HYDERABAD  SATURDAY  JULY 20, 2024  `9.00  PAGES 16  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’ 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 Record DON TAKES POTSHOTS AT BIDEN, PELOSI ■ “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” 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 OWNER NAMES OF HOTELS What exactly happened and how it created chaos U.P., U’khand harden stance on Kanwar 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 N A M I TA B A J PA I @ Lucknow 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 Adityanath-led 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 infor med 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 ‘halalcertified’ products. NDA allies oppose it NDA allies JD(U) and LJP came out against the UP govt’s decision, saying it could trigger communal tension 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 RGIA cancels 36 flights, IndiGo hit hardest Passengers look at screens, some of them showing Blue Screen errors, at T3 of Delhi international airport on Friday | PTI The outage forced the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Hyderabad, to cancel 36 flights. RGIA officials said all the affected flights belonged to IndiGo | P3 Tech outage cripples world MASSIVE TECH BLACKOUT AFFECTS AIRLINES, BANKS, MEDIA OUTLETS CHAOS AT MAJOR AIRPORTS AS OPERATIONS DISRUPTED INDIGO CANCELS OVER 200 FLIGHTS EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ 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 P9 fix has been deployed. SC to examine contours of guv’s immunity from criminal prosecution S U C H I T R A K A LYA N M O H A N T Y @ 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. SKILL UNIVERSITY BILL LIKELY TO BE TABLED IN TG ASSEMBLY The proposed varsity will introduce 17 courses and train over 20,000 youngsters every year. On Friday, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy reviewed the draft Bill | P4 GAPING HOLE The breached bund of the Peddavagu project in Aswaraopet mandal in Bhadradri Kothagudem district on Friday | P2 A flash flood caused a 150-metre wide breach in the Peddavagu irrigation project Officials put the loss due to the breach at `10 crore. Fortunately, no human life was lost Due to heavy rains upstream, the project received about 1.5 tmcft. Its storage capacity is 0.5 tmcft TGPSC reschedules Group-II exams to Dec E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ Hyderabad THE Telangana Public Service Commission (TGPSC) on Friday rescheduled the Group-II examinations to December. In a statement, the TGPSC said: “It is hereby informed that the Commission, having deliberated on the proximity of examination dates between various recruitments, has decided to reschedule the Group-II exams scheduled on August 7 and 8 to December 2024. The dates on which the Group-II exam would be conducted in December would be announced later.” It may be mentioned here that unemployed youths had staged protests over several days demanding postponement of DSC examinations, as they were scheduled to be held one week after the Group-II tests. The government, after discussing the matter with Group-II aspirants, decided to reschedule the examinations to December. Earlier in the day Deputy Chief Minister , Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka told the Group-II aspirants that the government would consider their demands. During the meeting with the Group-II aspirants at the Secretariat, Vikramarka issued instructions to TGPSC chairman Mahender Reddy to examine the possibility of postponing the exam as sought by the unCONTINUED ON P5 employed youth. CDPO exam cancelled The TGPSC on Friday cancelled the exam for posts of child development project officer in the Women and Child Welfare department held on January 3 and January 8, 2023, based on reports of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory and SIT in the backdrop of allegations of irregularities. Dates for the re-examination will be announced later. 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 P9 . HYDRAA comes into being, to manage disasters, protect assets EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ Hyderabad THE Telangana government on Friday issued orders establishing the Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency (HYDRAA) for the Telangana Core Urban Region (TCUR). HYDRAA will handle disaster management, asset protection and various other responsibilities. As per the orders, the chief minister will chair the governing body of the Agency, with the HYDRAA commissioner serving as the member-convener. The body will also include 10 members from different government departments. Addi- tionally a TCUR disaster man, agement sub-committee, led by the MAUD principal secretary and the HYDRAA commissioner, will be established with 13 members from various departments. These orders are effective immediately . HYDRAA will operate across the entire Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) area, including parts of Hyderabad, Rangareddy, Medchal-Malkajgiri and Sangareddy districts up to the O u t e r R i n g Ro a d (ORR). The agency is tasked with planning, organising, co- ordinating, and implementing disaster preparedness and prevention measures. It will also coordinate with state and national agencies for prompt dis- EXPRESS ILLUSTRATION aster response and rescue operations. ments in coordination with ULBs. Asset Protection Wing Disaster Management Wing This wing will focus on protecting government and urban local body (ULB) assets such as parks, open spaces, lakes and roads from encroachments. It will coordinate with local police and other bodies for enforcement and inspection of private premises for compliance with building and town planning regulations. The wing will also address unauthorised advertise- This wing will manage disaster response and relief through the Disaster Response Force (DRF) of HYDRAA. It will coordinate with the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA), and other agencies. The wing will also work with technical agencies for timely alerts and collaborate with various departments to handle emergencies. It will maintain a database for risk assessment and disaster predictions and manage fire safety inspections. CONTINUED ON P5