Monthly Archives: جولای 2020

Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was arrested in his Tampa home early Friday, state officials said. He is believed to be the linchpin of a hack that turned into an embarrassment for Twitter and called into question the security measures of a range of tech companies. Two other people were also charged with taking part in the hack.

Federal authorities were already tracking Clark before the Twitter hack. In April, the Secret Service seized more than $700,000 worth of Bitcoin from him, according to legal documents. The Tampa youth faces 30 felony charges, including fraud, and is being charged as an adult.

The Twitter hack began July 15 as an effort to steal and sell unusual user names. It quickly escalated as the hackers took over accounts belonging to cryptocurrency companies and celebrities. The scheme netted Bitcoin worth more than $180,000.

Federal authorities also brought charges against Mason John Sheppard, 19, of the United Kingdom, and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, Florida. They are accused of acting as brokers during the hack by selling stolen Twitter user names.

The hackers tweeted from 45 of the accounts, gained access to the direct messages of 36 accounts and downloaded full information from seven accounts. They gained access to internal Twitter systems by stealing login information from employees, then used their access to reset passwords on the accounts.

“While investigations into cyber breaches can sometimes take years, our investigators were able to bring these hackers into custody in a matter of weeks,” said John Bennett, a special agent in charge with the FBI. “Cyber criminals will not find sanctuary behind their keyboards.”

In a statement, Twitter thanked law enforcement for its “swift actions” and said it would continue to cooperate with the investigation.

Hackers involved in the breach told The New York Times that they had been quietly selling stolen user names when one person in their group, who went by the name Kirk, suddenly launched the Bitcoin scam before disappearing.

One of the hackers, who used the screen name “ever so anxious,” said he was motivated to participate because he wanted to acquire unique usernames. During the hack, he took the Twitter handle “@anxious” for himself.

“i just kinda found it cool having a username that other people would want,” “ever so anxious” said in a chat with the Times.

A special agent with an Internal Revenue Service investigative unit identified “ever so anxious” as Sheppard in a court filing.

“Working together, we will hold this defendant accountable,” Andrew Warren, the state attorney of Hillsborough County, Florida, said in a statement. “Scamming people out of their hard-earned money is always wrong. Whether you’re taking advantage of someone in person or on the internet, trying to steal their cash or their cryptocurrency, it’s fraud, it’s illegal, and you won’t get away with it.”

©2020 The New York Times Company

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Flipkart on Friday said the company’s Samarth programme that aims to support small businesses has seen a nearly four times quarter-on-quarter growth since its launch in July last year. The firm’s other marketplace segments have been typically growing at 1.5 times to two times on a quarterly basis since the past five to six years.

The programme currently supports over six lakh artisans, weavers and craftsmen across India and is working towards bringing more such sellers to the platform, the company said in a statement.

Flipkart said it has introduced a host of new benefits for the sellers which include a commission waiver of 0% for the first six months for any Flipkart Samarth seller on-boarded to the platform. Further, they will be granted free cataloguing support for a limited number of products, advertising credits for the first month to help them garner prominent visibility on the platform among others.

“With the help of government partnerships, we have been able to bring artisans online from the remotest parts of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Punjab and Karnataka till now. We will be reaching out and bringing in many more institutions and individuals,” Jagjeet Harode, senior director and head of marketplace at Flipkart, said.

Harode said post unlock, queries from potential sellers have gone up by almost two times.

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But severe floods that struck Bangladesh the last week of June, driven by heavy monsoon rains, are now keeping the 22-year-old from that work as well.

Instead, he finds himself stuck at home, one of millions of Bangladeshis affected by the flooding, which has hit nearly half of the country’s 64 districts and killed 41 people so far.

“My wife and I lost our jobs because the factory said they weren’t getting orders due to the coronavirus,” Sumon said.

“At my hometown I managed a job as a mechanic but that did not work because the water had risen and I couldn’t step out,” he said.

Now, with a baby daughter born just nine days ago, “I don’t know how we will manage. I am depending on a loan right now, but if things continue like this, we will be in trouble,” he said.

Low-lying, heavily populated Bangladesh is regularly hit by flooding, but experts fear the impact this year may be worse due to job losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic and floods that have lingered for an unusually long time.

Thousands of workers have been sacked from the country’s garment sector – responsible for 80% of Bangladesh’s exports – as European brands cancelled clothing orders worth millions of dollars as their shops shut due to the coronavirus.

Bangladesh, one of the biggest exporters of manpower in the world and heavily dependent on remittance, has also seen the return of thousands of its citizens from abroad as many lose their jobs in the pandemic.

In Bangladesh itself, more than 238,000 people have contracted the virus, and more than 3,100 have died, according to a Reuters tally.

Flooding has only made matters worse, government and other experts said.

“Normally, the water begins to recede after a certain point and people start going back to their homes from flood shelters,” said Sajedul Hasan, who works for the humanitarian programme of BRAC, a Bangladesh-based development organisation.

“But this time, the water level increased for a second time in July soon after it began to recede… this was because of excessive rainfall,” he explained.

A major Bangladeshi river, the Jamuna, has been flowing above the danger level for more than 30 days according to data from Bahadurabad station in north Bangladesh.

“This is the highest number of days that we have seen since 1998,” said A.K.M. Saiful Islam, of the Institute of Water and Flood Management at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

According to the country’s Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre, the water level is now receding and the situation is likely to improve by next month.

But both Islam and Hasan fear that economic hardships due to the pandemic and floods may lead more students to drop out of school, or compel families to migrate to the country’s overburdened cities for jobs, which could lead to exploitation.

Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, said he could see the “fingerprint” of climate change in the recent floods.

The country used to see severe floods once every two decades – but in the last 20 years Bangladesh has seen at least four of them, Huq said.

The country now needs to try new strategies to be more prepared to tackle the changes, he said.

One of those, implemented by the United Nations in Bangladesh, is forecast-based funding which gives vulnerable people money in advance of predicted extreme weather so they are better prepared.

Aklima Begum, 40, who lives in Kurigram in North Bangladesh, was one of thousands who received about $50 ahead of the floods this year. She was able to buy food, hire a boat and take shelter in a place the floodwaters didn’t reach.

“The money that I got did help, but I have still been badly affected. My goats and chickens died because of the flood,” she said.

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Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL) reported a net profit of Rs 1,910.8 crore on a standalone basis for the quarter ended June 30, recording a 46.9% drop from the same period a year ago. The state-run oil refining and marketing company attributed the fall in profit to inventory losses, stemming from fluctuations in global oil prices.

The inventory loss in the quarter was Rs 3,196 crore against gains of Rs 2,362 crore in the corresponding period a year ago, said IOCL chairman SM Vaidya.

Prices of the Indian basket of crude in the quarter touched ultra-low levels of $16.2/barrel, lowering the valuation of the crude oil stocked by the company, leading to inventory losses of $3.05/barrel. However, the net profit of IOCL would have been lower had its gross refining margin not increased 88% year-on-year to $4.27/barrel, thanks to the continuous rise in retail prices of petrol and diesel in the last month of the quarter, when demand for auto fuels revived with the gradual lifting of the lockdown to contain the coronavirus outbreak.

IOCL was more hurt by coronavirus in the preceding quarter, when it recorded a loss of Rs 5,185.3 crore, dragging down the overall FY20 profit by 92% annually to Rs 1,313.2 crore. The company sold 16.6 million tonne (MT) of petroleum products in Q1FY20, marking a substantial drop of 27% mainly due lower transportation activities in the first two months of the corona quarter when retail fuel prices were unchanged.

IOCL said that the company’s board has approved the implementation of an integrated para-xylene (PX) and Purified terephthalic acid (PTA) complex project at its Paradip refinery in Odisha, which would require an estimated investment of Rs 13,805 crore. The complex will produce feedstock chemicals used for manufacturing a variety of products ranging from clothes, pet bottles, adhesives to synthetic leathers and food packaging material. The project is expected to be complete by 2024.

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Sale of sacrificial animals on the internet also appeared to have satisfied the traders as many chose online marketplaces over the traditional ones mostly to reduce the risk of coronavirus infection amid the pandemic.

A few cows were left at Kamalapur market on Friday afternoon. Idris Mia, a trader from Barishal, said they were finally making profits as the customers began crowding the market from Wednesday.

Only one of the 12 cows he had brought was left unsold. “I doubted I would get this much price even amid the coronavirus outbreak,” he said, claiming that he had sold the first five cows at lower prices.

Meherpur’s trader Chan Mia said he also made a “little” profit after the customers had offered half the asking prices in the opening days. “I’ve sold all of my eight cows,” he said.

Another trader, Shaheen Alam from Jhenaidah, said: “The customers  finally understood the situation we are in. They are not haggling much.” He was waiting to sell the last two of his six cows.

The customers, however, complained of high prices.

Abdur Rahman, a resident of Basabo said he had bought the cow at Tk 86,000.

The price was a “bit high”, he said but added he was okay with it considering the coronavirus crisis.

“The traders are not ready to sell the cows at low prices. I had to buy the cow because the Eid is tomorrow. What else could I do?” he asked.

Jatiya Party leader Monirul Islam Milon wrote on Facebook that there was a lack of cattle at most of the markets across the city while some wrapped up business by Friday morning.

“It’s not an artificial crisis. There is really a shortage of cattle,” he said.

Reaz Uddin, a trader at Postogola Shashanghat market, believes limited ferry services due to river erosion and flash floods led to the crisis.

Lessees of the markets under the two city corporations in Dhaka said all the markets became almost empty by afternoon.

Yusuf Ali Joarder, a resident of Dholpur, said he began searching for a suitable cow online and found one after failing to get any at Postogola and Dholpur markets.

Around 27,000 cattle were sold in the online marketplaces, Dhaka North City Corporation and e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh.

Customers bought nearly three tines the amount of cattle sold online by visiting farms and homesteads after choosing the animals on the internet, officials said.

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Covid-19 and the ensuing lockdown opened the flood gates in terms of demand for data as work from home (WFH) became a reality. In last roughly four-and-a-half months beginning March, India’s data consumption grew at a scorching pace with demand on OTT and VoD platforms rising by a whopping 947% compared to what it was in February, with indications that the rally is far from over.

According to Frankfurt-based internet exchange, DE-CIX, data consumption on OTT and video on demand (VoD) platforms rose by 249% during March and April, as against February 2020. During March to July 18, this demand rose multi-fold to 947%. For comparison sake, Nokia’s annual mobile broadband India traffic index (February 2020) puts average time spent on OTT platforms at 70 minutes per day.

Speaking with FE, DE-CIX India’s senior VP & national sales head, Sudhir Kunder said current shift in people’s personal and professional lives is here to stay.

On future data consumption, he said, “While I would not say that from July to October-November you will see another spike of 900%, but consumption patterns are going to remain the same because people’s lives have now started to revolve around this new lifestyle, of work from home”.

Ericsson’s mobility report (June 2020) projects average traffic per smartphone to hit 25 GB a month by 2025 with additional 410 million smartphone users expected to be added during the same time.

DE-CIX data reveals that gaming follows OTT and VoD, with consumption rising 555% between March and July 18 compared to February 2020. Even demand on content delivery networks (CDNs) rose significantly by 134% during April-July 18.

Frankfurt internet exchange is the world’s leading interconnection platform, managing over 9 terabits per second (Tbs) peak traffic. In India, it operates exchanges in Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and Kolkata.

Kunder said demand for data is increasing every day, for instance, a leading telco in April sold around 4 lakh dongles. World’s largest independent cloud services provider, Linode agrees.

Linode India director (data centre & cloud operations) Ashwin Kumar said “First two weeks of lockdown saw demand spike almost 100%. That spike settled to a roughly 75% rise in utilisation. Enterprises like pharma & IT are deploying larger compute and storage plans. Significant demand came from Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai”.

On current scenario and what it means for internet exchanges, Kunder said, DE-CIX has prepared for the future and currently it can handle data traffic to the tune of 25 Tbs. It has already augmented its network, during February-March. “We had this foresight which is bearing fruits. Today for any exchange to exchange, my traffic can flow at 250 Gigabits/sec and my traffic consumption hugely went up. We in India also touched 1-1.2 Tbs for sometime and then came down. We do anywhere between 740-980 Gigabits/sec. But network is ready for more.”

Kunder said next wave, which the Indian commercial space is watching, is cloud. “Cloud adoption will see huge jump. From IT-ITeS standpoint, a lot of CIOs/CEOs have gone back to the drawing board and said in- vestments to be made in other spheres have been re-drawn for quick adoption of cloud.”

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Parker, who also directed “Fame”, “Mississippi Burning”, “Evita”, “The Commitments” and other successful movies, died after a lengthy illness, a spokeswoman said.

Known for his eclecticism, Parker was equally at ease in the worlds of musical comedy and of hard-hitting true crime drama.

“Bugsy Malone”, Parker’s highly original feature film debut in 1976, was a musical parody of Prohibition-era gangster movies, performed entirely by children. It featured a young Jodie Foster as the glamorous singer Tallulah, and other child actors who went on to have successful careers.

Parker followed up with “Midnight Express”, based on the true story of an American man imprisoned in Turkey for smuggling hashish. The film won two Oscars, including one for Oliver Stone, who wrote the script.

Again moving in a different direction, Parker then made the gritty musical “Fame”, about the highs and lows of the lives of performing arts students in New York – a huge commercial success that spawned a spin-off TV series.

He also directed the film “Pink Floyd – The Wall”, which was inspired by the rock band’s hit album of the same name.

Subsequent successes included “Birdy”, a drama about Vietnam War veterans, and “Angel Heart”, a sinister, atmospheric thriller set in New Orleans starring Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro.

The actor Matthew Modine tweeted to say “Being cast in his epic film, Birdy, transformed my life. Alan was a great artist whose films will live forever”.

“INCREDIBLE RUN OF HITS”

“Mississippi Burning” starred Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe as FBI agents investigating the disappearance of three civil rights activists in the 1960s. The film was based on true events, although it deviated from the facts in some important ways.

Although widely acclaimed at the time, garnering seven Oscar nominations and winning one, the movie was also criticised by some in the Black community. Critics objected to a lack of Black role models, and what they saw as a narrow focus on the white FBI agents.

Parker later returned to music, with commercial success, directing “The Commitments”, a comedy about a short-lived soul band in Dublin, and “Evita”, based on an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and starring Madonna in the title role.

Lloyd Webber said Parker was “one of the few directors to truly understand musicals on screen”.

Parker also made a film version of “Angela’s Ashes”, based on the bestselling memoir of the same name by Frank McCourt.

British filmmaker Edgar Wright, director of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Baby Driver”, was among many figures from the world of cinema who named Parker as an influence.

“His incredible run of hits as a British filmmaker gave immense inspiration to me,” said Wright, adding that he had twice parodied Parker’s “beguiling” debut “Bugsy Malone” and wanted one of the songs from that film played at his funeral.

Parker received honours in Britain for his achievements in filmmaking, including a knighthood in 2002. His films won a total of 19 British film academy awards (Baftas), 10 Golden Globes and 10 Oscars.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, called him “an extraordinary talent”:

“His work entertained us, connected us, and gave us such a strong sense of time and place.”

Parker is survived by his wife Lisa Moran-Parker, five children and seven grandchildren.

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Tokyo, July 30

A sudden explosion from a suspected gas leak blew out walls and windows in part of a northern Japanese town Thursday morning, killing one person and injuring 17 others.

There was no sign of a fire and investigators suspect that a gas leak may have cause the blast, Koriyama fire department official Hiroki Ogawa said. Local media say a gas leak and explosion occurred at a restaurant.

So far, one person was confirmed dead and 17 others have been taken to hospitals. Two of them were seriously injured, Ogawa said.

The area has been closed off and neighbours have been evacuated.

NHK footage showed only a skeleton left of a building, the steel structure gnawed and pieces of wall and glass scattered around. Several employees and customers at a nearby bank were injured, NHK said.

The explosion occurred in a crowded business and commercial district close to the city’s main train station, where hospitals, schools and the city hall are also located.

“I heard a ‘boom!’ and felt the ground shaking, so I thought it was an earthquake, but the shaking didn’t last very long so I realized it wasn’t,” an employee at nearby Kuwano Kyoritsu Hospital told NHK. Nobody was injured at the hospital, although some of its windows were shattered. — AP

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Equity markets fell for the third straight day on Friday because of profit booking in heavyweight Reliance Industries (RIL) and weak global cues. The Sensex declined 129.18 points, or 0.34%, to close at 37,606.89 while the Nifty was down by 28.7 points, or 0.26%, to close at 11,073.45. Both the Sensex and Nifty fell more than by 1% on a weekly basis.

Sanjeev Zarbade, vice president — private client group research, Kotak Securities, said, “This week, the global markets were in a consolidation mode and a similar thing played out in India as well as reflected by the BSE-30 Index which declined 1.3% in the current week. Market mood remained cautious due to insufficient progress on the next round of US fiscal stimulus, worries about credit risks in Indian banks and valuation-related concerns.”

The US reported its sharpest-ever GDP contraction on Thursday. The country’s GDP contracted by 32.9% in annualised terms. This soured the Street sentiment and Asian shares witnessed a negative trading session, with the stock markets in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea declining by 0.47% to 0.7%.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have remained buyers for July with inflows at $1.1 billion in total. According to Friday’s provisional data, FPIs sold stocks worth $127.8 million.

The Futures and Options segment on the NSE saw a turnover worth Rs 11.37 lakh crore, against the six month-average of Rs 14.9 lakh crore.

Profit booking in RIL saw its shares declining by 1.84% to close at Rs 2,070. The biggest losers on the Nifty were Eicher Motors, RIL, HDFC Bank, Bajaj Auto and Kotak Mahindra Bank — down by 2.74%, 1.84%, 1.66%, 1.61%, and 1.43%, respectively. Major gainers included Sun Pharma, Cipla, Grasim, JSW Steel, and UPL, up by 5.46%, 5.11%, 4.98%, 2.85%, and 2.84%, respectively.

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Bangla newspapers The Daily Azadi, the Daily Purbokone, the Suprobhat Bangladesh, the Dainik Purbodesh, and the Dainik Bir Chattogram did not hit the newsstands on Thursday and Friday.

The Chattogram Union of Journalists has expressed concerns over the decisions by the owners and editors to suspend the publication “indefinitely” when the newspaper industry is teetering amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Newspaper circulation dropped by around 90 percent in Chattogram when the government imposed a lockdown in late March to stem the spread of the virus.

The newspapers could not offset the losses after sales increased slightly following the end of the lockdown.

Some newspapers decided to pay the journalists half the Eid allowances, angering the media workers. CUJ later announced the programme to lay siege to the homes of owners and editors of four newspapers.

They began the demonstration by rallying outside the home of MA Maleque, the editor of The Daily Azadi, at Khalifapotti on Wednesday morning.

Deep in the night, the association of owners and editors, Chattogram Newspaper Alliance, decided to halt publication even after the journalists worked throughout Wednesday.

The journalists called off the programmes to lay siege to the homes of the editors of the Daily Purbokone and the Dainik Purbodesh on Thursday morning after the decision by the owners’ association.

No newspaper will be published in Chattogram at least until Tuesday due to the Eid holidays. It is unclear whether the newspapers will resume publication after the holidays.

Speaking to bdnews24.com, Azadi Editor Maleque said the journalists could have talked to him first before staging the “unprecedented” programme for Eid allowance.

He claimed the newspaper paid the journalists after speaking to the Azadi unit of the CUJ.

Maleque also alleged that the demonstrators hurled “abusive” words to him.

“I don’t want to publish the newspaper with such disrespect,” he said.

Mujibur Rahman, the owner and editor of the Dainik Purbodesh, told bdnews24.com they halted publication indefinitely following the association’s decision.

They will decide about the resumption of publication after the Eid holidays.

Nawsher Ali Khan, the chief reporter with the Daily Purbokone, said there was no official word from the authorities on the halt of publication.

CUJ General Secretary M Shamsul Islam said the owners and editors should not have stopped publication without making an announcement, describing the move as part of “an evil” strategy.

“We demonstrated only for full payment of the Eid allowances. The newspapers of Chatrtogram had not paid us full allowances before Eid-ul-Fitr. We don’t get increments properly,” he said.

The journalists’ leader said the owners had not heeded when they had raised the demands formally earlier. “That is why we went for demonstration,” he said.

The protesters will announce the next course of action following discussions after Eid.

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