The Ottawa Police Service Monday arrested a member of Ontario’s provincial parliament for his participation in the “Freedom Convoy” protests in February, according to a statement. Randall Hillier represents Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston, an area east of Toronto at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River. The Ottawa police said they began receiving complaints about “social media posts [...]
The US Supreme Court Friday ruled that the Navy and Department of Defense can reassign Navy SEALs who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Earlier this month, the Pentagon asked the Supreme Court to allow it to stop the deployment of unvaccinated SEALs. The court’s decision temporarily blocks the January ruling from a Texas federal [...]
District Judge Norman K. Moon of the Western District of Virginia Wednesday granted preliminary injunctions for 12 families to request mask requirements for their immunocompromised children in school. The complaint challenged Governor Glenn Youngkin’s executive order that allows parents of students attending Virginia public schools to choose for their children to not be subject to [...]
UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea, Tomas Ojea Quintana, in his presentation at the 49th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Monday urged the international community to revive engagement with North Korea because “leaving North Korea in isolation and maintaining the status quo offers no solutions to [...]
The Australian government granted Australia’s media regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), new powers Monday to combat disinformation and misinformation on digital platforms like Facebook and YouTube. ACMA is a regulatory government body that oversees communication and media services in Australia. As a part of their mission, the Australian Government asked ACMA to [...]
“In the pandemic economy, face masks are like bars of gold. Hoarders are hoarding them. Governors are bartering for them. Hospital workers desperately need them.” – Michael Schulman The N95 mask is very important armor in battling the COVID-19 pandemic. Instances of hoarding and black marketing of masks are rising in India. Healthcare personnel risk [...]
The British Mathematician, Clive Humby once famously said, “Data is the new oil.” He used it as a metaphor to explain that data is a resource, just like oil, that is useless “unrefined,” but once it is “refined” (mined and analysed), it creates enormous value. A lot of information can be extracted from data just [...]
Technology has always been a necessary evil but the advent of Deepfake has tilted the balance more towards the evil side. Deepfakes are an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based technology used to morph a person’s face onto another and manipulate voice recordings. Deepfakes have been increasingly used to create doctored videos and sound recordings which on [...]
Systems of government procurement are instrumental in mitigating the effects of the public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. First of all, well-organized cooperation between the government and the private sector can help address the most urgent problems, such as shortages of personal protective equipment and ventilators. Second, contracting out research and development projects [...]
The Prime Minister (PM) is the Chairman ex-officio of both the Prime Minister National Relief Fund (PMNRF) and the PM-CARES Fund, constituted to deal with disaster situations, like COVID-19 (which is also a “notified disaster”). Notably, the Disaster Management Act, 2005 (‘2005 Act,’ for short), pregnant with the statutory Fund, having all the trappings of [...]
