In an exclusive report on Tuesday, Reuters revealed that India might be planning on mandating smartphone developers to provide an option for removing pre-installed apps from new models to counter the potential threat of spying or manipulation and abuse of users’ data. Although the media house received this insight through a government document and two anonymous officials, India’s minister of state for IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, has dismissed the report as “plain wrong,” clarifying that there is no “crackdown” but only “ongoing consultations” between the government and industry players.
Armed Pakistani Taliban militants killed two police officers guarding teams collecting census data in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Tuesday. Another census team was attacked in a separate district of the region, which is close to the Afghanistan border.
Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, along with a coterie of high-ranking officials, arrived in Moscow on Tuesday to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. A Kremlin communiqué said that Assad and Putin would discuss “prospects for an overall settlement of the situation in and around Syria,” referring to the civil war that has ravaged the country for over a decade.
The Italian government has instructed Milan’s local authorities to stop registering children of couples in same-sex marriages, furthering PM Giorgia Meloni’s conservative agenda. The government legalised same-sex marriage in 2016, going against Catholic groups’ demands.
China is looking to gradually raise its retirement age to counter problems associated with the country’s rapidly ageing population. Currently, the retirement age in China is among the lowest in the world at 50 for women who work in factories, 55 for white-collar women, and 60 for men.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Wednesday that there is “an increasing need” for South Korea and Japan to “cooperate in this time of a polycrisis, with North Korean nuclear and missile threats escalating and global supply chains being disrupted.” “We cannot afford to waste time while leaving strained Korea-Japan relations unattended,” he stressed.
On Tuesday, Russia, based on its correspondence with Germany, Denmark and Sweden, submitted an official document to the UN stating that claims by the aforementioned countries’ authorities that they informed Moscow about the investigation of last year’s Nord Stream blasts “are untrue.” Russia’s UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzya urged the UN Secretary-General to establish an international investigation of the explosions, as it does not trust these countries’ reports.
The US State Department on Tuesday announced the implementation of the International Technology Security and Innovation Fund (ITSI) under the CHIPS Act of 2022. The fund will provide the Department with $500 million over five years to expand semiconductor manufacturing, secure semiconductor supply chains, and develop and deploy trustworthy ICT networks and services.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that he would take steps towards repealing authorisations for past wars in Iraq, days ahead of the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of the Middle Eastern country and subsequent toppling of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.