% and is the largest shareholder of NDTV, approved the appointment of Sudipta Bhattacharya, Senthil Sinniah Chengalvarayan, Sanjay Pugalia as directors on its board, NDTV said in a regulatory filing.

Earlier this year, the Adani Group announced that it would indirectly take over control of 29.18% of NDTV in lieu of unpaid debt 

ew Delhi Television Ltd. (NDTV) on Tuesday, November 29, 2022, told the stock exchanges that it had been informed by promoter group entity RRPR Holding Pvt. Ltd. that Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy had stepped down as directors. 

In a regulatory filing on Monday, NDTV said that RRPR had issued 99.5% shares to the Adani Group that would give the latter a 29.18% stake in the media firm. Adani is also conducting an open offer running up to December 5 for an additional 26% stake in NDTV.

NDTV’s promoters and their holding entity Radhika Roy Prannoy Roy Holding (RRPR) had taken an interest-free loan of a little more than ₹400 crore from Vishvapradhan Commercial Pvt. Ltd. (VCPL), a firm indirectly controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, in separate tranches, in 2009 and 2010. According to the loan agreement, the Roys transferred a portion of their shares to RRPR such that RRPR in effect owned 29.18% of NDTV. 

As per reports, warrants were also issued to VCPL allowing the entity to acquire 99.9% of the equity in RRPR in case the loan was unpaid. Before the loan, the Roys owned a majority stake of about 55% in NDTV. Right now, Radhika Roy and Prannoy Roy together hold about 32.26% of the company in their individual capacities. 

In August, AMG Media Networks, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Adani Group’s flagship Adani Enterprises Ltd. bought VCPL from its current owners for ₹113.74 crore and immediately exercised the warrants to acquire a 29.18% stake in NDTV and announced an open offer to buy an additional 26% stake.

Viji Sundaram Receives Society Of Professional Journalists Award

Viji Sundaram, an Indian American journalist, has been honored by the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) for a series of reports on domestic abuse in California for the San Francisco Public Press. 

Sundaram won the health reporting award from the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) for a series, titled “Coercive Control: Abuse That Leaves No Marks”, on domestic abuse in California for the San Francisco Public Press. 

The three stories from her series that won the award focused on “expanding the definition of domestic abuse in California and its uneven application in family court,” SPJ said. She has received several fellowships and won 11 journalism awards, including one for her expose on McDonald’s use of beef in its so-called vegetarian fries.

An SPJ press release stated that the Indian American won a health reporting award for three stories from the series Coercive Control: Abuse That Leaves No Marks. It focused on broadening the definition of domestic abuse in California and its inconsistent application in family court.

The SPJ, formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is the oldest organisation representing journalists in the United States. The stated mission of SPJ is to encourage and defend the first amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, promote high standards and ethical behaviour in journalism practice, and foster and support diversity in journalism.

Viji Sundaram’s profile on the Associated Press website mentions that she was a former health editor of New America Media in San Francisco and worked as a reporter for several publications, including India-West, the Cape Cod Times, the Providence Journal, and the New Bedford Standard-Times. She covered a wide range of topics, including immigration, crime, and social issues, especially relating to women. Sundaram has received many fellowships and won 11 journalism awards, including one for an expose on McDonald’s use of beef in its so-called vegetarian fries.

Furthermore, Sundaram co-founded Narika, a Berkeley-based helpline for South Asian women, and is a passionate animal rights activist. Her professional affiliations include the Association of Health Care Journalists, the South Asian Journalist Association, and Professional Journalists.

BBC’s Anti-Hindu And Anti-India Bias Must End: Hindus To Launch MASSIVE PROTESTS In London

Investigations found that Muslim youth were found to be terrorising Hindu families into leaving Leicester in a replay of the ethnic cleansing of the Hindus and Sikhs in Kashmir. The Muslim youth reportedly carried out `Muslim Patrols` in front of Hindu homes and posted such photographs on social media.

Dozens of British Hindu organisations are protesting against the BBC for what they call the international broadcaster`s `anti-Hindu and anti-India bias` running nonstop for many years. The protest will take place at 11 am UK time today in front of the BBC headquarters in London `against Hinduphobia and Indiaphobia.

It is similar to the one organised by the British Hindus against The Guardian newspaper in September, where the community said the newspaper`s coverage of Leicester was based on `biased and fake news.` The protesters will also hand over a memorandum to the BBC Director-General Tim Davie. They allege that the BBC has an inherent anti-Hindu bias in its coverage which has become worse over the last 18 years. 

In an extraordinarily strong condemnation of the BBC, a statement by the organisers said: `The BBC`s coverage of the violent attacks on Leicester Hindus by Islamists was the worst reporting seen so far and has contributed to the concealment of an attempt to ethnically cleanse Leicester of Hindus.` 

The groups say they are determined to protest till `the BBC cease its unrelenting vilification and dehumanisation of Hindus globally and of `licence-fee paying` British Hindus especially.` Some of the organisers of the `BBC Protest` include well-known people like Dr Vivek Kaul, Dr Sneh S. Kathuria, Pt Satish K. Sharma, Nitin Mehta MBE and Darshan Singh Nagi. 

Citing biased coverage by the BBC, the organisers point out Alasdair Pinkerton`s research for the 2008 edition of the peer-reviewed Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, saying, Alasdair Pinkerton `analysed the coverage of India by the BBC from India`s 1947 independence from British rule to 2008. Pinkerton observed a tumultuous history involving allegations of anti-India bias in the BBC`s reportage, particularly during the Cold War, and concluded that the BBC`s coverage of South Asian geopolitics and economics showed a pervasive and hostile anti-India bias because of the BBC`s alleged imperialist and neo-colonialist stance.` 

Picture: PGURUS

Mentioning an article, `Beaten and humiliated by Hindu mobs for being a Muslim in India`, The organisers said the headline is designed to create conflict and disorder. `It is irresponsible identitarian `divide and run` cheap, gutter journalism. It is self-evident that reports of this nature cause further inter-communal tension and stigmatise Hindus.` 

The organisers said the BBC is routinely producing hateful content, adding, `When a lie is repeated again and again, it gains credibility. A country which has given shelter to persecuted Parsis, Jews, Tibetans, Bahais and many more has been stigmatised as intolerant!` 

Pointing out to the BBC`s limited vocabulary used to describes Hindus, they said that its reporting only contains the terms, `Fear, Hate, Violence, Hindu Muslim, Kashmir, Cow, Mob and Protest` to describe India.

The organisers also claimed that increasing numbers of licence fee-paying British citizens and even the British Government feel the BBC is habitually peddling fake narratives on India and Hindus. `Your biased reporting on the world`s largest democracy and one of the biggest economies of the world is clearly against the national interests of India & the United Kingdom…` 

Anger against British media houses was ignited by the sporadic but continuing violence from August till September which targeted Hindus shops, homes, temples and cars. Fake information from social media was published by The Guardian`s and the BBC`s reporters without cross-verifying turning the Hindus into aggressors. 

In a big shock for the British government, the violence in Leicester also injured dozens of police officers, making Home Secretary Suella Braverman rush to the city. Even the newly-anointed King Charles III inquired about the serious unrest in the city. 

Investigations found that Muslim youth were found to be terrorising Hindu families into leaving Leicester in a replay of the ethnic cleansing of the Hindus and Sikhs in Kashmir. The Muslim youth reportedly carried out `Muslim Patrols` in front of Hindu homes and posted such photographs on social media.

The under-pressure police later debunked most of the fake messages posted by Muslims groups against Leicester`s Hindus. It also found that Muslim youth came from outside Leicester to fan the violence. 

(The sole responsibility for this article’s contents lies with news agency IANS and their content partners indianarrative.com. TheUNN has made no editing to the contents of this article)

The Role Of Alternative Social Media In The News And Information Environment

Free speech ideals, heated political themes prevail on these sites, which draw praise from their users and skepticism from other Americans

In recent years, several new options have emerged in the social media universe, many of which explicitly present themselves as alternatives to more established social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – especially by opposing free speech restrictions they say are rife at those sites.

These newer sites have created a small but satisfied community of news consumers, many of whom say one of the major reasons they are there is to stay informed about current events, according to a new Pew Research Center study. The study included a survey of U.S. adults along with an audit of seven alternative social media sites – BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Parler, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social – and a detailed analysis of prominent accounts and content across them.

Although fewer than one-in-ten Americans say they use any of these sites for news, most who do say they have found a community of like-minded people there. And news consumers on the four sites with large enough numbers to be analyzed individually – Parler, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social – largely say they are satisfied with their experience getting news on the sites, that they find the information there to be mostly accurate, and that the discussions are mostly friendly.

At the same time, however, the study finds signs that these sites may be another symptom of the increasingly polarized public discourse – and Americans’ partisan divisions in the broader news media environment.

A majority of those who regularly get news from at least one of the seven alternative social media sites (66%) identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party, in contrast with the news consumers on more established social media sites, who largely identify as Democrats or lean Democratic. And this trend is common among prominent accounts as well, with about a quarter of these accounts (26%) identifying as conservative or Republican or supportive of former President Donald Trump or his “Make America Great Again” movement. In addition, many prominent accounts express other values such as patriotism and religious identity.  

Several sites are linked to conservative backers – including Truth Social, which was launched by Trump about a year after he was “indefinitely” and “permanently” suspended from Facebook and Twitter. This is not a unique phenomenon: The study found a noteworthy percentage of prominent accounts on these seven newer sites (15%) have been banned or demonetized elsewhere on social media.

Perhaps connected to that, Americans who have heard of these sites but do not use them as sources for news are skeptical of them. When asked for the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about alternative social media sites, people in this category commonly cite inaccuracy and misinformation, political bias and the political right, and extremism and fringe ideas.

Other elements of the study speak to some of these associations. A small but measurable share of prominent accounts across these sites (6%) mention a connection to the set of conspiracy theories known as QAnon. And an analysis of recent content posted by prominent accounts on these sites finds that the most common phrases include some that are controversial and even inflammatory such as wariness toward vaccines and negative associations with LGBTQ people. Moreover, one of the most prevalent destinations for links found in these posts is The Gateway Pundit, a digital outlet that has been criticized for publishing false information.

These are some of the key themes to emerge from this major new study, which was designed to look at multiple aspects of the world of alternative social media. It examines those who turn to these sites for news, explores how the sites present themselves, and reports on the kinds of accounts that draw the most attention and the types of conversations taking place there.

For the first component, researchers conducted a survey of news consumers on seven sites: BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Parler, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social. Four of these – Parler, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social – had enough news consumers to do a deeper dive.

Next, researchers conducted an audit of all seven sites that explored elements of how the sites present themselves, privacy features, and other characteristics. Researchers then analyzed 200 prominent accounts sampled from those with the highest number of followers on each of these sites. They examined these 1,400 accounts for several attributes, including how they describe themselves in their profiles. Finally, researchers collected all 585,470 posts published by these accounts in June 2022 and examined their key phrases, themes and the links included in the posts. For more details, see the methodology. The rest of this overview discusses the key findings of the study in more detail.

Alternative social media sites have small, largely Republican audiences; prominent accounts tend to emphasize right-leaning identities and religious and patriotic values

These sites have become a refuge for some who feel they do not have a home on the more established sites.

Still, relatively few Americans use these alternative social media sites for news – though larger portions have heard of each of them. Parler is the best known of the seven sites named in the survey, with 38% of U.S. adults saying they are familiar with it. The share who get news on these sites is much smaller: Just 6% of Americans get news from at least one of the seven sites mentioned, and no single site is used for news by more than 2% of U.S. adults.

The news consumers on these sites lean heavily Republican. A majority of those who get news from at least one of the seven alternative social media sites (66%) are Republican or lean Republican. This is in contrast with more established social media sites, where news consumers are more likely to be Democrats or lean Democratic. (For more about news consumers on these more established sites, read our Social Media and News Fact Sheet.)

This report also looks at a sample of 200 of the prominent accounts on each site – those with the greatest number of followers – to determine what kinds of accounts tend to gain the most traction on alternative social media.

Roughly half (54%) of prominent accounts appeal to some kind of value or political orientation in their profiles. The most common of these values was right-leaning – 26% of prominent accounts expressed some kind of right-leaning or pro-Trump appeal – more of which centered around Trump or his “Make America Great Again” movement than with the Republican Party or conservative ideology.

Other expressed values included appeals to a religious identity (21% of prominent accounts), patriotism/pro-America views (21%), freedom and liberty (7%), pro-gun or pro-Second Amendment positions (6%), and support for the set of conspiracy theories known as QAnon (6%).

A close look at who is behind the prominent accounts shows that about eight-in-ten (83%) are run by individuals. That can mean either a single person with a noted affiliation to an organization or one without any organizational affiliation. Another 12% are organizations, including news organizations, nonprofit groups and others.

Along with a prevalence of conservative values and identities in prominent account profiles, political topics were common in the content posted there. This study collected all posts published by the 1,400 prominent accounts in June 2022 and identified those that were about five politically oriented topics: abortion; guns, gun control and shootings; the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and subsequent congressional hearings; LGBTQ issues; and vaccines.

The discussion around these issues often reflects fringe and controversial worldviews on the political right. For instance, some of the most common terms in posts about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol include “political prisoner,” “DC gulag,” “unselect committee,” “witch hunt” and “sham hearing.” Meanwhile, posts about vaccines indicate a deep and consistent concern about the impact of vaccination. These posts regularly refer to a small group of influential vaccine skeptics. 

The most common terms in these posts point to a widespread fear of real but rare impacts of vaccination (“side effect,” “adverse reaction,” “blood clot,” “heart inflammation”) but also diseases or symptoms for which the medical literature finds little evidence of being tied to vaccines (“[sudden adult] death syndrome,” “sperm count”). And posts about LGBTQ issues commonly referred to drag queen “story hour” (a common target of anti-LGBTQ groups) or derisive allegations toward gay and transgender individuals, such as “pedo” and “groomer,” implying that they prey on children.

Most alternative social media news consumers feel a sense of community on these sites, which prominently identify themselves as havens of free speech

About two-thirds of individuals who get news on at least one of the seven alternative social media sites (65%) say they have found a community of like-minded people there.

In a related finding, those who get news from Rumble, Parler, Truth Social and Telegram are far more likely to see these spaces as friendly than unfriendly. About half or more of those who get news on each of them – ranging from 53% to 69% – characterize the discussions they see on these sites as mostly friendly, while no more than a third of each site’s news consumers say the conversation there is mostly unfriendly (the rest say conversation is about an equal mix of friendly and unfriendly).

In some cases, the activity on these sites moves beyond the digital realm. One-third of alternative social media news consumers (33%) say they have participated in an in-person political rally or other political activity they learned about on these sites, and a similar share (36%) have donated money to accounts they follow on these sites.

A central way these sites depict themselves, one that may help give users that sense of community, is as welcoming havens for free speech as well as antidotes to the censorship and “cancel culture” they say exist on more established social media sites. Indeed, all of the seven sites examined explicitly state that they support free speech.

That message has clearly resonated with those turning to those sites for news. When users of alternative social media sites were asked to describe, in their own words, the first thing that comes to their mind in connection with these sites, 22% mentioned something related to the concept of freedom of speech, anti-censorship and an alternative to more established social media – far more common than any other type of response.

Alternative social media news consumers are particularly supportive of these concepts. Compared with Americans overall, alternative social media news consumers are more likely to say that freedom of information should be protected – even if it means allowing false information and offensive content online – than they are to say technology companies should take steps to restrict false information. For example, nearly two-thirds of alternative social media news consumers (64%) favor the protection of free speech even if it brings with it some false content, while the majority of all U.S. adults (61%) prefer that tech companies take steps to restrict this kind of content even if it limits freedom of information.

15% of prominent accounts on alternative social media sites were banned elsewhere

The free speech philosophies of these alternative social media sites have attracted some user accounts that were banned elsewhere. This may be connected to the perception among Americans who are aware of these sites but don’t get news there that the sites host misinformation.

Indeed, 15% of prominent accounts across the seven sites, including Trump’s account, have been indefinitely or permanently suspended, banned or demonetized on more established social media. This is particularly common on BitChute, a video-focused site, where about a third of prominent accounts (35%) have been banned or demonetized elsewhere.

In a number of cases the banning or demonetization was based on evidence that they had spread misinformation and inaccurate information (one example being COVID-19 vaccine skeptic Dr. Robert Malone).

That perception clearly exists among the larger segment of the public that does not use these alternative social media sites for news. When asked to name the first thing that comes to mind when they think of alternative social media sites, adults who have heard about these alternative social media sites but do not get news on them most commonly voice thoughts of inaccuracy and misinformation: 16% of responses. Another 11% of these U.S. adults cite political bias or associate the sites with the political right, and 6% associate alternative social media with extremism or consider them dangerous. Those who get news on these sites are less likely to mention these ideas and more likely to associate them with a lack of censorship or as alternatives to Big Tech.

The content on these sites also raises some questions about the credibility of the information found there. In June 2022, the most prominent accounts commonly linked to digital-only outlets such as The Gateway Pundit, Rebel News, Zero Hedge and Breitbart – each of which have been banned or demonetized by technology companies or other social media sites for misinformation or hate speech. Overall, during this period, there was a clear preference for material from other social media (45% of links) and relatively new, digital-only news sites (20%) rather than legacy news organizations like print publications (4%), radio or podcast sites (1%) or television (1%) sites. In fact, the same share of links went to The Gateway Pundit as to all print publications combined (4%).

Almost all alternative social media sites studied moderate content to some extent and also give users the option to do so

Notwithstanding their allegiance to free speech, almost all of the sites analyzed have at least some restrictions on content.

Every one of the sites, with the exception of Gab, moderates user content beyond the existing legal requirements to remove illegal content and cooperate with law enforcement requests.1 In some cases, sites have agreed to certain restrictions due to outside pressure from governments or mobile app stores like Apple’s App Store or the Google Play Store. This moderation includes removing posts that may contain violent, racist or offensive content and, in some cases, for the political viewpoint expressed.

In addition, almost all these sites give their users options to control the content they see. Five sites let users block or mute other users from their news feed, six sites let users report either accounts or posts, and four of the sites allow users to block explicit content.

Alternative social media news consumers largely satisfied with news they find there, which is often government and political news they wouldn’t have seen elsewhere

For many users, these sites are an important source of information about current events – often government and politics news – and they report finding news that they wouldn’t necessarily find elsewhere.

A majority of those who get news on at least one of the seven sites (56%) say a major reason they go to these sites is to stay informed about current events and issues. And much of what they see is government and political news: 52% say this is the most common type of news they come across on these sites.

In general, alternative social media news consumers like their experience there. About half or more of news consumers on Rumble, Truth Social, Telegram and Parler say they are very or somewhat satisfied with the experience of getting news there, and this overall satisfaction extends to their perception of the accuracy of the information they find. Fewer of the news consumers on each of these sites – roughly a quarter or less – say they are dissatisfied with the experience, while the rest say they are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.

These news consumers also say that much of the news they see on alternative social media sites is information they wouldn’t find elsewhere. Roughly half of news consumers who get news on at least one of the seven sites (52%) say they at least fairly often come across news on these sites that they would not have seen elsewhere, with an additional 32% who sometimes encounter unique news there. (PEW Research)

Elon Musk Likely To Strike Deal For $54.20 Per Share To Acquire Twitter

Musk and Twitter are reported to have agreed to enter the courtroom this month, with Twitter seeking an order directing Musk to close the deal at $54.20 per share.

Elon Musk is proposing to buy Twitter Inc. for the original offer price of $54.20 a share, potentially avoiding a courtroom fight over one of the most contentious acquisitions in recent history. Musk made the proposal in a letter to Twitter, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. Shares in Twitter climbed as much as 18% on the news, and is now halted. Representatives for Musk and for San Francisco-based Twitter didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Musk’s proposal to match the original deal terms means Twitter is facing a future under the leadership of a mercurial billionaire who has spent months publicly criticizing its management and questioning its value. It also means that his claims — about how many of Twitter’s users are bots, for instance — are not likely to be scrutinized in a courtroom.

Musk had been trying for months to back out of his contract to acquire Twitter, signed in April. Musk began showing signs of buyer’s remorse shortly after the deal was announced, alleging that Twitter had misled him about the size of its user base and the prevalence of automated accounts known as bots.

Musk formally quit the accord in July and Twitter sued him in Delaware Chancery Court to force him to go forward with the purchase. A trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 17. In the weeks-long run-up to that showdown, lawyers for both sides have fired cannonades of subpoenas at each other aimed at teasing out testimony and evidence.

Musk’s side needed to demonstrate that Twitter violated the terms of the deal. Twitter alleged that Musk used the bots issue as a pretext for backing out a deal he no longer found economically sound.

Musk’s legal team was getting the sense that the case was not going well, as Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick sided repeatedly with Twitter in pre-trial rulings, according to one person familiar. Even with the late emergence of a Twitter whistleblower who alleged executives weren’t forthcoming on security and bot issues, there were concerns Musk’s side would not be able to prove a material adverse effect, the legal standard required to exit the contract.

Twitter shareholders voted Sept. 13 to accept the buyout offer as Musk submitted it. The company said at the time that 98.6% of the votes cast were in favor of the deal. Musk, Twitter’s largest shareholder, didn’t vote at all, according to two people familiar with his decision. Musk owned almost 10% of Twitter — more than 73 million shares — when he agreed to acquire the company.

Musk was scheduled to answer questions about the deal in Austin, Texas on Oct. 6-7, according to a court filing Tuesday. Twitter Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal was scheduled to sit down for his deposition Monday.

Devika Bulchandani Named Global CEO Of Ogilvy

Devika Bulchandani has been appointed Global Chief Executive Officer Ogilvy, aglobal leader in creative marketing that “inspires brands and people to impact the world.” In this role she will be responsible for all aspects of the creative network’s business across 131 offices in 93 countries and spanning its Advertising, Public Relations, Experience, Consulting, and Health units. She will also join WPP’s Executive Committee as she takes on her new role.

Devika Bulchandani said: “David Ogilvy changed the industry 74 years ago when he founded this iconic agency. As we write the next chapter in the history books of Ogilvy, we will do it together with our clients, using creativity to push the boundaries of what’s possible. I am honored and humbled to take on this role, and to do it with all our incredibly talented people all over the world.”

The Indian origin Devika most recently served as Global President and CEO of Ogilvy North America. She takes the helm from Andy Main who is stepping down as Global CEO and will serve as a Senior Advisor until the end of the year.

Over the last two years the creative network has deepened and grown relationships with current clients while winning new business with brands including Absolut, Enterprise Holdings, World of Hyatt, TD Bank, FEMA, New York Philharmonic, and Audi of America. Ogilvy also played a key role in WPP being named as The Coca-Cola Company’s Global Marketing Network Partner.

Recently Ogilvy earned the coveted position of Network of the Year at the 2022 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for the first time since 2016 and secured the same honor from The One Show and Campaign magazine. Additionally, Ogilvy also became the only agency network to secure top rankings on both WARC’s Creative 100 & Effective 100 lists.

Mark Read, CEO of WPP, said: “Over the last two years, under Andy’s leadership, Ogilvy has seen a transformation in its creative and business performance. This stems from the consistently outstanding quality of work from Ogilvy’s teams around the world, the investment in attracting and developing talent across the business, and the strong and more diverse leadership team Andy has built. With the agency’s transformation a year ahead of the schedule we originally envisioned, Andy has decided that now is the right time to seek a new challenge and he is moving on with my personal thanks and best wishes.

“Devika is a champion of creativity who brings passion, purpose, and an uncompromising focus on generating impact to everything she does. In partnership with Andy and Liz Taylor, she has been instrumental in Ogilvy’s recent growth and development. Her love for our industry, deep understanding of clients’ needs, and track record of delivering growth for agencies and brands, make her the perfect choice to lead Ogilvy to even greater success.”

Andy Main said: “When I joined Ogilvy, my goal was to build on the company’s incredible heritage, raise its ambitions, and deliver growth for our clients through work that has impact. Our progress is a testament to all the talented people across the network and our amazing clients for whom I have the deepest gratitude and respect. David Ogilvy spoke about the importance of hiring giants and Devika is truly one of the giants in the industry. It has been an honor being a part of this company’s rich history and I know Devika will continue accelerating the momentum our team has built.”

Prior to joining Ogilvy, Devika spent 26 years at McCann in various leadership roles including President of McCann North America. As a leader who believes in the power of creativity to make a positive impact on society, Dev’s proudest achievements have occurred at the intersection of the social causes she champions and brand-building efforts on behalf of clients. She was the driving force behind Mastercard’s long-running “Priceless” campaign as well as “True Name,” a first-of-its-kind feature launched in 2019 that empowers transgender and non-binary people to display their chosen name on their Mastercard. Known for ideas that capture the cultural zeitgeist, Dev also helped launch “Fearless Girl,” an iconic and beloved symbol of women’s equality; the campaign became one of the most awarded campaigns in the history of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Next month Dev will be honored by New York Women in Communications (NYWIC) at the 2022 Matrix Awards, which honors women who are making a difference, building community, and inspiring the next generation of female leaders in their field. She has previously received a range of other honors including, NY Power Woman by Moves Magazine; US Advertising Agency Head of the Year by Campaign Magazine; Working Mother of the Year by She Runs It; and ADCOLOR Innovator. She has been the recipient of multiple 4As Jay Chiat Awards for strategic planning. Dev serves on the board of the ERA Coalition. She is also a founding member of Times Up Advertising and serves on the boards of the Ad Council, the 4A’s, and the Advertising Club.

Ogilvy inspires brands and people to impact the world. We have been creating iconic, culture-changing, value-driving ideas for clients since David Ogilvy founded the company in 1948. We continue building on that rich legacy through our borderless creativity—operating, innovating, and creating at the intersection of talent and capabilities. Our experts in Advertising, Experience, Public Relations, Health, and Consulting work fluidly across 131 offices in 93 countries to bring forth world-class creative solutions for our clients. Ogilvy is a WPP company (NASDAQ: WPPGY). For more information, visit Ogilvy.com

Hostile Takeover Bid On India’s Oldest Private TV Operation By Asia’s Richest Billionaire

When Asia’s richest man and that too an Indian with undisguisedly close ties with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to boot, makes a predatory takeover move on one of the country’s most high-profile news channels, it is a matter of great interest and concern.

The richest Indian in question is Gautam Adani, with the latest net worth of $137.5 billion, and the media company he is making a hostile move on is New Delhi Television or NDTV, the country’s first private television news operation founded in 1988 by the husband-and-wife team of Radhika and Prannoy Roy.

Adani, who has been close to Prime Minister Modi since the latter’s days as both their home state Gujarat’s Chief Minister, has turbocharged his business empire in the last eight years. Since Modi’s rise as prime minister in 2014 Adani’s wealth of $2.8 billion has multiplied close to 50 times. The takeover of NDTV barely two years before India’s next general elections in 2024 is seen by many as part a strategy to overwhelmingly dominate the media discourse in favor of the prime minister.

Jairam Ramesh, a prominent spokesperson of the opposition Congress Party, tweeted, “The news of a deeply over-leveraged company owned by the PM’s ‘khaas dost’ (special friend) making a hostile takeover bid of a well-known TV news network is nothing but the concentration of economic and political power, and a brazen move to control and stifle any semblance of an independent media.”

Notwithstanding its many weak moments over the years, NDTV has attempted to remain an independent media voice at a time when a vast majority of TV networks have just truckled into the often outrageous demands of the ruling dispensation.

Adani’s AMG Media Networks (AMNL), acquired Vishvapradhan Commercial for 1.14 billion rupees ($14.3 million). That gave the company a 29.2% stake in NDTV, according to a regulatory filing. Adani has said he intends to buy another 26% for 4.93 billion rupees, offering shareholders 294 rupees a share.

Sanjay Pugalia, CEO of AMG Media, was quoted as saying in a statement, “This acquisition is a significant milestone”  that will “pave the path of new age media across platforms.” AMG Media was founded in March and in less than six months it has made the biggest media takeover move in India.

That the Adani move was a hostile one became immediately clear yesterday after the Roys issued a statement that said it “was executed without any input from, conversation with, or consent of the NDTV founders.”

However, what jumps out in the statement is the following:

“VCPL has exercised its rights based on a loan agreement it entered with NDTV founders Radhika and Prannoy Roy in 2009-10.”

On its part, VCPL feels justified to do so because it has the rights to convert warrants of RRPR Holding Private Limited (RRPRH), the company owned by the Roys. At the heart of the hostile takeover is a reportedly interest-free loan amounting to 4.03 billion rupees dating back to 2009-10. That loan originally came from a company associated with Adani’s rival billionaire Mukesh Ambani, also a close ally of the prime minister.

VCPL came on the scene in 2012 when it acquired a 29.18 percent stake in the company that owns NDTV with the provision of converting the warrants into nearly complete ownership of RRPR. A decade hence Adani seems set to complete the takeover irrespective of the Roys’ protests. He has offered another 4.9 billion rupees to acquire an additional 26 percent stake in the media company making him the majority stakeholder.

Beyond the complex ownership restructuring necessitated by the 2009-10 loan there are larger issues of media independence at play. Of course, in a sense, the interest-free loan from some 12 years ago from an entity which had originally nothing to do with Adani, has come back to bite the Roys and NDTV in their behind.

While it is legitimate to debate what the NDTV takeover will do to the already disastrous media scene in India, it is equally important to remember that a great deal of money—4.03 billion to be precise—is behind the debacle for the Roys. Once people discover these complex facts, the Roys protestations related to media independence may lose much of its validity. The fact that an independent media company chose to take an interest-free loan from an entity they probably knew may not be eventually friendly towards them is problematic.

One can speculate that since at the time when the Roys took the loan, India was very much under the leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who was broadly hands-off with media control and management unlike the current government, the turn of events may not have been obvious to them. The Roys may have felt it was a safe bet to build their enterprise under a benign gaze of a government generally amiable to the media.

That they let the loan be unpaid for so long as to mutate into a predatory takeover holds a lesson for the tiny sliver of independent Indian media. (Courtesy: Indica News)

NY Times Rebuts Critics About Story On Delhi Govt’s Education Model

The New York Times (NYT), whose front page report lauding the AAP-led Delhi government’s much-touted education model became a major sub-plot of recent CBI raid against Manish Sisodia – Delhi’s deputy chief minister who also holds the education portfolio – dismissed allegations its report was a ‘paid article’.

“Education is an issue that the NYT has covered over many years. Our report about efforts to improve Delhi’s education system is based on impartial, on-the-ground reporting,” the newspaper’s director for external communications, Nicole Taylor, said in an email to news agency PTI.

“Journalism from the New York Times is always independent, free from political or advertiser influence,” Taylor added. On the same story being published in the Khaleej Times as well, she said that other news outlets ‘routinely license and republish our coverage’.

The report, published on the front page of NYT’s international edition on August 18, became a major sub-plot of Friday’s CBI raid against Manish Sisodia, the deputy CM of Delhi who also holds the education portfolio.

The response by the London-based Taylor, who, according to her LinkedIn profile is responsible for the daily’s communications in global markets outside the US, came after PTI wrote to her, seeking a clarification on the matter.

On Friday, as the CBI raided Sisodia’s residence in connection with alleged regularities in the Delhi government’s excise policy, several leaders of his AAP, including the party’s national convenor and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, and Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann, described him as the ‘best education minister of independent India’.

Pointing to the NYT’s story, the party said the fact that the central agency’s action against the senior minister came just a day after the report was published, showed that the opposition BJP, to whose government at the Centre the CBI and other central agencies report, was rattled by the rise of the AAP, and, in particular, that of Arvind Kejriwal.

It also challenged the saffron party to get an article published in the NYT by paying money, if possible. The AAP’s retort came after the BJP, pointing to the same story appearing in Khaleej Times (the paper credited NYT), said this proved that the report was a ‘paid promotion’.

Don’t Dawdle With Latest Iphone Update. Here’s Why And How

(AP) — Apple regularly issues updates to the software powering the iPhone, and sometimes it’s OK to dawdle when it comes to installing them. But that’s not the case with its latest — an upgrade that Apple released Wednesday to close a security hole that could allow hackers to seize control of iPhones and several other popular Apple products.

Security experts are warning that everyone with an iPhone should install the update as soon as possible to protect all the personal information many people store on a device that’s become like another appendage for many.

Without the latest update, a hacker could wrest total control of Apple devices, allowing the intruder to impersonate the true owner and run any software in their name.

The company also issued fixes to block the security threat on iPads and Macs. The flaw may already have been “actively exploited,” according to the company, which has had to fix other security problems with the earlier this year.

HOW DO I FIX THIS?

The good news? There’s an easy fix: you should be able to find easily. Start with the Settings app, the one with an icon featuring what looks like gears in an old watch. Go into the “General” section, then “Software Update.” The page you see will offer simple instructions or, if your device has already updated, a message to that effect. The whole process typically only takes a few minutes, according to security experts. .

WHY IS UPDATING YOUR APPLE DEVICE SO URGENT?

Commercial spyware companies such as Israel’s NSO Group are known for identifying and taking advantage of such flaws, exploiting them in malware that surreptitiously infects targets’ smartphones, siphons their contents and surveils the targets in real time. It’s a risk that’s best to avoid.

WHY DOESN’T MY APPLE DEVICE DO THIS FOR ME?

Apple devices are set to automatic updates by default, but it can take some time before they get around to it. Updates also don’t usually trigger unless can be done and it usually won’t happen unless the iPhone is plugged into a power outlet at the time. It’s quicker just to check for the latest updates and do it manually.

DOES THIS MEAN APPLE ISN’T DOING A GOOD JOB PROTECTING ITS USERS?

No. The reality is that hackers are constantly looking for ways to gain unauthorized access to phones, tablets, computers, and other internet-connected devices for a wide range of malicious and illegal purposes. Apple’s products tend to be a prime target because they’re popular, making them an attractive target.

“Apple is no different to any technology company in that they’re constantly dealing with vulnerabilities,” said Jamie Collier, senior threat intelligence advisor for the cybersecurity firm Mandiant and an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. “This is really a function of the fact that they’re innovating. They’re constantly developing, they’re constantly improving services, improving their technology, improving their software. That means they’re constantly rolling out new things.”

WHAT APPLE DEVICES ARE AFFECTED?

The affected devices include the iPhone6S and later models; several models of the iPad, including the 5th generation and later, all iPad Pro models and the iPad Air 2; and Mac computers running MacOS Monterey. The flaw also affects some iPod models.

OW DO I UPDATE IPADS AND MACS?

You can update your iPad using the same process outlined above: go to “Settings,” click “General” and click “Software Update.” On the Mac, go to “System Preferences,” then “Software Update.”

WHAT’S THE RISK THAT MY PHONE WAS COMPROMISED?

Unless you’re a journalist, political dissident or human rights activist, the chances are extremely low. The kinds of spyware created to exploit vulnerabilities of this type are expensive and typically reserved for targeted hacking.

“If you keep the systems updated, you’ll be absolutely fine,” Collier said. “Typically, when vulnerabilities in, say, phones and iPhones, for instance, are exploited, they tend to be pretty targeted, pretty focused on a small subset of individuals. So we’re unlikely to see anything that’s really widespread at this stage.”

World Photography Day

A day to celebrate the creativity and nuances of photography that have mesmerised us for years. Photography is a timeless medium of storytelling that beautifully captures the authenticity of time, emotions, culture, history, and more.

World Photography Day is celebrated annually on August 19 and is dedicated to the art, craft, science, and history of photography. To commemorates this medium, let’s checkout these mesmerizing images which are part of MAP’s exquisite collection of iconic photographs by renowned photographers like Jyoti Bhatt, Karen Knorr, T. S. Satyan, Mitter Bedi, and more.

Rajasthan by Jyoti Bhatt, 1973, Silver gelatin print, Rajasthan, India, PHY.00596

This image was photographed by Jyoti Bhatt in Rajasthan in 1973. It shows a clever juxtaposition representing the relationship between prey and predator using art and everyday life.

The Queen’s Room, Zanana, Udaipur City Palace, Udaipur by Karen Knorr, 2010, Archival pigment print, Udaipur, India, PHY.01765

This image forms part of the project ‘India Song’, which was started by British-American photographer Karen Knorr in 2008. It shows a digitally inserted peacock standing in a passage of the Zenana Mahal in the City Palace, Udaipur.

The project seeks to explore ideas of caste, femininity and hierarchy intertwined with the rich cultural heritage of Rajasthan by connecting the royal spaces to the animal world with a harmonious combination of digital and analogue photography.

This photograph by Sebastiao Salgado shows three coal workers from one of the coal mines of Dhanbad in Bihar, India. Forming part of Salgado’s social documentary oeuvre, the image provides a glimpse of the working communities and the state of their immediate environments.

This is a portrait of H. H. Maharaja of Jaipur Ram Singh, G.C.S.I. Photographed by one of the oldest photography studios in the world, Bourne & Shepherd, the image shows Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II of Jaipur. Accessioning as king at the age of sixteen months, Sawai Ram Singh was known as a reformist ruler. He was also an avid photographer, with an interest in portraiture and landscapes, having gained the reputation of the ‘Photographer Prince’.

This is a studio portrait of Maharaja Sir Bhagwati Prasad Singh of Balrampur taken by the studio Johnston & Hoffmann. The royal portrait presents an excellent example of hand-painted photographs, where the artists have beautifully brought out the beauty and richness of clothes, jewels and the furniture.

This photograph is part of a collaborative project between Pushpamala N and Claire Arni called ‘Native Women of South India: Manners and Customs’. Belonging to the sub-series called ‘The Native Types’, the images in the collection look at popular tropes and representations of women from South India through a performative angle. This particular image called ‘Lakshmi’ is modeled after an oleograph by late modernist painter Raja Ravi Varma.

This studio photograph is from the extensive work of Suhag Studio in Nagda, Madhya Pradesh, India, owned and operated by photographer Suresh Punjabi. The image shows a woman posing with a bunch of fake grapes. It was common practice for photo studios to keep props and costumes for customers, providing them with the space and opportunity to be playful, wishful and explore their own imagery.

This photograph taken by the late Indian photographer T. S. Satyan shows women at work in the Indian Telephone Factory, Bangalore in the late 20th century. The women appear to be assembling telephones on their stations. The image shows a great example of women’s workforce in technical fields in a rapidly transforming India.

This photograph was taken by late Indian photographer Mitter Bedi that shows an industrial setup of possibly Hindustan Unilever from 1961. Mitter Bedi was India’s most notable commercial and industrial photographer who paved the way for the upcoming generations. In a time, when India as a newly independent nation was going through a rapid phase of industrialization, Mitter Bedi became the most sought after photographer to chronicle this growth in various sectors like oil, textile, paper, sugar, mining etc. with his photography.

This image shows the Manikarnika Ghat on the bank of river Ganga with the Gyanvapi Mosque visible in the view. The mosque was built by Mughal ruler Aurangzeb in 1669. In the foreground, large stacks of firewood can also be seen, which were possibly used for cremation purposes. (IANS)

Teens, Social Media And Technology 2022

TikTok has established itself as one of the top online platforms for U.S. teens, while the share of teens who use Facebook has fallen sharply.

The landscape of social media is ever-changing, especially among teens who often are on the leading edge of this space. A new Pew Research Center survey of American teenagers ages 13 to 17 finds TikTok has rocketed in popularity since its North American debut several years ago and now is a top social media platform for teens among the platforms covered in this survey. Some 67% of teens say they ever use TikTok, with 16% of all teens saying they use it almost constantly. Meanwhile, the share of teens who say they use Facebook, a dominant social media platform among teens in the Center’s 2014-15 survey, has plummeted from 71% then to 32% today.

YouTube tops the 2022 teen online landscape among the platforms covered in the Center’s new survey, as it is used by 95% of teens. TikTok is next on the list of platforms that were asked about in this survey (67%), followed by Instagram and Snapchat, which are both used by about six-in-ten teens. After those platforms come Facebook with 32% and smaller shares who use Twitter, Twitch, WhatsApp, Reddit and Tumblr.1

Changes in the social media landscape since 2014-15 extend beyond TikTok’s rise and Facebook’s fall. Growing shares of teens say they are using Instagram and Snapchat since then. Conversely, Twitter and Tumblr saw declining shares of teens who report using their platforms. And two of the platforms the Center tracked in the earlier survey – Vine and Google+ – no longer exist.

There are some notable demographic differences in teens’ social media choices. For example, teen boys are more likely than teen girls to say they use YouTube, Twitch and Reddit, whereas teen girls are more likely than teen boys to use TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat. In addition, higher shares of Black and Hispanic teens report using TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp compared with White teens.2

This study also explores the frequency with which teens are on each of the top five online platforms: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook. Fully 35% of teens say they are using at least one of them “almost constantly.” Teen TikTok and Snapchat users are particularly engaged with these platforms, followed by teen YouTube users in close pursuit. A quarter of teens who use Snapchat or TikTok say they use these apps almost constantly, and a fifth of teen YouTube users say the same. When looking at teens overall, 19% say they use YouTube almost constantly, 16% say this about TikTok, and 15% about Snapchat.

When reflecting on the amount of time they spend on social media generally, a majority of U.S. teens (55%) say they spend about the right amount of time on these apps and sites, while about a third of teens (36%) say they spend too much time on social media. Just 8% of teens think they spend too little time on these platforms.

Asked about the idea of giving up social media, 54% of teens say it would be at least somewhat hard to give it up, while 46% say it would be at least somewhat easy. Teen girls are more likely than teen boys to express it would be difficult to give up social media (58% vs. 49%). Conversely, a quarter of teen boys say giving up social media would be very easy, while 15% of teen girls say the same. Older teens also say they would have difficulty giving up social media. About six-in-ten teens ages 15 to 17 (58%) say giving up social media would be at least somewhat difficult to do. A smaller share of 13- to 14-year-olds (48%) think this would be difficult.

Beyond just online platforms, the new survey finds that the vast majority of teens have access to digital devices, such as smartphones (95%), desktop or laptop computers (90%) and gaming consoles (80%). And the study shows there has been an uptick in daily teen internet users, from 92% in 2014-15 to 97% today. In addition, the share of teens who say they are online almost constantly has roughly doubled since 2014-15 (46% now and 24% then).

These are some of the findings from an online survey of 1,316 teens conducted by the Pew Research Center from April 14 to May 4, 2022. More details about the findings on adoption and use of digital technologies by teens are covered below.

Smartphones, desktop and laptop computers, and gaming consoles remain widely accessible to teens

Since 2014-15, there has been a 22 percentage point rise in the share of teens who report having access to a smartphone (95% now and 73% then). While teens’ access to smartphones has increased over roughly the past eight years, their access to other digital technologies, such as desktop or laptop computers or gaming consoles, has remained statistically unchanged.

The survey shows there are differences in access to these digital devices for certain groups. For instance, teens ages 15 to 17 (98%) are more likely to have access to a smartphone than their 13- to 14-year-old counterparts (91%). In addition, teen boys are 21 points more likely to say they have access to gaming consoles than teen girls – a pattern that has been reported in prior Center research.3

Access to computers and gaming consoles also differs by teens’ household income. U.S. teens living in households that make $75,000 or more annually are 12 points more likely to have access to gaming consoles and 15 points more likely to have access to a desktop or laptop computer than teens from households with incomes under $30,000. These gaps in teen computer and gaming console access are consistent with digital divides by household income the Center has observed in previous teen surveys.

While 72% of U.S. teens say they have access to a smartphone, a computer and a gaming console at home, more affluent teens are particularly likely to have access to all three devices. Fully 76% of teens that live in households that make at least $75,000 a year say they have or have access to a smartphone, a gaming console and a desktop or laptop computer, compared with smaller shares of teens from households that make less than $30,000 or teens from households making $30,000 to $74,999 a year who say they have access to all three (60% and 69% of teens, respectively).

Almost all U.S. teens report using the internet daily

The share of teens who say they use the internet about once a day or more has grown slightly since 2014-15. Today, 97% of teens say they use the internet daily, compared with 92% of teens in 2014-15 who said the same.

In addition, the share of teens who say they use the internet almost constantly has gone up: 46% of teens say they use the internet almost constantly, up from only about a quarter (24%) of teenagers who said the same in 2014-15.

Black and Hispanic teens stand out for being on the internet more frequently than White teens. Some 56% of Black teens and 55% of Hispanic teens say they are online almost constantly, compared with 37% of White teens. The difference between Hispanic and White teens on this measure is consistent with previous findings when it comes to frequent internet use.

In addition, older teens are more likely to be online almost constantly. Some 52% of 15- to 17-year-olds say they use the internet almost constantly, while 36% of 13- to 14-year-olds say the same. Another demographic pattern in “almost constant” internet use: 53% of urban teens report being online almost constantly, while somewhat smaller shares of suburban and rural teens say the same (44% and 43%, respectively).

Slight differences are seen among those who say they engage in “almost constant” internet use based on household income. A slightly larger share of teens from households making $30,000 to $74,999 annually report using the internet almost constantly, compared with teens from homes making at least $75,000 (51% and 43%, respectively). Teens who live in households making under $30,000 do not significantly differ from either group.

The social media landscape has shifted

This survey asked whether U.S. teens use 10 specific online platforms: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, WhatsApp, Reddit and Tumblr.

YouTube stands out as the most common online platform teens use out of the platforms measured, with 95% saying they ever use this site or app. Majorities also say they use TikTok (67%), Instagram (62%) and Snapchat (59%). Instagram and Snapchat use has grown since asked about in 2014-15, when roughly half of teens said they used Instagram (52%) and about four-in-ten said they used Snapchat (41%).

The share of teens using Facebook has declined sharply in the past decade. Today, 32% of teens report ever using Facebook, down 39 points since 2014-15, when 71% said they ever used the platform. Although today’s teens do not use Facebook as extensively as teens in previous years, the platform still enjoys widespread usage among adults, as seen in other recent Center studies.

Other social media platforms have also seen decreases in usage among teens since 2014-15. Some 23% of teens now say they ever use Twitter, compared with 33% in 2014-15. Tumblr has seen a similar decline. While 14% of teens in 2014-15 reported using Tumblr, just 5% of teens today say they use this platform.

The online platforms teens flock to differ slightly based on gender. Teen girls are more likely than teen boys to say they ever use TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, while boys are more likely to use Twitch and Reddit. Boys also report using YouTube at higher rates than girls, although the vast majority of teens use this platform regardless of gender.

Teens’ use of certain online platforms also differs by race and ethnicity. Black and Hispanic teens are more likely than White teens to say they ever use TikTok, Instagram, Twitter or WhatsApp. Black teens also stand out for being more likely to use TikTok compared with Hispanic teens, while Hispanic teens are more likely than their peers to use WhatsApp.

Older teens are more likely than younger teens to say they use each of the online platforms asked about except for YouTube and WhatsApp. Instagram is an especially notable example, with a majority of teens ages 15 to 17 (73%) saying they ever use Instagram, compared with 45% of teens ages 13 to 14 who say the same (a 28-point gap).

Despite Facebook losing its dominance in the social media world with this new cohort of teens, higher shares of those living in lower- and middle-income households gravitate toward Facebook than their peers who live in more affluent households: 44% of teens living in households earning less than $30,000 a year and 39% of teens from households earning $30,000 to less than $75,000 a year say they ever use Facebook, while 27% of those from households earning $75,000 or more a year say the same. Differences in Facebook use by household income were found in previous Center surveys as well (however the differences by household income were more pronounced in the past).

When it comes to the frequency that teens use the top five platforms the survey looked at, YouTube and TikTok stand out as the platforms teens use most frequently. About three-quarters of teens visit YouTube at least daily, including 19% who report using the site or app almost constantly. A majority of teens (58%) visit TikTok daily, while about half say the same for Snapchat (51%) and Instagram (50%).

Looking within teens who use a given platform, TikTok and Snapchat stand out for having larger shares of teenage users who visit these platforms regularly. Fully 86% of teen TikTok or Snapchat users say they are on that platform daily and a quarter of teen users for both of these platforms say they are on the site or app almost constantly. Somewhat smaller shares of teen YouTube users (20%) and teen Instagram users (16%) say they are on those respective platforms almost constantly (about eight-in-ten teen users are on these platforms daily).

Not only is there a smaller share of teenage Facebook users than there was in 2014-15, teens who do use Facebook are also relatively less frequent users of the platform compared with the other platforms covered in this survey. Just 7% of teen Facebook users say they are on the site or app almost constantly (representing 2% of all teens). Still, about six-in-ten teen Facebook users (57%) visit the platform daily.

Across these five platforms, 35% of all U.S. teens say they are on at least one of them almost constantly. While this is not a comprehensive rundown of all teens who use any kind of online platform almost constantly, this 35% of teens represent a group of relatively heavy platform users and they clearly have different views about their use of social media compared with those who say they use at least one of these platforms, though less often than “almost constantly.” Those findings are covered in a later section.

Larger shares of Black and Hispanic teens say they are on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram almost constantly than White teens. For example, Black and Hispanic teens are roughly five times more likely than White teens to say they are on Instagram almost constantly.

Hispanic teens are more likely to be frequent users of Snapchat than White or Black teens: 23% of Hispanic teens say they use this social media platform almost constantly, while 12% of White teens and 11% of Black teens say the same. There are no racial and ethnic differences in teens’ frequency of Facebook usage.

Overall, Hispanic (47%) and Black teens (45%) are more likely than White teens (26%) to say they use at least one of these five online platforms almost constantly.

Slight majorities of teens see the amount of time they spend on social media as about right and say it would be hard to give up

As social media use has become a common part of many teens’ daily routine, the Center asked U.S. teens how they feel about the amount of time they are spending on social media. A slight majority (55%) say the amount of time they spend of social media is about right, and smaller shares say they spend too much time or too little time on these platforms.

While a majority of teen boys and half of teen girls say they spend about the right amount of time on social media, this sentiment is more common among boys. Teen girls are more likely than their male counterparts to say they spend too much time on social media. In addition, White teens are more likely to see their time using social media as about right compared with Hispanic teens. Black teens do not differ from either group.

This analysis also explored how teens who frequently use these platforms may feel about their time on them and how those feelings may differ from teens who use these sites and apps less frequently. To do this, two groups were constructed. The first group is the 35% of teens who say they use at least one of the five platforms this survey covered – YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook – almost constantly. The other group consists of teens who say they use these platforms but not as frequently – that is, they use at least one of these five platforms but use them less often than “almost constantly.”

When asked how they feel about the time they spend on social media, 53% of teens who almost constantly use at least one of the platforms say they are on social media too much, while about three-in-ten teens (28%) who use at least one of these platforms but less often say the same.

Teens who are almost constantly online – not just on social media – also stand out for saying they spend too much time on social media: 51% say they are on social media too much. By comparison, 26% of teens who are online several times a day say they are on social media too much.

When reflecting on what it would be like to try to quit social media, teens are somewhat divided whether this would be easy or difficult. Some 54% of U.S. teens say it would be very (18%) or somewhat hard (35%) for them to give up social media. Conversely, 46% of teens say it would be at least somewhat easy for them to give up social media, with a fifth saying it would be very easy.

Teenage girls are slightly more likely to say it would be hard to give up social media than teen boys (58% vs. 49%). A similar gap is seen between older and younger teens, with teens 15 to 17 years old being more likely than 13- and 14-year-olds to say it would be at least somewhat hard to give up social media.

A majority of teens who use at least one of the platforms asked about in the survey “almost constantly” say it would be hard to give up social media, with 32% saying it would be very hard. Smaller shares of teens who use at least one of these online platforms but use them less often say the same.

The teens who think they spend too much time on social media also report they would struggle to step back completely from it. Teens who say they spend too much time on social media are 36 percentage points more likely than teens who see their usage as about right to say giving up social media would be hard (78% vs. 42%). In fact, about three-in-ten teens who say they use social media too much (29%) say it would be very hard for them to give up social media. Conversely, a majority of teens who see their social media usage as about right (58%) say that it would be at least somewhat easy for them to give it up.

Assault On The Media Continues Across The Globe

There are many forces that are assaulting journalism around the world: misinformation, intimidation, pressures on revenue models, and a growing trend of autocrats attacking press freedom

“Finally it is also an important right in a free society to be freely allowed to contribute to society’s well-being. However, if that is to occur, it must be possible for society’s state of affairs to become known to everyone, and it must be possible for everyone to speak his mind freely about it. Where this is lacking, liberty is not worth its name,” Peter Forsskål, a philosopher, theologian, botanist and orientalist wrote in his pamphlet, Thoughts on Civil Liberty, published in Stockholm in 1759.

And, it’s noteworthy that The World Press Freedom Day in Helsinki in 2016 adopted the Access to Information and Fundamental Freedoms, which is the right of every human being around the world, and its three perspectives: freedom of information as a fundamental freedom and a human right; protecting press freedom from censorship and surveillance overreach; and ensuring safety
for journalism online and offline.

Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, and a prerequisite for several other democratic rights. It is a right, but it implies responsibility and respect for the rights of others. The role of media has been changing rapidly, especially in recent times, with the advent of social media platforms where not only the news and views of the trained and well-established journalists are published, but anyone has the right reports, post a comment and be appreciative or critical of people, programs and policies for their worth.

The media is expected to be the “watchdog” of the other three branches of the government. Promoting the safety of journalists and combatting impunity for those who attack them are central elements within UNESCO’s support for press freedom on all media platforms. Media is described as the Fourth Estate after the executive, legislature, and judiciary and

However, media has been constantly criticized, intimidated and their rights taken away for being the “watchdog.’ There are many forces assaulting journalism around the world: misinformation, intimidation, pressures on revenue models, and a growing trend of autocrats attacking press freedoms. Journalists are attacked, and imprisoned and their rights to disseminate news and views taken away in numerous countries across the globe.

According to UNESCO, on average, every five days a journalist is killed for bringing information to the public. Attacks on media professionals are often perpetrated in non-conflict situations organized crime groups, militia, security personnel, and even local police, making local journalists among the most vulnerable. These attacks include murder, abductions, harassment, intimidation, illegal arrest, and arbitrary detention.”

The 2020 UNESCO Director-General’s Report on the Safety of Journalists and the Danger Impunity stated that with 22 killings each, Latin America and the Caribbean, together with Asia and the Pacific, registered the highest number of fatalities among journalists.

These organized crimes and strategies to prevent journalists, media and media platforms are not unique to the Third World or autocratic/tyrant rule d states alone. They are occurring on a daily basis well-established democracies, using so called “democratic laws” as well as in those nations and their rulers who have no regards for freedom of speech and do not tolerate dissent or criticism.

It’s noteworthy, after four years of contestant attacks on the media by his predecessor, President Jose Biden of the United States has kept the media at arm’s length while being decidedly less combative than his predecessor with reporters, an approach that was on display when he attended the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner this year.  It’s an approach that administration officials say is deliberate, and that Democrats say is part of Biden’s effort to return the White House to a more normal rapport with the media.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under the Trump and Biden administrations are now going after tech giants in antitrust lawsuits, based on deals that were solidified under Obama’s watch. The FTC’s case against Facebook seeks to undo the company’s acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram that were approved under the former president.

Filipino American media executive and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa, founder of the digital media outlet Rappler in the Philippines in 2012, has become the target of a series of attacks. Ressa has been arrested several times. This month, with the new administration of Bongbong Marcos in place, Rappler was ordered to shut down, for being the voice of the people.

Rana Ayyub, a senior journalist summarized the state of today’s journalistic fraternity: “The burden of bearing witness and speaking truth to power comes at great personal risk for journalists in many countries around the world. They live a relentless struggle, slapped with lawsuits and criminal cases for sedition, defamation, tax evasion and more. Their lives, and too often the lives of their families, are made miserable.”

Ayyub points to the heinous crimes inflicted on “Gauri Lankesh, Daphne Caruana Galizia and Jamal Khashoggi—all journalists with a profile, all brazenly killed in broad daylight. Their murders dominated the front pages of international publications. But their killers, men in power, remain unquestioned not just by the authorities but often by publishers and editors who develop a comfortable amnesia when meeting those in power. They do not want to lose access to them.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Termed the recent murders of British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous issues expert Bruno Pereira, whom police suspect were killed by people with ties to illegal fishing in the Amazon, amounted to a “nightmare” come true. “Central African Republic authorities should investigate the threats made against journalist Erick Ngaba and ensure his safety,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, in Durban, South Africa. “The security situation in the Central African Republic is worrisome enough for media professionals without additional online harassment.”

India’s record on violations against Journalists has been among the worst in recent times. A nation, said to be the “beacon of hope” and the “largest democracy” in the world dropped eight laces to 150 — out of 180 countries — on the World Press Freedom Index compiled by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) for 2022. The index’s report notes that “with an average of three or four journalists killed in connection with their work every year, India is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the media.” In the current year alone, it states, while one journalist has been killed, another 13 are behind bars.

In fact in the last 20 years, India, which was ranked 80th on the index in 2002, has seen its press freedom ranking progressively plummet. The country profile by RSF on India also says that “the Indian press used to be seen as fairly progressive but things changed radically in the mid-2010s, when Narendra Modi became prime minister and engineered a spectacular rapprochement between his party, the BJP, and the big families dominating the media.”

Twitter’s latest transparency report, for July-December 2021 says that the country made the highest number of legal demands to remove content posted by verified journalists and news outlets on Twitter. Of the total 326 legal demands Twitter received globally, against 349 accounts of verified journalists, India sent in 114 legal demands. India in fact also raised the second highest number of information requests, after the US, accounting for 19% of global information requests and 27% of the global accounts specified. Information requests seek details about an account and are issued by law enforcement or government agencies.

Terming the Indian press as “a colossus with feet of clay”, RSF adds that Indian “journalists are exposed to all kinds of physical violence including police violence, ambushes by political activists, and deadly reprisals by criminal groups or corrupt local officials” by “supporters of Hindutva” with the situation “very worrisome in Kashmir where reporters are often harassed by police and paramilitaries.”

If the powerful rulers of the countries use their power to intimidate the media world, the public are not immune to such ill thought out and narrow views. For some it’s their ideology that motivates them, for others it’s the belief in their “leader” who spreads lies and the flock follow them blindly, and for some who are so called well educated and well informed, it’s their goals to attain power, position and prestige in the society.

Recently, I came across on a WhatsApp media posting, where a picture of half a dozen veteran, well respected and award-winning journalists meeting with a Justice of the Supreme Court of India were called as “traitors of India” because they criticize and point to the the ruling party for its policies that do not benefit the people of India, but the members of the ruling regime.

Speaking at a Stanford University event, former US President Barack Obama called the present as “another tumultuous, dangerous moment in history,” where social media platforms are well-designed to destroy democracies. “Disinformation is a threat to our democracy, and will continue to be unless we work together to address it,” he said.

According to analysts, while free speech is protected by both the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, these legal instruments offer governments much greater leeway than the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution when it comes to defining categories, such as hate speech, that can be regulated.

Reports state. the European Union is in the midst of finalizing the Digital Services Act (DSA), an ambitious legislative attempt to create a “global gold standard” on platform regulation. After five trilogues, on April 23, the European Parliament and European Council reached a provisional political agreement on the DSA. As such, the DSA is likely to affect the practical exercise of free speech on social media platforms, whether located in Silicon Valley or owned by American tech billionaires.

Freedom of expression is a vital part of democracy, considering it does not cross the “Lakshman Rekha” of public order and morality, said former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi.
Gogoi, while expressing his views on action against individuals over social media posts, said, “Now on social media — is a critical part of healthy democracy, so long as it does not cross the Lakshman Rekha of public order and morality, be it against an individual or an institution. If the opinion is within the line (of public order), it should not be restrained…,” said Gogoi.

Adding that such an opinion should be based on facts and bonafide information, the former CJI said, “If it is an opinion not based on facts and disturbs public order and transgresses morality or creates distrust among the public for the institution, posing a threat to national interest, action needs to be taken. Nothing can be bigger than national interest.”

Gogoi also said that the present generation youth in the country are fortunate to have the power of social media. “It is a powerful tool, but it can be misused, which is unfortunate… Youth today, who wish to enter public life or politics must be aware that they cannot be successful unless they work hard and base their journey on facts. This is because it is very easy for misinformation to be spread…”

Media reports pointed out that in the first quarter of 2018, Facebook removed 2.5 million pieces of content for the transgression of community standards on hate speech. By the third quarter of 2021, the number had increased almost tenfold to 22.3 million. This was mainly the result of increased reliance on AI-based content-filtering algorithms. In 2018, AI caught 4 out of 10 transgressions before any user complaint, but in the third quarter of 2021, this rose to 96.5 percent.

“We’ve come a long way towards realizing freedom of expression, and other fundamental freedoms. The right to access to information is entrenched in law in over a hundred countries,” said Secretary-General Guterres of the United Nations during the 70th anniversary of the Geneva Association of UN Correspondents (ACANU). “But despite these advances, in recent years, civic space has been shrinking worldwide at an alarming rate.”

In the midst of all these, some recommend a model that would “encourage the implementation of human-rights standards as a framework of first reference in the moderation practices of large social media platforms. This would result in a social media environment that would be both more transparent and protective of users’ free speech on categories such as hate speech and disinformation. Using human rights law as the standard of content moderation would also provide platforms with norms and legitimacy to resist demands to censor dissent made by authoritarian states keen to exploit the well-intentioned but misguided attempts by democracies to rein in harmful online speech.”

Stating that Journalism and the media are “essential to peace, justice, sustainable development and human rights for all – and to the work of the United Nations,” Guterres noted, paying tribute to reporters who “go to the most dangerous places on earth, to bring us important information, to give a voice to people who are being ignored and abused, and to hold the powerful to account. Your work reminds us that truth never dies, and that our attachment to the fundamental right that is freedom of expressions must also never die… Informing is not a crime.”

A Proactive Approach Toward Addressing The Challenges Of The Metaverse

The metaverse promises to connect devices to humans and humans to each other in ways that threatens to transform economic and social relations.

When the science fiction writer Neal Stephenson first coined the term “metaverse” in 1992, the world of virtual reality-enabled computing that he imagined was still a long way off. But with virtual reality—and the computing infrastructure that enables it—making significant improvements in recent years, the interactive and embodied internet that Stephenson imagined is now closer to reality.

Today, computer science researchers conceive of the metaverse as a “network of interconnected virtual worlds” using three-dimensional platforms where humans interact with digital content and with each other, forming an “ecosystem where digital and physical worlds collide”. By relying on a combination of augmented, mixed, and virtual reality to move from the 2D version of the internet to a 3D shared space, the metaverse aims at an internet that is interoperable and synchronous.

The metaverse promises to connect devices to humans and humans to each other in ways that threatens to transform economic and social relations. As a result, it is critical that policymakers and technology companies collaborate to write the rules of the road for the metaverse. The potentially disruptive qualities of the metaverse are illustrative of how the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) will likely transform how humans work, entertain, conduct business, and socialize. The scale of this disruption means that policymakers need to adopt a proactive approach in thinking about how these technologies are likely to change our society rather than attempting to address harms once they are widespread. Especially given the recent drawdowns in the technology industry, the impending buildout of the metaverse also offers a rare opportunity to design a system that is more equitable from the start—in contrast to past paradigms like Web 2.0.

The promise of the metaverse

Depending on how it develops, the metaverse could have profound impacts on business and the global economy, though, so far, the development of the metaverse has been driven by applications in entertainment. Firms like Roblox, Epic Games, and, increasingly, Meta and Microsoft are pouring huge sums into developing interactive online spaces that have many of the characteristics of the metaverse. As the metaverse develops, it may provide useful applications in other fields.

Metaverse technologies can accelerate skill development, for example, through realistic, 3D simulations and can better connect regions and communities to these resources. Already, the UK government is investing in medical training using augmented reality for frontline nurses. As users live greater portions of their lives in the metaverse and carry out transactions there, a larger share of economic life may be transacted via cryptocurrencies, a shift that has the potential to transform the global economy.

Local governments can use the metaverse and its technologies to better serve their constituents in the short and long term by directly connecting more people to services and by having tools to better develop and update city infrastructure and plan for the future. By using “digital twins”—digital representations of real-world objects—metaverse technologies can be used to simulate proposals for urban redevelopment projects. The Boston Planning and Development Agency, for example, uses a digital twin of the city to simulate how water and sewer systems affect the physical landscape of the city, while Singapore uses a digital twin to visualize the effects of population increases on the city and its resources.

Given its uncertain future and lack of a concrete definition, it is difficult to estimate the economic impact of the metaverse, yet market research groups, investors, and banks have predicted high speeds of growth in the next 4 to 8 years, with estimates for the global market value of metaverse-related technologies ranging from $700 billion up to $13 trillion. Using a narrow definition of the metaverse, CitiBank estimates the total addressable market value of metaverse technologies will be between $1 and $2 trillion by 2030. Using a broader definition of the metaverse results in a market value between $8 and $13 trillion by 2030.

Wider accessibility to skills, as well as the blending of physical and digital worlds, will bring new and potentially more productive types of jobs and make them available to a wider range of people. Due to the pandemic, remote work opened up work opportunities for people around the world who no longer had to rely on being physically present. The metaverse has the potential to enhance these benefits and remove some of the drawbacks of remote work by increasing connection and collaboration between teams.

The metaverse could bring positive benefits for the planet as well, such as saving resources and reducing physical consumption and waste if social and business events are held virtually. Using the metaverse to create immersive and complex simulations related to biodiversity and climate change could better educate people about global change, increase access to and protect vulnerable biodiversity sites, and include more global and diverse voices in research and discussion about environmental science and sustainability.

The metaverse also can bring opportunities to address global challenges that require collaboration. Diplomacy through metaverse technologies could allow smaller or less powerful countries to be better connected to countries and people, allowing for new alliances, collaborations, and services. Barbados announced in 2021 that they will be the first country to open a virtual embassy within the metaverse platform, Decentraland, opening the possibility for other countries to embrace the metaverse as a means for international relations. None of these benefits are guaranteed, but using metaverse technologies to connect countries, communities, and individuals to resources and services in an immersive way has the potential to contribute to a more equitable and sustainable future across all aspects of society.

Challenges posed by the metaverse

The effects of the metaverse transcend borders and include risks to safety, privacy, work, resources, and inequality. These are issues raised by today’s technology as well, but the greater connectivity and integration of the metaverse threatens to either exacerbate or change their character.

Because the metaverse provides a more immersive experience, it is crucial that the safety concerns it raises are proactively addressed. The everyday abuse that users experience online today will only be worsened once such activities are experienced in VR and AR environments. Researchers have found that users experience abuse in these environments as “far more traumatic than in other digital worlds,” as the human brain can perceive virtual threats through immersive technology as actual threats. Online harassment, especially of women, has been prevalent since the internet’s inception and is happening in VR/AR environments already, with women reporting that they experience discrimination and violence in the virtual world more intensely than in other digital fora. At their best, advances in haptic and virtual technologies could help people feel more connected; at their worst, misuse could cause more realistic harm with little consequence to the perpetrator. Research has shown that online harassment disproportionately targets minorities, and these inequalities are likely to be replicated in the metaverse. Without policies to prevent such abuse, safety in the metaverse will likely be a barrier to widespread adoption.

The amount and type of data that is created and collected through metaverse technologies results in major privacy challenges. With users interacting with content and other users in a 3D environment, metaverse technologies are likely to collect highly detailed data on users and their interactions in a far more intrusive way than current online platforms. To describe the combination of behavioral and anatomical information collected in the metaverse, one Harvard researcher coined the term “biometric psychography” to describe how this data might provide insight into a user’s feelings and their potential causes. Data can be collected on eye tracking, facial scans, and other bodily responses that can be linked to an individual’s identity. When used for good, this data could lead to innovative and personalized experiences, but the potential exploitation and sale of this data leads to major privacy and human rights concerns. The potential value of this data creates major cybersecurity risks, as malicious hackers would be keen to obtain it.

The disruptions to work and the economy in the metaverse raises risks as well. The potential for further automation of jobs and the emergence of new jobs will be a challenge for those who are not prepared with adequate skills or guidance for transitioning out of these jobs. The widespread use of cryptocurrencies whose values are far from stable and that lack robust regulatory regimes may undermine trust in metaverse economies. The recent history of cryptocurrencies demonstrates that these digital currencies are quite vulnerable to theft, posing yet another barrier to adoption.

Given how computationally intensive metaverse technologies are, the energy demand to power these technologies is significant—so much so that one senior Intel executive predicted that the metaverse will require a 1000x increase on our current computing power. If the electricity to support this increase in computing power is not supplied by sustainable sources, the metaverse will drastically increase greenhouse gas emissions with extreme negative effects on the environment, making it critical that it is powered by alternative energy sources to manage its carbon footprint.

The metaverse also risks exacerbating global inequalities. Given its reliance on the interaction between new and existing technologies, the metaverse may first benefit countries, companies, and people who already in possession of its enabling technologies, infrastructure, and skills. This could result in early adopters capturing a majority of the benefits. Countries who supply the necessary infrastructure may also have greater control over the technology and how it develops. If the metaverse continues to grow and include more aspects of society from work to socializing, countries and communities already lagging behind in technology and internet adoption will be further isolated. As the metaverse attempts to create a virtual world that more accurately reflects the real world, already-existing power dynamics and inequality in the real world may be replicated in the metaverse.

The way toward a more equitable metaverse

The metaverse is currently not controlled by any one platform, and its early developers are operating under different incentives and regulations, which is likely to lead to market domination and insufficient privacy and safety protocols. To mitigate the evolving risks and capture the potential opportunities, key players—including the major tech companies, governments, developers, and users—must collaborate to co-develop regulations, align incentives, and create a governance framework now, rather than reacting to challenges that emerge later. Proactive strategies will be key to ensure that companies, users, governments, and experts are operating on a level playing field and create strategies to address safety and privacy concerns while still encouraging innovation.

Dealing with safety concerns within the metaverse will likely need a completely new approach—rather than adopting safety protocols from the currently existing internet. The immersive nature of the metaverse means that not only content but also behavior will need to be monitored and regulated. Regulation in other digital environments is often reactive and provides punishments after a violation, but the metaverse is likely to require incentives for positive behavior combined with effective mechanisms to report, prevent, and act on negative behaviorNorms may need to be created, agreed upon by users, and enforced by moderators. Balancing privacy with moderation will be a challenge, and moderation mechanisms should be discussed between platform developers, legal experts, and human rights experts.

Privacy mitigation will also need to be co-developed to ensure that data is safely handled. Companies and governments must examine potential vulnerabilities related to infrastructure and applications and adopt security practices such as breach notification and response, malware protection, and multi-factor authentication. As the metaverse and its platforms continue to develop across borders, data and privacy law will need to be examined and evaluated to address likely conflicts related to biometric data. Laws specific to metaverse technologies will likely need to be created and agreed upon internationally, instead of relying on existing statutes related to the internet. While laws and governance structures are developed, codes of conduct and voluntary constraints are likely to serve an important stop-gap function. Industry-wide codes of conduct could help provide a baseline for companies who are creating metaverse platforms or wish to be part of one to agree upon basic rules and be able to work together as they develop.

The rules of the metaverse are being written by its early adopters, which threatens to exclude key voicesOther players beyond tech-developers and governments have a role in the development of the metaverse as well, including financial institutions, mental-health professionals, sustainability experts, and civil rights activist. The scientific community will have an important role to play in studying regulatory mechanisms and governance structures, the effects of immersive technology on the brain, and sustainability. Maintaining diversity will be critical to preventing the metaverse from replicating the injustices and inequalities of the non-virtual world. Companies and governments alike should focus on policies that will contribute to a democratic approach in the development of the metaverse—including pushing for open-source standards and interoperability—to make sure the metaverse is not dominated by a select group of major technology companies whose incentives do not align with other members of society.

If developed with people and progress in mind, the metaverse and its technologies have the potential to enrich real lives with greater access to knowledge, experiences, and human connection. There is ample opportunity for accessibility, development, and equitable growth through the metaverse, but these can only be seized with proactive and strategic collaboration, planning, and action.

(Landry Signé is executive director and professor at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program and the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution, a distinguished fellow at Stanford University, and founding director of the Fourth Industrial Revolution Initiative. Hanna Dooley is a policy analyst at Arizona State University.

Mandovi Menon Among Asia Society’s Class of 2022

Mandovi Menon, creative director, writer, and media entrepreneur from India is among the Asia Society’s 40 young leaders from across the world who will form the newest class of the Asia 21 Young Leaders Network, joining an unparalleled network of over 1,000 individuals in politics, business, arts, education, sustainability, and technology. 

The Class of 2022 features a diverse mix of leaders representing 26 different countries and includes journalists, human rights advocates, entrepreneurs, fiction writers, politicians, and more. Together, they will form an integral part of the Asia Society family as the newest cohort of its signature young leaders initiative, embody the organization’s mission to navigate shared futures, and actively contribute in taking the network to new heights. 

“Drawing on their personal expertise and leveraging the collective power of the Asia 21 network, the class of 2022 will actively contribute in shaping a more peaceful, prosperous, and secure future for all,” said Asia Society President and CEO Kevin Rudd. “We are delighted to play our part in connecting individuals who share common values and desire to make this world a better place.”

Other members of the incoming class include Hajra Khan, captain of Pakistan’s national football team and founder of the Fortis Sports Academy; Fumino Sugiyama, restaurateur and LGBTQ activist and co-representative of Tokyo Rainbow Pride; Si Thura, executive director of Myanmar’s Community Partners International; Mandovi Menon, creative director, writer, and media entrepreneur from India; Sopheak Chak, executive director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights; Alexandre Chenesseau, managing director at Evercore; Guo Dong, associate director of the Research Program on Sustainability and Management at Columbia University; and James Griffin, minister of the environment, New South Wales, Australia. You can access biographies of all 40 members of the Class of 2022 at AsiaSociety.org/Asia21.

After a two-year hiatus caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the annual Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit will resume this year with an in-person convening hosted by Asia Society Japan from December 2 to December 4, 2022. The conference, centered around the theme of “leading in a world of competing values,” will include panel discussions, lectures, and special events in Tokyo, and will feature members of the new class as well as Asia 21 alumni. They will share best practices in leadership and explore opportunities to work collaboratively across borders and sectors to create positive impact. The sessions will also address diversity, equity, and integration through art, education, policy, leadership opportunities, and entrepreneurship.

According to LinkedIn, Mandovi is a creative director, writer and media entrepreneur who is passionate about using innovative storytelling to spark meaningful change. She believes that expressing creativity freely, with integrity, is at the heart of building a more inclusive world.

She is best known for having built multiple digital platforms and campaigns of repute over the past decade, which continue to create social impact and shape Indian youth culture significantly. In 2013, she co-founded her first media company, Homegrown—a pioneering platform that changed the way we speak to and about young Indians. Under her leadership, the platform earned a reputation for diverse, original storytelling that wasn’t afraid to take on the taboo, while continuously tackling pressing issues like juvenile justice, women’s rights, and sexual health. She conceptualised and led many digital campaigns and IPs for development sector clients like UNICEF, Dasra, & No Country For Women, as well as leading brands like Nike, adidas, HDFC Life and Puma (amongst others) during her time here.

Since moving on, she’s built three other first-of-its-kind media platforms, two of which focus specifically on children’s rights. One is Apalam Chapalam—a multi-lingual storytelling channel that caters to urban, underprivileged children in lockdown. In under a year, stories have been watched 200000+ times, and reached thousands of children in need. The second is ‘The Minor Project’—a dynamic public dialogue initiative to help end violence against children for Unicef India and Leher NGO. The third is a contemporary print publication from India called ‘The Dirty Magazine,’ where she helps create its vision as its Creative Director (Culture) & Features Editor.

Mandovi also continues to pursue various independent projects developing branding, identity & strategy for clients, as well as her own work as an artist and children’s book writer. She has a series of commissioned children’s stories and poetry due to be published in the coming year.

As a creative leader, she’s been honoured on Forbes Asia’s 30 under 30 list, Vogue Global Network’s ’50 Young Trailblazers Around The World,’ Lured Magazine’s ’15 Creatives Defining the New India’ amongst many other well-known publications for her work in Media, Communications and Culture-Building in India. She’s also regularly tapped as a credible source for how youth culture & youth identity is evolving in India today.

A Digital News Policy Overhaul In India

The government of India wants Big Tech majors Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, and Amazon to pay Indian publishers and media companies from their revenues for using their content in a new move to overhaul the digital news business in India.

This comes over a year after the publishers in India decided to follow the examples of countries like Australia when they asked social media giants such as Google to pay for their content. The Indian Newspaper Society in February asked Google to compensate Indian newspapers for using their content and insisted that the global search giant increase the publisher share of advertising revenue to 85 per cent.

The move comes as the government aims to regulate digital media in India with the Registration of Press and Periodicals Bill that may be introduced in the upcoming Parliament session.

It proposes the registration, for the first time, of digital media, which has not been defined by any law or any government regulation till now, and also punitive action for “violations”.

Digital news publishers will now have to register with the Press Registrar General within 90 days of the law coming into effect. There will be an appellate board with the Press Council of India chairperson as its chief to redress any grievances.

An earlier attempt to regulate digital media by the government under Information Technology rules in 2019 had sparked a huge controversy. Back then, the draft bill had defined digital media news as news in digitised format that can be transmitted over the internet and includes text, video, audio and graphics.

If the Registration of Press and Periodicals Bill gets Parliament’s nod, it will replace the British-era Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867 that was meant for regulating newspapers and printing presses in India. (Courtesy: TOI)

Elon Musk’s Twitter Deal Likely To Fail

With Elon Musk issuing his most direct threat yet to walk away from his purchase of Twitter (TWTR) on June 6th, openly accusing the social media company of breaching the merger agreement by not providing the data he has requested on spam and fake accounts, the proposed deal is likely to fail, reports here suggest.

In a letter to Twitter’s head of legal, policy and trust, Vijaya Gadde, Musk alleged that Twitter is “actively resisting and thwarting his information rights” as outlined by the deal.  “This is a clear material breach of Twitter’s obligations under the merger agreement and Mr. Musk reserves all rights resulting therefrom, including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement,” an attorney representing Musk wrote to the company.

Musk’s letter speculated that Twitter may be “withholding the requested data due to concern for what Mr. Musk’s own analysis of that data will uncover.”

Meanwhile, Twitter Inc said on Friday last week that the waiting period under the HSR Act for Elon Musk’s $44-billion acquisition of the social media firm has expired. Completion of the deal is now subject to remaining customary closing conditions, including approval by Twitter stockholders and the receipt of applicable regulatory approvals, Twitter said.

The HSR Act, or the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, requires parties to report large transactions to both the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division for review.

Musk has demanded that Twitter turn over information about its testing methodologies to support its claims that bots and fake accounts constitute less than 5% of the platform’s active user base, a figure the company has consistently stated for years in boilerplate public disclosures. Musk has also called for doing his own independent assessment based on Twitter data.

Shares of Twitter fell 5% in early trading Monday. Even before the latest development, Twitter stock was trading well below Musk’s takeover offer of $54.20 per share, likely indicating investor skepticism about the deal going through.

Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, has stood by his company’s longtime spam metric. In a statement Monday, the company said: “Twitter has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Mr. Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement.” The company also said it intends to “close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms.”

Musk has alleged that the true number of spam accounts is likely much more, potentially as high as 90%. Musk has previously said the acquisition “cannot move forward” until the company provides “proof” of its spam metric.

Some Wall Street analysts have said this pushback may be a case of buyer’s remorse and an effort to pressure Twitter into negotiating a lower price for the $44 billion deal. There have been questions from the start about how Musk would finance the acquisition. Social media stocks have also taken a hit in recent weeks amid broader market jitters.

The letter also claimed Twitter had sought to restrict access to the information by interpreting the merger agreement narrowly, such that providing the information would fall outside the scope of Twitter’s contractual requirements. But the letter charged that even by Twitter’s narrowed definitions, it still has an obligation to furnish the information.

In a separate securities filing, Twitter previously disclosed that Musk had waived a due diligence clause in the deal that could have made it easier for him to back out of the agreement; without it, Musk could face a tougher climb, and the prospect of litigation. In making the agreement to buy Twitter, Musk has made spam bots on the platform a central issue. He has vowed to defeat them or “die trying,” even as he has described Twitter as being vital to “the future of civilization.”

NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain, Suparna Singh Win “Most Trusted” Awards

NDTV 24×7 has won the awards for being “India’s Most Trusted Brand for News” (English). Sreenivasan Jain, who has won several awards for his investigative reports, has been named “India’s Most Trusted News Anchor”.

Suparna Singh, President of the NDTV Group, has been awarded “India’s Most Trusted Leader”.

The awards for 2022 have been given by an organisation called WCRCINT, which evaluates brands in different countries.

These huge awards for “India’s Most Trusted News Brand”, the sixth such honour since 2019, prove that audiences rely on the NDTV Network for genuine news. These awards are also an acknowledgement of NDTV’s whole-hearted commitment to No-Hate-For-Profit.

“As always, we are so grateful to our television and online audience, and to our business partners, for their support of independent journalism,” NDTV wrote on its website.

Geetanjali Shree’s “Tomb Of Sand” Becomes First Novel Translated From Hindi To Win International Booker Prize

Geetanjali Shree’s ‘Tomb of Sand’, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, has won the International Booker, the first novel translated from Hindi to win the coveted
£50,000 prize.

Shree and Rockwell winning the prize not only marks the award’s first Hindi winner, but also the first time a book originally written in any Indian language has won, reports the Guardian.

Titled ‘Ret Samadhi’ (Rajkamal Prakashan) in Hindi, the book centers around a north Indian 80-year-old woman who slips into a deep depression after the death of her husband and then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention – including striking up a friendship with a transgender person – confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more ‘modern’ of the two.

To her family’s consternation, she insists on travelling to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, and a feminist.

For someone who stormed the Hindi literary scene with her debut novel ‘Mai’, as a writer, it becomes part of one’s unconscious and subconscious to look, hear, smell, and see stories around you, in you. “So there is some, still inarticulated, but full life, circulating inside you all the time. And the moment happens, not quite by your choice when the muse bends over you and something begins to unravel and pen comes to paper.

Many variables come together and a work emerges, triggered by any small or big thing. In the case of ‘Ret Samadhi’, the image of an old woman lying with her back turned to everyone in a joint family and apparently with no interest in living any longer, set me off. My curiosity grew as to is she turning her back on the world and life or preparing to get up into a rejuvenated, reinvented new life! From there the novel took off. It was a long journey full of fun, pain, joy, anxieties, the works,” Geethanjali said in an earlier interview.

The author is clear that writing must never be extraneously motivated or influenced. “I write to express as best as I can, as creatively and sensitively as I can, and that is the only expectation I am propelled by. I let no one tell me what, when, how I must write.”

Adding that awards, praise and are extraneous to this basic activity, and are incidental, she said: “Of course, if they are positive, it adds a new dimension to my happiness and fulfilment, but, they are not and never will be my impetus.”

Shree, whose works have been widely translated into different languages including French, German, Korean and Serbian, feels that translation is dialogue and communication. It is never a fixed, frozen and complete exchange. “It is ongoing, live and enriching – some things are explained better, some remain confounding, just as in any communication. Some things may also get lost, but some things also get added. Just as when two people talk, they enrich each other and enlarge each other’s way of seeing, being, and experiencing, so is also the communication underway in translation.

The gains of it are immense. One cannot fear it for the risks that may be in there too. Communication is worth it, risky or not! Dialogue, which is what translation is, is the best thing in human life and the way forward.”

Stressing that it is extremely important that the author and translator share a rapport, Shree said: “You need a rapport which establishes that both of you share the same wavelength, sensibility, values. If a fanatic, narrow-minded, purist picks up my book for translation, it is, without doubt, a recipe for disaster.”

Speaking about her process, the author, who has also been actively associated with theatre – in 1989, a group of theatre artists, writers, musicians and painters got together to form ‘Vivadi’, said: “My writing is the process. Except that I must work regularly and for long hours, there are no rules about it. I have no set formula and like to let the dynamics of unfurling a beginning and issues it throws up take over and take me across a variegated terrain.”

Deriving her characters from the physical world and space within — “a mix of both. And such a mix that even if they relate to recognisable things/people somewhere, they are fictional,” she feels that there is a need not just for translations into English but also and as much for translations across South Asian languages.

“Is English going to be the only language in which all other literature has to be accessed? One, what about those who are not well versed in it; two, we surely want a multilingual, multicultural scene where many languages are in dialogue with many others, not English alone becoming the overarching big language and all others aspiring to get access within it.”

The author, who has also finished another novel, said: “For some years it has been sitting on my table, ready and waiting. One of these days I will pick it up and hand it to the publisher.”

NEWS 24 (BAG NETWORK) ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF PODCAST 24- AWAAZ SABKI

A new digital platform called PODCAST 24- AWAAZ SABKI will cover news and stories from India on a variety of subjects including Politics, Bollywood, Crime, Women, Health, History, Education & Sports. It will also provide a platform to discuss and deliberate on a range of important and relevant social issues.

After the success of all its satellite channels and an impressive presence on social media, BAG Network, under the leadership of Ms. Anurradha Prasad, has now established its presence in the Podcast space to connect with its audience using this powerful digital platform.  As Ms. Anurradha Prasad puts it, “PODCAST 24- AWAAZ SABKI will bridge the gap between news and our listeners by curating content that is current and relevant to our audience”.
Millions of loyal viewers of NEWS 24 will now be able to listen to all the flagship programs of  NEWS 24 like ‘Itihaas Gawah Hai’ with Anurradha Prasad, ‘Ansune Kisse’ with Rajeev Shukla, ‘Sabse Bada Sawal’ with Sandeep Chaudhary, ‘Rashtra Ki Baat’ with Manak Gupta, ‘Mahaul Kya Hai?’ with Rajeev Ranjan,  on PODCAST 24.
Listeners can access the PODCAST 24 through all major podcast apps such as Spotify, Amazon, Google etc. The channel can also be accessed through the News 24 website.
The BAG Network invites everyone to be a part of this new and exciting journey.

IAPC Organizes Induction Of The New BOD And National EC And Awards Ceremony At Indian Consulate In New York

The Indo-American Press Club, the largest organization of Indian descent journalists and media persons working across North America, organized the swearing-in ceremony and inauguration of new office bearers on Saturday, May 21st during a solemn induction ceremony, organized at the Indian Consulate in New York.

Kamlesh C. Mehta was administered the oath of office as the Chairman of the IAPC Board of Directors by Ambassador Randhir Jaiswal, Consul General of India in New York, while Ginson Zachariah, Founding Chairman of IAPC administered the oath to IAPC’s new President Aashmeeta Yogiraj, while IAPC General Secretary CG Daniel and several others were given the oath virtually.

Four distinguished and accomplished community leaders/professionals were honored with the Lifetime Achievement Awards for their accomplishments and contributions to the larger society.

Ambassador Randhir Jaiswal, Consul General, was the chief guest, while New York Mayor De Blasio was the Special Guest of Honor during the ceremony. Mayor De Blasio presented award to Pamela Kwatra, a trailblazer and the only Indian American woman recipient of the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor award in 2008, Pam Kwatra. She has a proud record of civic-social and professional accomplishments and recognition.

Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, the only 4th Woman elected to be the President of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin in its nearly four decades-long history was honored fgor her visionary leadership of AAPI benefitting AAPI members and the larger societies in India and the United States.

Dr. Thomas Abraham, who has been honored with the Bharatvanshi Gaurav Award of Anthar Rashtriya Sahayog Parishad and Pravasi Bharatiya Samman for his services to the NRI/PIO communities for the last 49 years since he moved to New York as a graduate student at Columbia University, was another awardee whom IAPC honored today.

The other honoree whom IAPC recognized today was Sudhir M. Parikh, M.D., a physician by profession and currently the Chairman and Publisher of Parikh Worldwide Media Inc., the largest Indian-American publishing group in the United States, and Chairman of ITV Gold, a 24×7 TV news channel, and is one of the most honored Indian Americans with Padma Shri and Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

Special Recognition at the event was given to: Ambassador Randhir Jaiswal, Consul General of India in New York for his vision, dedication and community service; Mayor Bill De Blasio, Former Mayor Of New York City, for Excellence in Public Service and Leadership; Dr. Prabhakar Kore, Member of Parliament, India, for his distinguished services in Education and Public Services; and Kevin Thomas, New York State Senator For excellence in Community Service and leadership.

In his address, while highlighting the many recent initiatives of the Government of India to lead India to prosperity and strength, Ambassador Jaiswal praised IAPC for its “significant contribution to promoting India-US friendship and the welfare of Indian diaspora in the United States. It has brought together people from the diaspora media fraternity under a cohesive umbrella so that the voice of the community could be heard in a meaningful manner.

We look forward to their continued support to bring developments from India to the readers in the US and carry all the excitement from the United States to the people of India. I invite Indo American Press Club to join hands with us in celebrating India@75, our Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav. I wish the Club steady growth, progress and success,” he said.

Former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, while congratulating Pam Kwatra on receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award, described her as a trailblazing businesswoman, a community leader, and a political force with executive chops. No wonder she worked with elan on important projects in my administration on my request.

I also came to know that her involvement with the community spans across culture, art & literature – preserving and promoting abroad the rich and varied culture of India.” While extending his greetings to IAPC, the Mayor said, “Congratulations are due to IAPC for doing a good job, to Kamlesh Mehta, its new Board Chairman, new committee members and all the honorees. We will continue to support this media organization.”

In his acceptance speech, Kamlesh Mehta said,  “These are unprecedented times for journalists and the media, when many have sacrificed their lives in the pandemic. At IAPC, we salute these brave men and women who risk their lives to bring to the world accurate reporting and being an effective voice of the media world.

IAPC envisages its vision through collective efforts and advocacy activities through its nearly one thousand members across the US and Canada, by being a link between the media fraternity and the world at large. We will work together with dedication to enhance the working conditions of our journalists, exchanging ideas and offering educational and training opportunities to our members, aspiring young journalists and media professionals around the globe.”

In her presidential address, Aashmeeta Yogiraj, Director – Programming & Marketing, JUS Broadcasting Corporation said, “I t is said that the media is the fourth pillar of democracy. Never was that statement truer than in the times we live in now. While media as an entity has certainly evolved to fit modern times, its invaluable service to society persists. As a member of the media, it is my honor to serve as President of the Indo-American Press Club. I look forward to furthering the principles of democracy alongside the rest of the IAPC leadership and team.” By becoming a member IAPC , she said,  You gain “access to a unique professional network, exclusive events with high-profile global influencers, cutting-edge Newswire services and an opportunity to network with others in the media industry.”

Ginsmon Zachariah, Founding Chair of IAPC BOD said, “Our homeland India is known to have a vibrant, active and free media, which plays a very vital role in the functioning and growth of the largest democracy in the world. And we recognize that as members of the media we have an important role to play in our adopted land. We are aware of our call to be a source of effective communication around the world. We as members of the media realize that we have a role to play in shaping our world to be a just and equitable place where everyone enjoys freedom and liberty.”

Providing the background to the formation of IAPC, Akay Ghosh, Founding President of IAPC  said, “We as individuals and corporations that represent the media world, consisting of print, visual, electronic and online, realize that we have a greater role to play. We have been working in this field for decades and often stand alone in a large media world. As individual members of the media, our voice is often drowned in the very large world of multi-media. We lack a collective voice to raise our voice, to pool our talents together and work as a cohesive group to reflect and respond to the challenges of the modern world. IAPC was  (IAPC), formed to fill this vacuum, and is committed to strive to be a common platform to raise the voice and explore the possibilities of helping shape the world to be a world that is fair, just and equitable for today and future generations.”

Eric Kumar, a major supporter to IAPC introduced Mayor Bill DeBlasio. In his address, he mentioned how closely Mayor Bill DeBlasio worked with the Indian American communities and made a law to support Ethnic Media. Famous Punjabi Singer Malkit Singh could not attend the event for delays in flight, he sent his gratitude for honoring him and best complements to IAPC for continued success.

The induction ceremony was attended by elite members and community leaders, including, Padma Shri Dr. Nori, Kenny Desai of FIA,  Girish Patel of BAPS, Girish Shah of Jain Samaj, Babu Stephen, former Chairman of IAPC, Shashi Malik of Long Island Association. Harish Thakkar of the American Indian Association, Ravi Bhooplapur of Xavier University,  Dr. Neeta Jain, Nilima Madan, Darshan Singh Bagga, Arvind Vora of Shanti Fund,  and Vipul Dev, the Consular  at CGI.

Parveen Chopra, past president of IAPC welcomed the audience. A souvenir with colorfully designed pages, depicting the history and objectives of IAPV, edited by Parveen Chopra and Dr. Mathew Joys was released.

A visual presentation of the Nine Years of IAPC history beautifully presented by Dr. Mathew Joys, IAPC BOD member from Las Vegas and Shan Justus from Texas provided a glimpse of the trajectory of IAPC’s growth since its inception in 2013. The closing ceremony included scintillating dances traditional folk dances and fast moving Bollywood dances by The Arya School of Dance and was followed by a sumptuous dinner. The hybrid event was also streamed simultaneously on social media platforms and watched live on YouTube by several members and supporters of IAPC.

Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, President Of AAPI Presented With The Lifetime Achievement Award By IAPC

Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, President Of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award during a solemn awards ceremony jointly organized by The Consulate General of India in New York and The Indo-American Press Club (IAPC), the largest organization of Indian descent journalists operating in North America , at the Indian Consulate, New York, NY on Saturday, May 21st, 2022.

Ambassador Randhir Jaiswal, Consul General of India, who was the chief guest presented the award at the Grand Ballroom of the Consulate in New York, which was attended by several community leaders, elected officials, diplomats, media personnel and professionals.

Other awardees who were honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award included:  Dr. Thomas Abraham, Dr. Sudhir Parikh, and Pamela Kwatra. The event, which was attended by several dignitaries, including former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio; Dr. Prabhakar Kore, Member of Parliament, India;  Kevin Thomas, New York State Senator; and several other elected officials.

The awards ceremony was part of the Induction Ceremony of IAPC’s new office bearers, including Chairman Kamlesh C Mehta and Secretary Ajay Ghosh of IAPC Board of Directors, and members of the IAPC National Executive Committee led by President Aashmeeta Yogiraj and General Secretary CG Daniel.

Dr. Anupama Gotimukula is the only 4th Woman elected to be the President of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin in its nearly four decades-long history.

A resident of San Antonio, TX, Dr. Gotimukula  is a board-certified Pediatric Anesthesiologist, practicing since 2007, and is affiliated with Christus Santa Rosa, Baptist and Methodist Healthcare systems in San Antonio.

In her acceptance Speech, Dr. Gotimukula shared with the audience about the many initiatives AAPI has taken up during the past one year. Under her dynamic and inspiring leadership, “AAPI has grown and reached new heights. The Global Healthcare Summit in Hyderabad, held under challenging Covid situations has been historic in nature. The Blood Donation Drive in 75 Cities across the US commemorating the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence has been highly praised by all,” she said.

Her goals on “Prevention is better than Cure” are resonating in India through the “Adopt a Village” preventive healthcare screening initiative of non communicable diseases. A report from AAPI was submitted to the Indian Government to establish the “Indian Preventive Health Task Force “ to help frame screening guidelines for all non communicable diseases like Diabetes, Hypertension, cancer screening etc., sje said.

Under her leadership, several new programs have been initiated, benefiting AAPI members and the larger communities in the United States and India. Dr. Gotimukula urged the media to focus on the many positive things that are happening around the world, rather than focus on negativity that destroys human freedom, liberty and unity.

The closing ceremony included scintillating dances traditional folk dances and fast moving Bollywood dances by The Arya School of Dance and was followed by a sumptuous dinner. The hybrid event was also streamed simultaneously on social media platforms.

IAPC To Hold Induction Ceremony Of The New Board Of Directors And National Executive Committee On May 21, 2022 At Indian Consulate In New York

The Indo-American Press Club, the largest organization of Indian descent journalists operating in North America since 2014, is pleased to announce the swearing-in ceremony and inauguration of new office bearers for the years 2022-2024 on Saturday, May 21 from 5pm to 8pm. This induction ceremony is organized at the Indian Consulate in New York. Ambassador Randhir Jaiswal, Consul General, will be the chief guest inaugurating the event at the Grand Ballroom of the Consulate.

The new Board of Directors, including Chairman Kamlesh C Mehta and Secretary Ajay Ghosh, and members of the IAPC National Executive Committee led by President Aashmeeta Yogiraj and General Secretary CG Daniel will be sworn in at the ceremony.

The event, which will be attended by several dignitaries, including former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio; Dr. Prabhakar Kore, Member of Parliament, India;  Kevin Thomas, New York State Senator; Harry Arora, State Assemblyman, Connecticut; Malkit Singh, Music Legend, and several other elected officials, will surely go down in IAPC history.

IAPC will honor Dr. Thomas Abraham, Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, Dr. Sudhir Parikh, and Pamela Kwatra with Lifetime Achievement Award.  The closing ceremony will include an entertainment feature by the Arya School of Dance, NY followed by a sumptuous dinner.

The hybrid event will also be streamed simultaneously on social media platforms. Your participation and valuable support is requested – please attend this magnificent event in person or Virtually Live on YouTube.

Indian-American Women Launch Digital Platform To Screen Films

A group of Indian-American entrepreneurs launched a video conference platform, where filmmakers from Hollywood and Indian cinema can screen their own cinematic content.

The USP of this initiative, ‘We Must Meet’ is that it can live stream political events, Town Halls, sports events, and concerts, which can be accessed by up to 30,000 people at the same time.

‘We Must Meet’ content will comprise international as well as regional projects. It will be driven by an annual subscription model and is being launched in India and globally.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, former US President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign adviser, has announced her involvement with ‘We Must Meet,’ a new digital platform launched by a group of women of Indian descent. The technological initiative is said to be the first video conferencing platform that can also function as an OTT platform, allowing Hollywood and Indian filmmakers to screen their own cinematic content.

Elaborating on the platform, Manju Mason, who has conceptualized ‘We Must Meet’, said in a statement: “The software has been entirely developed in the United States and is community-based. It will change the way people will meet and host business meetings.”

The platform is powered and managed by the technology company Iotum. The company announced that We Must Meet is soon going to launch We Must Meet Theme Parks, Boutique Hotels, resorts, and restaurants under the same brand.

The move comes at a time when India’s OTT market is growing fast and has the potential to become the largest in the world.

Five Ways Elon Musk Can Transform Twitter

News that Elon Musk bought Twitter could usher in substantial changes for the social media platform. Given its influential role in public conversation and policy actions, a shift in management control could have substantial consequences for the role of social media. Here are five things that could happen under Musk’s ownership.

Weaken Content Moderation in Name of Free Speech

Musk brings a strong free speech perspective that likely would alter some of the firm’s current content moderation policies. In the face of public concern over extremism, violence, hate speech, and false information, Twitter and other large social media platforms have strengthened their content moderation policies to remove content that encourages violence or spreads misinformation.

While many of those worried about the corrosive impact of social media on national and global discourse have applauded these moves, some free speech advocates have questioned these practices on grounds that more, not less speech, is desired—and that private companies shouldn’t be the arbiters of truth and justice.

Musk himself has advocated for stronger protections of freedom of speech on social media platforms and presumably would move the company closer to his perspective when he becomes its new owner. He likely would remove some of the content moderation practices and be less likely to remove tweets that, to him, fall within a gray area.

Bring Donald Trump Back to Twitter

One winner of an ownership change could be former President Donald Trump. Right now, Twitter has imposed a lifetime ban on Trump due to his role in inciting violence on January 6, 2021. After protesters stormed the Capitol and temporarily stopped Congress’ presidential election certification, Twitter executives said Trump had violated its terms of service and kicked him off the platform.

But under Musk, the company could revisit that decision and reinstate the former president on the grounds he is a leading public figure, has important things to say, and is a likely presidential candidate in 2024. If reinstated, that would give Trump a large megaphone to proclaim his views, spread lies and misinformation about the integrity of the 2020 election, and inflame public passions. The consequence could be sharper polarization, more intense partisanship, and a rise of political extremism.

Cozy Up to China

Unlike many leaders of large businesses, Musk has cultivated close ties with China and is building a large Tesla plant there. China is a global leader in the manufacturing of electric vehicle batteries, and Musk has expanded his dealings with China despite human rights concerns and fair labor practices.

The impact of an ownership change could be a different perspective on geopolitics than currently is the case. Musk could push policies that are more sympathetic to China, less restrictive towards Russia, or less supportive of human rights and environmental protection. He could introduce algorithms that favor content with a particular foreign policy take to the exclusion of alternative viewpoints.  To his credit, though, Musk has promised to “open up” the algorithms so that they are more transparent. That would be a positive move for the social media platform.

Weaken accountability by taking company private

Musk plans to take Twitter private when he assumes ownership. If that became the case, there would be less public transparency about what happens, fewer reporting requirements, and more secrecy in regard to corporate practices. One of the byproducts of being a private firm is less oversight by government agencies and more freedom to make decisions. With a company as influential as Twitter, that could have ramifications for public discussion and electoral discourse.

Encourage space travel and push for AI limits

New management likely would push the platform towards Musk’s well-known personal interests in space travel and antipathy towards AI. SpaceX already is a leader in private space exploration and Musk himself has talked about colonizing Mars and building a life presence beyond planet Earth. He likely would encourage space tourism in line with his business interests, and encourage people to think more broadly about the future of humanity. It is an open question how Twitter would deal with possible conflicts of interest with Musk’s other business holdings, but that is something that should be clarified during the regulatory review of this transaction.

In addition, Musk is on record as worrying about artificial intelligence and fearing its capacity to enslave humanity. He wants to put the brakes on the rapid expansion of AI without appropriate human safeguards. While advocates can debate the merits of either stance, there is little doubt that ownership of Twitter would put Musk in a stronger position to influence public discussions and shape policy towards AI and other emerging technologies.

Hacking Attempts By Russian Spies Found By Microsoft

US tech giant Microsoft on Apr 8 said that it has disrupted Russian hackers who attempted to infiltrate Ukrainian media organizations.
The spies were attempting to break into Ukrainian, EU and US targets, according to the company. Microsoft attributes the attacks to a group it calls “Strontium”.

In a blog post on Microsoft’s website, the firm said that a group was using internet domains in an effort to spy on US and EU government bodies and thinktanks, as well as a number of Ukrainian institutions including media organizations. Microsoft did not provide further details on who the targets were.

Microsoft said that it was taking legal and technical action to seize control of domains controlled by Strontium, and had obtained a court order that allowed it to take over seven domains on Apr 6.

Microsoft used a US court order to disable seven internet domains that a hacking group linked with Russian intelligence was using to try to infiltrate Ukrainian media organizations, reported CNN.

It’s the second time this week that a powerful US corporation or government agency has disclosed the use of a court order to target hackers accused of working for Russia’s military intelligence directorate, GRU.

The moves reflect US officials’ ongoing concerns about potential Russian retaliatory cyberattacks against US targets and a more aggressive strategy to try to thwart state-backed hacking operations.

The Justice Department revealed on Apr 6 that it had used a court order to disrupt a network of thousands of hacked computers controlled by another GRU-linked hacking group that could have been used in a cyberattack.

That network of infected computers, known as a botnet, “was a threat to US businesses, particularly the ones who were compromised, and it required action given the current threat environment,” the Justice Department official told reporters.

Discovery Acquires HBO, CNN, And Warner Bros., Creating New Media Giant

Discovery’s merger with Warner Media took effect on April 8th, 2022, creating a streaming media giant led by CEO David Zaslav. The deal combines two treasure troves of content and foreshadows further changes in the streaming era.

The newly formed company, Warner Bros. Discovery, will begin publicly trading on Monday. Zaslav said he will hold a town hall event for employees of the combined company later in the week.

“I am confident that our collective energy and genuine love for these businesses and brands will build the world’s most dynamic media and entertainment company,” Zaslav said in a memo to employees Friday afternoon.

Zaslav said Warner Bros. Discovery “can propel the creation of high-quality content; create more opportunity for under-represented storytellers and independent creators; and serve customers with more innovative video experiences and points of engagement.”

The deal, first announced last May, is a climactic moment for Zaslav and his longtime deputies at Discovery, best known for brands like Animal Planet, TLC and HGTV. The merger adds HBO, CNN, TNT, Turner Sports, the Warner Bros. movie studio, and a huge raft of other media assets to the company.

Setting the stage to compete with the likes of Disney and Netflix, Zaslav said in Friday’s memo that “we are well positioned to become a top-tier streaming competitor.”

He confirmed that the main streaming services from each side of the company, HBO Max and discovery+, will be brought “into a single product in the future.”

The merger vaults Zaslav to the very top tier of the media business, controlling everything from a legendary movie studio to a global news network.

As Rich Greenfield, the influential LightShed Partners media analyst, told CNN Business, “David can actually beat Goliath!” Greenfield said “Zaslav and team find themselves in a position that was unimaginable two years ago — sitting near the top of Hollywood.”

Shareholders of AT&T (T), which spun off WarnerMedia earlier this week, hold 71% of shares in the new company, and Discovery shareholders hold 29%. But the transaction represents AT&T’s reversal of an earlier plan to become a media heavyweight. With Friday’s deal “close,” in Wall Street speak, AT&T has officially unwound its 2018 takeover of Time Warner and refocused on its core business.

AT&T CEO John Stankey bid farewell to the media company in a candid memo to staffers on Friday. “Getting to this moment was one of the more difficult decisions of my life,” he wrote. “I am sure you aren’t surprised that it came with a fair amount of anxiety, disappointment, and concern relative to the changes it would trigger. All considered, I remain confident we have set the right path.”

“Over time,” Stankey wrote, “the combination of WarnerMedia and Discovery will bring forth a stronger company and quicken the already strong pace of innovation and change you have established.”

Warner Bros. Discovery is anticipating $3 billion in what businesses often refer to as “synergies,” which means the combination will almost certainly entail layoffs. Already, many of Warner’s top executives have exited the company, including WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, whose last day was Friday.

Zaslav wrote in an internal memo on Thursday that “we are establishing a simpler organizational structure with fewer layers, more accountability and more resources focused on the screen.”

Discovery executive Bruce Campbell will oversee all revenue for the new company. JB Perrette will run global streaming and interactive entertainment. Kathleen Finch will oversee all cable networks except CNN and HBO. CNN will be operated separately, with Chris Licht becoming chairman and CEO of CNN Global. All will report to Zaslav.

Three key creative executives from WarnerMedia will also report directly to Zaslav: HBO and HBO Max chief content officer Casey Bloys; Warner Bros. Television Group chairman Channing Dungey; and Warner Bros. Picture Group chairman Toby Emmerich.

Taking A Break From The Digital World Is Healthy

Technology has connected us in ways we never anticipated and made our lives more convenient. While technology definitely comes with numerous positive benefits, there are negative sides to it as well that can lead to physical and psychological issues. A 2017 study by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that people within the age group of 19-32 who had higher usage of social media were more likely to feel isolated than those who didnt use social media so often.

Innovative technologies and smart gadgets have made us slaves of the digital era, and there’s an imperative need to get some respite from this dependency and disruption. That’s where yoga and meditation can make a difference. These ancient practices have been part of our civilisation for years and are used to align the body, mind and spirit and bring mental clarity.

Why a Break from the Digital World is Necessary

We are constantly tethered to technology through our smartphones, tablets, computers, and even watches, and companies are pushing our psychological buttons to make us return for more. Constant distractions are ruining our cognitive functions and leaving many prone to anxiety and memory lapses. Overuse of digital media can also have detrimental effects on physical health. Too much smartphone usage can put a lot of pressure on the shoulders, neck, and spine. Technology overuse can also lead to strained injuries of the thumbs, fingers, and wrists. Overexposure to the blue light emitted by smartphones and computers can also interrupt the circadian clock, causing sleep issues.

How Yoga can help

In people who practice yoga on a daily basis, changes occur in the brain structure and new connections are developed. Also, it results in improved cognitive skills like memory and learning. Here are some easy yoga poses to get you started:

Tadasana (Mountain Pose): How to do:

*Stand with the feet together keeping the arms by the side.

* Straighten the legs and tuck the tailbone in while engaging the thigh muscles.

* While inhaling, elongate through the torso and raise the arms.

* Exhale and release the shoulder blades away from the head.

* Take slow breaths and maintain this position for 30 seconds.

Benefits: This pose engages all the major muscle groups and improves concentration and focus.

AdhoMukhaSvanasana: How to do:

* Come onto your hands and knees with the palms just past the shoulder.

* The knees must be kept under the hips.

* Lift the hips and press back to form a V-shape with the body.

* Keep the feet hip-width apart.

* Spread the fingers and move the chest towards your legs.

* Maintain this position for 30 second and gently release.

Benefits: This pose stretches the lower body, improves posture and balances the body and mind.

Balasana (Child’s Pose): How to do:

* Kneel on your mat with the toes tucked under.

* Lower the hips towards the feet and extend your arms forward.

* The stomach should be resting on the thighs and forehead touching the mat

* Maintain this position for 1 minute and release.

Benefits: Apart from releasing tensions in the chest, this pose relaxes the spine and back as well as promotes good sleep.

Savasana: How to do:

* Lie on the back with the arms alongside the body.

* The palms should be facing upwards and the body must be kept completely relaxed including the face.

* Continue with gentle breathing and keep your attention on your breath.

* Stay in this pose for a few minutes and release.

Benefits: This pose calms the nervous system reducing stress and anxiety. It also aids the immune and digestive system.

Achieve Balance with Meditation

Meditation has been a useful tool for ages to maintain control of the mind and transform thoughts. People who incorporate meditation into their daily lives remain more composed during times of adversity and clear-minded. In fact, new studies have revealed that consistent practise of meditation increases GABA levels, which promotes emotional well-being and helps one feel happy.

When combined with yoga and pranayama, meditation can do wonders for our body and mind gradually, and one can see the reflection of the same in their daily lifestyle.

Conclusion

The rapid advancement of technology has certainly led to increased stress and emotional distress driven by rapid reward cycles, exposure to too much information, and simultaneous engagement in different tasks. Meditation and yoga can help us release inner tensions, quiet the mind, and stay focused. Only a few minutes of practise every day can bring a whole world of change, making us happy, healthy, and resilient to stress and burnout. Technology is here to stay and even get more advanced. It rests on us as to how we can adopt these practises as part of our lifestyle to bring a positive change and stay healthy.

Chai With Manju Celebrates 10th Anniversary

“Chai with Manju” a celebrity series of interviews and features, one of the most watched in the New England region, where she featured celebrities and spiritual leaders such as Sadhguru, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Kennedys and the like, is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Over the past decade, Dr. Manju Sheth’s popular show, “Chai With Manju” on digital platforms, including on www.theunn.com with  celebrity interview series, has become one of the much talked about media features, bringing a wide range of exciting guests.

With hundreds of interviews and millions of viewers–first in the print and later in videos—Chai with Manju has spotlighted guests from almost every aspect of life: from musicians and spiritual leaders to academics and entrepreneurs and from politicians and diplomats to local heroes.

A physician by profession, having a passion for the media and with a deep commitment to serve the larger humanity and with a special focus on women’s empowerment, Dr. Manju Sheth is a Board Certified Internist, currently serving patients at Beth Israel Lahey Hospital.in the Boston Region in Massachusetts.

Dr. Sheth wears many hats to her credit. A multi-tasker and with full of energy, Dr. Sheth says, “If you want to do something in life then you will find a way.” It has not been easy to be “a physician, mother, media personality, and be involved in our vibrant New England community and the media world, but each of my involvements is truly important to me, and I give my full heart and energy to each of them. I always remind myself, that anything worth having has to be worked for.”

As the celebrity show Sushil Tuli, founder and CEO of Massachusetts-based Leader Bank, said that the Chai with Manju team over these years has done commendable work in bringing to its viewers and readers information, reports and opinions so vital in this age of media on social, business and cultural developments.

“Chai with Manju joins the pantheon of radio/TV programs such as Larry King Live and Fresh Air by Terry Gross,” said Brian Pereira, President, CEO and Board Member of Visterra Inc, and a member of the Board at American India Foundation, known as AIF.  “Ten years have passed in a blink of the eye, and we look forward to be educated and entertained for 10 more years.”

Desh Deshpande, a philanthropist, mentor, a successful serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author of “On Entrepreneurship and Impact”, urged Dr. Sheth to continue her “excellent work and bring us the insights of amazing people in the world.”

“It is a bold step for a doctor to venture into media.  Dr. Manju Sheth jumped in ten years ago and has brought many in-depth conversations with many distinguished individuals to us,” said Mr. Deshpande. “I cannot think of a single distinguished person who has stepped on the Boston soil and have not had Chai with Manju.”

“Chai with Manju has been a significant part of Indian Community in USA and around the world,” Mr. Tuli said. “I would like to congratulate Dr. Manju Sheth on their 10th anniversary of Chai with Manju. Dr. Manju Sheth has always been very enthusiastic about presenting personalities/speakers to keep the community informed about what is happening around us in this world”. Tuli asked Dr. Sheth to continue bringing the good stories and keep expanding viewership. TiE Boston President Anu Chitrapu said that Chai with Manju has evolved into a world-class series during the last 10 years.

Dr. Sheth was the co-founder and CEO of INE MultiMedia, a non-profit organization devoted to promoting and supporting charitable organizations, art, culture, education and empowerment through workshops, seminars and multimedia. Dr. Sheth is a former trustee of the Indian-American Forum for Political Education. Dr. Sheth is very dedicated to the education of the community about health related issues, and is also the producer and chair of the annual free mega Health & Wellness Expo.

Chai with Manju is created and hosted by Dr. Manju Sheth, MD, a physician at Beth Israel Lahey Health and Atrius Health, and is produced by Upendra Mishra, publisher of INDIA New England News, IndUS Business Journal, Life Sciences Times and Boston Real Estate Times.

“Manju’s eclectic selection of interviewees, thorough preparation ahead of the show and deft handling of the conversation has made her show a must-listen for the New England Indian community and beyond,” added Mr. Pereira.

“I want to extend my gratitude to my producer, Upendra Mishra, for always having faith in me and to all my viewers/readers for their love and welcoming me into their homes through my videos,” said Dr. Sheth. “I am so thankful to all the celebrities who have let me have a window into their life with these special interviews. We are looking forward to having a big celebration soon.”

Dr. Ashish Jha Appointed By Biden To Lead US Efforts On Covid

President Joe Biden announced on March 17, 2022 that he is appointing Indian-American physician, Dr. Ashish Jha as the “perfect person” to lead the White House Covid national initiative. Jeff Zients, who currently leads the effort is stepping down.

“To lead this effort, I am excited to name Dr. Ashish Jha as the new White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator. Dr. Jha is one of the leading public health experts in America, and a well-known figure to many Americans from his wise and calming public presence. And as we enter a new moment in the pandemic – executing on my National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan and managing the ongoing risks from COVID – Dr. Jha is the perfect person for the job,” Biden said in a statement which also announced the departure of Zients.

“I appreciate both Jeff and Dr. Jha for working closely to ensure a smooth transition, and I look forward to continued progress in the months ahead,” the President said. According to Brown University, where Dr. Jha is the Dean of the School of Public Health, he will be taking a short-term leave for the temporary special assignment.

A globally recognized expert on pandemic preparedness and response as well as on health policy research and practice, Jha is the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, and is one of the most popular experts that the media reaches out to for explaining the Covid pandemic and the efforts to control it.

Dr. Jha has taken up the new position at the request of President Biden, a press release from Brown University noted. Jha was born in Pursaulia, Bihar in 1970. He went to Canada when he was 9, and then to the U.S. in 1983. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Columbia University and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School.

In a series of tweets, Jha noted, “On a personal note – For a poor immigrant kid who left India not speaking a word of English And found in America a nation willing to embrace me as one of her own I am deeply honored for this chance to serve this country I love And grateful to a President for the opportunity.”

Always a cautious voice on numerous media outlets where he was interviewed over the last two years, Jha Tweeted after his White House appointment, “So, as they say… Some news – For all the progress we’ve made in this pandemic (and there is a lot) We still have important work to do to protect Americans’ lives and wellbeing So when @POTUS asked me to serve, I was honored to have the opportunity.”

Jha also warned, “We are not done We are very likely to see more surges of infections We may see more variants We can’t predict everything with certainty But we have to prepare to protect the American people whatever Mother Nature throws at us.”

In succeeding Zients, Jha will lead the response of the entire U.S. government to the COVID-19 pandemic, while also advancing the nation’s global health priorities and policies.

“For all the progress we’ve made in this pandemic (and there is a lot). We still have important work to do to protect Americans’ lives and well being. So when @POTUS asked me to serve, I was honoured to have the opportunity,” Jha said in a tweet.

He will be joining Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, National Drug Control Policy Director Rahul Gupta, and Center for Medicare Director Meena Seshamani at the higher echelons of US health care system.

Jha succeeds Jeff Zients, who is leaving the White House after 14 months during which two variants, Delta and Omicron, fueled a surge in Covid cases that the US struggled to contain. Zients leaves office with 65 per cent of Americans having received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine and nearly 77 per cent have been fully vaccinated with the seven-day average of infections plummeting from 806,851 in mid-January to 30,570 in mid-March.

Jha came to Brown from Harvard, where he was the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and the dean for Global Strategy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He had also served as the co-chair of the Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola, which examined the failure of the international community’s response to the disease.

Even while he was heading the Brown University’s School of Public Health, he continued to practice medicine at a hospital for ex-military members. During the Covid pandemic, he made frequent appearances on TV, wrote op-eds for leading newspapers and was often quoted by reporters.

The medical news website, STAT, called him “network TV’s everyman expert on Covid” with the qualities of a “telegenic phenom” and a “great communicator”. Zients was a businessman and a bureaucrat, unlike Jha who is a doctor.

The changeover to a doctor marks an inflexion point in the pandemic where the logistics of mass vaccination and testing are in place and the future task is to monitor and prepare for new variations or other developments.

SRK Announces Own OTTAPP

Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan, who recently set the pulse raising with ‘Pathan’ first look is now coming up with his own OTT platform called ‘SRK+’. The actor took to his Twitter to share the news with his followers.

Sharing a creative where he is seen giving a thumbs up next to the font ‘SRK+ coming soon’, he tweeted, “Kuch kuch hone wala hai, OTT ki duniya mein.”

In a surprising turn of events, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, who is known as the flagbearer of independent cinema, quote-tweeted SRK’s tweet and announced his collaboration with King Khan’s OTT. Kashyap tweeted, “Dream come true! Collaborating with @iamsrk on his new OTT app, SRK+”.

Shah Rukh Khan had gone silent after his son Aryan Khan was involved in a controversy related to a drug bust case. Few days back, the Special Investigation Team of the Narcotics Control Bureau, had issued a statement saying that Aryan Khan was never in possession of drugs hence there was no need to take his phone and check his chats.

In addition, Aryan’s chats did not suggest that he was part of any international syndicate, NCB said.

U.S. Surgeon General Investigates Covid-19 Misinformation Dr. Vivek Murthy Says It’s ‘About Protecting The Nation’s Health’

An investigation into health misinformation on COVID-19 has been launched by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. “Misinformation has had a profound impact on COVID-19 and our response,” Murthy told CNN. “Studies have demonstrated that the vast majority of the American public either believes common myths about COVID-19 or thinks those myths might be true. And many of those include myths around the COVID-19 vaccine, so we’ve seen firsthand how misinformation is harming people’s health when it comes to COVID.”

Murthy has requested input and data from tech companies, health care providers and community organizations to learn more about the scope and impact of misinformation on COVID-19.

This is the first time the Biden administration has asked tech companies to divulge certain data publicly, including major sources of misinformation, its extent, and who may have been more targeted, CNN reported.

“We’ll be looking forward to whatever information they have to share. We’re certainly approaching this with an open mind,” Murthy said. “Many of the new technology platforms have also been talking about solutions that they are trying to implement, but what we want to understand is what data do they have on whether these solutions are actually working or not.”

Equally important is input from health care workers, teachers and families on coping with misinformation, he said.

Health misinformation is making the jobs of health care workers much harder at a time where our health care work force is strained,” Murthy told CNN. “I hear from health care workers that they are battling COVID in the hospitals during the day, and they’re going home and battling health misinformation at night.”

Dr. Gerald Harmon, president of the American Medical Association (AMA), released a statement applauding the Surgeon General’s effort to root out COVID-19 misinformation online.

“The AMA has called out the junk science and misinformation about this virus that have proliferated on social media and sewn distrust in medicine, cost us lives, and driven families apart,” Harmon said.

“Collecting and understanding this data is critical to reversing its deadly impact and future spread,” Harmon added.

The surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, wants to know “exactly how many users saw or may have been exposed to instances of Covid-19 misinformation.” In his notice, he also asked for aggregate data on demographic groups that may have been disproportionately affected by the misinformation, the New York Times reported.

With a deadline of May 2, Murthy also demanded the Big Tech companies provide information about the major sources of COVID-19 “misinformation,” including those selling “unproven” products, services and treatments.

“Technology companies now have the opportunity to be open and transparent with the American people about the misinformation on their platforms,” Murthy said in an emailed statement to the Times.

“This is about protecting the nation’s health.”

The Times noted that denying a request for information “does not carry a penalty, but the notice represents the first formal request from the Biden administration of the tech companies to submit Covid-19 misinformation data, according to the surgeon general’s office.”

The White House has stepped into the controversy over top-rated podcaster Joe Rogan’s interviews with prominent medical scientists Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Peter McCullough, essentially calling for censorship. Press secretary Jan Psaki has declared that flagging “misinformation” contrary to the government’s narrative is not enough, and social media platforms must do more.

In an interview with MSNBC in January, Murthy said the social media “platforms still have not stepped up to do the right thing, and do enough, I should say, to reduce the spread of misinformation.”

Six months ago, Murthy issued a first formal advisory accusing Big Tech of failing to do its public duty, calling misinformation “an urgent threat to public health.”

In February, as WND reported, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin naming “proliferation of false or misleading narratives” regarding COVID-19 and the 2020 election as among the top terror threats. The National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin warned of a heightened threat of terror due in part to “an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors.”

When ‘misinformation’ becomes consensus

The Times on Thursday reported Murthy’s request for information is part of Biden’s Covid National Preparedness Plan, which the White House detailed on Wednesday after the State of the Union address.

Murthy also is seeking information from health care providers and the public on how COVID-19 “misinformation” has influenced patients and communities.

“We’re asking anyone with relevant insights — from original research and datasets, to personal stories that speak to the role of misinformation in public health — to share them with us,” he said.

The charge of spreading “misinformation,” however, has come as top health officials and scientists walk back their stances on masks, lockdowns, vaccines and other efforts to combat COVID-19, confirming the claims of esteemed scientists they have dismissed as “fringe” and conspiracy theorists.”

Pegasus: The New Cyber Weapon For Dismantling Democracy

The New York Times recently reported that India had purchased the Pegasus software from an Israeli company, NSO, as part of the multi-billion-dollar armaments deal that included sophisticated weapons and intelligence gear. The report also said that the purchase was finalized during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Israel and cleared by the then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2017.

Once again, the Government officials in India kept their silence on the New York Times story. Earlier, the Supreme Court in India has ordered an independent probe into Pegasus upon a ruling that came after petitions were filed which sought an investigation into allegations of unauthorized surveillance. The Court stated while ordering the inquiry that “the mere invocation of national security by the State does not render the Court a mute spectator.”

The Court also listed several compelling circumstances that were weighed before issuing an order. The right to privacy and freedom of speech are alleged to be impacted, and the entire citizenry is affected by such allegations due to the potential chilling effect. The bench went on to say that the “right to privacy is directly infringed when there is surveillance or spying done on an individual, either by the State or by an external agency” and “if done by the State, the same must be justified on constitutional grounds .” During the hearing, the Centre had filed a brief affidavit “unequivocally” denying the allegations and said the matter involved national security concerns. The Indian Express recently reported that two Cybersecurity experts had told the Supreme Court-appointed committee on the Pegasus issue that there is concrete evidence that the application was used to spy on the petitioners.

The NSO group claims that the product it sells to government clients is intended to collect data from the mobile devices of specific individuals suspected to be involved in serious crime and terror. However, contrary to their assertion, it has been reported that this spyware has been widely misused. In response, a global consortium of more than 80 journalists from 17 media outlets in 10 countries came together under the ‘Pegasus project’ coordinated by Forbidden Stories with the technical support of Amnesty International’s Security Lab. Their findings shed light on the fact that at least 180 journalists across the globe have been selected as targets in countries like India, Mexico, Hungary, Morocco and France, and others. Potential targets also included human rights activists, academics, business people, lawyers, doctors, union leaders, diplomats, politicians, and several heads of state.

In a recent column, Siddharth Varadarajan, of ‘The Wire’ wrote further on his interaction with Ronen  Bergman of the New York Times stating that the Indian leadership showed ‘specific interest’ in and ‘specific emphasis’ on acquiring the controversial spyware. The column went on to say that the forensic tests by Amnesty International’s tech lab revealed the presence of military-grade spyware on the smartphones of several journalists, including two of the publication’s founding editors, investigative journalists Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Sushant Singh and the leading opposition strategist Prashant Kishor. Their numbers were part of a leaked database of probable Pegasus targets, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa, and former CBI director Alok Verma.

What is Pegasus? Pegasus is a spyware that can be covertly installed on mobile phones running most versions of iOS and Android. Pegasus can be installed on the phone through vulnerabilities in common apps such as SMS, WhatsApp, iMessage, or by tricking a target into clicking a malicious link. Once installed, Pegasus can theoretically harvest any data from the device  (SMS, Emails, WhatsApp chats, photos, videos, calendar, or contacts) and transmit it back to the attacker. It could also activate a camera or a microphone, record calls, and scan the GPS data. When iPhone is compromised, it’s done in such a way that allows the attacker to obtain so-called root privileges, or administrative rights, on the device. Pegasus could easily do more than what the device owner can do.

For a long time, Israel has used the sale of sophisticated weapons as part of its broader efforts to win diplomatic successes abroad or at the United Nations. Subsequently to this agreement, India voted in favor of Israel by denying observer status at the UN’s Economic and Social Council to a Palestinian human rights organization. India has maintained a commitment to the Palestinian cause for decades, and its records at the United Nations speak for itself. This sudden about-face by India is viewed as a betrayal of the Palestinian people, and Pegasus may have a lot to do with it. It is not only India that has changed its attitude towards Israel after a Pegasus deal; a few countries, including Mexico and Panama, also appeared to have done the same. After installing Pegasus spyware in Panama City in 2012, Panama’s Government voted to oppose the United Nations decision to upgrade the status of the Palestinian delegation.

The story of Khadija Ismayilova’s story is available in the public domain. In Azerbaijan, an oil-rich nation nestled next to the Caspian Sea, has increasingly stifled free speech and dissent in the last decade. Ismayilova’s investigation into the ruling family had made her a prime target of her own Government. The authorities had thrown the book at her arresting her: surreptitiously filming her during sex, accusing her of driving a colleague to suicide, and eventually charging her with tax fraud and sentencing her to seven years in prison. However, she was released on bail after 18 months and banned from leaving the country for five years. So, in 2021, at the end of the travel ban, when Ismayilova packed away all her belongings boarded a plane to Ankara, Turkey, she may have thought she was leaving all that behind.

Little did she know the most invasive spy was coming with her. For nearly three years, Khadija Ismayilova’s phone was regularly infected with Pegasus. “All night, I have been thinking about what I did with my phone. I feel guilty for the messages I have sent. I feel guilty for the sources who sent me information thinking that some encrypted messaging ways are secure, and they didn’t know my phone was infected,” she told reporters. “My family members are also victimized. The sources are victimized, and private secrets of the people I have been working with are victimized,” she added.

There is little doubt that the use of Pegasus is an assault on the right to privacy everywhere and specifically an attack on the very fabric of Indian democracy. Undoubtedly, the Government is responsible for monitoring people involved in criminal wrongdoings, and there are established procedures involving the judiciary laid out for it. However, targeting opposition leaders, journalists, and regular citizenry for surveilling for their God-given right to express themselves is tantamount to undermining the democracy itself. This Pegasus scandal exposes the mindset of the current leadership, and it does not bode well for the future of India.

George Abraham is a former Chief Technology Officer of the United Nations and the Vice-Chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress, USA

IAPC Atlanta Chapter Reconstituted With New Office Bearers

IAPC Atlanta chapter has demonstrated over the years its unique quality of accepting changes and promoting new officers for each term.Exiting president Sabu Kurian (appointed to the national committee) recommended sitting secretary Jomy George as the next president, and Anie Anuvelil seconded the recommendation. Then the Vice president’s nomination was approved by Lukose Tharian and Philip Thomas. Followed by the secretary’s request for the new term, the suggested name was Sam T Samuel and Joint secretary Philip Thomas. The recommendation was unanimously seconded by Joseph K V and Thomas K. In addition, Grace Tharian is elected as Treasurer, and  Leelamma S.M as Joint Treasurer.

Thomas Kalladanthiyil was appointed as the Advisory board’s Chairman for the new term. The following members were selected to be the advisory panel – Harmeet singh, Dominic Chackonal, Roy Augustin, Lukose Tharian, and the Chapter unanimously agreed to the recommendation. The appointed executive officers gave their acceptance speech, and the New president declared the goals and vision for the Chapter for the new term. Secretary shared his vision to strategize the Chapter in a reformed way. Also, the treasurer shared unique ideas to make the Chapter financially sound for the new term. The future and the possibilities of the IAPC Atlanta chapter are endless and exciting. New executive members are motivated to see what the future holds for the Chapter with their talents and vision.

Founder Chairman Ginsmon Zacharia, Chairman Kamlesh Mehta, Board Secretary Ajay Ghosh, Directors Dr. Mathew Joys, Mini Nair, Sabu Kurian and General Secretary C. G. Daniel congratulated and offered all support and cooperation to the Newly elected Office Bearers at IAPC Atlanta.

Documentary ‘Writing With Fire Shines’ Light On The Only All-Women News Outlet In India

It’s 2016 and inside a newsroom in India, a group of rural female journalists are discussing why they need to pivot away from print reporting to digital. It’s a conversation that would feel familiar to journalists across the world—except many of the reporters at the online news outlet Khabar Lahariya have never even touched a smartphone, let alone used it to capture video. “I’m scared,” one woman says, noting that she is still learning how to report for print. Another explains that she doesn’t even use the phone her family has for fear she may damage it. But as time goes on, they learn anyway.

When filmmakers Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh sat in on this conversation at Khabar Lahariya, it confirmed that they had stumbled upon something special. A year earlier, they set out to create the documentary Writing With Fire, which closely follows a handful of Khabar Lahariya’s journalists from 2016 through 2019. The film marks the married couple’s first feature debut and was made by their production company Black Ticket Films, which focuses on social justice issues.

Khabar Lahariya’s journalists report on illegal mining, rape cases, subpar sanitation, elections and religious polarization in their local communities in Uttar Pradesh, India—the country’s most populous state and one with significant caste discrimination and high rates of crimes against women. The award-winning film, which premiered at Sundance in January 2021, was recently shortlisted for an Oscar in the ‘Documentary Feature’ category. In a group interview with TIME staff on Jan. 20, and in later follow-up conversations, Thomas and Ghosh shared how they approached the story and their experiences working on the film and releasing it during the pandemic. “We wanted the audience to have an immersive experience of what it means being a Dalit woman journalist working in Uttar Pradesh,” Ghosh says.

The women at Khabar Lahariya, which translates to ‘Waves of News’ are predominantly Dalit—among one of the most marginalized groups in India, which includes individuals oppressed as lower-caste or those falling outside the caste system altogether.

The central character of Writing With Fire is Meera Devi, who is the outlet’s chief reporter when the documentary begins. (She is now bureau chief.) Devi is a charismatic leader who is deeply invested in the growth of the journalists working for her and the stories she tells. In one scene, Devi—who is Dalit herself—visits a Dalit neighborhood as part of her reporting on the national government’s Swachh Bharat Mission, which had promised universal sanitation for all Indians. She asks a woman whose family still has to defecate outside their home whether she thinks the government is lying when they say they have fulfilled this promise. “Look at the condition of my house. We have to take our children to the forest, even at night,” the woman responds. When Devi asks another Dalit family why their home is so far outside the main village, they say it’s because other communities consider them impure.

Devi and her family also face discrimination, too. She says in the film that her daughter’s classmate started mocking her upon learning that she was Dalit. “I tell my daughters their caste identity will always follow them. This is how our society is structured. But it’s important to challenge the system,” Devi says.

Devi serves as a dedicated mentor to those working under her, teaching them everything from how to use a smartphone and recognize the English alphabet to thinking critically about angles and framing. In one scene, she sits a junior reporter, Shyamkali, down to explain why her story about a religious guru could inadvertently promote his work and gloss over how some have used their status to sexually exploit women.

Initially, Shyamkali is one of the members of the newsroom who struggles most with her work. (In another scene, editors say she has a low monthly publication count.) But by the end of the film, her impactful reporting on a rape case leads to the arrest of the alleged perpetrator—a testament to her growth under Devi’s guidance. “The rigor with which they have trained each other is so strong and deep,” Ghosh says.

Devi approaches her interviews with a genuine curiosity, even when she may not agree with the views of those she is interviewing. “As journalists they are looking at the deep wounds of India with a compassionate lens, with a genuine intention to understand the world,” Thomas says. In one scene, she asks a man why he is wearing political insignia at a religious festival. When he responds saying that God doesn’t discriminate between the political and non political, she gently asks what has God got to do with politics.

While the film unpacks serious issues such as caste oppression and violence against women, the female reporters who drive the story maintain their spirits while out in the field. Part of that was by design: Thomas says she was tired of one-dimensional stories about female suffering that fail to portray the warmth and complexities of female solidarity. “People come in thinking that this is going to be a dark, heavy social justice film coming out of India and then they experience the intelligence, wit and acumen of these women and they’re like whoa,” Ghosh says. “The film wouldn’t be half as powerful without that.”

Thomas says the film also illustrates the importance of diverse newsrooms. In India, many newsrooms are dominated by dominant caste men. Meanwhile, at Khabar Lahariya, many of the reporters are survivors of the kinds of trauma and challenges that they write about in their stories. “They come from the communities that they report on. There is this added sense of: if I don’t show up at this place, at this time, tomorrow, nobody else will,” Thomas says.

The documentary notes upon closing that more than 40 journalists have been killed since 2014 in India, making it one of the deadliest countries to practice journalism.

Thomas and Ghosh hope the film moves viewers to consider how they can support independent local media, wherever they live. “The fourth estate, globally, is under duress and it’s important for citizens to champion its values, to find journalists and institutions whose work they believe in and find a way to support them,” Ghosh says.

Khabar Lahariya had already been operating for more than a decade when the filmmakers arrived to document their work. Now, their Youtube channel has almost 550,000 subscribers, their team is growing, and they are closely following this year’s elections in Uttar Pradesh.

Asked whether the filmmakers’ presence may have influenced Khabar Lahariya’s successful trajectory, they were clear that it was a coincidence “They’re a juggernaut. There was no stopping them,” Ghosh says. “It was like, this train is moving. Do you want to hop on or not?”

Pope Francis Denounces Fake News About COVID, Vaccines, Urges Truth

Pope Francis denounced fake news about COVID-19 and vaccines Friday, blasting the “distortion of reality based on fear” but also urging that people who believe such lies are helped to understand true scientific facts.

Francis met with Catholic journalists who have formed a fact-checking network to try to combat misinformation about the pandemic. Francis has frequently called for responsible journalism that searches for the truth and respects individuals, and his meeting with the “Catholic fact-checking” media consortium furthered that message.

“We can hardly fail to see that these days, in addition to the pandemic, an ‘infodemic’ is spreading: a distortion of reality based on fear, which in our global society leads to an explosion of commentary on falsified if not invented news,” Francis said.

He said access to accurate information, based on scientific data, is a human right that must be especially guaranteed for those who are less equipped to separate out the morass of misinformation and commentary masquerading as fact that is available online.

At the same time, Francis asked for a merciful, missionary approach to those who fall prey to such distortions so they are helped to understand the truth.

“Fake news has to be refuted, but individual persons must always be respected, for they believe it often without full awareness or responsibility,” he said. “Reality is always more complex than we think and we must respect the doubts, the concerns and the questions that people raise, seeking to accompany them without ever dismissing them.”

Some Catholics, including some conservative U.S. bishops and cardinals, have claimed that vaccines based on research that used cells derived from aborted fetuses were immoral, and have refused to get the jabs.

The Vatican’s doctrine office, however, has said it is “morally acceptable” for Catholics to receive COVID-19 vaccines, including those based on research that used cells derived from aborted fetuses. Francis and Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI have both been fully vaccinated with Pfizer-BioNTech shots.

Francis has been one of the most vocal religious leaders speaking out in favor of vaccines and respect for measures to fight the pandemic. He has implied that people have a “moral obligation” to ensure the health care of themselves and others, and the Vatican recently required all staff to either be vaccinated or show proof of having had COVID-19 to access their workplaces.

How Social Media Influences Our Perception Of Love

Many of us don’t genuinely compare true love, but we draw similarities from films and television shows. Doesnt that make you think? Do you ever wonder why people seem to have bought into an idea of love, which is designed for amusement?

Social media impacts our perceptions of true love and what it should look like. Let’s have a look at some of the tools it employs.

High passion: This is defined as ensuring that your partnership is satisfied every day. It means that both partners are entirely satisfied with their relationship at all times. Each person is constantly filled with butterflies for the other. This is just one aspect of your union when you truly fall in love and are a member of a solid relationship. You’ll have off-days and days when you’d rather share something emotionally with each other than physically. You’ll have days when you don’t want to talk at all. True love is when you can sit in a room with someone and be at ease in silence.

Romance: It’s all about the romance in the movies: the flowers, the fancy dinners, the mansion and valuing your life over his. It’s critical to value romance. Small things, on the other hand, are what keep it going. It’s something that both parties should work on. Do you get up early to say your goodbyes before he goes for work? When he arrives home, do you get a kiss? Even after courtship, if you practice simple things, the spark will stay. It’s up to you both to keep it alive.

The “nomeansyes” trope: This is a difficult one. It’s difficult because social media has discovered a technique to persuade us to believe in an idea that is neither pragmatic nor realistic. We have a tendency to believe that the one person with whom our timing was off, the one who slipped away, would someday return to us.

Wouldn’t someone who is so ideal for you find a method to communicate with you? Yes, there are times when this genuinely works. However, it’s definitely better to let someone leave with no expectations for the future. Allow the last chapter to come to a close and look forward to the next. There’s a reason for everything. Perhaps the pages in your book that were set aside for the person have ran out. You should allow yourself to consider a re-read if the stars mysteriously align.

The perfect person: Sorry to break it to you, but this is also a myth. Why? Because there is no such thing as a flawless human. We see flawless portrayals of individuals in the media because a playwright has painstakingly crafted them. This could be their idealised version of what someone should be. There is a fact that you should quit looking for someone who is perfect in every way. Are you flawless? Look for someone whose goals and values align with yours. Most crucial, aim for a relationship where you can adore each other’s great as well as unfavorable aspects. Love is accepting each other’s flaws as well.

For us, social media generates illusions. We cling to illusions that help us build our ideals and notions about what love should be like. Let go of those illusions. Love is more about acts than it is about the flawless picture. Perhaps we should take a different approach.

Instead of waiting for them to make the first move, if you truly love someone, you should be bold enough to take action, to make the grand gesture at the end of the movie, and to profess your love. Instead of ideals, perhaps what we should take away from social media is the power to find answers and take control.

Online Scammers Target Prominent Indian Female Media Personalities With Promises Of Jobs At Harvard: NYT

Several prominent female journalists and media personalities in India including ex-NDTV anchor Nidhi Razdan have been targeted by online scammers with promises of prestigious jobs at Harvard, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

While the identity of the scammers remains a mystery, the incidents have raised questions about why Harvard — despite its reputation for fiercely protecting its brand — “did not act to stop the scam, even after being explicitly warned about it” by one of the victims, the Times said.

Another target was a spokeswoman for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Nighat Abbass. When the scammers pushed for her passport details and other personal information, she checked directly with one of the Harvard administrators included on the emails.

That administrator, Bailey Payne, a programme coordinator in the office of Harvard’s vice provost for international affairs, responded, saying the official invitation that appeared to have been sent from her Harvard.edu email address was fake.

When Payne asked Abbass if she would like to share more information, Abbass sent in a trove – the phone number from the U.A.E., the emails, screenshots of the fake Harvard documents and hotel booking records. But it’s not clear what action, if any, Harvard took, the Times said. Payne did not respond to requests for comment.

Jason Newton, a Harvard spokesman, declined to comment on what the university did with the information Abbass provided, the paper said. The first known target was outspoken female journalist Rohini Singh, who received a Twitter message from someone calling himself Tauseef Ahmad in mid-August 2019.

Ahmad invited her to participate in a high-powered media conference. Harvard would pick up all expenses. She, however, grew suspicious after Ahmad connected her to a colleague, introduced as Alex Hirschman, who wrote to her from a Gmail account rather than an official Harvard.edu email address.

Singh ceased communication. The next target was another female journalist, Zainab Sikander, who too received a Twitter message on August 22, 2019 from Ahmad, inviting her to participate in a high-powered media conference at Harvard.

It was the same message sent to Singh, the Times said. When she asked for a formal invite from a dean, it never came. Sikander then broke off contact as well. The next target was another female journalist working at a prominent Indian publication.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, she said she quickly broke off contact after getting suspicious about the scammer’s U.A.E. phone number. In late November 2019, the hackers were well practised when they reached out to Razdan, a news anchor at the apex of her career.

She received the first email on November 14, 2019, from an earnest sounding student – Melissa Reeve – inviting her to a Harvard media seminar. She was then introduced, by email, to another student, Tauseef Ahmad. When he said there might be a journalism job available at Harvard, Razdan let her hopes soar.

The next thing Razdan knew, she was interviewing with someone claiming to be Bharat Anand, the name of a real vice provost at Harvard. She never saw him, though. The interview was by phone. “This is where I feel I really messed up,” she said. “I should have insisted it be a video call.”

The scammers were taking bolder steps to impersonate Harvard. They bought a website from GoDaddy, HarvardCareer.com, in January 2020 and set up a Microsoft email server that would soon allow them to send messages stamped with Harvard’s name.

Unlike earlier owners of the domain, they opted for privacy protection that obscured their names from public registries of website owners, the Times said.

Razdan was then asked for references. Each of the people Razdan enlisted received an official looking email from HarvardCareer.com with a web link to upload a recommendation.

Harvard says it fiercely protects its trademark, employing software to detect new websites that infringe on its brand, but Newton, the university spokesman, declined to say if it had detected HarvardCareer.com, the Times said.

The scammers continued to use it to send emails, capitalising on Harvard’s reputation. They also copied employment documents from Harvard’s official website, using them as fodder as the scam advanced, the Times said.

In February 2020, right before Covid-19 exploded across the world, Razdan was told the job was hers. She received a lengthy contract that included everything from arbitration clauses to details about dental insurance. In June 2020, she announced to the world, via Twitter, about her move to join Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences as an Associate Professor teaching journalism.

Online classes were supposed to start in September. Right before classes were to begin, she received an email saying there was a delay because of Covid-19. The scammers would use the pandemic many times as an excuse for delays or slip-ups. They also asked her to install Team Viewer, which is software that enables computers to connect to each other.

Team Viewer would allow the scammers to access files on her laptop, but Razdan didn’t know that. Trying to be helpful, she downloaded the software. The scammers played off Razdan’s eagerness to connect with faculty members. Several times they invited her to do a video call with Emma Densch, a real dean at Harvard.But the calls kept getting cancelled at the last minute.

By December, Razdan began to get annoyed at what she thought was flakiness. She reached out to officials in Harvard’s human resources department. They didn’t write back. She then emailed Densch’s office directly, asking about the cancelled video calls. Densch’s assistant wrote back that Razdan was never on the dean’s schedule.

The assistant then asked: Who were you talking to? Razdan sent in a flurry of correspondence, including her signed contract. That’s when she received the shocking email in the middle of the night. Just like Abbass, she urged Harvard to investigate, emailing the university that “Someone/group of people have been impersonating senior Harvard officials and forging their signatures, and must be brought to book.”

She said Harvard never wrote back, the Times reported. She turned to Jiten Jain, the director of a cybersecurity firm in India called Voyager Infosec, to perform a forensic analysis of her laptop and devices. Jain, who shared his findings with The New York Times, said Razdan’s email account had likely been hacked.

Worse, Jain found remnants of a suspicious installer file on her computer, a sign that malware may have been installed. Razdan has filed an FIR with the Delhi Police which is investigating the hoax. It is still uncertain why Razdan and the other women were targeted, according to the Times report.

Usmani was speaking to IPS in an exclusive interview in Uttar Pradesh (UP) – the largest state in India with a population of about 240 million, of which 44 million are Muslims. Half of the Muslim population in the state are women.

Usmani, a director at the UNFPA headquarters in New York, originates from UP. She wonders how such a large number of people have remained invisible in this day and age of technology.

She said that a chance remark made by a journalist in New York led her to start the Rising Beyond the Ceiling (RBTC) initiative in UP, her place of birth. The male journalist told her that she was the first Indian Muslim woman he had spoken to in his life.

Celebrating the success of Indian Muslim women and the publication of a book, Rising Beyond the Ceiling were (back) computer science engineer Sameena Bano, and drone pilot Mohsina Mirza with (front) educationalist Dr Farzana Madni and biotechnologist Seema Wahab. Credit: Mehru Jaffer

Long after her meeting with the journalist, Usmani could not stop thinking of how millions of Indian Muslims remain unknown despite their creative contributions to society.

Colourful and inspiring images of countless Muslim women she knows flashed across her mind. She decided to share her troubling thoughts with other female friends and family members.

Usmani has over 25 years of experience in policy and programming leadership, focusing on women and girls and their reproductive health and rights. She reached out to like-minded women in UP, and within days a team of six professional Muslim women was formed.

The RBTC initiative is referred to as the team’s ‘COVID’ baby because it was initiated in early 2020 at the peak of the second wave of the deadly pandemic in India.

“Our brief was to work online and to scout and profile 100 Muslim women in UP. The purpose was to document the inspiring lives led by some Indian Muslim women,” Sabiha Ahmad, team coordinator and social activist, told IPS.

The idea of documenting the extraordinary lives of Indian Muslim women was born out of the urgent need to change the stereotypical narrative about women by women.

The team liked the idea of getting women to build an alternative narrative of each other by curating real-life stories of successful Muslim women in all their diversity.

The goal was to make these lives visible and drive a new narrative around Indian Muslim women. The result was a 173-page book. It documents the women from the state who drones and aeroplanes, weave carpets, serve in the police and army, write books and poetry, paint and bag trophies in tennis and snooker competitions.

There are profiles of politicians, trendsetters, doctors, entrepreneurs, and corporate professionals who met in Lucknow recently to celebrate the RBTC book and meet each other in person.

Usmani used her latest visit to Lucknow to release Rising Beyond The Ceiling formally. The directory details the lives of 100 Indian Muslim women whose inspiring stories shatter the stereotypical narrative a group perceived as primitive, veiled and suffering.

Faiza Abbasi, 47, contributor and co-editor, says the RBTC directory dares to write a different story. It is a step by women to celebrate each other. “We come forward to highlight each other’s achievements and to take the road our grannies left untrodden,” smiles Abbasi.

Abbasi is an educationist, environmentalist, and outstanding public speaker with a popular YouTube channel. She recalls how her father celebrated her birth by distributing sweetmeats to family and friends. However, an elderly aunt questioned the festivities. The aunt asked why the energy and resources were being wasted, and a fuss made over the birth of a girl?

Not used to the relatively progressive environment of today, many women still hesitate to celebrate their achievements. “We at RBTC want to celebrate and to learn to appreciate each other,” assures Abbasi. The RBTC promises to branch out its research analysis and documentation to other Indian states to document the successes of Muslim women.

The work of RBTC is vital at a time when the majority of Muslim women in India are the most disadvantaged. Statistical and micro studies on Muslim women show that they are economically impoverished and politically marginalised.

PBS Documentary Broadcast Part Of Sikh Awareness Campaign

PBS stations across the United States are set to air a documentary about the founder of the Sikh faith this weekend. “Guru Nanak: Life & Legacy” will be shown on December 9th and 10th on 100 different PBS stations in over 40 states.

“Although Guru Nanak’s teachings of equality and tolerance resonate with American audiences and are foundational values for American society, very few of our neighbors and Western society at large know anything about Guru Nanak Dev Ji,” said Gurwin Ahuja, the executive director of the National Sikh Campaign, in a statement to RNS.

The documentary, which will air in the early evening, is one piece of a campaign launched by NSC to bring more awareness to the Sikh faith, the world’s fifth-largest religion, and to garner acknowledgement of key dates in the life of the faith’s founder. The film is set to be broadcast in 15 of America’s largest metropolitan areas including Houston, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

An early 19th-century mural depicting Guru Nanak at the Gurdwara Baba Atal in Amritsar, India. Image courtesy of Creative Commons

The 90-minute documentary is biographical and also includes views from a variety of Sikh experts and American interfaith leaders. These include Bishop Chane, a Christian leader and former head of the Washington National Cathedral, and Bob Thurman, a Buddhist scholar who was named one of Time magazine’s 50 most influential people.

Sikh Americans began arriving in the United States in the late 19th century, and as early as World War I, Sikh Americans were joining the U.S. military. However, despite more than half a million Sikhs living in the United States today, a 2016 poll conducted by a Sikh organization found that less than 1% of Americans were familiar with the faith. The documentary also portrays Sikh Americans in every aspect of society, including farmers, truck drivers and doctors.

This will be the third time the film will be aired on PBS. The film was first developed under a contract between PBS Connecticut and Auter Productions for a release in 2019 to mark the 550th anniversary of Guru Nanak’s life and was aired again last December. Yet, organizers believe this year is important, as the easing of coronavirus-related protocols means in-person screenings of the film can take place next year.

“We hope to hold screenings of the film at the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill. That isn’t confirmed yet, but, since so many congressional leaders are elected from districts with significant Sikh constituents, it won’t be a problem,” said Sikh American activist Rajwant Singh, who is involved with the campaign.

This year, the film will also be distributed to educational institutions and libraries, and the NSC has worked to develop a supporting lesson plan. As a secondary goal, the organizers hope to get a major university to introduce a course on the life of the guru.

“In 2022, we will be scaling up our efforts to spread awareness and knowledge of Guru Nanak Dev Ji in American educational institutions,” said Ahuja.

‘Thalapathy’ Vijay Is 2021’s Most Tweeted-About South Indian Actor

Tamil actor Vijay, fondly known as ‘Thalapathy‘ by his fans, has emerged as the most tweeted about actor in south Indian films for the year 2021, Twitter India announced on Sunday.

The social media giant tweeted a list that featured the top 10 actors on Sunday.

In the list, Telugu star Pawan Kalyan emerged second while Mahesh Babu was placed third. The fourth place went to Tamil star Suriya while Telugu actors Junior NTR and Allu Arjun took the fifth and sixth places, respectively.

The seventh spot went to Tamil superstar Rajinikanth, who celebrates his birthday on Sunday and the eighth, ninth and tenth spots went to actors Ram Charan, Dhanush and Ajith Kumar, respectively.

Among the actresses, Keerthy Suresh took the first place becoming the most tweeted about actress while Pooja Hegde and Samantha Ruth Prabhu came in second and third.

Kajal Aggarwal was placed fourth in the list, which had Malavika Mohanan taking the fifth spot. Rakul Preet Singh, who has now begun acting in Hindi films, was placed sixth, while Sai Pallavi came seventh. Tamannaah, Anushka Shetty and Anupama came in eighth, ninth and tenth, respectively.

Vijay is a Tamil film actor and playback singer. He began his acting career doing many minor uncredited roles as a child artist in films produced by his father S. A. Chandrasekhar. Post-Thirumalai, he began portraying a stereotypical acting manner, much like Rajinikanth and M. G. Ramachandran. Vijay has more recently become a charismatic film star and has thus developed a large fan-following for himself. He is one of the highest paid actors in Tamil film industry, and he is referred to by fans and media as Thalapathy.

Joseph Vijay Chandrasekhar was born on June 22, 1974, to film producer and director S. A. Chandrasekhar and Shoba Chandrasekhar, a playback singer. He had a sister named Vidhya Chandrasekhar who died at the age of two. The story of Vidhya Chandrasekhar was pictured in the film, Sukran. Vijay went on to do Visual Communications at Loyola College, Chennai & was classmates with fellow actor Surya Sivakumar, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Karthik Raja, and Vishnuvardhan.

He married the Sri Lankan Tamil, Sangeetha Sornalingam, on August 25, 1999. She was a die-hard fan of Vijay and sought interest in marrying him. They have two children, a son named Jason Sanjay, born on August 26, 2000 in London, and a daughter named Divya Saasha, born on September 9, 2005 in Chennai.

Career

Vijay’s first role was in the drama, he continued to perform as a child artist in films until Ithu Engal Neethi, directed by his father S. A. Chandrasekhar. Vijay debuted as a lead role actor in the 1992 film Naalaya Theerpu, produced by his father, then he co-stared with Vijayakanth in the film Sendhoorapandi. This film helped Vijay to become popular in the interior areas of Tamil Nadu. He received his breakthrough in the film Poove Unakkaga, which was directed by Vikraman.

He made a friendly appearance in the 2012 Bollywood film Rowdy Rathore starring Akshay Kumar, directed by Prabhu Deva. As a playback singer, Vijay has sung over thirty songs in his films, he completes his 25 years in singing on 2019.

Who’s Got Your Mail? Google And Microsoft, Mostly

Top providers and the number and percentage of domains using these companies in different sets of domain names

Newswise — Who really sends, receives and, most importantly perhaps, stores your business’ email? Most likely Google and Microsoft, unless you live in China or Russia. And the market share for these two companies keeps growing. 

That’s the conclusion reached by a group of computer scientists at the University of California San Diego, who studied the email service providers used by hundreds of thousands of Internet domains– between 2017 and 2021. 

“Our research team empirically showed the extent to which email has been outsourced and concentrated to a small number of providers and service providers,” said Stefan Savage, a professor in the UC San Diego Department of Computer Science and Engineering and one of the paper’s senior authors. 

The team presented their findings at the Internet Measurement Conference 2021, which took place virtually Nov. 2 to 4, 2021.

This concentration has several consequences: it increases the impact of service failures and data breaches; and it exposes companies and users outside the United States to potential subpoenas from U.S. government agencies. 

A quick explainer of the difference between domains and service providers: The second half of your email address is your company or agency’s domain–for example, ucsd.edu is the domain for the University of California San Diego. The email service provider is the company that, behind the scenes, provides the infrastructure that allows you to send and receive email and stores your messages–so ucsd.edu’s email service is provided by a combination of Google and Microsoft mail services.

As of June 2021, Google and Microsoft are the dominant providers among popular domains, with 28.5% and 10.8% market share, respectively. In comparison, GoDaddy leads the market of providing services for smaller domains, with a 29% market share. The authors also observed a higher level of concentration over time: Google and Microsoft’s market share increased by 2.3% and 2.9%, respectively, since June 2017. 

Some of the growth comes from smaller domains that used to host their own emails. “While self-hosted domains switched to providers across all categories, more than a quarter of them changed their mail provider to Google and Microsoft,” said Alex Liu, a UC San Diego computer science Ph.D. student and the paper’s lead author. 

More affected during outages, data breaches

Concentration of email service providers has led to much bigger service outages. In August and December 2020, global outages affected Gmail and Drive–Gmail alone has an estimated 1.5 billion users. Outlook most recently suffered an outage in October 2021– an estimated 400 million people use the service. 

The concentration of email service providers also puts more people at risk in the event of a data breach. One often-cited example is the Yahoo data breach that exposed at least 500 million user accounts. Recently, a flaw in a Microsoft Exchange protocol has been shown to have leaked hundreds of thousands of credentials. 

 Legal impact

Google and Microsoft, the two dominant US-based email service providers, appear to be in wide use by organizations outside the United States — particularly across Europe, North America, South America, large parts of Asia and, to a lesser extent, Russia. For example, 65% of Brazilian domains in the researchers’ dataset host email with Google or Microsoft. But they are not used in China. 

However, outsourcing email service to US companies can also have legal implications. Under the 2018 CLOUD Act, US-based providers can be legally compelled to provide stored customer data, including e-mail, to US law enforcement agencies, regardless of the location of the data, or of the nationality or residency of the customer using the data. 

Perhaps as a result, Tencent has an overwhelming market share in China, with 41%, as does Yandex in Russia, with 32 %. Both countries have shown that they prefer to keep control over data access. 

In addition, an increasing number of email domains contract with email security providers, such as ProofPoint and Mimecast. These companies can operate as a third-party filter for inbound emails, removing the need to manage security locally. These companies have almost a 7% market share for large commercial companies; and a 17.5% market share for .gov domains. 

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the University of California San Diego, the EU H2020 CONCORDIA project and Google. 

Why Indian-Born CEOs Dominate Silicon Valley

Parag Agrawal, who was appointed this week as Twitter’s CEO, has joined at least a dozen other Indian-born techies in the corner offices of the world’s most influential Silicon Valley companies.

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, and the top bosses of IBM, Adobe, Palo Alto Networks, VMWare, and Vimeo are all of the Indian descent.

Indian-origin people account for just about 1% of the US population and 6% of Silicon Valley’s workforce – represented in the top brass. Why?

“No other nation in the world ‘trains’ so many citizens in such a gladiatorial manner as India does,” says R Gopalakrishnan, former executive director of Tata Sons and co-author of The Made in India Manager.

“From birth certificates to death certificates, from school admissions to getting jobs, from infrastructural inadequacies to insufficient capacities,” growing up in India equips Indians to be “natural managers,” he adds, quoting the famous Indian corporate strategist C K Prahalad.

The competition and chaos, in other words, make them adaptable problem-solvers – and, he adds, the fact that they often prioritize the professional over the personal helps in an American office culture of overwork.

“These are characteristics of top leaders anywhere in the world,” Mr. Gopalakrishnan says.

Indian-born Silicon Valley CEOs are also part of a four million-strong minority group that is among the wealthiest and most educated in the US.

About a million of them are scientists and engineers. More than 70% of H-1B visas – work permits for foreigners – issued by the US go to Indian software engineers, and 40% of all foreign-born engineers in cities like Seattle are from India.

“This is the result of a drastic shift in US immigration policy in the 1960s,” write the authors of The Other One Percent: Indians in America.

In the wake of the civil rights movement, national-origin quotas were replaced by those that gave preference to skills and family unification. Soon after, highly-educated Indians – scientists, engineers, and doctors at first, and then, overwhelmingly, software programmers – began to arrive in the US.

This cohort of Indian immigrants did not “resemble any other immigrant group from any other nation”, the authors say. They were “triply selected” – not only were they among the upper-caste privileged Indians who could afford to go to a reputed college, but they also belonged to a smaller sliver that could finance a master’s in the US, which many of Silicon Valley’s CEOs possess. And finally, the visa system further narrowed it down to those with specific skills – often in science, technology, engineering, and maths or STEM as the preferred category is known – that meet the US’s “high-end labour market needs”.

“This is the cream of the crop and they are joining companies where the best rise to the top,” says technology entrepreneur and academic Vivek Wadhwa. “The networks they have built [in Silicon Valley] have also given them an advantage – the idea was that they would help each other.”

Mr. Wadhwa adds that many of the India-born CEOs have also worked their way up the company ladder – and this, he believes, gives them a sense of humility that distinguishes them from many founder-CEOs who have been accused of being arrogant and entitled in their vision and management.

Mr. Wadhwa says men like Mr. Nadella and Mr. Pichai also bring a certain amount of caution, reflection, and a “gentler” culture that makes them ideal candidates for the top job – especially at a time when big tech’s reputation has plummeted amid Congressional hearings, rows with foreign governments and the widening gulf between Silicon Valley’s richest and the rest of America.

Their “low-key, non-abrasive leadership” is a huge plus, says Saritha Rai, who covers the tech industry in India for Bloomberg News.

India’s diverse society, with so many customs and languages, “gives them [Indian-born managers] the ability to navigate complex situations, particularly when it comes to scaling organizations,” says Indian-American billionaire businessman and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who co-founded Sun Microsystems.  “This plus a ‘hard-work’ ethic sets them up well,” he adds.

There are more obvious reasons as well. The fact that so many Indians can speak English makes it easier for them to integrate into the diverse US tech industry. And Indian education’s emphasis on math and science has created a thriving software industry, training graduates in the right skills, which are further buttressed in top engineering or management schools in the US.

“In other words, the success of Indian-born CEOs in America is as much about what’s right with America – or at least what used to be right before immigration became more restricted after 9/11 – as what’s right with India,” economist Rupa Subramanya recently wrote in Foreign Policy magazine.

The huge backlog in the applications for US green cards, and increasing opportunities in the Indian market have certainly dimmed the allure of a career abroad.

“The American dream is getting replaced with the India-based start-up dream,” Ms. Rai says.

The recent emergence of India’s “unicorns”- companies worth more than a $1bn – suggests that the country is starting to produce major tech companies, experts say. But, they add, it’s too early to tell what global impact they will have.

“India’s start-up ecosystem is relatively young. Role models of successful Indians both in entrepreneurship and in executive ranks have helped a lot but role models take time to spread,” Mr. Khosla says.

But most of the role models are still men – as are almost all of the Indian-born Silicon Valley CEOs. And their rapid rise is not enough reason to expect more diversity from the industry, experts say.  “Women’s representation [in the tech industry] is nowhere close to what it should be,” Ms. Rai says.

Sidharth Shukla, Kareena Kapoor Are Most Searched Celebs On The Net

The ‘Year in Review 2021’ released by the web services Yahoo! reports that the late reality television star and actor, Siddharth Shukla, who breathed his last on September 2, 2021, has been the most searched male celebrity of the year that’s slowly drawing to an end.

Shukla is followed by Bollywood megastar Salman Khan, who is the host of the reality show ‘Bigg Boss’, which, incidentally, made the late actor famous in his lifetime.

Close on the heels of Salman Khan is the Telugu actor, Allu Arjun, followed by the late Kannada superstar Puneeth Rajkumar, another actor to meet with a premature end, and the celebrated thespian, Dilip Kumar, who passed away this past July.

Among the most searched female celebrities of 2021, Kareena Kapoor Khan grabbed the top spot. Her second pregnancy was the talk of the town for a part of the year and it was followed by the arrival and progress of her second son, Jeh.

With Kareena making it a habit of posting Jeh’s pictures, along with those of her elder son, Taimur, she managed to keep her fans hooked to her Instagram account.

Katrina Kaif, whose wedding with Vicky Kaushal now rules the headlines, secured the second spot, followed by Priyanka Chopra, Alia Bhatt and Deepika Padukone.

The Biggest Newsmaker list saw a new entrant: Shah Rukh Khan’s son, Aryan, who emerged as No. 2 in the ranking after his headline-grabbing arrest by the Narcotics Control Bureau for allegedly possessing drugs and being a part of an illegal rave party on a cruise ship.

IAPC Houston Chapter Seminar On Climate Change Discusses Media Impact

Indo American Press Club Houston Chapter organized a seminar on climate change and the role of the media.  The virtual meeting was held on December 3, 2021, using the Zoom virtual platform.

Dr Mathew Vairamon, Chapter Secretary welcomed the participants. Roy Thomas, Chapter President introduced the topic. The meeting was inaugurated by Dr S. S. Lal, eminent public health and pandemic expert, who is currently the International President of IAPC. He spoke about his experiences in Africa, India, and South East Asia while working as a UN expert. He described the environmental pollution that is causing carbon emissions, greenhouse effect , and global warming. He further described how global warming and the resulting unprecedented hurricanes, floods, and droughts have driven people to poverty and disease.

Dr Mathew Joys, Vice Chairman of IAPC explained the phenomenon of global warming and its social and economic impact. He stressed the need for global political action to contain global warming by reducing the carbon footprint through reduction in use of fossil fuels and in use of renewable energy and in energy conservation in every way. Dr CK  Mittal stressed the need for dissemination of scientific facts on climate change by the online and print media and the need for comprehensive global and countrywide legislation. Joseph Ponnoly indicated the need for environmental protection, reforestation, and the need for ensuring clean air and clean water for the survival of the human race and the planet. He also emphasized the role of the media to create awareness and to provide unbiased reporting.

Varghese Abraham Denver said that we must do something for the next generations since it is an existential crisis and affects the survival of the human race.  Uma Saji from New York indicated how global warming leads to melting of the polar ice and the destruction of the ecosystem and bio diversity.  Sangeeta Dua pointed out that the media has a great role to translate scientific knowledge and convey the information to the public to create awareness of the climate crisis and what needs to be done.

The meeting was attended by IAPC members and several media persons including Kerala Vision, AC George and Biju Chacko. Sangeeta Dua, Treasurer IAPC Houston Chapter proposed a vote of thanks.

Web3: Is it the Internet of the future or just a buzzword?

There’s a buzzword that tech, crypto and venture-capital types have become infatuated with lately. Conversations are now peppered with it, and you’re not serious about the future until you add it to your Twitter bio: Web3.

It’s an umbrella term for disparate ideas all pointing in the direction of eliminating the big middlemen on the internet. In this new era, navigating the web no longer means logging onto the likes of Facebook, Google or Twitter.

Think of it this way: The nascent days of the Internet in the 1990s were Web 1.0. The web was seen as a way to democratize access to information, but there weren’t great ways of navigating it beyond going to your friend’s GeoCities page. It was pretty disorganized and overwhelming.

Then came Web 2.0 starting in the mid-2000s. Platforms like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter emerged to bring order to the Internet by making it easy to connect and transact online. Critics say over time those companies amassed too much power.

Web3 is about grabbing some of the power back.

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“There’s a small group of companies that own all this stuff, and then there’s us who use it, and despite the fact that we contribute to the success of these platforms, we don’t have anything to show for it,” said Mat Dryhurst, a Berlin-based artist and researcher who teaches classes at New York University on the future of the internet.

And so, the answer, according to Dryhurst and other Web3 fans, is an iteration of the internet where new social networks, search engines and marketplaces crop up that have no company overlords.

Instead, they are decentralized, built upon a system known as the blockchain, which already undergirds Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Imagine it as a kind of bookkeeping where many computers at once host data that’s searchable by anyone. It’s operated by users collectively, rather than a corporation. People are given “tokens” for participating. The tokens can be used to vote on decisions, and even accrue real value.

In a Web3 world, people control their own data and bounce around from social media to email to shopping using a single personalized account, creating a public record on the blockchain of all of that activity.

“To the average person, it does sounds like voodoo,” said Olga Mack, entrepreneur and blockchain lecturer at University of California, Berkeley. “But when you press a button to switch on lights, do you understand how the electricity is made? You don’t have to know how electricity works to understand the benefits. Same is true of the blockchain.”

Right now, the idea of the entire Internet reinventing may sound like some far-away digital utopia. But Web3 is driving new conversations — and generating lots of new money, particularly from crypto investors.

‘At first baffling,’ but Web3 is growing more mainstream and tech companies are taking note

The Web3 movement has been helped along by the rise of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which are digital collectibles and other online files that can be bought and sold with cryptocurrency. Then there are the publicity stunts. Recently, a group of crypto enthusiasts banded together to attempt to purchase a copy of the U.S. Constitution with digital currency. They organized under the name ConstitutionDAO. (A DAO stands for a decentralized autonomous organization, the name for an online collective of crypto supporters who assemble together collectively in a group governed by blockchains and tokens. It’s very Web3.)

Dryhurst admits that trying to explain Web3 can be exasperating, since it’s a loosely-defined term that takes on a slightly different shape depending on who is defining it but, he said, that’s the case with all new frontiers of technology.

“Every new advent of the web is at first baffling,” he said.

To technologists and cryptographers, Web3 has remained a theoretical grand vision for years. But in recent months, the push for a blockchain-powered future has come to dominate tech conferences and social media chatter in certain circles. It’s even forced major tech companies to assemble teams dedicated to Web3.

And that’s brought a certain irony to the evolution of Web3: Enthusiasts hope Web3 will mean that sharing photos, communicating with friends and buying things online will no longer by synonymous with Big Tech companies but be done through a multitude of small competing services on the blockchain — where, for instance, every time you post a message, you earn a token for your contribution, giving you both ownership stake in the platform and one day a way to cash in.

In theory, this also means avoiding fees, rules and the strictures of tech companies. Nonetheless, major tech platforms are also jumping on the idea.

“It means that all the value that’s created can be shared amongst more people, rather than just the owners, investors and employees,” said Esther Crawford, a senior project manager at Twitter.

Crawford said Twitter is studying ways to incorporate Web3 concepts into the social network, like one day being able to log into the social network and tweet from an account associated with a cryptocurrency, not a Twitter account. She sees the future differently: not a crypto version of Twitter replacing Twitter. But rather Twitter introducing Web3 features on top of standard Twitter.

“For a long time, Web3 has been very theoretical,” she said. “But now there is a surge of momentum to build.”

Will Web3 be the new norm?

Experts say, in the best case scenario for Web3 enthusiasts, the technology will operate alongside Web 2.0, not fully supplant it.

In other words, blockchain-based social networks, transactions and businesses can and will grow and thrive in the coming years. Yet knocking out Facebook, Twitter or Google completely is not likely on the horizon, according to technology scholars.

“I’m not in a position to say who will win,” Dryhurst said. “But Web2 companies will be folding Web3 ideas into their services to stay relevant.”

He thinks many people would want to be able to take their data and history of interactions online wherever they go on the Internet, rather than remain on singular web platforms–what some call the “walled gardens” of big tech companies.

“This is a fundamentally difference experience than what we’re used to today,” Dryhurst said.

But he admits that boundless freedom can lead to troubling outcomes for some.

“The Faustian bargain is that the same reasons that it’s exciting that there’s nothing impeding people to build whatever community they want, I can’t stop someone from building something that’s hellacious,” he said.

Decentralized social networks have proved appealing to white supremacists and other far-right groups, but Sam Williams, founder of Arweave, a blockchain-based project for storing data online, said he trusts most small communities to determine what speech is permitted online.

On balance, he said, collective voting on the rules of engagement will be better than what users experience on major social media platforms today.

“If we stay in the current paradigm, we will move further and further into a realm where a small handful of companies run by a small number of people run our experiences in cyberspace,” he said. “And in that world, the problems of Big Tech are exacerbated.”

Another issue, of course, is government oversight. Blockchain-based tokens are now in a regulatory netherworld, but that could soon change as the Biden administration begins the process of setting new rules for the industry.

How does Web3 fit with that other vision of the Internet’s future — the metaverse?

Facebook recently rebranded itself Meta, and said its priority would be to build the “metaverse,” a digital future where everyone is living and interacting and working together in virtual reality.

Among the company’s stated principles is “robust interoperability,” meaning that users could take their accounts or avatars from site to site or service to service seamlessly, rather than have to log in to accounts controlled by separate companies every time they visit new sites.

That’s also one of the ideals of Web3.

But true believers say there is no place for Facebook in a Web3 world, no matter how hard the social network tries to be part of the next generation of the Internet.

“Facebook will always be incentivized to enrich Facebook,” Williams said. “And that’s not how cyberspace should be governed.”

What’s the chance Web3 is just an over-hyped fantasy?

It doesn’t take long to find skeptics of Web3.

James Grimmelmann, a Cornell University professor who studies law and technology, has become vocal about his doubts.

“Web3 is vaporware,” said Grimmelmann, referring to a product that’s announced but never delivered.

“It’s a promised future internet that fixes all the things people don’t like about the current internet, even when it’s contradictory.”

He said if part of the impetus is to resist giving up personal data to Big Tech companies, then the blockchain is not the solution, since that will make even more data public.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “The vision says the problem with the internet is too many centralized intermediaries. Instead of having lots of different applications and sites, we’ll put it all on blockchains, which puts it all in one place.”

To Grimmelmann, Web3 represents technologists reaching for the idealistic ethos of the dawn of the internet — everyone can freely use the information superhighway! — that long ago was overtaken by tech companies.

The Internet’s evolution always has been a tug between fragmentation and centralization, he said. When it swings too far in one direction, a backlash tries to pull it in the opposite direction.

“Blockchains are interesting and solve some difficult problems in new ways,” he said. “They’re probably going to end up in the toolkit that the next internet is built out of, but that doesn’t mean the internet is going to be built around them.”

But many people who found wealth during the pandemic by investing in cryptocurrencies are looking around for something to plunge cash into beyond NFTs of “bored apes” who are members of a cartoon “yacht club.”

Right now, he said, Web3, albeit mostly theoretical, is the thing.

“There are a lot of people who have money to invest,” he said. “And they need some vision to throw money at.”

Indian American Hotmail Founder Launches A New Social Video App – Showreel

Sabeer Bhatia, the man who played a significant role in making email the default communication medium it is now, wants to change video content with his new social video app, Showreel.

The app can be used to create more natural video resumes for job applications that offer much more context than just text, but also to pitch a startup idea or just to find a partner for yourself.

The Hotmail co-founder, now a serial entrepreneur based in California, says the idea came in the middle of the pandemic when he saw his eight-year-old daughter effortlessly make TikTok videos.

“That sparked an idea. I said this is the future, video is the future of all content consumption. Can we do something to help the 1 billion unemployed people?”

However, the first version of Showreel was not a big success as the videos which came in response to text questions were not that natural. That’s when he decided to change the questions also into video and now in the app, the respondents answer questions that Bhatia asks, almost like a natural conversation.

“I believe in the next 10 years, rather than sending a resume to a prospective employer, you will be more likely to send a more effective video or a QR code that points to a video,” says Bhatia, explaining how this format helps companies cut down on recruitment time by helping filter candidates faster.

Also, at some point, the AI layer will kick in and show candidates that align to the recruitment philosophy of the company, adds Bhatia, who has hired a team of engineers to help set up the product and take it to the next level.

With video, he says, the context is set and you subconsciously already know who you are going to talk to and what to expect. “Through a LinkedIn profile, you don’t know anything about the person. A picture says a few more things, but a video will complete him, you know, so it will be better for business interaction, not just for employment,” he adds, underling that this platform offers rich data that makes it more intelligent.

Beyond recruitment, startup’s and matrimony, Bhatia already sees the platform being used to take surveys, especially where people find the written text a stumbling block. He also thinks there will be applications in health too where he will get doctors to formulate the right questions to plug gaps in the health system.

Bhatia is already working with top companies as well as the global university system to plug this into their hiring and placement process. The app, available on both iOS and Android, can also be customized based on their requirements. He said language versions can be expected soon.

As for a business model, Bhatia is candid that he is yet to think of one. But if he solves the problem of connecting job seekers with employers and making it an easier process, monetization wouldn’t be a tough problem to solve.

Press Freedom In Pakistan Under Threat

Press and Media are the Fourth Pillar of Democracy. The term Fourth Estate or fourth power refers to the press and news media both in explicit capacity of advocacy and implicit ability to frame political issues. Though it is not formally recognized as a part of a political system, it wields significant indirect social influence.

Free press gives voice to people’s concerns and expectations and ensures accountability on the rules. Therefore, the freedom of the Media is a vital yardstick to measure the degree of democracy practically available to the citizens of a country. Unfortunately, while in the United States and the Western countries, freedom of press is a matter of fact, the same cannot be said about many countries in Asia and Africa where the authorities regularly gag press freedom. Pakistan is one of those countries, which calls itself a democracy, but its record of press freedom can put dictatorships to shame.

For the past few years, Pakistan’s rank in the global freedom of press index has constantly declined, owing to growing cases of abduction and assault on journalists. At least ten journalists were murdered, and several others threatened, kidnapped, tortured, and arrested in Pakistan on trumped-up charges while discharging their professional responsibilities in 2020 alone, according to the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) Media Freedom Report 2020.

Senior journalist and former chairman of Pakistan Electronic Media Authority (PEMRA), Absar Alam was shot near his home in April 2021 but survived. Absar Alam has been critical of the country’s powerful military establishment. In a video message soon after the shooting, Alam said he had been hit in the ribs by a bullet and that he did not know the gunman. “I will not lose hope, and I am not going to be deterred by such acts,” Mr. Alam said in the video as he was being transported to a nearby hospital. “This is my message to the people who got me shot.”

In May 2021, three unidentified men beat, bound, and gagged Asad Ali Toor inside his apartment in Islamabad. Toor worked as a producer for the privately-owned broadcaster Aaj TV and hosted a YouTube current affairs channel with about 25,000 subscribers. CCTV footage showed Toor struggling to walk in his apartment building’s lobby as passersby helped remove the bindings. The journalist said that his arms were bloodied and bruised in the attack, and he required stitches on his elbow.

A few days later, Hamid Mir, the popular host of political talk show ‘Capital Talk’ of Geo News channel, delivered a fiery speech at a protest staged by scribes against an attack by three “unknown” persons on journalist and YouTuber Asad Ali Toor in Islamabad on May 28, 2021. The Geo News Channel subsequently suspended the show “Capital Talk,” which was hosted by Hamid Mir.

Nazim Sajawal Jokhiyo, an amateur video reporter, was found dead with his body covered with the marks of blows and torture on November 3 in Malir, a district in Karachi’s eastern suburbs. Jokhiyo made the video intending to draw attention to the hunting of the Asian houbara bustard, a threatened species. Hunting this bustard is officially banned in Pakistan, but wealthy guests from Gulf countries are allowed to pursue the bustard. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for an independent investigation into the murder of Nazim Jokhiyo.

Pakistan’s censorship crusade has gathered pace under Prime Minister Imran Khan, seeking to placate powerful conservative and religious constituencies. In July, Imran Khan was featured on the red list of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and several other heads of state who massively cracked down on press freedom.

In May 2021, Pakistan’s Federal Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued a draft ordinance titled the Pakistan Media Development Authority. Under the ordinance, the Pakistani government sought broad new powers to control the media due to its crackdown on freedom of expression. Journalists, human rights activists, and political leaders across that country have raised the alarm about proposed legislation that would bolster the powers of the government to censor and restrict the media.

On August 23, Human Rights Watch condemned the proposed PMDA law, saying the government should “stop trying to control reporters and instead start protecting media freedom,” and argued that media regulators must be independent of government controls.

On September 13, 2021, the journalist fraternity, led by the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), walked from the National Press Club to the Parliament House in Islamabad, where they staged a sit-in.

“Press freedom is certainly shrinking under Imran Khan. Journalists have lost a record number of jobs, critical investigative magazines like the Herald and Newsline have shut down, despite surviving dictatorships, and critics’ voices have been removed from TV,” Usama Khilji, a digital rights activist, told DW.

Journalists and bloggers have complained of intimidation tactics, including kidnappings, beatings, and even killings. In recent years, the space for dissent has shrunk even further, with the government announcing a crackdown on social networks and traditional media houses, which critics say has resulted in widespread self-censorship. “The media regulatory framework in Pakistan does need to be amended. With journalists under relentless attack for doing their jobs, the government needs to stop trying to control reporters and instead start protecting media freedom,” said Gossman of Human Rights Watch.

In the developing world where a large proportion of the population is not aware of their political and economic rights, media and press play an essential role in educating the people and advocating their concerns. Press played important role in liberation of these countries from the colonial yoke. Can there be a democracy if voice of the people, press, and opposition is stifled? What kind of message do the Pakistani rulers want to give by threatening, beating, and killing the journalists.

Can rulers alter the truth by silencing the messengers? Free press and media are essentials of free and democratic countries. Let us all strive to maintain the freedom of the press and media and support the people of Pakistan who are up against all odds.

Ryan Kaji Is the Most Popular 10-Year-Old in the World

In human years, Ryan Kaji is 10. In YouTube views, he’s 48,597,844,873. If, in our digital age, a person’s life can be measured by their online footprint, Ryan’s is the size of a brachiosaur’s, which, as a lot of Ryan’s fans know, is gargantuan. Another way of putting it is that even if every one of Ryan’s YouTube views were just 30 seconds, he has been watched 4,500 times longer than he has been alive.

There’s a sacred text that talks about an era of peace and harmony, where lions lie down with lambs. The kicker is that a child is in charge of it all. Except for the part about peace and harmony, we are in an age where a child does indeed rule a significant subsection of the Internet. Ryan has been the highest paid YouTube star for three years straight, partly because he has nine channels on the platform. His revenue last year, according to Forbes, was about $30 million. Most of that was from his far-flung merchandise empire: he (or his parents) has lent his name to 1,600 licensed products in 30 countries, including Skechers, pajamas, Roblox, bedding, watches, sporting goods, water bottles, furniture, toothpaste and, of course, toys.

As well as a legion of YouTube videos, Ryan has shows on Nick Jr. (the Emmy-nominated Ryan’s Mystery Playdate) and Amazon Kids+ (Super Spy Ryan) and his own streaming channel. His animated superhero alter ego, Red Titan, will appear for the second time as a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. “Ryan is bar none the crown prince of YouTube,” says Quynh Mai, founder of Moving Image & Content, a creative agency for digital content. (She does not represent him.)

How did we get to a place where a person can be the linchpin of a media empire before he has armpit hair? And of all the exuberant folks on YouTube, why has this kid raked in the most cash? Part of the answer is that this is no ordinary child, but another part is that Ryan’s rise speaks volumes about the way entertainment, business, technology and family life have changed in the past decade.

Ryan’s prominence, and the existence of the genre of human known as “kidfluencer,” is a source of consternation to many parents, authorities and child-development experts. Four of the 10 U.S. YouTube channels with the most subscribers are geared toward young children. Legislation has recently been introduced in the Senate that may curtail the activities of Ryan and his fellow YouTube toycoons. But his ascent has also shown how profoundly childhood has been and is being reshaped, and that it may be too late to put the jack back in the box.

One thing that everyone agrees on is that much of Ryan’s fame was a result of timing. He was about 3½ in 2015 when he asked his mom Loann Guan—the family changed its name to Kaji to preserve some anonymity as they got famous—if he could be on YouTube like other kids. Loann, 37, was a science teacher on spring break looking for kid-friendly activities. She and her husband Shion, 34, had watched YouTube in college and had a grasp of the format and how the algorithm worked.

Ryan’s ToysReview quickly became one of YouTube’s most popular channels. By 2016, both parents had quit their jobs to make videos full time. Shion is a Cornell-educated structural engineer, which may be why he sensed the danger of having Ryan, just 5, carry the bulk of the show. He beefed up the production team to avoid burnout and had animators create characters based on Ryan’s personality for more content. Shion and Loann also appear in the videos and play with toys and games on their own channel.

Pocketwatch and YouTube issue manuals on how to be both parent and programmer, and Shion hints that he’s trying to start a working group of YouTube families to set industry standards. He won’t go into details, but says he would like more input from YouTube, especially on how families manage their finances, their kids’ time and fame. After all, the platform is taking a healthy cut of the money, and the minors who have made their name on it have few legal protections. The Kajis say a portion of the revenue from the family business goes into trust accounts they’ve established for their children, and they have put all of Ryan’s TV earnings into another trust.

Meta—Facebook’s New Name

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on October 28th at his company’s Connect event that its new name will be Meta. “We are a company that builds technology to connect,” Zuckerberg said. “Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.”

What Alphabet is to Google, Meta is to Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has announced that the company he founded will no longer be called Facebook, but Meta. The change in corporate identity — there’s a new logo too — is meant to reflect the social media behemoth’s new passion: Developing a 3D virtual world.

“To reflect who we are and what we hope to build,” he added. He said the name Facebook doesn’t fully encompass everything the company does now, and is still closely linked to one product. “But over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company.”

Facebook, the social media platform, will continue to be called the same — and called out for all the same flaws. It will now be owned by Meta, just as Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus… and a newly announced Reality Labs. The Labs will be responsible for developing the metaverse that Zuckerberg hopes will be the company’s new identity.

He says: “From now on, we’re going to be the metaverse first. Not Facebook first,” Zuckerberg said. “Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything we are doing.”

The brand rename comes amidst intense scrutiny over Facebook’s role in the spread of hate speech and disinformation, thanks to the leaks by whistleblower Frances Haugen. Perhaps Zuckerberg also hopes the rebrand would set a new narrative and help limit the blowback.

But what about the Facebook name, originally derived from its first iteration, FaceMash, in 2003?

“Increasingly it just doesn’t encompass everything we do,” said Zuckerberg. “But right now our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything we’re doing today or in the future…I want to anchor our identity on what we’re building towards.” So, the parent company becomes Meta—though the social media app remains Facebook.

Meta, Facebook, and the many names associated with it still face the same issues they did moments before the announcement. In the past two months, Instagram has come under fire for severely impacting the self-esteem of younger users, especially those belonging to Generation Z. And leaked internal Facebook documents have shown the company was reluctant to do more to combat vaccine misinformation, the spread of fake news from white supremacist-supporting news outlets, and has devoted remarkably little resources to combatting the spread of harmful content in developing countries where Facebook is the dominant social network.

“You’re going to be able to do almost anything you can imagine,” said Zuckerberg, who described the multiple ways people would interact in VR. Zuckerberg emphasized the metaverse’s immersive potential, in situations like family visits or office meetings. “Instead of looking at a screen, you’re going to be in these experiences,” he said.

IAMC Urges FB To Help End India’s “Genocidal Rhetoric” Against Minorities

The Indian American Muslim Council, an advocacy group dedicated to safeguarding India’s pluralist and tolerant ethos, called on Facebook to take immediate action against India’s hate speech epidemic, which has directly led to violence in the past and will continue to have deadly consequences if left unchecked.

Whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, has exposed the company’s failure to curb hate speech, which has led to societal division and violence against vulnerable populations in multiple countries, including India. Within Facebook groups and WhatsApp chats, most instances of fake news, fear-mongering propaganda, lynching videos, gory images, and hateful content are freely circulated with no pushback.

India is Facebook’s largest market, with 340 million active users, and yet the company allocates only scant time and resources towards monitoring India-specific hate speech and fake news. As a result, such content has resulted in real-life consequences for minorities in India, especially Muslims. The Wall Street Journal reports that “inflammatory content on Facebook spiked 300% above previous levels at times during the months following December 2019, a period in which religious protests swept India.”

The sheer volume of anti-Muslim hate speech culminated in the 2020 Delhi pogroms, according to a report reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. “Rumors and calls to violence” were spread widely in the lead up to the clashes, which left 53 dead. The majority of the victims were Muslims, beaten and lynched at the hands of Hindu supremacist mobs.

According to Haugen, Indian Facebook is awash with “dehumanizing posts comparing Muslims to ‘pigs’ and ‘dogs’ and misinformation claiming the Quran calls for men to rape their female family members.” Rumors that “Hindus are in danger” are common, padded by unfounded claims that Muslims were responsible for the spread of Covid-19, that Muslim men have an agenda to seduce and convert Hindu women to Islam, and that Muslims are generally anti-nationals who hate all Hindus.

“Facebook’s continued dereliction of duty in the face of mounting evidence of how its platform is enabling violence and genocide, is an alarm bell for all who care about human rights and democracy,” said Mr. Rasheed Ahmed, Executive Editor of IAMC. “As Facebook has failed to clean house despite multiple exposes, it is time for regulators to step in.”

This report is consistent with criticisms human rights organizations have made of India since the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. John Sifton, Asia Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch, writes: “This divisive political discourse has served to normalize violence against minorities, especially Muslims, in India. Prejudices embedded in the government have infiltrated independent institutions, such as the police, empowering nationalist groups to threaten, harass, and attack religious minorities with impunity.”

This rhetoric trickles down from some of the most powerful figureheads of the Indian government, which in turn normalizes extremism among the general population. A leaked document shows that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ideological offspring of the RSS and the party of Narendra Modi, encourages the use of multiple accounts under a single user, which aids in the spread of propaganda. The Bajrang Dal, a Hindu extremist group with links to the BJP, frequently posts anti-Muslim hate speech on the platform. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the umbrella organization of the Hindu supremacist movement, was specifically called out by Hagen for promoting “fear mongering” and “anti-Muslim narratives,” and targeting propaganda towards “pro-Hindu populations with V&I (violent and incendiary) intent.”

Facebook’s failures in India mirror its deadly role in the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. If left unchecked, India’s hate speech problem could likely culminate in a similar genocide.

The Indian American Muslim Council is committed to working with human rights advocates in the US and in India to safeguard India’s pluralism and religious freedom for people of all faiths.

The Congress Party in India demanded a probe by a joint parliamentary committee into Facebook’s content moderation policies following revelations that the company was less stringent in curbing inflammatory posts, particularly Islamophobic content, on its platform.

“What right does Facebook have to push a particular ideology through fake posts, pictures and a narrative,” Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said. “The role of Facebook can no longer be dismissed as an error of omission as they are knowingly furthering the agenda of the ruling party and its ideology which is hate-filled, bigotry and dividing society.”

According to leaked internal documents, Facebook stopped short of flagging RSS-affiliated pages despite they promoting anti-Muslim narratives with violent intent; did not consider as “coordinated inauthentic behavior” when a BJP worker posted inflammatory posts from multiple accounts in the run-up to the West Bengal election; and failed to remove posts calling for violence against Muslim during last year’s Delhi riots.

Facebook Dithered in Curbing Divisive User Content in India

Facebook in India has been selective in curbing hate speech, misinformation and inflammatory posts, particularly anti-Muslim content, according to leaked documents obtained by The Associated Press, even as the internet giant’s own employees cast doubt over its motivations and interests.

Based on research produced as recently as March of this year to company memos that date back to 2019, internal company documents on India highlight Facebook’s constant struggles in quashing abusive content on its platforms in the world’s biggest democracy and the company’s largest growth market. Communal and religious tensions in India have a history of boiling over on social media and stoking violence.

The files show that Facebook has been aware of the problems for years, raising questions over whether it has done enough to address the issues. Many critics and digital experts say it has failed to do so, especially in cases where members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party are involved. Across the world, Facebook has become increasingly important in politics, and India is no different.

Modi has been credited for leveraging the platform to his party’s advantage during elections, and reporting from The Wall Street Journal last year cast doubt over whether Facebook was selectively enforcing its policies on hate speech to avoid blowback from the BJP. Modi and Facebook chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have exuded bonhomie, memorialized by a 2015 image of the two hugging at the Facebook headquarters.

The leaked documents include a trove of internal company reports on hate speech and misinformation in India that in some cases appeared to have been intensified by its own “recommended” feature and algorithms. They also include the company staffers’ concerns over the mishandling of these issues and their discontent over the viral “malcontent” on the platform.

According to the documents, Facebook saw India as one of the most “at risk countries” in the world and identified both Hindi and Bengali languages as priorities for “automation on violating hostile speech.” Yet, Facebook didn’t have enough local language moderators or content-flagging in place to stop misinformation that at times led to real-world violence.

In a statement to the AP, Facebook said it has “invested significantly in technology to find hate speech in various languages, including Hindi and Bengali” which “reduced the amount of hate speech that people see by half” in 2021.

“Hate speech against marginalized groups, including Muslims, is on the rise globally. So we are improving enforcement and are committed to updating our policies as hate speech evolves online,” a company spokesperson said.

This AP story, along with others being published, is based on disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen’s legal counsel. The redacted versions were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including the AP.

Back in February 2019 and ahead of a general election when concerns of misinformation were running high, a Facebook employee wanted to understand what a new user in India saw on their news feed if all they did was follow pages and groups solely recommended by the platform itself.

The employee created a test user account and kept it live for three weeks, a period during which an extraordinary event shook India — a militant attack in disputed Kashmir had killed over 40 Indian soldiers, bringing the country close to war with rival Pakistan.

In the note, titled “An Indian Test User’s Descent into a Sea of Polarizing, Nationalistic Messages,” the employee whose name is redacted said they were “shocked” by the content flooding the news feed. The person described the content as having “become a near constant barrage of polarizing nationalist content, misinformation, and violence and gore.”

Seemingly benign and innocuous groups recommended by Facebook quickly morphed into something else altogether, where hate speech, unverified rumors and viral content ran rampant.

The recommended groups were inundated with fake news, anti-Pakistan rhetoric and Islamophobic content. Much of the content was extremely graphic.

One included a man holding the bloodied head of another man covered in a Pakistani flag, with an Indian flag partially covering it. Its “Popular Across Facebook” feature showed a slew of unverified content related to the retaliatory Indian strikes into Pakistan after the bombings, including an image of a napalm bomb from a video game clip debunked by one of Facebook’s fact-check partners.

“Following this test user’s News Feed, I’ve seen more images of dead people in the past three weeks than I’ve seen in my entire life total,” the researcher wrote. The report sparked deep concerns over what such divisive content could lead to in the real world, where local news at the time were reporting on Kashmiris being attacked in the fallout.

“Should we as a company have an extra responsibility for preventing integrity harms that result from recommended content?” the researcher asked in their conclusion.

The memo, circulated with other employees, did not answer that question. But it did expose how the platform’s own algorithms or default settings played a part in spurring such malcontent. The employee noted that there were clear “blind spots,” particularly in “local language content.” They said they hoped these findings would start conversations on how to avoid such “integrity harms,” especially for those who “differ significantly” from the typical U.S. user.

Even though the research was conducted during three weeks that weren’t an average representation, they acknowledged that it did show how such “unmoderated” and problematic content “could totally take over” during “a major crisis event.”

The Facebook spokesperson said the test study “inspired deeper, more rigorous analysis” of its recommendation systems and “contributed to product changes to improve them.”

“Separately, our work on curbing hate speech continues and we have further strengthened our hate classifiers, to include four Indian languages,” the spokesperson said.

India’s SC Orders Independent Probe Into Pegasus

Ruling that the Indian government does not get a free pass every time the specter of national security is raised, the Supreme Court appointed a committee on October 27, 2021 comprising three technical members and supervised by its retired judge Justice R V Ravendran to conduct a “thorough inquiry” into allegations of use of Pegasus software for unauthorized surveillance.

Justice Ravendran will be assisted in this task by Alok Joshi, former IPS officer (1976 batch) and Sundeep Oberoi, Chairman, Sub Committee in (International Organisation of Standardisation/International Electro-Technical Commission/Joint Technical Committee). The three technical members of the committee are Naveen Kumar Chaudhary, Professor (Cyber Security and Digital Forensics) and Dean, National Forensic Sciences University, Gandhinagar, Gujarat; Prabaharan P, Professor (School of Engineering), Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri, Kerala; and Ashwin Anil Gumaste, Institute Chair Associate Professor (Computer Science and Engineering), Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Maharashtra.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India N V Ramana said the committee will “enquire, investigate and determine:”

  • whether the Pegasus suite of spyware was used on phones or other devices of the citizens of India to access stored data, eavesdrop on conversations, intercept information and/or for any other purposes not explicitly stated herein;
  • The details of the victims and/or persons affected by such a spyware attack;
  • What steps/actions have been taken by the Respondent-Union of India after reports were published in the year 2019 about hacking of WhatsApp accounts of Indian citizens, using the Pegasus suite of spyware;
  • Whether any Pegasus suite of spyware was acquired by the Respondent Union of India, or any State Government, or any central or state agency for use against the citizens of India;
  • If any governmental agency has used the Pegasus suite of spyware on the citizens of this country, under what law, rule, guideline, protocol or lawful procedure was such deployment made;
  • If any domestic entity/person has used the spyware on the citizens of this country, then is such a use authorised;
  • Any other matter or aspect which may be connected, ancillary or incidental to the above terms of reference, which the Committee may deem fit and proper to investigate.

The committee has been asked  make recommendations on:

  • Regarding enactment or amendment to existing law and procedures surrounding surveillance and for securing improved right to privacy;
  • Regarding enhancing and improving the cyber security of the nation and its assets;
  • To ensure prevention of invasion of citizens’ right to privacy, otherwise than in accordance with law, by State and/or non ­State entities through such spywares;
  • Regarding the establishment of a mechanism for citizens to raise grievances on suspicion of illegal surveillance of their devices;
  • Regarding the setting up of a well-equipped independent premier agency to investigate cyber security vulnerabilities, for threat assessment relating to cyberattacks and to investigate instances of cyberattacks in the country;
  • Regarding any ad­hoc arrangement that may be made by this Court as an interim measure for the protection of citizen’s rights, pending filling up of lacunae by the Parliament;
  • On any other ancillary matter that the Committee may deem fit and proper.

The ruling came on a batch of 12 petitions which sought an independent probe into the allegations which surfaced in the media about the unauthorized surveillance.

US, India To Cooperate In Fighting Cybercrimes, Telemarketing Fraud

The United States and India have agreed to expand their cooperation in fighting cybercrimes, telemarketing fraud and enforcing consumer protection, the US Justice Department said on Thursday.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Arun G. Rao of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch, together with colleagues from the Consumer Protection Branch and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), met this week with Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials in New Delhi to further strengthen law enforcement cooperation.

During the meeting, they discussed means for combating emerging crime trends, including fighting rising telemarketing fraud.

“In their meetings, the parties affirmed their shared commitment to strengthen cooperation in combating crime, specifically with respect to efforts to investigate and prosecute cyber-enabled financial frauds and global telemarketing frauds, including international robocalls and communications,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

They additionally discussed the need for continued cooperation in tackling emerging technology-based crimes through faster information exchange and evidence sharing, with a view to ensure security and protection of citizens of both jurisdictions, the department added.

Tamannaah Among Most Influential Social Media Stars In Southern India

Tamannah Bhatia is one of the most famous actresses of the South. With her alluring personality and mesmerizing presence, Tamannah has gained a vast section of fandom. Her social media profiles indicate the kind of followers the actress has gained over the years. In a recent survey by Forbes India, Tamannah stands in the tenth position in the list of the most influential social media stars (South India). Forbes India has released the results of their recent survey, by calculating the Instagram influence using various metrics. They released the list of Top 30 Most Influential South Actors on Social Media.

Tamannah, who topped as the tenth most influential social media star, expressed her happiness over achieving the feat. The actress also shares the credit with her fans and followers, who she thinks is the main reason behind her success. Forbes India considered the Instagram activity of celebrities from Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam film industries over the most recent 25 posts. The influence is represented through Qoruz Score, using a digital tool which calculates the score based on the likes, number of followers, video views, and other social media activity.

Tamanna Bhatia is an Indian film actress born in Mumbai, India. She made her acting debut in 2005 with Hindi film Chand Sa Roshan Chehra (2005). Also in 2005, she made her Telugu debut with movie Sree (2005). In 2006, she appeared in her first Tamil film, Kedi (2006). In 2007, she starred in two films, Happy Days (2007) and Kalloori (2007), which both earned her critical acclaim. With many commercial successes like Padikathavan, Ayan, Paiyaa and Siruthai, she established herself as one of the leading actresses in the south Indian film industry.

Tamannaah was first found in the 2003 movie Enakku 20 Unakku 18, coordinated by Jyothi Krishna. She postulated the role of Trisha’s companion at 13 years old. In 2005, at 15 years old, she worked the female lead in Chand Sa Roshan Chehra, which was an Industry failure in the cinema world. That year, she made her exordium in Telugu film with Sri and Tamil film with Kedi in 2006.

Tamannaah played the role of a model exhibiting up in different TV commercials. She is embracing famous brands like Celkon Mobiles, Fanta, and Chandrika Ayurvedic cleanser and also the brand ambassador of the Salem predicated jewelry retailer AVR and Khazana Jewellery. Prior to entering the Film industry, she adscititiously acted in Tamil ads like Shakthi Masala, Power Soap, and Sun Direct. She supplementally worked with Virat Kohli for a promotion shoot of Celkon Mobile. In 2014, she presented in a PETA ad, inspiriting shoppers to buy beauty care products that have not been endeavored on animals. In Walk 2015, she adscititiously marked as a brand ambassador for channel Zee Telugu.

“While I’m Alive, I’ll Keep Speaking” Journalist Rana Ayyub’s Fight to Expose the Truth in India

For the last several months, every time Rana Ayyub’s phone or doorbell rings, she has felt a pang of fear. Could this be the day the Indian government finally throws her in prison—or worse?

In early October, Ayyub was rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night with a suspected heart attack. She remembers screaming to doctors in her hospital bed: “I’m dying.” The scare turned out to be a palpitation, and she was prescribed blood pressure medication. “It happened because I was fearful of my life,” Ayyub, 37, says in a phone interview with TIME two weeks later. “I was just tired of this existence.”

Ayyub is one of India’s most famous journalists, and a thorn in the side of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She rose to prominence after she self-published Gujarat Files, a 2016 book about the 2002 violence in the state of Gujarat that left at least 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus dead. Ayyub’s work accused Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, and his allies of being complicit in the anti-Muslim violence and included undercover audio recordings of politicians in India’s now-ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. (Modi has never been formally charged and has said his government used its “full strength” to “do the right thing.”)

Since then, Ayyub has struggled to find editors at mainstream Indian publications willing to publish her work. This summer, she joined the American newsletter platform her Substack. She also writes a regular column for the Washington Post, and has occasionally written for TIME, including a TIME cover story in April highlighting the Modi government’s mismanagement of the country’s devastating second wave of COVID-19. And for the past several months, she has endured an escalating campaign of intimidation from Indian authorities and supporters of the ruling party.

“Of all the cases of journalists we work on around the world, at the moment Rana is one of my top concerns,” says Rebecca Vincent, the director of international campaigns at rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF). “The hate she’s facing has been escalating for years but it’s so intense at the moment. We have a history of journalists being killed with impunity in India, and frankly it’s very possible that could be repeated. When I receive urgent calls from Rana, my immediate instinct is concern for her life.” The Indian government should know, Vincent says, that the world’s eyes are watching out for Ayyub’s safety. “If something happens to her, it will be very obvious where it came from and why,” she says.

Although India is often called the world’s largest democracy, U.S.-based nonprofit Freedom House downgraded India from “free” to “partly free” in March, citing a decline in civil liberties since Modi came to power in 2014, including the intimidation of journalists and activists. Independent journalists, especially women, face particularly intense harassment, abuse and rape threats.

In 2017, prominent journalist Gauri Lankesh, known for her outspoken criticism of the Hindu nationalist government, was shot dead in Bangalore. RSF notes that India “is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists trying to do their job properly” and the group’s annual World Press Freedom Index ranks India at 142 out of 180 countries.

Modi’s government set up a committee in 2020 to improve India’s ranking; the committee said in March that the RSF methodology lacked transparency and identified a “Western bias” in the index. (India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting did not reply to a request for comment.)

Ayyub is used to living on the edge. In 2018, for example, BJP supporters shared on social media a pornographic video doctored to include Ayyub’s face in an attempt to discredit her. For more than four years, she has received a barrage of anonymous death and rape threats on her social media. But for the last several months, she has been the victim of a campaign of intimidation by Indian authorities that has taken even her by surprise.

In June, the Uttar Pradesh police opened an investigation into Ayyub and other Muslim journalists after they tweeted a video showing a violent attack against a Muslim man. Police and government officials said the man’s claim was faked and police accused Ayyub and several others of attempting to “create animosity between Hindus and Muslims,” saying they did “not make an attempt to establish truth in the case.” In a statement at the time, the Uttar Pradesh government said it placed “absolute sanctity to rule of law, civil liberties and freedom of expression” and the investigation was not lodged “due to any witch-hunt.”

In June, the central government’s Income Tax Department sent Ayyub a summons, investigating her income in relation to her fundraising for COVID-19. (During the height of India’s pandemic earlier this spring, she traveled the country distributing humanitarian aid that she had raised funds for via her online following.) Shortly after, the Enforcement Directorate began investigating Ayyub’s foreign sources of income. Ayyub describes the accusations as baseless. She says she has been followed in the street by mysterious cars, and that she has been forced to disclose to authorities confidential information and emails, including with her editors. On Sept. 27, she filed an appeal against the Income Tax Department, where her case is pending. (The department did not respond to TIME’s request for comment.)

After an experience being tailed by an unknown car for 90 minutes in Mumbai, Ayyub wrote a letter for one of her family members to publish in the event of her death. “It just says that in case anything happens to me, I don’t want you to let my death go in vain,” she says. “I want the future generation of journalists, writers, activists to know that even if my life is short-lived, it’s a fight worth fighting. While I’m alive, I’ll keep speaking.”

Press freedom is under growing threat around the world. In October, the Nobel Committee awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia, editors-in-chief of independent publications who have each faced state-sanctioned intimidation for daring to stand up to authoritarian regimes. Ayyub has spoken to Ressa and gathers strength from knowing that others like her are going through similar trials. She welcomes the recognition for Ressa and Muratov, and sees parallels between their countries and India. (The Philippines is ranked at 138 on the World Press Freedom Index, while Russia is at 150.) “It has given so many of us the courage to fight,” she says of the Nobel Peace Prize going to embattled journalists. “It felt like it was for each one of us.”

But Ayyub is no editor-in-chief. She is a single journalist working mostly alone, without institutional support, and largely for international publications. This makes her particularly vulnerable, but also more determined. “If anything, what they are doing to me has made me realize that my words count, and they are having an impact,” she says.

After Ayyub’s heart scare in early October, her 75-year-old father suggested the family leave the country. His daughter refused. “I love this country more than I can ever explain,” she told TIME. “If I hated it, I would have left a long time ago. Our forefathers, our freedom fighters, fought the British to give us this independent India, this grand idea of a democracy. And I’m fighting for this very idea.”

How Parents Can Help Teens Navigate Social Media

Newswise — BUFFALO, N.Y. — How can families help children and teens navigate the ever-changing landscape of social media — especially when many of today’s parents and caregivers did not grow up with these technologies as central to their daily lives?

Sourav Sengupta, MD, a University at Buffalo expert in child and adolescent mental health, says one way that trusted adults can support young people is by setting age- and developmentally-appropriate boundaries. It’s not a matter of “teetotaling,” he notes: It’s about slowly teaching young people how to use social media in healthy ways.

“I think we are generally behind as adults in keeping up with our children’s social technology use,” Sengupta says. “While some parents of younger children identify as ‘digital natives,’ many parents became more active social technology users beyond childhood or adolescence.

“Our children will need to grow up to find a reasonable way to incorporate, tolerate and utilize social technologies in their lives,” Sengupta adds. “We really cannot afford to be passive in that process. We need to be engaged, which includes offering firm boundaries.”

Sengupta is an assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, and program director for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship in the Jacobs School.

Q: What are some ways that social media impacts mental health?

Sengupta: “There is significant evidence for the negative social and emotional impacts of excessive social technology use. For example, there are concerns for increased social isolation, lower self-esteem, decreased participation in normative healthy activities, and decreased concentration.

“On the other hand, there is also evidence to support adolescents utilizing social technologies to explore their identities, connect with peers and family, and learn more about their world.”

Q: How do generational gaps create challenges for parents and caregivers?

Sengupta: “I think that many of us do not have meaningful lived experiences of what it means to be a modern child with so much access to such a broad range and depth of social, cultural and technological information, all the time.

“For parents and caregivers who find themselves a bit overwhelmed, we may need to catch up a bit. Check in with other parents, spend some time interacting with the apps your kids are using. If you’re looking for a little primer, check out Common Sense Media’s Social Media resource page for parents.”

Q: Instagram has been in the news a lot lately. What are some considerations for this platform?

Sengupta: “Instagram is a highly visual medium. It immediately grabs our attention at a very primal level. Combine that with the experience of getting (or not getting) ‘likes,’ responding to comments, and constantly comparing complex experiences through pictures with limited context, and you’ve got a recipe for a highly stimulating, variably rewarding, intermittently toxic social experience for young people.

“Instagram can really lend itself to the ‘curated life’ phenomena. If you see other users primarily posting about their most amazing positive experiences, it can give the impression that others’ lives are amazing while mine is ‘just okay.’ Teens can spend a significant amount of time agonizing over getting a post ‘just right.’ To me, parents’ supervision and potential concern over use may need to be proportional to the amount of time and energy an adolescent spends crafting the perfect image or comment.”

Q: What tips do you have for parents?

Sengupta: “Think purposeful and pro-social. If young people are using social media to learn something new, interact with peers about a special event coming up, or directly connect with a friend or family member, these can be healthy ways for them to feel connected and engaged in their social world.

“Limits are important. We know that spending hours a day on social media can put young people at increased risk for depression. One study showed that limiting use to 30 minutes or less per day was associated with decreased loneliness and depression. For teens, 30 minutes or less a day is a great goal but may feel far off for many teens and families. If you are pulling back, do it gradually and don’t be surprised by resistance. For younger children, strongly consider holding off on anything other than directly supervised use or video calls with trusted friends and families. And don’t forget, there should be a significant amount of screen-free time before bed.

“Slowly grant increasing freedom as young people demonstrate they are developmentally prepared to handle that autonomy. It’s like how you’d approach helping young people gradually develop a healthy relationship with alcohol or rich foods or romance. Different families will have different values and priorities that inform how much and how often their kids will use these technologies, but we need to be involved. We need to (re)engage.

“Familiarize yourself with the social technologies children and teens are using. You should be on their platforms as a friend or connection. There should be a clear understanding that you get to ‘vet’ what is being posted.

“Talk to young people about digital safety. They should understand that they shouldn’t give away personal/private information to strangers. For teens, we need to discuss healthy emotional expressions and contrast those with exploitative or risky expressions they may come to regret. If teens are being too excessive or risky in their social media use, parents may have to be creative and persistent in finding ways to appropriately limit use. And if this is feeling too difficult, it may be time to check in with a teen’s pediatrician or consult with a therapist.

“Lastly, work to be a good role model. Teens are going to find it difficult to listen to their parents about less screen time if adults in the household are constantly on their devices. Find ways to unplug and spend quality time together as a family. Not always easy, but always worth it.”

Facebook Fined $4.79 Million For Favoring Foreigners Over U.S. Citizens

In a case that turns on its head the common perception of foreigners suffering employment bias in the U.S., Facebook is to pay a fine of $4.75 million for discriminating in favor of foreign workers on H-1B visas – largely used by companies employing Indian workers – and against American citizens and permanent residents, according to the Justice Department.

The department said Oct. 19 that Facebook, headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif., will also pay up to $9.75 million to the workers it had discriminated against under a settlement it made with it and the Labor Department, reported IANS. “This settlement is an important step forward and means that U.S. workers will have a fair chance to learn about and apply for Facebook’s job opportunities,” Labor Department’s Indian American Solicitor Seema Nanda said.

The Justice Department said that the fine and the backpay were the largest “that the Division ever has recovered in the 35-year history of the INA’s (Immigration and Naturalization Act) anti-discrimination provision.” The voluntary settlement by Facebook closes the case launched in December by the Justice Department in the final days of former President Donald Trump’s administration.

The department had charged Facebook with routinely reserving jobs for H-1B visa holders, using recruiting methods designed to deter U.S. workers from applying for certain positions, and hiring only temporary visa holders in 2018 and 2019. The foreign workers were hired under the permanent labor certification program (PERM) that would make them eligible for permanent resident status or green cards, the Department said.

“Companies cannot set aside certain positions for temporary visa holders because of their citizenship or immigration status. This settlement reflects the Civil Rights Division’s commitment to holding employers accountable and eradicating discriminatory employment practices,” said Kristen Clarke, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General.

The division is under the purview of Indian American Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta.

Facebook said that although it strongly believed that it met the federal government standards for the PERM program, “We’ve reached agreements to end the ongoing litigation and move forward with our PERM program, which is an important part of our overall immigration program.”

About 65 percent of all H-1B visa holders are from India and are a staple of Silicon Valley, widely used by software programmers and other employees of major U.S. technology companies.

The Justice Department said that Facebook had made it difficult for U.S. citizens and others with the right to work here by requiring them to apply only by mail for those positions while the foreigners were allowed to apply electronically.

Under the settlements, Facebook, whose PERM program was audited by the Labor Department this year, will also be required to advertise jobs more widely, accept electronic resumes and applications from all, and train its employees in anti-discrimination rules.

Associated Press adds from Washington: The department’s civil rights division said the social network giant “routinely refused” to recruit, consider or hire U.S. workers, a group that includes U.S. citizens and nationals, people granted asylum, refugees and lawful permanent residents, for positions it had reserved for temporary visa holders.

Critics of the practice contend that the foreign nationals will work for lower wages than U.S. citizens. The tech companies maintain that’s not the case, that they turn to foreign nationals because they have trouble finding qualified programmers and other engineers who are U.S. citizens.

“In principle, Facebook is doing a good thing by applying for green cards for its workers, but it has also learned how to game the system to avoid hiring U.S. tech workers,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “Facebook started lobbying to change the system more to its liking starting back in 2013 when the comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate was being negotiated.”

IAPC Expresses Grief & Condolences At the Passing Away Of Easo Jacob

“Indo American Press Club is shocked and wants to extend our heartfelt condolences on the sudden passing away Easo Jacob, an active member of the Indo-American Press Club Advisory Board and the first President of the Houston Chapter of IAPC. The death of Easo Jacob, the Vice-Chairman of the International Media Conference held in Houston in 2019, is a great loss to IAPC and the media fraternity of Indian Americans,” said Dr. Joseph M. Chalil, Chairmaan of  IAPC here.

Easo Jacob had served as a Director Board Member of IAPC, as a National Executive Vice President, Vice Chair of IAPC international Media Conference in 2019 and as the President of IAPC Houston Chapter.

“Easo’s contributions to the media world and to IAPC has been enormous. He was instrumental in organizing a Seminar on Risk Management for Journalists, several journalism workshops, and the Presidential Election Debate only a few which showed Easo Jacob’s unparalleled ability to organize successful events. The untimely death of Easo Jacob is a great loss for the media world,” said IAPC president Dr. S.S Lal.

IAPC Founding Chairman Ginsmon Zachariah said, “The death of Easo Jacob, who had been with the organization since its inception, has shocked everyone at IAPC and the media woirld, in addition to the larger communtiy.  The contributions of Easo Jacob for the growth of IAPC cannot be overlooked. Also, I have come to know of his professionalism in the media world, while I was working with him during his tenure as the Resident Editor of Asian Era and Managing Editor of Aksharam Magazine.” As per Mr. Zachariah, his sudden death is a huge loss to IAPC, the Indian American media and the Malayalee community in North America.

“Easo Jacob’s death is an irreparable loss to IAPC,” Dr. Matthew Joyce, Vice Chair of IAPC BOD said. Mathewkutty Easo and Regie Phillip, other members of the IAPC leadership recall that Easo Jacob had become closely associated with IAPC and its members during his tenure as the vice chairman of the media conference in Houston in 2019. They lauded his leadership, commitment and journalistic skills. Through Malayala Manorajyam, a news magazine launched in 1988 in Houston, Easo contributed to the media industry and the larger Malayelee community.

Kottayam Vazhoor Chungathil Parampil family member Easo Jacob, who has been in the US for 37 years, had completed his postgraduate degree from SB College, Changanassery and was an alumnus of CMS College, Kottayam and NSS College, Vazhoor. Easo died on Friday, October 15th due to health related issues.

A Mobile App Could Save Lives In India

Newswise — A mobile app could help turn the tide of a rise in breast cancer in women as young as 30 in India, according to new research.

The disease is the most prevalent form of cancer globally and has become a major problem in India, where breast cancer accounts for 25% to 31% of all cancers.

There has also been a significant shift away from older women to those aged 30-50 developing the disease.

Dr Judith Fletcher Brown, at the University of Portsmouth, UK, says a mobile app used by on-the-ground healthcare workers might be the answer to reaching more women and teaching breast examination techniques.

She said: “India has emerged as a hub central to the development of new technology. It really is time the Indian government made a concentrated effort on raising awareness about the early warning signs of this disease as a preventative method.

“The rate of technological innovation and demand in India for mobile devices offer fresh possibilities for the health and wellbeing of the world’s largest democracy.

“It’s time to invest in innovative mobile technology to combat the rise in breast cancer statistics.”

Dr Fletcher Brown suggests a breast healthcare app could be used by Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs). These on-the-ground healthcare workers are already accepted by the community, they overcome socio-cultural barriers as part of their normal day-to-day work, and they could encourage vulnerable target groups to engage with the breast cancer education mhealth technology.

Using a bespoke app (operated on a digital tablet with culturally-specific images) ASHAs could educate and demonstrate breast self-examination techniques to help identify the early warning signs of cancer. Similar technology is fast and simple to use.

In her previous research, Dr Fletcher Brown carried out fieldwork in New Delhi, India, and found the reason for such appalling statistics was a lack of awareness about the early warning signs of breast cancer by women. Macro environmental forces including weak political will to fund women’s health, combine with a society in which societal protocols which render discussion about cancer as culturally sensitive.

She said: “Tragically, the intense focus of the health service resources on Covid-19 patients, means late diagnosis at an advanced stage still remains the main challenge in the war against breast cancer.”

Dr Fletcher Brown’s latest research, with Diane Carter, Professor Rajesh Chandwani and Professor Vijay Pereira, reveals mobile health technology (mhealth) as an opportunity to improve cancer healthcare knowledge for women in India.

She said: “Smart technology such as mobile phones are a promising tool for disease control interventions in emerging economies and in India the dominant focus has so far concentrated on HIV/AIDS and diabetes education. We suggest broadening the scope of mheath technology to raise breast cancer awareness among Indian women.”

Need For Management Of Perception About India:” V. Muraleedharan Tells Diaspora

“India is fully democratic. Judiciary is independent. Media is free. There is no substance to the claims that the media is controlled by the government,” declared India’s Minister of State for External Affairs Shri V. Muraleedharan on October 12th at the Mill River Hotel in Stamford, CT.

The visiting Indian leader from the ruling BJP Party was responding to a question raised by this writer about the “intimidation, influence and control” on the media by the government and about the negative image portrayed by the Western media due to the short-sighted and communalistic policies and programs of the ruling BJP.

Shri Muraleedharan urged for a “management of perception” to change the way India is being portrayed by the Media and appealed to the NRIs to be the “ambassadors of India” to help reshape the image outside of India. “I am here to listen to you. Want to make sure your suggestions are heard and implemented,” Muraleedharan said.

The young leader from the state of Kerala and elected from to India’s Upper House of Parliament from the state of Maharashtra was addressing the representatives of the Diaspora during a Reception and Interactive session organized by the Consulate of India in New York and the GOPIO – CT Chapter. Stating that the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi calls himself a sewak of every Indian, Muraleedharan said, “The role of the Ministry of External Affairs is to care for the Diaspora. And my visit today is for the purpose of benefitting the Indian Diaspora,” he told the audience.

Shri Muraleedharan, who officially took charge as Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs in May 2019, is visiting the United States to address the United Nations. He took the opportunity to travel to Connecticut to “listen” directly to the Diaspora and address their concerns. “I’ve been in charge of the External Affairs Ministry for the last 2 years. I was feeling that there is a need for interaction with the Diaspora. And this forum is a place where people have an opportunity to share their problems and concerns,” he told the audience. While assuring the community that he has listened to the concerns of the Diaspora, he will address each one of them and find an amicable solution.

On Press Freedom in India, the Minister categorically denied that Government is interfering with or “controlling” the media. “Allegations that the Indian media is controlled by the government doesn’t have any substance to it,” he said. Pointing to the fact that there are several media who are openly critical of the government, he asked the audience, “If the freedom for the media is restricted, how can the media be allowed to be critical of the Government? How could the media publish the stories of the bodies floating in the Ganges during the peak of the Pandemic, even though the situation is far from what was reported?” He described such allegations as totally false and there is a need for the “management of perception.”

The event was led by Dr. Thomas Abraham, Chair of GOPIO International and GOPIO – CT leadership including President Ashok Nichani, Exec. VP Prasad Chintalapudi, Secretary Prachi Narayan, Treasurer Biru Sharma, and Joint Secretary Meera Banta. Several past presidents Sangeeta Ahuja, Shailesh Naik, Shelly Nichani and Anita Bhat.

Among others who attended the Reception and the Interactive Session with the Honorable Minister Shri V. Muraleedharan, included, Deputy Consul General of Indian in New York, Dr. Varun Jeph; Consul for Community Affairs at the Indian Consulate Mr. A.K.Vijayakrishan; CT Assemblyman Harry Arora, several community organizations including Milan cultural Association President Suresh Sharma; Past President of the Federation of Indian Associations of New York, New Jersey and CT, Andy Bhatia; CT Tamil Sangam President Shivakumar Subramaniam and past president Uma Sekhar; CT Telugu Association Past President Rao Yelamachali; Malayalee Association of Southern Connecticut President T.P. Sujanan; GOPIO Media Council Chair Nami Kaur; Sabinsa Corporation President Dr. Asha Ramesh; and former Provost and Vice President of Academic affairs of GOPIO, Dr. Rupendra Paliwal.

In his introductory remarks by Dr. Thomas Abraham, welcoming Minister V. Muraleedharan said, “After the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs was merged with the External Affairs Ministry, Cabinet Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar and his associate Minister Shri Muraleedharan have been dealing with Diaspora affairs. Minister Muraleedharan, we are so pleased that you took some time off your busy schedule at the UN to join us and interact with us.”

Dr. Abraham provided a brief history of GOPIO International, which was formed at the First Global Convention of People of Indian Origin in 1989 in New York, which has now grown into  a Pan-Indian community organization for NRIs and PIOs with over 100 chapters spread in 35 countries. “We at GOPIUO are a partner with Indian missions abroad to protect India’s interest around the world.

Drawing the attention of the Minister to some of the issues faced by the NRI/PIO community, Dr. Abraham said, “We campaigned for Dual Nationality and the govt. came up with PIO Card and later on with the OCI card. We asked for voting rights for Indian citizens living outside India. Although voting rights are given, there has been very little participation because of the requirements of physical voting in India. The Election Commission has recommended Proxy Voting, but not implemented yet.”

He urged the government of India to appoint at least two Members of Parliament in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, representing the 32 million people of Indian origin living outside India, more than half of them Indian citizens.

Other issues raised during the meeting included, violence against Indians in South Africa; post pandemic issues of Indian workers in the Middle East; Challenges for NRIs to open and operate banking accounts in India and the technical problems faced while submitting application for OCI Cards, removing travel restrictions to India for people of Indian origin who are citizens outside India and issues relating to OCI card holders doing business in India, but are treated as foreigners in some areas where changed government rules such as the Biodiversity Act are affecting them. “We also suggest some initiatives through ICCR for sending cultural troupes to PIO countries for India’s 75th Celebration next year.”

Dr. Abraham introduced Deputy Consul General at the Indian Consulate Dr. Varun Jeph, whom he described as a medical professional, “Dr. Jeph, and has joined the mission only last month and has already reached out all community organizations.”

The ministry of external affairs wants to offer opportunities for every Indian abroad the right to vote, the Minister Muraleedharan said. However, the practical aspect of this major issue has several challenges. Pointing to the fact that Indians are spread over more in almost all 193 countries and coordinating the efforts and ensuring that all those who are eligible are given the opportunity to vote has been a major challenge, while assuring the Diaspora that he will address the issue and follow with the concerned officials.

On Cronoa related travel restrictions, the Minister said, the situation is evolving. We want that every Indian should be given the opportunity to travel to India.  However, it’s based on international civil aviation authority and that commercial flight operations have not started to the full yet. In order to attract foreign tourists to India, the Government has announced that the there will be no charges for visa for the first five lakh Visa applicants to India, Muraleedharan said.

Responding to a question of NRIs not being allowed to own properties in India, he assured “you need not be worried” and said that he is not aware of any law in any state, including in the state of Andhra Pradesh that the properties of NRIs are going to be taken away by the state.

Muraleedharan said, the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence is “a celebration of Indians across the globe so I don’t think that you need to come to India to participate in that. All our Missions are organizing the events and I urge every Community organization to take the lead so that every Indian is involved in the celebration of the 75th year of India’s Independence.”

Journalists Who Took On Putin And Duterte Win 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

(Reuters) – Journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, who braved the wrath of the leaders of the Philippines and Russia to expose corruption and misrule, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, in an endorsement of free speech under fire worldwide. The two were awarded “for their courageous fight for freedom of expression” in their countries, Chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen of the Norwegian Nobel Committee told a news conference.

“At the same time, they are representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions,” she added. “Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda.” Muratov dedicated his award to six contributors to his Novaya Gazeta newspaper who had been murdered for their work exposing human rights violations and corruption.

“Igor Domnikov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya, Stas Markelov, Anastasia Baburova, Natasha Estemirova – these are the people who have today won the Nobel Prize,” Muratov said, reciting the names of slain reporters and activists whose portraits hang in the newspaper’s Moscow headquarters. In an interview with Reuters in Manila, Ressa called the prize “a global recognition of the journalist’s role in repairing, fixing our broken world”.

“It’s never been as hard to be journalist as it is today,” said Ressa, a 35-year veteran journalist, who said she was tested by years of legal cases in the Philippines brought by the authorities over the work of her Rappler investigative website. “You don’t really know who you are until you are forced to fight for it.”

FIRST FOR JOURNALISTS IN 86 YEARS

The prize is the first Nobel Peace Prize for journalists since the German Carl von Ossietzky won it in 1935 for revealing his country’s secret post-war rearmament program.

Muratov, 59, is the first Russian to win the peace prize since Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. Gorbachev himself has long been associated with Muratov’s newspaper, having contributed some of his Nobel prize money to help set it up in the early post-Soviet days when Russians expected new freedoms.

Ressa, 58, is the first individual winner of a Nobel prize in any field from the Philippines. Rappler, which she co-founded in 2012, has grown prominent through investigative reporting, including into large scale killings during a police campaign against drugs. In August, a Philippine court dismissed a libel case against Ressa, one of several lawsuits filed against the journalist who says she has been targeted because of her news site’s critical reports on President Rodrigo Duterte.

She was one of several journalists named Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2018 for fighting media intimidation, and her legal battles have raised international concern about the harassment of media in the Philippines, a country once seen as a standard bearer for press freedom in Asia. In Moscow, Nadezhda Prusenkova, a journalist at Novaya Gazeta, told Reuters staff were surprised and delighted. “We’re shocked. We didn’t know,” said Prusenkova. “Of course we’re happy and this is really cool.”

Russian journalists have faced an increasingly difficult environment in recent years, with many being forced to register as agents of foreign states, a designation that invites official paperwork and public contempt.”We will leverage this prize in the interests of Russian journalism which (the authorities) are now trying to repress,” Muratov told Podyom, a journalism website. “We will try to help people who have been recognised as agents, who are now being treated like dirt and being exiled from the country.”

SPOTLIGHT

Reiss-Andersen said the Nobel committee intended the award to send a message about the importance of rigorous journalism at a time when technology has made it easier than ever to spread falsehoods. “We find that people are manipulated by the press, and … fact-based, high-quality journalism is in fact more and more restricted,” she told Reuters.

It was also was a way to shine a light on the difficult situations for journalists, specifically under the leadership in Russia and the Philippines, she added. “I don’t have insight in the minds of neither Duterte, nor Putin. But what they will discover is that the attention is directed towards their nations, and where they will have to defend the present situation, and I am curious how they will respond,” Reiss-Andersen told Reuters. The Kremlin congratulated Muratov. “He persistently works in accordance with his own ideals, he is devoted to them, he is talented, he is brave,” said spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

The award will give both journalists greater international visibility and may inspire a new generation of journalists, said Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “We normally expect that greater visibility actually means greater protection for the rights and the safety of the individuals concerned,” he told Reuters. The Nobel Peace Prize will be presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner’s Work Important In Fight For Press Freedom, Says Colleague

When Max Pensky hosted courageous Philippine journalist Maria Ressa for a talk as part of Binghamton University’s Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention (I-GMAP), little did he know that he would wake up the next day to find out that Ressa had just been named the latest Nobel Prize winner.

“In recognizing Maria, the Nobel committee now sees that anti-democratic leaders who want to muzzle press freedom don’t just use the old tools – arrests, detention, death threats, closing media outlets,” said Pensky. “Now they depend on social media, too. Maria’s courageous work in the Philippines calls out strongman Rodrigo Duterte and Facebook for using fake news, troll armies, and online harassment, combined with “old school” government intimidation, in a new, toxic mix. Maria’s award is for letting the world know how this actually works in her own country, and warning us that we all have to face it if we want press freedom of our own.”

“This year’s Nobel Peace Prize is important and timely. Freedom of the media is now, as stated by the President of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Berit Reiss-Andersen, challenged all over the world. The committee highlights this by choosing two particularly significant examples in very dissimilar situations, both developing in authoritarian directions. The prize hopefully strengthens the possibilities of the two journalists and their colleagues to continue to work according to the high editorial standards they have set for themselves and that genuine news coverage requires.

From a peace perspective, accurate and reliable news coverage is central for assessing the dangers of war, civil war, and repression, as well as for peace negotiations and making the right decisions. In a world full of fabricated news, it is particularly important to protect independent reporting.

This year’s prize expands on Nobel’s idea of giving the prize to efforts contributing to “fraternity among nations.” Media now has a different significance than in 1901 when the first prize was awarded. Correct, autonomous reporting is always central for peace and security within and among nations.”

Facebook Whistleblower Testimony Should Prompt New Oversight

‘I think we need regulation to protect people’s private data,’ influential Democrat says in wake of Frances Haugen revelations. Testimony in Congress this week by the whistleblower Frances Haugen should prompt action to implement meaningful oversight of Facebook and other tech giants, the influential California Democrat Adam Schiff told the Guardian in an interview to be published on Sunday.

“I think we need regulation to protect people’s private data,” the chair of the House intelligence committee said.

“I think we need to narrow the scope of the safe harbour these companies enjoy if they don’t moderate their contents and continue to amplify anger and hate. I think we need to insist on a vehicle for more transparency so we understand the data better.”

Haugen, 37, was the source for recent Wall Street Journal reporting on misinformation spread by Facebook and Instagram, the photo-sharing platform which Facebook owns. She left Facebook in May this year, but her revelations have left the tech giant facing its toughest questions since the Cambridge Analytica user privacy scandal.

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Haugen shared internal Facebook reports and argued that the social media giant puts “astronomical profits before people”, harming children and destabilising democracy via the sharing of inaccurate and divisive content. Haugen likened the appeal of Instagram to tobacco, telling senators: “It’s just like cigarettes … teenagers don’t have good self-regulation.”

Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Haugen’s testimony might represent a “big tobacco” moment for the social media companies, a reference to oversight imposed despite testimony in Congress that their product was not harmful from executives whose companies knew that it was.

The founder and head of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has resisted proposals to overhaul the US internet regulatory framework, which is widely considered to be woefully out of date. He responded to Haugen’s testimony by saying the “idea that we prioritise profit over safety and wellbeing” was “just not true”.

“The argument that we deliberately push content that makes people angry for profit is deeply illogical,” he said. “We make money from ads, and advertisers consistently tell us they don’t want their ads next to harmful or angry content.” Schiff was speaking to mark publication of a well-received new memoir, Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could.

The Democrat played prominent roles in the Russia investigation and Donald Trump’s first impeachment. He now sits on the select committee investigating the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, by Trump supporters seeking to overturn his election defeat – an effort in part fueled by misinformation on social media. In his book, Schiff writes about asking representatives of Facebook and two other tech giants, Twitter and YouTube, if their “algorithms were having the effect of balkanising the public and deepening the divisions in our society”.

Facebook’s general counsel in the 2017 hearing, Schiff writes, said: “The data on this is actually quite mixed.” “It didn’t seem very mixed to me,” Schiff says. Asked if he thought Haugen’s testimony would create enough pressure for Congress to pass new laws regulating social media companies, Schiff told the Guardian: “The answer is yes.”

However, as an experienced member of a bitterly divided and legislatively sclerotic Congress, he also cautioned against too much optimism among reform proponents. “If you bet against Congress,” Schiff said, “you win 90% of the time.”

Are You Addicted To Technology?

Newswise — During the COVID-19 shutdown, many people increasingly turned to technology for entertainment and information, a trend that raises concerns about an increase in technology addiction.

According to the Pew Research Center, about 30 percent of Americans are almost constantly online, and health officials are concerned about the amount of time children and adults spend with technology. China recently banned children from playing online games for more than three hours a week, internet addiction centers have been opening in the United States and Facebook has come under fire for teenagers’ obsessive use of its Instagram app.

“There is functional, healthy engagement with technology – ubiquitous and necessary in our everyday lives – and addictive use, and it can be difficult to know when that line has been crossed,” says Petros Levounis, chair of the Department of Psychiatry, associate dean at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and author of Technological Addictions. “However, while obsessive use of technology may signal an addiction, it could otherwise be a sign of another mental health disorder.”

What does it mean to be addicted to technology?
While the majority of people who use technology will not have any problems – indeed, there are professional and recreational benefits from using electronics – a small percentage could develop an addiction and suffer consequences similar to that from substance abuse. In fact, studies have shown that as internet addiction worsens, so does the probability of developing a substance use disorder.

Using technology can become an obsession. People start engaging activities like online gaming, internet auctions, surfing the Net, social media, texting or cybersex and get caught up in the excitement. Soon, the focus shifts from generating feelings of pleasure and reward to being an activity they do to avoid feeling anxious, irritable or miserable.

How has the COVID-19 shutdown contributed to technology addiction?
We have noticed emerging addictions. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, cybersex has increased, with online dating apps, text chats and online pornography. Internet gaming, too, has exploded. One of the most concerning aspects with online gaming is that companies are now using psychology labs to maximize the effectiveness of their products in a way that is highly reminiscent of how the tobacco companies employed chemists to maximize their products’ addictiveness.

How do people know they’re addicted?
The two major red flags are: continued use of technology despite the knowledge of adverse consequences – people say “I know it’s bad for me, but I have to keep doing it” – and lying to people who are important to you about the frequency of the activity.

If you suspect you or someone you love is addicted to technology, what can you do?
Do not try to get the person into a rehab to be “cured.” Find a psychiatrist, preferably one who specializes in addiction, who can evaluate the person for a variety of disorders. The person might have depression, anxiety or a more serious psychiatric disorder like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, which is masquerading as a technological addiction.

How can parents help their children to use technology wisely?
Parents need to be good role models and be consistent in setting rules. For example, it is not okay for parents to declare that dinner time is a “cell phone free” time and then proceed to check emails during meals. If parents take technology out of their children’s bedrooms to promote good sleep hygiene, they should abide by these rules as well.

Morality Demonstrated In Stories Can Alter Judgement For Early Adolescents

Newswise — BUFFALO, N.Y. – An important lesson in the moral education of children could be as close as the book in their hands. Stories matter. And they can play a role in shifting the importance of particular moral values in young audiences, according to the results of a new study. “Media can distinctly influence separate moral values and get kids to place more or less importance on those values depending on what is uniquely emphasized in that content,” says Lindsay Hahn, PhD, an assistant professor of communication in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.

Hahn is first author of the new study, which adds critical nuance to a body of literature that explores how media content affects children. While many previous studies have focused on broad conceptualizations, like prosocial or antisocial effects that might be associated with specific content, Hahn’s study looks at how exposure to content featuring specific moral values (care, fairness, loyalty and authority) might influence the weight kids place on those values.

Do children reading about particular moral characteristics absorb those traits as a building block for their own morality? The findings, which appear in the Journal of Media Psychology, suggest so, and further support how this indirect approach to socializing children’s morality can supplement the direct teaching of moral principles kids might receive through formal instruction.

“Parents, caregivers and teachers are often wondering how media can be used for good,” says Hahn, an expert in media psychology and media effects. “How can it be used for good things? How can it discourage bad habits? How can it educate?”

Answering those questions begins with a better understanding about how to use media.

“When parents are considering what media they might want to select for their children, they can take into account what particular moral value is being emphasized by the main character, and how the main character is treated because of those actions,” she says.

For the study, Hahn and her colleagues took the main character from a young adult novel and edited the content to reflect in each version the study’s focus on one of four moral values. A fifth version was manipulated in a way that featured an amoral main character. Those narratives were shared with roughly 200 participants between the ages of 10 and 14. This is a favorable range for media research because it’s more difficult to introduce narrative comprehension in younger kids, while equally challenging to hold the attention of older adolescents, who become bored with rudimentary storylines, according to Hahn. The team then created a scale designed to measure the importance kids place on moral values to determine how participants might be influenced by specific narratives.

“Measuring these effects can be difficult,” says Hahn. “That’s why, in addition to testing our hypothesis, another purpose of this research was to develop a measure of moral values for kids. Nothing like that exists yet, that we know of.” That measure, notes Hahn, can facilitate future research on media effects in young audiences. Paper co-authors include Ron Tamborini, Michigan State University (MSU) professor of communication; Sujay Prabhu, an MSU affiliate; Clare Grall, Dartmouth College postdoctoral researcher; Eric Novotny, University of Georgia postdoctoral researcher; and Brian Klebig, Bethany Lutheran College associate professor of communication.

Google Doodle Honors Sivaji Ganesan On 93rd Birth Anniversary

Sivaji Ganesan needs no introduction. The innumerable characters he made memorable on screen gave him a permanent place in the hearts of millions of movie-goers, and he still lives there, 20 years after he passed away on July 21, 2001, at the age of 73.

On Friday, October 1, to celebrate his 93rd birth anniversary, the legendary actor, who was also a recipient of the Dada Saheb Phalke Award, the country’s highest award for cinema, has been honored by Google with a Google Doodle.

Doodle, illustrated by Bangalore, India-based guest artist Noopur Rajesh Choksi, celebrated the 93rd birthday of Sivaji Ganesan, one of India’s first method actors and widely considered among the nation’s most influential actors of all time.

On this day in 1928, Sivaji Ganesan was born as Ganesamoorthy in Villupuram, a town in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, India. At a young age of 7, he left home and joined a theater group, where he started playing child and female roles then lead roles. In December 1945, Ganesan made a name for himself–literally–with his theatrical portrayal of 17th-century Indian King Shivaji. This regal stage name stuck and Ganesan carried the crown as “Sivaji” as he conquered the world of acting.

He made his on-screen debut in the 1952 film “Parasakthi,” the first of his over 300 films spanning a nearly five-decade cinematic career. Renowned for his expressive voice and diverse performances in Tamil-language cinema, Ganesan quickly ascended to international fame. His best-known blockbusters include the trendsetting 1961 film “Pasamalar,” an emotional, family story considered one of Tamil cinema’s crowning achievements, and the 1964 film “Navarthri,” Ganesan’s 100th film in which he portrayed a record-breaking, nine different roles.

Ganesan’s big break in acting came when he was portraying the Maratha King, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, in the play ‘Sivaji Kanda Samrajyam’, written and directed by the late former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and doyen of Dravidian politics, C.N. Annadurai.

The name Sivaji became iconic and Ganesan retained the name throughout his extraordinarily brilliant acting carrier. The big break for the legendary actor came with the Tamil film, ‘Parasakthi’, directed by Krisnan-Panju and written by M. Karunanidhi, DMK leader and late former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Critics have listed several movies as his best, but Sivaji Ganesan himself rated his performance as V.O. Chidambaram in and as ‘Kappalottiya Thamizhan’ as his most memorable one.

Sivaji Ganesan was remembered for his extraordinary flair for dialogue delivery. He pioneered an exquisite style, diction, tone and tenor. His style of dialogue delivery helped him play such mythological and historical characters as Lord Shiva in (‘Thiruvilaiyaadal’), the great Chola emperor in and as ‘Raja Raja Cholan’, the Vaishnavite saint (and one of the 12 Alvars revered in southern India), Periyalvar, in ‘Thirumal Perumal’, and the seventh-century Shaivite saint Appar in ‘Thiruvarutchelvar’.

The legend was addressed as ‘Nadigar Thilagam’ (literally translated as ‘the pride of actors’) for his all-around acting performance, but ironically, Sivaji did not receive any National Award, except for a Special Jury Mention for a cameo appearance in the Kamal Haasan-starrer ‘Thevar Magan’ released in 1992. Predictably, the legend rejected the award.

Sivaji Ganesan was unsuccessful in politics, unlike his compatriot M.G. Ramachandran, fondly referred to as MGR, who became Chief Minister and one of the most popular leaders of the state. The legend was engaged in politics as a Dravida Kazhagam activist and later as a member of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), but he crossed over to the Congress in the late 1950s.

He joined hands with the Congress (O) led by another Tamil leader K. Kamaraj, after the Congress split in 1969 and later aligned himself with Indira Gandhi after the passing away of Kamaraj. Eventually, Sivaji Ganesan left the Congress and floated his own ‘Tamizhaga Munnetra Munnani in 1989, but had to face a crushing defeat at the electoral hustings.

In 1960, Ganesan made history as the first Indian performer to win Best Actor at an international film festival for his historical movie “Veerapandiya Kattabomman,” one of his biggest blockbusters with people remembering the dialogues from the movie even today. Other distinguished accolades came near the end of his career. In 1995, France awarded him its highest decoration, Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honor.

The Indian government in 1997 honored him with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award which is India’s highest award in the field of cinema. Today, his legacy is carried on for international audiences through the performances of the many contemporary Indian acting greats who cite Ganesan as a major inspiration.  Lights, camera, happy birthday, Sivaji Ganesan!

News Consumption Across Social Media in 2021

As social media and technology companies face criticism for not doing enough to stem the flow of misleading information on their platforms, a sizable portion of Americans continue to turn to these sites for news. A little under half (48%) of U.S. adults say they get news from social media “often” or “sometimes,” a 5 percentage point decline compared with 2020, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted July 26-Aug. 8, 2021.1

When it comes to where Americans regularly get news on social media, Facebook outpaces all other social media sites.

In a separate question asking users of 10 social media sites whether they regularly get news there, about a third of U.S. adults (31%) say they get news regularly on Facebook, while about one-in-five Americans (22%) say they regularly get news on YouTube. Twitter and Instagram are regular news sources for 13% and 11% of Americans, respectively.

Other social media sites are less likely to be regular news sources. Fewer than one-in-ten Americans say they regularly get news from Reddit (7%), TikTok (6%), LinkedIn (4%), Snapchat (4%), WhatsApp (3%) and Twitch (1%).

The percentage of Americans who get news regularly from these sites has remained largely unchanged since 2020, though the share who regularly get news on Facebook has declined slightly (36% in 2020 vs. 31% in 2021).

When looking at the proportion of each social media site’s users who regularly get news there, some sites stand out as being more “newsy” even if their total audience is relatively small. Twitter, for example, is used by 23% of U.S. adults, but more than half of those users (55%) get news on the site regularly. On the other hand, YouTube, though widely used, sees a smaller portion of its users turning to the site for news regularly (30%).

Overall, the percentage of users of each site who regularly get news there has remained relatively stable since 2020, a year that included both a presidential election and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, both Facebook and TikTok buck this trend. The share of Facebook users who say they regularly get news on the site has declined 7 points since 2020, from 54% to 47% in 2021. TikTok, on the other hand, has seen a slight uptick in the portion of users who say they regularly get news on the site, rising from 22% to 29% in this period.

In some cases, there are drastic demographic differences between the people who turn to each social media site for news. For example, White adults make up a majority of the regular news consumers of Facebook and Reddit (60% and 54%, respectively), yet just under four-in-ten Instagram news consumers (36%) are White. Both Black and Hispanic adults each make up a sizable portion of Instagram’s regular news consumers (20% and 33%, respectively). People who regularly get news on Facebook are more likely to be women than men (64% vs. 35%), while two-thirds of Reddit’s regular news consumers are men. A majority of regular news consumers on LinkedIn (57%) have a four-year college degree or higher. Younger adults, those ages 18 to 29, are far more likely to regularly get news on both Snapchat and TikTok than other age groups.

The majority of regular news consumers of many sites are Democrats or lean Democratic. This may be related to the relatively young age profile of the news consumer base of these social media sites. No social media site included here has regular news consumers who are more likely to be Republican or lean Republican.

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