INDIA, U.S. on same page on China’s Cyber attacks
New Delhi and Washington are highly agitated about China’s continued cyber-attacks. While the Narendra Modi government on Wednesday took up the matter with the Chinese Ambassador, America’s Federal Bureau of Investigations Director Christopher Wray announced the FBI’s new strategy for countering the Red Dragon’s cyber threats in remarks at the National Cyber Security Summit. The Modi government has set up an expert committee to study a media report that a Shenzen-based company, with links to the Chinese government, is monitoring over 10,000 Indians and entities. The targets are believed to include President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, key Opposition leaders and people from politics, legislature, science, business, judiciary and the media. Led by Lt Gen (Retd) Rajesh Pant, India’s chief coordinator on cyber security, the committee will submit its recommendations within 30 days.
Wray says that the most significant threats are coming from the Chinese government targeting America’s defence secrets and intellectual property, Russian efforts to undermine critical infrastructure, and increasingly sophisticated criminal cyber syndicates that seek to steal from individuals and institutions. India believes that about 35% cyber-attacks come from China and the rest from Pakistan, North Korea and some other nations and global criminal syndicates.
Mongolians against Chinese in education institutes
Earlier this month, tens of thousands of Mongolians in Southern Mongolia protested everywhere from the streets to the classroom, against a new curriculum that would mandate core subjects to be taught in Chinese instead of the Mongolian language. Mongolians engaged in creative and bold acts of resistance such as signing petitions, writing banners of protest in beautiful Mongolian calligraphy, and boycotting classrooms. Enghebatu Togochog, Director of the New York-based NGO Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center, told The Sunday Guardian that these protests were part of a “civil disobedience resistance movement.” From New York, Pema Doma, Campaigns Director of the Students for a Free Tibet, told this writer that “we have seen similar attacks by the Chinese government on Tibetan language inside Tibet and have strongly resisted”.
Ram, Sita, Lakshman Sculptures return from UK
Devotees in Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam are waiting for the return of antique bronze idols of Rama, Sita and Lakshman that were stolen in 1978 from a temple built during the Vijayanagara period. The sculptures are 90.5 cm, 78 cm and 74.5 cm in height, respectively. On Tuesday, all three idols were formally handed over to the TN government through a virtual meeting attended by Union Minister for Culture and Tourism, Prahlad Singh Patel. The event was also attended by State Chief Secretary K. Shanmugam and Director General of Police J.K. Tripathy.
In August 2019, the High Commission of India (HCI) was communicated by members of the India Pride Project that four antique idols of Rama, Sita, Lakshman and Hanuman, stolen from the temple may be in Britain and that the idol of Rama was suspected to be with an individual collector in London. Rahul Nangare, First Secretary, HCI, told The Sunday Guardian that “the matter was taken up with the Art and Antique Unit of the London Metropolitan Police.” The Idol Wing of TN police, headed by Additional Director General of Police, Abhay Kumar Singh, sent a report confirming that the theft took place in 1978 at Rajagopalasamy Temple in Anandamanglam, then in Mayuram taluk, and provided expert opinion about match of the idol with evidence from the French Institute of Pondicherry photo archive.
The London Police contacted the owner of the statue and conveyed the Mission’s request to return it as it appeared, prima facie, to be a stolen idol from an Indian temple. The art collector said that he had purchased it in “good faith” after doing due diligence checks including through a check of the Art Loss Register Certificates. The vendor involved was now deceased.
The owner revealed that he also possessed two other idols, of Sita and Lakshaman, which he handed over to the High Commissioner Gaitri Issar Kumar on Tuesday. “Thirteen sculptures were recovered from abroad since Independence till 2014,” Union Minister Patel told The Sunday Guardian. ”
‘Field More Women Candidates’
WATER, Women Association for Training, Empowerment & Resettlement, has appealed to all the national and Bihar’s regional political parties to field more women candidates in the coming state assembly elections. A pan-Indian NGO, WATER works for women’s betterment and empowerment, especially of the marginalized communities, irrespective of caste and religion, so that they can walk with dignity and heads high. It also lobbies for gender parity in electoral politics through its campaign Ab Hai Meri Bari (Now It’s My Turn), that urges people to elect good women candidates. WATER president Shilpi Arora has sent letters to the heads of all the national and regional parties of Bihar, including Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, to give election tickets to more women. “