At a press conference in the heart of Silicon Valley, five men in suits posed for a photograph that shed unprecedented light on the world’s most powerful intelligence partnership. The men belonged to the Five Eyes espionage alliance, each representing intelligence services from Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the US. Until then, they had never appeared together in public. Their smiles to the camera contrasted against a dark warning shared by one group member, Britain’s head of MI5, Ken McCallum. The UK had seen a sharp rise in aggressive attempts by foreign states to steal the country’s high-tech secrets, he warned. The biggest threat of all: China. According to McCallum, more than 20,000 people in the UK have been approached by Chinese agents online as part of “epic scale” espionage efforts. One alleged Chinese spy created fake profiles on LinkedIn to contact thousands of British officials – offering cash, trips to China and paid speaking gigs as ways of extracting state secrets. Reports of China’s covert spy network in the UK will weigh on the minds of City bosses, as corporations fortify their offices with costly cyber defences to protect their data being stolen by ransomware gangs. While some UK companies are now spending millions of pounds spent on cyber insurance, many remain uncovered. Most vulnerable are Britain’s small and medium-sized businesses, according to Jamie MacColl, a cyber research fellow at defence think tank Royal United Services Institute. “A lot of organisations just don’t view it as an important risk, particularly smaller companies. They might think, you know, a cyber attack is something that happens to someone else, or it’s something that only happens to large corporations,” he says. The coverage gap can be partly blamed on insurance fees. A decade ago, cyber insurance was cheap and easy to buy. Insurance companies cut their prices to spark demand in a nascent market. “Naive insurers entered into the cyber insurance market with not a lot of cybersecurity expertise, wrote policies that had very high limits and no kind of security requirements to get a policy. They all got burnt when ransomware became an issue,” says MacColl. The rise of Russian-backed cyber hackers demanding multi-million pound ransoms from City firms left underwriters lumbered with mounting losses. Some insurers were forced to leave the cyber risk market entirely. Profit-seeking insurers hiked prices and made it harder to qualify for protection, with many companies not meeting the higher minimum security requirements. While costs have since come down as more cyber insurers re-entered the market over the past year, how much these policies will actually cover has also been hotly debated. Where trade secrets are stolen by cyber spies, the answer is typically straightforward. While insurance will often pay for follow-on investigation and compliance costs after a cyber attack, the loss of intellectual property and proprietary information is not usually covered. Insurers can easily determine the value of financial losses from a company’s day-to-day operations being disrupted, but the same can’t be said for trade secrets. “It’s hard to put a value on them. That’s not to say there’s no damage, but it’s harder for insurers to quantify,” says Josephine Wolff, an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at Tufts University in the US. More complex is who foots the bill in the case of a catastrophic cyber attack. Lloyd’s of London, the biggest and oldest global insurance market in the world, last year began excluding devastating “state-backed” cyber attacks from its standard insurance policies. The new rule stopped insurers selling protection against state-sponsored cyber attacks which are so severe they “significantly impact” a country’s ability to function. It sought to protect insurers from being exposed to enormous costs of systemic cyber warfare, updating war exclusions first introduced to protect earlier risk managers from being crippled by the costs of replacing sunken battleships during the Spanish Civil War. “Think the digital equivalent of a nuclear strike. This remotest of possibilities, like a nuclear strike, is not one that insurers can cover as standard,”  James Burns, head of cyber strategy at insurance company CFC Underwriting, wrote on LinkedIn. The overhaul came after Western powers blamed Russia for the NotPetya hack in 2017, one of the most destructive cyber attacks in history which shut down computer systems of companies in more than 60 countries. After a lengthy legal battle, insurers were left on the hook for billions of dollars in insurance claims. However, it is not clear how the cyber exclusions will actually work in practice. “We haven’t seen a lot of big tests of them yet. We haven’t seen a lot of attacks where insurers have denied big claims and people have gone to court to fight out what it all really means,” says Wolff.     Source: BSS

The incident at the La Palma swimming resort in Guanajuato state left six adults and a 7-year-old child dead. Guanajuato has seen a rise in drug-related violence in recent years. A group of armed men attacked a central Mexican water park on Saturday, killing six adults and a 7-year-old child, according to authorities. Additionally, one person was severely injured in the assault. The incident occurred in the afternoon at La Palma swimming resort in the Cortazar municipality of Guanajuato state. A statement from City Hall in Cortazar said that police "arrived at the scene where they found...three dead women, three men and a seven-year-old minor, in addition to one person seriously wounded." The statement from officials did not provide any insight into the possible reason for the attack. How the incident unfolded According to the statement, the gunmen arrived at the La Palma swimming resort at 4:30 p.m. local time (2230 UTC/GMT) with the intention to carry out an attack. They directly targeted a group of people and started firing, then proceeded to remove the security cameras before leaving the scene, according to the authorities. A witness at the location captured a video posted on the local news site. The footage showed victims lying on the ground or chairs, surrounded by dense smoke, presumably from the gunfire. Meanwhile, others ran for shelter. More than 350,000 murders since 2006 In recent years, there has been a rise in drug-related violence in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. Despite being a prosperous industrial region, it has become one of Mexico's most violent areas due to the ongoing conflict between the Santa Rosa de Lima criminal organization and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which focuses on drug trafficking and fuel theft. The government's deployment of the military to combat drug cartels in 2006 has been a contentious issue, with over 350,000 murders in Mexico since then, most of which have been attributed to criminal gangs.

The policy of the current government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of 'leaving no one behind' was a policy of Bangabandhu, said Bangabandhu's grandson and CRI's Trustee Radwan Mujib Siddiq on Sunday. He made the remark during the online launching of a policy magazine 'WhiteBoard'. The newly-launched policy magazine will always give ‘balanced objective and clear messages’ to policymakers, said its editor-in-chief Radwan Mujib Siddiq during the launching through a webinar. As revealed by Radwan Mujib, WhiteBoard will create a space for the brightest minds not just in Bangladesh but for the Bangladeshis making a difference aboard and being capable to guide the country in overcoming the challenges it is dealing with. The grandson of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman reflected on the vision of the magazine, launched by ruling Awami League’s research wing Centre for Research & Information (CRI), which will cover the gamut of policy issues in Bangladesh. Valuing youths as the driving force of this magazine, he said, “We’re always open to our primary audience, which is the young generation.” Syed Mafiz Kamal, Co-editor of the magazine, moderated the event while Samia Huq, Department of Economics and Social Science, BRAC University took part in the event. Samia is also a member of its editorial advisory board. Reasoning why this is a timely initiative, Radwan wrote in the editor’s note of the magazine, “Why have we launched this new initiative? Because Bangladesh is growing rapidly and confronting new challenges, with young people at the helm. Bangladesh is set to be among the world’s top 30 economies by 2030." But, he said, there is a lack of data-driven and coherent analysis of what is happening in the country. "This is where WhiteBoard steps in. Aimed at students and young professionals, policy-makers, and practitioners, both at home and abroad, WhiteBoard will be the go-to resource for the latest commentary on Bangladesh. We promote evidence-based analysis and incisive debate on topics ranging from the economy to gender-based violence, from tech innovation to youth employment. Nothing is off the table!” The first issue brings forth Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's policies that outlined the nation’s progress in the post-liberation war-torn country. Talking about how the policies of Bangabandhu relates to today’s policy landscape of Bangladesh, Radwan said the country in the last 10 years went back to some of its founding principles and one of them is ‘friendship to all and malice to none’, which relates to the country’s good relations with so many economic partners. As revealed by CRI sources, this issue debunks the myths about Bangabandhu's administration -- created and disseminated following the assassination of Bangabandhu and 16 of his family members in 1975. The policies and methodologies of Bangabandhu, often lost under the weight of his other charismatic accomplishments such as fiery speeches and pro-liberation leadership, do deserve a chance to be heard by modern policymakers, youths. All the content developers of this magazine are endowed with a track record of possessing ample knowledge of the vision. A total of eight contributions were made to the first issue by eminent personalities, including renowned economist Rehman Sobhan, humanitarian activist Julian Francis, and journalist Syed Badrul Ahsan, Professor Shams Rahman, and political scientist Rounaq Jahan. The stories came under the titles of ‘Emerging from the village to mark a new country on the map’, ‘Mujib’s economic policies and their relevance today’, ‘Economic development through political stability’, ‘Just like today’s progressive politics’, ‘BaKSAL was social-democratic in nature’, ‘Bangladesh’s Constitution of 1972: an exposition of Mujib’s political philosophy’, ‘How Mujib co-managed one of the largest relief operations in the world’, ‘Friendship towards all was a masterstroke’, and ‘Mujib administration’s policy action timeline’. In a detailed interview published in the magazine, Syed Badrul Ahsan shed light on the common misperceptions about the formation of the Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (BaKSAL) by Bangabandhu. “The term ‘BaKSAL’ is used in a very critical or pejorative way. But it should be described as a second revolution, as Mujib conceived of it. Mujib’s first revolution was the liberation war and the achievement of independence in 1971. “The second revolution was largely geared towards the economic emancipation of the people. That’s the way he looked at it,” he said in the interview. Recounting how Bangabandhu had to build everything from scratches in a war-ravaged country, Julian Francis wrote, “During the war, all communication, social and industrial infrastructure had been targeted. Transportation networks had been destroyed – bridges, roads, culverts, railways, and waterways. More than 300 rail and road bridges had been demolished. The damage done in the transportation and communication sector was estimated at USD 160 million. The main trading hub, Chittagong Port, had been ruined. Nearly 22,000 educational institutions, including 18,000 primary schools, had been damaged. The cost to public assets stood at USD 350 million. The challenges before Mujib were thus huge, especially in the early phase of the reconstruction process. The government took up this Herculean task along with its development partners. It was estimated that the reintegration of refugees and the internally displaced would require the construction of 43 million houses.” There are many developments the youths can see today but what they do not know is that the seed of those developments was sown and nurtured by Bangabandhu and those futuristic policies have come alive through the pages of this magazine. The unveiling of this chapter is a tribute to the Father of the Nation on his birth centenary and the magazine will be a lighthouse for policymakers who will be able to model their policies on his vision, said CRI today. Previously scheduled for March, the month of Bangabandhu's birth, the launch was deferred due to the Covid-19 pandemic that took a toll on the entire planet. This initiative complements other efforts of the CRI such as the launching of "Mujib", a graphic novel based on the life and vision of young Mujib which is the first of its kind in Bangladesh in terms of comic-style narration on the life of a historical figure. The future editions of WhiteBoard will delve into crucial matters of national policymaking from an angle that usual advocacy groups and donor agencies have left a void. During the webinar, Radwan Mujib also disclosed that the upcoming issues of the magazine will cover COVID-19 and Bangladesh-50. "We’re launching WhiteBoard because we believe we’ll bring in new ideas into the policy-sphere of our country; the quality of our magazine should speak for itself," said Syed Mafiz Kamal, co-editor, WhiteBoard. Source: UNB AH

Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) Mayor Md. Atiqul Islam alleged that nobody is leaving waste of sacrificial animals in the certain places. The allegation of the mayor came in while visiting the slaughtering house of sacrificial animals of DNCC digital haat at Basila Sadiq Agro on Saturday. The mayor said, there are 256 certain places for dumping waste of sacrificial animals, I have visited some of the sites but observed that nobody is leaving waste in those places. To the city dwellers he said, please leave the waste in the certain places. We have to change our mentality to protect the city. It is very challenging. It will be fulfilled when we work as united. Mayor Atiq said that four hundred sacrificial animals were slaughtered in the slaughtering house. For the first time animals were slaughtered in this way. AH

Chairman of Bangladesh Jatiya Party (BJP) Barrister Andaleeve Rahman Partho has declared to leave the 20-party alliance led by BNP. He said this in a press release sent to the news media on Monday. Later BJP secretary general Abdul Matin Saud confirmed the matter. He said, they are paying more importance to Jatiya Oikyafront led by Gonoforum president Dr. Kamal Hossain leaving 20-party alliance aside. We are victim of negligence from them. Matin said, they have joined the parliament after rejecting the results of eleventh national parliament election. They even did not discuss with 20-party about joining the parliament. Brushing aside any possibility of joining the new alliance he said, we are not going to join any alliance at the moment. We will be busy to organize our party. Barrister Andaleeve Rahman Partho’s father Naziur Rahman Manju was former minister and mayor of Dhaka City Corporation. His mother Sheikh Reba Rahman is sister of Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim. Partho became involved in politics from the year 2000 with his father Naziur Rahman Manju. When his father died in 2004 he was elected Chairman of BJP. In 2008 Partho took part in the ninth national parliament election from Bhola-1 constituency under 4-party alliance. He defeated Awami League candidate Yusuf Hossain Humayun there. He was the member of parliamentary standing committee on establishment ministry from 2009 to 2014. His party boycotted the election of 2014 along with the alliance led by BNP. He was a candidate of eleventh national parliament election in 2018 from Dhaka-17 constituency under Jatiya Oikyafront but he was defeated. AH        

We have to leave jobs due to different reasons. Sometimes people are seen leaving their jobs for misunderstanding with seniors, salary related matters, pressure of work and others. It is a normal matter. But don’t forget to do some works before leaving job- Many people leave their jobs after facing some situation. But before leaving the job be cool headed and think how much severe is the reason of your resignation. Try your best to solve the matter. Before leaving the job inquire about the organization you are going to join. Think deeply about the responsibility of new job, career future and facilities of the organization and then take decision. Try to submit your resignation letter after following rules of the organization so that nobody can tell you non-professional. Say farewell after maintaining good relation with your colleagues and other officials. Because you may work with these colleagues in another place in future. Take your testimonial and release letter from the old organization. Before leaving the office check your personal drawers, different files and computer to ensure that nothing of yours is left behind. AH

The much discussed three leaders joined Jatiya Oikyafront leaving Awami League several months before the eleventh national parliament election. Through voting results they were defeated with huge vote differences. Of the three leaders one is former Awami League Member of Parliament (MP) Golam Maula Rony. The other two leaders are Reza Kibria and Abu Sayeed. Of the three leaders Golam Maula Rony was in the greatest fiasco. He took part in the election from Patuakhali-3 constituency with sheaf of paddy symbol. He got only 6 thousand 176 votes. But the winner Awami League candidate Shahjada got 34 times ( 2 lakh 15 thousand 579) votes than him. In Habiganj-1 constituency Reza Kibria got 85 thousand 197 votes. Awami League candidate Gazi Mohammad Shahnewaz (Milad Gazi) won from this constituency. He got 1 lakh 58 thousand 188 votes. In Pabna-1 constituency Awami League candidate Shamsul Haque Tuku won the election. He got 2 lakh 82 thousand 992 votes. In this constituency Professor Abu Sayeed who recently joined Oikyafront from Awami League got only 15 thousand 391 votes, which is one eighteenth of Tuku. The Jatiya Oikyafront led by Dr. Kamal Hossain was formed on October 13 of the current year. After that former Awami League finance minister’s son Reza Kibria and former state minister for information Professor Abu Sayeed joined Dr. Kamal Hossain’s party Gono Forum. Both of them became Oikyafront candidates in the election with symbol sheaf of paddy. On the other hand just before the election former Awami League MP Golam Maula Rony joined BNP and ran for election with symbol sheaf of paddy. AH    

Malaysia's new leader, Mahathir Mohamad, said Saturday that defeated scandal-tainted Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife have been barred from leaving the country to prevent them from fleeing from possible prosecution over a massive corruption scandal. A leaked flight manifesto showed that Najib and his wife, Rosmah Mansor, were due to leave on a private jet on Saturday to Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, fueling rumors that he was bolting the country after a shocking electoral defeat earlier in the week that ended his coalition's 60-year grip on power. Najib had said in a statement on social media on Saturday that he was planning to take a short vacation to spend time with his family. The immigration department, which initially said there was no travel ban, later issued a statement to say Najib and his wife had been blacklisted from leaving the country. Mahathir confirmed that he prevented Najib from leaving. He said there was sufficient evidence for an investigation into Najib, in reference to the massive corruption scandal involving the 1MDB state fund that Najib set up and is being investigated in the United States and other countries. U.S. investigators say Najib's associates stole and looted 4.5 billion dollars from the fund, with some 700 million dollars landing in Najib's bank account and around 30 million dollars used to buy jewelry for his wife. Najib has denied any wrongdoing. "There are a lot of complaints against him, all of which have to be investigated," Mahathir told a news conference. "We have to act quickly because we don't want to be saddled with extradition from other countries." Mahathir said the investigations would take some time because investigators need to contact authorities in other countries and gather evidence. He has said Najib will have to face a court if any wrongdoing is found. Najib responded swiftly, saying he respects the immigration department's ruling and will remain in the country with his family. He also said he was committed to "facilitating a smooth transfer of power." Later Saturday, Najib said at a news conference that he was stepping down as president of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and as chairman of the National Front coalition to take responsibility for Wednesday's election defeat. The announcement came after strong calls emerged from the UMNO, the linchpin of the coalition, for Najib to resign. The National Front, which has ruled Malaysia since independence from Britain, won only 79 of the 222 parliamentary seats, losing power to Mahathir's four-party alliance amid public anger over the 1MDB scandal and a rising cost of living. It was a remarkable comeback for the 92-year-old Mahathir, who was prime minister for 22 years until his retirement in 2003. Najib, 64, said his deputy, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, would take over as UMNO president. "We accept the people's verdict with an open heart," Najib said. "Maybe this will be an opportunity for us to fix our weaknesses and shortcomings, although these are more a matter of perception than reality. God willing, UMNO will continue to live." Amid the 1MDB scandal, Najib sacked critics in his government, including an attorney general and a deputy prime minister, and muzzled the media. The subsequent attorney general, Mohamed Apandi Ali, cleared Najib in 2016, saying that the money was a donation from the Saudi royal family and that most of it was returned. Mahathir has indicated that Mohamad Apandi could be dismissed for hiding evidence of wrongdoing. Also Saturday, Mahathir appointed Lim Guan Eng, an ethnic Chinese, as finance minister, the first ethnic minority to be appointed to the powerful post in 44 years. He also named former Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin as home affairs minister and Mohamad Sabu as defense minister. The three are party leaders in his alliance. Mahathir said he would name the rest of his 25-member Cabinet this coming week. Source: AP AH

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum on Monday put out word that he is leaving Facebook, which bought the smartphone messaging service four years ago for 19 billion dollars.  Koum said in a post on his Facebook page that he is taking time off to pursue interests such as collecting air-cooled Porsches, working on cars and playing ultimate Frisbee.  US media reports indicated that a disagreement with Facebook over the privacy of user data may have also been a factor in Koum's decision to quit his position as a high-ranking executive and likely leave his seat on the board at the leading online social network.  Xiaomi redmi 6a launched and here you will get all details about this smartphone - Redmi 6a next sale date "It's been almost a decade since Brian (Acton) and I started WhatsApp, and it's been an amazing journey with some of the best people," Koum said in the post.  "But it is time for me to move on."  Acton left Facebook last year to start a nonprofit.  WhatsApp boasts more than 1.2 billion users worldwide.  In a reply to Koum's post, Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said he would miss working closely with the WhatsApp co-founder.  If you use Paytm then visit here and you can get discount & cashback upto 100% Paytm cashback offer "I'm grateful for everything you've done to help connect the world, and for everything you've taught me, including about encryption and its ability to take power from centralized systems and put it back in people's hands," Zuckerberg said in his written reply.  "Those values will always be at the heart of WhatsApp."  WhatsApp last week raised its minimum age for users in the European Union to 16 years, as the bloc prepares for a new online privacy law to come into force next month.  In an update to its terms of service, WhatsApp said the minimum age for users outside the EU was still 13 years.  WhatsApp parent Facebook has pledged to change how it handles private data to comply with the forthcoming law change.  But unlike WhatsApp, which will only apply the new law to its European users, Facebook plans on rolling out changes for its users worldwide.  The change in the European law was already planned prior to the recent privacy scandal involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.  Zuckerberg has spent most of the past month on the fallout from revelations on the hijacking of personal data by the political firm, seeking to assuage fears that the California-based internet colossus can safeguard privacy while making money by targeting ads based on what people share about themselves. Source: AFP AH