The number of Indians arrested for illegally entering the US has tripled to around 9,000 so far in 2018, making them one of the largest groups of illegal people apprehended, US Customs and Border Protection said. Paying smuggling rings between $25,000-$50,000 per person, a growing number of Indians are illegally crossing US-Mexico border and claiming asylum for persecution, CBP spokesman Salvador Zamora said. Many present viable claims, but many are economic migrants with fraudulent petitions that swamp the system and can cause legitimate cases to be “washed out” in the high volume of fraud, he said. Around 4,000 Indians who entered the US illegally this year did so over a stretch of border fence at Mexicali, Zamora said.
Pakistan observes Bhagat Singh’s birth anniversary
Revolutionary freedom fighter Bhagat Singh's 111th birth anniversary was observed at the Lahore High Court in Pakistan on Friday, 28 September. Several lawyers gathered to mark Singh's birth anniversary and paid rich tributes to one of the most influential revolutionaries of the Indian independence movement. The gathering also passed two resolutions – one seeking an apology from the British Queen to the people of the Indian subcontinent for hanging Singh, and the other, for issuing a commemorative coin and postage stamp in his memory. Bhagat Singh Memorial Foundation Chairman Imtiaz Rashid Qureshi said the Pak government should include the story of Singh in school curricula and award him the country's highest civilian award for his gallantry.
Non-bailable arrest warrant against Pak scribe
Pakistan drew widespread condemnation after Lahore high court issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against one of the country’s most respectable and senior journalists Cyril Almeida. The court has also barred him from leaving the country. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) was quick to take note and express it concern while several journalists and media groups across the globe condemned the harassment of Almeida who works for Pakistan’s major English news daily, the Dawn. Almeida’s name has also been put on the Exit Control List. The decision against the journalist came in connection with a petition filed against Nawaz Sharif and former PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi for treason and defaming state institutions after he had publicly admitted in an interview with Dawn that Pakistani terrorists were involved in the 26/11attacks.
Pak bureaucrat suspended over wallet stealing
A video showing a senior Pakistani bureaucrat stealing the wallet of a visiting Kuwaiti dignitary has gone viral on social media, prompting authorities to suspend the high-ranking official, according to media reports. The dignitary was part of a high-level delegation which was in the country to discuss bilateral trade. Zarrar Haider Khan, joint secretary of the ministry of industries and production and a BS-20 officer of the state bureaucracy’s elite Pakistan Administrative Service, was caught on CCTV cameras while pocketing the wallet which had a significant sum of Kuwaiti dinars, reports said.
Now, China censors ‘bad’ economic news
China has long made it clear that reporting on politics, civil society and sensitive historical events is forbidden. Increasingly, it wants to keep negative news about the economy under control, too. A government directive sent to journalists in China named six economic topics to be “managed,” according to the order. The list of topics includes worse-than-expected data that could show the economy is slowing; local government debt risks; the impact of the trade war with the US, signs of declining consumer confidence; the risks of stagflation, or rising prices coupled with slowing economic growth and “hot-button issues to show the difficulties of people’s lives”. The government’s new directive betrays a mounting anxiety among Chinese leaders that the country could be heading into a growing economic slump. Even before the trade war between the US and China, residents of the world’s second-largest economy were showing signs of keeping a tight grip on their wallets.
Marilyn Monroe's wedding car up for auction
Late Hollywood veteran star Marilyn Monroe's black Ford Thunderbird is up for auction. The car is expected to fetch up to $500,000 when it goes under the hammer at an upcoming Julien's Auctions event in November. Monroe owned the car from 1955 to 1962 after buying it before she married playwright Arthur Miller. A published report at the time suggests the actress and Miller arrived for their civil wedding ceremony on June 28, 1956 in the vehicle. Reports suggest it was a Christmas gift from her business partner and photographer, Milton Greene. She passed it on as an 18th birthday gift to John Strasberg, the son of director and acting coach Lee Strasberg and his wife, Paula. The legal transfer of the vehicle took place months before Monroe's death on August 5, 1962.
‘Fake’ queuers at iPhone store try to sell spot to fans
Hundreds of Russians braved the cold and rain to queue for days outside a Moscow phone store ahead of the release of the new Apple iPhones, but when the doors opened none stepped in to buy. Instead, they tried in vain to sell their queue places to genuine Apple enthusiasts outside the first Russian store to sell the new iPhones XS and XS Max in central Moscow.
‘Replace Disney figures with troop pics in classes’
Egyptian media are reporting that a regional governor has ordered depictions of Disney characters removed from kindergartens and replaced with images of Egyptian troops killed fighting militants. The Youm7 website quotes Alaa Marzouq, governor of Qaliubiya, as saying that the move is meant to promote “children’s patriotism”. He says: “These characters are US-made.”
Videos on ‘how to hack FB’ running on YouTube
Even as Facebook deals with a fresh data breach that affected nearly 50 million of users, YouTube continues to host tutorials that claim to provide people ways to hijacking Facebook accounts, media reports said. Some videos described a method similar to the one used by the hackers. Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cyber security policy, said that he was “aware of certain videos describing different elements of the attack.” A Google spokesperson was quoted as saying that the company will remove videos that encourage illegal activities of the hacking.
California judges to decide who gets custody of pets
California courts could be going to the dogs - and maybe cats, too - under a new law granting judges authority to settle disagreements over who keeps the family pet in divorce cases the same way they handle child-custody disputes. Under a bill signed last week by Governor Jerry Brown, pets will still be considered community property but a judge deciding who gets to keep them will have the discretion of weighing such factors as who feeds them, who takes them to the vet and on walks, and who protects them.
We fell in love’: Trump swoons over letters from N Korea’s Kim
US President Donald Trump took his enthusiasm for his detente with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to new heights, declaring at a rally with supporters that “we fell in love” after exchanging letters. Trump and Kim have said they want to work toward denuclearising the Korean peninsula, holding an unprecedented meeting earlier this year in Singapore to discuss the idea. Before they turned the page on decades of public acrimony, the leaders regularly traded threats and insults as North Korea pushed to develop a nuclear missile capable of hitting the US. “I was really being tough - and so was he. And we would go back and forth,” Trump told a rally in West Virginia. “And then we fell in love, okay? No, really - he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters,” he said. His supporters laughed and applauded.
US, Japan researchers win Nobel Prize in Medicine
The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been jointly awarded to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo, by the Nobel committee of the Karolinska Institute. The two immunologists - from the US and Japan, respectively - were awarded the Prize “for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.” “Cancer kills millions of people every year and is one of humanity’s greatest health challenges. By stimulating the inherent ability of our immune system to attack tumor cells this year’s Nobel Laureates have established an entirely new principle for cancer therapy,” read a statement from the Academy. “The discovery made by the two Medicine Laureates takes advantage of the immune system’s ability to attack cancer cells by releasing the brakes on immune cells,” tweeted the official Nobel Prize handle.
