Heena Sharma Blog

  The CBI has booked UK-based Cambridge Analytica and Global Science Research Ltd for illegally harvesting data of Facebook users in India for commercial purposes, officials said on Friday. The action came after a preliminary enquiry into the matter which showed that Global Science Research had created an app "thisisyourdigitallife" which was authorised by Facebook to collect specific datasets of its users for research and academic purposes in 2014, they said. The company then entered into a criminal conspiracy with Cambridge Analytica, allowing it to use the data harvested by it for commercial purposes, the officials said. Facebook had collected certificates from both the firms in 2016-17 that data collected by them using "thisisyourdigitallife" was accounted for and destroyed. However, the CBI enquiry did not find any evidence of any such destruction, according to the officials. Read More

  By Sanjeev Miglani NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's government has cleared commercial exports of COVID-19 vaccines , with the first consignments to be shipped to Brazil and Morocco on Friday, the Indian foreign secretary told Reuters. The shots developed by UK-based drugmaker AstraZeneca and Oxford University are being manufactured at the Serum Institute of India, the world's biggest producer of vaccines, which has received orders from countries across the world. The Indian government had held off exporting doses until it began its own domestic immunisation programme last weekend. Earlier this week, it sent free supplies to neighbouring countries including Bhutan, Maldives, Bangladesh and Nepal. Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said commercial supplies of the vaccine would begin from Friday in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's commitment that India's production capacities would be used for all of humanity to fight the pandemic. Read More

  UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is saddened by the loss of life in a fire at the Serum Institute of India facility in Pune and hopes that the incident is fully investigated, his spokesperson has said. Five men died after a fire broke out in a five-storeyed under-construction building in the Serum Institute of India's Manjari premises in Pune on Thursday, police said. The Manjari facility is where the Covishield vaccines used in the nationwide inoculation drive against the pandemic are made. The building where fire broke out is one km from the Covishield vaccine manufacturing unit. We, obviously, are saddened by the loss of life and send our condolences to the families impacted, and we hope the fire is fully investigated, Stephane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, said at the daily press briefing on Thursday. Read More

  The popular automated transcription service Otter.ai can now transcribe Google Meet calls in real time with a new Chrome extension. "The Otter.ai Chrome Extension lets you transcribe and caption Google Meet in real time, and save audio transcripts to your Otter account," the company described in a new update. Otter.ai said the Chrome extension works with all its plans, including the free version. Otter.ai also has integration with Zoom video calls. But to use Otter's integrated live transcriptions in Zoom, you'll need to be on a paid Otter and Zoom plan. To use Otter in Google Meet, start Google Meet in your browser and then click on the Otter.ai Chrome Extension icon to open the extension. Read More

Two million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India arrived in Dhaka on Thursday as a gift from New Delhi. The Air India charter flight 1232 from Mumbai carrying the consignment landed at Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka at 11.20 a.m. on Thursday. In a tweet, Indian Minister of External Affars S Jaishankar said: "Touchdown in Dhaka. #VaccineMaitri reaffirms the highest priority accorded by India to relations with Bangladesh." The vaccines which came as a gift will be handed over at a formal ceremony at State Guesthouse Padma on Thursday afternoon. Bangladesh Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen, Health Minister Zahid Maleque, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam, High Commissioner of India to Bangladesh Vikram Kumar Doraiswami and other high government officials will be in attendance. Read More    

  The BSE barometer Sensex scripted history on Thursday, January 21, when it scaled Mount 50,000 for the first time. The 30-pack index galloped from 40,000-mark hit on October 8, 2020 to 50,000 in just 74 sessions and from 45,000 level (scaled on November 4, 2020) in mere 32 trading days. When the index had plummeted to the lows of 25,000 at the peak of the Covid-19 crisis, there was little to no one who had envisaged such a meteoric rise from the index's three-year low. A plethora of factors have fuelled such a rally in the index, ranging from liquidity push by the central bankers to FII buying, and recovery in economic growth. Latest developments on the Covid-19 vaccine front and a change of guard in the United States too lent confidence to investors to keep ploughing money in the market. Read More

  The World Health Organization (WHO) plans to approve several Covid-19 vaccines from Western and Chinese manufacturers in coming weeks and months, a document published on Wednesday shows, as it aims for rapid rollouts in poorer countries. COVAX , a global scheme co-led by the WHO, wants to deliver at least 2 billion Covid-19 doses across the world this year, with at least 1.3 billion going to poorer countries. But it has so far struggled to secure enough shots due to a shortage of funds, while wealthy nations have booked large volumes of vaccines for themselves. In the race to deploy shots, regulatory approvals are key to confirming the effectiveness and safety of vaccines, and to boosting output. But some poorer countries rely mostly on WHO authorisations as they have limited regulatory capacity. Read More