May 13, 2023 – Business Observer

May 13, 2023

ROSEN, A GLOBALLY RECOGNIZED FIRM, Encourages Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. Investors to Secure Counsel Before Important Deadline in Securities Class Action – TDS, TDSPrU, TDSPrV

NEW YORK, May 12, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of securities of Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. (the “Company” or “TDS”) (NYSE: TDS, TDSPrU, TDSPrV) between May 6, 2022 and November 3, 2022, both dates inclusive (the “Class Period”), of the important July 3, 2023 lead plaintiff deadline.

SO WHAT: If you purchased TDS securities during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement.

WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the TDS class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=15807 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email pkim@rosenlegal.com or cases@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than July 3, 2023. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.

WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources or any meaningful peer recognition. Many of these firms do not actually litigate securities class actions, but are merely middlemen that refer clients or partner with law firms that actually litigate the cases. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs’ Bar. Many of the firm’s attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.

DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, the Company and its subsidiary, United States Cellular Corporation (“UScellular”), made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) defendants had no reason to believe UScellular’s “free upgrade” promotional activity, which was tested and trialed during the second quarter of 2022, was effective at reducing the Company’s postpaid churn rate as they represented to investors, as opposed to merely adding new postpaid subscribers, when its churn rate was actually increasing or remaining constant over most quarters in the class period; (2) UScellular was not making progress with respect to its churn rate, as it represented to investors; (3) UScellular was not in fact balancing its promotional activity and its profitability; (4) due to extreme competition among postpaid carriers, UScellular did not have the flexibility to offset the costs from widespread, expensive promotions with price increases; and (5) as a result of the Companies’ decision for UScellular to continue engaging in heavy promotions to address its postpaid subscriber churn rate despite any lack of positive impact on churn rate, UScellular’s profitability substantially declined. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.

To join the TDS class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=15807 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email pkim@rosenlegal.com or cases@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action.

No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor’s ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff.

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Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Contact Information:

Laurence Rosen, Esq.
Phillip Kim, Esq.
The Rosen Law Firm, P.A.
275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Tel: (212) 686-1060
Toll Free: (866) 767-3653
Fax: (212) 202-3827
lrosen@rosenlegal.com
pkim@rosenlegal.com
cases@rosenlegal.com
www.rosenlegal.com

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8838498

May 13, 2023

Tri Ri Asset Management announces launch of Flagship VC fund

NERW YORK, May 12, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Tri Ri Asset Management (“TRAM”) today announced the launch of their flagship venture capital fund, the TRAM Venture Fund (“TRAM VF”), with a target size of USD 125 million. TRAM VF will be focused on the MENA region, with a particular emphasis in Pakistan. Tri Ri Asset Impact Fund, with a commitment of USD 50 million, serves as the fund’s anchor. TRAM VF is dedicated to serving the later-stage tech company growth needs in Pakistan and MENA. The new fund’s deployment will focus on investing in innovative early-stage and growth-stage tech companies and enabling them to emerge into market leaders in GCC, South Asia, and North Africa.

TRAM VF will meet the needs of local startups and help them to become regional and global competitors. The local tech industry has recently seen substantial expansion; yet, funding is falling behind the quick speed of change and technological adoption. This has drawn global technology businesses as well as international venture capitalists to the region. TRAM VF will further accelerate the growth of the VC ecosystem in order to meet the increasing demand for technology products and services.

Adeel Hussain, General Partner of TRAM VF stated: “Following the successful launch of our PE Impact fund last year, we are pleased to announce the launch of our Flagship VC Fund TRAM VF and its initial closure of $92 million. A particular thanks to our anchor investor, as well as the LP a Swiss family office, whose commitment demonstrates how ripe the region is for VC investments.”

Asad Ali, Co-CIO & Principal added: “We look forward to deploying our first flagship VC fund in a region with such complex growth. Scaling from our roots in Real Estate our capital deployment strategy has always been the core of our rapid growth. We will be able to use the same strategies to assist early stage startups within the region to leverage and grow their business. Our investment strategy is defined by a data-driven approach, specialized sourcing capabilities, and an uncompromising commitment to meaningful collaboration with entrepreneurs. We are more than just investors; we are also builders, utilising our team’s market experience to propel firms more precisely than generalist organisations. Supporting entrepreneurs is a privilege that we never take for granted.”

TRAM VF will utilize its differentiated market expertise and metrics-driven evaluation process, to invests across Fintech, healthcare, consumer, education, food security, real estate, fintech, B2B, Artificial Intelligence across the region.

About Tri Ri Asset Management:
Tri Ri Asset Management, is a concentrated, research-intensive, fundamental value investor in the public markets. Since 2019, Tri Ri has executed an aggressive but disciplined growth strategy, building a balanced portfolio of public market and real estate holdings.
As of March 2023, Tri Ri’s portfolio composed of USD 850 million in assets under management along with USD 1.2 billion in Co-investments and 7 renowned properties with over 1500 rooms.

Richard Haig
Investor.relations@tririasset.com

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8838768

May 13, 2023

Insilico Medicine Founder and CEO to Give Keynote on Disease Modeling with AI at PEGS Boston

Abu Dhabi, May 12, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Insilico Medicine, a generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, announced that Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and CEO of the Company, will attend the PEGS Boston Summit from May 15-19. He will deliver a keynote presentation on “The State of the Science in Disease Modeling Across Diverse Indications” on May 15 at 11AM at the Hynes Convention Center and join in an interactive discussion on May 15 at 12:45PM.

In his presentation, Dr. Zhavoronkov will make the first announcement of peptide-based drug design strategies and Generative Biologics, a new engine that belongs to the company’s end-to-end AI-driven drug discovery platform Pharma.AI that leverages hundreds of millions of biological data points, machine learning algorithms, and generative biology models to build and design polypeptides from scratch.

A team of expert scientists are developing Pharma.AI at the Insilico Medicine Generative Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing Research and Development Center in Abu Dhabi, the region’s largest AI-powered biotechnology research center.

“We are at an exciting moment in the history of generative AI in drug discovery,” says Zhavoronkov. “Thanks to years of accumulated data and technological advances in generative AI, we can find targets and design new small molecules for hard-to-treat diseases with incredible speed and efficiency working in close partnership with pharmaceutical companies. We look forward to using generative AI to explore diverse drug development strategies.”

Insilico Medicine was one of the first companies to use generative adversarial autoencoders for de-novo drug discovery. In 2016, the Company introduced the earliest iternation of its generative biology tool for identifying novel targets with a publication in Nature Communications. Another publication followed in Oncotarget, demonstrating how Insilico could employ generative algorithms with reinforcement learning to design novel small molecules with predefined and optimized properties. By 2018, Insilico integrated generative biology and chemistry approaches into the commercially available Pharma.AI platform that accelerates the process of lead discovery from years to days, and is currently being utilized by 11 of 20 top pharmaceutical companies.

The Company has also utilized the platform to develop its own robust pipeline of assets, including two drugs – for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and COVID-19 – currently in clinical trials and many potentially best-in-class and first-in-class assets in preclinical stages of development available for licensing. In total, Insilico has 31 programs across 29 targets, including in fibrosis, oncology, immunology, and central nervous system disorders.

Zhavoronkov says PEGS, the world’s largest gathering of protein engineering and biotherapeutics experts, is the perfect setting for announcing the latest developments to Insilico’s platform. “We were instrumental in the early development of generative biology and generative chemistry, and now we’re advancing AI-designed drugs into clinical trials. It is truly a pivotal moment.”

About Insilico Medicine

Insilico Medicine, a clinical-stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, is connecting biology, chemistry, and clinical trials analysis using next-generation AI systems. The company has developed AI platforms that utilize deep generative models, reinforcement learning, transformers, and other modern machine learning techniques for novel target discovery and the generation of novel molecular structures with desired properties. Insilico Medicine is developing breakthrough solutions to discover and develop innovative drugs for cancer, fibrosis, immunity, central nervous system diseases, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and aging-related diseases. In early 2023, the Company opened the Insilico Medicine Generative Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing Research and Development Centre in Abu Dhabi, the region’s largest AI-powered biotechnology research center. The R&D hub brings together global talent in artificial intelligence and software development to expand the capabilities of Insilico’s end-to-end AI-driven drug discovery platform, Pharma.AI, explore aging research and sustainable chemistry, and support the digital transformation of healthcare in the region.

For more information, visit www.insilico.com

Attachment

Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD presents at PEGS

Brita Belli
Insilico Medicine
475-225-0843
brita@insilico.com

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8838633

May 13, 2023

Pakistan: Pro-Khan Violent Protesters to Face Terror Trials

Pakistan's civilian and military leadership Saturday vowed to hunt down and bring to justice all those involved in acts of violence during this week's protests sparked by the brief arrest of the country's popular former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

"I have given law enforcement apparatus a target of 72 hours to arrest all those involved in facilitating, abetting and perpetrating the disgraceful incidents of arson, ransacking, sabotage and damaging public and private properties," incumbent Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement.

"Bringing these people to justice is a test case for the government. Their cases will be tried by the anti-terrorism courts," he noted.

Pakistan's military chief, General Asim Munir, backed Sharif's resolve in a separate statement Saturday.

"The armed forces will not tolerate any further attempt to violate the sanctity and security of its installations or vandalism and resolve to bring to justice all the planners, abetters, instigators, and executors of vandalism," a military statement quoted Munir as saying.

The government announced the crackdown as police have already rounded up nearly 3,000 supporters of Khan's opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, for their alleged role in several days of nationwide protests.

Detention sparks protests

Lingering political tensions escalated Tuesday after Pakistani paramilitary forces dragged and arrested Khan in the capital, Islamabad, from outside a courtroom as he prepared to attend a hearing in a legal challenge against him.

The detention of the 70-year-old cricket star-turned-prime minister on corruption charges sparked protests across Pakistan, some of which turned violent.

The Supreme Court declared the arrest unlawful, however, and Thursday ordered Khan to be set free, effectively defusing the street agitation, which saw protesters allegedly torching vehicles and state property.

Protesters also stormed the main gate of the military's general headquarters in Rawalpindi, while others broke into the residence of a regional army commander in the eastern city of Lahore. In the northwestern city of Peshawar, protesters set fire to the building which is the home of the state-run radio station.

The violence killed at least 10 people and wounded several hundred, including police officers. Khan alleged that 'live fire' by security forces had killed at least 40 protesters.

Court bars arrest of Khan

On Friday, a federal high court barred police from arresting Khan for two weeks, enabling him to leave Islamabad hours later for his home in his native Lahore. He has faced dozens of cases, ranging from corruption and treason to terrorism and murder, since a parliamentary vote of no-confidence removed him from office less than four years into his term.

Khan rejects all the allegations and has persistently accused the powerful military of being behind the legal challenges to get him disqualified to block his return to power and ban his PTI party, the country's largest political force.

Military officials reject the charges, and Sharif's government insists corruption cases against the deposed prime minister are "genuine" and alleges the judiciary is being soft on Khan.

"Nobody can eliminate a political party by force and put them in jail," Khan said in a televised address Saturday. His speech was streamed live on social media, including YouTube, because the government has barred local television channels from airing Khan's statements.

He rejected allegations that PTI supporters were responsible for acts of violence during the protests and accused pro-government "infiltrators" of the incidents of arson and riots. Khan demanded an impartial investigation into the events starting with his unlawful arrest.

After protests broke out Tuesday, the government blocked internet access to social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter across Pakistan and restored them partially late Friday. But the services again were inaccessible Saturday.

Source: Voice of America

May 13, 2023

Karnataka results: Congress wins key India state election

India's main opposition Congress party has defeated Prime Minister's Narendra Modi's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in a crucial election in the southern state of Karnataka.

Experts say the win will give the Congress party a much-needed morale boost ahead of the national election due next year. Karnataka - the BJP's only bastion in southern India and home to tech hub Bangalore - was the first of five big states to go to the polls this year.

According to the Election Commission's website, the Congress has won more than 130 out of 224 state assembly seats - it needed a simple majority of 113 seats to form the government on its own. The BJP is ahead in less than 70 seats.

Dozens of Congress supporters gathered outside the party headquarters in Bangalore and New Delhi, waving party flags and shouting victory slogans.

"The market of hate has been shut, and shops of love have opened," Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told supporters in Delhi.

Earlier in the day, the BJP's incumbent state chief minister Basavaraj Bommai conceded defeat, saying that "in spite of the efforts of the prime minister and party workers, we could not make the mark".

Mr Modi had run a gruelling campaign to help the BJP retain power in the state, addressing several rallies and roadshows within a span of 10 days. The Congress's efforts were led by national leaders including Mr Gandhi and party president Mallikarjun Kharge, along with state leaders Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar (both of whom are in the running to become chief minister).

Congress spokesperson Akhilesh Pratap Singh told the BBC that the results from Karnataka would have a larger impact ahead of next year's general election.

"The BJP will lose the assembly elections later this year in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Chhattisgarh. Mr Modi would lose next year's general election too," he claimed.

But Suvrokamal Dutta, a political analyst who supports the BJP, disagreed, saying that one election victory would not improve the Congress's fortunes.

"Narendra Modi is too big a challenge for the Congress party to handle," he said.

The Congress was once India's most powerful party, governing India almost continuously - except for a few years - from independence in 1947 to 2014, when Mr Modi's BJP swept to power by a landslide. Since then, the party has been striving to regain its lost political prominence.

The results in Karnataka are also significant for the Congress as it comes less than two months after Mr Gandhi, its former president, was convicted for defamation and disqualified as a lawmaker.

Analysts say that the BJP, which had been governing Karnataka for four years, faced strong anti-incumbency sentiment. Its tenure was marked by internal squabbles and allegations of poor governance. Party leaders also mostly focused on the achievements of Mr Modi's federal government in their speeches.

The results show that the Congress was "able to put its differences aside" and come together to fight the election, says political analyst Vijay Grover.

"Mr Modi had staked his own personal charisma and credibility to try and revive the party from anti-incumbency. But that doesn't seem to have happened at the level that he would have expected," he says, adding, however, that the prime minister's popularity was still a significant factor nationally.

The Congress party highlighted issues such as inflation, high unemployment and the BJP's alleged poor governance, which seem to have struck a chord with voters.

Some Bangalore residents told the BBC that the Congress ran an energetic, well-planned campaign and managed to counter the BJP's criticisms effectively. Mr Shivakumar and Mr Siddaramaiah also worked well together to capitalise on the anti-incumbency sentiment, they added.

The election campaigns were intense, with both parties promising several measures to help the poor, including free gas cylinders and electricity.

The Congress's promise to ban the Bajrang Dal, a hardline Hindu group, had sparked a controversy ahead of the election. The Congress equated Bajrang Dal with the Popular Front of India (PFI), a controversial Muslim group which was outlawed last year.

The BJP, in turn, accused the Congress of being "anti-Hindu", saying the party had hurt the sentiments of the followers of the monkey god Hanuman, also known as Bajrang Bali.

Mr Singh from the Congress claimed that Karnataka's voters had rejected the "divisive and communal politics" of the BJP. He also said that Mr Gandhi's nationwide "unity march", which ended in January, galvanised Congress members.

Mr Dutta, however, said that the Congress party should not get carried away by its victory, pointing to the party's earlier losses in several states in north and north-eastern India.

Political analyst and author Sugata Srinivasaraju added that the results in Karnataka don't necessarily indicate an advantage to the Congress in the general elections.

"The context and narratives will be very different in 2024. It happened last time too. The BJP in Karnataka may benefit in 2024 because it would have shed its anti-incumbency by then," he said.

Source: BBC

May 13, 2023

President Criticizes NUST for Not Refunding Over $10,000 to Student

President Dr. Arif Alvi has directed the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) to return $11,270 to a student who withdrew from the university 15 years ago. As per reports, NUST retained the fee instead of returning it.

The President criticized NUST for its mismanagement and unjust retention of fees. The case was brought to the President’s attention in 2022. Dr. Alvi emphasized that NUST is a government-run agency and not a private commercial organization. Any provision in NUST’s prospectus must be compliant with the law.

He stated that no policy or code of conduct can override Pakistan’s constitutional provisions that protect individuals’ rights and prevent exploitation. Dr. Alvi condemned NUST withholding the student fees as exploitative and dishonest.

The President clarified that the student’s provisional admission could not be converted into final admission because NUST had given the vacant seat to another student. The refusal to refund the fees amounted to coercion and confiscation. He emphasized that if admission is not finalized and NUST does not suffer financial loss, the student is entitled to a refund.

Source: Pro Pakistani