New Delhi: A two-year Intelligence Bureau trail helped the NIA to bust Islamic State sympathizers planning to carry out terror attacks in Hyderabad, official sources said on Thursday.
The Intelligence Bureau had been tracking the group since 2014 after getting information about the links of its members with their contacts in Syria. The Islamic State had just become active.
"For the last five or six months, the IB was trailing them from very close range," an official in the know told IANS.
"The residences, schools and colleges as well as work places of the suspects were under strict watch. Their mobile numbers, Facebook accounts and other activities were monitored," the official said.
When the suspects bought large quantities of chemicals suspected to be urea or ammonium nitrate powder as well as acid, acetone, hydrogen peroxide - which are precursor substances for making deadly explosives - around two weeks ago, it led to serious concerns.
Some officials felt that attacks may be imminent and decided to act.
"The suspects might have planned to make some lethal concoction of explosives," the official said.
The information was finally shared with the National Investigation Agency (NIA). Names of five suspects planning possible terror strikes in Hyderabad were passed on to the NIA.
The NIA filed a First Information Report (FIR) on June 22 against five Hyderabad youths: Mohammed Iliyas Yazdani, 24, his brother Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, 29, Habib Mohammed, 32, Mohammed Irfan alias Yaqais, 26, and Abdullah Bin Ahmed Al Amoodi alias Fahad, 30.
The NIA then sought permission from a Hyderabad court to conduct multiple raids to bust the group. This happened on June 28. The raids happened the next day.
At that time, the intelligence agencies were not sure if the group was linked to the Islamic State or some group in Pakistan.
The official said that hours after a secret briefing to the raiding team, which included select police officers, the NIA carried out searches at 10 places in Hyderabad on Wednesday morning.
"The operation was successful. We nabbed 11 suspects including the five named in the FIR," the official said. "Huge arms and explosives along with IED manufacturing materials were also seized."
Five of 11 suspects were formally arrested after 12 hours of questioning. The other six -- Syed Naimath Ullah Hussaini, 42, Muzaffar Hussain Rizwan, 29, Mohammed Ataullah Rehman, 30, Abdul, 32, A.M. Azhar, 20, and Mohammed Arbaz Ahmed, 21 -- were let off on Wednesday night but again questioned at a secret location in Hyderabad on Thursday.
"During their questioning, we learnt that the group was being directed by a common handler of the Islamic State based in Syria," the official said.
Computer science graduate Habib and commerce student Mohammed Iliyas, who dropped out after his first year at a Hyderabad college, were said to be the key suspects.
Iliyas had an agency that provided services to procure PAN cards and birth certificates.
The official said Iliyas and Habib once had online contact with Karnataka's Muhammad Shafi Armar, a fugitive Indian Mujahideen operative now leading a group of Indians fighting with the Islamic State.
Step away from the stylus and get back from that Mac: being a designer can be hazardous to your health. The job you love could be doing serious damage to your body and to your brain.
Some of you already know this. We used social media to find out how readers felt their jobs had affected their health. Here's what we found...
The results showed that 15 per cent reported back problems, 15 per cent headaches and migraines, 13 per cent eye problems and 11 per cent repetitive strain injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome; six per cent reported obesity and five per cent circulation problems.
Creative people are at risk of certain conditions because we like what we do
There were other serious issues too, with 17 per cent of you reported psychosocial issues such as stress and depression, 12 per cent sleep problems and seven per cent relationship problems.
So what's going on – and more importantly, what can we do about it? Dr Gail Kinman is professor of occupational health psychology and director of the Research Centre for Applied Psychology at the University of Bedfordshire; she's studied the effect work has on our physical and mental health.
Too passionate
As she explains, creative people are at risk of certain conditions because we like what we do. "It's all about job involvement," she says. "People who do this type of work breathe it."
As Dr Kinman points out, the flow that creatives experience – "when you are completely and utterly absorbed in what you're doing, when the demands of what you're doing are slightly beyond your capabilities" is good for your well-being, but it can be bad for your health.
"You're not aware of time passing, you're not aware you're hungry, you're not aware that you're sitting awkwardly." If you're sitting with poor posture and poor ergonomics for long periods of time, back pain and repetitive strain injuries are likely to say hello sooner rather than later.
01. Pay attention
You can ward off many injuries with a bit of attention – a good, supportive chair and an ergonomically arranged desk, good lighting, a comfortable mouse and a posture that keeps you upright with your arms and legs at right angles – but one of the major threats to designers is lack of exercise.
If you're solo or part of a relatively small team, then the combination of tight deadlines and long hours can make it difficult to find the time or the motivation to eat well and exercise regularly – and that can be fatal, especially if when you go home you relax in front of another screen instead of doing something for your fitness.
The long-term consequences of poor diet and lack of exercise include obesity, type II diabetes, circulation problems, back and neck problems, heart disease, and increased risk of some cancers.
02. Exercise while your work
Some creatives have decided that the best way to address that is to exercise while they work, or at least to abandon the chair and work standing up.
Proponents of standing desks and treadmill desks – which are exactly what they sound like; desks attached to the kind of treadmill you'd find in a gym – say they help burn calories and help you live longer. But critics point out that standing all day can cause arterial disease and varicose veins, and if your posture isn't perfect, they can contribute to back problems and repetitive strain injuries.
03. Take a walk
You're better off taking regular walks – especially if they involve meeting up with people. "I'd say do something physically different from being at work, especially if your place of work is also your place of leisure," Dr Kinman recommends.
While the 'genius is close to madness' cliché has now been comprehensively debunked, the nature of creative work isn't always good for your mental health. Tight deadlines, tough requirements, job insecurity and the stress and strains of getting paid can make life miserable. It's particularly pronounced if you work from home or remotely, where you don't have the interactions you'd have with colleagues in the office.
"There is a very prominent model of job stress that is based on high demand, low control and social isolation," Dr Kinman says. Together, those factors have been linked with serious illnesses including coronary heart disease and depression, but you don't need to change all three to make your work less stressful.
It's the combination of all three that hurts, so for example you might be juggling major deadlines, working all the hours God sends, and missing your friends or loved ones.
04. Social support is vital
Illustration: Becca Allen for Computer Arts magazine
"Social support is one of the most important factors," Dr Kinman says. "What we need to do is to replenish ourselves, and social support is a very important part of that."
The support might be listening to you vent, or taking your mind off things, or practical support. All of it helps.
Can you get the same support from social media? Dr Kinman isn't convinced. "Social support for creative people can be strange," she laughs.
"You want people when you need them, but you want them back in their box when they start interfering with your work. Social media is very good for that, because you can do that management. But of course that means you won't have the deep social interaction that you need."
05. Know yourself
As Kinman points out, there's a difference between serious stress and depression and having a few bad days or feeling overwhelmed by a client from hell. "It's about knowing your body and your mind, and listening to the signals," she says. "Depression and pre-depression can have a kind of flattening effect.
There are feelings of low self-esteem, a lack of enjoyment of everyday activity, a lack of concentration. It's like a narrowing of your field of vision. Sometimes the people closest to you are better than spotting it than you are yourself."
06. Listen to Ice Cube
Being a designer is hardly one of the world's most dangerous jobs, but it's a good idea to look at what you do, when you do it and how long you do it for to make sure that your working life isn't going to hurt your heart or your head.
In the words of renowned workplace health and safety expert Ice Cube, you'd better check yourself before you wreck yourself.
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Learn the core techniques to dynamically and realistically destroy a building for a VFX project.
Over the course of this 3d art tutorial, we will explore a part of the cmiVFX course, The Church Destruction Tactics. We'll be working on a high-end VFX scene, using several techniques to apply art-directed effects on a heavy film-quality destruction scenario of a church, with RealFlow 2015, as well as a variety of tools such as FumeFX, Particle Flow particles and 3ds Max.
We will demonstrate RealFlow's strong rigid and soft bodies sim tools, and its multijoint control system, to create high-detailed explosion and destruction scenes. We'll also generate smoke, debris, dust and impact effects.
Powerful simulations
RealFlow 2015 is a unique complete dynamics software, it's known for its powerful liquids simulation tools, but it has one of the best rigid, soft and elastic simulation environments too, and its stability, simplicity and solvers interactivity between each other, make it the best choice when it comes to simulating destruction scenes – as you will see in this tutorial.
The whole course at cmiVFX includes a complete model of the church, and other soft body and particles simulation in RealFlow, but here we'll be using a section of the model (which is enough for you to master these skills), and we've included more than two hours of high-quality video.
RealFlow has one of the best rigid, soft and elastic simulation environments
I'll begin by sharing how to set up a scene in RealFlow; set up the already fractured Church (the part which we will be working on in this tutorial) inside RealFlow, by grouping its parts, setting up pieces' properties, and establishing the right connections between them, as well as other simulation details.
You can download all of the work files, videos and set-up files that accompany this training from 3D World's online Vault. Throughout the tutorial I'll be referencing using these, so have them to hand. Special thanks to 3Quarter.ae, Artware Corp, cmiVFX, Fadi Wahbeh and Chris Maynard for the support and the materials used in this course; I hope you find it as much fun to follow as I did to create!
01. Set up the scene
The church is set up in RealFlow
Open an empty scene in RealFlow and create a new project. Call it Church base then import the fractured church objects one by one from the Article Project Files>RealFlow>Objects From 3D folder. Import these as multibodies by right-clicking on the nodes and selecting Dope>Add>Obj>Multibody or import them all by using Import>Multibodies from folder. Also check the Preferences for correct axis and other simulating settings, FPS and steps.
02. Rename the objects
All passive objects are collected into one group
Start renaming the objects and define their nature. Some of those will be passive objects and some will be rigid body objects. You can define this by going Node params>Node>Dynamics. Also, try to put all the passive objects in one group, name it a passive group. The multibody object is a group made up of fractured objects itself and by encapsulating them together you can change their properties to make them easier to deal with later when simulating.
03. Set object properties
Properties will determine an object's behaviour
Change your objects' properties by setting up their densities, friction and elasticities. Doing this will determine their behaviours when they collide with other objects, and remember that you will be dealing with various substances and materials, and each has its own values. Create a little moving sphere, which should hit the edge of the church section we are working on here. Make this a rigid body too and give it a suitable initial velocity from Rigid Body>Velocity.
04. Control break points
Break points are controlled by connections and joints
To control objects' break points, collisions and strength – to have the full control over their collapse after getting the impact – you must establish a set of connections and joins between the fractured parts, as well as inside each multibody object. You can set up new multijoints by right-clicking on the nodes, and selecting Dope>Add>Obj>MultiJoint. Choose the objects you will need to join together, adding different settings for each node and connection.
05. Set multijoints
Solidity is defined by the Force mode
Select the objects you want to connect from Creation>A&B, and set the Contact Distance Search to include all the pieces you'll need to have joints in, change the contact's number to define the joint's number between each part. Define the Force mode to unlimited or constant from Forces to determine its solidity, and finally set the break distance value to make it breakable; if it exceeded this distance during the simulation.
06. Use plasticity
Plasticity keeps deformed chunks mishapen
Plasticity is a special property in multijoint that enables displaced chunks (deformed joints links) to keep their deformation permanently or partly, which makes them look real. This is very useful when simulating, for example, the behaviour of iron rods which in reality should be there connecting these pieces. Don't forget that you can always create joints between a multibody and itself, by adding it to both A&B objects, along with other objects.
07. Add a gravity node
Scale can change the simulation's final look
Add a gravity node by right-clicking on the node and selecting Dope>Add/Daemon/Gravity. Ensure that simulation options are set right: here, we increase the frames per second value to 60, to make a slower simulation – remember, the scene and imported object's scale is extremely important as it can change the simulation's final look, speed and even its stability. We work in real-world scale, but you can change the scene scale by going to Scale Options.
08. Import into 3ds Max
The animation is scaled to fit with FumeFX
Import the simulation Destroyed Church into 3ds Max, by importing the animation .sd file from the Object folder from the Church base RealFlow scene we set earlier. Make sure that its scale is suitable for FumeFX smoke setup, in this case, I scaled the animation .sd file 100 times to fit with FumeFX, but we will continue this tutorial by opening the file Article project files>3ds Max Scenes/Article_ChurchDestructionTactic_Start.max from the Vault.
09. Set the particle flow
Particle Flow creates debris for every piece of the church
Open the 3D file and from the Creation Menu go to Geometry>Roll Down/Particle Flow and create a Particle Flow (PF) anywhere in your scene. From the Modify Menu press Particle View, then create a PF by right-clicking; change the birth to start from 0 and the number of particles to 800. Now replace the position icon with position object to create the particles from every piece of the church. Pick the pieces from the list and lock the particles to them.
10. Add dust and smoke
FumeFX can determine the property of smoke
To simulate the dust and smoke later in FumeFX, we are going to create particles from each fallen piece and let the system emit particles when any of those pieces start falling or moving. When creating smoke, we need to tell FumeFX where, when and how fast it should be, this can be done by emitting smoke from each particle on each piece, and then we can control its properties later in FumeFX. Now your primary particle system is ready.
11. Generate particles
A Spawn mode maintains a natural look
Next, add a Spawn node to generate particles from each particle when it moves. Set the mode to By Travel Distance; Steps to 60; Inheritance to 50, Variation to 25 and Divergence to 10, to make sure that they fall naturally, which will generate the smoke and lead it later. Add a Particle Age node, set the test value to 5 and the variation to 5, to kill the particles as we just need the church pieces' start-up positions and their initial velocity for Fume Smoke.
12. Control the particles
A force node controls gravity and turbulence
Add a Force node to control the movement of the particles. A wind force with a minus value can simulate both gravity and turbulence, which we need because we are simulating smoke, as well as a Drag Force node with 5, 5, 5 to simulate air resistance; you can delete the particles under the ground plane by adding Particle Group Selection and Group Split then delete all the particles inside the group; and then set the Group Selection to continuous update.
13. Create a container
All church objects are selected to let smoke collide with them
Go to Create>Geometry>FumeFX to create a container. Make sure it includes the objects emitting smoke and set Steps to 4; and create a folder to put your sim files in from the path menus. Set Turbulence to 1.5, scale it to 5 and 5 for details, create a particle Source from Create>Helpers>FumeFX>Particle Src, and pick the particles as its source. In FumeFX Objects, select the Source and all the church objects to let smoke collide with them when generated.
14. Set a graduated growth
Graduated growth stops the smoke appearing too early
As we don't want FumeFX to emit any smoke before the church starts to fall, we need to set a graduated growth for the smoke radius. Change radius to 0, activate the curve beside it by right-clicking and select Enable; set 6 for the next radius growth, and right-click beside it on PA, change it to Particle Velocity, left-click on it and change the Maximum into 0.05, to ensure the smoke radius for each particle will grow based on its velocity; set Velocity Multiplier 1.4.
15. Final tweaks & simulate
Gradient colours control the smoke's look
Now, add two lights and raytrace shadows; these can be selected in FumeFX's Illumination tab. Also, change the Rendering tab's setting by adding a gradient colour bar to describe the smoke's look by right-clicking or selecting Color and then Key mode, and playing with its opacity to define its thickness... and then simulate! When you're done, render the sequence with the default rendering setting to see your animation in action.
Website galleries, aka CSS galleries: they're a great source of ideas, as well as keeping us abreast of the latest web design trends. We all have our go-to web design gallery for quick inspiration when the brief drops on your desk - but are there other sites you might not know about, that could be even more useful?
Galleries come in all shapes and sizes with hundreds popping up every day it's hard to sift through the low-quality ones to find the real gems. Here's 13 that are definitely worth considering to bookmark...
Awwwards is a little different to most website galleries because sites are selected by a jury rather than a single curator. If you sign up to the site you can curate your own choices and create your own favourites list, which very handy if you're looking for a certain niche of website.
The FWA (Favorite Website Awards) is considered the crème de la crème of galleries within the web design industry. Like Awwwards it has its own vibrant community.
In contrast with the first two web design galleries on our list, HTML Inspiration takes a minimalist approach to its design, letting the work speak for itself. The selection on this website is brilliant and the featured website is nice and big so you don't even need to click on it to appreciate its design.
Site Inspire is another web design gallery that combines minimal design with finely-honed selection of great sites. It's curated by Daniel Howell, who tends to favour minimal, clean and responsive websites.
Admire the Web is another web design gallery that features large inspirational screengrabs so you don't have to click on every one. Clear categories and tags make finding what you're looking for a piece of cake.
Unmatched Style is a little busier than 3, 4 and 5 on our list, but they do offer some handy extra design resources. The piece de resistance is the colour chart, enabling you to find inspiration via colour.
At 1,439 sites and rising, there's plenty of inspiration to be found here. A nice bonus Styleboost offers is a little summary against each inspiration. Nice and clear web design gallery, this.
Make Better Websites offers a superb browsing experience. Nice big images accompany submissions and a brilliant refine function makes the site simple and rewarding to use.
We're not hugely certain where the difference lies between CSS galleries and web galleries - not many websites are made without CSS these days! But besides that, we love the clean and clear design of this simple (in a good way) web design gallery.
One Page Love, as you can imagine, specialises in one page websites, and it's the best we've come across in this niche. Selections are made by Rob Hope, who has great taste. He's also curator/owner of www.mmminimal.com.
Although this site doesn't have the cleanest design and is non-responsive, its legacy alone makes it deserving of inclusion on this list. It's been running since 2001, but the curators' taste is far from vintage, with brilliantly modern web design inspirations getting uploaded daily.
Web Crème has also been about for some time as you can see by their very slim left-aligned website. But if you think the design might be due for update, that's more than made up for by the brilliant selection of inspiring websites.
Have we missed out your favourite source of web design inspiration? Let us know about it in the comments!
