Okay, I'm going to explain briefly our recent paper with Marcoli, which is in the archive, only it's not in mathematical section, but in physical section, so mathematicians usually cannot find it, Big Bang, Blow Up, and Modular Curves, algebraic geometry and cosmology. Well, I think everybody heard about Big Bang. Our universe seemingly started in a unique event. There was nothing before, then suddenly something blew up, and of course this verb blew up, suggest analogy with algebraic geometry immediately. Something blew up, and then somehow this universe started. And it's according to observational data and standard theories, it will end as a very, very large, maybe infinitely large and infinitely cold space without anything interesting going on. So recently, well, not very recently, but the last decade or so, Professor Penrose, Roger Penrose, who has a lot of mathematical and physical fantasy, suggested that, as a poet said in my end, is my beginning, namely that actually before the Big Bang, there was a previous aeon, previous universe that became very, very big and cold. But then something happened, and there was this Big Bang, and everything started again. Mathematically speaking, in order to invent a model of something like that, one should start with explaining what happens exactly at the moment zero and at the moment infinity. And geometrically, it means that we should define some interesting possibilities for future and past boundaries of space times. And if possible, the boundaries should be such that future boundaries of one aeon should somehow match the early boundary, zero boundary of the next aeon. That's one thing, and that will be the subject of the first part of my talk. Then I will say a few words about observational data, data, what is time in cosmology. And then I will discuss the moment that was central in my idea of how to cope mathematically with all this story. I asked the question, what happens with time at the boundary? And then I'll explain how modular curves enter the picture. This is a mathematical thing, and they match the so-called mixed master universe that was invented by physicists, and say a few words about boundaries and Roger Pendereau's crossovers. So, future and past boundaries. So, the general notion of a boundary is quite well known to mathematicians. If we have a manifold M and some subset in it, open subset, and then this open subset is embedded into something else, as an open subset. And it's embedded in such a way that its closure, its dense, and so its closure coincides with M bar zero. And then we say that this difference between M bar zero and M zero is a partial boundary of M. It's by no means uniquely defined. You need an external embedding for it. Boundaries are generally used for studying asymptotic behavior of dynamical systems, solutions to differential equations. So, in particular, when we are describing classical models of universe-satisfying Einstein equations, and we want to study their limiting behavior, we usually add some boundary, and then look what happens at this boundary. But I will start with two very elementary examples. The basic example one is the projective boundary of Minkowski spacetime. So, M4 is a fine four-dimensional space with a metric of Lorentz signature. And let's embed it into this affine space, into its projective space in an economical way. And then the boundary will be three-dimensional vector space. And basic example two is a blow-up where we replace a point in M4 by the projective space of origin directions. Again, boundary is P3 here. Here, there is one subtlety, whether we are imagining complex case, which is also quite interesting in the Sir Roger context, or whether we are imagining real space. We can imagine first complex space, and then real points of it if there is a natural real structure. But on the other hand, this boundary may have a non-trivial fundamental group. And it might happen that we should pass from real points of a complex picture to a cover of it. But this is related to possibility of non-trivial orientation in the real case. But these are particularities. So, here is the canonical linear model of universal non-gelativistic cosmic time. This is kind of synthesis of results of observations. So, we have this vague point of blow-up. Then, there is a very mysterious period of inflation. So, time here goes in the horizontal direction. There is a very mysterious period of inflation, during which the universe becomes very, very big. But the period itself is something like 10 power minus 32 or 34 seconds. The cosmologists invented this period in order to explain, of course, nothing is observable from this period, but they invented this period in order to explain some things that could not be explained otherwise. First stars appear about 400 million years after the Big Bang. And then there is a period till now, which takes about 14 billion years. And up to approximately this moment, the light did not come to our space section only later on. And during this time, so this is dark age, so to speak, then here development of galaxies, planets and so on. And here very essential dark energy becomes an accelerated expansion. Now, of course, I have absolutely no time and competence to discuss details of many of these strange happenings. But what I want to discuss a little bit is mathematical correlates of the idea that there is some kind of cosmic time, cosmic time. This is pretty strange from a mathematical viewpoint, and I will return to it a little bit later. But right now, using this picture, I will illustrate what two boundaries I suggest to add to any mathematical picture of this observational one. At the cold end of the universe, I presume that it is well approximated by flat Minkowski space, although there is matter, there are some curvatures and things like that, but globally it's well approximated by Minkowski space. And therefore, the future boundary can be approximated by the simplest boundary of Minkowski space, namely three-dimensional projective space. Now, it carries one, so time infinity, moment of time infinity corresponds to the section P3. But there is one additional structure there, namely, so to speak, infinite sky. The point is that if we take any moment of space time in the Minkowski space and then draw the whole cone of light cone, the whole light cone from this point, then at P3 they will have all one common base. Because, say, if you look at this light cone and this particular light ray and then this one and the parallel light ray, then at the end they have the common point. And this common point will be the point of this infinite sky. On the other hand, at the moment of zero I imagine that I have some classical geometric picture of this space. I take this point of Big Bang and I blow it up in the algebraic geometrical sense. So there it was my unfold with Lauren's signature metric. Here is this point.  And then I get the new P3 which takes place of this plane and this point, sorry, and its intersection, its base in the tangent space is again this additional structure in this P3. So we see that these two simple mathematical procedures give boundaries at the beginning and at the end of the same structure, P3 and a sky sphere. Okay. Now I want to discuss what is this mysterious cosmological time. As I said, this is an abstraction invented by cosmologists. The point is that of course in relativistic models of space time, time is a local notion. If you have a time like geodesic gamma, then differential of local time, time along this geodesics on gamma is the same as differential of the relevant Einstein metric restricted upon gamma. So I will always consider Lauren's metric of signature 1, 3, that is 1 plus time dt square minus 3 squares of space coordinates.  We usually imagine that space like point are on a real distance, but with this convention the distance is purely imaginary. So if you wish it's the same time. Unlike light like geodesics, time stays still. Time is just zero along light like geodesic. So if you imagine different directions from one point of space time in various directions, so this light cone becomes a wall. The respective wall crossing in the space of geodesics produce the well-known to physicists the weak rotation of time from real axis to imaginary axis. Only of course physicists invented it in a totally different context. But nevertheless here it is very clear. Now cosmological time is a theoretical construct. It's not anything like this local times. It's a theoretical construct not unique and depending on the choice of model of the way physicists match observations with their mathematical model and so on. Here are two important examples that are bridging theory and observations. One example is the so called inverse temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation. One divided by KT. It is accepted that the current value of this background radiation measures the global age of our universe starting from the time when we start seeing light. That's approximately as many years after the Big Bang. Before that it was a pack. Now this is one way to define so to speak cosmic time and another way is the red shift of stars in observable galaxies and then multiplied by Hubble's constant. This is also a very remarkable suggestion or discovery made in the 20s that the red shift in the usual way is proportional to the velocity with which the star goes away from us but that it is also proportional to the distance to the star. The coefficient is the so called Hubble constant. So we have then the observable stars and galaxies now are put to various cosmological time sections of our universe. So this is the Sloan Digital Scala survey. Unfortunately it's not so easy to see well the colors here. The point is so here we are this is Earth. Each point that you see here is a galaxy and the red date is the older Earth stars of this galaxy. The red date is the older Earth stars. Here is the outer circle. It's approximately the distance of 2 billion light years and white sectors contain unseen galaxies. They are obstructed by dust, the so called dust. Such a dusty matter in our own galaxy. So this kind of observations, radio telescopes and things like that, big computers of course, produce the basis of the reconstruction of the model of the universe. And when I produced this slide I found to my amazement that the scientific picture of observable universe appears on an uncanny resemblance to Marcel Duchamp classical of modernism. New Dessant d'en escalier. So the lady here is drawn at the various moments of her getting down the stairs. Of course for Duchamp the motivation was the new media movies and things like that but our universe behaves in a similar way. We see it in various moments of its existence. Now I will describe so I have described approximately to what we want to apply our mathematical models, how do we produce boundaries past and future of our models. And now I want to explain the idea that when time is on the boundary, then time becomes purely imaginary. But this weak rotation in two different models either happens instantly or else is mediated by the movement of time along the hyperbolic, along the hyperbolic geodesic in the complex half plane. So in the complex half plane we have real axis, imaginary axis and time can just the zero from imaginary become real or vice versa or this jump can be modelled by going along the geodesic. Here a little bit mathematics. So first of all one of the standard cosmological models of universe is the Friedman-Robertson-Walker one. Such a time is a product of axis of cosmological time t and three space of constant curvature k, one minus one or zero. That at the moment t is rescaled by a factor. To find this factor we should solve Einstein differential equations in various models. So we have the signature metric and depending on the curvature we have this value for coefficients s and r as I said depends on the chosen solution. So dynamics then is described by one real function r of t. It increases from zero in the big bank to infinity and this is the scale r equals to one now. Now if one writes the differential equations that constrain r of t, the following refers to the so-called cosmological constant three. Then in the strange way I was very much impressed when I've seen the equation of an elliptic curve. Physicist usually do not know what is an elliptic curve and cannot recognize its equation when they see it but for me it was a key moment, a decisive moment. I found out that what I thought about imaginary time somehow matches very well this appearance of this elliptic curve in the equations and moreover they then model the global time besides the proper time t from which we started and the scale factor r of t. They introduce a very natural again for a mathematician time, cosmological time, just the integral of the differential of the first kind along a real curve from zero to present moment r of t. Coefficient a and b here are characterizing matter and radiation sources so they also depend on time and in concrete situations they differ depending on what kind of conjectures you assume. But now the qualitative summary in the Friedman-Robertson-Walker universe the time evolution is described by a real curve on an algebraic surface so it's not universal but the universal surface having all elliptic curves on it. There exists of course a very well known to mathematicians the universal family of elliptic curves which is parametrized by the upper half plane. Just take a point tall, take and see the lattice generated by one and tall and take the quotient. This group acts upon the whole family in this way and quotient by subgroups are usually a finite index, are modular curves, they parametrize also other verse of family. Below I will show that as soon as we have this picture of cosmological time in our minds we can understand different picture of universe near Big Bang which is called the so-called mixed-max universe. So we will be imagining it as a statistical dynamics approximation to an unknown quantum field or string picture of the Big Bang. Okay so a new subject matter what is a mixed-max universe? As I wanted to say it is a certain classical dynamical system with chaotic behavior which approximates the behavior of a set of certain pretty simple solutions near but near the Big Bang. That is the point. So we will take the so-called Bianchi-9 space time which has a so symmetry of its space like sections and essentially its main difference from the Robertson-Wauker model is that now we had there say when we had a positive curve which is then we had essentially a sphere here only the radius has been changing but now we have an ellipsoid each axis can have a different coefficient of expansion A, B, T, B, C. They are called scale factors and there exist a fantastically simple family of the so-called Kassner solutions to Einstein equations. They are just powers of T or these three coefficients are just power of T and this Pi are points on the real algebraic curve which is of course just a circle. The metric becomes singular at t equal to zero which is the Big Bang moment. Okay now in the 70s, Belinsky, Halatnikov and Liefschitz argued that if we consider not specific Kassner solutions to this model, Bianchi-9 model but kind of typical solution and move not from the Big Bang to infinity but in the reverse direction when we look at the typical solution that goes backwards in time then this typical solution to this model can be described by an infinite sequence of Kassner solutions that is infinite sequence of points P1, P2, 3 on this real circle. The space of the sequences is endowed with symbolic dynamic that encodes the logarithmic time dynamic of the relevant Bianchi spaces and it was discovered quite early that formal is the same symbolic dynamic encodes geodesics with irrational real ends and complex upper half plane H and their projections to the modular curve. In this paper with Matilda are probably one of the main suggestions besides suggesting this relevance of the imaginary time during the transition periods. A certain suggestion how to explain this coincidence, the symbolic dynamics of Kassner solutions and the symbolic dynamics of geodesics. So we argue that the identification of these two dynamics reflects the picture of physical time undergoing as I said reverse recrotation mediated by the movement along hyperbolic geodesics. So now I have yet some time so I can give some details about these two different encodings. So one encoding is BKL encoding of Kassner errors. So we introduce here the reverse logarithmic time as I said there are many cosmological times so introduce this one. When omega goes to plus infinity, this means that you go backwards to the big bank and BKL argues that the typical solution determines a sequence of infinitely increasing moments omega 0, omega 1, omega n and the sequence of irrational real numbers un and during one semi-interval which is called nth Kassner era for a given trajectory gamma. The evolution of ABC is approximately described by several consecutive Kassner formulas. Time intervals where scaling powers are constant are called Kassner cycles. And the evolution in the nth era starts at a time omega n with a certain value un and this determines the value of u determines the respective scaling powers p1, p2, p3. Here they are. Then the next cycles inside the same era start with values u minus 1, u minus 2 and the respective scaling powers and after as many cycles inside the current era jump to the next era comes with this parameter. This means that the natural encoding of all un together is obtained by just considering an irrational number x together with continued fraction decomposition and that the time flow is modeled by the powers of this discrete shift. Just very simple. And xn is this. So now this is inside one era. So what happens at the next moment? We introduce an additional parameter delta n that translates omega n into new value m omega n plus 1 and then the information about both sequences together is actually modeled or encoded by powers of the shift of two sided sequences of natural numbers. When we didn't look at the omega then we got only one sided and here it's two sided and the rearrangement of coordinates like that in the increasing order induces generally a non identical permutation of coefficients and when u diminishes by one the old permutation is multiplied the old permutation is multiplied by this one and when we pass to the next era then this permutation occurs. Now I will show you that the geodesic flow on modular surfaces is very naturally encoded in exactly the same way. We consider geodesics in up a half plane that are intersecting the imaginary half line. If we take such two sided infinite sequences of case then we define using it the geodesic going from initial point x minus which is between minus one and zero to the end point which is in the interval between one and plus infinity and here are precise definitions of this and the relevant Poincare section for this symbolic dynamics on one of these curves is essentially the projection of the imaginary semi axis of h to m. Here are a few. Also on h we see tessellation by fundamental domains for PSL to Z and its projection its trace on the real axis is essentially a farry triangle. So we have three geodesics connecting three rational points or i infinity and two rational points here are farry neighbors. And encoding oriented geodesics with irrational ends by double sided sequences we do it in the following way. We go say from this point on imaginary axis in this direction. We intersect one triangle of the tessellation and look where is the point i infinity to the right or to the left. Here it is to the left of my geodesics. Then I pass another triangle where the respective point is here to the right then one more to the right and so on. So we have infinite sequences and in this context there is an explanation of coincidence of these two encodings of solutions of typical solutions of Einstein equations and sequences can get its qualitative explanation namely postulating that return of the cosmological time to its real values is mediated by a stretch of hyperbolic geodesics and we never choose any concrete geodesics we consider the whole dynamical system and in this way we get statistical classical statistical description which should be in principle the trace of a known for us quantum development. Well a small warning when we embed the real curve tool using invariant of elliptic curve that I have shown I choose the coordinate minus i2 and think about right complex of blunder than upper one but this doesn't matter much. Okay. Now I am returning to boundaries and crossovers. The remark I made at the very beginning about mathematical isomorphism of two boundaries that deal with their skies future boundary of asymptotically flat space time and past blow-up boundary modeling Big Bang and I am again here that it may be used to furnish a mathematical model of what Penrose calls conformal cyclic cosmology. So this is Penrose's picture of expanding universe and it is the same as was at the very beginning only very schematic and now times goes up instead of to the right. So we have Big Bang somewhere here is very very brief but enormous inflation period we are somewhere here space section can be finite or compact or infinite and here are the data that I have already explained as a provisional data in the initial picture just the picture taken from Penrose book and what he suggests is that somehow as the previous universe ends somehow the new one starts and his mathematics that he suggested concerns matching not actual geometry of space but the relevant Einstein matrix namely he essentially is saying that when we go to this boundary from the past that is from the future of previous eon or backwards to the past of current eon then the metrics match in the following way they become conformally equivalent but the conformal factor tends to zero in one case it tends to infinity in other case is his conformal rescading intuitively I think it agrees with the pictures that we suggest namely that our past and future boundary get blown together if one uses the Penrose picture of twisters so the metric can be then matched in a conformal way but generally our picture is this assume that we have two models of space time m minus for the previous eon m plus for the next eon and m plus must be endowed with a point big bank point of course there is nothing invariant about this point as soon as we are considering the four four dimensional space only when we introduce the cosmological time then we can say ah this is moment zero before that just any big back point we construct then a partial compactification of m minus by three dimensional projective space or a subdomain in it construct the algebraic geometric blow up m bar m plus and identify the boundary of m minus bar with the part of the divisor of tangent directions and this will be the crossover and identification will be through identification of skies of the respective skies this notion that future sky of previous eon somehow corresponds to the past sky of the next eon is very essential for any attempts to produce observational validation or or falsification of this picture so it's quite important that in our geometric construction it appears in an extremely natural way and I repeat that at the moment of the crossover t infinity previous eon t zero this one the cosmological time undergoes a recitation becomes purely imaginary and then undergoes a reverse recitation and the mixed-marked stochotic universe is accommodated here if the reverse recitation is mediated by a stretch of hyperbolic geodesic thank you so the way you include the geodesics in terms of words of left and right left and right and so on reminded me of how we can from the Christ making torus of a two-dimensional torus also by left and right angles is it just an accident producing no I mean this is the particular case of the general Poincare principle if you have some chaotic movement on a geometric manifold or whatever how do you encode the typical behavior you choose also to speak and then you count only moments where this geodesic or whatever it is intersects this wall this principle is so universal that it works almost everywhere but with different choices so do you see any connection from that in Torre or is this an accident? well what I do see is really this connection with real curves on universal families of elliptic curves maybe one and another themselves are connected somehow I do not know I do not understand why you you said that this is like a miraculous link between the BKM picture and well because you know, Mitzner and Chitra in the 70s understood that the BKM picture was a billiard on the hyperbolic space on the hyperbolic plane and then the shape of the billiard is the art in billiard which is half the modular billiard and this generalized to any dimension to the models coming from no what picture there that you did not mention which explains well I mean I think that the real explanation is even now not in place because we must have a precise mathematical bridge between solutions of Einstein equations and this picture up to now these two encodings exist so to speak juristically and independently our suggestion which is not yet made mathematically precise is that this bridge between two ways of looking at these encodings should be through considering the time curve as a curve on familiar elliptic curves this should be verified proved or whatever by looking at concrete solutions of Einstein equations those that were used by Misner and Bogojevlinski and Halatnikov and Belinsky, Lifschitz everybody but up to now the coincidence of these two encodings was only looked as a miraculous coincidence including the work of Misner I think well Do you see as it's kind of complex analytic continuation of space time around Big Ben is kind of nice analytic complexity continuation of space time is kind of nice around Big Ben Yes, in a way yes with one reservation namely this strange thing that when you do blow-ups in complex geometry and real geometry you get in real geometry this additional covering but otherwise yes complex analytic story is very natural like in Penrose twisters Because there was sometimes when we were coming by Neil Turok about making fundamental not around Big Ben but kind of contours around here doing the standard Yeah, we must find time on Turok I must look at it, I don't know Another question Let's thank Yuri Valovic


The news broadcast ecosystem is one of the most interesting places to be in because the business of news is in constant evolution. After comprehensive feedback from the industry, we bring to you our annual conference news next 2018. Our theme this year is future of news television in a multi-lingual, multi-screen environment. With that, I'd like to invite Mr. Anurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, Business World and the Exchange for Media Group to please come and present the welcome address. Good morning. It's my honour and privilege to be at an event that is possibly for me the biggest and the most important event in the Exchange for Media calendar and possibly in the news industry in India. We also have Mr. Suman Seraf and Mr. Kamini Seraf from Hyderabad. Mr. Seraf is the promoter of Radha TMT. It's a large steel company or TMT company. Mr. Kamini Seraf is the chairperson of the Fikis Ladies' Organization and is very active in the media. I have lots of friends in the audience. I would also like to tell you that Jyotsana and Rohail are not, you know, hosts. They are editorial colleagues that work in Exchange for Media. Jyotsana edits pitch our marketing magazine. Rohail is a senior editorial colleague at Exchange for Media and he covers advertising marketing media for us. Now, let me ask you, my friend Praveen Negum who is a market entry and a service text expert. He wrote a book on service text 12 years back and many more friends from the industry some I can see and because of the bright lights it blinds me sometimes. Let me ask you this question. How many of you believe that the Indian news media is doing a good job? News broadcasting, how many of you think we are doing a good job? Please raise your hands about 20 hands. How many of you think we are not doing a good job? Clearly at least twice the hands. Maybe two and a half times, right? Now, let me understand from a person who raised the hand why we are doing a good job. Somebody who believed that and somebody who is not in the news industry, who is not an anchor or a journalist, you know, yes sir. Why we are doing a good job? No, that's true but on a very critical, why do you think we are doing a good job? Okay, now let me go to the people who believe we are not doing a good job. Ranjit, we are doing a good job or a bad job? You have too many friends in the media, that's why I keep quiet. Yes, sir, there is no truth. There is no truth in our news. It's fiction. So we should get more advertising like GECs. That's a very strong statement on a serious note. What do you do, sir? I don't know you. Fantastic. Clearly somebody of your eminence and your background feels that that's the cause for worry. Now, let me tell you what I think knowing news in the news industry from both my own understanding, reporting on it, having friends and being in the civil society. First, let me say that right now there is a fight for the soul of this country happening. It doesn't matter what side you are on. There are no sides. There is only one side. That is the country and its progress. And the notions of truth, facts and the benefit of the country. Let me also ask, how many of you have seen the post? Priya has seen it. Five people have seen it. Now, of course, movies can move you. And I would recommend, I don't get any royalty or any fees for promoting posts. It's a fantastic movie on the business of news, on the domain of news and how publishers and editors need to conduct themselves or should conduct themselves. I think there is increasingly this notion that news needs to be more objective. And again, recently in the Supreme Court, four of the judges came out and said, you know, we believe everything in the Supreme Court is not good. Now that, in journalism also, we've had those moments where people from the journalism fraternity have spoken up and said, you know, not everything is okay in the journalism fraternity. In fact, when I hire people today in the editorial domain, I don't talk to editorial guys. I don't take reference checks. Because most editorial people are not kind to other editorial people, if not all. So there is immense amount of jealousy in this people-driven business. Having said that, the editorial people are looking at each other for doing news. So sometimes I feel that the news is being done for each other to impress each other, not for the masses. The second point I'm trying to make is that when an episode like the Supreme Court episode happens, the people who are in power, it doesn't matter whichever government, they would like to say, oh, we told you that everything is wrong with the Supreme Court or there's something wrong with the Supreme Court. Similarly, in the news domain, the people who are in power would like to see a weak media. You know, for many, many years, for the last 15 years, the news industry has faced this issue of distribution fees. Unlike the US or UK, where 50% of the budgets of news television goes into content, 45% of our budgets go into distribution fees. Now the distribution and the carriage fees will come down, have to come down, but the new DTH operators have become, you know, the new operators who charge carriage fees. So in a country where the economics of news gets disturbed because we spend disproportionate amount of money on distribution and very little money, relatively very little money on content, that's one problem. The second problem is of being more detailed, of being more objective. And these two things of being more detailed and being more objective go hand in hand. For that, again, it goes back to the same issue of putting more resources. The journalism of debates in a studio is also cost effective. When you get eight guests in a room and you talk to them, it costs much lesser money than doing an investigative story. So I'm trying to tell you that the Indian news broadcasters, the editors, journalists are working in an environment where over the last 15 years the ecosystem is such that it is not geared up to provide a business environment to news in which news flourishes. So I want to kind of flag that off, that the news people are doing a job in a very tough environment where the business ecosystem is stacked in a manner that you cannot spend that much money in content. Second, whether it's the government, whether it's bureaucracy, whether it's business people who advertise on news channels, they honestly don't want an honest media. They can keep talking about it, but they really don't want an honest media. And the principal job of the news is to report on the government of the day. It's to report on the people who rule the country. And if they will not encourage, I mean, they can't allow, we don't need anybody's permission. But if they don't encourage or let us be, and you know, there are, you know, there is a lack of courage. I think I wouldn't say there is a lack of courage for some reason. Most of the news broadcasters are subdued. And I may say that I'm entitled to my own view. And the last point I want to make is that people of the country are looking at news providers with hope. There's a lot of people who still believe in the credibility of media. Mr. Avinadar Kumar, while you believe that the news media should do a better job, and I agree with that, I think the people in the news industry, in spite of the odds stacked against them, are doing a fairly good job. Can they do a better job? Clearly, yes. Right? But I just want to tell you that when we started this nine years back, a lot of my friends from outside the media said, when awards to celebrate news broadcasters and anchors and journalists, what do they do good? I think that's a very cynical view. Media has an important role to play. And let me tell you that in the fashion domain, in the food domain, you know, trends come back. The old good things come back. I promise you at some stage in this country, if you believe it, it isn't there. If you believe that, at some stage in the future, the good old principle of journalism will come back. We talked about news in a multilingual digital age. Today, most of the people consume news on their hand phones. We all are screenagers. We may not be teenagers, but the old saying was that a family that prays together stays together. The new saying is that a family that's on WhatsApp together stays together. In an era where WhatsApp has become the primary source of receiving news, it may not be the primary source of generating news. I may say that WhatsApp is misleading. Most of the information that comes on WhatsApp is half-baked, is propaganda. So I would request all my friends in this room not to forward WhatsApp information without verifying it. The danger of fake news and propaganda is bigger than malaria, it's bigger than terrorism. Because at the end of the day, if news media does not take up issues in an honest manner, in my view, a lot of news media does. Yes, there are biases because the people who run news channels are also people. They're human beings, they have biases, they believe in a certain ideology. But unlike the US or UK, the news channels don't state their ideologies upfront. It's okay to have an ideology. You know, Fox openly supports the Republican thought process or a certain kind of thought. In India, there are channels that support a certain kind of thought, but they do not kind of profess it upfront. So my request would be if we have biases, we must state those upfront.  Is Bloomberg a broadcaster or is it a website? To me, it's a broadcaster. I think it's a blessing and disguise that you haven't got a license yet because you'll be able to build a digital business and hopefully your digital business will be more valuable and impactful than a broadcaster. You know, the new CEO of NDTV is here, and I happen to know some people who are part of NDTV at the ownership level without taking name. And I know how excited they are about digital and the fact that you've become the head of CEO, I'm sure I don't know you, but you ran the digital business, that's possibly one of the reasons and NDTV on digital is huge for me among the best businesses. Rajeev Ji is here from ZNews, he leads ZNews. I can tell you that with his background in digital, one of the reasons he leads ZNews apart from all his leadership qualities is because he came from a digital domain and he's trying to make ZNews very digitally engaging and profitable. Again, the issue with digital is that you've got to over invest just now. Right now, there are not commensurate returns for digital for the kind of traffic NDTV has on its side, you still do 70, 80 crores. I don't know, 100 crores, maybe more. Okay, that's a lot of money, but for the kind of traffic, it's just under-leveraged. So, in digital, you've got to over invest, and at some stage, the amount of money in digital will be more than the amount of money in broadcasting. Salil, welcome. Now you run a digital company. Salil runs Hook, which is the Netflix of him from Singapore. He won't agree like that, but that's my simpler way of putting. So again, the issue about digital is that you've got to over invest. The impact is happening through digital, but the advertising revenues may or may not follow. So I just want to say that people in this room are people who can change the destiny of the nation by making sure that the editorial products they lead, the businesses they lead, they're more fearless. I only have one word, because I don't think news people can be bought. Most of the news people I know are fairly honest. They worry about the destiny of the country. They worry about their responsibility to honest journalism, and they try and do their job. And let me say that for a great editor, you also need a great promoter. For a great editor, you need a great publisher. If you do not have an honest and fearless publisher or an owner, whatever you want to call, a great editorial product won't happen. So I think that fearless quality is needed. And I can say that my friends in the news media are very, very conscious of that. They're also conscious of reinventing themselves, and they're also conscious of the fact that they need to get trust of both the readers and the sponsors, the advertisers. Last but not the least, you cannot talk of news without talking of the regulatory environment. I've already talked about the fact that the money that we spend in carriage fees is still substantial. It was supposed to end four years back. It hasn't ended. Right, Rajivji? We still spend a fair amount of money in distribution. So I hope that the regulatory system in some way will become more friendly to news. But if it doesn't happen, being digital is an advantage. So all the news broadcasters that are in some way thinking of their broadcasting setups as purely digital and the broadcasting setup where they have some revenue is something that they can phase out over the next three, five years are the broadcasters or I may call roundcasters that will survive. Talking about the size of the news business, the size of the news business is 3,000 crores. It is almost less than 5% of the overall advertising pie. Now that's very little. I hope through today's deliberations and the showcasing of the great work that the news broadcasting ecosystem is doing we are able to grow this 5% to about 10% because out of the 70,000 crores we are less than 5% of that industry. So news is a very small piece but news is not about the size of advertising revenue. News is about the kind of impact it makes, the kind of discussion it engages. So news again when the exchange for media news broadcasting awards that are in the evening at 7 p.m. Shri Mahesh Sharma Honorable Minister is the chief guest. I can tell you that I was there for about one and a half hours. I was not part of the jury but I was there for one and a half hours and I did participate in the deliberations as in I was watching them and I can tell you that there were very intense discussions and the jury members were very diverse. The people who know the industry, they just didn't look at performance. They didn't look at numbers. They looked at editorial credibility. They looked at the long-term impact that those news organizations are having and whether you agree or not, perception is bigger than reality. In reality is of course there. So the perception about certain individuals, certain news products was a very diverse jury. So you can't, you know, it was a very balanced, diverse and very knowledgeable jury. So they had point of view on everything. So not necessarily the channels that had the highest ratings or programs that had the highest ratings won. Because if we had to do that then there's no need for an award. There's no need for a jury. I want to tell you that the people that who won, it is not just about financial performance. That's one of the parameters. That's one of the parameters, especially when it comes to the business awards. But it's a lot about credibility. It's a lot about the promise of future. It's a lot about the kind of reporting was done. So the news broadcast awards and news next are a lot about editorial integrity. And I can tell you that this is a time when I try and not meet my friends from the news industry because all of them are my friends. You know, I don't like, I would like all of them to win. So I can tell you that, you know, lots of people from the media industry wanted to know who won. I couldn't even give them a list because I didn't have it till the morning, right? So I just want to tell you that the most honest awards, whether you agree with them, don't agree with them, we'll be happy to engage with you on that. We can show you jury tapes, jury bites. And when you see the jury deliberations, the glimpse of jury deliberations, you know that there was intense discussion about some categories and winners. So I wish that next year when we meet, we have grown from this 5% to at least 10% and digital is what leads the growth. There are elections in many states in the next few months. Whenever there are elections, news channels come up. I'm sure there will be at least 5 to 10 news channels that will come up. It may be through existing licenses or maybe the government will finally issue new licenses. So I hope that the news industry becomes more and more dynamic. It grows financially because I believe wherever there is Saraswati, which is the goddess of excellence, the goddess of wealth, that is Lakshmi always follows. Also, the last point I want to say is that today in the digital domain because the growth will also come from digital. The digital advertising in domain is about 15,000 crores at best in India if you add everything, right? Out of that, 11,000 crores is Google and Facebook. Everybody else including the news broadcasters is 4,000 crores. So the digital publishers or the publishers news broadcasters have to think about whether we want to give our content to Google and Facebook or not. We have to think about it because the only ones benefiting from giving content is them. We are not benefiting from it. So that's something that we need to discuss and choose whether we want to make sure our content is part of their ecosystem because it sometimes reflects nervousness on our part to believe that our brands are any less than theirs. They may be more technology driven. They may have larger distributions because they are in the lives of people in a different way. But I think people who consume news by going to branded news sources, that's my belief. So I hope that the news people, the editorial people realize that they have a power which they are not utilizing fully and the news leaders, the business side people realize that they need to be more on their own if I can say because they are as big. Because Google and Facebook have been built by us in some way, providing content to them. So we must be. I know Rohit is here from Jio. Jio is going to take over the world, not just India at some stage. But we have to see how we are able to benefit in a two way manner. I wish all the winners tonight, we will start the award sharp at 7. Hopefully the minister will be here on time. I wish all the winners who win tonight all the best and I'm sure they will inspire us to do good work. I wish that the news organizations become more editorially fearless and profitable. Thank you. God bless you. The family which WhatsApp's together stays together. Lovely words. Thank you, Mr. Bhattra. You can follow us on Twitter. The handle is E4M3 events for all the live updates and also cast the buzz with hashtag and the awards. Also, don't forget to tweet as we will keep an eye on your tweets and person with maximum tweets will win an award. Now I would like to request Mr. Acharya Tiwari to come to the stage and start this event.


Thank you for the introduction. Hello. Thank you, everyone, for being here this morning. We have a couple more seats here if you want to sit down with us. No, it's OK. Because I don't see well far, even with my glasses on. So it's absolutely self-serving. So yeah, it's my first time in Singapore. I'm super excited. And it looks like a really good work camp. So you should be excited about your community. It's a good one. So my name is Francesca. I'm the WordPress Community Manager at SiteGround, the web hosting company. And giving back to the WordPress community is actually part of my job. And it's awesome, obviously. And I get to do one of the things that I love the most, which is sharing knowledge. I think we all have something to share. And we're not going to take this with us in the afterlife. So we better share it now. And I do so based on my experience or on the collective experience of the SiteGround team. This talk in particular is based in my experience as a hosting company employee, but also some terrible experiences that I had as a web developer when I was freelancing. I am not a security expert. So if any of you is a security expert in this room, don't ask me advanced security questions because the whole point of this talk is actually talking about security in a non-menacing way for people that have no coding skills, have no security knowledge. But if there are some security expert amongst you, luckily, I have a colleague attending with me who's an expert WordPress Enterprise engineer and is right outside at the SiteGround booth. So if you do have advanced questions, please come by the booth. But don't ask me because I don't know the answer for sure. So I like to think of myself as a common sense dispenser.  So this is what the talk is about. Honestly, it's about not making it over complicated. There are some basic steps that you can take to secure your website and to secure your browsing. And they're kind of easy to implement. But a lot of time you hear the term security and you go, oh, this is for developers. This is too complicated for me. But actually, the very basic rules of security can be implemented by everyone. So as I said, during my time as a freelancer, I had a horrible experience of being hacked. I run a website for women, for female entrepreneurs in Italy. And one day, we receive a season-deceased email from an American lawyer. And of course, we panic because what's going on? So what's going on is that a pharmaceutical company added some content to our website that was mentioning the competitor of the company and bashing it. And basically, we didn't realize any of this at the time because we had a false sense of security. We had a plugin. We had a plugin installed on the website. So we said, all right, this is taking care of everything for us, but that's not how it works. This is a sentence that you might have heard a lot when we talk about security, not just in the WordPress space, but security is a process and not a plugin. There are awesome plugins, the security plugins out there. But you cannot just rely on that. You have to do your homework. You are part of making your website secure. So just a few words on who carries the attacks. Because when this happened to us with this website, we were like, who wants to hack us? I mean, we're a blog about a free blog run by volunteers with no ads. And we give advice to women that want to start their own businesses. But so hacking is nothing personal. Hackers don't really care about your website unless you're the FBI or any other very high-profile target. What happens is that, OK, sometimes attacks are carried by people, but this is very rare. And unless, as I said, you have a very high visibility website like the White House, they will not care about your blog or my meeting blog, for example. But these attacks are very specific and very elaborate, of course, because they are custom made to attack that specific website. What happens to most of us that get hacked is that bots or bot nets, which are a network of bots, will run random script and attacks at a scale. So nobody really cared about my website. It was just there for the taking, because it was not secured in any way. So bot attacks are a lot less sophisticated, but they go at scale. They go at millions at a time. At SiteGround, we have an anti-bot AI, and it blocks millions of accesses every day. So that's the scale of the attacks. And bot nets are just a network of bots where one computer searches the command and control, but it controls all the other computers. So as I said, it's nothing personal. So this is something that you really have to remember, because maybe you just launched your website yesterday and who, beside my mother, is reading this blog? Why are these hackers caring about me? Why they do? Because of a number of reasons, because they want to basically gain access to your website and what they can do through your website. So what they can do? A lot of websites get attacked because of spam. So that's exactly what happened to us. They added some content to our website that we weren't aware of, and they used basically our website as a vehicle to distribute the spam. They could be upload unwanted content. They could steal your data, for example, as you know, on WordPress, when someone comments on your blog or they buy something through WooCommerce, their email is stored actually in the admin area, so they could gain access to the website just to build a database of email, for example. They just get all the emails and then start sending spam. That's very common. They can redirect. So as you know, linking is still an important SEO feature, so they might link to the website from your website. So your website is still white-listed and they put just links to the website so they can increase their index in Google, for example. They could use your website as part of a web... of a webbot, botnet, sorry. I'm heavily jet lagged if you haven't noticed. But I'm doing my best. The thing that I didn't really know still existed, but it's ransomware. Do you know what ransomware is? It's digital ransom and it's actually very popular, unfortunately, also on social media and Instagram is very popular. If you have an account with a lot of followers, please, please, please secure it because that's very, very common to just receive an email that say, hey, I've got your Instagram account. Give me 5,000 euros. That's it. The effects. Being hacked has a lot of effects. First of all, the reputation. How many of you have visited a website that said it's hacked and really came back? Probably, I mean, if I see that a website has noticed the website has been hacked, I will not go back there. Even if they clean it one second after I've been there, my trust in this website is done. I don't trust it anymore. It gets this Google safe browsing. It's a feature, one of the many features of Google. It will say this website is not safe for browsing. So again, you have to then get it removed and you have to go through some steps.  And finally, of course, the cost for cleaning it up. Unless you're able to do it by yourself, someone has to clean this and it costs money and it costs time. But in my eyes, the reputation is the highest cost because it's really done. Once it's done, it's done. So there's no chance to reduce this to zero. There is no zero risk of being hacked. Hacked doesn't exist. But you can reduce the possibility of being hacked by using some very simple and common sense rules. The first one, which is possibly the most important security issue ever, is picking a right password. The password needs to be long. And when I mean long, I mean at least 25 characters. It doesn't mean if they're random characters or, you know, a sentence that you can read, but it needs to be at least 25 characters. Don't repeat passwords. Why? Because if you use the same password for your website, for your email address, for your LinkedIn, once these boats get access to one of the services, the first thing they do, is they use the same password on every other online service. So if you use your password more than once, they will hack more than one services. No one remembers 25 characters long passwords, okay? So this is why luckily we have password managers. I use one password personally, which the name means is really that you need just one password, which is the password, the master password to access the service, and then everything else is stored and encrypted so you don't need to worry about. But honestly, this is probably the most important rule we're going to talk about today. The second one is, especially for WordPress, keep everything updated. Now there used to be a time, and maybe some of you remember it, when there was an update of WordPress, it was panic because you got the white screen of death, the so-called white screen of death. You updated it, you didn't know what went wrong, you just, nothing. So this has really decreased dramatically in the last few years, so don't worry about it. But it starts also from picking the right plugins and themes. So always pick plugins and themes that have been recently updated that you know are kept alive by their developers. So go see the ratings, of course, but also go see in the forum if they have open questions and if they reply. If they reply, it means that they're still engaged with the product, so they will be there if something happens. And again, check that there is support because there are right now, I think, over 45,000 plugins in the WordPress directory, and a lot of them have been abandoned, but maybe you installed it like 10 years ago, and now you're running old code, which might be very dangerous for your website. How do you know if all of this happens? You go to WordPress.org, plugins or themes, and then you check there's a number of parameters that you can check when was updated, how many installations they are tested up to. This is something, a screenshot that I did a few months ago. The ratings, the support, this is the important thing that you have to look for. So you know that you're getting, you're plugging from a reputable source, but also for someone that cares about their product and they protect it actively and they keep applying patches to it. As I said, update everything. So don't write in WordPress core. Don't write in your theme. You create a child theme, you add a functions.php file, but just don't mess with the core files of anything because then the next time you upload it, you're losing everything, updated, you're losing everything. And again, there is no... Honestly, it's really safe nowadays to update everything. I am one of the perks of working for hosting companies that you have access to a lot of data. You can analyze how many updates go well and how many go wrong. For example, last year you might remember the 5.0 WordPress update that everyone was fearing because it was introducing a new editor. And we were one of the first hosts to update it on every server because we tested it when you have this large amount of data available. You tested, let's test it on a couple of servers and it's already thousands and thousands of customers.  But before you update, this is also very, very, very important. You should always have a backup of your website. Always look for a hosting that provides backup services but also save your backups in an offline space. For example, your computer. So you will have two copies if something goes wrong. Also test the restore procedure because don't do what I did with my first website. So I was probably terrible at being a freelancer. I don't know how people hired me because the first website that I did was my personal website and I managed to delete everything including the database.  And then I did have a backup but I didn't know how to restore it. So please test your restore processes so you're sure. But also backup your computer. This is something that we often forget especially if your website is backed up also on your computer backup the computer as well. And of course what we said about passwords is also to your computer. So make sure that also the computer has a very good password to access it. And another thing that I would say don't keep outdated version of your backup in your hosting space because there might be some vulnerabilities in that version of the website that you don't know about and the account could be hacked through that. So once you have a few copies that are enough to work with just delete everything older so you don't have the risk of being hacked for something that is not even active on your website anymore. One thing that is not about securing your website but it's about securing browsing for everyone is HTTPS. So this doesn't secure your website it secures the communication between the client and the website. It means that any data that is put in your site your computer cannot be intercepted or it can be intercepted but it cannot be understood by a bot because it's encrypted. And honestly there is no reason not to use it. I mean when SSL came out people were saying oh it slows down your website and it's a mess and the certificate and a lot of excuses. Well, Let's Encrypt which is one of the institutions I don't know how you call them in English that issues these certificates they're free, they renew it automatically every three months and most web-hosted today use HTTP2 which makes browsing much faster anyway. So honestly there is no reason not to use it and I would say that also most hosting companies now a day offer this for free I mean they should, it's free so why pay for that and also one click install so honestly there is no reason not to use this just go through the dashboard of your hosting company and click on the sign that says add SSL certificate and that's it you got a secure website well you got a secure communication to your website. One thing that came to me a few months ago after I gave this talk is that there are a lot of memes how do you say in English, memes or meme okay in Italian we say meme which is a lot cuter I think I think it's much better and so there are these memes around the web that say what's the name of your pet what's the name of your mom where were you born what's your hobby as it occurred to you that these people are building a massive database of recovery questions because that's what's happening there when you put something to recover your question what are your, recover your passwords what are the most common questions what's your mom's name where were you born what's the name of your high school stuff like that so basically answering to this kind of meme come on in, steal my password so please don't do it they're really cute I get it especially if you call them meme but no don't do it and now for the very advanced amongst us I hate this but I do it two factor authentication I hate it because it's boring every time I have to sign into something I have to take my computer, my phone out and look for the authenticator but do it especially for high level access so two factor authentication you add a second password basically that it's randomly generated and it's time based and you do it through your phone so you go does anyone here use this two factor authentication for something okay so I don't have to explain too much what 2FA is it's boring but it's very useful so I would say especially high level services do use two factor authentication for example for your hosting account use two factor authentication for your Gmail account use two factor authentication because those are services that will give access to other services so be sure to secure this and if you use WordPress which I think you do since you're at a work camp there is in the general setting area they keep changing the name of this but it's membership anyone can register so that's another very common sign that will tell you for sure that you've been hacked that you have additional users in your WordPress website that you don't know who they are admin 00, admin 01 and you get hundreds of those is because they were able to register through your website and gain access as admin so unflag that because no one really needs to register to your website except for you and the people you pick one thing I really would like you to walk away from this talk with the awareness and the key concept here is that honestly security is a shared responsibility you cannot always count on someone else you have to do your part so core developers keep core WordPress core updated plugin developers keep plugging up data hosting keep server updated but you have to do your part which starts from this very simple rule that I gave you and that I hope you will follow so thank you for having me and I hope it will be useful Thank you Francesca so we'll open up the floor for a few questions we've got a little bit of time so I think we'll also start a little bit after us does someone have a mic? Any questions? Even though TFA is very boring do you have a regimented plugin or something that you guys are using to sign around for TFA? I personally use I'm going to tell you exactly what I need to Authenticator I use Authenticator, Google Authenticator which is How long do you use to link Authenticator to the WordPress? That's a question that I don't know how to answer but sorry, this doesn't work on, off, works, no yes I am pretty sure that there's a plugin for that like everything in WordPress basically the craziest thing you can think of there's a plugin for that so I use Authenticator and I would say to add a TFA authentication to your website probably there's a plugin if it's not developed by Google itself which is kind of starting to develop a lot of products for WordPress there's one for sure thank you for asking something that I can answer yes, other questions hi where? I don't see anything even with the glasses no here, maybe if you want to know also about knitting, I'm game there's nobody has a question the question is that in SiteGround how often do you all take the backups of the website? on SiteGround what do you recommend and let's say in terms of because if you're going to keep backups on your website how much storage buffer do you need? okay so we do automatic backups every day and then depending on the plan that you have you can do also request additional backups we keep them for 30 days on our servers and if you decided to do something additional I would say so this is already taking care of the daily backups but I would say if you're going to make a big change on your website first of all never do it live always use either staging or local environment but even if you do it live like I did for a long time do a backup before that and then once you're done with all the changes you can just throw it away I'm also a bit of a keeping things very neat I'm one of these people that only has three icons on the desktop and so as soon as something doesn't serve me anymore it's gone it's either in the trash or archive somewhere so that goes also for plugins if you have plugins or themes once I got a client that had something like 20 unused themes in her website that has to stop you need your theme that you're using now and if you want for example one thing that I used to do as a freelancer I had the theme that I was in use at the moment and then a backup theme like 2012, 2011 one of the basic WordPress themes so if something went wrong when one of the backup I still had a base I don't know a few months ago I don't know if you saw that TechCrunch had a problem like that so WordPress VIP servers had a problem so for a few hours TechCrunch reverted to 2019 which was kind of funny but at least it was there as a backup theme so I would say use that don't don't you get themes and plugins that you don't use because those are all points of attack so the same with the backup once you're done with it I mean keep it for a few days so you're sure that everything goes do one before the major changes do one after the changes but don't keep too many copies I mean why that's my thinking but in terms of the storage we are going to keep maybe a week of backups or 30 days of backups when it comes to choosing a hosting plan well that really that really depends on your website there are some websites that are very light and some websites that are major that have also very big DB so it really depends I think at SiteGround the minimum space that we give is something like 10 gigs on the basic plan and that should serve you for quite a few days of backup and it goes up and you can always buy extra storage so for one week of backup that should be enough unless you have a major photography website that weighs tons of gigs so it always depends on the size of your website basically it goes down to the size of your website yes have I replied is it a good answer? okay I have someone here in front hi I don't have a question for you but feedback I am a security professional okay all of my sites I use word hints it's a very good comprehensive even the free one it handles most everything I need and it does have a free 2FA with it it uses the free OTT on your phone and so there's no need to pay a lot word fence word it's very highly recommended and so one of your criteria is a lot of people recommended this one is so I've had a lot of good luck with that I use it on all my sites then word fence word as in wordpress and fence as a oh a fence thanks yes more questions one and two I see one there and one there thanks for sharing thank you for coming regarding let's say you are working with a third party developer that requests having access to for example cPanel or your wordpress admin while we ensure that this partnership we are engaging with other parties how do you ensure that this is secure ah so you want to give cPanel or admin area access to a third person because they need to work on your website okay so there's a question how we solve that at sideground there's an answer how we solve that at sideground an answer on how you solve those in other places so in other places I would say never share your password with anyone even your mother or son or partner your password is sacred and it's yours so if you can add a user add a user and I don't know if you can control the level of access they have to your website I think again there are a lot of tools for that that are not hosting dependent and why would you want them to access your hosting plan not just your website you probably want them to access your website ah because they need to update stuff I don't know well I think there's there are a few plugins out there that can restrict the management of that so you could probably but that's at WordPress that's at WordPress access in terms of hosting well I know that recently we launched a product that solves that but that's for a sideground I wouldn't know for other hosting how to do this but so the general rule would be don't share your access with anyone honestly if you can add a user and then you can see through the logs if they did something that is not right yeah one thing also you can keep a lock then you know what they change on the website so that you can reverse the change again I would say if you work with other people I would go the distributed development environment route with version control with git so you know who's you can approve what's being deployed before it's being deployed so you can prevent anything from happening but this requires obviously having a development workflow that works with that and that you can do with most hosting that will give you SSH key so you can deploy through git we have space for one more question yes you had a question I cannot answer to that because I don't know the other platforms I'm sorry but I'm sure even my colleague knows more about this because he also works on the enterprise team so he probably have more of a knowledge about this I have personally I even before I started working for Cygrand I always used managed hosting because I cannot be bothered with that that's not my job so unless you receive admin I why would you take that like if you're a freelance developer you already have to wear so many hats because you have to develop and market yourself and deliver and do the accounting why do you want also to manage your servers as long as someone else does it for you but technically I think even is the best person to reply to this and there are other hosting companies sponsoring work in Singapore so you can get more feedback from everyone I think we're out of time this is a quick one possibly about eating or Italian food why no one has asked me about I'm kidding I'm kidding everyone please thank you Francesca thank you for being here


In Belgorod, the residents were warned the Russians are being evicted from the city. The Russian city of Belgorod among the largest just across the border to Ukraine has been facing comparatively frequent shelling and drone attacks. These have intensified in recent weeks as Russia in turn intensified its bombardment of Ukraine. A few days ago, fighting took place already in the region not far from the border. The Ukrainian military declares a certain raid that they committed on the territory of the Russian Federation. Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said residents would be moved to the towns of Stary, Oskol and Gubkin, further from the border with Ukraine where they would be housed in comfortable conditions. You will stay there for as long as necessary, he added, but warned there would not be enough temporary housing to accommodate everybody. The announcement came a day after rocket attacks wounded at least two people and knocked out glass from high-rise buildings, sparking panic among residents. I see several appeals on social media where people write, we are scared, help us get to a safe place. Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a video message shared online. Of course we will, we have already moved several families, he added. I will appeal to my colleagues, the governors of other regions to help us, the governor said. Belgorod city hall had earlier warned homeowners to secure their windows with tape to protect them from blast waves amid increasing rocket attacks. The Kremlin has tried to maintain the semblance of normalcy inside Russia, but recent deadly strikes on Belgorod have brought the war closer to home. The city of Belgorod lies some 30 kilometers from the border with Ukraine and has repeatedly come under what Moscow calls indiscriminate attacks by Ukrainian forces. Earlier authorities said unprecedented Ukrainian strikes on the city killed 25 people, the worst attack against Russian civilians since the war began in February 2022.