Tag: india

Another Indian commercial driver was just charged with killing an American…

We’re sad to report that it’s happened again. Another Indian commercial truck driver has been charged in a deadly crash that killed an innocent American. This crisis of foreign truck drivers on US roads looks like it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.

This is the American man who was killed. Mr. Wilkerson was a volunteer firefighter and an EMT. Our hearts go out to his family. This was a totally preventable death.

The driver, Mr. Sarbjeet Parmar, has been charged with negligent homicide along with five other counts. He’s not only accused of killing one man but also of injuring an entire car full of people.

KTVQ:

The driver of a commercial vehicle involved in a fatal crash on Interstate 90 that claimed the life of a volunteer firefighter and EMT has been charged with negligent homicide.

According to documents filed in Yellowstone County District Court, Sarbjeet Parmar, 39 of Buckley, Wash., has also been charged with five counts of felony criminal endangerment.

He pleaded not guilty to all charges Monday afternoon. Judge David Carter ordered a $10,000 bond. Parmar must wear GPS monitoring and surrender his passport as conditions of bail.

Court records state Parmar was driving a commercial vehicle pulling a trailer on Dec. 22, 2024 when the vehicle went into the median at mile marker 431 at about 4 p.m., rolled onto its side and entered the oncoming lane of traffic.

The commercial vehicle then struck a Volkswagen passenger car and a Chevrolet Suburban. The driver of the Suburban, 56-year-old Kevin Wilkerson of Laurel, was killed. Three other occupants of the Suburban and two occupants of the Volkswagen were injured.

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Woke judge stops illegal migrant’s deportation because his wife has ADHD

A Federal Court judge halted a man’s deportation to India due to his Canadian wife’s ADHD-related health issues and the financial strain his departure would place on his sister.

Jagjit Singh, an Indian national, arrived in Canada on a temporary visa in 2021 seeking refugee status. He withdrew his claim after marrying L.B. on January 13, 2025, for sponsorship. 

While immigration processed his spousal sponsorship, Singh, who had overstayed his visa and was no longer seeking refugee protection, faced deportation. 

His wife met sponsorship eligibility in May, and Singh received an August removal date in July. CBSA denied his request to delay deportation until his wife’s application was decided. 

Singh appealed to Canada’s Federal Court and was heard Tuesday by Justice Avvy Yao-Yao Go, who rendered her decision the same day, according to the National Post.

Go stated the Officer improperly assessed evidence and misinterpreted discretion, particularly regarding irreparable harm. She clarified that irreparable harm is non-monetary, affecting not just the deported individual but anyone directly affected and remaining in Canada.

The judge cited harm to both Singh’s wife and sister in her ruling.

“In the end,” Go wrote, “taking into consideration the irreparable harm to [Singh’s] spouse on the … I find that granting the stay until the underlying [application] is determined would be just and equitable in all the circumstances of the case.”

“The evidence before the Court further indicates that the Applicant’s sister has put her house on sale in light of the Decision denying the Applicant’s request to defer his removal.”

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AI Startup Backed by Microsoft Revealed to Be 700 Indian Employees Pretending to Be Chatbots

A once-hyped AI startup backed by Microsoft has filed for bankruptcy after it was revealed that its so-called artificial intelligence was actually hundreds of human workers in India pretending to be chatbots.

Builder.ai, a London-based company previously valued at $1.5 billion, marketed its platform as an AI-powered solution that made building apps as simple as ordering pizza. Its virtual assistant, “Natasha,” was supposed to generate software using artificial intelligence.

In reality, nearly 700 engineers in India were manually coding customer requests behind the scenes, the Times of India reported.

The ruse began to collapse in May when lender Viola Credit seized $37 million from the company’s accounts, uncovering that Builder.ai had inflated its 2024 revenue projections by 300%. An audit revealed the company generated just $50 million in revenue, far below the $220 million it claimed to investors.

A Wall Street Journal report from 2019 had already questioned Builder.ai’s AI claims, and a former executive sued the company that same year for allegedly misleading investors and overstating its technical capabilities.

Despite that, the company raised over $445 million from big names including Microsoft and the Qatar Investment Authority. Builder.ai’s collapse has triggered a federal investigation in the U.S., with prosecutors in New York requesting financial documents and customer records.

Founder Sachin Dev Duggal stepped down earlier this year and was replaced by Manpreet Ratia, who reportedly uncovered the company’s internal misrepresentations.

The company now owes millions to Amazon and Microsoft in cloud computing costs and has laid off around 1,000 employees. On LinkedIn, the company announced its entry into insolvency proceedings, citing “historic challenges and past decisions” that strained its finances.

The fallout is seen as one of the biggest failures of the post-ChatGPT AI investment boom and has renewed scrutiny of “AI washing”—the trend of rebranding manual services as artificial intelligence to secure funding.

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From helpdesk to havoc: Why Clorox is suing Indian company for $380 million

In a San Francisco courtroom, the Clorox Company recently dropped a legal bombshell – a $380 million lawsuit against Indian-American information technology company Cognizant, alleging gross negligence in a 2023 cyberattack.

In the complaint dated July 22, 2025, Clorox contends a hacker simply called Cognizant’s helpdesk, lied about being an employee and was handed network credentials – no identity verification, no oversight, just a password transfer. The resulting cyberattack ended up paralyzing Clorox’s operations, costing upwards of $49 million in remediation and much more in lost business.

Offshoring ecosystem under the microscope

Cognizant, though officially headquartered in New Jersey, was founded in Chennai, India in 1994, and now employs over 250,000 people across India, providing everything from software development to helpdesk services for global corporations. Industry analysts have warned that shifting U.S. companies’ sensitive customer data offshore exposes Americans to significant privacy risks. India lacks comprehensive data privacy laws or an enforcement body like the Federal Trade Commission.

While offshoring offers cheap labor and scalability, it also creates layers of separation between U.S.-based clients and the employees handling their data. Those layers can conceal critical weaknesses.

Clorox case: A failed firewall

In Clorox’s telling, the hacker didn’t crack advanced encryption or “spear-phish” executives. He just called Cognizant on the phone and lied about who and what he was. That was enough. Cognizant agents reset the account, handed over passwords and reopened Clorox’s VPN access without a single identity check. Agents reportedly said phrases like: “Here’s the password … Welcome …”

Cognizant disputes the claim, saying its contract with Clorox, dating back to 2013, covered only helpdesk tasks, not broader cybersecurity responsibilities. Cognizant characterized Clorox’s own defenses as “inept,” calling the attack partly Clorox’s fault.

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Mutant Rice and Lab Rats: Bill Gates Sparks Outrage After Referring to India as ‘Testing Ground’ for Experiments

In late 2024, Bill Gates sparked outrage in India after describing the country as “a kind of laboratory to try things.” The controversy resurfaced with the May 5 announcement that India became the first country to officially release two genome-edited rice varieties that critics warn may come with serious unintended consequences and risks.

In late 2024, Bill Gates sparked outrage in India after describing the country as “a kind of laboratory to try things” during a podcast with Reid Hoffman. Gates emphasized the nation’s stability as a “testing ground” for global initiatives.

His remarks were widely condemned. Social media erupted, with many Indians accusing Gates of reducing their nation to a mere experimental ground for Western interests.

Social media users labelled Indians as “guinea pigs” in Gates’ laboratory and questioned the ethics and motives behind such experimentation.

A widely reported response on X captured the sentiment:

“India is a laboratory, and we Indians are Guinea Pigs for Bill Gates. This person has managed everyone from the Government to opposition parties to the media. His office operates here without FCRA, and our education system has made him a hero! I don’t know when we will wake up!”

(FCRA refers to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, which regulates foreign contributions to ensure they are not detrimental to the national interest.)

The controversy resurfaced with the May 5 announcement that India became the first country to officially release two genome-edited rice varieties: Kamala (DRR Dhan 100 Kamala) and Pusa DST Rice 1.

These are not classified as genetically modified (GM) crops. Unlike traditional GM crops, which deliberately introduce foreign DNA, these gene-edited varieties use CRISPR-Cas SDN-1 and SDN-2 technologies, which are often claimed not to introduce foreign DNA but only to alter existing genes.

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X Complies with Over 8,000 Indian Government Censorship Orders, Blocks News and User Accounts

The X Global Government Affairs team has revealed that the social company has received over 8,000 censorship orders from the Indian government, affecting access in that country to entire accounts.

We obtained a copy of the memo for you here.

Among them are executive orders to block accounts of international news organizations and prominent X users, the post said, adding that the company will comply by “withholding” those accounts only in India.

Other platforms have also received the same orders but have yet to comment on the issue.

According to the post, the decision was not an easy one to make but X views it as necessary in order for the platform to continue its presence in India.

Noncompliance with the orders could have resulted in “significant fines” and even imprisonment of local employees, X announced.

It is further explained that the Indian government’s orders do not state which individual posts were found in violation of the country’s law, opting rather to demand that entire accounts must be blocked.

“For a significant number of accounts, we did not receive any evidence or justification to block (them),” Global Affairs writes.

Even though the decision has been made to comply with the orders at this time, X made it clear the company “disagrees” and views the blocking of accounts rather than individual allegedly offending posts as not only “unnecessary” but also a form of censorship that affects both existing and future content, in that way violating users’ right to free speech.

Having complied in order to stay in the market, X is now “exploring all possible legal avenues available to the company.”

The Global Affairs post is urging affected users who are located in India, to turn to the courts in a bid to have the orders overturned – since they, unlike X, have this option. Those users are also reminded they can contact the government directly.

X lists a number of legal aid organizations that those with blocked accounts can consider contacting, and explains the decision to go public with some details about the censorship orders as “essential for transparency” – while “lack of disclosure discourages accountability and can contribute to arbitrary decision making.”

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Trump Announces US-Mediated ‘Full and Immediate Ceasefire’ Between Warring Nuclear Powers India and Pakistan

The situation between warring neighbors (and nuclear powers) India and Pakistan seemed to be devolving into an open war, as the two countries targeted military bases and exchanged missile and drone attacks.

This military conflict arose after a deadly terrorist attack on tourists in the disputed Kashmir region, raising concerns of a full-blown military confrontation between the two nations that have Historically had a tumultuous relationship, marked by multiple conflicts since their partition in 1947.

But the efforts by the US Donald J. Trump administration have made a difference: after a full night of negotiations mediated by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a ceasefire has been achieved.

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India Poised to Approve Starlink, Provided It Supports User Surveillance and Content Censorship

India’s Ministry of Communications has issued a memorandum that details the conditions under which the country’s authorities would approve licenses to Starlink and other Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite (GMPCS) companies.

A set of rules required of these operators is interpreted in some reports as an obligation to agree to facilitate surveillance and censorship.

At the same time, it is acknowledged that most countries impose similar rules – but the memo and its provisions are above all framed as a test for Starlink owner, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and his commitment to free speech.

Starlink has shown interest in entering the Indian market and has service resale deals with two of the country’s largest telecommunications firms. But making those deals operational depends on being granted a license, with the memorandum now explaining the 29 conditions that companies must meet.

GMPCS operators will have to ensure security clearance for gateway/hub location in India, as well as that functionality such as lawful interception facility, monitoring/control facility of user terminals, data traffic routing, etc., are located in the country.

Unregistered terminals will be immediately disconnected, while those registered for one location and then moved will be locked.

“Rogue for malicious activities” terminals are to be blocked without delay.

During hostilities, those issued GMPCS licenses must be able to restrict or deny service either based on specific geo-locations or to individuals or groups of subscribers.

Another requirement is to set up special monitoring zones 50 kilometers within the land borders and the exclusive economic zone (200 nautical miles).

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Did Pakistan really shoot down five Indian fighter jets?

At just after 1am local time on Wednesday morning, Indian fighter jets took off for the launch of Operation Sindoor, a series of strikes targeting alleged terrorist camps inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

French-made Rafales and Russian MiGs were in the air for less than half an hour, firing missiles that crashed into nine targets across the border. The question now gripping the region is whether all of them returned.

The first site struck was the Abbas camp in the city of Kotli, about 13km across the Line of Control in Kashmir, at 1.04am.

Vyomika Singh, a wing commander in the Indian air force (IAF), said that the camp had been used by suicide bombers from Lashkar-E-Taiba (LeT), the group New Delhi blames for killing 26 tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.

In grainy, bird’s-eye video posted online by the information wing of India’s armed forces, small clouds of black smoke puff up from a scrubby hillside as the missiles explode on impact.

Some of the eight other operations targeted sites much deeper inside Pakistan, including the Subhnallah mosque compound in the Punjabi city of Bahawalpur and an LeT training camp in the city of Muridke, a short distance north of Lahore.

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India Confirms Strikes On Pakistan’s “Terrorist Camps”; Pakistan Claims 5 Jets Shot-Down

India confirmed early Wednesday that it had conducted strikes on Pakistan, two weeks after more than two dozen civilians were killed in a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir.

India said it had struck Pakistan after gathering evidence “pointing towards the clear involvement of Pakistan-based terrorists” in last month’s attack on civilians in a tourist area in Kashmir.

It said that its military actions on Wednesday had been “measured, responsible and designed to be nonescalatory in nature.” 

It added that it had targeted only “known terror camps.”

India’s defense ministry said in the statement that nine sites had been targeted in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. 

“Our actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature,” it said in a statement, calling it “Operation Sindoor.”

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