Feature
China secretly kills 20 agents of America’s secrete agency CIA
Washington: According to a media reports, Chinese government has secretly killed or imprisoned at least 20 agents of America’s secrete agency CIA in between 2010 and 2012 to crippling the country’s information.
Officials told America’s local news paper that it was not clear whether the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was hacked or whether a mole helped the Chinese to identify the agents.
On other hand, the CIA has not commented on the any such report on Sunday.
The one of NYT official was quoted saying on the report, one of the informants was shot in the courtyard of a government building as a warning to others.
Four former CIA officials spoke to the NYT, telling it that information from sources deep inside the Chinese government started to dry up in 2010. Informants began to disappear in early 2011.
The CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) teamed up to investigate the events in an operation one source said was codenamed Honey Badger.
The NYT report said this investigation had centred on one former CIA operative but there was not enough evidence to arrest him. He now lives in another Asian country.
In 2012, an official at China’s Security Ministry was arrested on suspicion of spying for the US. He was said to have been lured into the CIA.
In 2010-2012 Chinese government secretly kills 20 agents of America’s secrete agency CIA:
No other such arrests appear to have reached public attention during that time.
Matt Apuzzo, a New York Times journalist who worked on the story, told the BBC: “One of the really troubling things about this is that we still don’t know what happened.”
Apuzzo said, “There’s a divide within the American government over whether there was a mole inside the CIA or whether this was a tradecraft problem, that the CIA agents got sloppy and got discovered, or whether the Chinese managed to hack communications.”
A few years later in 2015, the CIA pulled staff out of the US embassy in Beijing, after a hack blamed on the Chinese state exposed information about millions of US federal employees.
If the events of 2010-2012 were helped by a similar hack, it was not one that was made public.
The disappearance of so many spies damaged a network it had taken years to build up, the New York Times report said, and hampered operations for years afterwards.
It even prompted questions from within the Barcak Obama administration as to why intelligence had slowed.
Officials said it was one of the worst security breaches of recent years.
The State Scores Extra High on Gaming-Friendly Industry Index
Meghalaya scored 92.85 out of 100 possible points in a Gaming Industry Index and proved to be India’s most gaming-friendly state following its recent profound legislation changes over the field allowing land-based and online gaming, including games of chance, under a licensing regime.
The index by the UK India Business Council (UKIBC) uses a scale of 0 to 100 to measure the level of legalisation on gambling and betting achieved by a state based on the scores over a set of seven different games – lottery, horse racing, betting on sports, poker, rummy, casino and fantasy sports
Starting from February last year, Meghalaya became the third state in India’s northeast to legalise gambling and betting after Sikkim and Nagaland. After consultations with the UKIBC, the state proceeded with the adoption of the Meghalaya Regulation of Gaming Act, 2021 and the nullification of the Meghalaya Prevention of Gambling Act, 1970. Subsequently in December, the Meghalaya Regulation of Gaming Rules, 2021 were notified and came into force.
All for the Tourists
The move to legalise and license various forms of offline and online betting and gambling in Meghalaya is aimed at boosting tourism and creating jobs, and altogether raising taxation revenues for the northeastern state. At the same time, the opportunities to bet and gamble legally will be reserved only for tourists and visitors.
“We came out with a Gaming Act and subsequently framed the Regulation of Gaming Rules, 2021. The government will accordingly issue licenses to operate games of skill and chance, both online and offline,” said James P. K. Sangma, Meghalaya State Law and Taxation Minister speaking in the capital city of Shillong. “But the legalized gambling and gaming will only be for tourists and not residents of Meghalaya,” he continued.
To be allowed to play, tourists and people visiting the state for work or business purposes will have to prove their non-resident status by presenting appropriate documents, in a process similar to a bank KYC (Know Your Customer) procedure.
Meghalaya Reaches Out to a Vast Market
With 140 millions of people in India estimated to bet regularly on sports, and a total of 370 million desi bettors around prominent sporting events, as per data from one of the latest reports by Esse N Videri, Meghalaya is set to reach out and take a piece of a vast market.
Estimates on the financial value of India’s sports betting market, combined across all types of offline channels and online sports and cricket predictions and betting platforms, speak about amounts between $130 and $150 billion (roughly between ₹9.7 and ₹11.5 lakh crore).
Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Delhi are shown to deliver the highest number of bettors and Meghalaya can count on substantial tourists flow from their betting circles. The sports betting communities of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are also not to be underestimated.
Among the sports, cricket is most popular, registering 68 percent of the total bet count analyzed by Esse N Videri. Football takes second position with 11 percent of the bets, followed by betting on FIFA at 7 percent and on eCricket at 5 percent. The last position in the Top 5 of popular sports for betting in India is taken by tennis with 3 percent of the bet count.
Local Citizens will Still have Their Teer Betting
Meghalaya residents will still be permitted to participate in teer betting over arrow-shooting results. Teer is a traditional method of gambling, somewhat similar to a lottery draw, and held under the rules of the Meghalaya Regulation of the Game of Arrow Shooting and the Sale of Teer Tickets Act, 2018.
Teer includes bettors wagering on the number of arrows that reach the target which is placed about 50 meters away from a team of 20 archers positioned in a semicircle.
The archers shoot volleys of arrows at the target for ten minutes, and players place their bets choosing a number between 0 and 99 trying to guess the last two digits of the number of arrows that successfully pierce the target.
If, for example, the number of hits is 256, anyone who has bet on 56 wins an amount eight times bigger than their wager.
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