Apple issues fresh spyware alert to users The US firm has warned its users in India and 91 other countries of a ‘mercenary spyware attack’. In its latest alert, Apple has dropped the term ‘state-sponsored’ it used to describe such malware attacks in the past. Apple said these attacks are very hard to detect and prevent. The targets are usually politicians, diplomats, activists, and senior journalists | P14 chennai l friday l april 12, 2024 l `9.00 l PAGES 40 l late city EDITION CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI ED can now take Annamalai’s Kovai duel is TN head-turner over Herald assets S M a nn a r M a nn a n @ Coimbatore Properties worth `751.90 cr to be attached Ex press News service @ New Delhi in a big blow to the Congress, the decks have just been cleared for the Enforcement Directorate to take possession of assets worth `751.90 crore belonging to the party-owned Associated Journal Ltd (AJL) and Young Indian. For, the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) Adjudicating Authority has upheld the provisional attachment order issued last year in connection with a money laundering probe against AJL. The ED had provisionally attached these properties last year. The ED had also interrogated several individuals, including Congress leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. The two Congress leaders together held 76% of shares in Young India, the holding company of AJL, which publishes The National Herald newspaper. According to the ED, the AJL had to repay a loan of `90.21 crore to AICC, which treated the said loan as non-recoverable and sold it for a mere `50 lakh to Young Indian. The adjudicating authority said it believes the movable assets and equity shares attached by the ED are proceeds of crime. The ED had initiated the money-laundering probe following a process initiated by the Court of Metropolitan Magistrate based on a private complaint against irregularities in the affairs of National Herald. The ED says AJL is in possession of proceeds of crime in properties in many cities worth `661.69 crore and Young Indian `90.21 crore in investment in equity shares of AJL. As the summer peaks, the battlefield in Coimbatore Lok Sabha constituency sparkles in an unfamiliar glow. There are two reasons. For one, BJP’s Tamil Nadu state president, K Annamalai, an IPS officer-turned-politician, has entered the poll fray Second, the . DMK took over the constituency from CPM after a gap of a decade and fielded a soft-spoken Ganapathy P Rajkumar, former Mayor of Coimbatore Corporation, with the sole aim of trouncing the BJP with all its might. The fact that in 2019, CPM’s P R Natarajan romped home with over 1.79 lakh votes may portray the constituency as a hopeless trek for any debutant. But in the 2021 assembly polls, it changed colour from tip to toe in favour of AIADMK in the five segments under this LS constitue n c y. Even the victory of the BJP’s Vanathi Srinivasan from Coimbatore South — the sixth assembly seat — after a three-cornered contest in which she handed Kamal Haasan a drubbing, could be attributed to the alliance with the AIADMK. The firebrand Annamalai, initially reluctant to enter the Lok Sabha race, fell in line with the party’s decision. Having lost to the DMK in the Aravakurichi assembly seat in 2021 by 24,816 votes, he is leaving no stone unturned by touring every nook and cranny of the constituency amidst his busy schedule of campaigning for candidates of the BJP and its allies across the state. He is seen as a fearless, corruption-free leader by the youth and people who are looking for an alternative for the two Dravidian parties. But will it be enough to cross the line? Continued on P7 val, along with Thierry Fremaux, General Delegate. This year’s Cannes Film Festival is scheduled to be held from May 14 to 25. The last Indian film to enter the main segment at Cannes is the 1994 Malayalam film Swaham, by director Shaji N Karun, which lost to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. All We Imagine As Light is an Indo-French co-production, and revolves around two nurses from Kerala who work at a nursing home in Mumbai. The film stars Kani Kusruti (Biriyaani) and Divya Prabha (Ariyippu). British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri’s Santosh will also be screened at the Cannes this year — under the Un Certain Regard section. Illustration: Mandar Pardikar Main segment ‘All We Imagine as Light’ first Indian film in 30 yrs at Cannes P ras h a n t h Va l l ava n Mumbai-based filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light is all set to premiere at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, where it will compete for the prestigious Palme d’Or award. The announcement was made on Thursday by Iris Knobloch, president of the Cannes Festi- Nilgiris plot: poll officer knocks at TN CEO’s door Nilgiris: An Assistant Expenditure Observer (AEO) in the Nilgiris Lok Sabha constituency has written to the Chief Electoral Officer of Tamil Nadu alleging that the Returning Officer demanded he reduce the expenditure recorded as spent by DMK candidate A Raja to match the candidate’s accounts. P Saravanan, the AEO, claimed the shadow observation register (SOR) maintained by him showed a difference in expenditure of several lakhs of rupees. The RO M Aruna, also the Nilgiris collector, refuted the allegations, pointing out that Saravanan is only one of six AEOs monitoring candidate expenditure from different locations. “I didn’t ask him to record a lower expenditure for the DMK candidate. As instructed by observers, I checked expenditure reports of all candidates. I did pull up this AEO for errors in the record,” she told TNIE. 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