NEWS

New Delhi:  According to a data released on Wednesday, indicating that Indians are likely to be the hardest hit by the country’s annual visa cap. Indian engineers, IT professionals, doctors and teachers are among 6,080 skilled workers holding a UK job offer who were denied visas to the UK since December 2017.

The Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) acquired the figures via a Freedom of Information (FOI) to the UK Home Office to highlight the “scale of the problem” being created due to the British government’s annual immigration cap for skilled professionals hired by UK-based companies from outside the European Union (EU).

New Delhi:  Outgoing chief minister Siddaramaiah turned "emotional" at a meeting of the party's new legislators on Wednesday while speaking on Congress's defeat in the assembly polls even as senior leaders blamed him for the result, party sources said.

The 69-year-old leader received flak from several senior party MLAs, who held him responsible for the Congress's performance, citing his complete authority in selection of candidates and the Lingayat issue, they said.

Meanwhile, home minister in the outgoing government Ramalinga Reddy said most of the MLAs were present at the meeting today except "three or four " who were on their way, but all were in touch".

New Delhi:  India ranked second globally to the US, which made the maximum number of requests for data at 32,742. Facebook revealed these numbers in their biannual transparency report on Tuesday. India has made over 12,000 requests for data from Facebook between July and December 2017. Facebook complied with some or all data in 53 per cent of these requests. The data requests were up by 23.5 per cent from the first half of 2017, when the government made 9,853 requests.

These requests cover Facebook and its other products like WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Oculus.“Government officials sometimes make requests for data about people who use Facebook as part of official investigations. A vast majority of these requests relate to criminal cases, such as robberies or kidnappings. In many of these cases, these government requests seek basic subscriber information, such as name, registration date and length of service,” says Facebook describing the nature of the requests. Facebook has over 201 million monthly active users in India, and over 234 million in the US.

New Delhi:Nobdoy expected that BharatiyaJanataParty's dream run would be scuttled by afternoon. The Congress and JD(S) agreed to form post-poll alliance in a fractured mandate in Karnataka. All developments indicating Congress-JDS alliance is in the offing in Karnataka.

Now, the BJP, which is the single largest party with 104 seats, may question the constitutional validity of the move by Congress and JDS to stake a claim to form the government. However, BJP is now paying for their own political overtures in the Goa and Manipur assembly elections.

It may be recalled that the BJP had set a different precedent after the Goa and Manipur assembly elections. In Manipur, though the Congress won 28 out of 60, the BJP with 21 seats went ahead managed to form an alliance. Congress had won 28 seats (35.1% share of the electorate) in the 60-member Manipur assembly; the BJP got victory in 21 seats (36.2% of the vote share).