IB to report bank frauds to government 

          New Delhi - June 17, 2003 - The Intelligence Bureau of the Government of India will now pro-actively probe bank frauds. Senior officials said in the ongoing effort by the Vajpayee government to weed out corruption in the ranks, initiating investigations on the economic front can throw up names of involved persons, long before a formal investigation is launched. The brief to the IB was very clear: other agencies involved in investigating economic offences or those which deal with economic intelligence will provide the necessary training to IB officials to equip IB operatives with the necessary skills. The Bureau first had to pass a trial by fire and run a parallel investigation into a few ongoing cases pending with other agencies. Senior officials claimed the Bureau's field agents passed the test. Why did the government create yet another unit to investigate economic offences when the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, the Serious Fraud Office and the CBI's Economic Offences Wing already existed? An official said this was because "these agencies investigate cases after a complaint is filed. Moreover, they have a mandate by law to take the matter to court after completing their investigation, because a case has been registered." But, the only report the IB delivers is to the government."

The Statesman - June 18, 2003

Women catch up with men in cheating 

          Berlin: The modern western woman is now almost as likely to cheat on her partner as a man, according to a survey carried out for a German women's magazine. In an online survey of 1,427 men and women aged between 25 and 35 by the Hamburg-based GEWEIS institutes for social research for Woman magazine, 53 per cent of women said they had been unfaithful to their partner, compared with 59 per cent of men. "In recent years, numbers of unfaithful men and women have evened out a lot," GEWEIS head Werner Habermehl said. 

The Asian Age - June 20, 2003

Cyber crime case: Deposition via video conference

              New Delhi - June 27, 2003 - For the first time in India, a Metropolitan Magistrate recorded the statement of an American witness through video conferencing in a cyber crime case where an Indian engineer is accused of trying to illegally sell software of a US-based company. Last year, the CBI in a joint operation with the US' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had arrested one Shekar Verma of Geometric Software Solutions Company (GSSCL) when he tried to sell the source code of Solid Works - a US-based software company. Shekar contacted Tom Vorgitch and offered to sell the code for $20,000. He was arrested while trying to pass on the code to FBI agents posing as buyer in Mumbai. 

Hindustan Times - June 28, 2003

Spammers in US, UK to come under Microsoft's 'law'  

            London - June 18, 2003 - Microsoft, software giant, said on Tuesday it had filed lawsuits against 15 alleged spammers, accusing them of clogging its computers and those of its customers with over 2 billion unsolicited email messages. Thirteen of the lawsuits were filed in Washington state, which has recently passed tough anti-spam legislation, while the remaining two were filed in the UK. It is an issue that requires global coordination, so that industry and government have the maximum ability to protect consumers, said Microsoft lawyer Brad Smith. Spam, which by some estimates, accounts for half of all email traffic, is increasingly being seen as a threat to the viability of the internet.

The Asian Age - June 19, 2003

Food for Thoughts

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or wrongs.

- Charlotte Bronte.

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 Here's a test to see if your life on earth has finished: if you are alive, it has not.

- Richard Bach

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If I accept the sunshine and the warmth,
I must accept the thunder and the lightning.

- Khalil Gibran