India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party has sacked the head of its social media cell in Haryana state amid growing calls for his arrest over five-year-old Twitter posts about Islam.
“The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Haryana state president Omprakash Dhankar has immediately removed Arun Yadav as the IT chief,” the BJP said on Thursday.
The party has a strong presence across social media platforms and has dedicated information and technology teams to propagate its ideology.
Mr Yadav’s sacking comes two months after the BJP dismissed its national spokeswoman Nupur Sharma and another party member, Naveen Jindal, for making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed during a live television debate and in social media posts.
Their comments drew worldwide condemnation, particularly from Gulf countries including the UAE, and triggered street violence in India that claimed at least three lives.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and his party distanced themselves from Ms Sharma's comments, describing her as a “fringe element”.
India’s Supreme Court last week said Ms Sharma should “apologise to the nation” for her comments that "set the country alight". She has cases filed against her for “hurting religious sentiments” in several states but is yet to be arrested.
There were widespread calls on Twitter for Mr Yadav to be arrested over a tweet in 2017 that juxtaposed images of the Kaaba and a glass of liquor.
The hashtag #ArrestArunYadav was trending on the microblogging site with more than 130,000 tweets.
Many users' tweets compared Mr Yadav's case with the case of Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of the fact-checking website Alt News.
Mr Zubair was arrested by Delhi police on June 28 over a tweet posted in 2018 that shows a still from a Bollywood film in which a sign saying "Honeymoon Hotel" has been changed to read "Hanuman Hotel", a reference to a Hindu deity.
Police said Mr Zubair was arrested on the basis of a complaint from a Twitter user who did not give their name. The charges against him include hurting religious sentiments and promoting enmity between groups.
"Hello @DGPHaryana @DelhiPolice If Zubair can be arrested for his 2018 tweet, then why not Arun Yadav?" Shaikh Sadeque, president of Tipu Sultan Party, a small regional political party in Maharashtra, wrote on Twitter.
A high-ranking member of India's main opposition Congress party called the BJP's dismissal of Mr Yadav “eyewash” and demanded his arrest.
“The BJP has sacked yet another 'fringe element'. But instead of this eyewash, will these 'hate minions' be arrested?" Srinivas BV, head of the Congress youth wing, tweeted.
First Person
Richard Flanagan
Chatto & Windus
Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
Kanguva
Director: Siva
Stars: Suriya, Bobby Deol, Disha Patani, Yogi Babu, Redin Kingsley
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Low turnout
Two months before the first round on April 10, the appetite of voters for the election is low.
Mathieu Gallard, account manager with Ipsos, which conducted the most recent poll, said current forecasts suggested only two-thirds were "very likely" to vote in the first round, compared with a 78 per cent turnout in the 2017 presidential elections.
"It depends on how interesting the campaign is on their main concerns," he told The National. "Just now, it's hard to say who, between Macron and the candidates of the right, would be most affected by a low turnout."
Company profile
Company: Eighty6
Date started: October 2021
Founders: Abdul Kader Saadi and Anwar Nusseibeh
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Hospitality
Size: 25 employees
Funding stage: Pre-series A
Investment: $1 million
Investors: Seed funding, angel investors
Bareilly Ki Barfi
Directed by: Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari
Starring: Kriti Sanon, Ayushmann Khurrana, Rajkummar Rao
Three and a half stars
Know your cyber adversaries
Cryptojacking: Compromises a device or network to mine cryptocurrencies without an organisation's knowledge.
Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.
Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.
Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.
Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.
Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.
Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.
Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.
Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.
Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
Stree
Producer: Maddock Films, Jio Movies
Director: Amar Kaushik
Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Shraddha Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Aparshakti Khurana, Abhishek Banerjee
Rating: 3.5
Recipe
Garlicky shrimp in olive oil
Gambas Al Ajillo
Preparation time: 5 to 10 minutes
Cooking time: 5 minutes
Serves 4
Ingredients
180ml extra virgin olive oil; 4 to 5 large cloves of garlic, minced or pureed (or 3 to 4 garlic scapes, roughly chopped); 1 or 2 small hot red chillies, dried (or ¼ teaspoon dried red chilli flakes); 400g raw prawns, deveined, heads removed and tails left intact; a generous splash of sweet chilli vinegar; sea salt flakes for seasoning; a small handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
Method
▶ Heat the oil in a terracotta dish or frying pan. Once the oil is sizzling hot, add the garlic and chilli, stirring continuously for about 10 seconds until golden and aromatic.
▶ Add a splash of sweet chilli vinegar and as it vigorously simmers, releasing perfumed aromas, add the prawns and cook, stirring a few times.
▶ Once the prawns turn pink, after 1 or 2 minutes of cooking, remove from the heat and season with sea salt flakes.
▶ Once the prawns are cool enough to eat, scatter with parsley and serve with small forks or toothpicks as the perfect sharing starter. Finish off with crusty bread to soak up all that flavour-infused olive oil.
Past winners of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
2016 Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes-GP)
2015 Nico Rosberg (Mercedes-GP)
2014 Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes-GP)
2013 Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull Racing)
2012 Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus)
2011 Lewis Hamilton (McLaren)
2010 Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull Racing)
2009 Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull Racing)
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Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
From Zero
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Label: Warner Records
Number of tracks: 11
Rating: 4/5
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Classification of skills
A worker is categorised as skilled by the MOHRE based on nine levels given in the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) issued by the International Labour Organisation.
A skilled worker would be someone at a professional level (levels 1 – 5) which includes managers, professionals, technicians and associate professionals, clerical support workers, and service and sales workers.
The worker must also have an attested educational certificate higher than secondary or an equivalent certification, and earn a monthly salary of at least Dh4,000.
