chennai l saturday l july 20, 2024 l `9.00 l PAGES 20 l late city EDITION Trump calls for unity in his first address after assassination bid After formally accepting his third presidential nomination from the Republican Party, Donald Trump on Thursday said he will work for all ‘Will be President for all of America’ Don takes potshots at Biden, Pelosi Starting his 92-minute speech in a soothing and calm manner, he promised he would be a president “for all of America”, including Democrats, saying he wanted to heal the divided country. The 78-year-old also recounted in detail the attempt to assassinate him last Saturday, which he said deeply affected him, and narrated how sad he was about a supporter killed by the gunman ■ “I am not supposed to be here tonight. I stand before you... only by the grace of almighty God,” Trump said, recounting the assassination attempt on him ■ However, a few minutes into the speech, Trump shed his new-found softer image and wore his familiar bombastic avatar calling Joe Biden “the worst president in US history” and former House Speaker “crazy Nancy Pelosi” Record Trump’s PRESIDENTIAL acceptance speech was the longest in U.S. history 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 81 domestic flights delayed in Chennai What exactly happened and how it created chaos Microsoft said the issue began at 1900 GMT on Thursday, after a defective update to CrowdStrike Falcon, an IT solution designed to protect Windows systems, ended up crashing the systems instead C s h i v a k u m a R @ Chennai Air passengers at the Chennai International Airport were caught off-guard on Friday as flight schedules were hit by a major disruption in Microsoft Corporation’s cloud services. The technical glitch resulted in crowding at the airport as airline officials began issuing handwritten boarding passes to passengers. Apart from cancellations, numerous flights were delayed by a minimum of 30 to 45 minutes. According to airport sources, as of 8 pm on Friday out of , the total 192 domestic flights, 81 have been delayed and nine flights were cancelled. Out of the 36 international flights, nine have been delayed with no cancellations. A Chennai airport official said that services of several airlines, including IndiGo, Akasa, SpiceJet, Air Asia and Air India Express, were hit. Several airlines also reported that their check-in and ticket management services were temporarily unavailable. The airlines initiated manual check-ins to minimise disruption to passengers and flight schedules, said a Chennai airport spokesperson. Meanwhile, in an official statement, IndiGo said, “Our team is working relentlessly to resolve the issue and restore normal services as quickly as possible.” An Air India Express spokesperson said that none of their flights were cancelled. “We are doing manual check-ins,” he added. Notably, all those airlines using the Navitaire Departure Control System for passenger reservations were affected. According to the official website, Navitaire, an Amadeus company migrated its 60+ air, line customers to Microsoft Azure (the corporation’s cloud platform) last year. What is CrowdStrike that caused the chaos CrowdStrike is a US-based cybersecurity firm that provides incident response and threat hunting services. It is known for its expertise in detecting and responding to advanced threats Over 2,600 flights cancelled globally Passengers look at screens, some of them showing Blue Screen errors, at T3 of Delhi international airport on Friday | PTI Out of more than 1,10,000 scheduled commercial flights on Friday, 2,691 have been cancelled globally, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium Tech outage cripples world Massive tech blackout affects airlines, banks, media outlets chaos at major airports as operations disrupted Indigo cancels over 200 flights E X P R ESS NE W S SE R VI C E @ New Delhi/Mumbai/Bengaluru AIRLINES, banks, media outlets, and financial institutions across the world were on Friday thrown into turmoil by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent histoy, caused by an update to an antivirus programme. The mass IT outage came after some widely used Microsoft 365 applications and services shut down for hours as a result of the update. There were unprecedented chaos in major cities, including in India, with flights grounded, communication shut down, and shops closed. Millions encountered the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error, causing sudden system shutdowns or restarts. Microsoft, which said it was actively working to fix the outage, attributed the BSOD issue to a recent update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which admitted that its action affected Windows devices. In India, almost all the airlines and major airports were affected as they struggled to provide online booking, web check-ins, and flight status updates. IndiGo cancelled around 200 flights across the country . SpiceJet, Air India, Akasa, and Vistara also faced disruptions due to a technical error in Microsoft Azure, the cloud computing platform that powers critical systems. Throughout the day, airlines were seen doing manual check-ins and issuing handwritten boarding passes. Operations at key airports such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru were badly hit, leaving thousands of passengers stranded. Aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu said his ministry and Airports Authority of India (AAI) are actively managing the situation. Banking regulator RBI in a statement said that critical systems of most banks are not in cloud and that only a few banks are using the CrowdStrike tool, which created the chaos. “Our assessment shows that only 10 banks and NBFCs had minor The reasons for this outage has been identified and updates have been released to resolve the issue Minister for Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw disruptions, which have either been resolved or are being resolved. Overall, the Indian financial sector in the Reserve Bank’s domain remains insulated from the global outage,” an RBI statement read. Auto major Maruti Suzuki India said it had briefly halted production and dispatch operations due to the outage. Although many IT employees found it difficult to log into Microsoft applications on Friday no major setbacks were re, ported for the IT industry except production downtime. “Those who were using Microsoft Azure were not able to login,” an IT employee said. Meanwhile, in a statement around 7 in the evening, CrowdStrike said that the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. P13, 14 SC to examine contours TN cancer project in trouble as 62% of guv’s immunity from fail to turn up for confirmation tests criminal prosecution s i n d u j a j a n e @ Chennai S u c h i tr a K a lya n M o h a n ty @ New Delhi The Supreme Court on Friday decided to examine the contours of the blanket Constitutional immunity governors in harness have from criminal prosecution, after hearing a plea filed by a woman employee of the West Bengal Raj Bhavan. She alleged that she was sexually harassed by incumbent Governor C V Ananda Bose. Article 361 of Constitution says no criminal or civil proceedings shall be instituted or continued against the President, or the Governor, in any court during his term of office. A three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud asked Attorney General R Venkataramani to assist in the case and issued notice to the state government on the plea filed by the woman contractual staffer. “The petition raises the is- sue pertaining to the ambit of the protection which is afforded to the governor under clause (2) of Article 361 of the Constitution,” the bench said in its order of issuing notice to the state government and others. The court granted liberty to the petitioner to implead the Union government as a party in the petition. Senior lawyer Shyam Divan, appearing for the petitioner, argued that Article 361 should not be a bar against investigation. “Evidence has to be gathered right now. It cannot be deferred indefinitely he said. ,” The woman employee had moved the court on July 4 seeking a thorough probe into the case by the police and guidelines on the immunity enjoyed by gover nors. The victim claimed the governor called her on April 24 and May 2 on the pretext of offering a better job, but allegedly harassed her sexually within Raj Bhavan. dmk moves hc against three new criminal laws The union government should have consulted the Law Commission before bringing in the new laws. Change of names has created confusion, says Madras HC bench | P2 A community-based screening programme for oral, breast and cervical cancers launched in four districts on a pilot basis last year has been facing a huge challenge as a majority of those suspected to have cancerous cells, after initial screening, have failed to turn up for confirmation tests. According to the data available with the Directorate of Public Health, 62% of people suspected to have cancer in the screening failed to turn up for confirmation tests. At just 15%, the number of people who showed up for confirmation tests for oral cancer is the worst. This is followed by 29% for breast cancer and 49% for cervical cancer. The screening programme was launched in Erode, Ranipet, Tirupattur and Kanniyakumari districts in November 2023 following an announcement by Health Minister Ma Subramanian. According to the DPH, Erode, Tirupattur and Ranipet were chosen for the pilot project as more cancer cases were suspected in these districts due to environmental factors. Kanniyakumari was chosen as a control district. As part of the programme, health workers go to houses and invite people to primary health centres for preliminary screening. Their contact details are collected during the exercise. If preliminary screening indicates the possibility of cancer, they will be asked to come back again for confirmation tests.  P7 Indian evacuation from Bangladesh begins, toll 105 Y e s h i S e l i a n d P r a s a n ta M a z u m d a r @ New Delhi/Guwahati With the situation in Bangladesh continuing to remain volatile and the toll of the student unrest over a contentious quota order reaching 105 on Friday, hundreds of Indian students have started streaming into the country through various border crossings. India was careful not to comment on the situation, with External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal saying, “We see this as an internal matter of the country .” Till Thursday, over 300 people, mostly students from India, Nepal and Bhutan, were evacuated via Dawki in Meghalaya. The Meghalaya government said 202 Indians — 198 students and four tourists — were evacuated. The students included 67 from Meghalaya. Ninety-five others from Nepal and seven from Bhutan had entered through Dawki. “On Friday, 96 students crossed the border at GedeDarshana around 5.30 pm. None of the students waiting to cross back was left behind. Another batch of over 100 students are expected to cross into India during at night,’’ according to a source. Sources said border cross- Protesters pelt stones as they clash with police in Dhaka on Friday | AFP ings between India and Bangladesh at Benapole-Petrapole, Gede-Darshana and AkhauraAgartala remain open for students and Indian nationals. “Around 13 Nepalese students were also permitted to enter India after their embassy made an official request,’’ the source added. The Indian Railways cancelled the Kolkata-Dhaka Maitree Express on Saturday and Bandhan Express between Kolkata and Khulna on Sunday There are over 15,000 Indi. ans in Bangladesh, of which 8,500 are students. The Assam government has sought the Centre’s help for the evacuation of students stranded in the neighbouring country P13 . ow n e r n a m e s o f h ot e l s u.p., u’khand harden stance on kanwar NAMI TA B AJ PAI @ Lucknow NDA allies oppose it NDA allies JD(U) and LJP came out against the UP govt’s decision, saying it could trigger communal tension Bigotry, says Cong The Congress said the move shows bigotry, with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra terming it an attack on Constitution A day after it toned down the Muzaffarnagar police’s order asking eateries and shops along the Kanwar Yatra route to display their owners’ names, the Yogi Adityanathled government in Uttar Pradesh on Friday hardened its stance, saying the order will now be applicable across the state. Meanwhile, Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami said similar orders to display the names, addresses, and mobile phone numbers of owners are already in place in his state. The Muzaffarnagar police had on Monday issued an order instructing hotels, roadside eateries, and shops that fall on the yatra route to display the names of their owners to enable the pilgrims to take informed decisions and maintain the sanctity of their faith. However, after the authorities were panned for allegedly trying to target Muslim traders, the order was reviewed on Thursday and it was left to the ‘free will’ of the eateries owners to display their names. With the latest government decision, displaying the information will be mandatory . Kanwar Yatra will commence on July 22 with the advent of the Hindu month of Shravan and conclude on August 2. The authorities have also made it clear that stringent action will be taken against those selling ‘halal-certified’ products. c h i l d - f r i e n d ly o r d e r HC bars schools from insisting on TCs, making remarks on fee R SIVAKUMA R @ Chennai The Madras High Court has ordered the Tamil Nadu government to take appropriate action to ensure that schools in the state do not insist on submission of the transfer certificates (TC) of children while admitting them in schools and that no remark of fee dues is mentioned in the TCs. “The appellants are directed to issue a circular or instructions or orders to all school administrations across the state to not insist upon the submission of a TC by the child at the time of admission,” a division bench of Justices S M Subramaniam and C Kumarappan ordered on Friday . The bench also directed the state government to prohibit school managements from making “unnecessary entries” in the TC, including on nonpayment or delayed payment of fees. “In the event of violation, actions are to be initiated under Section 17 of the Right to Education (RTE) Act and un- der the relevant laws applicable for protection of children, including the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act,” it ordered. The court also directed the state government to “ rev i s i t ” t h e Tamil Nadu Ed- ucation Rules and the Code of Regulations for Matriculation Schools and bring necessary amendments to bring them “in consonance” with the provisions of the RTE Act within three months. The orders were passed while allowing a writ appeal filed by the state government against an order of a single ‘Give jobs to 410 who cleared TET in 2017’ Chennai: The HC on Friday asked the TN government to recruit 410 candidates who cleared the Teacher Eligibility Test in 2017 as secondary grade or graduate teachers before going ahead with 2023 notification | P2 judge who ruled in favour of private school managements on making entries about fee arrears in the TC. The court stated that the noble object of the RTE Act, aimed at achieving a Constitutional goal — of providing quality education to all — cannot be allowed to be diluted by offending the provisions of the very Act. It also slammed school managements which punish students by forcing them to stand outside classrooms if their parents could not pay the fees within the stipulated time.  P7