The Pegasus project: The latest update
If you need more context to understand this story, be sure to check out our explainer here and here.
Heads of state: The latest names released include three presidents, ten prime ministers and a king. They were all on the global database of 50,000 phone numbers—which means they were potential targets, but there is no evidence of actual hacking since they did not share their phones for forensic analysis. In any case, this VVIP list includes the following:
“Three sitting presidents, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Iraq’s Barham Salih and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa. Three current prime ministers, Pakistan’s Imran Khan, Egypt’s Mostafa Madbouly and Morocco’s Saad-Eddine El Othmani. Seven former prime ministers, who according to time stamps on the list were placed there while they were still in office: Yemen’s Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr, Lebanon’s Saad Hariri, Uganda’s Ruhakana Rugunda, France’s Édouard Philippe, Kazakhstan’s Bakitzhan Sagintayev, Algeria’s Noureddine Bedoui and Belgium’s Charles Michel. And one king: Morocco’s Mohammed VI.”
Meanwhile in India: The Wire reports that the numbers of top Karnataka leaders are also on the database. And they were added in 2019—right when the BJP was attempting to oust the ruling Congress-JDS coalition. The numbers belong to those of then deputy chief minister G Parameshwara and the personal secretaries of then chief minister HD Kumaraswamy and top Congress leader and ex-CM Siddaramaiah. The Wire has all the details. Also in The Wire: the many activists on the list. Indian Express has more on the cost of licensing Pegasus.
A related read: Article 14 on how India’s largest electricity company has purchased facial recognition systems to monitor its 60,000 employees.
A series of bad weather news
One: It is scorching in Tokyo right now, and beach volleyball players have already found sand too hot for their feet during practice—on a day when city residents were warned not to exercise outdoors. Reminder: the government issued 13 “no exercise” advisories from late July to early August last year—the same timeframe as this year’s Olympics, which may well turn out to be the hottest on record. The Guardian has more on the hot weather woes in Tokyo. Point to note: The chief of the Olympics organising committee has left open the possibility of a last-minute cancellation of the games—though due to rising Covid cases not rising temperatures.
Two: Baby birds on the US West coast are jumping out of their nests to escape the terrible heatwave—and they end up falling to the ground and dying or severely injuring themselves. A wildlife expert explains: "Not only are they exposed to the really high temperatures but they're also exposed to the direct sunlight," she said. "They have no choice that they have to flee from the nest." (ABC News)
Three: After Western Europe, Central China is now dealing with massive flooding caused by unusually heavy rains. Twelve people have died and around 100,000 people have been moved to shelters in the city of Zhengzhou—where more than 20cm (7.8in) of rain fell in one hour on Tuesday. Watch the scary state of the subway below.
Raj Kundra’s arrest: The latest update
The businessman has been sent to police custody until July 23 after a court hearing. Here’s what the police is saying now: “Through investigation it is clear that Mr. Kundra is involved in making nude and vulgar videos, uploads them on social media and earns money.”
And here’s how it worked: Kundra's company Viaan Industries had a partnership with a London-based company Kenrin—which in turn owns an app called Hotshots. This app allegedly publishes pornographic films. More importantly this: The content creation, operation of the app and accounting was the responsibility of Viaan, but Kenrin collected the revenues from app subscriptions. And it may even be just a dummy company:
“As of now what we see is that Kenrin might have got established only to bypass laws because in India it was not allowed... but all the content creation, operations and account management were done in Mumbai."
A SEBI probe into Adani
India’s stock market regulator is scrutinizing at least three companies—Adani Ports, Adani Group’s transmission businesses and Adani Gas—to check if they have breached securities laws:
“The scope of the scrutiny is to ensure no insider traded unfairly and, secondly, the disclosures have been made adequately and in a timely manner so that public shareholders are protected from unwarranted risks”
At issue: any unpublished price sensitive information (UPSI) that may have been misused either to influence the prices or to make unfair gains. The shares of all six listed Adani firms fell, with Adani Total Gas dropping by 5%. (Mint)
A staggering estimate of Covid deaths in India
Former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian has published new research that shows India’s uncounted fatalities may be 10 times the official toll—making it the worst human tragedy in the country since Partition. The gap is likely to be anywhere between 3.4 to 4.7 million—for deaths that occured between January 2020 and June 2021. Our official toll is around 414,000. How they arrived at this number:
“The report on India’s virus toll used three calculation methods: data from the civil registration system that records births and deaths across seven states, blood tests showing the prevalence of the virus in India alongside global Covid-19 fatality rates and an economic survey of nearly 900,000 people done thrice a year.”
Then looked at deaths from all causes and compared that data to mortality in previous years—a method widely considered an accurate metric. We may have missed the deaths in the first wave because it was “spread out in time”—which made us unable to grasp the “scale of the tragedy in real time.” During the second wave, different factors were at play:
“Nervous politicians and hospital administrators may also have undercounted or overlooked large numbers of the dead, analysts said. And grieving families may be hiding Covid connections as well, out of shame, adding to the confusion.”
Al Jazeera and The Telegraph have the best reporting on this.
In happier pandemic-related news: Indian women in middle-to-senior management roles appear to have fared well during the pandemic. A recent survey of more than 300 companies found that women accounted for 43% of such jobs in 2020—a jump of more than 20 percentage points from the previous year. One big reason: "'Flexible' used to be a bad word for recruiters...It really took the pandemic to gain an acceptance for work from home roles." Of course, we don’t know if this has made any dent in the gender pay gap which stood at 22.5% as of 2018. (CNN)
An amazing new cancer test?
MIT researchers have developed a simple urine test that can detect the presence of cancer—and a follow-up scan to locate exactly where it is. The MIT system is built around a specially designed nanoparticle that is designed to register the presence of cancerous cells. Note of caution: It has only been tested on mice, but the results are very heartening. New Atlas has all the nerdy details.
Three cool things to see
One: The three awesome covers for Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition this year. They feature three very different women—Leyna Bloom, Megan Thee Stallion and Naomi Osaka—and the magazine’s first transgender cover model. (Today)
Two: Oreo’s hilarious ‘Thins Protection Program’—clever new packaging designed to camouflage your box of delicious cookies. The disguises available: package of Hanes t-shirts, a cookbook, cauliflower rice, even a truck manual. See example below:
We were also amused by XBox’s reply to the new campaign, which said “We like to hide ours in plain sight 👀” Lol!
Three: Louis Vuitton’s $2,890 speaker that looks like an “artifact of untold cosmic power from the next Marvel movie.” Also: “the Horizon speaker will serve as an artistic centerpiece of your living room or outfit, a unique blend of fashion and technology that aims to challenge what a portable speaker should look like.” Well, mission accomplished! The Verge has more product details. See the ‘Thanos-friendly’ speaker below:
Say hello to the Pink Ladies!
Paramount+ has greenlit a prequel to the greatest high school musical ‘Grease’—which will follow the four original Pink Ladies (Rizzo, Jan, Marty and Frenchy) before sweet little Sandy came along. And it will be set four years before the original movie. FYI: There is another Grease prequel in the works called ‘Summer Loving’ which focuses on none other than Danny Zuko. A replacement for John Travolta? We think not. (NME)
Speaking of sequels: The new ‘Sex and the City’ series is working very hard to shed its so-white rep. HBO Max announced the addition of three women of colour to the cast: Sarita Choudhury, Nicole Ari Parker and Karen Pittman. Choudhury plays Seema Patel, a single and successful Manhattan real estate broker. (Vanity Fair)
Also guaranteed to be a blockbuster: Prince Harry’s planned “intimate and heartfelt” memoir about his “lifetime in the public eye”—and will “share, for the very first time, the definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape him.” For the very first time? (BuzzFeed News)
Dine With Data: All About Pallet 🕵️♀️
Company: Pallet 🕵️♀️
About: With the internet making it infinitely easy to find things, curation has become the need of the hour.
Pallet helps curated communities build their own job boards, and creates mechanisms for corporates to hire directly from quality groups of people rather than float an ad on Linkedin that is open to everyone.
Founded in 2020, company has raised a total of $7M over two rounds of funding. 💰
Food For Thought: Technical writers like Lenny San (product management) and Sahil Bloom (finance) have created another revenue channel for themselves by leveraging their audience and providing them access to jobs through Pallet. Think influencers, but for jobs. ✨
DWD Take: Communities are often dormant powerhouses of talent, because they gather around the same kind of content and learn from each other continually. Companies like Pallet are finding ways to tap into these communities and build a value offering around them! 🚀
URL: https://pallet.xyz
About DWD: Dine With Data🍴 sends you a short summary of one new startup every day, delivered straight to your WhatsApp inbox!
