New Delhi: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced two new updates for “groups” on WhatsApp — new controls for admins, and easily see groups in common.
The new features which will start rolling out globally over the coming weeks, come just a few months after WhatsApp launched Communities, a feature that offers larger, more structured discussion groups.
“Last year, we rolled out Communities to help people get the most out of their groups on WhatsApp. Since launching, we’ve wanted to build even more tools for admins and users alike. Today we’re excited to roll out a few new changes we’ve made to make groups more manageable for admins and easier to navigate for everyone,” the company said.
It has built a tool that gives admins the ability to decide who is able to join a group, giving admins more control over their group privacy.
“When an admin chooses to share their group’s invite link or make their group joinable in a community, they now have more control over who can join,” the company said.
With the growth of Communities and their larger groups, the tech giant said it wants to make it easy to know which groups you have in common with someone.
“Whether you’re trying to remember the name of a group you know you share with someone or you want to see the groups you’re both in, you can now easily search a contact’s name to see your groups in common.”
Belagavi: Hitting back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “remote control” jibe at him and the Congress, AICC President Mallikarjun Kharge on Monday asked as to where was BJP chief J P Nadda’s remote control.
Accusing the Modi-led BJP government of “troubling” party leader Rahul Gandhi for “speaking the truth”, the Congress President said he doesn’t fear such things and was ready for everything.
“Modi came to Belagavi and said – Kharge has become President (Congress), but remote control is with someone else. Okay, my remote control is with someone else, but where is Nadda’s (BJP national President J P Nadda) remote control?” Kharge asked.
Addressing the ‘Yuva Kranti Samavesha’, a youth convention, organised by the party’s state unit here, he said: “Nadda speaks under control of whose remote? There are lots of weak spots about you (BJP), for us (Congress) to speak about. You lack courage…”
Claiming that Kharge, who hails from the state, was insulted and disrespected by the Congress in favour of a “family”, despite his seniority and age, PM Modi while addressing a public meet here on February 27 had said, “This shows Kharge is Congress President just for the sake of it, and looking at the way he is treated, everyone can see and understand, as to whose hands the remote control is in.”
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, General Secretaries K C Venugopal and Randeep Singh Surjewala, state unit chief D K Shivakumar, Legislature Party leader and Leader of Opposition Siddaramaiah among several leaders were part of the mega rally organised at CPED ground here.
Noting that Rahul Gandhi questioned the government in the Lok Sabha on the Adani-Hindenburg issue, the Congress chief alleged that (parts of) his speech was removed from records in Parliament. “Similarly, mine (Kharge’s) was removed from records in Rajya Sabha.”
“This is democracy… Is it wrong to say that democracy was not functioning properly in this country? To say there is still casteism in this country? You (BJP government) don’t allow us to speak the truth, while you keep lying,” he asserted.
“Your (BJP government’s) ED, CBI or CVC cannot overpower us, we don’t fear them. Rahul Gandhi has never feared and will never fear. He speaks the truth, and such a person is being troubled. Let them do it, will they jail him? We are ready for everything,” he added.
Pointing out that during the course of the nationwide Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, Gandhi met farmers, youth, women, and every strata of the society, Kharge said: “Forty-six days after the speech made by Rahul Gandhi in Jammu and Kashmir about the problems shared by the people, Delhi Police came to his door seeking for proof regarding his statement on alleged rape or sexual harassment on a women, quoting her.”
Despite the Karnataka contractors’ association giving proof for their 40 per cent commission charge in the state, no action is being taken, Kharge claimed. “Modi and Shah (Amit Shah) should take action here and make an inquiry as the proof is already given here, then come to Rahul Gandhi.”
This was Kharge’s first visit to Belagavi after taking over as the Congress President.
He pointed out that Belagavi was a “sacred land” for Congress, as Mahatma Gandhi was elected as the party’s President in the district in 1924, and Jawaharlal Nehru was appointed as the General Secretary.
Kharge, seeking the blessings of the people of the state for the upcoming assembly polls, asked the party leaders and workers to fight the polls with unity.
He also accused the BJP government in Karnataka of rampant corruption, and praised the KPCC’s poll ‘guarantees’ including the unemployment allowance for the youth, which was announced today as the fourth ‘guarantee’, in the event of the party coming to power.
The party has already announced three poll ‘guarantees’ 200 units of free power to all households (Gruha Jyoti), Rs 2,000 monthly assistance to the woman head of every family (Gruha Lakshmi), and 10 kg of rice free to every member of a BPL household (Anna Bhagya).
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JKPSC Last Date Extended for Assistant Commissioner Food Safety and Assistant Controller Drugs, J&K Drugs & Food Control Organization
Filling up of the posts of Assistant Commissioner Food Safety and Assistant Controller Drugs, J&K Drugs & Food Control Organization, in Health & Medical Education Department. Extension of date thereof.
It is notified for information of all the concerned aspirants that the last date for submission of online application forms for the post Assistant Commissioner Food Safety and Assistant Controller Drugs, J&K Drugs & Food Control Organization, in Health & Medical Education Department notified vide Notification No. 27-PSC(DR-P) of 2022 dated 21.12.2022, has been further extended up to 12.03.2023.
However, the cut-off date for determining the eligibility shall remain same as 26-12-22
Further Details :
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5395 Posts Yantra India Limited Recruitment 2023 – Apply Link Available
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Kochi: Giant plumes of toxic smoke continued to rise from the Brahmapuram waste plant here on Sunday evening as hundreds of firefighters, including Naval personnel, battled to bring the blaze that has gone on for four days under control.
A senior police officer said that the fire appeared to be extinguished, but huge amounts of smoke was still rising from the site and therefore, it may not have been quelled completely.
Aerial visuals of the site aired on various channels showed huge and thick plumes of smoke billowing from the site which appeared to be completely ravaged by the fire.
Meanwhile, the district administration declared Monday as a holiday for Anganwadis, kindergartens, day care centres and children of classes 1 to 7 of government, aided, unaided, CBSE and ICSE schools located in Kochi city and neighbouring gram panchayats and municipalities.
Earlier in the day, Kerala Industries Minister P Rajeeve said that the fire was under control and would hopefully be extinguished by evening.
He and State Health Minister Veena George said that the smoke due to the blaze was not a matter of concern.
Their announcements came while speaking to reporters after a high-level meeting at the Ernakulam District Collectorate here.
They said that people need not stay indoors as recommended on Saturday and can move out by taking precautions, like wearing N95 masks.
However, those with breathing problems, like asthma, the elderly, children and pregnant women should try and avoid getting exposed to the smoke and should wear masks if going out, the Ministers said.
George also said hospital records of the city do not indicate any medical cases due to the smoke.
Nevertheless, arrangements, like dedicated beds for those affected by the smoke generated due to the fire, have been made in all government hospitals and medical colleges in the city.
Besides, two oxygen parlours and a round the clock medical team of doctors have been put in place in Brahmapuram.
Regarding the decisions taken in the meeting, Rajeeve said that all stakeholders were of the view that there needs to be a coordinated effort to deal with such situations.
In lieu of that, it was decided to put in place a system comprising a coordination committee of representatives from the Kochi Corporation, fire services, police, health services, electricity board and fire safety officials of Bharat Petroleum and CIAL.
Also, it was decided in the meeting that a panel comprising officials of the corporation and the panchayat, where the waste plant is set up, and including the District Collector and the local MLA will meet every three months to discuss problems in that area.
After the prevailing issue is resolved, the corporation will also take urgent steps to ensure proper road connectivity to the area — another decision taken in the meeting according to Rajeeve.
The Minister further said as a result of the more than 3-day long fire, waste collection in Kochi has come to a standstill and therefore, in the meeting it was resolved that the corporation and the District Collector would take steps to put in place a temporary arrangement for removing garbage from the city.
The issue of bio-mining, which has not been taking place at the waste plant for some time, will be tackled by Local Self Government Minister M B Rajesh.
Earlier in the day, a fire officer engaged in the fire-fighting at the waste plant said it was taking time to quell the flames as there were layers of plastic underneath which got heated up and prevented the fire at the top from cooling down.
Lack of rains and wind also played spoilsport against the fire-fighting efforts and there was a second instance of a fire breaking out during the operations.
He said the fire tenders have been mobilised from divisions of other districts like Kottayam and Alappuzha.
In addition to all these, the phosgene gas generated by the fire is leading to nausea, dizziness among the firefighters which also affected operations.
According to police, 25 fire-fighting units, which included tenders from Thrissur, Kottayam and Idukki districts as well as those of the Indian Navy and Bharat Petroleum, battled the blaze since morning.
Air quality in parts of this port city was found to be poor this morning due to the fire.
According to the data on the Kerala Pollution Control Board website, the PM 2.5 and PM 10 particulates’ level in the air in Kochi were way above the prescribed standards.
The level of PM 2.5, tiny particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter that can enter deep into the lungs and even the bloodstream, was found to be 279.58 ug/m3, at around 8.30 AM today, as against the normal standard of 60.
PM 10, particles with diameter less than 10 micrometres, level were recorded at 324.65 as against a normal of 100.
The fire broke out in the waste dumped at the plant on Thursday.
Officials had maintained that such incidents happen every year around this time due to the extreme heat.
San Francisco: Tech giant Apple’s upcoming iPhone 15 Pro smartphone will reportedly not feature two buttons for volume control.
Leaked drawings of the upcoming smartphone show that the regular two volume buttons will be replaced by a single long one, reports AppleInsider.
It will likely give the iPhone 15 Pro greater water and dust resistance because the solid-state button needs a much smaller hole in the frame to work.
The upcoming iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max are expected to be released in September this year, and will likely feature curved titanium sides and an EU-enforced USB-C charging port, the report said.
It was also rumoured that the tech giant will bring support for Wi-Fi 6E network to only iPhone 15 Pro models.
Last month, it was reported that the iPhone 15 Pro smartphone will come equipped with 8GB of RAM. For comparison, the iPhone 14 Pro models come equipped with 6GB of RAM.
However, the standard iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus smartphones are expected to remain at 6GB of RAM, but might be upgraded to faster RAM.
“I can’t tell you how I’ll rule in any case, but throughout this race, I’ve been clear about what my values are,” Protasiewicz said during her victory speech, pointing to her support for abortion access, voting rights and public safety.
The eventual winner will help decide major cases that are likely to come before the court. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and state Attorney General Josh Kaul sued to overturn a more than century-old state law banning most abortions, which could make its way to the state Supreme Court later this year. The court may also be poised to have a say on election laws, as it has in the past.
The race — a down-ballot contest in an off-year — brought in millions of dollars. From the beginning of the year through the primary election, ad spending reached over $9 million on television, digital and radio, per AdImpact. The top spender was Fair Courts America, a super PAC linked to GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein, which has put in around $2.8 million in support of Kelly. Last year, the group said it intended to spend “millions of dollars” on Kelly’s candidacy.
Not far behind Fair Courts America was Protasiewicz, who aired a robust ad blitz backed by a $2.3 million spend. She raised more than $725,000 from the beginning of the year through Feb. 6 — more than all of her opponents’ combined fundraising in that period. Her campaign said it raised more than $2 million since she entered the race in May, a record-breaking sum for a spring primary candidate in Wisconsin.
A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund — the same group that spent close to $4 million on the governor’s race in support of Evers last election — spent $2.2 million on advertisements hitting Dorow. Dorow spent over $600,000, and outside groups made up the rest of the spending.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
For the conservative movement, he said, Ottawa Impact’s takeover of the county board “could end up being counterproductive if they don’t find a way to govern well, dot the I’s, cross the T’s, follow the protocols and resolve some of the current critiques.”
He called it all “very resolvable.” But there is a risk, he said, if the board cannot cool things down.
“They risk having so much of a pushback that some of them would get primaried in two years,” Redmond said. “And even worse, if they didn’t get primaried, it will set the stage for the Democrats to come in and take over, and that would be a real disaster.”
Ottawa County is so heavily Republican that’s probably a long way off. But the county is one of the state’s fastest-growing, and change isn’t inconceivable.
Paul Hillegonds, a former Republican speaker of the Michigan state House from Holland, told me that “when you look at the statewide election results, it’s clear there are a lot of disaffected Republicans, and more Republicans voting independently, and I think we’ll see more of that in Ottawa County, I’m guessing, if the party continues to move in the direction it’s going.”
And every indication is that the party is going to. In Lansing over the weekend, the state Republican Party selected Kristina Karamo, an election denier who lost her race for secretary of state last year, as the party’s new chair. And in Ottawa County, Republicans supportive of Ottawa Impact are already privately discussing primarying members the group backed last year but who have since questioned some of their actions, including Bonnema.
This came up during the board meeting last week, after Walter Davis, a retired college professor who had promised to speak at every commission meeting for two years as a form of protest, told the board he had to break that promise on the advice of his doctor. He couldn’t afford to get his blood pressure up.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Raipur: Former Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Pravin Togadia on Sunday described India’s rising population as a “ticking time bomb” and stressed the need to formulate a law to prevent its explosion and the resulting adverse effects.
He also expressed hope that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah will introduce a law for population control and the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.
Togadia, president of Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad, was talking to reporters in Chhattisgarh’s capital Raipur ahead of addressing a public meeting in Basna area of state’s Mahasamund district
When asked about the demand to bring a population control law, Togadia said, “The rising population and population imbalance are a time bomb and when it explodes it will lead to civil wars in cities and villages. Therefore, in order to prevent such a situation there is a need to formulate a population control law.”
“I believe that Narendrabhai Modi and Amitbhai will go to the 2024 election after formulating laws regarding population control, UCC and construction of temples in Kashi and Mathura. These moves will not only protect Hindus, but also their (Bharatiya Janata Party’s) votes,” he added.
Replying to another question, he said Bharat is already a Hindu rashtra and we wanted to establish it as a Hindu political state. India is a Hindu majority country and we will not allow Hindus to feel insecure anywhere in India.
At first glance, the Twitter user “Canaelan” looks ordinary enough. He has tweeted on everything from basketball to Taylor Swift, Tottenham Hotspur football club to the price of a KitKat. The profile shows a friendly-looking blond man with a stubbly beard and glasses who, it indicates, lives in Sheffield. The background: a winking owl.
Canaelan is, in fact, a non-human bot linked to a vast army of fake social media profiles controlled by a software designed to spread “propaganda”.
Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims, which controls more than 30,000 fake social media profiles, can be used to spread disinformation at scale and at speed. It is sold by “Team Jorge”, a unit of disinformation operatives based in Israel.
Tal Hanan, who runs the covert group using the pseudonym “Jorge”, told undercover reporters that they sold access to their software to unnamed intelligence agencies, political parties and corporate clients. One appears to have been sold to a client who wanted to discredit the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), a statutory watchdog.
On 18 October 2020, the ICO ruled that the government should reveal which companies were awarded multimillion-pound contracts to supply PPEafter being entered into a “VIP” lane for politically connected companies. “This is politically motivated, it’s clear!” Canaelan lamented on Twitter two days later.
‘Team Jorge’ unmasked: the secret disinformation team who distort reality – video
That comment was part of a chorus of disapproval generated by the bots, who seemed aghast. “Information Commissioner tries everything to destroy the government,” one said, while another described the ruling as a “desperate act”.
All of the “replies” under that and other tweets were united in their outrage at the ICO, which they described as “a waste of time” and “lame”. As the replies continued, they became more trenchant, making wild and false accusations against the ICO about bribes, corruption and links to the far right.
Others just seemed nonplussed by the ICO’s insistence on transparency over the government’s pandemic procurement. “This is so typical from the UK …” one bot opined, “focusing on the wrong things.”
It is not known who commissioned Team Jorge to unleash the bots on the ICO, or why. Hanan did not respond to detailed requests for comment but said: “To be clear, I deny any wrongdoing.”
The ICO campaign appears to have been relatively short-lived compared with others around the world that reporters have been able to link to Team Jorge’s Aims software, which is much more than a bot-controlling programme.
Each avatar, according to a demonstration Hanan gave the undercover reporters, is given a multifaceted digital backstory.
Aims enables the creation of accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. Some even have Amazon accounts with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts.
Hanan told the undercover reporters his avatars mimicked human behaviour and their posts were powered by artificial intelligence.
Using the Aims-linked avatars revealed by Team Jorge in presentations and videos, reporters at the Guardian, Le Monde and Der Spiegel were able to identify a much wider network of 2,000 Aims-linked bots on Facebook and Twitter.
Quick Guide
About this investigative series
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The Guardian and Observer have partnered with an international consortium of reporters to investigate global disinformation. Our project, Disinfo black ops, is exposing how false information is deliberately spread by powerful states and private operatives who sell their covert services to political campaigns, companies and wealthy individuals. It also reveals how inconvenient truths can be erased from the internet by those who are rich enough to pay.The investigation is part of Story killers, a collaboration led by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit whose mission is to pursue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed reporters.
The eight-month investigation was inspired by the work of Gauri Lankesh, a 55-year-old journalist who was shot dead outside her Bengaluru home in 2017. Hours before she was murdered, Lankesh had been putting the finishing touches on an article called In the Age of False News, which examined how so-called lie factories online were spreading disinformation in India. In the final line of the article, which was published after her death, Lankesh wrote: “I want to salute all those who expose fake news. I wish there were more of them.”
The Story killers consortium includes more than 100 journalists from 30 media outlets including Haaretz, Le Monde, Radio France, Der Spiegel, Paper Trail Media, Die Zeit, TheMarker and the OCCRP. Read more about this project.
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We then traced their activity across the internet, identifying their involvement in what appeared to be mostly commercial disputes in about 20 countries including the UK, US, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Panama, Senegal, Mexico, Morocco, India, the United Arab Emirates, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Ecuador.
The analysis revealed a vast array of bot activity, with Aims’ fake social media profiles getting involved in a dispute in California over nuclear power; a #MeToo controversy in Canada; a campaign in France involving a Qatari UN official; and an election in Senegal.
Tal Hanan. Photograph: .Source: Haaretz/The Marker/Radio France
Do you have information about Tal Hanan or ‘Team Jorge’? For the most secure communications, use SecureDrop or see our guide.
One of the Aims-backed campaigns targeted a Monaco-based superyacht company, accusing it of having direct links to several Russian oligarchs who were subject to sanctions.
We also identified real-world events that appeared to have been staged to provide ammunition that could be leveraged in social media campaigns. One case involved a fake protest staged outside a company headquarters on Regent Street, central London.
Three masked activists in baseball caps, sunglasses and masks filmed themselves waving placards. A similar leafletting campaign was staged near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, before being circulated on social media by Aims bots. It is not possible to know who the clients were in any of the campaigns, or even what their objective was.
However, what seems clear is that the avatars peddling propaganda are doing so with the help of stolen photographs of real people.
The photo of a beaming man on Canaelan’s Twitter bio, the Guardian has established, was taken from the real Twitter page of Tom Van Rooijen, 25, a freelance Dutch journalist living in the Netherlands.
Canaelan’s Twitter bio (left) was taken from the real Twitter page of Tom Van Rooijen, a journalist in the Netherlands. Photograph: Twitter
Informed about the identity theft by the Guardian, Van Rooijen said he felt “quite uncomfortable” seeing his face beside a tweet expressing views he disagreed with. “I give a lot of workshops to school classes about news, media, journalism and fake news. I teach children weekly that their identity can be stolen by a Twitter bot,” he said. “I never thought my own identity would be stolen by a bot.”
Van Rooijen is likely to be among tens of thousands of unsuspecting victims whose images have been harvested by Team Jorge.
Other techniques are also used to lend the avatars credibility and avoid the bot-detection systems created by tech platforms. Hanan said his bots were linked to SMS-verified phone numbers, and some even had credit cards. Aims also has different groups of avatars with various nationalities and languages, with evidence they have been pushing narratives in Russian, Spanish, French and Japanese.
Those involved in the ICO campaign had been made to seem British, retweeting news articles from the Guardian, BBC, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. They showed an interest in the royal family, Glastonbury and Liz Truss’s performance as foreign minister, and posted lighthearted jokes about British weather and food, as well as scenic photos from Wiltshire and Yorkshire.
Those backgrounds provided some credibility when, later, they suddenly began expressing views about the UK’s data watchdog.
Twitter declined to comment. Meta, the owner of Facebook, this week took down Aims-linked bots on its platform after reporters shared a sample of the fake accounts with the company. On Tuesday, a Meta spokesperson connected the Aims bots to others that were linked in 2019 to another, now-defunct Israeli firm which it banned from the platform.
“This latest activity is an attempt by some of the same individuals to come back and we removed them for violating our policies,” the spokesperson said. “The group’s latest activity appears to have centred around running fake petitions on the internet or seeding fabricated stories in mainstream media outlets.”
For all of their apparent sophistication, some Aims avatars betrayed giveaways. One of the Twitter bots involved in UK campaigns alongside Canaelan was “Alexander”, whose profile picture showed a young man with a sculpted beard in a white beanie hat. The background: orange tulips beside a chirpy slogan “Be happy”.
And his profile bio consisted of two short sentences that hinted at an interest in falsehoods – and how to make them convincing: “The difference between fiction and reality?’ Fiction has to make sense.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
