Latest news with #OT
News18
2 days ago
- Health
- News18
'Was A 15-Minute Procedure': 4-Year-Old Dies After 'Minor' Surgery, Family Alleges Negligence
Last Updated: The family said that the child was admitted to SK Jain Hospital in Delhi for a minor operation A four-year-old boy died after a 'minor" surgery at a hospital in East Delhi's Pandav Nagar on Thursday, with officials confirming that his family has alleged medical negligence. According to the family, Viraj Sharma was admitted to SK Jain Hospital for a minor operation. However, within an hour of being hospitalised, he was declared dead. 'He would have gone to Class 1 next year. They (doctors) told us it was just a 15-minute procedure," Viraj's father, Gaurav Sharma was quoted as saying by The Indian Express. The family added that on May 22, doctors had advised some tests to assess whether Viraj was fit to undergo the procedure. According to the boy's father, the test results came back normal, and the doctors gave the go-ahead for the operation. 'On May 28, the doctor told me to bring my son the next morning. On Thursday, around 8 am, I took my son to the hospital. At 8:40 am, they took him to the Operation Theater and told me that it would be done in 15 minutes," said Gaurav, a graphic designer employed at a Noida-based software company. Gaurav said he waited outside the operation theatre until 9:15 am before receiving any information. 'The doctors said they had given him an injection before the operation, which has caused some reactions. They said he was breathing heavily and that his condition is critical," he recalled. He was then taken into the OT, where, according to him, doctors were using electrical pumps on his son's chest. Shortly after, he was informed that Viraj needed to be transferred to another hospital. 'My son's nose was bleeding, his nails were blue, and his body was cold. He was not moving at all. Still, I took him to Makar Hospital with one last hope," he said. At Makar Hospital, doctors conducted an initial examination and declared the child dead. A police complaint has been lodged at the Pandav Nagar police station, and Sharma has also submitted a written complaint to the DCP East District office. Police confirmed that a post-mortem was conducted on Friday, and the findings are awaited to determine whether medical negligence was involved. 'We have constituted a medical board and the inquiry will start as soon as the post-mortem results are in," said DCP (East) Abhishek Dhania. First Published:
Tahawul Tech
26-05-2025
- Business
- Tahawul Tech
Nozomi strengthens global and regional defenses against rising infrastructure cyber threats
Edgard Capdevielle, CEO of Nozomi Networks, shares pressing global and regional insights on the evolution of cyber threats, AI's dual role in defense and offense, and the urgent need to secure operational technologies across sectors, with Interview Excerpts What has been the most significant shift in cyber threats targeting critical infrastructure globally over the past 12 to 18 months, and how has AI evolved in both offensive and defensive strategies? Cyber threats targeting critical infrastructure have become increasingly sophisticated and relentless. Global tensions and geopolitical conflicts often coincide with a surge in cyber activity—ransomware, for example, has grown rampant. AI plays a central role in both attack and defense. Threat actors leverage AI for reconnaissance, social engineering, and code development, while defenders are integrating AI to detect anomalies, enhance visibility, and respond to threats. At Nozomi Networks, our entire platform was built at the intersection of AI and OT security, enabling advanced protection for industrial systems What advanced attack tactics are you observing, and how can infrastructure operators defend against these emerging threats? One major development is the increasing exploitation of the wireless attack surface, particularly in OT and IoT environments. Attackers can now access systems remotely, even from outside facilities like parking lots. Additionally, 'living off the land' attacks—where threat actors exploit legitimate system tools—are hard to detect. Criminals and nation-state actors use AI to craft zero-day exploits and personalized phishing attempts. To counter these threats, we've introduced wireless sensors to broaden visibility and defense. What are the top three emerging threats that critical infrastructure operators need to prepare for, and how can AI help mitigate these risks? Ransomware: It has leveled the playing field, making even non-financial sectors prime targets. Wireless Attacks: Wireless infrastructure can now be exploited externally, bypassing traditional firewall defenses. AI-driven Threats: AI enables highly targeted and automated attacks. 'AI helps mitigate these risks by enhancing real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and adaptive threat response across sectors including energy, tourism, and manufacturing.' How have regional challenges in the Middle East and Africa impacted the cybersecurity posture of critical infrastructure? Are there specific sectors at heightened risk? The GCC region's dependence on critical sectors like oil, gas, water, and energy, combined with ongoing digital transformation and IT-OT convergence, has expanded the attack surface. There's an influx of both cyber criminals and nation-state actors. While the region is advancing in cybersecurity maturity, challenges persist due to legacy OT systems interacting with modern IT, often with inadequate protection. What role do regional regulations and cybersecurity frameworks play in securing critical infrastructure, and how can these be improved? Regulatory bodies across the GCC are becoming more proactive. The UAE's National Cybersecurity Strategy and Saudi Arabia's ECC framework under the NCA are setting foundational standards. Cross-country cooperation is also growing. However, regulations should go beyond compliance and push for proactive risk management. The focus must shift from incident response to predictive protection, supported by a shared risk language across sectors. Is there a gap between the sophistication of cyber threats and the preparedness of critical infrastructure operators in this region? How can this gap be addressed? For years, financial and retail industries evolved in lockstep with cybercriminals, while critical infrastructure lagged behind. Operators now face nation-state-grade threats without the legacy of security investment or practices. Bridging this gap requires not just technical upgrades but cultural and budgetary shifts—security must become embedded into every layer of operations.
Time of India
24-05-2025
- Health
- Time of India
Iron rod got out of labourer's eye after complex op
Mumbai: A 13-cm-long iron object penetrated a 25-year-old labourer's right eye while working at a site in south Mumbai. Doctors at the state-run JJ Hospital, Byculla, removed it in a 3-hour surgery, leaving his vision intact. The labourer, whose name has been withheld on request, was brought to the hospital on May 19 with a thin rod penetrating his eye and blood oozing from the wound. His heart was beating at half the normal rate, and doctors in the casualty department were worried he would soon suffer cardiac arrest. A team of surgeons, led by the ENT dept and including members from the ophthalmology, plastic surgery, and anaesthesiology depts, began the surgery late evening. The rod had an angular entry but was stuck close to the carotid artery, which supplies blood to the brain. A doctor who participated in the surgery said that had the object penetrated straight in the eye, the result could have been fatal. "A complex endoscopic surgery was performed to remove the foreign body. The procedure involved orbital decompression with intranasal removal," said JJ Hospital dean Dr Ajay Bhandarwar. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Trade Bitcoin & Ethereum – No Wallet Needed! IC Markets Start Now Undo The foreign body, measuring 13 cm x 2 cm x 0.5 cm, posed a significant challenge due to its location and potential complications. ENT surgeon Dr Sunita Bage, who performed the surgery, said the thin rod appeared cemented to the spot. After three hours, doctors removed the object with minimal facial damage. Around 2.30 am, he was wheeled out of the OT and taken to the CCU, where doctors tested his vision with rapid hand counting. "We got a doctor to walk in the room and found that even at 3 ft, he could rightly identify her dress colour as green," said Dr Bage. The medical team had feared that the object was so close to the brain that it could cause paralysis, but his movements are fine. He is likely to be discharged on Monday. His relatives and co-workers took him to multiple hospitals before getting him to JJ Hospital. "They wasted five hours, and blood loss resulted in bradycardia (slow normal heart rate)," said Dr Bage.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The brutal men who built Hitler's war machine
The title and sub-title of Charles Dick's well-researched and scholarly book, Unknown Enemy: The Hidden Nazi Force that Built the Third Reich, do him, and it, no favours. Yes, Dick has studied, in depth, the Nazi machine – Organisation Todt (OT), named after its founder Fritz Todt – and which Hitler charged with overseeing the infrastructure of the new Germany. But OT was not an unknown enemy, and it certainly isn't after much scholarship on it. Dick himself published a book on it three years ago, though for an academic market, of which this appears to be in effect a 'popular' version, and it is 15 years since Blaine Taylor's Hitler's Engineers: Fritz Todt and Albert Speer – Master Builders of the Third Reich. As well as books, there are numerous articles in learned journals. But then this is a book for the mass market, which is not credited with too much intelligence; early on, we're told that the Red Army answered to 'Soviet dictator Josef Stalin'. (We are, at least, spared the formula 'Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler'.) Todt was a highly qualified engineer who had fought in the Great War and joined the Nazi party early on. Hitler had great regard for him, not because he was a sycophant – he was far less of one than many who greased up to the Führer – but because he was exceptionally good at his job. He took a realistic view of what his organisation could do, and never overpromised about the speed at which it would do it. Hitler's first great dream in transforming Germany was to improve the roads, so OT built the autobahns. Hitler also regarded them as essential to get his troops to all corners of Europe swiftly, in order to discharge his acts of conquest. When the Second World War came, OT had new priorities: the Atlantic Wall, submarine pens, mines for raw materials, bunkers for command posts and, after the devastating RAF raid on Peenemünde in summer 1943, huge underground factories in which to develop the V-2 and also to build Messerschmitts. This is where Dick lifts up the stone: much of what OT achieved, or tried to achieve, required slave labour. As such, OT played its part in the Final Solution and other war crimes. This book is a depressing reminder that most of the leaders of the organisation, and the chief brutes who worked under them, got away with it. Todt himself did not live to have judgement passed on him: he was killed in a plane crash just after meeting Hitler at his eastern command post in 1942. There have been conspiracy theories ever since that the plane was sabotaged on Hitler's orders. Todt, who had a remarkable grasp of realism in a movement characterised by blind fanaticism, had been to tell his Führer that the war against the Soviet Union was unwinnable, and the Germans should offer peace terms before the conflict broke the Reich's economy. Dick discounts the theory and is right to do so, given the absence of evidence. He points out that if Hitler wanted to be rid of Todt, he had plenty of other means by which to do so. Todt was succeeded by Hitler's blue-eyed boy, Albert Speer. Speer later served 20 years in Spandau for war crimes but managed to charm some of the judges at Nuremberg into believing he should not be hanged. However, his responsibility for OT, the orders he repeatedly gave for the urgent completion of infrastructure projects, whatever the cost, and the bestial conditions in the labour camps for which he was responsible suggest a rope round his neck was the very least he deserved. He compounded his offence by continuing to lie about what he knew – or didn't know – in the 15 years between his release in 1966 and his death in 1981. Dick highlights some of the discrepancies in the stories he told at various times, and his apparent unawareness that a sustained act of genocide was happening. Dick presents the story often from the point of view of the enslaved: Jews for whom getting on an OT work detail was a possible escape from the gas chambers, Russian prisoners of war, Poles and others from the overrun territories of the East. There were also German criminals, hauled out of jail and put to work on lethal projects such as the railway in north Norway that could help ship iron ore to the Reich. Those from western Europe whom the Nazis considered racially superior – French, Dutch, Danes – had better treatment, but the management and overseer class were almost entirely German, and contained the usual quota of sadists and psychopaths. Dick does highlight the odd more humane SS officer, but they were rare birds. What he also makes clear was that OT leaders did not merely work their charges to death, they beat them to death, shot them and sometimes even buried them alive if it suited them. They deserve their place in infamy, but the question of how so many of them got away with their hideous crimes shows just how ineffective the restoration of order in post-Nazi Germany really was. Unknown Enemy: The Hidden Nazi Force that Built the Third Reich is published by Bloomsbury at £25. To order your copy for £19.99, call 0330 173 5030 or visit Telegraph Books Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Newsroom
21-05-2025
- Business
- Newsroom
When public spending cuts precipitate a meltdown
Comment: Stand by for more blunt cuts to government agencies' staffing and spending in Thursday's Budget – and for potentially more of what a new Auditor-General report identifies as rushed, evidence-free, poor-practice changes to please ministers. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has made clear her second Budget will need to mirror her first in finding savings in state spending to fund new initiatives no longer covered by a reduced operating allowance. Indications are that those public service cuts will again need to be substantial to make her numbers work, for now. Last year, one of the agencies that endured a flat 6.5 percent cut to its voted budget was Oranga Tamariki. Its example in finding the necessary savings to meet the Cabinet's demand leading up the 2024 Budget is salutary for the next wave of spending reductions. A new report from the Office of the Auditor-General into Oranga Tamariki's sudden changes to its contracts with external organisations providing prevention and care services for children would be one of the most scathing to emerge from that office in the past few decades. The Auditor-General points to a cluster of poor practice, bad execution and near non-existent communication from the children's ministry in cutting around $60m in its contract spend, cancelling around 30 agencies' funding for 2024/25 and trying to strong-arm others by not paying its bills on time. The 64-page inquiry report says Oranga Tamariki decision makers did not adequately establish what the changes would mean for the children needing care. Worse, the agency simultaneously moved last year to accentuate a policy of grabbing back from some providers all money it said they underspent and had instead put into their reserves. 'Previously, Oranga Tamariki had generally allowed providers to retain funding even if they had not achieved 100 percent of all contracted measures,' the Auditor-General's office said. 'For example, providers could move funding from under-utilised services to over-utilised services to meet demand.' The process of seeking full return, known as 'reconciliation', saw Children's Minister Karen Chhour publicly declare, without evidence found by the Auditor-General, that some community service providers had used the taxpayer as a 'cash cow' for too long. And at the same time as the cuts to contract funding and the reconciliation demands, OT was also restructuring out about half the relevant staff, some of whom worked in regions liaising with the outside providers being cut. Told it needed to find the 6.5 percent budget cut, it attempted all these changes at once. The result, according to the Auditor-General report, was dire. OT gave notice to providers that equated to a few working hours (not days or weeks) over Matariki weekend in 2024. It did not tell them why they were losing money, would not engage or explain and then it was forced to keep referring children to some of those same agencies for help. It tried to make the agencies losing funding do the work of finding new services to refer children to. It withheld payment to some organisations as a way to force agreement on either new contract arrangements or to enforce returns of the underspent monies from previous years. The inquiry report says OT had no evidence where the money some organisations had in reserve might have come from – for example, other income streams, other government funding lines. It also would not let the agencies redirect the 'underspend' in areas where they had 'overspent' because of demand for care of children. Organisations affected by the contract changes eventually had a reprieve six months later, when Chhour's office announced a delay to the changeover timeline for some funding until December this year. Crucially, the savings programme aiming to cut contracts by $60m to $400m ended up finding just half that because OT had to keep paying transition costs, among other things. Politically, all this was at arm's length. Chhour and the Government can claim the contract problems were operational decisions, as were the decisions to seek 'reconciliation' by taking back underspent monies and also to cut staff involved in managing the contracts. But the defence is thin. A blunt demand for cuts of 6.5 percent spooked an apparently dysfunctional government agency to rush and botch funding changes, with unknown effects on wait times, service standards or service cuts for … children. Chhour repeatedly told opposition MPs in Parliament there had been no change to 'frontline' OT services, but the Labour and Greens MPs retorted then that her definition of 'frontline' to mean OT's own staff working directly with kids was artifice. The Auditor-General's report, so timely in the week before another Budget of expected cuts, cannot say so, but the evidence it lays out and the findings within clearly show the political direction was central to what resulted. 'Oranga Tamariki told us that it received a clear direction from the Minister for Children that Oranga Tamariki needed to focus on its core purpose.' Chhour told the Auditor-General's inquirers that her instruction was not to find savings but to ensure funding went to outcomes sought and were connected to core purposes, without duplication. Given what followed, and OT's focus for months on savings and dollars, that argument amounts to something of an out-of-body-experience. The report says the OT failures 'have harmed trust and confidence' and 'public organisations need to actively demonstrate that they can act as a trusted partner'. 'The services provided under contract support some of New Zealand's most vulnerable children and their families. Therefore it is critical that Oranga Tamariki manages the contracts well.' Something might have been learned between 2024 and the expected further cuts to public agency budgets for the 2025/26 financial year. The Auditor-General sure hopes so. 'The effects of decisions on children and their families are still not known. Given this is the core role of Oranga Tamariki, it is unacceptable for it to be in this situation.'
