HYDERABAD SUNDAY APRIL 07, 2024 `12.00 PAGES 30 LATE CITY EDITION ‘CHINA COULD ABUSE AI TO SWING OUTCOME IN POLL-BOUND INDIA’ Warning by Microsoft comes as India and South Korea go to polls this month and the US in November. North Korea could add to trouble BEIJING BID TO SOW DIVISION, SAYS MICROSOFT NORTH KOREA IS STEALING CRYPTOS China is increasingly experimenting in memes, videos and audio generated by artificial intelligence to further its interests, said Clint Watts, GM, Microsoft Threat Analysis Center. It has been increasingly using the AI-content in the US to influence and sow division, he said. But for the time being, China’s efforts will not have impact on poll outcome, he added ■ ■ North Korea continues to prioritise theft of crypto currency for revenue to fund its space, missile and nuclear programmes, Watts said. Its attack is focused on the US, South Korea and Japan The good news is there is not much evidence to show that China’s efforts have been successful in swaying public opinion in the US $3 BN WORTH CRYPTOS HAVE BEEN STOLEN BY NORTH KOREA SINCE 2017, U.N. SAYS 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 Just like KCR, Modi too tapped phones: Rahul PHONE-TAPPING CASE BJP demands probe by CBI EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE Muslim League imprint in Cong manifesto: PM @ Hyderabad Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Chief Minister Revanth Reddy and Deputy CM Bhatti Vikramarka greet the crowd at the ‘Jana Jatara’ public meeting at Tukkuguda near Hyderabad on Saturday As soon as the government changed, the police who tapped the phones destroyed CONGRESS MP Rahul Gandhi on Sat- the data on the hard disks and threw the urday alleged that Prime Minister pieces into the Musi river. The BRS ran Narendra Modi and BJP leaders were the government by intimidating people abusing power by tapping the and resorting to extortion. A phones of thousands of peophone call comes in at night ple, just as former Telangana and the next day you will have chief minister K Chanto cough up the money they deConsidering drasekhar Rao did by misusmand,” Rahul added. himself great, ing the intelligence, police and He was speaking after reModi ji is tearing revenue departments. leasing his party’s manifesto apart the dignity He said that the BJP was us— Panch Nyay Patra — for the of the country ing Central investigative agenupcoming Lok Sabha elections and its cies to resort to forcible collecat the Jana Jatara public rally democracy. Fear tion of money like making is being installed at Tukkuguda here, attended companies buy electoral by thousands of people. BRS in the system bonds. “The Enforcement DiBhadrachalam MLA Tellam Sonia Gandhi, rectorate has become an ExVenkata Rao also took part in tortion Directorate under the Congress leader | P9 the meeting. Chief Minister Revanth RedBJP dispensation,” the Condy speaking on the occasion, mainly tar, gress leader said. “Former CM Chandrasekhar Rao geted the BRS chief. He slammed the tapped the phones of thousands of peo- former CM’s “foul language” and threatple. He abused intelligence agencies, ened to send him to Charlapally jail. CONTINUED ON P6 tax-collecting departments and police. B K A R T H E E K @ Hyderabad EXCHANGE OF FIRE 3 Maoists killed by TG Greyhounds E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ Mulugu IN an encounter with Greyhounds personnel in the border areas of Karriguttalu forest in Mulugu district and Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh, three Maoists were killed on Friday midnight. Following the incident, security was beefed up by the Mulugu police in Maoist-affected areas. Speaking to TNIE, Mulugu SP Dr P Shabarish said: “The encounter took place in the Nambi police station limits of Chhattisgarh. We have alerted all the border police stations to conduct combing operations in Naxal-hit areas.” Earlier this week, at least 13 Naxalites, including three women, were killed in an encounter with security forces in Bijapur district. A delegation of BJP leaders, led by Rajya Sabha MP K Laxman, submitted a memorandum to Governor CP Radhakrishnan on Saturday, seeking an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investig ation (CBI) into the alleged phone tapping carried out during the BRS regime in the state. The Telangana unit of the BJP appealed to the Governor to seek a report from the state to apprise the Ministry of Home Affairs. As the matter falls under the concurrent jurisdiction of both the governments and the Election Commission of India (ECI), the allegations warrant a thorough CBI investigation, the saffron party added. Alleging that the phone tapping took place with the “proactive connivance” of senior BRS leaders including for mer chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, the memorandum expressed concern about the facts coming to light, claiming that they raise serious questions about national security and breach of the safety and liberty of individuals. Referring to the reported confessions of the arrested officers that they had transported money in police vehicles during elections to BRS candidates, the memorandum said that if the confession was true, it was an attempt to deceive the Election Commission of India (ECI) and amounted to “brazen fraud”. It also claimed that the government machinery was misused to subvert the election process and democracy . EXPRESS READ Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath during a roadshow ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha election, in Ghaziabad, Saturday | PTI from the hopes and aspirations of today’s India. WHILE underscoring the futility of IN“On the other hand, we have worked DIA bloc in Uttar Pradesh and calling without discrimination. Saturation it a flopped film of two boys (Rahul coverage of our welfare schemes has Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav) been our mantra. We want the of 2017 re-released in 2024, welfare initiatives to reach Prime Minister Narendra every section, every caste and Modi on Saturday launched a everyone without discriminablistering attack on the Contion. This is true secularism,” Worshipping gress in Saharanpur, charging Shakti is a part of he added. that its manifesto released a In his pushback, Congress our natural day earlier had imprint of the spiritual journey. leader Jairam Ramesh accused erstwhile Muslim League. But people of the the BJP of practising the “poliINDIA bloc say “The Congress manifesto tics of divisiveness”. He retheir fight is completely bears the imprint called that Jan Sangh founder against Shakti of the Muslim League of the Syama Prasad Mookerjee had days of the freedom struggle. joined a coalition government Narendra Modi, Its every page reeks of breakin Bengal with the Muslim prime minister ing India into pieces. And League in the early 1940s. whatever part of the Congress Hurling a barb at the SP the , is left is completely dominated by the PM said: “Look at the Samajwadi Parleftists. Such a party cannot take India ty… They are changing their candidates forward in the 21st century,” he said, every hour.” The SP changed as many as adding the poll statement of the Con- 17 candidates after giving tickets to gress showed it was completely cut off them on seven seats of western UP . N A M I TA B A J PA I @ Lucknow Undisclosed CPM bank a/c frozen E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ Kochi EVEN as Opposition parties accuse the Central agencies of trying to cripple their electioneering at the behest of the BJP, the Income Tax department (I-T) on Saturday froze a bank account of the CPM which has `4.8 crore. The account of the CPM Thrissur district committee in a nationalised bank caught the attention of I-T investigators when `1 crore was recently withdrawn from it. The action was initiated by an I-T special team tasked with monitoring the flow of black money in the backdrop of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. According to a tax official, the I-T returns of the party had not mentioned the account. The name of the bank was not revealed by the department. Meanwhile, the CPM state leadership condemned the action, alleging that the I-T department froze the account without prior notice or seeking any explanation. The account has been frozen after an unexpected interrogation of CPM Thrissur district secretary M M Varghese by the I-T sleuths at the Enforcement Directorate office in Kochi on Friday, where he was being questioned in connection with the Karuvannur Service Cooperative Bank scam. “The bank account, opened in 1998, is in the name of the CPM Thrissur district committee. Upon examining the party’s I-T returns, we discovered the details of this bank account were not disclosed,” said an I-T official. Party claims it files tax returns regularly CPM said the party files tax returns without fail to the I-T department and the ECI. It alleged that the move was part of the Union government targeting Opposition parties and state governments run by them Significant cash transactions were identified in the bank account of the CPM district committee in Thrissur. Given the general election season, we launched a probe into these transactions Income Tax Department sources WHAT’S TRENDING Aerial view: Hit wave strikes IPL season with 6 What has changed when compared to last year — THE ongoing edition of the In- any of the previous years, dian Premier League (IPL) is really — is that the teams more than two weeks old. One are clearing the boundary of the patterns to have emerged cushions at an unprecefrom the 17th iteration is that, dented rate. As it stands, as it stands, the league is on they are hitting at least course to see a new record one six every 2.1 for sixes in a single year. overs, comfortably After Friday night’s Sunday the best such metmatch between SunrisSpecial ric in the history ers Hyderabad and of the league. Chennai Super Kings, In 2023, it was the 10 teams combined had one every 2.3 managed 326 maximums for an overs. In 2022, it was average of 18 per match. You one hit over the extrapolate that over the 74 fence every 16.2 games and they are on course deliveries. for 1332; comfortably eclipsing Why is this the the previous best of 1124 in 2023 case? There are (74 matches). various reasons S W A R O O P S W A M I N AT H A N @ Chennai for this but the short answer is that uncapped Indian batters are comfortable in taking the aerial route (out of the top 25 leading six-hitters this year, four are uncapped Indians who have honed their skills in domestic T20 cricket). The other pronounced rationale behind this sort of six-hitting lies in the teams (and players) valuing the art of boundaries: 80% of all T20 matches are won by teams wh o h i t m o r e boundaries. Even among the boundaries, sides who hit more sixes typically tend to win more matches. Dan Weston, who worked with Punjab Kings during the mega auction in 2022, explained: “This year, Kolkata have so far hit an almost equal number of fours and sixes (45 sixes and 44 fours). We are starting to see the combination of the additional depth that the impact player provides to domestic players coming in. Teams are realising that the extra depth allows them to play more attacking cricket.” All of this comes with one caveat. With three-fourths of the season to go, there may be a regression to the mean. The next few weeks will reveal whether this is the beginning of another evoMORE ON P13 lution. MAGIC FIGURES 4.93 Abhishek Sharma hits a six every 4.93 balls SIXES GALORE 1.08 Riyan Parag of RR scores a 6 for every (1.08) four Temperatures soar over 440C in state Hyderabad: Temperatures soared to 440C in some parts of Telangana on Saturday. According to reports from the Telangana Development and Planning Society, the highest maximum temperature of 44.50C was recorded in Suryapet, Bhadradri Kothagudem and Nalgonda| P3 WITH THIS ISSUE 30 PAGES, INCLUDING 12 OF SUNDAY MAGAZINE, 4 OF HEALTH SPECIAL WEB OF SLAVERY PLUS 12 PAGES
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