Latest news with #2021
Time of India
16 hours ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Delhi High Court Seeks Response on Plea Challenging Notification Empowering Police to Issue Social Media Takedown Notices
New Delhi: Delhi High Court sought the response of LG VK Saxena on a plea challenging a notification issued by him empowering police to issue takedown notices for social media content. A division bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela issued a notice to LG and the union ministry of electronics and information technology, asking them to file replies within six weeks. The court listed the matter for further hearing on Sept 17. The bench was hearing a plea filed by the 'Software Freedom Law Center' challenging the legality and constitutional validity of the notification issued by LG that designated Delhi Police as the nodal agency under the Information Technology Rules, 2021, empowering it to issue takedown notices for online content. The notification empowers Delhi Police officers to issue takedown orders to social media companies and other intermediaries to remove illegal content under the Information Technology Act. Advocate Talha Abdul Rahman, appearing for the petitioner, submitted before the court that this designation has no basis in law. Neither Section 79 of the Information Technology Act nor the IT Rules, 2021 confer any authority to appoint such a nodal agency. The petition stated that allowing police officers to unilaterally issue takedown notices, without judicial or independent oversight, opens the door to unchecked censorship and arbitrary restriction of constitutionally protected speech. It added that such a move violates Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution and contradicts the landmark judgments of the Supreme Court, which emphasise the need for legal safeguards and proportionality in actions impacting fundamental rights. "The statutory power to block or remove online content is exclusively vested in the central govt under Section 69A of the IT Act, read with the Information Technology Rules, 2009. The impugned notification, by granting these powers to the police, oversteps constitutional and statutory boundaries and is, therefore, ultra vires the parent legislation," the plea said.
Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Mehdi Taremi: From Iranian military to Champions League final with Inter
For one tiny fragment of time, the possibility of doing something extraordinary appears. How many opportunities do you get, in your entire career, to execute something indelible, to make the world stop and gasp? As Nanu's high, outswinging cross comes over from the right, Mehdi Taremi weighs the angles, the timing, the obstacles in front of him, and chooses to go for it. Then he launches himself into an act which is equal parts biomechanical genius and blind faith. His incredible overhead kick against the eventual champions Chelsea in the 2021 quarter-final remains the last Champions League goal to finish in the Puskas Award top three. Arguably, no one has since scored a better goal at a higher level of football. But what strikes you most, watching the video back, is the dissonance of the reaction. There is no explosion of incredulous joy. The stands are empty. No one is going out of their mind with the sheer 'Ohmygoddidyoujustseethat' of it. Taremi doesn't allow himself so much as a fist pump or a high five; he simply jogs backwards towards his own half with no expression on his face besides a faint grimace of exhaustion. There is a certain humility here: the humility of the unobserved. Most of the 40-odd footballers whose journeys will converge in the 2025 Champions League final have scarcely known life without eyes on them. Achraf Hakimi was scouted by Real Madrid when he was eight. Gianluigi Donnarumma and Warren Zaïre-Emery have been spoken of as generational prospects since they were 15 years old. Yann Bisseck made his Bundesliga debut before his 17th birthday. That it takes belief to reach the highest level of the sport has always been true. But in this age, it is also almost impossible to reach the top without gathering a retinue of believers — the social-media hype-men, the friendly journalists, the agents, the coaches, the scouts, going back to that first moment of discovery. What happens, though, if no one sees you? What if you're from one of the few places on earth the watchers don't go? Taremi was born in Bushehr, a port city on the Persian Gulf coast of Iran. He learnt to play football there on a bare, dusty pitch with a gnarled old juniper tree growing in the middle. The tree was protected and could not be cut down, Taremi told the Iranian football journalist Adel Ferdosipour in an interview three years ago, as they visited his home town, so he learnt to dribble round it, to play wall-passes with it, to find the beauty in the obstacle. Who was the first person who told you you were a talented footballer, Ferdosipour asks him? Taremi purses his lips, ums and ahs, thinks for a bit. 'I found it out myself,' he says. You might have noticed Taremi, wearing the No99 shirt, in the epic semi-final second leg against Barcelona, for his bustling hold-up play after he came on as a substitute. He supplied the assist for Davide Frattesi's winning goal. At the end, as the Barcelona players splintered into postures of individual desolation and the Inter players ran into each other's arms and the cameras followed their exuberant celebrations, quietly, in a corner of the pitch that no one was looking at, Taremi went over to Raphinha, lying face-down in the turf, peeled him up off the floor and gave him a consoling tap on the shoulder. In truth, Taremi hasn't had a great season. In 43 appearances, he's only managed three goals. He has no chance of dislodging Marcus Thuram and Lautaro Martínez from Simone Inzaghi's starting XI, and he's not likely to play a significant role in Munich. He might not even get on the field. So why write about him? Because sometimes the unlikeliness is the whole point. Because sometimes the glory is in the journey. His mother told him that his dream wouldn't lead him anywhere, that he was 'chasing after the wind'. When she left him in the care of his aunt one day, Mehdi's football was placed on a shelf too high for him to reach. He still has the scar on the back of his head from when he climbed to try to reach it, and fell to the floor. His father, who had been a footballer himself, was more encouraging, and when he was 18, Taremi joined his hometown club. Still, at an age when Martínez and Nicolò Barella and Alessandro Bastoni had already made their international debuts, Taremi was serving out his military conscription in a garrison. Eventually, he joined Persepolis, one of Iran's biggest clubs, where he found someone who believed in him: their manager, Ali Daei, the former Iran striker, once the all-time top scorer in men's international football. In his first three seasons, Taremi scored 50 goals. But he knew that in order to reach the top of the sport, he needed to leave his homeland. A move was arranged to the Turkish club Caykur Rizespor, but at the last minute Taremi, along with his team-mate Ramin Rezaeian, decided it just didn't feel right, and backed out of the transfer. For reneging on the agreement, Fifa banned the two players for four months each. In the interview with Ferdosipour for his Football360 channel, Taremi recalled that he and Rezaeian cried in each other's arms when the news came through. After one more season at Persepolis, he ended up at Al-Gharafa in the Qatari league. By now he was established in the national team, and it was this that would give him his big opportunity. The Iran manager was the Portuguese coach, Carlos Queiroz, who recommended him to Carlos Carvalhal, then the manager of Rio Ave, a small club in the Primeira Liga. It's important not to overlook this: though his story is in some ways a fairytale, Taremi had to work his connections to get himself noticed. Taking a leap of faith — and an enormous pay cut from his Qatari salary — he moved to Portugal. One 20-goal season at Rio Ave was enough to persuade Porto to sign him. He was 28 when he played in the Champions League for the first time, against Manchester City in 2020. When he moved to Inter, after four stellar seasons at Porto, last summer, he sounded like a man who had come to the end of a long odyssey. 'This is the happiest moment of my life,' he told the club website. 'It has been a very beautiful journey for me.' Little did he know that there was a Champions League final in his future. But that's the thing about Taremi's journey: the next link in the chain was never clear. He didn't plot his move to Rio Ave with Porto in his sights, and he couldn't count on interest from Serie A when he moved to Porto. He just flung himself at each opportunity, living entirely in that moment and trusting that his talent would find its own path. And now he has reached the biggest game in football. Elite club football can sometimes seem like a hermetically sealed world of privilege, where the participants are identified from a young age and groomed for greatness in academies. But it matters that you can still get from as far outside that world as you can imagine to the pinnacle of the sport. And even if Taremi doesn't play, his presence, his having got there, still feels like a kind of triumph. Champions League final
India Gazette
a day ago
- Politics
- India Gazette
Delhi HC seeks response on challenge to Delhi Police's online content takedown powers
New Delhi [India], May 29 (ANI): The Delhi High Court has issued a notice in response to a plea challenging a notification by Lieutenant Governor (LG) Vinai Kumar Saxena that grants the Delhi Police authority to issue takedown orders for online content on social media platforms. A division bench, comprising Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela, on Wednesday acknowledged the submission made by the Software Freedom Law Centre ( and sought responses from the LG Office and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), directing that they be submitted within six weeks. SFLC has contested the constitutional validity of the notification, which designates the Delhi Police as the Nodal Agency under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules, 2021), enabling it to issue takedown orders for online content. The petition argues that allowing police officers to independently direct content removal, without judicial or external oversight, risks enabling unchecked censorship and arbitrary limitations on constitutionally protected free speech. It was argued that neither the IT Rules, 2021, nor Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act confer any authority for the establishment of a Nodal Agency, Nodal Officer, or any other positions specified in the contested Notification. Section 79 solely provides conditional immunity to intermediaries and delineates their due diligence responsibilities; it does not grant executive power to the State or Union to institute a mechanism for speech regulation or restriction. It was also contended that the authority to restrict access to online content falls exclusively within the purview of Section 69A, alongside the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009 (referred to as the 'Blocking Rules, 2009'). The Central Government has already exercised its authority to appoint a designated officer for issuing blocking orders through the formal implementation of these rules. The statutory framework does not envisage the establishment of any parallel or supplementary authority, particularly at the direction of a state-level executive. The plea stated that the IT Act does not provide for the creation or operation of a Nodal Agency in the manner proposed by the contested Notification. (ANI)
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
I used to be proud of my sexual appetite... until I did something on a girls' trip to Greece that will haunt me for the rest of my life: EBONY LEIGH
It's been four years since the wildest weekend of my life, but still not one single person knows what I really got up to on that girls' trip to Greece. You might already know I love nothing more than sharing my sauciest secrets. But since my Mykonos vacay in 2021, my lips have been sealed... for very good reason.
New Indian Express
a day ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Delhi HC asks LG, Centre to reply to plea on online content takedown notices
NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has sought the response of the Lieutenant Governor on a plea challenging a notification issued by him empowering police to issue takedown notices for social media content. A bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela issued notice to the LG and the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and asked them to file replies within six weeks. The court listed the matter for further hearing on September 17. The bench was hearing a plea filed by Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) challenging the legality and constitutional validity of the notification issued by the LG that designated Delhi Police as the nodal agency under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, empowering it to issue takedown notices for online content. The notification empowers Delhi Police officers to issue takedown orders to social media companies and other intermediaries to remove illegal content under the Information Technology Act.
