Government sacks PNB executives for lapses in $2 billion fraud in first firings: sources

The logo of Punjab National Bank (PNB) is seen on a branch office window in New Delhi, February 27, 2018. REUTERS/Saumya Khandelwal/Files

Neha Dasgupta, Krishna N. Das-JANUARY 20, 2019

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The government has sacked two executives of the state-run Punjab National Bank (PNB) for allegedly failing to prevent a $2 billion fraud, two sources said on Sunday, nearly a year after the country’s biggest bank scam came to light and also dragged the government into the controversy.

The firing of the two executive directors, whom the CBI have accused of breaching the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines, is the first instance of sacking of the bank’s employees since it said that billionaire diamond jeweller Nirav Modi and his uncle had for years fraudulently raised billions of dollars in foreign credit by conspiring with staff at the bank.

Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi, who left India before the fraud was discovered, have denied the accusations.

In a stock exchange filing late on Friday, the country’s second-biggest state bank said the government had removed K. Veera Brahmaji Rao and Sanjiv Sharan “from the office of executive director” with immediate effect. The filing did not give a reason.

The government then fired them because “they failed to use global payments network SWIFT to detect the fraud”, a bank source said. The sources who had direct knowledge of the matter and declined to be identified because the reasons for the sacking have not been made public.

 

“They were not able to supervise and there was dereliction of duty on their part,” said one of the sources, a government official.

Phone calls to PNB Chief Executive Sunil Mehta as well as to Rao and Sharan went unanswered.
The 124-year-old bank has in recent months reinstated most of the 21 employees who were suspended immediately after the scam became public because they were not charged by police.

POLITICAL ISSUE

India has issued non-bailable warrants against both Modi and Choksi and Interpol red notices are out too, but their continued evading of the law is being used by the Congress party to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the lead up to a general election due by May.

 

“Your money, money of our tribal brothers, lower castes, farmers was taken away and you did not even realise,” Congress President Rahul Gandhi said in a state election rally late last year. “Nirav Modi fled after taking the money, Mehul Choksi also fled with him.”

The BJP, meanwhile, says the fraud began when Congress was in power.

Investigations into the case had been slowed by a public spat between the top-two officials in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), said a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
A CBI spokesman did not have an immediate comment on the matter.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has seized assets worth millions of dollars of both jewellers.

A senior ED investigator told Reuters late last year that they were confident both Modi and Choksi would be brought back to the country “soon”. He said the Indian embassies in the UK, where Modi is believed to be in, and the one in Antigua, where Choksi is, were in constant touch with authorities with information about them.

Sunil Mehta, chief executive officer of India's Punjab National Bank (PNB), speaks during an interview with Reuters at his office in New Delhi, April 11, 2018. REUTERS/Saumya Khandelwal/Files

“We know fear bells have started ringing there,” said the ED investigator, who declined to be named as he was not authorised to talk to reporters. “We want them to be brought back to India before the elections.”

A call to the ED office went unanswered.

Reporting by Neha Dasgupta and Krishna N. Das; Additional reporting by Abhirup Roy and Aftab Ahmed; Editing Muralikumar Anantharaman

Can State’s New Cyber Bureau Hack It?

The U.S. State Department is working to stand up a new cybersecurity bureau, but it's hobbled by debates with lawmakers on its purpose and mandate.

Network cables are seen going into a server in an office building following a cyberattack that affected dozens of countries in Washington, D.C., on May 13, 2017. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

BY ROBBIE GRAMER, ELIAS GROLL

| JANUARY 18, 2019, 1:30 PM
The U.S. State Department is expected to stand up a new cybersecurity bureau this year as the government grapples with expanding foreign cybersecurity threats, according to current and former officials familiar with the plans. But the scope of that body’s work remains unclear amid squabbles with Capitol Hill over its responsibilities.

At a time when the United States and its adversaries are making major investments in offensive hacking capabilities, current and former officials say the bureau would fill a gap in the U.S. government’s diplomatic abilities.

Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan is expected to announce the creation of the new bureau in a speech on the Trump administration’s cybersecurity strategy this spring, according to one official.

The official added that plans are underway for the bureau to be run by a new assistant secretary of state but cautioned that nothing has been finalized.

Without a unit inside the State Department devoted to the subject, current and former officials fear that Washington is neglecting a key issue that is expected to play a major role in international relations.

“It is the area where our adversaries are not only choosing to confront the United States the most, but also drawing the most blood,” said Jason Healey, a former White House official on cybersecurity under President George W. Bush now at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

The State Department did not respond to request for comment for this story. The department’s press office sent an email saying communications with media are limited due to the ongoing government shutdown.

President Donald Trump’s administration has taken a hard line on cybersecurity issues, issuing indictments and imposing sanctions on hackers alleged to be working on behalf of the Chinese government and loosening Barack Obama-era rules on carrying out offensive cyberattacks.

The White House has accused Beijing of stepping up its campaign of stealing American intellectual property in a bid to boost domestic firms, an issue that U.S. negotiators are attempting to address as part of talks aimed at ending a tit-for-tat trade war between the two countries.

Amid this growing confrontation over issues in cyberspace, American diplomats working on cybersecurity have been hamstrung by a lack of authority and resources at a time when U.S. adversaries are stepping up their efforts in this space. China and Russia are increasingly using their diplomatic clout to dictate the direction of internet governance bodies, and critics of the Trump administration argue that it has been lagging in its diplomatic approach on the issue.

As the administration has downplayed the importance of multilateral bodies, China, for example, has tried to use its growing clout in United Nations bodies to advance its vision of a more highly regulated internet, as Foreign Policy reported in 2017. Beijing views the open internet as a security threat and has tasked its diplomats with advancing efforts to regulate online speech.

The State Department used to have an office that coordinated cybersecurity issues, but former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson shuttered it in 2017, in a move cybersecurity experts and former officials decried as short-sighted. In apparent response to the criticism, Tillerson reversed course shortly before his firing last March, telling lawmakers a year ago that he had plans to create a new bureau on cybersecurity.

His successor, Mike Pompeo, signed a memo last summer that would have re-established the bureau under the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, according to current and former officials. But since then, the officials say, the issue has been beset by delays as top diplomats and lawmakers debate where in the department to place the bureau and what exactly the bureau’s mandate should entail. The ongoing government shutdown, now nearing its fourth week, could further delay the rollout.

One State Department official said the bureau is still expected to be overseen by the undersecretary for arms control and international security, to emphasize its focus on national security issues. But others, including lawmakers, have pushed for the bureau to report to the undersecretary of political affairs, the department’s third-ranking official, and focus more on political priorities relating to cybersecurity.

In January 2017, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would have established the Office of Cyber Issues in the State Department, located that office under the undersecretary for political affairs, and consolidated all of the department’s work on cybercrime, internet freedom, deterrence, and cyberdiplomacy.

But that legislation stalled in the Senate, and Pompeo now appears to be moving toward establishing the bureau under the jurisdiction of his department’s arms control experts.

What appears as an internecine bureaucratic fight is in reality a conflict over the bureau’s priorities and whether the coming cybersecurity body will address more than just the hard security issues in cyberspace, such as the launching of offensive cyberattacks.

While the development of frameworks governing the use of offensive cyberattacks represents a key diplomatic issue, economic and human rights questions are also important. Policies governing the use of encryption have implications for online global commerce, which is made possible by the use of widespread encryption. The internet human rights agenda is another fraught area, as authoritarian states seek to clamp down on the open web as a tool of dissent and civic organizing.

Regardless of where the bureau is placed, it is expected to also be tasked with building up the cybersecurity capacity of developing countries’ governments to improve internet security worldwide, according to one official.

Placing the bureau under the department’s arms control wing would place an emphasis on these hard security questions in cyberspace and possibly cause the department to neglect the economic and human rights dimensions of cyberdiplomacy, said Chris Painter, the State Department’s former cyber coordinator.

Still, Painter welcomed the move to re-establish a division within the department devoted to cybersecurity issues.

The bureau is expected to employ roughly 80 people, the current and former officials say. About half will be current State Department employees recruited from other bureaus. The other half will be new hires.

Until then, the vestiges of the cybersecurity coordinator office that Tillerson disbanded have been folded into the department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. Robert Strayer, a former Republican Senate aide, manages those efforts as a deputy assistant secretary.

Officials said he is on the shortlist to run the new bureau.

Video: Slavoj Zizek on MeToo

Jan 19, 2019Jan 19, 2019

In this episode of the mini-series by Russia Today with Slavoj Zizek, the slovenian philosopher dissects the #MeToo movement which, he thinks, is no longer the #MeToo that was launched ten years ago. “They talk about sex all the time. But it’s not really about sex. For them sex is only viewed through the prism of power.”

Mexico explosion: scores dead after burst pipeline ignites

At least 73 dead and 76 injured in blast that occurred as people tried to fill containers with fuel
 
Scores killed in Mexico pipeline explosion - video

David Agren in Mexico City@el_reportero-Sat 19 Jan 2019 23.39 GMT

The death toll from the explosion of a pipeline ruptured by suspected fuel thieves in central Mexico has risen to 73, the governor of the state of Hidalgo has said.

At a news conference with the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the governor, Omar Fayad, said 76 people had also been injured in Friday evening’s explosion, which happened as people tried to fill containers with fuel.

Dozens of burned bodies lay in the charred field where the blast occurred in the municipality of Tlahuelilpan as forensic experts inspected and photographed the remains. Soldiers and other military personnel surrounded the cordoned-off area.

López Obrador pledged to step up his government’s drive to stamp out fuel theft, which has cost the country billions of dollars in the last few years.

Video footage showed people getting covered in petrol as they tried to fill their containers on Friday. Screams could be heard later as a fireball shot into the sky. “Hit the ground,” one person yelled at those fleeing.

The origins of the explosion remain uncertain, but it brought home the horrors of stolen fuel, often siphoned from pipes belonging to the state-run oil company, Pemex.

"Mi garrafón, wey" circula en redes video de la fuga en #Tlahuelilpan, Hidalgo antes de la explosión https://t.co/LoGFExj8cH pic.twitter.com/wCOP5XQv4a

— La Silla Rota (@lasillarota) 19 January 2019

Fayad appealed to people via Twitter to avoid taking fuel, saying they were putting their lives and those of their families at risk. “What happened today in Tlahuelilpan should not be repeated,” he said.

Mexico has cracked down on fuel theft, which has mushroomed in recent years and spawned criminal gangs, whose clashes over huachicol – originally slang for poor-quality alcohol – have sent the homicide rate soaring in several states.

López Obrador, who took office on an agenda of combating corruption and calming the country, ordered the crackdown on fuel theft barely a month after taking office, on 1 December.

He closed fuel pipelines running from refineries and deployed tanker trucks to supply petrol stations, arguing that fuel theft cost the country billions. He also sent the army to guard key Pemex installations, where, he alleged, insiders were working with fuel thieves.

 Aerial footage shows scale of Mexico fire after pipeline explosion - video

Pemex pipes were tapped an average of 42 times a day in the first 10 months of 2018, according to the company.

On Saturday López Obrador said: “Far from stopping the fight … against fuel theft, it’s going to become stronger, we’ll continue until we’ve eradicated these practices.”

The crackdown inevitably caused shortages and long petrol lines in at least six states and the national capital – not unlike the US in the 1970s.

Opponents criticised the crackdown as improvised and ill-considered, while business groups have warned of a possible economic slowdown and shortages of staples in some western states. “They can’t guard the pipelines, so they’re going to stop using the pipelines,” said George Baker, a veteran observer of the Mexican oil industry.


 Emergency personnel arrive in Tlahuelilpan, Hidalgo, Mexico. Photograph: Social Media/Reuters

But the public is backing the president, whose predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, presided over a six-year term marred by accusations of graft and inaction on crimes like fuel theft. A poll in the Reforma newspaper showed 73% of respondents saying they were willing to endure fuel shortages to combat huachicol.

Still, a culture of stealing fuel has taken hold in some parts of the country – such as in the state of Puebla, where residents of poor corn-farming villages have blocked major highways to protest against army actions against so-called huachicoleros.

“Huachicol happens in poor towns and everyone there benefits,” said Esteban Illades, editor of the magazine Nexos. “As long as that keeps happening, no power can stop huachicol.”

In December 2010, authorities blamed oil thieves for a pipeline explosion in a central Mexico near the capital that killed 28 people, including 13 children. That blast scorched homes, affecting 5,000 residents in an area six miles (10km) wide in San Martin Texmelucan.

Storm over genetically modified twins

Is it ethically repugnant to modify the gene-code of embryos?

Kumar David-January 19, 2019, 8:16 pm 

There is next to nothing I know about genetics but the Second International Human Genome Editing Summit for 2018 was held at the University of Hong Kong from 27 to 29 November and I took my chance to attend many sessions. The very technical ones were Greek to me but the broader interactions and sessions for the public were great. The conference is a big event (the first was in Washington DC in 2015) and the sponsors include the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences and US National Academy of Medicine. The fun however was on the day before the Summit when scientist He Jiankui of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, described the work his team had done leading to the birth of genetically changed twins Nana and Lulu. He also claimed that another woman was pregnant with a similarly modified child. These are the first known genetically modified humans.

He Jiankui spoke to a packed hall of scientists and the world’s press and as you can guess all hell broke loose. Here are some reactions. Nobel laureate David Baltimore, a Cal-Tech prof emeritus, called it irresponsible: "I think there has been a failure of self-regulation by the scientific community". David Liu of the Broad Institute, Massachusetts, challenged He Jiankui on how the girls benefited by having their DNA altered. The children were not at risk of contracting HIV at birth he said and there were many other ways to avoid HIV infection later in life. "What was the unmet medical need for these patients?" Liu asked. Matthew Porteus a professor at Stanford declared "He’s already at risk of becoming a pariah. Scientists discuss research plans with colleagues to get feedback years before they set out. Unless he starts to engage in the scientific process it will get worse and worse."

He Jiankui described how he used a well-known editing process called Crispr-Cas9 to modify a gene called CCR5 in embryos created through IVF for couples with HIV-positive fathers. The modification mirrored a natural mutation found in a small percentage of people which makes them resistant to the virus. He faced a stormy hour-long session and defended himself commendably against angry scientists and the media. He concluded: "I believe that not only in this case but millions of children need this protection since an HIV vaccine is not available. For this I feel proud."

The crux of the debate is what you might call the fear of a Frankenstein-Creature and to make it worse the genetic change may be heritable, meaning a continuing line of descendants may inherit and carry forward the change. Mary Shelly (1797-1851), wife of English poet Percy Bysshe Shell wrote the tale of a young scientist Victor Frankenstein who created a Creature in his lab. The Creature, hideous to behold, escaped and wrecked much havoc but when Victor tracked it down it pleaded with him to create a female Creature as a companion. Fearful that this could lead to a monster race that could savage mankind Victor refused. Hence the horror that greeted He Jiankui’s gene-edit was defused in this way in Mary Shelly’s famous novel.

Not everyone is negative about changing the DNA of a human embryo to give a child a better chance in life. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics said in July 2018 that it may be "morally permissible" if it was in the child’s interests and did not add to the kinds of inequalities that already divide society. "It is our view that genome editing is not morally unacceptable in itself," said Karen Yeung, chair of the Nuffield working group and professor of law, ethics and informatics at the University of Birmingham. "There is no reason to rule it out in principle." Experiments around the world have shown that DNA editing could, in principle, prevent children from inheriting serious diseases caused by faulty genes. Currently the law in most countries including China ban the creation of genetically modified babies. Chinese authorities, soon after his presentation, condemned He Jiankui’s initiatives and it is rumoured that his laboratory has been sealed.

The prospect of modifying genes in human embryos is controversial since, for a start, the procedure has yet to be proven safe. British researchers found that the most popular tool for editing, Crispr-Cas9 caused damage elsewhere in the DNA. If so, gene editing would disrupt healthy genes though it is meant only to fix faulty ones. Secondly, changes made to an embryo’s DNA would affect all its cells, including the sperm or eggs, thus genetic modifications would be passed down to future generations. DNA editing also raises the possibility of "designer babies", where the genetic code is knowingly rewritten so that the child has superior traits. The Nuffield report does not rule out any specific uses of genome editing, but says that to be ethical, it must be in the child’s interests and have no ill-effects for society.

George Church, a geneticist at Harvard agreed with the report’s guiding principle that gene editing "should not increase disadvantage, discrimination, or division in society". But reproductive gene editing, if permitted, will for sure be used for enhancement and for cosmetic purposes which may worsen inequality and social division. So I (KD) ask, will it be possible to stand in the way of a gilded age in which some are genetic ‘haves’ and the rest ‘have-nots’? It won’t be a matter of money since the price tag will plummet like microchips once the technique gets going. I think it’s an open question. We have two dilemmas to think about: (a) can the forward march of gene-technology (or any technology) be stopped, and (b) what is wrong in designing babies to be healthier and smarter?

Can technology be stopped?

Let me start with a bold assertion. There are probably tens of thousands if not more planets in the Milky Way galaxy carrying life forms and at a wild guess it is possible there are a few thousand carrying intelligent life. Multiply this across the universe and the number is daunting. There could well be millions if not billions of places in the universe inhabited by intelligent life. Some may be less and some more evolved than humans. It is reasonable to expect that some may comparatively be super-civilisations a million or many millions of years more evolved than homo sapiens. If such civilisations exist it is certain they would have upgraded their heritance mechanisms. True they may not be carbon-based and may have quite different ‘genetic codes’ (or whatever) than earthbound life forms, but this does not affect my basic hypothesis.

To ramble on, it stands to reason that these supra beings too worried themselves sick like we are doing now whether it is wise to mess around with inheritance mechanisms but found solutions to impediments. It seems to me that thinking long-term it is impossible to stop progress. I think once biotechnology finds ways to fix glitches and prevent undesired distortions, as technology surely will given time, the adoption of these methods will become standard.

The ethics of designer babies

What response can one give to parents who say "Why should I not design my baby to be healthier and smarter?" Pointing to the risks of something going wrong in the genetic engineering process and the baby being in some way misshapen is only a temporary obstacle. Gene splicing and reforming is in its infancy and like all technologies will improve with time. What answer can one give parents once the technology is perfected and the risk has been driven to near zero? Think of laser eye surgery or air travel which have now become everyday things. What about the objection that the changes will be heritable and persist for ever? The parents will reply "Yes of course, that’s the whole point. We want the improvements to persist for all future generations of our children’s children".

What about the moral objection that one is playing god? The reply is that there are many things that god did not get right, so what’s wrong with fixing them? Take vaccination for example. God forgot to make the immune system resistant to polio and many other diseases so medical science stepped in and fixed it.

To finish on a general note. What if Chinese parents want to fix the genes of their children to give them and their descendants round instead of slit eyes? What if the English want to engineer their descendants to rid them of a grey-pink pasty hue and endow them with a gorgeous golden brown to put the bikini-clad nuggets on Copacabana Beach to shame? I say wonderful! And what if a future great leader decides to fix our native genes and make Lanka’s populace less stupid when it visits the polling booth? That would be a massive step forward. So, let me leave you with these iconoclastic thoughts to mull over as you sip your Sunday coffee.

How Orkney leads the way for sustainable energy

Working on the Pelamis wave power converter in Orkney. Photograph: Steve Morgan/Alamy Stock Photo

Robin McKie-Sun 20 Jan 2019

A tech revolution – and an abundance of wind and waves – mean that the people of Orkney now produce more electricity than they can use

It seems the stuff of fantasy. Giant ships sail the seas burning fuel that has been extracted from water using energy provided by the winds, waves and tides. A dramatic but implausible notion, surely. Yet this grand green vision could soon be realised thanks to a remarkable technological transformation that is now under way in Orkney.

How Orkney leads the way fo... by on Scribd

The causes and (expensive) fallout of the SingHealth data breach

(L-R) Cyber Security Agency CEO David Koh, MCI Permanent Secretary Gabriel Lim, Minister for Communications and Information S. Iswaran, Health Minister Gan Kim Yong, Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary Chan Heng Kee and SingHealth CEO Ivy Ng attend a press conference regarding the SingHealth cyber attack in Singapore. July 20, 2018. Source: The Straits Times/AFP

By Soumik Roy | 18th January 2019 | @SoumikRoy

CYBERSECURITY is becoming a major concern for organisations and regulators everywhere, and in sectors such as healthcare, with institutions storing critical personal information — from financial data to medical reports — the stakes are higher.

In the recent SingHealth data breach, for example, personal information of 1.5 million patients, including that of Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and a few other ministers, was stolen. Some 160,000 people also had their outpatient prescriptions stolen.

According to the report issued by the Committee of Inquiry (COI) investigating the incident, the hack was a result of basic failings such as weak administrator passwords and delays in applying recommended patches to the organisation’s systems.

SEE ALSO: How Singapore is upskilling its workforce

While the 454-page report reconstructs the series of events and explains what exactly went wrong, it also identified five key findings that actually made SingHealth vulnerable to the attack in the first place. These were:

1. Inadequately trained staff

IHiS staff did not have adequate levels of cybersecurity awareness, training, and resources to appreciate the security implications of their findings and to respond effectively to the attack.

2. Lapses in administrative action

Certain IHiS staff holding key roles in IT security incident response and reporting failed to take appropriate, effective, or timely action, resulting in missed opportunities to prevent the stealing and exfiltrating of data in the attack.

Lukasz Olejnik@lukOlejnik

Report on the Singaporean health facilities (1.5 million user data stolen; sensitive). Technical and organizational deficiencies (fear?), a skilled attacker. Contains detailed post-mortem. https://www.mci.gov.sg/~/media/mcicorp/doc/report%20of%20the%20coi%20into%20the%20cyber%20attack%20on%20singhealth%2010%20jan%202019.pdf?la=en …

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04:29 - 10 Jan 2019

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3. Existing vulnerabilities and weaknesses

There were a number of vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and misconfigurations in the SingHealth network and SCM system that contributed to the attacker’s success in obtaining and exfiltrating the data, many of which could have been remedied before the attack.

4. Attack orchestrated by skilled hackers

The attacker was a skilled and sophisticated actor bearing the characteristics of an Advanced Persistent Threat group.

5. Better defenses could have helped avoid attack

While our cyber defenses will never be impregnable, and it may be difficult to prevent an Advanced Persistent Threat from breaching the perimeter of the network, the success of the attacker in obtaining and exfiltrating the data was not inevitable.

In addition, the report also provided 16 recommendations for SingHealth and other public health organisations in Singapore — many of which included remedying the aforementioned findings.

SEE ALSO: Records of Singapore’s property agents are now available online

According to local media, in light of the report, Minister-in-charge of Cyber Security S. Iswaran and Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong told Parliament that the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) had found both SingHealth and its IT vendor Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS) guilty in the cybersecurity incident.

As a result, PDPC imposed its largest and second largest fine to date. It charged IHiS with SGD750,000 (US$550,000) and SingHealth with SGD250,000 (US$185,000) in light of the COI’s report.

“Even if organisations delegate work to vendors, organisations as data controllers must ultimately take responsibility for the personal data that they have collected from their customers,” PDPC told The Straits Times.

This article originally appeared on our sister site Tech Wire Asia. 

'My son's severe asthma is very distressing'

Oscar has been in hospital 57 times with his asthma

18 January 2019

Five-year-old Oscar's life has regularly hung in the balance because of severe asthma.

On his second birthday, he was so ill he did not respond to any medicines, leaving his parents fearing the worst.

"I will never forget how his tiny chest rose up and down in desperate movements, trying to fill his lungs with air," his mum, Carla, says.

After 57 emergency trips to hospital with her son, Carla is used to the routine but she never stops worrying.

"Within 30 minutes, he can go from coughing and looking OK to constantly coughing and gasping for breath...

"What we have been through, it's very distressing," she says.

"We've been told there's nothing else they can do for him."

Oscar is now at school which means he has to be closely supervised

According to Asthma UK, it is difficult to know how many life-threatening asthma attacks happen every day in the UK, because not everyone seeks treatment for them and they can be difficult to define.

But they estimate that someone in the UK has an attack every three seconds and many of those could be avoided if people heeded the warning signs and sought help quickly.

This was based on asking 10,000 people with asthma to report how many attacks they had suffered in the past year.

Asthma is a long-term condition which affects the airways - the tubes that carry air in and out of the lungs - causing them to narrow and making it harder to breathe.

It affects 4.3 million adults and 1.1 million children in the UK.

Last year, 77,855 people were admitted to hospital with an asthma attack - and 1,250 died, around three people a day.

Most of those are older adults, the charity says, who may not pick up the signs and ask for help.

Asthma UK says you are having an asthma attack if:

• your blue reliever isn't helping, or you need to use it more than every four hours
• you're wheezing a lot, have a very tight chest, or you're coughing a lot
• you're breathless and find it difficult to walk or talk
• your breathing is getting faster and it feels like you can't get your breath in properly

The charity offers health advice on its website and has emergency advice to follow when having an asthma attack - for adults and children.

There can be a spike in asthma attacks over winter, linked to coughs and colds

It says the best way for people to stay well with asthma all year round is to take their preventer inhaler every day, so that protection in the airways is built up over time.

Dr Sam Walker, director of research and policy at Asthma UK, says: "Asthma attacks can be really frightening but some people don't seek help, despite advice to do so.

"But people never think it's as bad as it is," she says.

She says there can be a spike in asthma attacks over winter, linked to coughs and colds, but triggers vary from person to person, and can include pollen.

'Helpless feeling'

In Oscar's case, the symptoms are usually obvious, to the extent that he can now tell his mum when he is having an attack.

But he can deteriorate very quickly and now he is at school, the family are putting their trust in someone else spotting the signs and acting fast.

The constant worry has taken its toll on everyone, including Oscar, who sees a psychologist because of the trauma of so many hospital visits and procedures.

"I'm worrying all the time," says Carla.

"Is the school going to ring me? Should I go out?

"We can't go on holiday abroad because we need to be near a hospital and we've lost thousands of pounds on cancelled trips because he was just too poorly to go."

But the worst feeling is helplessness, she says.

"He can be coughing all night but there is nothing you can do."