Trump Pulls Out of North Korea Summit Meeting With Kim Jong-un
Published: The New York Times
25 May 2018
President Trump on Thursday pulled out of a highly anticipated summit meeting with Kim Jong-un, accusing the North Koreans of bad faith and lamenting that “this missed opportunity is a truly sad moment in history.” The president made his announcement in a remarkably personal, at times mournful-sounding letter to Mr. Kim, North Korea’s leader, in which he cited the North’s “tremendous anger and open hostility” in recent public statements as the specific reason for canceling the meeting. Click here to read...
Sites block users, shut down activities and flood inboxes as GDPR rules loom
The Guardian
24 May 2018
Dozens of websites shut down their activities completely, others forced users to agree to new terms of service, and inboxes have been flooded with emails begging customers to remain on mailing lists as the GDPR rules come into force on Friday. The biggest update in data protection laws since the 1990s is posing major challenges for developers and businesses – while giving substantial new powers to consumers. Click here to read...
About $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency stolen since 2017: cybercrime group
Published: Reuters
24 May 2018
Criminals have stolen about $1.2 billion in cryptocurrencies since the beginning of 2017, as bitcoin’s popularity and the emergence of more than 1,500 digital tokens have put the spotlight on the unregulated sector, according to estimates from the Anti-Phishing Working Group released on Thursday. The estimates were part of the non-profit group’s research on cryptocurrency and include reported and unreported theft. Click here to read...
China extends currency swap deal with Pakistan
Published: The Economic Times
24 May 2018
China today extended currency swap agreement with Pakistan amid reports that Beijing has given a USD one billion loan to Islamabad to avert a foreign currency crisis. The People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, said today it had extended a currency swap agreement with the State Bank of Pakistan. Click here to read...
Over 300% increase in incidents of cross-border firing in Jammu and Kashmir this year
Published: Hindustan Times
25 May 2018
There has been over 300% increase in the incidents of cross-border firing along the India-Pakistan border in Jammu and Kashmir this year so far, leading to maximum deaths and injuries to BSF personnel in the last five years, an official data said. According to the data accessed by PTI, over 300 unprovoked firing incidents have taken place this year till now, leading to the killing of five Border Security Force (BSF) personnel and injuring 34 of their colleagues who were deployed along the frontier areas of the international border in Jammu region. Click here to read...
Nepal: Oli government prepares for clemency to ex-Maoist leaders serving jail term
Published: The Indian Express
24 May 2018
Parallel to the formation of the new party and the government led by K P Oli acquiring absolute majority, it has begun an exercise to grant ‘presidential clemency’ to an erstwhile Maoist leader and legislator serving a life term as a murder convict.
“Under instruction from the ruling party leaders, the prison department has recommended for presidential pardon to Balkrishna Dhungel for good behaviour along with 800 others who are undergoing jail term for various crimes,” an official source said. Dhungel had killed Ujjain Shrestha, a businessman and a ‘class enemy from eastern Nepal’s Okhaldhunga district in 1999, and was awarded a life term by the Supreme Court convicting him for murder. Click here to read...
Files on Tamil Tigers and MI5 in Sri Lanka erased at Foreign Office
Published: The Guardian
23 May 2018
Britain’s Foreign Office destroyed almost 200 files on Sri Lanka dating from the start of a Tamil Tiger uprising during which MI5 and the SAS secretly advised the country’s security forces, it has emerged. The loss of the files means that there is almost no record of the British government’s work with the Sri Lankan authorities at the start of a famously brutal civil war. Click here to read...
