After revaluation, Ravish emerges II PU science topper, Vaishnavi second topper

In a fresh claim, arrested BJP leader and advocate G Devaraje Gowda has alleged that Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar and four other ministers were behind exposing Prajwal Revanna’s sex scam that has brought disgrace to Janata Dal (Secular) H D Deve Gowda family. 

Devaraje Gowda has been arrested in a sexual abuse case. 

Speaking to reporters while being taken to the district prisons, in Hassan on Friday, Gowda alleged that he was offered Rs 100 crore to drag the name of H D Kumaraswamy in the Prajwal’s case. 

“D K Shivakumar had offered me Rs 100 crore to project that H D Kumaraswamy was behind the case. The offer was made through ministers N Chaluvarayaswamy, Krishna Byre Gowda, Priyank Kharge and another minister. They had even sent Rs 5 crore as advance to Bowring Club. But I did not agree. Hence, they hatched a plot to trap me,” Gowda alleged.

“It is D K Shivakumar, who collected all information from Prajwal Revanna’s former car driver Karthik and readied the pen drive. A team of four ministers were formed to handle the issue. As I did not agree to the plan. They planned to bring disrepute to the BJP, Narendra Modi and H D Kumaraswamy,” he said.

Gowda further alleged that former MLC M A Gopalaswamy of Channarayapatna was sent to him for negotiation.

“The main intention of D K Shivakumar is to bring disrepute to Modi and BJP in the case. Besides, he wanted to defame H D Kumaraswamy’s leadership in the state” he claimed. “They filed a sexual harassment and rape case against me, but found no evidence. Now, they are trying to fix me in the pen drive case” he alleged.

India is currently polling in the Lok Sabha elections, and AI-generated videos that spread disinformation have emerged as a major threat. As per a report, Meta approved several political advertisements manipulated by Artificial Intelligence that spread disinformation during Lok Sabha elections 2024.

Facebook reportedly approved ads that contained slurs towards Muslims in India like “let’s burn this vermin” and “Hindu blood is spilling, these invaders must be burned” along with disinformation about political leaders and other messages with Hindu supremacist language.

Another advert approved by the owner of Facebook and Instagram called for an opposition leader's execution who as per a false claim sought to “erase Hindus from India”. This ad contained the image of a Pakistan flag alongside the message.

The report comes at a time when the social media platform X had to recently take down an animated video shared by the Karnataka unit of the BJP after an Election Commission direction.

India Civil Watch International (ICWI) and Ekō, a corporate accountability organisation created and submitted these adverts to Meta's ad library to test the company's mechanism to detect and block harmful political content.

All adverts “were created based upon real hate speech and disinformation prevalent in India, underscoring the capacity of social media platforms to amplify existing harmful narratives," the report mentioned.

The researchers submitted 22 adverts to Meta in English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Kannada, of which 14 were approved. Another three were approved with small tweaks. However, once approved, the researchers immediately removed the ads before their publication.

The research concluded that Meta failed to detect the presence of AI-manipulated images in all of the approved ads.

While five of the adverts, including one with some allegations against PM Modi were rejected on charge of breaking Meta's policy on hate speech, the report noted that the 14 others approved targetted Muslims and “broke Meta’s own policies on hate speech, bullying and harassment, misinformation, and violence and incitement."

“Supremacists, racists and autocrats know they can use hyper-targeted ads to spread vile hate speech, share images of mosques burning and push violent conspiracy theories – and Meta will gladly take their money, no questions asked,” the Guardian quoted Maen Hammad, a campaigner at Ekō as saying.

In response, Meta clarified that they require advertisers to disclose their use of AI.

“When we find content, including ads, that violates our community standards or community guidelines, we remove it, regardless of its creation mechanism. AI-generated content is also eligible to be reviewed and rated by our network of independent factcheckers – once a content is labeled as ‘altered’ we reduce the content’s distribution. We also require advertisers globally to disclose when they use AI or digital methods to create or alter a political or social issue ad in certain cases," the company said in response.

Meanwhile, Meta has been accused in the past of failing to curb Islamophobia on its platforms.

“This election has shown once more that Meta doesn’t have a plan to address the landslide of hate speech and disinformation on its platform during these critical elections,” Hammad said questioning how one can trust Meta if it fails to detect even a handful of AI-generated images.

Madikeri: A 15-year-old was bludgeoned to death and the accused fled with her severed head at Mutlu village in Somwarpet of Kodagu district on Thursday late night, hours after her SSLC examination result was declared.  

The victim has been identified as US Meena, a 10th grade student of Surlabbi High School. She had passed the SSLC examination and her school attained 100% results. 

However, she was brutally murdered by accused Prakash (32), a resident of the village. The police have launched a search operation to find the suspect, said Kodagu SP K Ramarajan 

It is said that the minor girl's engagement with the suspect was thwarted by officials from Women and Child Development department on May 9, and later officials had even convinced her parents of not to marry the minor girl.

However, the suspect barged into her house in the night and allegedly kidnapped her. Later, he took her to an area near the periphery of the forest and murdered her after which he fled with her severed head.

Victim's mother too has suffered injuries and is admitted to a hospital for treatment. The reason for the murder will be known after the probing officials have inquired the victim's mother, said the SP.