The head of Sudan’s military council has walked down a day after leading a coup that overthrew long-time leader Omar al-Bashir amid a surge of protests.
Defense Minister Awad Ibn Auf disclosed his decision on state TV, saying his successor will be  Lt-Gen Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan.

Sudan was thrown into chaos and uncertainty as General Awad Ibn Auf, who had assumed power following the ousting of long-time President Omar al-Bashir, abruptly resigned from his position as the Chief of the Transitional Military Council (TMC). The resignation, coming just a day after his appointment, caught many by surprise and further escalated the political turmoil that has gripped the country. This article aims to explore the events leading up to Ibn Auf’s appointment, analyze the factors behind his sudden resignation, and discuss the implications for Sudan’s transition to a civilian-led government.

However, the army has said it will stay in power for two years, followed by elections.
Still, protest leaders urge they will not leave the streets until the military hands over to a civilian government.

How did it start?

1. The downfall of Mr. Bashir’s pathed months of unrest that began in December over rising prices.
   Mr. Ibn Auf as head of military intelligence, gave space to the Darfur conflict in the 2000s.
2. Following this, The US imposed sanctions on him in 2007.
3. The new head in charge also is a top military figure, but the Associated Press news agency reports that his record is cleaner than other Sudanese generals.
4. He is also said to have met with protesters to hear their views.
5. Also, Mr. Bashir has been known by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the Darfur conflict.
   Thus, the military council has said it will not extradite Mr. Bashir, who denies the charges, although he may be put on trial in Sudan.

Decision to quit

• On Thursday despite Mr. Bashir being removed, demonstrators had refused to disperse, camping out outside army headquarters in the capital, Khartoum, in defiance of a curfew.
• The military council came out to speak in response for the first time on the issue.
• The council denied as it was seeking power, telling the protesters that they would decide the country’s future, while the army maintained public order.
• Just a few hours after that, Mr. Ibn Auf announced he was resigning and would be replaced by Lt-Gen Burhan.

Mr. Ibn Auf

I have taken this decision, in order to ensure the cohesion of the security system, particularly the armed forces,  from cracks and strife, and relying on God, let us begin this path of change.
The protesters rejoiced his strong and sudden departure but the Sudan Professionals Association, which has been spearheading the demonstrations, later announced that they will confirm soon.

Sudan Professionals Association[SPA]

• We have called on the armed forces to ensure the immediate transfer of power to a transitional civilian government.
• While they further responded to the destruction of arbitrary decisions by leaders that do not represent the people and the detention of all symbols of the former regime who were involved in crimes against the people.
• Until these demands are met completely, we ought to continue with our sit-in at the General Command of the Armed Forces.
• The police meanwhile have reported saying, at least 16 people had been killed by stray bullets at the protests that took place on Thursday and Friday.

Conclusion:

The abrupt resignation of General Awad Ibn Auf as the Chief of the Transitional Military Council has added another layer of complexity to Sudan’s already turbulent transition period. The factors behind his resignation include public outrage, international pressure, and internal power struggles. As Sudan navigates this uncertain phase, the focus should be on fostering inclusive dialogue and ensuring a peaceful transition to civilian rule. The international community must continue to support Sudan in its pursuit of a democratic and prosperous future.

This helped Facebook to build Facebook’s web of social connection and recommend other users to add them as friends, Facebook has been doing this since May 2016 and it was unintentionally uploaded and they are now deleting the data, confirmed by A Facebook spokesperson.

Here’s the full statement of Facebook’s Spokesperson:

“Last month we stopped offering email password verification as an option for people verifying their account when signing up for Facebook for the first time. When we looked into the steps people were going through to verify their accounts we found that in some cases people’s email contacts were also unintentionally uploaded to Facebook when they created their account. We estimate that up to 1.5 million people’s email contacts may have been uploaded. These contacts were not shared with anyone and we’re deleting them. We’ve fixed the underlying issue and are notifying people whose contacts were imported. People can also review and manage the contacts they share with Facebook in their settings.”

This is once again a privacy misstep by Facebook which is getting into a data breaches scandal for the last two years, though this is still a small data breach than Cambridge Analytica during which the personal data of more than 87 million users was leaked.

Facebook gave a detailed article on the issues stating that:

(Update on April 18, 2019 at 7AM PT: Since this post was published, we discovered additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a readable format. We now estimate that this issue impacted millions of Instagram users. We will be notifying these users as we did the others. Our investigation has determined that these stored passwords were not internally abused or improperly accessed).

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Facebook posted in its March 21 blog post that it found user password issue as a part of routine security check in January, Facebook also mentioned that passwords were not visible to anyone outside of Facebook and they have found no indications that anyone invaded into any users account. “We have fixed these issues and as a precaution, we will be notifying everyone whose passwords we have found were stored in this way,” Facebook said.

Though Facebook still hasn’t revealed the exact number of accounts whose passwords were exposed to the employees.

Almost every day the giant tech company is getting involved in privacy breaches cases and is under investigation by numerous government agencies for its data collection and privacy policy.

Photo Credit- mobileworldlive.com

In his opposition towards China Mobile’s application for USA market, the chairman, Ajit Pai stated, “it is clear that China Mobile’s application to provide telecommunications services in our country raises substantial and serious national security and law enforcement risk.” He put his vote for not supporting China Mobile’s application for USA market and said that the full commission would vote on the proposal in May.

The proposal may seem appropriate but somehow it is going to affect the technical relationship between these two countries badly. The chances for a tacit war between USA and China regarding telecommunications is on the peak as per the accusations of White House on Huawei telecommunication services. Huawei telecommunications is the largest telecom equipment company of China who has been accused of being a spy of the Chinese government to wreck the communication networks. However, the accusations were not only denied by Huawei but also the effort of USA to persuade other countries to avoid the services of Huawei telecommunication was proved neutral.

The rejection of China Mobile’s application came after an internal review by Mr. Pai as he said that he could view a recommendation last year by the commerce department to reject this service plans because there was a risk of security services as the issue of “hacking data” was claimed.

The application was already filled and it was under the commission for years without much public attention and for the first time, a rejection of foreign telecommunications application was made. “It was the first time that an administration had rejected a foreign telecommunications application”, the commission made a statement to clarify that they are not letting China Mobile’s Services in the markets of USA.