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Chandigarh, Dec 25 (PTI) Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatreya on Wednesday said information technology is the most effective means of ensuring transparency, implementing good governance and curbing corruption. He was speaking at the Good Governance Day event organised at LNJP Hospital, Kurukshetra on the birth anniversary of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Before addressing the event, the governor paid floral tributes to Vajpayee, distributed fruits to patients and extended greetings of the Good Governance Day to the people of the state. He formally inaugurated the Good Governance Day programme by lighting the ceremonial lamp. During the event, he interacted with patients, exchanged views with hospital doctors and staff. Dattatreya noted that the state government is organising programmes in every district on Good Governance Day to reinforce the principles of governance. Reflecting on Vajpayee's legacy, he remarked that the former prime minister dedicated his entire life to society, working tirelessly for the country's progress through inclusive development. Vajpayee was a true patriot who selflessly served the nation and his birth anniversary is now celebrated across the country as the Good Governance Day, said Dattatreya, while emphasising the need for the younger generation to draw inspiration from the leader's exemplary life. The governor further stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, following the path shown by Vajpayee, has implemented welfare-oriented policies aimed at eradicating poverty and ensuring holistic development. These initiatives have been coupled with governance reforms and the introduction of Digital India to make such schemes accessible to every citizen, he said. The governor also extended Christmas greetings to the people. (This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)Trash Mag 'Variety' Tries to Smear Zachary Levi in Nasty Hit Piece From Former Co-Star No One Knows
BREAKING NEWS Labour Minister Agnes Nyalonje resigns from Chakwera’s Cabinet, says SKC’s death changed her situationNEW DELHI: From an anonymous office in a New Delhi mall, matrimonial detective Bhavna Paliwal runs the rule over prospective husbands and wives — a booming industry in India, where younger generations are increasingly choosing love matches over arranged marriage. The tradition of partners being carefully selected by the two families remains hugely popular, but in a country where social customs are changing rapidly, more and more couples are making their own matches. So for some families, the first step when young lovers want to get married is not to call a priest or party planner but a sleuth like Paliwal with high-tech spy tools to investigate the prospective partner. Sheela, an office worker in New Delhi, said that when her daughter announced she wanted to marry her boyfriend, she immediately hired Paliwal. “I had a bad marriage,” said Sheela, whose name has been changed as her daughter remains unaware her fiance was spied on. “When my daughter said she’s in love, I wanted to support her — but not without proper checks.” Paliwal, 48, who founded her Tejas Detective Agency more than two decades ago, says business is better than ever. Her team handles around eight cases monthly. In one recent case — a client checking her prospective husband — Paliwal discovered a decimal point salary discrepancy. “The man said he earns around $70,700 annually,” Paliwal said. “We found out he was actually making $7,070.” It is discreet work. Paliwal’s office is tucked away in a city mall, with an innocuous sign board saying it houses an astrologer — a service families often use to predict an auspicious wedding date. “Sometimes my clients also don’t want people to know they are meeting a detective,” she laughed. Hiring a detective can cost from $100 to $2,000, depending on the extent of surveillance needed. That is a small investment for families who splash out many times more on the wedding itself. It is not just worried parents trying to vet their prospective sons or daughters-in-law. Some want background checks on their future spouse — or, after marriage, to confirm a suspected affair. “It is a service to society,” said Sanjay Singh, a 51-year-old sleuth, who says his agency has handled “hundreds” of pre-matrimonial investigations this year alone. Private eye Akriti Khatri said around a quarter of cases at her Venus Detective Agency were pre-marriage checks. “There are people who want to know if the groom is actually gay,” she said, citing one example. Arranged marriages binding two entire families together require a chain of checks before the couple even talk. That includes financial probes and, crucially, their status in India’s millennia-old caste hierarchy. Marriages breaking rigid caste or religious divisions can have deadly repercussions, sometimes resulting in so-called “honor” killings. In the past, such premarital checks were often done by family members, priests or professional matchmakers. But breakneck urbanization in sprawling megacities has shaken social networks, challenging conventional ways of verifying marriage proposals. Arranged marriages now also happen online through matchmaking websites, or even dating apps. “Marriage proposals come on Tinder too,” added Singh. The job is not without its challenges. Layers of security in guarded modern apartment blocks mean it is often far harder for an agent to gain access to a property than older standalone homes. Singh said detectives had to rely on their charm to tell a “cock and bull story” to enter, saying his teams tread the grey zone between “legal and illegal.” But he stressed his agents operate on the right side of the law, ordering his teams to do “nothing unethical” while noting investigations often mean “somebody’s life is getting ruined.” Technology is on the side of the sleuths. Khatri has used tech developers to create an app for her agents to upload records directly online — leaving nothing on agents’ phones, in case they are caught. “This is safer for our team,” she said, adding it also helped them “get sharp results in less time and cost.” Surveillance tools starting at only a few dollars are readily available. Those include audio and video recording devices hidden in everyday items such as mosquito repellent socket devices, to more sophisticated magnetic GPS car trackers or tiny wearable cameras. The technology boom, Paliwal said, has put relationships under pressure. “The more hi-tech we become, the more problems we have in our lives,” she said. But she insisted that neither the technology nor the detectives should take the blame for exposing a cheat. “Such relationships would not have lasted anyway,” she said. “No relationship can work on the basis of lies.”
Breaking news Our journalists are working right now to gather more details for you. The BDN publishes only verified information from trusted sources, so we don’t cite social media hearsay or police scanner chatter. Send a tip here . The Bangor Walmart was temporarily evacuated on Saturday. The store was reopened by 4:09 p.m., an employee at the store told the Bangor Daily News. The employee did not know the cause of the evacuation. A phone call to the Bangor Fire Department was not immediately returned. More articles from the BDN'It's an emotional addiction that destroys the soul': poker machine addict
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday announced that he is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump , an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office. The move spares the lives of people convicted in killings , including the slayings of police and military officers, people on federal land and those involved in deadly bank robberies or drug deals, as well as the killings of guards or prisoners in federal facilities. The decision leaves three federal inmates to face execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018 , the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history. “I’ve dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system,” Biden said in a statement . “Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.” Reaction was strong, both for and against. A Trump spokesperson called the decision “abhorrent.” “These are among the worst killers in the world and this abhorrent decision by Joe Biden is a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones.” said Trump spokesman Steven Cheung. “President Trump stands for the rule of law, which will return when he is back in the White House after he was elected with a massive mandate from the American people.” Heather Turner, whose mother was killed during the 2017 robbery of a Conway, South Carolina, bank, blasted the decision in a social media post, saying Biden didn’t consider the victims of these crimes. “The pain and trauma we have endured over the last 7 years has been indescribable,” Turner wrote on Facebook, describing weeks spent in court in search of justice as “now just a waste of time.” “Our judicial system is broken. Our government is a joke,” she said. “Joe Biden’s decision is a clear gross abuse of power. He, and his supporters, have blood on their hands.” Some of Roof’s victims supported Biden’s decision to leave him on death row. Michael Graham, whose sister Cynthia Hurd was killed by Roof, said Roof’s lack of remorse and simmering white nationalism in the U.S. means Roof is the kind of dangerous and evil person the death penalty is intended for. “This was a crime against a race of people who were doing something all Americans do on a Wednesday night — go to Bible study,” Graham said. “It didn’t matter who was there, only that they were Black.” The Biden administration in 2021 announced a moratorium on federal capital punishment to study the protocols used, which suspended executions during Biden’s term. But Biden actually had promised to go further on the issue in the past, pledging to end federal executions without the caveats for terrorism and hate-motivated, mass killings. While running for president in 2020, Biden’s campaign website said he would “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level , and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.” Similar language didn’t appear on Biden’s reelection website before he left the presidential race in July. “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden’s statement said. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president, and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.” He took a political jab at Trump, saying, “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.” Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has spoken frequently of expanding executions. In a speech announcing his 2024 campaign , Trump called for those “caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.” He later promised to execute drug and human smugglers and even praised China’s harsher treatment of drug peddlers. During his first term as president, Trump also advocated for the death penalty for drug dealers . There were 13 federal executions during Trump’s first term, more than under any president in modern history, and some may have happened fast enough to have contributed to the spread of the coronavirus at the federal death row facility in Indiana. Those were the first federal executions since 2003. The final three occurred after Election Day in November 2020 but before Trump left office the following January, the first time federal prisoners were put to death by a lame-duck president since Grover Cleveland in 1889. Biden faced recent pressure from advocacy groups urging him to act to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of capital punishment for federal inmates. The president’s announcement also comes less than two weeks after he commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic, and of 39 others convicted of nonviolent crimes, the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history. The announcement also followed the post-election pardon that Biden granted his son Hunter on federal gun and tax charges after long saying he would not issue one, sparking an uproar in Washington. The pardon also raised questions about whether he would issue sweeping preemptive pardons for administration officials and other allies who the White House worries could be unjustly targeted by Trump’s second administration. Speculation that Biden could commute federal death sentences intensified last week after the White House announced he plans to visit Italy on the final foreign trip of his presidency next month. Biden, a practicing Catholic, will meet with Pope Francis, who recently called for prayers for U.S. death row inmates in hopes their sentences will be commuted. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has long called for an end to the death penalty, said Biden’s decision is a “significant step in advancing the cause of human dignity in our nation” and moves the country “a step closer to building a culture of life.” Martin Luther King III, who publicly urged Biden to change the death sentences, said in a statement shared by the White House that the president “has done what no president before him was willing to do: take meaningful and lasting action not just to acknowledge the death penalty’s racist roots but also to remedy its persistent unfairness.” Madeline Cohen, an attorney for Norris Holder, who faced death for the 1997 fatal shooting of a guard during a bank robbery in St. Louis, said his case “exemplifies the racial bias and arbitrariness that led the President to commute federal death sentences,” Cohen said. Holder, who is Black, was sentenced by an all-white jury.