Month: June 2025

SAMASTIPUR/NEW YORK (TIP) : A teenager from a small village in Bihar, India has captured international attention with his remarkable talent in cybersecurity. Ram Jee Raj, a 17-year-old ethical hacker from Pahepur, near Samastipur, recently discovered a major vulnerability on the official website of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and has since been inducted into NASA’s Cyber Security Hall of Fame, reports local media channel.
Despite having no formal training, Raj is a self-taught cybersecurity enthusiast who learned coding, game development, and web development by watching online tutorials and reading on his own. His interest in technology was sparked during childhood through video games, which gradually evolved into a deeper passion for understanding software, systems—and eventually, ethical hacking.
According to reports, Raj uncovered a serious flaw in NASA’s website and responsibly reported the issue by emailing the agency with technical details and a suggested fix. Five days later, NASA confirmed the vulnerability, took corrective action, and sent Raj an official acknowledgment and commendation.
His accomplishment is even more inspiring given his background. Raj is the son of Rinkesh Kumar, a resident of Pahepur. He is also currently working on a startup focused on using AI to revolutionize farming—an innovation he hopes will benefit India’s agricultural communities.
“I consider myself a white-hat hacker,” Raj has said in interviews, referring to ethical hackers who help organizations improve security. His success story is already inspiring other young Indians, especially those from rural areas, to explore careers in technology.

NEW DELHI (TIP): Three men from Punjab, who had gone missing in May while they were travelling to Iran, have been rescued by Tehran police, sources said on Tuesday, June 3.
The three rescued men have been identified as Hushanpreet Singh from Sangrur, Jaspal Singh from SBS Nagar, and Amritpal Singh from Hoshiarpur. They had gone missing shortly after arriving in Tehran on May 1.
The three men were allegedly duped by an illegal travel agent who promised them work permits in Australia. Instead, the agent routed them through Iran via the dunki route. Later, it was alleged that they were kidnapped.
Their families had claimed that the kidnappers demanded a ransom of Rs 1 crore and threatened to kill the men if the payment was not made.
The relatives alleged that the kidnappers shared pictures and videos showing the men with their hands tied by ropes and visible cuts and bruises on their bodies. The families said they were able to communicate with the men during the initial days, but the contact was lost after May 11.
Last week, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had said it is working closely with Iranian authorities to locate the three men, with efforts under way to ensure their safe and early return.
MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, confirming the ongoing coordination, had said, “We are trying to locate them for their safety, security and eventual return home.

ABU DHABI (TIP): Manpreet Singh, a resident of New Delhi, has appealed the Indian government regarding the torture and harassment of his father, Dalvinder Singh, faced in Abu Dhabi.
Talking to the media, Manpreet narrated the traumatic experience his father endured. Dalvinder Singh, an Amritdhari Sikh from Kaithal, travelled to Abu Dhabi on a tourist visa as part of a group tour on April 21. When the group visited the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan (BAPS) Temple, the Abu Dhabi police stopped Dalvinder Singh, questioning him about his kirpan. Despite efforts by the tour guides and the temple management to explain about the religious significance of the symbols, the authorities were not convinced and arrested him.
Manpreet said his father had to face humiliation and mental torture during his 20-day detention. Despite the CID, Baniyas jail authorities, and Al Rhaba jail authorities initially denying the arrest, they later blamed Dalvinder for arguing with the police. However, Dalvinder Singh does not know the local language of UAE or English, making the allegation baseless; and it was also not mentioned in the court order.
During his detention, Dalvinder Singh was kept in inhumane conditions. His turban, kada, and kanga were forcibly removed, leaving him bareheaded and depriving him of his religious beliefs.
In the final days of his detention, he was shifted to Al Wathba Central Jail. He was served non-vegetarian food — even though he’s a vegetarian. He was deported without his turban, causing severe humiliation during his flight to India.
In search of Dalvinder Singh, Manpreet and his father-in-law were sent from one jail to another. It was only after the intervention of the Indian embassy that Baniyas jail authorities accepted his arrest. Despite court orders for his eviction, the process was delayed by 15 days.
Manpreet Singh appealed to the Indian government to take up the matter with its counterpart in UAE to ensure such incidents do not occur again.

STANFORD (TIP): Indian American physician and writer Abraham Verghese has underscored the vital role of immigrants in the life of the nation underlining the contributions of international students living, studying, and working in the U.S.
“When legal immigrants and others who are lawfully in this country, including so many of your international students, worry about being wrongly detained and even deported, perhaps it’s fitting that you hear from an immigrant like me,” he said at Harvard’s 374th Commencement last week.
Verghese, who teaches at Stanford, was the principal speaker at Commencement, which unfolded as a federal judge in Boston extended a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration’s revocation of Harvard’s ability to host international students and scholars, the Harvard Gazette reported.
He also spoke directly to the contributions of foreign-born doctors at hospitals across the country.
“We were recruited here because American medical schools simply don’t graduate sufficient numbers of physicians to fill the country’s need,” said Verghese, who spent two years early in his career at what is now Boston Medical Center. “More than a quarter of the physicians in the country are foreign medical graduates, many of them ultimately settling in places that others might not find as desirable.”
“A part of what makes America great, if I may use the phrase, is that it allows an immigrant like me to blossom here, just as generations of other immigrants and their children have flourished and contributed in every walk of life, working to keep America great.”
He was speaking from experience. Born in Ethiopia to expatriate teachers from India, Verghese, a doctor and writer, began his medical studies in Addis Ababa but had to interrupt them as the country descended into civil war in 1974.
After completing his medical studies at Madras Medical College in India, he arrived in Johnson City, Tennessee, as an infectious disease specialist in the mid-1980s, the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
Pointing to his experience as a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop — his books include “Cutting for Stone,” “My Own Country,” and “The Covenant of Water” — Verghese credited America for enriching his life as an author.
He quoted the novelist E.L. Doctorow: “It is the immigrant hordes who keep this country alive, the waves of them arriving year after year. Who believes in America more than the people who run down the gangplank and kiss the ground?”
He also praised Harvard President Alan Garber for resisting Trump administration demands for viewpoint audits and other measures, even as dramatic funding cuts imperil the University’s ability to carry out its research mission. Harvard deserves support and praise, he said, for “affirming and courageously defending the essential values of this university, and indeed of this nation.”
Verghese also stressed the importance of character and courage: “Graduates, the decisions you will make in the future under pressure will say something about your character, while they also shape and transform you in unexpected ways.
“Make your decisions worthy of those who supported, nurtured, and sacrificed for you: your parents, your partners, your family, and your ancestors. Make your decisions worthy of this great university and the hardship it must endure going forward as it works to preserve the value of what you accomplished here.”
Verghese exhorted students, “Cherish this special day. And above all, make good use of your time.”

NEW YORK (TIP): An Indian American student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was barred from attending her graduation ceremony after delivering a speech denouncing the war in Gaza, according to media reports.
Megha Vemuri, the 2025 class president of MIT, is the latest in the list of students to face discipline after protesting the war in Gaza.
Vemuri told CNN that after her speech, the university’s senior leadership informed her she was not allowed to attend Friday’s commencement ceremony and was barred from campus until the event concluded.
School officials confirmed that they told Vemuri that she was prohibited from attending the undergraduate ceremony. MIT leadership said that they stand by the punishment they issued to Vemuri.
“MIT supports free expression but stands by its decision, which was in response to the individual deliberately and repeatedly misleading Commencement organizers and leading a protest from the stage,” a school spokesperson said in a statement.
The school said that she would receive her degree.
Vemuri, who grew up in Georgia, was a scheduled speaker at Thursday’s OneMIT Commencement ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she took to the podium, with a keffiyeh – a symbol of pro-Palestinian solidarity – draped over her graduation robe.
She praised her peers for protesting the war in Gaza and criticized the university’s ties to Israel.
An MIT spokesperson told CNN Vemuri’s speech on Thursday “was not the one that was provided by the speaker in advance.”
Vemuri’s father Sarat said that she was a double major, in computation and cognition and linguistics, and was told that she would receive her diploma by mail.
Vemuri said she was grateful for her family, who have been present this week, supporting her. She says she’s not disappointed about not getting to walk the stage.
“I see no need for me to walk across the stage of an institution that is complicit in this genocide,” Vemuri said.
“I am, however, disappointed that MIT’s officials massively overstepped their roles to punish me without merit or due process, with no indication of any specific policy broken,” she added.
He called MIT’s purported support of free speech hypocritical.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has condemned the university’s decision to ban Vemuri from the ceremony.
“MIT must respect academic freedom and respect the voices of its students, not punish and intimidate those who speak out against genocide and in support of Palestinian humanity,” CAIR-Massachusetts Executive Director Tahirah Amatul-Wadud said in a statement.
College campuses across the US have witnessed protest encampments and accusations of antisemitism since the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza.
The tensions coupled with the Trump administration’s attacks on universities, have left some school communities wrestling with how to balance civility and safety with open expression and debate, The New York Times said.
New York University recently said it was withholding the diploma of a student who condemned “genocide” in Gaza while delivering a graduation speech. Several students at Harvard, Columbia and other universities nationwide are also facing disciplinary threats.
At the start of the school year in September, MIT issued new school rules surrounding when and where students can protest on its campus.
School leadership has responded more strictly toward unsanctioned demonstrations this year, which was a departure from the prior school year when protestors camped out on campus.