SAMBALPUR l friday l april 12, 2024 l `9.00 l PAGES 14 l CITY EDITION Apple warns of sophisticated spyware attacks on iphone users Politicians, diplomats, scribes targeted In its latest alert, Apple has dropped the term ‘state-sponsored’ it used to describe such malware attacks in the past. The latest notification has also come at a time when around 60 countries, including India, are in election mode. The targets are usually politicians, diplomats, activists and senior journalists. Apple said these attacks are very hard to detect | P12 The US firm has warned its users in India and 91 other countries of a “mercenary spyware attack” targeting a select few influential individuals Enable ‘lockdown mode’ to secure phone ■ ■ Apple has recommended the notified users to enable the ‘lockdown’ mode, which offers extreme protection but disables certain features According to a 2023 survey by cyber security firm Check Point, 49% of global organisations are unable to detect a breach on employee-owned devices. The threat actors execute malicious codes and take control of devices, it said 2021 When apple started sending out alerts to its users about security breaches 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 Decks cleared for Firebrand Annamalai’s duel in coimbatore is TN head-turner ED to take over Herald assets PMLA adjudicating authority upholds 2023 order to attach properties worth `751.90 cr Ex press News service @ New Delhi Prime properties The assets to be taken into possession by the Enforcement Directorate include the Herald House at ITO in New Delhi, land as well as buildings in Mumbai, Lucknow and some other prime location 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 officerturned-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 elections, it changed colour from tip to toe in favour of AIADMK in the five segments under this LS constituency. 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 actor-turned-neta Kamal Haasan a drubbing, could be attributed to the alliance with the AIADMK. The firebrand Annamalai, initially reluctant to enter the Lok Sabha race, later fell in line with the party high command’s deci- BJD fields Lekhasri from Balasore LS, drops Bhupinder from Narla seat the Court of Metropolitan Magistrate, which took cognisance of a private complaint against irregularities in the affairs of National Herald. The court had held that seven accused persons and entities, including Young Indian, prima facie committed offences of criminal breach of trust under various IPC sections, including cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property, dishonest misappropriation of property and criminal conspiracy . The ED probe revealed AJL is in possession of proceeds of crime in the form of properties in many cities worth `661.69 crore and Young Indian `90.21 crore in the form of investment in equity shares of AJL. E x p r e s s N e w s Se r v i c e @ Bhubaneswar Days after joining the BJD, former BJP vicepresident Lekhasri Samantsinghar was declared the party’s candidate for the Balasore Lok Sabha seat by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here on Thursday . The chief minister also announced names of the party’s candidates for nine Assembly segments. With this, the BJD has announced candidates for all the 21 LS seats and 117 Assembly seats. With Lekhasri, the ruling party has now fielded women candidates in seven Lok Sabha seats which constitutes one-third of the total constituencies in the state. Lekhasri is pitted against sitting Balasore MP from BJP and former Union minister Pratap Chandra Sarangi. Besides, she has replaced BJD candidate of 2019 Rabindra Kumar Jena. In the latest list, three sitting MLAs including senior leader Bhupinder Singh, the party’s legislator from Narla Assembly seat in Kalahandi district, have been dropped. The party has fielded Manorama Mohanty, chairman of the Narla block, in Bhupinder’s place. The politically significant Paradip seat also witnessed a change in candidate. In place of sitting MLA Sambit Routray, the party has nominated his wife Geetanjali from the seat. The party has fielded a former Congress MP from Keonjhar Madhav Sardar replacing sitting MLA Premanand Nayak from Telkoi as the latter had quit the party and joined BJP Sitting MLAs from Laxmipur . and Baliguda seats Prabhu Jani and Chandramani Kanhar respectively, have been Continued on P5 repeated. love and God A man with his child in his arms after offering Eid prayers at Jama Masjid in Bhubaneswar, on Thursday | Shamim Qureshy Main segment ‘All We Imagine as Light’ first Indian film in 30 years to compete at Cannes P r a s h an t h Va l l a v an 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 Festival, 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 competition section 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. Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing won the Oeil d’Or (Golden Eye) for Best Documentary at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021. The film revolves around a college student who writes a letter to her estranged boyfriend. In 2017, the director’s Afternoon Clouds, was the only film to be selected for screening at Cannes. Born and raised in Mumbai, Kapadia went on to study film direction at Film and Televi- Poster of All We Imagine As Light sion Institute of India in Pune. All We Imagine As Light will compete against 19 other films, including Megalopolis by Francis Ford Coppola, The Apprentice by Ali Abbasi, Kind of Kindness by Yorgos Lanthimos, and The Shrouds by David Cronenberg. Director Greta Gerwig, best known for films like Lady Bird and Barbie, will lead the juries of the competition section. Veteran filmmaker George Lucas will receive an Honorary Palme d’Or this year. Top award Neecha Nagar is the only Indian film ever to win the top honour at Cannes back in 1946. At the time, the award was known as Grand Prix du Festival International du Film Illustration: M andar Pardikar 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 uphold 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. It had also interrogated several individuals, including Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, in connection with the case. 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, however, treated the said loan as nonrecoverable and sold it for a mere `50 lakh to Young Indian. In its order, 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 S M anna r M annan @ Coimbatore sion. Having previously 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? While the BJP eyes the support of a sizable North Indian population and votes from Hindu outfits, the DMK hopes to lap up minority votes and the support of allies like the CPI and CPM, which hold sway over the working class. On the other hand, the AIADMK enjoys a traditional vote bank. While Singai G Ramachandran, AIADMK’s IT wing president, is banking on party strongman S P Velumani and five MLAs, the DMK will definitely miss the presence of jailed ex-minister V Senthil Balaji, who played a vital role in the party’s victory in the local body polls in the Kongu belt. e x p r e ss r e a d Speaker disqualifies Dhali, Nayak for switching parties India keen to help Pak curb terror, says Raksha Mantri Bhubaneswar: Speaker Pramila Mallik has disqualified two MLAs, Arabinda Dhali and Premananda Nayak, who recently joined BJP after resigning from BJD, as members of the Assembly. Government chief whip PK Muduli had sought their disqualification | P3 New Delhi: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday offered India’s assistance to Pakistan in combating terrorism within their country. Singh said India will not allow terrorists to operate within its borders and warned Islamabad of consequences if it tried to destabilise India | P9 Heatwave all set for a return from Sunday E x p r e s s N e w s Se r v i c e @ Bhubaneswar IF you enjoyed the cooler climes for the last five days after a blistering heatwave, brace for the return of the sweltering conditions. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued warning for a second spell of h e a t w av e f r o m S u n d a y onwards. The national weather office on Thursday said temperature is expected to rise by 6 degree to 8 degree Celsius within next four days. After Sunday’s thunderstorm activities, maximum temperature had dipped by 7 degree to 8 degree C at many places in the state. Now, it is slated to rise again. D i re c t o r o f I M D, B h u baneswar Manorama Mohanty said, there will be a gradual rise in temperature within four days. Subsequently, the maximum temperature is expected to remain 4 degree to 5 degree C above normal. The flow of dry, hot westerly-northwesterly winds towards Odisha is expected to gather strength from Sunday onwards and push mercury further up. Continued on P5
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