Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) immediately
alerted the police authorities to remain vigilant about gangs using the
modus operation to make quick money, the officials said.
New Delhi:
The CBI has alerted the state
police departments and other law-enforcement agencies about an Interpol
input warning on a racket selling fake hand sanitizer, and another
racket that poses as PPE and other COVID-19-related medical suppliers,
officials said on Monday.
After getting the input, the Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI) immediately alerted the police authorities
to remain vigilant about gangs using the modus operation to make quick
money, the officials said.
Agency sources said some criminals are
approaching hospitals and health authorities posing as representatives
of manufacturers of PPE kits and other COVID-19-related protective gear.
Exploiting
the shortage of such articles, they take online advance payments from
authorities and hospitals but after the receipt of payments, no
deliveries are made.
Interpol has also given inputs about fake
hand sanitizer being made using methanol, a highly-toxic substance, as
the base, the officials said.
Instances have been reported from other countries of use of spurious hand sanitizer during the COVID-19 pandemic, they added.
"Methanol can be highly toxic and dangerous for the human body," an official said.
Activists set out to show that police brutality was pervasive. The police have now made that clear.
Demonstrators in Minneapolis marched last Friday to protest the killing of George Floyd.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Time
It’s wondrous, isn’t it, how the people just keep coming out? Day after day, night after night, in dozens of cities, braving a deadly virus and brutal retaliation, they continue to pack the streets in uncountable numbers, demanding equality and justice and, finally, prompting what feels like real change.
How did this happen? How did Black Lives Matter, a hashtag-powered movement that has been building for years, bring America to what looks like a turning point?
I have a theory: The protests exploded in scale and intensity because the police seemed to go out of their way to illustrate exactly the arguments that Black Lives Matter has been raising online since 2013.
For the last two weeks, the police reaction to the movement has been so unhinged, and so well documented, that it couldn’t help but feed support for the protests. American public opinion may have tipped in favor of Black Lives Matter for good.
By “the police,” I mean not just state and municipal police across the country, but also the federal officers from various agencies that cracked down on protesters in front of the White House, as well as their supporters and political patrons, from police chiefs to mayors to the attorney general and the president himself.
Black Lives Matter aims to highlight the depth of brutality, injustice and unaccountability that American society, especially law enforcement, harbors toward black people. Many protesters set out to call attention to the unchecked power of the police, their military weaponry and their capricious use of it. They wanted to show that the problem of policing in America is more than that of individual bad officers; the problem is a culture that protects wrongdoers, tolerates mendacity, rewards blind loyalty and is fiercely resistant to change. More deeply, it is a law enforcement culture that does not regard black lives as worthy of protection.
And what did the cops do? They responded with a display of organized, unchecked power on camera, in a way that many Americans might never be able to unsee.
To understand why this moment may prompt structural change, it is worth putting the latest protests into a larger context. To me, the past two weeks have felt like an echo of that heady moment late in 2017, after TheNew York Timesand TheNew Yorkerexposed Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual assault. At the time, #MeToo, as an online rallying cry against sexual abuse and harassment, wasmore than a decade old. The Weinstein story didn’t create that movement, just as thevideos of George Floyd’s deathat the hands of the Minneapolis police didn’t create Black Lives Matter.
Image
Police officers confronting demonstrators for violating a curfew during a protest in Brooklyn last Wednesday.Credit...Amr Alfiky for The New York Times
Instead, the Weinstein news broke the dam. Since then, #MeToo activism has gone on to upend society in a way that felt revolutionary.
It feels like the dam is breaking again.
The movement behind Black Lives Matter has taken to the streets before but nothing on this scale, with this intensity. And not with these results. The National Football League was once a powerful and bitter rival; now it has embraced the movement, though it still has not apologized to or signed Colin Kaepernick, the player who first knelt in protest against police brutality.
Politicians at every level are professing newfound support, and, right before our eyes, the Overton window of acceptable public discourse about police reform has shifted to include terms like “demilitarize,” “defund” and “abolish.”
It’s not clear how far the politics will go, but the shifts so far are significant. “Never before in the history of modern polling has the country expressed such widespread agreement on racism’s pervasiveness in policing, and in society at large,” The Times reported last week.
More important, we are no longer just talking about imposing new limits on how the police can operate. We’re finally asking more substantive political questions: What roles should be reserved for the police in our cities, and what roles would better be served by hiring more teachers, social workers or mental health experts?
In Los Angeles, where leaders on the left and the right have long showered resources on the police, the mayor has now proposed spending $250 million more on social services and $150 million less on policing. Last week, New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, resisted cutting the $6 billion police budget; on Sunday, he promised future cuts. And in Minneapolis, a veto-proof majority of City Council members pledged to dismantle the city’s police department.
The proximate cause of the latest protests was the horror of George Floyd’s death. But we’ve seen videos of cops killing black men before and they have rarely led to criminal prosecution, let alone broad societal upheaval.
What’s happening now is about more than that video. Just as, after the Weinstein story broke, when women came forward with stories too numerous to ignore or dismiss, what we’ve seen in the last two weeks are episodes of excessive force too blatant and numerous to conclude that the problem is one of a few isolated cases.
The evidence of police brutality has become too widespread even for elected officials to ignore. They can no longer easily coddle police unions in exchange for political support; now ignoring police misconduct will become a political liability, and perhaps something will change.
Alex Vitale, a sociologist and the author of “The End of Policing,” which argues for a wholesale dismantling of American policing, told me that he has high hopes for structural change because organizers had laid the groundwork for it. “My reason for optimism is that before Minneapolis happened, there were already dozens of campaigns to divert police funding,” he said. “So that’s why that demand emerged so quickly people were already doing that work.”
Vitale also suggested that the movement can take hold permanently, that what’s happening now has cracked “the ‘ideological armor’” of policing in America.
I think he’s right.
Image
Police officers waiting for members of the December 12th Movement and other protesters in Brooklyn on June 1.Credit...Anthony Geathers for The New York TimesSource: New York Times.
The brother of the African American man whose death in police custody has sparked global protests, has urged the US Congress to pass reforms on police brutality and "stop the pain".
Philonise Floyd told a House hearing that his brother George could not become "another name on a list".
"Be the leaders that this country, this world, needs," Mr Floyd said.
George Floyd died in Minneapolis in May as a white police officer held a knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Lawmakers in the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee have been listening to testimony from civil rights activists and law enforcement officials, a day after the funeral service of George Floyd, 46, in Houston.
The committee plans to send a bill to the floor of the Democrat-led House by 4 July on combating police violence and racial injustice.
It comes amid a nationwide - and in many cases international - debate on police practices and accountability, and more generally on racial inequity
"I'm here to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain," an emotional Philonise Floyd, 42, told lawmakers. "George called for help and he was ignored. Please listen to the call I'm making to you now, to the calls of our family and the calls ringing on the streets of all the world.
"The people marching in the streets are telling you enough is enough."
Democrat committee chairman Jerrold Nadler said: "We must remember that [George Floyd] is not just a cause, a name to be chanted in the streets. He was a man. He had a family... we mourn his loss."
The Democrat-proposed bill would make so-called police chokeholds illegal, enforce anti-racism training, bar sacked officers from switching to another force and make it easier to prosecute abuse.
Republican committee representative Matt Gaetz said that although elements needed to be "fine-tuned", "you will be able to count on Republican co-operation as we hone these ideas and hopefully pass them and get them to the president's desk".
A spokesperson for Mr Trump said on Wednesday that the president would have "proactive policy prescriptions, whether that means legislation or an executive order".
What is happening with the Minneapolis police?
As the House hearing was taking place, the police chief in Minneapolis said that his department "absolutely" could be reformed and vowed not to let George Floyd's death be in vain.
Medaria Arradondo said one reform would be to introduce a new early warning system to identify the conduct of police officers.
On Sunday, a majority of the city council's members vowed to disband the police department and replace it with a new model of public safety.
"Defund the police" has been a rallying call for many protesters nationwide. It has been opposed by both President Trump and his Democratic challenger in November's election, Joe Biden.
What other developments have there been?
In New Jersey, a FedEx employee and a corrections officer have been suspended from their jobs after a video emerged of two men appearing to re-enact the death of George Floyd in an attempt to taunt people protesting against police brutality
A New York police officer has been charged with assault after a woman protester was allegedly thrown to the ground during a rally on 29 May in Brooklyn
Police in Minneapolis are investigating Facebook posts reportedly from an active officer that mocked protesters and encouraged looters to target a neighbourhood popular with Somali immigrants
Anti-racism protesters continue to target statues they believe glorify imperialist history. A statue of Christopher Columbus was dumped in a lake in Virginia and another had its head cut off in Boston.
Is GTA 6 in development? Although Rockstar Games hasn't officially
confirmed that it's working on another instalment in the Grand Theft
Auto franchise, there are plenty of reports and rumors suggesting it's
on the way.
Believe it or not, it's been seven years since GTA 5
launched at the tail end of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 generation of
consoles. That's a long time ago, so we don't think it's
impossible that GTA 6 is in the pipeline, especially after the
remarkable and ongoing success of GTA 5.
With the end of 2020 approaching, bringing with it the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X
and the start of the next console generation, it feels like the right
time to hope that Rockstar might have something to reveal sometime soon,
even if any release date is likely to be a while away.
Although
we still don't have an official confirmation and details are thin on
the ground, that hasn't stopped us gathering together the best pieces of
gossip, rumor and fact for your perusing pleasure. Here's everything we
know so far about GTA 6.
GTA 6 release date: when is GTA 6 coming out?
Red Dead Redemption 2 has now been in the wild for nearly two years
now and GTA 5 for nearly seven, which means we're hoping a GTA 6
announcement isn't far away – even though we're likely to be waiting a
while to play it.
According to some rumors,
we could see the next Grand Theft Auto announced in 2020, with a
potential release in 2021. However, Rockstar has been focused on getting
Red Dead Online
up and running - and GTA Online is still raking in the dough - which
may have diverted attention, not to mention the delays potentially
caused by Dan Houser's departure from Rockstar and the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic.
At
the more conservative end of the scale, reputable industry analyst
Michael Pachter predicts the game's actual release could be as far away
as 2022. In an interview with Gaming Bolt,
Pachter said that he thinks a 2020 announcement with a 2021 release
would be the best case scenario, while a 2021 announcement with a 2022
release or later would be more likely.
But the most solid GTA 6 release date hint comes from publisher Take-Two Interactive's marketing budget. Reported by VentureBeat, Take-Two's 10-K SEC filing (which
lays out financial plans for the next five years) shows that the
company expects to spend $89 million on marketing between April 2023,
and the end of March 2024 - that's a huge spike and, as the report
points out, more than half the marketing budget expected for any other
fiscal year over the next decade.
This has led industry analyst Jeff Cohen to predict that this spike is because GTA 6 is expected to release within this period.
In a note to
investors, included in VentureBeat's report, Cohen pointed out that
previous marketing budgets have predicted the releases of other big
releases from Take-Two Interactive, including Red Dead Redemption 2.
If
this prediction is correct then we would expect to see GTA 6 release
sometime between April 2023 and March 2024. Originally this spike was
expected to take place in the fiscal year 2023, however its been pushed
back to 2024. If it is GTA 6 that has caused this spike, this would
suggest that a delay has incurred - potentially due to Covid-19.
Take-Two Interactive has already revealed it has 93 "full game releases" planned for the next five years. During an earnings call (via GamesRadar),
Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said that this line-up is the strongest
in the company's history. According to Slatoff, 63 of these games are
"core gaming experiences", 17 will be "mid-core or arcade" and 13 are
casual games.
However,
out of these 93 games, 21 will be exclusively mobile titles - with the
other 72 landing on PC, consoles and streaming platforms. But, perhaps
the most interesting stat from this meeting is that half of this games
line-up are from existing IPs.
This
has suggested that we could see GTA 6 in that five-year window, with
the highly-anticipated next GTA falling into that "core gaming
experiences" category. So a release date sometime in 2023 would
definitely fall into that window.
This
is all still speculation at the moment and this marketing budget
increase could be due to another factor. Until Take-Two Interactive or
Rockstar Games confirms GTA 6's official release window, or makes an
official GTA 6 announcement, we can only speculate about when GTA 6 is
coming. Hopefully we won't have much longer to wait.
The latest coronavirus
news updated every day including coronavirus cases, the latest news,
features and interviews from New Scientist and essential information
about the covid-19 pandemic.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
Latest coronavirus news as of 5 pm on 9 June
Highest daily jump in worldwide coronavirus cases so far
The highest daily increase in
worldwide coronavirus cases yet was recorded on Sunday, with 136,000 new
cases confirmed, World Health Organization (WHO) director general
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists
yesterday. “Although the situation in Europe is improving, globally it
is worsening,” he said. Almost 75 per cent of the cases confirmed on 7
June were from only 10 countries, mostly in the Americas and South Asia,
The Guardian reports.
Other coronavirus developments
Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, was today criticised by doctors and infectious disease researchers
for saying on Monday that it is “very rare” for people to have the
coronavirus without symptoms. Van Kerkhove clarified her statement
today, during a live Q&A on social media, saying that “anywhere between 6 and 41 per cent of the population may be infected but not have symptoms.”
Primary school pupils in England will no longer be expected to return to school
before the end of the summer term, the UK government has said. Primary
schools in England reopened on 1 June to reception, year 1 and year 6
pupils and the government’s original plan was for all remaining pupils
to return for the last month of term before the summer holidays start on
22 July. Head teachers previously warned that it wouldn’t be possible
for school pupils to practice social distancing in classrooms.
A Public Health England coronavirus testing survey
is to track the prevalence of coronavirus among those who do return to
school and investigate how much children spread the virus. Teachers and
pupils in up to 100 schools will soon receive coronavirus swab and
antibody tests.
Covid-19 was mentioned on the death
certificates for 44,869 people in England and Wales between the weeks
ending 27 March and 29 May, data from the Office for National Statistics
reveals. The number of deaths recorded as involving covid-19 in the
week ending 29 May was 1822, down from the most recent peak of 8758 in
the week ending 17 April. The total number of deaths registered in
England and Wales in the week ending 29 May was 9824, which is 20 per
cent higher than would be expected based on the five-year average.
Coronavirus deaths
The worldwide death toll has passed 407,000. The number of confirmed cases is more than 7.1 million, according to the map and dashboard from Johns Hopkins University, though the true number of cases will be much higher.
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