Mediaboss Marketing

On 6th November, a special police team in Madhya Pradesh had raided a gambling den owned by Congress leader Gajendra Sonkar alias Gajju and recovered many illegal weapons and live ammunition. Out of the 17 recovered pistols, two were found to be licensed in the name of an employee at his stone crusher plant. Police have arrested the employee and initiated the process of cancelling the license.

During the search at his house, 17 illegal weapons, including two carbines, 19 magazines, and 1478 different cartridges, were recovered. Two of them were registered in the name of one Prashant Patial, a resident of Modivada Cantt. During the investigation, the special team found that Patial works at Sonkars stone crusher as a supervisor at a monthly salary of 15,000 rupees.

In the initial interrogation, police found out that Sonkar got the license in Patials name as there were criminal cases registered against him. Sonkars arms license was cancelled in 2014. SP Sidharth Bahuguna said that they had initiated the process to cancel the license of the two pistols.

On 6th November, Madhya Pradesh Police raided the house of former MP Congress Committee secretary and Congress leader Gajendra Sonkar. During the house search, they recovered a large cache of weapons, including 17 pistols that included two carbines, 1478 live cartridges, 19 magazines, an axe, and more. The police arrested 41 gamblers and recovered 42 mobile phones, playing cards, and 7.4 lakh cash as well.

SP Siddharth Bahuguna said on 6th November that they had booked Gajendra Sonkar, his brother Mahendra Sonkar alias Monu, his father Rajkumar Sonkar alias Babu Nati, manager Rajneesh Verma, Bhailal Patel, and Omkar alias Babua Sonkar in the case. While the police arrested Gajendra and Mahendra, others are still absconding. Police have announced Rs.5000 bounty on the absconding accused.

The illegal weapons and other incriminating material were recovered when the special police team had raided a gambling den run by Sonkar on November 6. 41 gamblers were caught in the act and over 7 lakh rupees in cash was also found.

As per the reports, the District Magistrate and Collector Karmaveer Sharmas court imposed the National Security Act on the Sonkar brothers on Friday based on the report submitted by SP Bahuguna. Gajendra has 12 cases registered against him under the Prevention of Gambling Act, assault, Arms Act, attempt to murder, Explosive Substances Act, etc. His brother Mahendra has five cases under assault, theft, arms act, gambling registered against him. As the NSA has been imposed on the brothers, they will remain in Central Jail even after their remand period is over.

Other accused in the cases, Gajendra Sonkars father Nati Babu Sonkar, manager Rajnish Varma, associates Bhailal Patel and Omkar Sonkar are absconding. The district police has declared rewards of Rs 5000 each on them.

Gajendra Sonkar is a Congress leader and has been seen with senior party leaders in the past. His Twitter account says that he had been spearheading party membership campaigns in the area. He had shared photographs of himself with Rahul Gandhi and Kamal Nath.

In another news, Jabalpur Police has raided an illegal arms manufacturing factory. As per the reports, long-distance slingshots used during CAA-NRC protests and riots were manufactured here. The infamous slingshots were made with the help of YouTube tutorials and were highly accurate even at 150-200 meter range. During the protests, they were in high demand in Hanumanatal, Gohalpur, Adhartal region.

Police have recovered six swords, airguns, and other weapons during the raid. Hanumanatal police station in-charge of Umesh Golhani said that the factory belonged to Shahnawaz alias Ravi Ansari, resident of Thakkar village. According to CSP, Akhilesh Gaur said that Ansari has been manufacturing arms for a long time. He had manufactured many custom-made weapons for criminals in the past. Police are now making a list of his customers for further action.

The rest is here:
Madhya Pradesh: Raid on Congress leaders gambling den unearths illegal weapons and ammunition, booked under NSA - OpIndia

In a tersely-worded letter to the Maryland Department of Transportation, the U.S. Navy served notice that the state should not plan on gaining control of any military property in Bethesda for the widening of the Capital Beltway (I-495).

The letter also took the agency to task for not considering transit alternatives and the impacts of the pandemic on commuting patterns.

The Nov. 4 correspondence is among thousands of comments provided to MDOT during a just-completed public feedback period on the Hogan administrations plan to add four express toll lanes to Interstates 495 and 270.

During testimony before a legislative panel on Friday, Transportation Secretary Greg Slater called the Navys objections pretty significant and serious. An influential local official agreed.

The two-page letter was signed by Capt. Mary S. Seymour, the Commanding Officer at Naval Support Activity Bethesda, a base whose main tenant is the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. A sprawling property across from the National Institutes of Health, NSA Bethesda fronts on MD 355 and borders the Beltway.

The Navy raises several objections to the states proposal to add four lanes to the two highways.

The letter chides MDOT for continuing to assert that it will take NSA Bethesda property for the project.

As previously stated in multiple letters from the installation to MDOT, the Navy will not cede any property for the construction of this toll road, Seymour writes. Doing so would compromise Antiterrorism/Force Protection guidelines and impact the NSA Bethesda Mission. The Navy requests the project remove the property acquisition from consideration in the analysis.

The letter notes an ongoing disagreement between the state and Department of Defense over right-of-way and fence line impacts and finds MDOTs analysis of the construction footprint to be woefully inadequate.

The information in the [Draft Environmental Impact Statement] shows disruption to mission critical infrastructure on the northeast corner of the installation without providing any technical information on the potential size and duration of those impacts, Seymour wrote.

Impacts to those facilities and infrastructure will cause an immediate degradation of installation support services to Walter Reed Military Medical Center and mission critical construction. This is a direct contradiction to the DEIS assumption that impacts to any individual facility would not alter access to or use of the hospital facilities.

Echoing complaints from state legislators, local officials and members of the public, the Navy faults the state for failing to consider the potential benefits of increased transit. This document is supposed to analyze a multi-modal transportation system, yet focuses exclusively on toll roads.

In addition, the letter urged greater analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on both road and transit use. These impacts are changing commuter behavior and should be reflected in this document, Seymour told MDOT.

In an appearance before a House Transportation and Environment subcommittee on Friday, Slater, the states transportation chief, told lawmakers he had read the Navys letter.

I think certainly some of the concerns that theyve raised are pretty significant and serious, he said. And we want to work through that with them and really talk through all of those [concerns] with them.

The consensus-oriented secretary, who is popular with officials from both parties, said he took issue with the tone of the Navys letter, which he described as kind of a not-super-productive dialogue.

He said he has urged his project team to reach out to NSA Bethesda officials in the near future.

While the substance of the Navys objections mirrored those that have been raised for many months by environmentalists, Democratic officials and homeowners near the two highways, several officials said it was striking for DOD to be raising the same issues.

There now seems to be a pretty unified wall of opposition to this project, said Montgomery County Planning Board Chairman Casey Anderson, whose agency has clashed with MDOT staff during project discussions.

I didnt really feel there was going to be a solid, almost-unanimous opposition among all the relevant entities that own property or have some legal role in approving this, he added. I feel a little better about this than I did six months ago.

Del. Marc Korman (D-Montgomery), the chair of the T&E subcommittee on capital spending, called the Navys objections significant.

The meat of the letter is them saying and Im paraphrasing youre not taking any of our land, for national security reasons, and stop pretending you are, he said in an interview.

Ben Ross, head of the Maryland Transit Opportunities Coalition and a vocal critic of the project, called the Navys objections a big obstacle for the state.

The Navy repeatedly raised this issue with MDOT during DEIS preparation, and MDOT did not modify its plan to use Navy property, he said in an email. I cant see U.S. DOT approving something that requires land from the Navy that the Navy says it needs for mission-critical reasons.

Efforts to get reaction from supporters of the project on Friday were not successful.

[emailprotected]

See more here:
US Navy Strongly Opposed To Capital Beltway Widening Project - Josh Kurtz

Netball South Africa (NSA) president Cecilia Molokwane seemed unfazed on Monday about the legal threat sent to her federation by trade union Solidarity over the sports race regulations.

Molokwane said the governing netball federation would not respond to trade union Solidaritys legal letter until their council met to discuss the issue.

On 6 November, Solidaritys Hennie Bierman addressed a letter to Molokwane saying NSAs race regulations were "irrational".

This came after the Mpumalanga Sunbirds were disqualified for failing to adhere to the regulations during their clash with the Kingdom Queens, in the Telkom Netball Leagues Division 2 final last month.

READ | 'No quotas in netball,' says Molokwane

"[We are] of the view that the rules are irrational, damaging to the sport of Netball, and most importantly, to the players, coaching and management staff," Bierman wrote.

"The TNL tournament rules are on its own ambiguous in that no rational benchmark is set to determine the target system."

Molokwane, however, said they had procedures to follow before they could engage Solidarity on their threat.

"You can take us to court and do whatever but at the end of the day we will still have to go to the very same council and say, Solidarity is taking us to court, what do we do?" she said.

"We cannot spend money on legal matters. We will only answer that letter only when weve gone to council.

"We are not going to jump because of them. We have procedures to follow. We have a constitution to follow and it should be a council resolution like many other legal things we have to deal with.

"We are not going to do anything and we havent even responded. We will take the letter to council and go through our procedures, as we did with the AfriForum issue."

Molokwane said she was concerned that people outside netball were trying to influence the sport in a negative way and that it was up to their own council to decide whether their system was fit or not for the sport.

"My concern is that there are people outside of netball thinking they can come into netball and threaten us, giving us legal letters and whatever," said Molokwane.

"The council of Netball South Africa will decide whether the rules suit them or not. At the end of the day, they are the people that play netball.

"They are the people with the players and they will decide what is best for the players in the country."

READ | Proteas air Black Lives Matter grievances

Molokwane added that NSA, which was under a barrage of criticism during the height of the Black Lives Matter conversation in South African sport, her federation was working hard to ensure redress.

However, she suspected foul elements were trying to destabilise the organisation ahead of the 2023 Netball World Cup in Cape Town.

"We are still trying to fix the wrongs and injustices of the past and we cant do that in a day," Molokwane said.

"People are expecting so many miracles from us, the executive, and I dont know why. Theres only seven of us but we are working and we do netball because of the passion and love we have for it.

"People are trying to destabilise us. Is it not a plan to make sure we dont host the World Cup?"

View post:
NSA president Cecilia Molokwane unfazed by Solidaritys legal threat over race regulations - News24

Imagine youre a young cyber officer in the Russian military looking to break into the defended network of a NATO government. You identify a target, a person whose credentials you could steal to gain access to the network and then perhaps move from node to node, looking for sensitive information to exfiltrate. You send your target a phishing email. The target clicks the link. Youre in! But later on, you learn that the information you stole was meaningless and you may have exposed your own techniques or tools. Your adversary wanted you to succeed in the hack to get information on you.

This is the value of honeypots, a deceptive cybersecurity practice that NATO used as part of its most recent exercise, NATO Cyber Coalition, which took place in Estonia and other locations from Nov. 16 to 20.

The exercise, coordinated through Estonias Cyber Security Training Centre, brought in more than 1,000 participants. Previous exercises have strived to mimic real-world challenges, such as Russian hybrid warfare techniques.

This year, We put [out] machines that are sacrificial, that are what we call honeypots or honeynets, said Alberto Domingo, a technical director for Cyberspace at the NATO Supreme Allied Transform Command on a call with reporters and other observers on Friday. The idea is that the adversary will find it easier to attack these machines without knowing and they will do that and we will be preserving the information for NATO and interacting with this adversary.

This experiment took the concept a further than standard use of deception techniques, he said by working with the adversary without his knowing...in order to derive: what is their behavior?

The objective is to collect intelligence on the adversary without their being aware of it. Its answering the questions of who is the adversary? What type of adversary are we talking about? What do they want and what are they going to do next? said Domingo.

The use of honeypots by governments is a relatively recent phenomenon.

In April 2017 Deborah Frincke, then NSAs director of research, discussed how her agency had also begun to experiment with deceptive tactics as a means of gathering intelligence on adversaries.

During a breakfast put together by the National Defense Industry Association, Frincke said that a lot of commercially available cybersecurity software gave adversaries too much room to explore its vulnerabilities. It was too easy, she said, just to buy a copy of the software and hunt for an attack that didnt set off obvious alarms.

There are ways we can get defenses right and ways we can get defenses wrong. So if you always put out a system that always tells an adversary always when theyve beaten it, thats probably not the most productive way to proceed. If they sometimes will get feedback thats incorrect, deceptive, that might be a better thing, said Frincke. She said the NSA was looking at Where might we go in terms of understanding defenses. We might think about defensive deception, for instance.

Frinke said honeypots can give you a window into the adversarys mindset. They can help answer such questions as what will the adversary tend to do? How long will they keep at a task before they move? Can we use that to determine between a [human] adversary and an automated system?Can we make them go away, worn out, or become indecisive? Thats getting at what is the cognitive load of the system were throwing at them. Can we give them a little more information that might actually be counterproductive to them, especially if its sometimes wrong? So you can start playing those games of what the adversary is actually doingand think about it from a psychosocial standpoint, how much does that buy you?

Just a month after Frincke gave that talk, Russian GRU actors attempted to breach the presidential campaign of French politician Emmanuel Macron. But unlike the DNC in 2016, the French had advance warning that they were targets. Macrons team set up their own honeypot defense.

We created false accounts, with false content, as traps. We did this massively, to create the obligation for them to verify, to determine whether it was a real account, the campaigns digital director Mounir Mahjoubi told the New York Times. I dont think we prevented them. We just slowed them down, Mahjoubi said. Even if it made them lose one minute, were happy,

Ian West, the chief of NATOs Cybersecurity Centre, wouldn't say whether NATO currently employs honeypots in real-world settings. We cant go into what we do or dont do in terms of our tactics, West said. We use every defensive means thats available to us in order to defend our networks.

But according to Frincke, the NSA conducted a series of internal exercises, which led to some surprising findings. Does attacker awareness of defensive deception change its effectiveness? By and large, she said, it doesnt.

Read more:
NATO Experiments With Deceptive Tactics to Lure Russian Hackers - Defense One

Currently, a divergence is observed between the aggregate of gross state domestic products (GSDPs) and the gross domestic product (GDP) of India. Though a thorough exercise is required to find out the reason, this difference has public policy implications for the country.

The divergence between the recorded output of Indias constituent states put together and the national output, which is taken to signify the size of the economy, gives rise to doubt if the GDP numbers put out by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) accurately capture the countrys economic growth. This divergence, if found true, could complicate assessments of the outcomes of various policy measures.

In 2019-20, as per available official data, Indias 20 states and Union territories (UTs) combined recorded growth of 6.9%, compared to national-level GDP growth of 4.2%. There have been reasonable differences between the two numbers in the past, and after the introduction the 2012 series of the National Accounts Statistics (NAS), this difference averaged 0.3 percentage points over fiscal years 2012-13 through 2018-19. The added-up GSDP growth of states/UTs has been consistently higher than that of national GDP during the last five years. But the growth difference of 2.7 percentage points in 2019-20 is not only abnormally high, it also suggests that the deceleration of growth at the sub-national level was not as sharp as the national number may suggest.

In India, states release only annual data of their GSDP and not quarterly data. Also, they do not provide GSDP figures with a break-down of consumption and investment. However, in their annual GSDP sectoral estimates, not only do they follow the same methodology of data compilation used by the National Statistical Agency (NSA), but the data is also discussed and vetted by the NSA. The comparable estimates of GSDP for 2015-16 to 2017-18 that the NSA prepared for the Finance Commission indicate that states estimates were quite consistent with these; specifically for 21 states, the ratio of one to the other varied between 0.99 and 1.01. Even the average annual growth at current prices of the NSAs comparable GSDP for 2015-16 to 2017-18 at 12% was a just a shade lower than 12.4% for the aggregated GSDP as compiled by the states themselves. This suggests that state estimates did not suffer from any methodological or estimation flaws. Further, the aggregated GSDP of states/UTs was also aligned with national GDP in 2011-12, the first year of the new NAS series, with the ratio of aggregated GSDP of sub-national constituents being 1.012. Aggregated GSDP growth after that was expected to show a similar growth trajectory. The gap of 2019-20, however, raises a question: Is there an emerging disconnect?

Before we look at the implications and ways of resolving it, it is important to look at two issues. The ministry of company affairs MCA-21 data for corporate output across all sectors and the data on railways, financial institutions, public administration and defence is allocated by the NSA to various states. Their respective directorates of economics and statistics incorporate that data in their overall compilation of GSDP. Each states share differs, and tends to exceed 60% of total GSDP for most. Hence, differences in GSDP growth can be inferred to arise from only that part of GSDP which is solely in the states domain. Often, discrepancies in GDP estimates (including sharp revisions) get attributed to the informal sector. The overall share in GDP of households and non-profit institutions serving households, which is the informal sector, has been around 45%, and this is almost equally distributed across agriculture, industry and services. Though there are differences in growth across those three broad sectors, industrial growth is significantly more robust from a data perspective.

Some questions arise in this regard. Has the issue of a sharp, persistent and secular deceleration of GDP growth been overplayed? The average annual growth of GSDP of Indias 20 major states/UTs during 2012-13 to 2018-19 was 7.15%. This measure of growth in 2019-20 at 6.89% was only a shade lower than 6.97% achieved in 2018-19, and showed a marginal deceleration from the trend medium-term growth. Seven of these states (six of them major), namely Tamil Nadu, Haryana, West Bengal, Sikkim, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh recorded higher growth in 2019-20 than the previous year. Could it be that Indian states are making a more accurate assessment of the growth situation on the ground? After all, considerable changes have taken place in the composition of the economy over the last five years, especially in the informal sector.

The methodology of the survey used by states to gather data has the approval of the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO). The NSSO, however, lacks the expert capacity to supervise these surveys, and this makes data robustness hard to ensure. Should this bottleneck not be eased for us to obtain clarity?

If the states GSDP reflects the situation correctly, has Indias unorganized sector bounced back faster after demonetization (in 2016) and introduction of the goods and services tax (in 2017) than anecdotal data suggests? And if this is so, will it not be prudent to ensure that the sector gets access to capital as part of the countrys stimulus strategy? And finally, will the 15th Finance Commission use GSDP or CSO data in deciding on its devolution of resources to states?

R. Gopalan and Manak C. Singhi are respectively, former secretary in the department of economic affairs, ministry of finance, and former senior adviser at ministry of finance, Government of India.

Subscribe to Mint Newsletters

* Enter a valid email

* Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.

Read the original here:
An odd divergence between India and its constituents - Mint