U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s Visit to India to Further Strengthen Defense Cooperation

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterNation India, Nation USA 0

U.S. Secretary of Defense Gen. Lloyd J. Austin is scheduled to visit India from March 19 to March 21 to further strengthen bilateral defense cooperation. It will be the first high-level visit by someone from the U.S. after Joe Biden took over as the president on Jan. 20.

During his visit, Austin is expected to meet Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and other senior dignitaries in the government. The visit will take place a week after the first ever Indo-Pacific Quad summit on March 12, which will be attended virtually by the heads of states of India, the U.S., Australia and Japan. The U.S. defense secretary will also visit Japan and South Korea.

“Both sides are expected to discuss ways to further strengthen bilateral defense cooperation and exchange views on regional security challenges and common interests in maintaining a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region,” the defense ministry said in a statement.

Discussions regarding defense cooperation would also focus on how both countries could consolidate military-to-military cooperation and defense trade and industry cooperation.

Austin’s visit to India as part of his first overseas travel emphasizes the strength of the India-U.S. strategic partnership.

India has inked defense deals worth $18 billion with the U.S. since 2007. In the near future, a deal worth $3 billion for 30 armed drones from the U.S. to be used by all the three forces is likely to be signed. As per plans, India will be acquiring 30 MQ-9 Reaper – 10 each for the three services.

The procurement is being done as India is facing a war-like situation on two fronts – Pakistan and China. These MQ-9B Predator drones are manufactured by San Diego, Calif.-based General Atomics. The MQ-9B has an endurance of 48 hours and a range of over 6,000 nautical miles.

It comes with nine hard-points, capable of carrying sensors and laser-guided bombs besides air-to-ground missiles. During the Aero India show in Bengaluru last month, the U.S. Defense Attache in India, Rear Admiral Eileen Laubacher, had stated that the U.S. is looking forward to enhancing bilateral relations with India and also to work together to tackle evolving space threats.

She had said: “As we build out our own space force, re-establish the space command, we look forward to wide-ranging cooperation with India and the defense space agency. It is imperative that we both work together in this emerging domain as space threats evolve.”

Referring to the growing Chinese assertiveness and emerging threats for the Indo-Pacific region, Laubacher had said: “Today we are seeing an increasingly provocative set of behavior throughout the Indo-Pacific, from the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea, to India’s borders high in the Himalayas. These actions threaten the norms of international conduct, the norms which India and the U.S. uphold resolutely.”

US Secretary Of State To Look Into Case Of 83-Yr-Old Fr. Stan Swamy, Held In Custody

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterNation India, Religion 0

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that he would look into the case of an 83-year-old Catholic priest, Stan Swamy, held in custody in India on allegations he was linked to Maoists. Responding to a request from a member of the House of Representatives while he was testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Blinken asked for more information and said: “We’ll look into it.”

Juan Vargas, who is the vice chair of the House International Economic Policy and Migration Subcommittee, told Blinken while questioning him that it was “incredible injustice” that Swamy, who was arrested by the National Investigation Agency, has been in jail for over 130 days.

Swamy belongs to the Jesuit order of priests and Vargas said that he had himself been a member of that society. He was arrested in Ranchi and taken to Maharashtra and detained in a Pune jail under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) on allegations that he participated in the activities of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist.

The case relates to a celebration by Dalits on January 1, 2018, in Koregaon-Bhima near Pune, which was followed by violence that left one person dead. Swamy has been an activist for tribal and Dalit rights.

Earlier in his testimony to the Committee on President Joe Biden’s Priorities for US Foreign Policy, Blinken said that in furtherance of its aims, “we held the first ministerial meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between us, Japan, Australia, and India, and we will hold a leader-level summit this week on Friday”.

China was the dominant theme during the hearing with Blinken declaring, “Our relationship with China, the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century”. Repeatedly questioned about Biden’s comment when asked on a CNN programme about Beijing treatment of the Uighur Muslim minority that “culturally, there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow”, Blinken reiterated that he considers there was a “genocide” of the Uighurs and the US would continue to speak out forcefully against it.

U.S.-China Meetings in Alaska

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterGlobal, Nation USA 0

The Biden administration’s diplomatic engagement with Asia will intensify this week with a series of meetings featuring top U.S. officials and their counterparts across the Pacific. Following a visit to Japan and South Korea with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Alaska along with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan for a high-profile meeting with Chinese officials Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi. These gatherings follow President Joe Biden‘s participation in last week’s virtual Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) meeting with the leaders of Japan, Australia, and India.

Below are remarks from Daniel Russel, Asia Society Policy Institute vice president for international security and diplomacy and former assistant U.S. secretary of state, on the upcoming U.S.-China meeting in Alaska. Please feel free to quote from them in your coverage:

“A joint meeting with the Chinese by the secretary of state and national security advisor is not without precedent. In the Obama administration, when the U.S hosted the Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington, the secretary and national security advisor typically held an informal dinner for the senior Chinese representative the evening before the talks. Those conversations were far more open, candid, strategic, and useful than most of the scripted exchanges that took place during the official delegation meetings.

“Meeting with foreign officials outside of either capital allows the visitor to focus on the meeting and frees the host from the distraction of regular duties. This was the logic behind the decision to organize an informal first meeting at Sunnylands between President Obama and newly selected Chinese president Xi Jinping in 2013. They were able to have extended and in-depth meetings and conversations over meals without the formalities and distractions. If senior Chinese officials came to Washington they would be expected to meet with their embassy, business groups, legislators, think tanks, and other U.S. officials.

“The Alaska venue is significant because in addition to being the place where the secretary of state’s plane normally refuels en route home from Asia, it is the westernmost part of the United States and draws attention to the fact that the U.S. is very much a Pacific nation – not merely a visitor to the Asia-Pacific as the Chinese often imply.”

“The timing is significant because it comes immediately on the heels of the first-ever Quad summit and the Biden administration’s first high-level, in-person consultations in key Asian-allied capitals. This signals that its emphasis on allies, partners and democratic governments doesn’t mean the administration is ignoring China.”

“The fact that both Blinken and Sullivan already know their Chinese counterparts and have extensive experience with past dialogues is an asset – this will not be their first rodeo. Their close relationships with Biden mean they speak with authority, and their history as close colleagues prevents Chinese ‘forum shopping’ between the State Department and the White House.”

“This meeting is a chance for top foreign policy officials from the two countries to begin a strategic discussion of the respective world views and priorities of each side – to explain and to listen to each other. We should regard this meeting as an exploratory exchange, rather than a negotiation that resolves outstanding problems. The Anchorage meeting is far more likely to serve as an initial level-set for the two sides to think through their strategies than it is to launch any type of structured bilateral dialogue.”

Gautam Adani World’s Biggest Wealth Gainer, Adds $16.2 Billion In 2021

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Finance/Economy, Youth 0

Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani has achieved a remarkable milestone amid the Covid-19 pandemic, as he added the highest wealth to his fortune in the world, as per the latest Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed that so far in 2021, Adani has added $16.2 billion, taking his total net worth to $50 billion. With this surge in his wealth, Adani is now the 26th richest person in the world.

Even though he’s not in the club of the 25 richest people on the planet, Gautam Adani has managed to ‘outgrow’ fellow billionaires, including the two richest men in the world, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, by seeing his net worth ballooning the most in 2021. While Adani has added $16.2 billion to his wealth since the start of this year, Amazon’s Bezos has seen his wealth shrink by $7.59 billion to $183 billion while Tesla’s Musk added $10.3 billion to reach $180 billion, as per Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The development comes at a time when the Adani Group is rapidly expanding its footprint in diversified sectors, including airports business and data centres. Recently, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited announced that Windy Lakeside Investment Ltd, a unit of Warburg Pincus, will invest Rs 800 crore for a 0.49 per cent stake in the company.

Shares of several Adani companies have surged over the past one year amid the pandemic, adding to its Chairman’s wealth. Adani Enterprises’ shares have increased over four-fold in the past one year and the stock price of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone has more than double during the period.

Google Co-founder Larry Page is ranked second in terms of highest gain in wealth with a growth of $14.3 billion. Amazon Inc Founder Jeff Bezos is the richest person on the planet with a net worth of $183 billion, followed by Elon Musk with a net worth of $180 billion.

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani is the 10th richest person in the world with a net worth of $84.8 billion. So far in 2021, he has added $8.05 billion of wealth. (IANS)

Adani’s fattening wallet has been on account of a surge in investor interest in his companies across sectors such as ports, power plants, renewable power, airports, data centres and coal mines. Except for one company, all his other companies have seen their share prices appreciate by over 50% this year — the odd one out being Adani Green Energy, whose 12% rise in 2021 gets dwarfed by the 500% rise in its value in 2020.

Known to be media shy, the self made first generation billionaire is also not a stranger to controversies. His Carmichael coal mine project in Australia has been the object of disaffection of environmentalists for fear of damage to the ecology and the company was renamed last year as Bravus Mining and Resources in order to distance itself from the Adani brand name.

Bhaskar Menon, Founding Chairman of EMI Music Worldwide, Dies at 86

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterEntertainment, Profile 0

Bhaskar Menon, the Indian American founding chairman and CEO of EMI Music Worldwide and a legend in the music business, died March 4 at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 86. “Determined to achieve excellence, Bhaskar Menon built EMI into a music powerhouse and one of our most iconic, global institutions,” said Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge in a statement. “Music and the world have lost a special one. Our hearts go out to his loved ones.”

In a career spanning over three decades, Menon was associated with some of the biggest names in the music industry, from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd, Queen, David Bowie and Tina Turner.

Before EMI, Menon was the CEO of Capitol Records and is credited with launching Pink Floyd’s popularity in the U.S. with the campaign that he designed for the band’s release of “The Dark Side of the Moon,” reported NDTV.

Menon was born in 1934 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He attended the Doon School, Dehradun, and Christ Church, Oxford, after which he joined EMI in 1956. In 1957, he moved to EMI’s Indian subsidiary, Gramophone Company of India, where he rose through the ranks before eventually being elevated to chairman in 1969, according to billboard.com.

Billboard noted that the most notable chapter in Menon’s career began in 1971, when he relocated to Los Angeles, Calif., in 1971 to take the helm at Capitol and steered the company into the new decade.

Menon’s tenure at Capitol came to an end in 1978, when he was named chairman and CEO of EMI Music Worldwide, a position he held for the next 12 years, per Billboard.

After leaving the music business in the early 1990s, Menon remained in Los Angeles and founded the company International Media Investments in 1995, through which he invested in and provided consultation services for a variety of entertainment and media businesses, including NDTV, where he held a seat on the board, it said.

Menon is survived by his wife Sumitra, their two sons, Siddhartha and Vishnu, and his sister Vasantha Menon.

Indra Nooyi Honored By National Women’s Hall Of Fame

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

Indra Nooyi, former chairperson and chief executive officer of PepsiCo is among nine women inducted into the 2021 class of National Women’s Hall of Fame (NWHF). Nooyi who has consistently ranked among the world’s most powerful people was honored for her contribution to the business field. The NWHF made the announcement on March 8, International Women’s Day.

The nation’s oldest membership organization, NWHF is dedicated to honoring and celebrating the achievements of these distinguished American women, the organization’s website says, noting that it uses the stories of its inductees as tools for inspiration, innovation and imagination,

During her tenure at PepsiCo, the company grew its net revenue by more than eighty percent, and PepsiCo’s total shareholder return was one hundred and sixty-two percent, the NWHF says in its press release.

PepsiCo expanded significantly during Nooyi’s tenure, acquiring Tropicana Products, Inc., merging with Quaker Oats Company and PepsiCo’s anchor bottlers, and acquiring the Russian company Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods, resulting in the largest international acquisition in PepsiCo’s history.

In addition to her business success as CEO, Nooyi was the chief architect of Performance with Purpose, PepsiCo’s pledge to do what is right for the business by being responsive to the needs of the world.

This pledge included delivering more nutritious products, limiting the company’s environmental footprint, and empowering its associates and the people in the communities PepsiCo serves.

Other women honored include the late renowned author Octavia Butler, former United States Army officer Rebecca Halstead, a multidisciplinary artist Joy Harjo, late philanthropist and educator Emily Howland, late NASA research mathematician Katherine Johnson, former first lady of the United States Michelle Obama, soccer icon Mia Hamm, and feminist artist and educator Judy Chicago. aHaHBnnn

NWHF will celebrate the inclusion of these women into the Hall at the biennial in-person induction ceremony on Oct. 2, 2021 at the its new home, the recently revitalized 1844 Seneca Knitting Mill building in New York. The ceremony will be held monitoring the COVID-19 situation and will be live streamed free to the public.

Anoushka Shankar Announces New Track, ‘Sister Susannah’

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterEntertainment, Women 0

Grammy-nominated sitarist, composer and producer Anoushka Shankar has announced the release of her new track, “Sister Susannah,” slated to drop on March 22.

“Over the course of the last year, it has been impossible to ignore the shadow pandemic happening alongside the pandemic itself. Hearing of the suffering of so many women, I have once again been startled by how common the experiences of abuse can be,” Shankar said.

The track features the Indian American musician on sitar, and reciting a checklist of requirements from the perspective of an unidentified man to his romantic partner.

She added: “‘Sister Susannah’ is a song I’ve toyed with for some time and the current situation, alongside people’s visceral reactions to our rare live performances of the song, prompted me to revisit and release it.”

Alongside Shankar, Grammy-nominated composer Alev Lenz has co-written the music and lyrics, and poet Nikita Gill contributes the poem in the song, marking her first foray into music. Manu Delago performs percussion and Nina Harries, Alev Lenz and Anandi Bhattacharya provide additional vocals.

Shankar is also scheduled to perform at the 63rd Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony. She will join artists including Gregory Porter and Kamasi Washington.

As part of the International Women’s Day celebrations, she performed Mar. 8 evening at Women, Power and Change: International Women’s Day at WOW, an event by WOW UK Festival 2021 that is being held virtually for the first time.

Brooklyn’s Priya Darshini’s Debut Album

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterEntertainment 0

“Is my idea of being at peace the same as being a home? Is it within me? Who am I? All these questions found expression in Periphery,’ says Brooklyn-based musician Priya Darshini, who has been nominated for in the Best New Age Album category at the Grammys 2021, country’s most prestigious music award. The 63rd Annual Grammys took place on the night of 14-15 March, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

The album, Periphery nominated for ‘containing at least 51% playing time of new vocal or instrumental new age recordings’ features music artists Max ZT (hammered dulcimer), Dave Eggar (cello), Chuck Palmer (percussion), and Will Calhoun (percussion).

“It was recorded live on one mic in a church in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and was an incredible experience to be a part of,” Darshini posted.

Born in Chennai, India and currently based out of Brooklyn, New York, Darshini has sung for over one-hundred television and radio commercials, as well as recorded for several Indian movie soundtracks, according to her bio on her website.

She began her classical singing career by performing a duet song with Hariharan for the Tamil film Kadhal Dot Com under music director Bharathwaj. She is also the first Indian playback singer to pursue PhD research in Film Music from University of Mysore, according to tamilsai.net.

Darshini is performing virtually at the Mandala Makers Festival organised by Mandala South Asian Performing Arts on March 26 at 7.30pm CST along with Max ZT.

She is also an actor (The Letters), ultra-marathoner (first and youngest Indian woman to run a 100-mile race in the Himalayas), and entrepreneur (The Wind Chasers – organizing extreme ultra marathons in the Himalayas and the south of India).

Darshini is a trustee of the Mumbai-based non-profit organization Jana Rakshita – an NGO working with underserved pediatric cancer patients, and building infrastructure for schools, with a focus on education for girls. She is working with a New York-based sustainable couture fashion startup that aims at slowing down fast fashion inspired by cradle-to-cradle design.

While the celebration of the occasion had everything to do with her superlative album Periphery that was released earlier in the year, it is in many ways a validation of so many of her choices, struggles and sacrifices. “My friends and family have been so excited about the nomination. I’ve been receiving so much love and appreciation for the album and the nomination has only multiplied that. It is also the recognition of the years of their support and encouragement I’ve received from near and dear ones, to help me follow this path, guide me through making difficult choices and to tell me to always, always be at it,” says Priya, speaking from Chicago.

Vatican Denies Blessing Of Same-Sex Marriages

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterCulture, Religion 0

The Roman Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex marriages, no matter how stable or positive the couples’ relationships are, the Vatican said this week. The message, approved by Pope Francis, came in response to questions about whether the church should reflect the increasing social and legal acceptance of same-sex unions.

“Does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?” the question asked. “Negative,” replied the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is responsible for defending Catholic doctrine. The church says its answer regarding same-sex couples “declares illicit any form of blessing that tends to acknowledge their unions as such.”

The message underlines the church’s insistence that marriage should be limited to a union between a man and a woman, saying that same-sex unions involve “sexual activity outside of marriage.” In the Vatican’s view, same-sex marriages are not part of God’s plan for families and raising children.

“The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing,” the statement said.

Bestowing a blessing on a same-sex couple’s relationship would also be an “imitation” of the nuptial blessing, the Vatican said. God, the Vatican said, “does not and cannot bless sin.”

Because of the Vatican’s stance on marriage, critics have accused the church of treating LGBTQ people as lesser members of its congregation. In an apparent response to those concerns, the Vatican said on Monday that its declaration is not meant to be “unjust discrimination.”

It called on Catholics “to welcome with respect and sensitivity persons with homosexual inclinations.”

The Vatican also said that its refusal to give religious approval to same-sex marriage does not preclude giving blessings to homosexual people. But it added that the church “does not have, and cannot have,” the power to bless same-sex relationships.

The message cited Francis’ own words from 2016, when he wrote, “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.”

That line comes from “Amoris Laetitia” (The Joy of Love), the papal treatise on families that was widely seen as Pope Francis’ move to make the Catholic Church more inclusive. When it was published, the document set off disagreements within the church hierarchy over whether Catholics who have been divorced and remarried should receive sacraments.

Pope Francis has been viewed with cautious optimism by LGBTQ groups because of remarks like his statement, widely published in 2020, that homosexuals are “part of the family” and that same-sex and other nontraditional couples need a “civil union law.” But rights advocates also noted that the pope’s remarks didn’t promise a change within the church, saying the comment seemed to reflect his own opinions, rather than a shift in Catholic doctrine.

India’s Golden Chariot Luxury Train Resumes From Bengaluru

March 17, 2021November 8, 2022 Staff ReporterTourism, Travel 0

The Golden Chariot luxury train to tourist destinations and heritage sites across south India resumed from Bengaluru after a four year break, an official said on Sunday.

“The 6-coach luxury train chugged off from Yesvantpur station in the city with South Western Railway General Manager A.K. Singh flagging it off,” Bengaluru Divisional Manager A.K. Verma told IANS.

In its first-round trip, christened ‘the Pride of Karnataka’, the train will cover Bandipur national park, Mysuru, Halebidu, Chikkamagaluru as well as Goa in 6 days and 7 nights.

The week-long journey also takes passengers to Unesco world heritage sites of Badami caves, Pattadakal temples and Hampi palace ruins in the state’s northwest region before returning to Bengaluru.

“Though the train has capacity to carry 48 passengers in single and double cabins in 6 coaches, about 30 of them are travelling in this trip, occupying single and double cabins,” said Verma.

In its second-round trip, christened ‘Jewels of South India’ from March 21, the train will chug through Mysuru to Mahabalipuram, Thanjavur and Chettinad in Tamil Nadu and Kochi in Kerala, including its backwaters in 3 nights and 4 days.

The ticket fare for deluxe cabin is Rs 3,20,130 for 2 persons and Rs 2,40,100 for a single passenger.

The package includes onboard meals, transport for sightseeing, entrance fee to all tourist sites covered in the trip and charge of guides.

Launched originally by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) in partnership with the Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation (KSTDC) in 2008, the former took over the operations of the train in 2020.

“The train offers travellers an opportunity to experience the historical, architectural and scenic beauty of South India in the comfort of luxurious amenities and international service standards,” said the IRCTC in a statement.

The renovated and refurbished luxury coaches boast of complimentary WiFi and OTT streaming onboard, choice of Indian and international cuisine, and wines.

The service includes cultural shows by artistes onboard.

Each of the 6 coaches are named after dynasties that ruled south India over the centuries.

Each coach has 4 cabins with a mix of 30 twin beds and 13 doubles beds. One cabin has been designed for specially-abled.

Two restaurants — Ruchi and Nalapaka — serve delicious meals while ‘Madira’ bar serves choicest of beers, spirits and wines.

Arogya, the spa-cum-fitness center offers traditional Ayurvedic therapies with modern workout machines. (IANS)

The Kovalam Experience

March 17, 2021November 8, 2022 Staff ReporterTourism 0

With its crescent-shaped, palm-fringed beaches, golden sands and beautiful vistas, Kovalam is the favourite beach destination of any traveller. Earlier, in the 1970s, Kovalam was known for being part of the hippie trail. The beach has changed over the years but continues to charm travellers with its aura and enrich them with a multitude of experiences.

Kovalam is a small coastal town in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala. With its three crescent-shaped beaches, and the cultural, heritage, wellness, zen, and adventure sports experiences they have on offer, Kovalam is a beach lover’s paradise.

The beaches have turned into a destination that has something in store for everyone. Be the traveller or tourist an ardent beach lover, a culture buff, an adventure junkie, or one searching for the inner self, Kovalam has something to bestow.

Every day is a lazy, laid-back day here if you want it to be, that is. You can begin your day with a hot cuppa in hand, walk along languid sandy stretches and laze away to glory. Or, you can start your day on a high note, by hopping onto a catamaran and riding into the sea! That is the beauty of Kovalam. There is never a dearth of activity (or reasons for inactivity) here, and you will be smothered by a range of vibrant options regarding how to spend the day.

Kovalam has three beaches viz. Hawa Beach or Eve’s beach; Grove’s Beach (Samudra Beach) which is also called Kovalam Beach, and the Light House Beach. The lighthouse beach is famed for its mighty lighthouse which offers a breathtaking aerial view of Kovalam.

The experiences it offers include sunbathing, swimming, catamaran cruises, and water sports such as boating, scuba diving, parasailing, surfing, and so on. You can alternately indulge in some holistic or wellness treatment such as yoga and Ayurveda.

And if you need to experience some piety, then head to the Azhimala Siva Temple which is an ancient place of worship that boasts of a uniquely crafted mega sculpture of Lord Siva.

You can also head to the Kerala Arts and Crafts Village to experience the cultural wealth of Kerala. You get to take home that souvenir you have been longing for or interact with artists and artisans at their workplace or craft studios.

If you need the ultimate Kerala experience, Kovalam is where you head off to!

The Anti-Swastik Bill Will Not Move Forward: NY Democratic Party Chair Assures Indian-Americans

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Culture, News 0

New York State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs announced during a March 10, 2021, Zoom meeting with members of the Indian-American community, that the NY Senate Bill 2727, which designates the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religious symbols as representing hate, “Will not move forward, it will not be advanced in the Senate or the Assembly, it is not going anywhere”.

The Zoom meeting was organized by the Nassau County Democratic Committee and the newly formed United Front of Indian Americans in North America (UFIANA).

“The meeting was the result of intense efforts by Kamlesh Mehta, who has taken a frontline seat in the ‘save Swastik’ campaign,” the press release from the United Front said.

Besides Mehta, others leading the initiative include Dr Raj Bhayani, Vibhuti Jha and Mukesh Modi, all of whom formed the host committee for the high profile meeting attended by at least 60 people.

Dr. Uma Mysorekar, president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America. Photo courtesy United Front of Indian Americans in North America

Mehta introduced Jacobs as well as others attending the meeting — the Consul General of India in New York Randhir Jaiswal, Dr. Uma Mysorekar, president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America.

All those attending unanimous said that the Bill S2727 should be rescinded, or the language relating to Swastik be removed from the text because the bill was intended to ban Nazi Hakenkreuz as a symbol of hate.

“I am familiar with Swastik as a positive symbol of peace, prosperity and good tidings among people of many cultures and nationalities. So, when Kamlesh Mehta brought to my attention the difficulty with this bill I understood the importance to the Indian community,” Jacobs is quoted saying during the meeting, in the press release.

“When I spoke to members of the Senate and others concerned, I said, we in this country have a culture of respecting each other. What makes America great is we are an amalgamation of people from all over and part of the lure of America is that you lead your life as good citizens with kindness towards each other and still have the ability to hold on to your own culture. This bill would have been an affront to that basic premise of American democracy. The Indian American community is essential to the success moving forward of this country,” Jacobs continued.

Kamlesh Mehta, one of the leaders of the ‘save Swastik’ initiative. Photo courtesy United Front of Indian Americans in North America

He thanked New York State Senator Kevin Thomas, the first Indian American to be elected to the upper house, noting, “He understood the need that the hate bill does not move forward.”

Dr Mysorekar emphasized that the Swastik has been a sacred symbol in the Vedic tradition for many millennia.

“Symbolizing well-being, auspiciousness and good luck charm, it is part of our festivals, temple rituals, and is displayed at homes, weddings and even below the deity as a yantra,” she said.

“Its negative connotation in the western world especially in the U.S. is because of Hitler. But today, misrepresenting and teaching Swastik as a symbol of hate will cause confusion in the minds of young people, who utilize it in their daily religious practice, and can lead to bullying and biases against them. It can also perpetuate misinformation,” Mysorekar warned.

She added that she has been receiving many calls from people worried about the hate bill, but after Jacobs’s assurance, “now we can all sleep peacefully.”

Ambassador Jaiswal shared some of his personal history with attendees. He said though he is a Hindu, and Swastik is personal (it is even displayed outside his father’s house in Hazipur in Bihar), he also carries the responsibility of Buddhist and Jain traditions because of their links with the place of his birth, Vaishali.

India’s Consul General in New York Randhir Jaiswal. Photo courtesy United Front of Indian Americans in North America

“Swastik has given a wealth of hope, happiness and philosophy to the modern world at large. So, juxtaposing something ancient and sacred with something as recent as early 20th century when it was twisted, would have amounted to doing injustice to the inner meaning of Swastik and the emotions of people attached to it,” Consul General Jaiswal said.

Mehta appreciated the prompt response and instant action by Chairman Jacobs. He emphasized the sanctity of Swastik, saying all taking part in the meeting follow different faiths, yet Swastik is the common auspicious symbol among them, uniting 1.8 billion people all over the world.

Jha, who has been active in promoting U.S.-India relations, also thanked Jacobs. “In the annals of India-US relationship, your name will last forever,” he told Jacobs.

Noting that the two symbols, Om and Swastik, are basic to Hindu religion, Jha said that Jacobs’ assurance will delight over a billion people, and it has prevented a fissure between India and the United States.

Mukesh Modi, who the press release said, was unofficially called the mayor of the Indian American community on Long Island, thanked Jacobs for respecting the constitutional and religious rights of everyone.

“You are going to get 1.8 billion blessings, which will give you more power and strength to protect our constitutional and religious rights,” Modi said.

Dr Raj Bhayani, an eminent leader in healthcare whose heart beats for India, said that the holocaust and difficulties faced by the Jewish community must be recognized, but that two wrongs do not make a right. Hakenkreuz is not Swastik, he stressed.

Dr Bhayani acknowledged the leadership of Kamlesh Mehta, founder of The South Asian Times, India Day Parade, Rotary Club of Hicksville South, RANA and the new organization which hosted the Zoom meeting.

Pradeep Tandon, in his power point presentation, showed how the ancient Swastik was a positive symbol and was freely used in U.S. society and culture before World War II. There is even a town named Swastik in Clinton County in New York.

Krish Rudra recalled working with Jacobs some years ago and requested him to see that Swastik identified as a hate symbol is also removed from New York Penal Code 240.31.

Bina Sabapathy expressed the hope that the issue does not arise again.

Many community leaders including Dr. Jay Sarkar, Narinder Kapoor, Dr. Rakesh Sharma, Dr. Ravindra Goyal, Dr. Raj Modi, Harish Thakkar and Fal Pandya also spoke and thanked Chairman Jacobs for his assurance to the Indian American communities in New York.

Jacobs noted that what needed to be done was educate people on differentiating Swastik from the Nazi symbol.

India’s Degraded And Downgraded Democracy

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterNation India 0

“The offence of sedition cannot be invoked to minister to the wounded vanity of the governments,” declared the judge while ordering bail for the 22-year-old climate change activist Disha Ravi, who was arrested recently, accused of working with the activist Greta Thunberg to undermine the Indian government — an outrageous fiction. Their only “crime” was expressing support for the farmers’ protest.

But the decision in Ravi’s case has much wider implications. It was a rare but welcome instance of the judiciary standing up to the Indian government’s increasingly authoritarian tactics.

The judge came down heavily against the use of sedition charges against activists and journalists. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sedition charges have been deployed as a clear tool of intimidation. A report by the organization Article 14 shows that 96 percent of sedition cases filed against 405 Indians for criticizing politicians and government officials were registered after 2014, when Modi assumed power.

So it didn’t really come as a surprise when the latest Freedom House democracy report degraded India from “free” to “partly free.” The report noted that the government and “its state-level allies continued to crack down on critics during the year, and their response to covid-19 included a ham-fisted lockdown that resulted in the dangerous and unplanned displacement of millions of internal migrant workers. The ruling Hindu nationalist movement also encouraged the scapegoating of Muslims, who were disproportionately blamed for the spread of the virus and faced attacks by vigilante mobs.”

The report’s conclusion is a scathing indictment. “Rather than serving as a champion of democratic practice and a counterweight to authoritarian influence from countries such as China, Modi and his party are tragically driving India itself toward authoritarianism,” the report says.

Of course the Indian government — which has now dismissed criticism from the United Nations and Amnesty International, which was forced to shut down in the country — rushed to attack the report as “misleading, incorrect and misplaced.”

But the government offered few specifics in its rebuttal. That’s because the steady decline of Indian democracy is impossible to deny, and emphasizing PR-friendly stories of economic growth won’t mark that reality anymore. The V-Dem Institute, based in Sweden, also downgraded India’s classification from “world’s largest democracy” to “electoral autocracy” in its latest report.

The same day Freedom House released its report, tax officials raided the home of the filmmaker Anurag Kashyap and the actress Taapsee Pannu. Both have been fiercely critical of the arrests of students and activists and have also expressed support for the farmers’ protest. The duo stands out for deciding to raise their voices for social justice, defying the comfortable silence and denial prevailing among most Bollywood stars.

Indian movie stars and athletes are often deployed to promote government policies and amplify propaganda. It helps cement their popularity. So when Thunberg, along with celebrities such as Rihanna and Meena Harris, tweeted in solidarity with the farmers’ protest, the entire powerful ecosystem of government supporters started attacking them for wanting to “destabilize” India.

But many of those high-profile supporters have been silent about the Freedom House downgrade. It’s more convenient to pick fights with celebrities than actually contend with the fact-based reality that India’s vibrant democracy is descending into totalitarianism. A top Indian movie star who enjoys cult status told me early in the year that his blood boils seeing activists and students being thrown behind bars, but that he feared that expressing support would bring retaliation from the government, such as the launching of fictitious investigations against him. His fears are not without merit. The raid on Kashyap and Pannu was a clear message. It’s not just the film industry that has been neutralized and co-opted — critics in the Indian media are also being identified and monitored.

The Indian news magazine Caravan just published an investigation about how Indian ministers actively discussed ways of neutralizing “negative influencers” critical of the government. “Some negative influencers give false narratives and discredit the Government. These need to be constantly tracked so that proper and timely response can be given,” the report reads.

The Freedom House report highlighted what Indian activists and independent journalists have known for a long time. What the citizens of Kashmir, who are vilified in their own land, have known for a long time. What students and dissidents fighting each day to uphold India’s democratic traditions have known for a long time. What Muslims who feel orphaned in a country their forefathers helped built with their blood and sweat have known for a long time.

My hopes for this country, as a journalist and as a Muslim, are being crushed each day. But like many Indians who have cherished the dream of this inclusive plural nation, I see the Freedom House report as an important historical document. I hope it provides solace to the young and the restless and the disillusioned, even while our own people, our media, our popular figures decide to ignore the truth. Some seem to be reveling in the criticism like a badge of honor.

But the world is indeed watching.

India’s New Internet Rules Are ‘Digital Authoritarianism’

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterMedia, Technology 0

The Indian government must suspend sweeping new Internet regulations, 10 international NGOs said in an open letter Thursday. The new rules, brought in by executive order in late February, give the Indian government an arsenal of muscular new powers that will force tech companies and news outlets to comply with government surveillance and censorship demands.

The rules increase the pressure on U.S. tech companies including Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp to comply with what the letter’s authors say is an increasingly authoritarian Indian government—or risk losing access to India, their biggest market in the world, which many see as key to future growth.

The Indian government had been preparing the new rules for years, but published them amid an escalating protest movement by Indian farmers that has captured both national and international attention. In February, the Indian government clashed with Twitter over the company’s refusal of a government request to remove hundreds of posts by activists and politicians about the protests, with the company saying they constituted freedom of expression. After the Indian government threatened Twitter employees with jail time, Twitter eventually re-blocked most of the posts.

“Why the government brought this up now is deeply linked to the farmer protests,” says Raman Jit Singh Chima, the Asia-Pacific policy director at Access Now, one of the groups that signed the open letter criticizing the rules. “After the pushback they received from social media firms, who were contesting orders they were receiving, the government definitely wants to send a clear signal that ‘we are going to regulate you, and if you push back, it will result in more regulation overall.’”

India’s new rules come at a time when tech platforms are facing threats of regulation by Western governments over content including hate speech, misinformation, and incitement to violence. But the Indian rules are more worrying, the open letter says, because they are part of a wider push toward “digital authoritarianism,” including Internet shutdowns and arrests of journalists. Although the Indian rules also contain useful provisions like mandating transparency in cases when user content has been removed, they come with no clear mechanisms for tech companies to push back against potentially unlawful government demands.

“The rules change the fundamental Internet experience for any average user in India,” says Apar Gupta, executive director of India’s Internet Freedom Foundation. “Social media companies, streaming platforms and online news portals are now being brought under some level of direct government supervision,” he says. “These rules are a very stark illustration of a desire of the government to control the online conversation. They extend forms of regulation over areas that enrich any kind of democracy, and encourage self-censorship.”

What do the new rules say?

The rules force companies to remove content that the government says is illegal within three days of being notified, including content that threatens “the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India,” public order, decency, morality, or incitement to an offense. The rules also state that platforms must hand over information about users to law enforcement upon request.

Encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp—which is owned by Facebook—will also be forced under the new rules to keep information on who the “first originator” of any message is, and provide it to the government upon demand. WhatsApp is already facing similar legislation in Brazil, its second-biggest market after India. And Western intelligence agencies have also pressured encrypted platforms to build “backdoors” into their messaging services.

WhatsApp did not respond to TIME’s request for comment, but its head Will Cathcart said the company was “still digesting them and understanding what they actually mean, or don’t mean,” in an interview on Big Technology, a podcast by journalist Alex Kantrowitz.

Cathcart suggested that WhatsApp may be prepared to bring legal cases in India if the rules meant breaking the end-to-end encryption that the chat service is based on. “If you’re talking about break[ing] encryption, it’s really hard for me to imagine being comfortable with it,” he said. “It’s hard for me to imagine even how you ask people to do that, I think it’s such a fundamental threat. So, we’ll stand and we’ll make our case, and we’ll argue.”

Facebook and Signal (an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that is growing in popularity in India) did not respond to TIME’s requests for comment.

In a statement, Twitter said: “We are studying the updated guidelines, and we look forward to continued engagement with the Government of India to strike a balance between transparency, freedom of expression, and privacy … We believe that regulation is beneficial when it safeguards citizen’s fundamental rights and reinforces online freedom.”

India’s new rules also say that companies must appoint a resident Indian citizen to be a “chief compliance officer” who will be criminally liable for any failure to comply with the rules. “India’s worst-kept secret is that if you work in the Internet industry, you will face arrest threats and threats of prosecution on a regular basis,” Chima says. “They’re just trying to codify this in one place. The idea is that if you have one person, you can put them under so much pressure that it will force compliance.”

The open letter by the 10 activist groups called on tech companies to resist the new rules. “They should interpret and implement legal demands as narrowly as possible, to ensure the least possible restriction on expression, notify users, seek clarification or modification from authorities, and explore all legal options for challenge,” the letter said.

As well as social media and streaming platforms, the new rules also impose strict new limits on digital news platforms—where a small handful of Indian publications have managed to remain critical of the government. In March, India’s democracy rating was downgraded from “free” to “partly free” by the U.S.-based NGO Freedom House, which cited among other factors the government’s “rising intimidation of academics and journalists.”

Under the new rules, digital publications will be subject to oversight by government-run committees, with the power to block publication of stories, remove stories, or even shut down entire websites. One of the 10 signatories of the open letter on Thursday is Reporters Without Borders, an NGO that campaigns for press freedom worldwide.

“Digital media has been quite outspoken, and I see this clearly as a way to bring it to heel, to control it, and perhaps intimidate it,” says Sidharth Bhatia, a founding editor of The Wire, a leading online publication that regularly publishes content critical of the Indian government. “It is executive overreach of the worst kind.”

The new legislation could result in critical reporting being silenced, Bhatia says. “Let’s say we’re about to publish a story about somebody powerful,” he says. “In a normal journalistic way, we will probably send a message before publication saying we would like your point of view. That person could very well go and say ‘I fear they will publish a very damaging story against me, and it’s libelous, etc.’” If that were to happen, he says, the case would be escalated through two committees, that contain no representatives of the digital media, until it is heard by a senior bureaucrat in India’s Ministry of Information. “At that level, you’re not likely to want to go against the government,” Bhatia says.

The publisher of The Wire is challenging the government’s new rules in the Indian court system—a challenge that a Delhi high court judge upheld on Tuesday, with the case adjourned to April 16.

Bhatia says that if the new rules are allowed to stand, they will have a “terrible chilling effect” on Indian journalism. “There is already talk within the media of journalists self-censoring,” he says. “More and more will say it’s not worth the trouble.”

Freedom House Report Declaring India Only A “Partly Free” Democracy A Recognition Of Reality Say Indian Americans

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Nation India 0

Indian American Muslim Council (www.iamc.com) an advocacy group dedicated to safeguarding India’s pluralist and tolerant ethos today expressed its concurrence with the annual report of Freedom House, the Washington-based pro-democracy think tank which designated India as only a “partly free,” democracy. Freedom House is a preeminent think tank in the US with significant influence on the discourse around American foreign policy.

The report on the global political rights and liberties, downgraded India, numerically the world’s largest democracy, from “Free” to “Partly Free” while highlighting a steady erosion of democracy increasingly manifested through pressure on human rights groups, the intimidation and harassment of journalists and academics, policies that target and harm religious minorities, particularly Muslims, and the politicization of the Indian judiciary.

“Under Modi, India appears to have abandoned its potential to serve as a global democratic leader, elevating narrow Hindu nationalist interests at the expense of its founding values of inclusion and equal rights for all,” said the Freedom House report titled “Democracy under Siege.”

The report reflects the worst four year decline in India’s Freedom House ranking- in 2018 it was 77th, the next year it was 75, in 2020 71 and in 2021 it is 67. The report referred in detail to atrocities against Muslims highlighting the fact that “the ruling Hindu nationalist movement also encouraged the scapegoating of Muslims, who were disproportionately blamed for the spread of the virus and faced attacks by vigilante mobs.”

“Last year, the government intensified its crackdown on protesters opposed to a discriminatory citizenship law and arrested dozens of journalists who aired criticism of the official pandemic response. Judicial independence has also come under strain; in one case, a judge was transferred immediately after reprimanding the police for taking no action during riots in New Delhi that left over 50 people, mostly Muslims, dead,” said the Freedom House report.

In December, Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, approved a law that prohibits forced religious conversion through interfaith marriage, which critics fear will effectively restrict interfaith marriage in general; authorities have already arrested a number of Muslim men accusing them of “forcing” Hindu women to convert to Islam.

The report situates India’s status as part of a global shift in the balance between democracy and authoritarianism. It warns that India’s “fall from the upper ranks of free nations” could have damaging consequences for the prospect of world’s democratic standards.

“Rather than serving as a champion of democratic practice and a counterweight to authoritarian influence from countries such as China, Modi and his party are tragically driving India itself toward authoritarianism,” it said.

“The alarming report of the Freedom House is not surprising given the rapidly escalating situation in India that has gotten alarm bells ringing across the United States and other Western European democracies,” said Ahsan Khan, President of IAMC.

Various American newspapers and magazines have questioned if India could still be called a democracy given Mr. Modi’s persecution of free speech and dissent and targeting of its minorities. The Editorial Board of the Washington Post in February called into question India’s status as a democracy, highlighting the clampdown on dissent, especially in reference to the arrest of a 22-year-old climate and animal rights activist Disha Ravi. Similarly, the NYT and the Economist in the past questioned Mr. Modi’s pretense of a democratic government.

“Arresting those who have expressed dissent, on false and fabricated charges is pervasive. Merely giving a speech or protesting, legitimate rights of citizens under the Constitution, can land people in jail,” said Mr. Khan while highlighting the situation of student leader Umar Khalid and anti-CAA protester Gulfisha, both of whom are in jail on fabricated charges.

“Many experts in the United States have raised concerns that India’s rapid transformation into a fascist state is following a genocidal trajectory, against Muslims, minorities as well as Hindus opposed to the Hindutva movement,” added Mr. Khan.

IAMC is dedicated to promoting the common values of pluralism, tolerance, and respect for human rights that form the basis of the world’s two largest secular democracies – the United States and India.

Mortgage Raise Above 3% For The First Time In Recent Times

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Economy 0

Americans who purchased new homes or refinanced their mortgages over the past few months may have done so at just the right moment. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 3.02%, mortgage-finance giant Freddie Mac said Thursday. It is the first time the rate on America’s most popular home loan has risen above 3% since July and the fifth consecutive week it has increased or held steady.

Mortgage rates fell throughout most of 2020 after the Covid-19 pandemic ravaged the economy. That helped power the biggest boom in mortgage lending since before the financial crisis, fueled by refinancings. When rates hit 2.98% in July, it was their first time under the 3% mark in about 50 years of record-keeping.

The recent upward moves paint a clear contrast: More vaccinations in the U.S. and recent progress on the latest coronavirus relief bill have brightened investors’ outlook on the economy, a key variable in determining borrowing rates.

Mortgage rates tend to move in the same direction as the yield on the 10-year Treasury, which has been rising. Treasury yields rise when investors feel confident enough in the economy to forgo safe-haven assets such as bonds for riskier ones including stocks. Last week, the yield hit its highest level in a year.

Freddie Mac chief economist Sam Khater said he expects a strong sales season, partly because he thinks “the uptrend in rates from here will be more muted than the past few weeks.” The Federal Reserve has said it would maintain ultralow interest rates until the economy improves.

The rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage increased to 3.02% this week, up from 2.97% the previous week, according to Freddie Mac, a government-sponsored agency that backs millions of mortgages. That was the first time the rate exceeded 3% since the third week in July and the highest level since the first full week in July, when the rate was 3.03%.

The average rate on 30-year fixed mortgages surged over 3% this week, hitting that benchmark for the first time in seven months.

The rise in rates isn’t a surprise. With expectations that the economy will start to recover and the potential for increasing inflation, many experts see mortgage rates rising in 2021.

However, it’s important to note that even with the recent rate growth, both mortgage and refinance rates remain historically low. As recently as May 2019, rates were over 4%, so many homeowners still have the opportunity to save with a mortgage refinance or purchase a new home at a low rate.

Here’s what rising rates might mean for you.

Rates have surged 0.37% from an all-time low of 2.65% in early January and now sit at 3.02%, according to Freddie Mac. For someone taking out a $250,000 30-year mortgage, this increase in rates would add about $49 to your monthly payment and cost roughly $17,800 more in interest over the life of the loan.

Mortgage interest rates aren’t expected to continue to rise at this rate. “The rise in mortgage rates over the next couple of months is likely to be more muted in comparison to the last few weeks,” Freddie Mac chief economist Sam Khater said in a statement released yesterday. So don’t expect to see the real estate market turn into a buyers market anytime soon.

This rapid increase in rates has been driven, in part, by rising long-term Treasury bond yields, which topped 1.5%. “Interest rates have been volatile recently, with the benchmark 10-year Treasury increasing about 50 basis points from where it was at the start of the year,” Freddie Mac deputy chief economist Len Kiefer wrote in an email. And that has put pressure on mortgage rates, which historically have moved in tandem with 10-year Treasury bond yields.

For now, however, the message remains the same: If you’re financially ready to buy or refinance a home, today’s mortgage interest rates are historically low.

Mithali Raj, 1st Woman Cricketer To Complete 7,000 ODI Runs

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterSports, Women 0

Mithali Raj reached the 7,000-run milestone in her 213th match, which was the fourth ODI of the ongoing five-match series against South Africa. Veteran batter Mithali Raj on Sunday added another feather to her cap by becoming the first player to complete 7,000 runs in women’s ODI cricket.

The Indian skipper reached the 7,000-run milestone in her 213th match, which was the fourth ODI of the ongoing five-match series against South Africa.

“Magnificent Mithali! #TeamIndia ODI skipper becomes the first woman cricketer to score 7000 ODI runs. What a performer she has been!” the BCCI tweeted.

The 38-year-old, who made her international debut in 1999, was also the first player to score 6,000 runs in women’s ODIs. England’s Charlotte Edwards, who retired from international cricket in 2016, is second the list of leading run scorers with 5,992.

Mitahli scored a 71-ball 45 before being dismissed by medium pacer Tumi Sekhukhune in the 38th over of the fourth ODI. She hit four boundaries during her stay in the middle.

On Friday, during the third match, Mithali had become the first Indian player and only the second internationally to complete 10,000 runs across all formats.

A Universe of Irresistible Indian Stories To Arrive On Netflix

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Staff ReporterCinema, Entertainment 0

Growing up in India you see and feel entertainment all around you. Our country is filled with beautiful, diverse stories to tell, talented storytellers and crew who bring them to life, and incredible actors who captivate us on screen.

At Netflix, we love to tell stories that bring us together. Films and series told authentically by Indian creators you love as well as voices that are new. But how do we identify that one story that everyone will love? We don’t. Each and everyone of us have our own tastes and moods and all of us want to see our lives reflected on screen.

Our upcoming lineup features more variety and diversity than we have seen before. From the biggest films and series, to gripping documentaries and reality, and bold comedy formats. We are taking our next big leap in India to bring you more than 40 powerful and irresistible stories from all corners of the country.

Coming soon is the bold and sassy series Bombay Begums, the relationship drama Ajeeb Daastaans, the quirky Pagglait, love and longing in Meenakshi Sundareshwar and the consequences of desire in Penthouse. There’s also Jagame Thandhiram starring Dhanush, Taapsee Pannu in Haseen Dillruba, Kartik Aaryan in Dhamaka, the moving family drama with Arjun Kapoor and Neena Gupta Sardar Ka Grandson, a generous dose of modern romance with the series Feels Like Ishq and R. Madhavan’s comedy series Decoupled.

Experience fear and tension with Raveena Tandon’s mystery thriller Aranyak, a wildly twisted love story Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein; meet Jeetu bhaiya once again in Kota Factory, laugh out loud with the king of comedy Kapil Sharma, and uncover the mysterious disappearance of the queen of hearts Madhuri Dixit Nene in the series Finding Anamika.

This is just a taste of the films and series to come. We are so excited to share these rich and diverse stories from the best and brightest creators and talent from India to the world.

Taapsee – Tahir starrer “Looop Lapeta” announces release date

The Taapsee Pannu and Tahir Raj Bhasin-led “Looop Lapeta”, which has already evoked quite a buzz for its cool, millennial look released recently by the makers, is set to release in cinemas on October 22, 2021. The makers were among the first to take the plunge to resume production in October last year. The film was shot in Mumbai and Goa from November and wrapped on schedule. It is currently in post-production.

“Looop Lapeta” is being touted as a new-age, intriguing roller-coaster ride centered around a girl (Savi) who finds herself in a sticky situation when her boyfriend (Savi) gets unknowingly trapped in a crisis.

Helmed by noted ad filmmaker Aakash Bhatia, “Looop Lapeta” is produced by Sony Pictures Films India, Ellipsis Entertainment (Tanuj Garg, Atul Kasbekar) and Aayush Maheshwari. It comes from the makers of “Neerja”, “102 Not Out”, “Padman”, “Tumhari Sulu” and “Shakuntala Devi”.

“MAJOR” Will Release July 2nd – Only In Theaters

March 17, 2021March 31, 2021 Staff ReporterCinema 0

On March 15th, the 44th birth anniversary of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, the team of the film MAJOR released an exclusive and first video glimpse of the film, remembering the great soldier and paying their tribute to him. The film’s teaser will release on March 28th. Sony Pictures Films India has also launched a website for people to send in their tributes and messages for Late Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan: https://majorthemovie.sonypicturesindia.com/.

The messages sent by people and fans of Major Sandeep will be then collated into a collage and gifted to Major’s parents. Team MAJOR remembers the martyr for his valor & sacrifice of Major Unikrishnan, who was awarded with the Ashoka Chakra , India’s Highest Peacetime Gallantry Award Major is an upcoming Indian biographical film, directed by Sashi Kiran Tikka and produced by Sony Pictures Films India, in association with Mahesh Babu’s GMB Entertainment and A+S Movies. Shot simultaneously in Telugu and Hindi, it is based on the life of 2008 Mumbai attacks martyr, Sandeep Unnikrishnan.

The film is a dedication to the way he lived, and not how he died. Adivi Sesh (in his Hindi film debut) portrays Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, the title character. The film also stars Saiee Manjrekar, Sobhita Dhulipala, Revathi and Prakash Raj. MAJOR is scheduled to be released theatrically on 2nd July, 2021. Produced by Sony Pictures Films India in association with Mahesh Babu’s GMB Entertainment and A+S Movies, MAJOR, a bilingual film shot in Hindi and Telugu, is slated to release in North American theaters on July 2nd, 2021.

Blackstone, Starwood Capital Team Up in $6 Billion Purchase of Extended Stay

March 17, 2021November 8, 2022 Staff ReporterTourism, Travel 0

Blackstone Group Inc. and Starwood Capital Group have agreed to acquire hotel owner and operator Extended Stay America Inc. for $6 billion, a bet that a rare bright spot for the lodging industry during Covid-19 can shine brighter as the U.S. emerges from the pandemic.

The companies provided details of the deal, which real-estate executives say is the largest sale in the hotel sector during the Covid-19 period earlier this week.

As bookings plunged across the U.S. hotel industry over the last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Extended Stay, which specializes in economy temporary housing for healthcare professionals, proved stronger than its peers.

Private equity company Blackstone’s and investment firm Starwood’s cash offer of $19.50 per share represents a premium of 15.1% to Extended Stay’s share closing price on Friday.

Shares of Extended Stay, which owns and operates 650 hotels in the United States, rose more than 17% before the opening bell.

“Extended Stay has demonstrated resilience over the past year despite persistent challenges due to government lockdowns and travel restrictions,” said Barry Sternlicht, chief executive officer of Starwood Capital.

“We are excited about the company’s growth opportunity as restrictions ease.”

Extended Stay’s stock has more than doubled in the past 12 months, outperforming its larger peers Marriott and Hilton which gained between 60% and 65%.

Extended Stay is a midprice hotel chain that focuses on lodging for guests interested in staying for weeks or longer, offering kitchen facilities and more space than a typical hotel room. During the pandemic, its rooms and suites attracted essential workers, healthcare professionals and others who needed to travel.

That business helped Extended Stay achieve a 74% occupancy rate last year, Blackstone said. The average occupancy rate across all U.S. hotels was 44%, according to hotel data-tracking firm STR.

During Historic Visit To Iraq, Pope Francis Calls Extremism As ‘Betrayal Of Religion’

March 10, 2021March 17, 2021 Staff ReporterGlobal, Religion 0

During Pope Francis’s four-day tour of Iraq across six cities is Francis’ first trip outside Italy since the coronavirus pandemic began, the Pontiff touched down in Baghdad on Friday, March 5^th where he was met by Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. In a speech after being welcomed by Iraqi President Barham Salih, Pope Francis said he was very pleased to come to Iraq, which he described as the “cradle of civilization.” In his address to the nation, ravaged by two decades of war, violence and deaths, he said, “May the clash of arms be silenced… may there be an end to acts of violence and extremism, factions and intolerance!” he said.

“Iraq has suffered the disastrous effects of wars, the scourge of terrorism and sectarian conflicts often grounded in a fundamentalism incapable of accepting the peaceful coexistence of different ethnic and religious groups.”

Francis later met with clerics and other officials at a Baghdad church that was the site of a bloody 2010 massacre. He returned to Baghdad on Saturday afternoon and celebrated Mass at the Chaldean Cathedral of Saint Joseph.

About 10,000 Iraqi Security Forces personnel are being deployed to protect the Pope, while round-the-clock curfews are also being imposed to limit the spread of Covid. Iraq’s PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi greeted him at the airport, with a red carpet, Iraqis in national dress and songs from a largely unmasked choir. Hundreds of people lined the airport road as the Pope’s convoy, heavily chaperoned by police motorcycles, left for the city.

Visiting Ur, the ancient Iraqi city where Jews, Christians and Muslims believe their common patriarch Abraham was born, Pope Francis denounced extremism as a “betrayal of religion.” The Pope visited Ur on Saturday, the second day of the first ever papal visit to Iraq. Addressing a meeting of inter-faith leaders, Francis condemned the violence that has plagued Iraq in recent years and called for friendship and cooperation between religions.

“All its ethnic and religious communities have suffered. In particular, I would like to mention the Yazidi community, which has mourned the deaths of many men and witnessed thousands of women, girls and children kidnapped, sold as slaves, subjected to physical violence and forced conversions,” he said.

Covid and security fears have made this his riskiest visit yet, but the 84-year-old insisted he was “duty bound”. He also said Iraq’s dwindling Christian community should have a more prominent role as citizens with full rights, freedoms and responsibilities. He is hoping to foster inter-religious dialogue – meeting Iraq’s most revered Shia Muslim cleric – and will celebrate Mass at a stadium in Irbil in the north.

Francis also praised the recovery efforts in Northern Iraq, where ISIS terrorist destroyed historical sites, churches, monasteries and other places of worship. “I think of the young Muslim volunteers of Mosul, who helped to repair churches and monasteries, building fraternal friendships on the rubble of hatred, and those Christians and Muslims who today are restoring mosques and churches together,” he said.

Pope Francis delivered his speech at Our Lady of Salvation. “We are gathered in this Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation, hallowed by the blood of our brothers and sisters who here paid the ultimate price of their fidelity to the Lord and his Church,” the pontiff said.

The speech calling for cooperation between religions came just hours after the Pope held a historic meeting with revered Shia Muslim cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the holy city of Najaf. The 45-minute papal meeting with the 90-year old al-Sistani — who rarely appears in public — represented one of the most significant summits between a pope and a leading Shia Muslim figure in recent years.

During the meeting, broadcast on al-Iraqiya state TV, al-Sistani thanked Francis for making an effort to travel to Najaf and told him that Christians in Iraq should live “like all Iraqis in security and peace, and with their full constitutional rights,” according to a statement released by the Grand Ayatollah’s office.

The Pope in turn thanked al-Sistani and the Shia Muslim community for “[raising] his voice in defense of the weakest and most persecuted, affirming the sacredness of human life and the importance of the unity of the Iraqi people,” according to a statement from the Holy See.

Iraq has imposed a total curfew for the entirety of the four-day papal visit to minimize health and security risks. Francis is scheduled to leave Iraq on Monday.

Francis has met with leading Sunni cleric Grand Imam Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb on several occasions in the past, famously co-signing a 2019 document pledging “human fraternity” between world religions.

Pope Francis, during his historic visit to Iraq, addressed an interfaith gathering of Iraq’s religious and ethnic groups in Ur, said to be the birthplace of Abraham, the common patriarch for Jews, Christians and Muslims. He drove home the need for respect and unity, and he used the opportunity to condemn violent religious extremism.

Pope Francis traveled to the ruins of the ancient city of Ur, considered the cradle of civilization, to remind people that what binds them is more powerful than what divides. Faithful from the Christian, Muslim, Yazidi and Mandean communities were present Saturday. The pope reinforced his call for inter-religious tolerance and fraternity during the first-ever papal visit to Iraq, where religious and ethnic divisions and conflict have torn apart the social fabric for decades.

Indeed, the Christian population in the Middle East has been falling: The Christian share of the overall population in Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories decreased from 10% in 1900 to 5% in 2010, according to a Pew Research Center estimate published in 2014. Christians in the region tend to be older than Muslims, have fewer children and are more likely to emigrate — and that was before widespread persecution of Christians in northern Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017 by the group that calls itself the Islamic State.

In Iraq specifically, Christians made up less than 1% of the population as of 2010, according to Pew Research Center estimates. Among Christians in Iraq at that time, an estimated 41% were Catholic, 41% were Protestant and 17% identified with Orthodox Christianity.

Pope Francis’ trip to Iraq this weekend has been described by the Vatican as an effort to encourage the Arab country’s dwindling Christian community and strengthen ties with Muslims.

Indian-Americans Are Taking Over US: Biden

March 10, 2021March 17, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Nation USA 0

Indian-Americans are taking over the US, President Joe Biden said while congratulating Swati Mohan, the NASA engineer, who guided the Mars rover Perseverance to a soft landing on the Red Planet.

“It’s amazing. Indian of descent Americans are taking over this country. You, my Vice President, my speechwriter Vinay. But I tell you what, thanks. You guys are incredible,” he said during a virtual meeting to congratulate Mohan and others on the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) team that landed the Perseverance on Mars.

“One of the reasons why we’re such an incredible country is we’re such a diverse country. We bring the best out of every single solitary culture in the world here in the US of America. And we give people an opportunity,” Biden said of the immigrants.

Mohan, who proudly displays her Indian identity with a bindi on her forehead, said: “Being able to work with this incredibly diverse talented team that has become like a family, spending years creating our own technological marvel has been a privilege.”

The NASA engineer said that she had been inspired as a child to get into space exploration by watching the Star Trek TV series where a “fantastical, really, really close knit team” was working together for sole purpose of exploring space “and understanding new things and seeking new life”.

Vandana “Vandi” Verma is the Chief Engineer for Robotic Operations for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, the largest, most advanced rover NASA has sent to another world touched down on Mars Feb.18, after a 203-day traversing 293 million miles.

Biden’s Vice President is Kamala Harris and his director of speech writing is Vinay Reddy, who is one of more than 20 Indian-Americans named to senior positions in his administration.

Two Indian women astronauts have gone to space, Kalpana Chawla, who was killed on her second mission aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger that broke up in 2003, and Sunita Williams, who has been a commander of the International Space Station.

Astronaut Raja Chari belongs to the Artemis team from which the next members of future expeditions will be selected. He is to command the SpaceX Crew-3 mission set for September.

When JPL Director Michael Watkins introduced Mohan, Biden said: “Hey Doc, how are you?”

Mohan said she was well and as she began to thank him for taking the time to speak to them, he cut her off, saying,:” Are you kidding me? What an honor this is, what an incredible honor this is” (for him to speak to her).

After mentioning the achievement of Indian-Americans, he told her: “Did you want to say something? I’ll be quiet.”

Mohan said she hoped that Perseverance would be able to find new life on Mars. She recalled to him the moments before the Perseverance landed on the Red Planet: Although it was going pretty smooth, the team was “really nervous and, frankly, terrified until we got through those final seven minutes”.

Mohan, who guided the rover safely to a soft landing, said: “To be able to call ‘touchdown’ safely, to see those first images come back from Mars, to see the place where we have never been able to go to on Mars before and go there — reach there for the express purpose of seeking out new life just made it feel like I was living in a dream.”

Biden replied: “I tell you what, you feel like you live in a dream, you’ve created a dream for millions and millions of young kids young Americans. You restored a dose of confidence in the American people. They were beginning to wonder if we are still the country we always believed we were. You guys did it. You guys gave a sense of America’s back. It’s astounding what you did. You should not underestimate it.”

Taking a dig at his predecessor Donald Trump, Biden said that he had heard of a head of state who wondered what had happened to the US. “They used to be so proud to do great things. And here they can’t even deal with a coronavirus. It matters because democracies have to demonstrate they can run efficiently. We have never ever, ever failed to meet a call. We’ve set our mind to it. And we’ve done it together. And that’s what you all show. So, it goes way beyond the whole notion of what you just recently did,” he added.

Mohan said that there was “the thrill of all the scientific discoveries that are yet to come and what Perseverance can actually find — and hopefully find those signs of past life on Mars”. Under Mohan’s guidance, Perseverance slowed down from a speed of nearly 20,000 km per hour with retrorockets and a parachute to about 3 kmph to touch down at the Jezero Crater on Mars about 224 million miles away from Earth on February 18. (IANS)

GAPIO Organizes 2021 Global Indian Physicians Congress

March 10, 2021March 17, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Health 0

The Global Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (GAPIO), a non-profit organization, and leading association for the Indian medical diaspora organised its annual Global Indian Physicians Congress on February 27^th – 28^th 2021. The Congress is an important event in the medical calendar where the exchange of knowledge from subject specialists from across the world takes place. This year’s virtual conference provided an international forum to delegates to share their knowledge and exchange ideas on clinical skill development, solutions to contemporary health issues and modernizing the approach to delivering healthcare.

Dr Harsh Vardhan, the Hon’ble Health Minister, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare was Chief Guest. In a video message, Dr. Harsh Vardhan praised GAPIO, as a shining example of the talent and caliber of Indian physicians who have made remarkable contributions in various fields of medicine across the globe.

Praising the contribution of medical professionals in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Harsh Vardhan said, “As the world faced the unprecedented crisis of COVID19, it has been our doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers who have cemented their position as the foremost champions of humanity, saving humankind as it was staring at an existential crisis.” The Minister also praised India’s efforts domestically and internationally and commended the physicians, nurses, and scientists involved in fighting the pandemic. India can greatly benefit from GAPIO’s support, he emphasized and concluded by complimenting the awardees for their outstanding work.

“I am so proud to be part of GAPIO, a great organization with the mission to bring together 1.4 million physicians of Indian origin on one professional platform,” said GAPIO Secretary General USA and Chairman and Publisher of Parikh World Wide Media and ITV Gold 24×7 TV Channel in the U.S., Padma Shri Dr. Sudhir Parikh, at the Congress. “This was a great event. From the time it was started in 2011, GAPIO is now in 53 countries. Not only does it provide a professional platform to more than 1 million Indian physicians, it also brings all the resources they have to offer to impact the much greater philanthropic work we can do in India and around the world,” Dr. Parikh told News India Times.

Since its inception in 2011 GAPIO has endeavored to bring 1.4 million physicians of Indian origin across the world on a single platform to facilitate the exchange of knowledge, skills and research. This was the 11^th edition of the Congress. More than 5000 participants from USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Middle East, Africa, UAE, India and other countries participated in the Congress, making it one of the largest such events in the world.

The GAPIO Congress featured highly qualified medical professionals and leaders from around the world, and an award ceremony for those who have excelled in their areas of expertise, including young physicians.

Founder President of GAPIO and Chairman of Apollo Hospitals Group Dr. Prathap C Reddy, said, “The exemplary work by the awardees is an inspiration for others to emulate. The spirit of the physicians of Indian origin to excel in India and overseas is what we hope to recognize.
There are countless examples of pathbreaking work across the globe that would make every Indian proud. COVID-19 has once again shown the important role played by physicians of Indian origin in handling global health crises. The valuable lessons learnt from these clinical leaders will form part of the deliberations. The need for innovation and cross-systemic learning is more important than ever before. Apart from the COVID-19 pandemic, India and the world at large are facing an epidemic of non-communicable diseases – NCDs like diabetes, heart disease and cancer. We seek involvement of everyone to overcome this biggest challenge to mankind posed by COVID-19 and NCDs.”

President of GAPIO and Group Medical Director, Apollo Hospitals Group and Senior Consultant Pediatric Gastroenterologist and Hepatologist Dr. Anupam Sibal, said, “From supporting liver transplantation to pioneering cardiac surgery to establishing high-end lab services to excelling in rheumatology to introducing geriatric care to performing complex arthroplasty in a rural setting, the awardees represent the spectrum of path-breaking achievements.

“Remarking on the young physician’s category, Vice President GAPIO and CEO cum Chairman of Columbia Asia Group of Hospitals Dr. Nandakumar Jairam, said, “The awardees in the Young category represent the aspirations of the Young Indian Physician who is willing to take on challenges to improve the delivery of care, while excelling in academics and research. Research and innovation can improve the delivery of quality healthcare in India to the last mile. As the country braces to overcome its myriad health challenges, this Congress will help identify methodologies most suitable to skill and scale the healthcare workforce in the country.”

Dr. Sudhir Parikh, Secretary General of GAPIO and Chairman and Publisher of Parikh World Wide Media and ITV Gold 24×7 TV Channel in USA, said, “Global health challenges need global solutions, and we believe through GAPIO we will evolve constructive and tangible ways of ensuring that healthcare is affordable and accessible to all citizens.”

The award winners in the Distinguished Category, each of whom receives Rs. 100,000, a citation, and a trophy include:

Pravin Agarwal (Mr Pravin Agarwal Foundation) for Dr. Prathap C Reddy Philanthropy award
Rohini Handa for the Dr. IA Modi Award
• Navin Dang for GAPIO Excellence in Diagnostics Award
Maligail Ramkrishna Girinath for GAPIO Karl Storz Surgical Excellence Award
VS Natarajan for GAPIO Lifetime achievement award.
Dr. Madan Mohan Reddy received the GAPIO Special Appreciation Award for his pathbreaking work in delivering orthopedic care including joint replacements in villages.

The award winners in Young Category each of whom receives Rs. 50,000, a citation and a trophy, include:

Sonali M Khobragade and Dr. Purvi Parikh (joint winners) for Dr. IA Modi Award
Nishat Hussain Ahmed for GAPIO Excellence in Diagnostics Award
Susovan Banerjee for GAPIO Excellence in Radiology/ Radiation Therapy Award
Bhavuk Garg for GAPIO Karl Storz Surgical Excellence Award.

Karl Storz provides an endoscope to the winner of the Storz Surgical Excellence Award.

Speakers at the well-attended event included

Dr. Sathyaki Nambala, India, senior consultant and chief of Cardiac Surgery, Apollo Hospital, Bangalore;

Dr. Jatin Shah, USA, professor of surgery at Cornell Medical College, New York;

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, India, founder, chairperson and managing director of Biocon Limited;

Dr. Arun Garg, Canada, consultant medical biochemist at Royal Columbian Hospital, Canada and President of Canada India Network Society (CINS);

Dr. Sanjay Patole, Australia, senior neonatologist, KEM Hospital for Women in Perth, Western Australia;

Dr. Sandeep Guleria, India, senior consultant, Renal Transplant surgeon at Apollo Hospital, New Delhi;

Dr. OM Ganda, USA, senior physician and medical director, Lipid Clinic – Joslin Diabetes Center, and also associate professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School;

Dr. Venkataraman Sundareswaran, USA, fellow – Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation at World Economic Forum;

Dr. Mani Menon, USA, robotic surgeon and one of the foremost Urologists in the United States; and

Dr. Senthil Seniyappan, UK, consultant paediatric endocrinologist, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool.

Young Climate Activist Varshini Prakash Recognized As Woman of the Year 2021

March 10, 2021March 17, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Women, Youth 0

A climate activist, Varshini Prakash was given the coveted Woman of the Year 2021during the annual awards ceremony on Saturday, March 6^th. She was chosen for the award for her courage, persistence and energy to inspire to the next generation to join the battle to make the world a better place. Ms. Prakash was on the TIME 100 Next List in 2019 and also made to Forbes magazine’s 30 Under 30 2020.

As per reports, a panel of nine independent judges on Saturday broke from the tradition and chose 27-year-old and she was honored with the award at the 18^th annual INDIA New England Woman of the Year Awards ceremony organized virtually.

The organizers of the awards ceremony said, “Ms. Prakash is leading a climate revolution in U.S. politics. Co-founder and Executive Director of the Sunrise Movement, as well as co-author of the book “Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can”, Ms. Prakash has led a youth movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process, while bringing The Green New Deal to the attention of millions during the recent election.”

In her acceptance speech, Ms. Prakash said she was surprised to win this honor, and said “the people should lead and the leaders follow” calling upon all of the people to come together to fight against climate change. Only then perhaps leaders will listen and take concrete far-reaching measures, she said.

“It is indeed a very proud moment for the New England community to celebrate these amazing women and their journeys and recognize a young and vibrant leader in Varshini Prakash as the Woman of the Year,” said Praveen Tailam, Chair TiE Global who headed an independent panel of nine judges. “Launching and growing a revolution to address the climate crises through her Sunrise movement is no easy task. Varshini’s courage, persistence, and energy inspire the next generation to join the battle to make the world a better place and create new jobs.”

Mr. Tailam added: “Varshini is a real trailblazer by embarking on a path less traveled, especially from our community. It is upon us to nurture such selfless individuals and elevate the initiatives that affect the entire human race.”

In addition to Mr. Tailam, the right other judges were: Nikhil Bhojwani Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Recon Strategy; Shipra Dubey, PhD, Principal Associate, Harvard Medical School Director, Radiochemistry, Research and Development, BICOR, Radiology Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Vineeta Kumar, President Indian American Getting Involved Group; Santhana Krishnan, Founder, South Asian Art Gallery and Managing Partner, Om Ventures; Revathy Ramakrishna, Co-Founder, Vision-Aid; Preetesh Shrivastava, Founder, Hindi Manch and Preetesh Entertainment, LLC; Meena Subramanyam , Vice President and Global Program Leader, Takeda Pharmaceuticals; Bala Sundaram, PhD, Vice Provost for Research & Dean of Graduate Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Judges also selected two out of 20 Outstanding Women for Honorable Mentions. “We were entrusted to pick one winner and it was hard. Along with the winner the jury decided to honorably mention two incredible women and in no particular order,” said Mr. Tailam. “Rhitu Siddarth. Rhitu has been bravely providing humanitarian leadership thru her work with UN in many troubled and battled countries like Syria, Sudan, Libya and more over the last 18 years. So proud of you. And Priti Chatter, who quietly and surely make an impact to solving problems that address the immediate needs of billion people.”

Bharatanatyam dance teacher Sridevi Ajai Thirumalai, who has taught over 1,000 students and has developed her own-style of teaching classical dance to Indian-American children, received India New England News Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mandy Pant and Jharna Madan served as emcees of the evening. Tech support was provided by Sraveo. Key sponsors included Boston Group/Sybu Kota, BMW Sudbury/Pranav Gill, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Alankar Decorators, Boston Sound & Light Company, Dyuti Majumdar Photography.

“I always say that you do not get Woman of the Year award. It finds you. Somehow an independent jury panel finds someone who is right for the role in that moment in time from 20 fantastic and extremely qualified women,” said Dr. Manju Sheth, director hostess of the Woman of the Year awards. “Climate change is currently on everyone’s mind so not surprisingly that Varshini, a leader in climate revolution with her sunrise movement is Woman of the Year 2021. She is perhaps our youngest winner. Congratulations to her. We are proud of her. Congratulations also to Rhitu Siddarth and Priti Chatter for special well deserved recognition as well.”

Senate Passes $1.9 Trillion Coronavirus Relief Package

March 10, 2021March 17, 2021 Staff ReporterFinance/Economy 0

The US Senate approved President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan Saturday, March 7^th securing additional aid for American families, workers and businesses — and a legislative victory for the Biden administration.

After more than 24 hours of debate, the evenly divided Senate voted 50-49 to approve the measure. Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska was absent because he was in Alaska for a family funeral.

The final vote was 50-49, with all Democrats voting in favor of the bill and all Republicans voting against it. The passage of the bill was met with cheers and applause from Democrats, celebrating the passage of one of Mr. Biden’s key priorities. Vice President Kamala Harris did not need to visit the Capitol to break any ties, as GOP Senator Dan Sullivan left due to a family emergency on Friday.

The package would deliver a new round of financial assistance to Americans grappling with the impact of the pandemic, including $1,400 direct payments, an extension of supplemental unemployment benefits and an increase to the child tax credit.

Individuals earning up to $75,000 and couples earning up to $150,000 would receive the full direct payments of $1,400 per person. But those payments would phase out for individuals and couples who make more than $80,000 and $160,000, respectively.

The income cutoff was lowered after moderate Democrats demanded that the latest round of checks target lower-income families.

Federal unemployment benefits would be extended through Sept. 6 at the current rate of $300 per week, and the first $10,200 of those benefits would be tax-free for households that earn $150,000 or less. That provision followed a lengthy debate Friday among Democratic senators.

Democrats were under pressure to get the bill to Biden’s desk before current federal unemployment benefits expire on March 14. The budget reconciliation process allowed them to act without Republican backing, requiring only a simple majority to pass the bill.

Democrats took a victory lap after the passage of the bill, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer telling reporters after the vote that “it’s a great day for this country.” Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders called the bill “the most significant piece of legislation to benefit working families in the modern history of this country.”

President Biden dubbed the plan “historic” during an address on Saturday.

“For over a year the American people were told they were on their own,” he said, and later added, “This nation has suffered too much for much too long, and everything in this package is designed to relieve the suffering and to meet the most urgent needs of the nation.”

The president noted that 85% of American households will now soon receive direct payments of $1,400 per person, and a “typical middle class family of four” will get $5,600. “That means the mortgage can get paid. That means maintaining the health insurance you have. It’s going to make a big difference in so many lives in this country,” he said.

“The bottom line is this: This plan puts us on the path to beating this virus,” Mr. Biden said Saturday. “This plan gives those families that are struggling the most the help and the breathing room they need to get through this moment. This plan gives small businesses in this country a fighting chance to survive. And one more thing,” he added, “this plan is historic.”

Government Of India Is Now Requiring Overseas Citizens Of India To Have Special Permit For Journalism & Research

March 10, 2021March 12, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Media, Nation India 0

In a stunning development for Overseas Citizens of India, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a notification on March 4 dramatically altering the compact between OCIs and the Indian state. This notification, which is issued under Section 7B of the Citizenship Act, 1955, supersedes three earlier notifications issued on April 11, 2005, January 5, 2007, and January 5, 2009, which laid down the rights of the OCIs.

In addition to classifying OCIs as “foreign nationals”, the new notification introduces a series of new restrictions that dramatically curtails the rights and liberties of OCIs in India. These restrictions include a requirement for OCIs to secure a special permit to undertake “any research”, to undertake any “missionary” or “Tablighi” or “journalistic activities” or to visit any area in India notified as “protected”, “restricted” or “prohibited”.

In addition, the notification now equates OCIs to “foreign nationals” in respect of “all other economic, financial and educational fields” for the purposes of the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 2003 although past circulars by the Reserve Bank of India under FEMA will hold ground. This reverses the position that has held for the last 16 years wherein OCIs were equated to Non-Resident Indians rather than “foreign nationals” for the purposes of their economic, financial and educational rights.

OCIs can however continue to purchase land (other than agricultural land), pursue the profession of medicine, law, architecture and accountancy and seek parity with Indian citizens with regard to airfares and entry fee to monuments and parks. OCIs can also continue to seek enrolment in Indian educational institutions on par with NRIs but not for seats reserved exclusively for Indian citizens.

OCIs have been pushing for implementation of rights on par with Indian citizens, especially in claiming seats in educational institutions through competitive exams. “There are multiple cases pending in courts in Karnataka, where OCIs have laid claim to seats reserved for Indian citizens. So things had to be clarified further,” a Home Ministry official said. The notification in the Gazette last week granted OCIs the right of multiple entry lifelong visa to India for any purpose; exemption from registration with the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Officer (FRRO) for any length of stay in India; and parity with Indian nationals in the matter of domestic air fares, entry fees to monuments and public places.

It also said that OCI cardholders will enjoy parity with Non Resident Indians (NRIs) in adoption of children, appearing in competitive exams, purchase or sale of immovable property barring agricultural land and farmhouses, and pursuing professions such as doctors, lawyers, architects, and chartered accountants.

However, many of these rights have been subjected to certain restrictions. The notifications says that the right of multiple entry lifelong visa for “any purpose” can be enjoyed provided the OCI obtains a special permission from “the competent authority” or the FRRO “to undertake research; to undertake any Missionary or Tabligh or Mountaineering or Journalistic activities; to undertake internship in any foreign Diplomatic Missions or foreign Government organizations in India or to take up employment in any foreign Diplomatic Missions in India; to visit any place which falls within the Protected or Restricted or prohibited areas as notified by the Central Government or competent authority”.

The restrictions on missionary and Tablighi activities on foreigners and OCIs have existed since the 90s when the latter were known as Persons of Indian Origin (PIO). In February 2018, the government published broad guidelines for Indian visa wherein it mentioned the restrictions on foreigners and OCIs from engaging in Tablighi activity.

The “OCI cardholder shall not be eligible for admission against any seat reserved exclusively for Indian citizens” In respect of all other economic, financial and educational fields not specified in this notification or the rights and privileges not covered by the notifications made by the Reserve Bank of India under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (42 of 1999), the OCI cardholder shall have the same rights and privileges as a foreigner,” the notification said.

The central ministry of home affairs has notified new rules that require Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) to take special permission from the government if they want to be involvedin journalistic, missionary or “Tabligh” activities in the country.
India provides OCI statues to certain Indian-origin foreign nationals. They have parity with Non-Resident Indians in purchase or sale of immovable properties other than agricultural land, in appearing for the entrance tests such as National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, and in inter-country adoption of Indian children, among others.
The ministry, in its notification issued on Thursday, said the OCI cardholders are entitled to get multiple entry lifelong visa for visiting India for any purpose but “required to obtain a special permission or a special permit from the Foreigners Regional Registration Officer or the Indian Mission to undertake research and to undertake any missionary or Tabligh or mountaineering or journalistic activities”. News agency PTIquotes a home ministry official as saying that these rules were part of the ‘brochure’ published in 2019 but were recently consolidated and notified.
In 2019, the central government had revoked the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card of author and journalist Aatish Taseer, days after Time magazine published a critical story, headlined “India’s Divider in Chief”, on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the general election.
The home ministry then said he had “concealed the fact that his late father was of Pakistani origin”. Aatish, a UK national, is the son of assassinated Pakistan politician Salman Taseer and Indian journalist Tavleen Singh.

Judicial defeats

Most of these new restrictions have likely been inspired by the defeats suffered by the government in various cases filed by OCIs before the judiciary. Take for example, the new requirement for OCIs to apply for a special permit to undertake any missionary activities. This restriction has been introduced to undercut a judgment by Justice Vibhu Bakru of the Delhi High Court wherein he came down heavily on the Ministry of Home Affairs for cancelling the OCI card of an American-Indian doctor on the grounds that he was engaged in “evangelical and subversive activities” while offering free medical services to the needy and the poor in Bihar. In that judgment, Justice Bakru made it clear that there was no restriction preventing OCIs from engaging in religious activities.

Similarly, the restrictions on OCIs competing for seats reserved for Indian citizens is meant to undercut a judgment of the Karnataka High Court by Justices BV Nagarathna and NS Sanjay Gowda declaring that OCI students will be treated as Indian citizens for the purposes of admission to professional courses.

Lastly, the Ministry of Home Affair’s assertion that OCIs are foreign nationals and not Indian citizens is most likely inspired by ongoing litigation before the Delhi High Court wherein an OCI has sought a declaration from the court that OCIs enjoy fundamental rights just like Indian citizens.

The requirement for OCIs to take a special permit to engage in journalistic activities has likely been motivated by right-wing ideologues like Subramaniam Swamy who has been targeting journalists like The Wire’s Siddharth Vardarajan because of their foreign citizenship. There are several other next generation OCIs who work as journalists in India and whose future will now be under a cloud if the Ministry of Home Affairs decides to deny them the required permit to continue working as journalists in India.

This notification by the Ministry of Home Affairs is not surprising. For some time now, the Ministry of Home Affairs has dedicated its efforts to reduce the concept of OCIs to a glorified long-term visa programmer rather than implement it as a dual citizenship program, as was the intent of Parliament when then Home Minister LK Advani piloted the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003, through Parliament.

The “Statement of Objects & Reasons” accompanying this Bill, which lays down the intent of the government at the time of introducing a bill in Parliament and which can legitimately be used by the judiciary to discern the legislative intent, stated the following:

“Subsequently, the High Level Committee on Indian Diaspora constituted by the Central Government, inter alia, recommended the amendment of this Act to provide for the grant of dual citizenship to persons of Indian origin belonging to certain specified countries. The Central Government has accordingly decided to make provisions for the grant of dual citizenship.”

Advani in his introductory speech had clarified once again that the entire purpose of the Bill was to introduce dual citizenship for the Indian diaspora. It is therefore disingenuous for the Ministry of Home Affairs to now claim through a recent notification the claim that OCIs are foreign nationals. This argument is all the more absurd when viewed in light of the fact that the phrase OCI literally has the phrase “Indian citizen” in its title.

Lastly, it bears noting that the entire concept of OCIs was brought through the Citizenship Act, 1955, which is a legislation specifically meant to regulate the concept of Indian citizenship. There are separate laws like the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 2003, which deal exclusively with foreigners and their rights in India.

The fact that Parliament sought to locate OCIs in the Citizenship Act and not the Foreigners Act or FEMA is sufficient proof that Parliament wanted OCIs to be Indian citizens.

Editors Guild Of India Is Concerned About New Media Ethics Code, Says, ‘It Undermines Media Freedom’

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterMedia, Nation India 0

Nearly a week after the Centre’s notification of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, the Editors Guild of India (EGI) has said these regulations will “fundamentally alter” and put “unreasonable restrictions” over digital media and therefore urged the government to take back these rules.

In the name of controlling an “unfettered social media,” the EGI said that the government cannot “overwhelm India’s constitutional safeguards for free media.” The new rules, “fundamentally alter how publishers of news operate over the Internet and have the potential to seriously undermine media freedom in India,” it added.

The guild also expressed concerns over the overwhelming power that the reforms grant the government. “They empower the Union Government to block, delete, or modify published news anywhere in the country without any judicial oversight and mandate all publishers to establish a grievance redressal mechanism,” the EGI statement read.

In creating the new reforms, the EGI said, the government did not consult stakeholders and therefore it must “put the rules in abeyance and conduct meaningful consultation with all stakeholders.” The Centre on February 25 notified new guidelines for intermediaries in “soft touch oversight” rules, saying these were needed to hold social media and other companies accountable for “misuse and abuse”.

The rules called for a three-tier regulation mechanism for OTT platforms like Netflix, YouTube, etc and required them to self-classify their content into five categories based on age suitability. The Centre’s announcement came amid a debate in the country to regulate digital platforms after Amazon Prime’s series “Tandav” stirred a controversy for allegedly insulting Hindu deities.

AAPI Recommits To Its Seven Pillars of Lifestyle Magic NObesity Revolution – Wear Yellow Campaign On World Obesity Day

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Education, Health 0

Obesity has been identified as a leading cause for early death as it leads to hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, heart attacks, strokes, some kinds of cancer and adversely affecting almost all organs in the human body. Describing Obesity as a major disease, World Health Organization (WHO) has recognized that PREVENTION is the most feasible option for curbing the obesity epidemic. Parents, schools, communities, states and countries can help make the Healthy choice the Easy choice.

American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), the largest ethnic medical organization in the United States has been in the forefront for the past several years, spreading this message of healthy living. Continuing with the goal of creating awareness by educating the public and healthcare professionals, AAPI has initiated several programs and campaigns, creating awareness on Obesity and ways to prevent it. As per World Health Organisation (WHO), since 1975, the rate of obesity has tripled. People from all ages and both developed and developing countries are affected by obesity.

“Today, March 4^th is being observed across the world across as the World Obesity Day, AAPI, who has been a leader in Obesity campaign, urges and want to encourage practices among people that can help them in achieving and maintaining a healthy weight,” said Dr. Sudhakart Jonnalagadda, President of AAPI. “I am grateful to the several AAPI leaders and the dozens of AAPI Chapters from across the nation for taking on this role of educating to empower, and for participating in and spreading this noble message, and creating awareness on the need for Living Well.”

Historically, AAPI has been observing January 7th, 2021 as the Global Wear Yellow Day for Obesity Awareness & Health, showcasing Yellow for Energy, Motivation, Hope, Optimism, Joy and Happiness. AAPI’s theme and campaign is: AAPI’s Workplace Wellness – BMI Day; focusing on the Seven Pillars of Lifestyle Magic NObesity Revolution – Wear Yellow. I want to stress today that it is a conscious choice by every one of us to “Be Healthy, Be Happy.” And, the “Secret to Living Longer is to Eat half, Walk double, Laugh triple and Love without measure.”

Major contributors for the success of AAPI’s obesity awareness campaign over the years include, Dr. Uma Koduri, who had organized the pilot programs for childhood obesity in USA since 2013, childhood obesity in India in 2015 and Veteran obesity in USA in 2017 with the help of Drs. Sanku Rao, Jayesh Shah, Aruna Venkatesh for childhood obesity, Vikas Khurana, Satheesh Kathula for Veteran obesity, and Janaki Srinath, Uma Chitra, Avanti Rao for childhood obesity in India.

Presently, AAPI Obesity Committee’s Chair is Dr. Uma Koduri and co-chairs are Drs. Padmaja Adusumili (Veteran obesity), Pooja Kinkabwala (Childhood obesity) and Uma Jonnalagadda (Adult obesity) with chief advisors Dr. Kishore Bellamkonda and Dr. Lokesh Edara.

“AAPI has embarked on an ambitious plan, launching Global Obesity Awareness Campaign 2021,” said Dr. Uma Koduri, Founder of NObesity Revolution, Chair of National AAPI Obesity Committee, and Founding President of AAPI Tulsa Chapter. According to Dr. Koduri, “AAPI began the *GO YELLOW* campaign on Jan 7th with the mission to educate the public on: *G – Get your BMI* (measure height, weight and calculate your BMI…ask google to calculate for you ��); and, *O*- *Own your Lifestyle. It’s up to you. No one can do it for you*. Loose weight, exercise, eat healthy – whole food, plant predominant diet. *YELLOW – energy, motivation hope, optimism, joy and happiness*.”

“I am proud to announce today that we have been successful in successful in making this a global a reality by 12-12-2020 by covering 100 cities in USA, 100 cities in India and 100 countries around the World, including on the 7th continent on Earth, the Antarctica,” Dr. Koduri, who has been in the forefront of the obesity awareness campaign for years now, explained. “What had started off in 2011 at 11-11-11-11-11-11 seconds as AAPI Health Walkathons were held in all 5 Continents – Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe and North America was successfully completed in 2020 by Obesity Walkathons by Dr. Suresh Reddy in the remaining 2 Continents – South America and Antarctica,” Dr. Koduri added.

“While following in the footsteps of American Heart Association initiatives, “National Wear Red Day, on the first Friday in February,” which has become an annual campaign to raise awareness about heart disease in women, AAPI is leading a campaign to create awareness on Obesity,” said Dr. Sajani Shah, Chairwoman of AAPI BOT.

Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, President-Elect of AAPI said, “With obesity proving to be a major epidemic affecting nearly one third of the nation’s population, we have a responsibility to save future generations by decreasing childhood obesity. And therefore, we at AAPI are proud to undertake this national educational tour around the United States, impacting thousands of children and their families.”

According to Dr. Ravi Kolli, Vice President of AAPI, “AAPI has it’s chapters in almost every city and town of USA. With this extensive network around the nation, we should be able to spread the message on obesity by following the template plan. We are also exploring the use of social media and phone ‘apps’ as healthy lifestyle tools.”

“As a professional organization that represents the interests of over 100,000 physicians of Indian origin, who are practicing Medicine in the United States, one of our primary goals is to educate the public on diseases and their impact on health. The Obesity campaign by AAPI is yet another major role we have been focusing on,” said Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, Secretary of AAPI.

Dr. Satheesh Kathula, Treasurer of AAPI, said, “AAPI has taken this initiative as a “main stream” issue in both children and adults, in the US and in India. AAPI has helped organize several childhood obesity and veterans obesity programs across the US. We have the right team to take this project forward. I urge all AAPI members, their families and the members of the larger society to make a commitment today to adapt the motto: Experience the Lifestyle Magic, making this Year 2021 and beyond to be Healthy and Prosperous For You and For Every One Around You.”

“The impact and role of AAPI in influencing policy makers and the public is ever more urgent today. AAPI being the largest ethnic medical organization in USA and the second largest organized medical association after AMA, we have the power and responsibility to influence the state and the public through education for health promotion and disease prevention. Hence AAPI is trying ‘To Educate to Empower’ as ‘An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure.’ In this context, AAPI is in the process of getting Wear Yellow for Obesity Awareness Proclamation from the White House so it can be implemented nationwide. So far, we got official proclamations from Mayors from several States,” he added.

AAPI is a forum to facilitate and enable Indian American Physicians to excel in patient care, teaching and research and to pursue their aspirations in professional and community affairs. For more details on AAPI’s Global Obesity Awareness Campaign, please visit: www.aapiusa.org

12 Indian Institutions Among Top 100 In World

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterEducation, Science 0

This year, 12 Indian institutions have made it to the top 100 of the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2021. These are IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, IISC Bangalore, IIT Guwahati, IIM Bangalore, IIM Ahmedabad, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Anna University, University of Delhi, and O P Jindal University.

Among these, IIT Madras has been ranked 30th in the world for Petroleum Engineering, IIT Bombay has been ranked 41st and IIT Kharagpur 44th for Minerals and Mining Engineering, and the University of Delhi has been ranked 50th in the world for Development Studies.

Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal on Thursday said the reforms made by the government in higher education has improved representation of Indian institutions in globally acclaimed rankings.

“Over the last few years, the government’s continuous focus on improvement and reform in Indian higher education has resulted in significant improvement in the representation of Indian institutions in globally acclaimed and reputed rankings like QS,” the Union education minister said at the unveiling of the QS World University Rankings by Subject (2021).

“India’s higher education system plays a vital role in driving the nation’s competitiveness. Today, India is a leading nation with the highest number of higher education institutions across the globe with significant progress in the last few years in terms of enrolment in higher education which now stands at 37.4 million,” Pokhriyal said.

About the government’s efforts towards minimising the gender gap in higher education, he said women constituted 48.6 per cent of the total enrolment. The minister also said that the ‘National Education Policy’ is aimed at transforming Indian higher education into a knowledge superpower in the 21st century.

“NEP has a forward-looking vision for holistic and multidisciplinary education, eliminating the rigid separation of streams. It paves the way for internationalisation of education and encourages top world-ranked universities to open campuses in India,” Pokhriyal said. He also stressed on the active participation of all stakeholders in the implementation of the policy.

The First Gandhi King Legacy Roundtable Summit Launched

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Education 0

The First Gandhi King Legacy Roundtable Summit was organized by the U.S. Congressional Multi Advisory Task Force (MEATF) of Congressman Danny K Davis in cooperation with Metropolitan Asian Family Services (MAFS) on Friday February 26 from 12 noon to 4pm.

Vasavi Chakka, Commissioner, Naperville Sister Cities Commission moderating the Summit stated that this Summit is being held to Commemorate the Black History Month and Mahatma Gandhi’s73 Death Anniversary with the theme being, “Challenges of the Behavioral Health Crisis during the COVID pandemic.

Dr. Mrs Santosh Kumar, Founder Executive Director of Metropolitan Asian Family Services welcoming the Roundtable Summit stakeholders said that this is the first time a Gandhi King Roundtable Summit is being held in Illinois State and stressed that the Summit is addressing the important issue of Behavioral Health and how to improve and increase the Behavioral Health Resources in our communities which is the most effective way to continue the legacy of the legends Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. Vijay Prabhakar, Founder Chairman of Congressman Danny K Davis’s Multi Ethnic Advisory Task Force in his opening remarks credited India’s Consul General at Chicago Amit Kumar for conceiving this historic Summit to honor Gandhi King’s Legacy. Dr. Vijay Prabhakar, a public health expert said that America will face the gravest challenge from the behavioral health crisis in 2030 and hence all concerned citizens, elected officials, behavioral healthcare providers and other stakeholders should form a broad framework to work towards seriously addressing the challenges of behavioral healthcare.

Ambassador Amit Kumar, Consul General of India at Chicago inaugurating the Summit said the greatest testament of the Gandhi King Legacy is the current strong ties between India, the largest democracy and USA, the Oldest democracy, at the highest levels and recalled the role of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership during the COVID pandemic. The supply of Indian made vaccines to several countries recently is yet another glowing example of India’s Prime Minister Modi’s global leadership, he added. CG Kumar thanked the organizers for hosting the Roundtable Summit on the Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King and to commemorate the Black History Month.

He recalled that their life, message and philosophy continue to inspire us all, that life of Mahatma Gandhi was very closely followed in the US, referred to the historic visit of Dr. King to India in 1959 and efforts to spread the legacy of these two leaders. He referred to the Gandhi-King Scholarly Initiative Act passed by the US Congress in 2020 that was initiated by late Congressman John Lewis, another iconic figure in the civil rights movement. He thanked Representative Danny K Davis, for his strong support to India-US ties, and recalled his initiative to establish the Multi-Ethnic Advisory Task Force a decade ago to empower different ethnic communities in his district. He also acknowledged the exemplary contribution of the Indian American community in helping local communities in several ways during the Covid-19 period.”

S. Congressman Danny K. Davis’s Multi Ethnic Advisory Task Force saluted India’s Consul General Amit Kumar for his vision in conceiving this Gandhi King Legacy Summit as a tribute to two great legends. The month of February is officially observed as BLACK HISTORY MONTH throughout United States and Gandhi’s 73rd Death Anniversary (Punyatihi /Shaheed Diwas) was on January 30. U.S. Congressman’s Multi Ethnic Advisory Task Force presented Consul General Amit Kumar with an Official plaque for his initiative in conceiving this historic epoch making event. A brief video of Martin Luther King Jr speaking on Mahatma Gandhi was screened followed by Dr. Sriram Sonty, eminent Ophthalmologist, the Vice President of The Gandhi Memorial, Chicago eloquently describing the GANDH-KING Connection and its relevance to the present day.

Consul General of India Amit Kumar along with Consul General of Japan Kenichi Okada at Chicago jointly presented the Gandhi King Legacy Award of Excellence 2021 to Dr. Steve Munsey, Founder, Family Christian Center, Munster, Indiana for his extraordinary leadership to the underserved communities of Northwest Indiana and the City of Chicago during COVID pandemic from June 2020 to present. Dr. Steve Munsey, Author, Pastor, Creative Director, and Producer giving the Dr. Gandhi King Legacy Oration 2021 extolled all the leaders to emulate the virtues of these two great legends by their actions in their day to day lives and implement life transforming programs with purposeful goals. Dr. Munsey spoke about the need to make Behavioral Health Care affordable and accessible to all especially the vulnerable sections of the community now.

Marvin Lindsey, CEO, Community Behavioral HealthCare Association of Illinois delivered the Key Note Address. U.S. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (8th-IL) in his remarks said, “I don’t need to tell you that this is Black History Month and this month, we celebrate the legacy of Dr. King And I don’t need to tell you that Dr. King was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi of India. Now today, we are coming together to celebrate this joint legacy , one of nonviolence, one of justice, one of making sure everyone has a seat at the table, and that no one is on the menu . That is what today’s roundtable is all about.

S. Congressman Danny K Davis in his presidential address at the Summit commended India’s Consul General at Chicago Amit Kumar for initiating this Gandhi King Legacy Roundtable Summit which is most apt and very timely for our Communities to heal. “Martin Luther King Jr. was a disciple of Gandhi. A Lot of Gandhi’s teachings was put into practice by Martin Luther king Jr. . So it is important that our elected leaders and Community leaders adapt and enrich the same partnership between African and Indian communities here in Chicago and beyond. I applaud Dr. Vijay Prabhakar, the creative public health expert and founder of my Multi Ethnic Advisory Task Force (MEATF ) along with Mrs Santosh Kumar, Executive Director of Metropolitan Asian Family Services of Illinois(MAFS) for recognizing the importance of the Gandhi King relationship and for continuing their legacy in this dynamic environment. We need to strengthen this partnership among our ethnic communities. I am waiting to hear about the outcomes of this Summit and will work towards supporting the Summit’s recommendations.”, added Congressman Danny Davis.

Dr. David Albert, Director, Division of Mental Health, Illinois Department of Human Services gave the Call to Action. Dr. David Albert said that the State Of Illinois runs Seven Psychiatric hospitals and funds 207 Community Mental Health Centers in the State of Illinois. Dr. Albert said that during the COVID pandemic, the need for special attention to the Senior Population and the Youth /Students population is engaging the department.

The Gandhi King Legacy Roundtable Summit 2021 unanimously resolved to establish a Citizens Action Alliance For Behavioral Healthcare (CAABH) to nurture, enrich and empower behavioral healthcare providers while spreading awareness of behavioral healthcare resources in our communities. The Summit further resolved to launch a monthly publication on behavioral healthcare resources that features op-ed column by elected representatives, showcase community behavioral health programs, informative clinical updates and latest community behavioral health resource tools. The Summit called for monthly town hall meets of elected representatives, community leaders, behavioral healthcare providers and concerned citizens for behavioral healthcare as a constructive follow up.

Dr Vijay Prabhakar , Founder Chairman of U.S. Congressman Danny K Davis’s Multi Ethnic Advisory Task Force named Ms. Twin Green, CEO of THE LINK & OPTION Center, South Holland, IL as C.A.A. B.H.’s Ambassador for Southland of Illinois at the closing session of the Summit. Dr. Vijay Prabhakar thanked Dr. Terrence Chiramel of American Association of Multi Ethnic Physicians AAMEP-USA, Ms. Alli Dhanaraj of American Multi Ethnic Coalition AMEC, Charlie Dressner , Chief of Business Development, MEDSTAR Laboratory, Hillside, IL, Ms. Neelam Desai, Manager, MAFS Naperville Office, Adam Feldman, Senior VP, Ensoftek Inc, and Anil Kumar of The Global Eye, Digital News Magazine for all their support in organizing this First Gandhi King Roundtable Summit.

Consul General Of Japan in Chicago, Kenichi Okada presented the Congressional MEATF Citations to MAFS Mahatma Gandhi Medal of Excellence 2020 recipients and Dr. Mrs Santosh Kumar, Founder of MAFS honored eight individuals with the MAFS Gandhi Medal of Excellence 2020. The 2020 MAFS Gandhi Medal of Excellence recipients who were honored are Dr. Tariq Butt, President , Chicago Medical Society , Dr David Albert , Director, Division of Mental Health , Illinois Department of Human Services , Donald Dew , President, Habilitative Systems Institute, Chicago , Professor Benneth Lee, Founder National Alliance for the Empowerment of the Formerly Incarcerated, (NAEFI ), Ms. Arloa Sutter, Founder-Executive Director, Breakthrough Ministries, Chicago , Albert Holmes, Founder CEO, Elite House of Sober Living, Chicago Heights, IL, Ms. Vinita Gulabani , President, Indian American Cultural Association, Downers Grove, IL and Luke Tharasri, President, Maximon Behavioral Health , Los Angeles.

Dr. Sreenivas Reddy, Vice Chair, Illinois Physician Disciplinary Board in his Closing remarks envisaged that this Gandhi King Legacy initiative on Behavioral Healthcare should be implemented globally and thanked the organizers Multi Ethnic Advisory Task Force of Congressman Davis (MEATF), Metropolitan Asian Family Services (MAFS) and THE GLOBAL EYE, Digital News Magazine for hosting this historic Summit. Dr Reddy further added that the presence of the Visionary Consul General of India Amit Kumar and the energetic Consul General Of Japan Kenichi Okada is the new beginnings for a global collective action on behavioral healthcare.

Naureen Hassan Named 1st VP, COO Of NY Fed

March 10, 2021March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterFinance/Economy, Profile 0

Indian-American Naureen Hassan, a 25-year veteran of the financial services industry, has been named as the First Vice President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the Bank said that the appointment effective March 15, was approved by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. “As First Vice President, Hassan will be the New York Fed’s second ranking officer as well as an alternate voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee,” the statement said.

“Naureen’s leadership background, deep commitment to fostering diverse teams, and extensive technology and financial experience will be critical to her role as a bank leader,” John C. Williams, President and CEO of the New York Fed, was quoted as saying in the statement.

“I am confident that Naureen will be an inspiring and innovative leader, and look forward to working with her to move our organisation forward in line with our values,” he added.

Meanwhile, Denise Scott, Executive Vice President of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and chair of the New York Fed’s Board of Directors, said that “Naureen’s leadership experience and operational expertise are fully aligned with what the search committee and I envisioned for this role”.

According to the statement, Hassan has previously served in various capacities in the financial services industry, focusing primarily on digital and business process transformation. For the past four years, she was Chief Digital Officer of wealth management at Morgan Stanley. Hassan’s parents are immigrants from Kerala, India. Her father, Javad K. Hassan was a former senior executive at IBM and former president of Global Inter Connect Systems at AMP Inc (now TE Connectivity). (IANS)

CDC Says Fully Vaccinated People Can Gather Privately Without Masks

March 10, 2021March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth 0

People who are fully vaccinated against the new coronavirus can gather privately in small groups without masks or physical distancing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, relaxing safety guidelines for inoculated individuals under some circumstances.

The CDC said Monday that fully vaccinated people should continue to take precautions in most circumstances to prevent the spread of the virus that causes Covid-19. People who are fully immunized should continue to wear masks and keep their distance from others in public or while visiting unvaccinated people at higher risk for severe cases of Covid-19, the CDC said. The agency said vaccinated people should continue to hold off on long trips by plane or train.

“Our guidance must balance the risk to people who have been fully vaccinated, the risks to those who have not yet received the vaccine, and the impact on the larger community transmission of Covid-19,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a media briefing.

The updated guidance comes as government officials, businesses and individuals try to map a path back toward normalcy, one year after the pandemic first shut down much public life and business as usual across the country. New cases, hospitalizations and deaths related to Covid-19 have fallen in recent weeks following a winter surge, and the effort to inoculate Americans against the virus is ramping up.

Here is the statement issued by CDC on March 8^th:

This is the first set of public health recommendations for fully vaccinated people. This guidance will be updated and expanded based on the level of community spread of SARS-CoV-2, the proportion of the population that is fully vaccinated, and the rapidly evolving science on COVID-19 vaccines.

For the purposes of this guidance, people are considered fully vaccinated for COVID-19 ≥2 weeks after they have received the second dose in a 2-dose series (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna), or ≥2 weeks after they have received a single-dose vaccine (Johnson and Johnson [J&J]/Janssen ).^†

The following recommendations apply to non-healthcare settings.

Fully vaccinated people can:

Visit with other fully vaccinated people indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing
Visit with unvaccinated people from a single household who are at low risk for severe COVID-19 disease indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing
Refrain from quarantine and testing following a known exposure if asymptomatic

For now, fully vaccinated people should continue to:

Take precautions in public like wearing a well-fitted mask and physical distancing
Wear masks, practice physical distancing, and adhere to other prevention measures when visiting with unvaccinated people who are at increased risk for severe COVID-19disease or who have an unvaccinated household member who is at increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease
Wear masks, maintain physical distance, and practice other prevention measures when visiting with unvaccinated people from multiple households
Avoid medium- and large-sized in-person gatherings
Get tested if experiencing COVID-19 symptoms
Follow guidance issued by individual employers
Follow CDC and health department travel requirements and recommendations

Tri-State FIA Announces Winners Of ‘Dance Pe Chance’

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Culture 0

Winners of the popular annual Dance Pe Chance solo dance competition 2021, organized by the Federation of Indian Associations-NYNJCT, were announced on Feb. 23, 2021. This was the 37^th edition of Dance Pe Chance. The winners were selected from across four categories of participants—minor, junior, senior and adult, a press release from organizers said.

The event, part of the 72^nd Indian Republic Day celebration, was organized over a span of two weekends. The auditions were held on February 13 and 14, and the finals were on February 20 and 21.

Started nearly four decades ago, DPC has had approximately 20,000 participants to date, who have showcased their Bollywood dancing skills.

This time, the event was organized virtually due to the pandemic, but the excitement within the community was intact, according to organizers.

“Thanks to the efforts of the entire team and the enthusiasm of the participants, DPC 2021, also America’s Best Bollywood Dancer, became the biggest online reality show in America in Covid times,” the press release said.

The contest started out with 200 participants in the auditions. Twenty six performers were selected out of that for the finale.

Celebrity judges for the final round were well-known Indian actress and dancer Sudha Chandran, South Indian actress and Kuchipudi dancer Laya Gorty and Bollywood choreographer Feroz Khan.

Judges included choreographers and dancers Swati Vaishnav, Prashasti Majmundar and Anil Diwakar.

The Winners

Rayan Siddamsettiwar was adjudged the best in the minor category, followed by Nayan Nampally and Dhilan Shetty at the second and third positions

In the junior category, Ria Jain bagged the first prize, while Arya Prasad and Simone Shah took home the second and third prizes respectively. Ria was also adjudged America’s Best Bollywood Dancer.

Keshav Agiwal was ranked first in the senior category. Diya Bhatt was at the second and Riya Chaturvedi at the third place in the same category.

Among the adult participants, Shreya Baral got the first prize, with Kiran Kumar Jandhyala at the second and Carol Chettiar at the third place.

Next Edition

Applications for the next edition of DPC will open on October 1 this year, FIA NY NJ CT president Anil Bansal announced.

“We are proud of our team for putting together such a wonderful program and of all the children and their parents who have worked hard on their performances. FIA is committed to promoting and encouraging our next-generation children, artists and performers, while promoting our culture and to reinforce our commitment, we are increasing the first prize from $2,000 to 5,000 for next year,” Bansal is quoted saying in the press release.

Ankur Vaidya, Chairman of FIA NY NJ CT, noted how the event was forced to become virtual due to the pandemic. “The contest was held in strict compliance with CDC guidelines and Covid-related mandates. It is indeed a privilege to see a sincerely dedicated and 100% voluntary effort placed to showcase our community’s talent,” Vaidya said.

Saurin Parikh, DPC chair 2021 and vice-president of FIA NY NJ CT, said the response was overwhelming and performances above par. “I would like to congratulate all the participants, who are all winners for coming out of their comfort zone and performing so well despite the limitations caused by the pandemic,” Parikh said.

Parveen Bansal, secretary of the federation, said, “We are happy that despite the current pandemic situation and limitations, we continued our 37 years old tradition of celebrating India’s Republic Day with a dance competition in the USA. In these challenging times, we needed to be innovative and improve our plans almost every day.”

Vanita Gupta’s Nomination As US Associate Attorney-General Meets With Mixed Response From Conservatives

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterNation USA, Profile, Women 0

After the Indian-American cabinet nominee, Neera Tandon withdrew her nomination last week, , the focus is now on Vanita Gupta, who is soon to face the Senate for confirmation as the third highest-ranking official in the Justice Department. Conservatives are split on Gupta, a civil rights lawyer, with two groups fighting it out with TV ads — one rallying against attacks on her by another.

President Joe Biden has nominated Gupta to be the associate attorney-general and the Senate is take up her confirmation – a requirement for senior administration positions – on March 9.

The first salvo came from the Judicial Crisis Network with an ad campaign accusing her of being soft on crime. In a reference to the Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality that sometimes turned violent last year, the group’s ad said, “When our cities burned Gupta could’ve stood for law and order, for victims. Instead, she advocated to let convicts out of jail.”

However, it also coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic and her suggestion to release some of the low-level criminals only echoed that of former President Donald Trump’s Attorney General William Barr, who wanted to ease crowding inn jails to ease overcrowding that could spread the disease. According to media reports, the Network spent $800,000 on the campaign.

Now, the Defending Democracy Together (DDT) organization is countering it with a campaign ad of its own that is on YouTube and is set to air on TV. Urging her nomination, the ad said, “Don’t let Washington play politics with the nomination of Vanita Gupta.”

It said that she “has been building bridges across partisan divides, she has the broad backing of law enforcement” and has the support of leading conservatives.

DDT is a group of Republican conservatives who have opposed Trump. Its directors include former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and Linda Chavez, the highest-ranking woman among former President Ronald Reagan’s White House staff.

Gupta will need the support of all the 50 Democrats in the evenly-divided Senate to get her nomination approved – or will have to get Republican support if anyone from her party defects.

Tanden’s nomination to be the director of the Office of Management and Budget is stalled because one Democrat, Joseph Manchin, announced that he will not vote for her citing her intemperate statements and tweets attacking both Republicans and Democrats.

While a leftist group, Roots Action, has campaigned against Tanden, who had attacked the leftist Senator Bernie Sanders among others, the Democrats and other liberals are solidly behind Gupta.

The Wall Street Journal reported that a petition against Gupta was being circulated by some Republican state attorneys-general.

Countering that campaign and the one by the Network campaign labelling Gupta soft on crime, three groups of law enforcement officials – Fraternal Order of Police, Major County Sheriffs of America and Federal Law Enforcement Officials Association have come out to support her.

During his Senate hearings Merrick Garland, who was confirmed as the attorney-general, faced hostile questions about Gupta from Republican Senator Mike Lee.

Garland vouched for her saying, “I regard her as a person of great integrity and a person dedicated to the mission of the department, particularly equal justice under the law.”

Gupta was the principal deputy assistant attorney-general and head of the Civil Rights Division in former President Barack Obama’s administration.

She made her mark as a newly-minted lawyer by winning the release of 38 people, most of them African-Americans, who had been wrongly convicted by all-White juries on drug charges in a Texas town and also got them $6 million on compensation. (IANS)

India’s Top Court Favors Indian Nuns’ Struggle For Tax Exemption

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Religion 0

India’s Supreme Court has ended the long-running litigation of a congregation of nuns against the Kerala government by ruling that Catholic nuns should not pay tax for their residential buildings.

The March 1 ruling that favored the Sisters of the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament (SABS) applies to the convent buildings of more than 35,000 nuns living in Kerala, officials said. “The order benefits not only us but also other religious congregations in the state,” said Sister Grace Kochupaliyathil, the congregation’s Kothamangalam provincial superior.

The dispute began after a revenue officer refused to grant tax exemption to a newly built convent in Thodupuzha town in Idduki district. The officer refused to accept the nuns’ argument that they are exempted from paying building tax as the Kerala Building Tax Act of 1975 says those not involved in any profiteering business are exempted from paying tax.

The higher officials of the state revenue department also refused to agree to tax exemption, forcing the nuns to move Kerala High Court in 2004. The state High Court asked the government to reconsider its decision, but the government refused. The nuns then moved Supreme Court in 2012, resulting in the present verdict. “It was a very long legal battle and finally God blessed us and we won the case,” Sister Kochupaliyathil told UCA News on March 3.

Some 35,000 of India’s more than 104,500 nuns live and work in the southern state of Kerala. The SABS congregation began litigation after several other convents faced the same situation.

A section of the law says buildings that are used for religious, charitable or educational purposes are exempted from building tax. “So clearly, convents very well come within the definition of the law and are liable to get its benefit because we are involved only in education and no profiteering business,” Sister Kochupaliyathil said.

The state government contended that no exemption was possible as residential accommodation for nuns and hostels for students are used for residential purposes, not for educational and charitable purposes. The Supreme Court verdict asked the state to follow the spirit of the law.

“If nuns are living in a neighboring building to a convent so that they may receive religious instruction there, or if students are living in a hostel close to the school or college in which they are imparted instruction, it is obvious that the purpose of such residence is not to earn profit but residence that is integrally connected with the religious or educational activity,” the court noted.

If the activities in the convent are predominantly religious, then buildings of the convent used for that purpose also should qualify for an exemption, the court said.

The Catholic Church in India runs some 55,000 educational institutions, including at least one-third of them in Kerala, mostly managed by women religious.

Hundreds of convents and hostels are built attached to these institutions for the education of children. “The top court order will immensely benefit all those nuns,” said Sister Kochupaliyathil.

17% Of Food Production Wasted, UN Report Estimates

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterEnvironment, Finance/Economy 0

A new report from the United Nations estimates that 17% of food produced globally is wasted each year. Instead of finishing your leftovers, you let them go bad and buy takeout.

It’s a familiar routine for many — and indicative of habits that contribute to a global food waste problem that a new United Nations report says needs to be better measured so that it can be effectively addressed.

The U.N. report estimates 17% of the food produced globally each year is wasted. That amounts to 931 million metric tons (1.03 billion tons) of food.

The waste is far more than previous reports had indicated, though direct comparisons are difficult because of differing methodologies and the lack of strong data from many countries.

“Improved measurement can lead to improved management,” said Brian Roe, a food waste researcher at Ohio State University who was not involved in the report.

Most of the waste — or 61% — happens in households, while food service accounts for 26% and retailers account for 13%, the U.N. found. The U.N. is pushing to reduce food waste globally, and researchers are also working on an assessment of waste that includes the food lost before reaching consumers.

The authors note the report seeks to offer a clearer snapshot of the scale of a problem that has been difficult to assess, in hopes of spurring governments to invest in better tracking.

“Many countries haven’t yet quantified their food waste, so they don’t understand the scale of the problem,” said Clementine O’Connor, of the U.N. Environment Program and co-author of the report.

Food waste has become a growing concern because of the environmental toll of production, including the land required to raise crops and animals and the greenhouse gas emissions produced along the way. Experts say improved waste tracking is key to finding ways to ease the problem, such as programs to divert inedible scraps to use as animal feed or fertilizer.

The report found food waste in homes isn’t limited to higher income countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom.

Roe of Ohio State noted that food sometimes is wasted in poor countries without reliable home refrigeration. In richer countries, people might eat out more, meaning food waste is simply shifted from the home to restaurants.

Roe said cultural norms and policies also could contribute to waste at home — such as massive packaging, “buy one, get one free” deals, or lack of composting programs.

That’s why broader system changes are key to helping reduce waste in households, said Chris Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University.

For example, Barrett said, people might throw away food because of a date on the product — even though such dates don’t always say when a food is unsafe to eat. “Food waste is a consequence of sensible decisions by people acting on the best information available,” he said.

To clarify the meaning of labeling dates, U.S. regulators have urged food makers to be more consistent in using them. They note that labels like “Sell By”, “Best By” and “”Enjoy By” could cause people to throw out food prematurely, even though some labels are intended only to indicate when quality might decline.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a family of four wastes about $1,500 in food each year. But accurately measuring food waste is difficult for a variety of reasons including data availability, said USDA food researcher Jean Buzby, adding that improved measurements are part of a government plan to reduce waste.

Richard Swannell, a co-author of the U.N. report, said food was generally more valued even in richer countries just a few generations ago, since people often couldn’t afford to waste it. Now, he said, awareness about the scale of food waste globally could help shift attitudes back to that era. “Food is too important to waste,” he said.

Rajagopalan Vasudevan’s Invention Of “PlasticRoad” Makes Rides Smoother

March 10, 2021March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Community, Environment 0

On a road into New Delhi, countless cars a day speed over tones of plastic bags, bottle tops and discarded polystyrene cups. In a single kilometer, a driver covers one ton of plastic waste. But far from being an unpleasant journey through a sea of litter, this road is smooth and well-maintained – in fact the plastic that each driver passes over isn’t visible to the naked eye. It is simply a part of the road.

This road, stretching from New Delhi to nearby Meerut, was laid using a system developed by Rajagopalan Vasudevan, a professor of chemistry at the Thiagarajar College of Engineering in India, which replaces 10% of a road’s bitumen with repurposed plastic waste.

India has been leading the world in experimenting with plastic-tar roads since the early 2000s. But a growing number of countries are beginning to follow suit. From Ghana to the Netherlands, building plastic into roads and pathways is helping to save carbon emissions, keep plastic from the oceans and landfill, and improve the life-expectancy of the average road.

By 2040, there is set to be 1.3 billion tonnes of plastic in the environment globally. India alone already generates more than 3.3 million tonnes of plastic a year – which was one of the motivators behind Vasudevan’s system for incorporating waste into roads.

It has the benefit of being a very simple process, requiring little high-tech machinery. First, the shredded plastic waste is scattered onto an aggregate of crushed stones and sand before being heated to about 170C – hot enough to melt the waste. The melted plastics then coat the aggregate in a thin layer. Then heated bitumen is added on top, which helps to solidify the aggregate, and the mixture is complete.

Many different types of plastics can be added to the mix: carrier bags, disposable cups, hard-to-recycle multi-layer films and polyethylene and polypropylene foams have all found their way into India’s roads, and they don’t have to be sorted or cleaned before shredding.

As well as ensuring these plastics don’t go to landfill, incinerator or the ocean, there is some evidence that the plastic also helps the road function better. Adding plastic to roads appears to slow their deterioration and minimise potholes. The plastic content improves the surface’s flexibility, and after 10 years Vasudevan’s earliest plastic roads showed no signs of potholes. Though as many of these roads are still relatively young, their long-term durability remains to be tested.

By Vasudevan’s calculations, incorporating the waste plastic instead of incinerating it also saves three tonnes of carbon dioxide for every kilometre of road. And there are economic benefits too, with the incorporation of plastic resulting in savings of roughly $670 (£480) per kilometre of road.

In 2015, the Indian government made it mandatory for plastic waste to be used in constructing roads near large cities of more than 500,000 people, after Vasudevan gave his patent for the system to the government for free. A single lane of ordinary road requires 10 tonnes of bitumen per kilometre, and with India laying thousands of kilometres of roads a year, the potential to put plastic waste to use quickly adds up. So far, 2,500km (1,560 miles) of these plastic-tar roads have been laid in the country.

“Plastic-tar road can withstand both heavy load and heavy traffic,” says Vasudevan. “[It is] not affected by rain or stagnated water.”

Similar projects have emerged around the world. The chemicals firm Dow has been implementing projects using polyethylene-rich recycled plastics in the US and Asia Pacific. The first in the UK was built in Scotland in 2019 by the plastic road builder MacRebur, which has laid plastic roads from Slovakia to South Africa.

MacRebur has also found that incorporating plastic improves roads’ flexibility, helping them cope better with expansion and contraction due to temperature changes, leading to fewer potholes – and where potholes do happen, filling them in with waste plastic otherwise destined for landfill is a quick fix. The UK government recently announced £1.6m for research on plastic roads to help fix and prevent potholes.

In the Netherlands, PlasticRoad built the world’s first recycled-plastic cycle path in 2018, and recorded its millionth crossing in late May 2020. The company shredded, sorted and cleaned plastic waste collected locally, before extracting polypropylene from the mix – the kind of plastic typically found in festival mugs, cosmetics packaging, bottle caps and plastic straws.

Unlike the plastic-tar roads laid in India, the UK and elsewhere, PlasticRoad doesn’t use any bitumen at all. “[PlasticRoad] consists almost entirely of recycled plastic, with only a very thin layer of mineral aggregate on the top deck,” says Anna Koudstaal, the company’s co-founder.

Each square metre of the plastic cycle path incorporates more than 25kg of recycled plastic waste, which cuts carbon emission by up to 52% compared to manufacturing a conventional tile-paved bike path, Koudstaal says.

But once the plastic is inside a path or road – how do you make sure it stays there? Might the plastic content be worn down into microplastics that pollute soil, water and air?

Ordinary roads, tyres and car brakes are already known to be a major source of microplastic pollution. Koudstaal says that plastic-containing paths do not produce more microplastics than a traditional road, as users don’t come into direct contact with the plastic.

The other potential point where microplastics could be released from the paths is from below: the paths are designed to allow rainwater to filter through them, trickling down through a drainage system beneath the path’s surface. But Koudstaal says microplastics are unlikely to leave this way either: “The bike paths include a filter that cleans out microplastics, and ensure rainwater infiltrates into the ground cleanly.”

Gurmel Ghataora, senior lecturer at the department of civil engineering at the University of Birmingham, agrees that using plastics in the lower surfaces of the road minimises the risk of generating additional microplastics. “It is inevitable that such particles may be generated [at surface level] due to traffic wear,” he says.

With India home to one of the world’s largest road networks, growing at a rate of nearly 10,000km of roads a year, the potential to put plastic waste to use is considerable. Though this technology is relatively new for India, and indeed the rest of the world, Vasudevan is confident that plastic roads will continue to gain popularity, not only for environmental reasons, but for their potential to make longer-lasting, more resilient roads.

100 Days of Rage and Resistance! 248 Lives Lost!

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterMedia, Nation India 0

The historic and globally recognized farmers’ movement, which entered into an electrifying phase with the ‘Delhi Chalo’ Call on 26^th Nov, completes 100 days today. The movement continues to challenge the notorious ‘Three Farm Acts’ that would herald unprecedented levels of corporate control over agriculture, nullifying the mandi system, diminishing the significance of the Minimum Support Prices (MSP) and opening up the possibility of alienation of farmlands to big corporations. Landowning farmers, marginal farmers and agricultural workers, in particular women across all categories, stand to lose by these laws. In addition, this will lead to a general increase of dominance of big corporates such as the Adanis and Ambanis over rural governance and agriculture, enhancing the already existing “Company Raj”.

For more than 7 months, the entire nation witnessed farmers across the country on the streets, raising their voice against these laws that would permanently jeopardize their already precarious situation and also eventually disband the public distribution system (PDS). Diverse sections of civil society and concerned citizens extended support at many places. The farmers and farm workers of Punjab, a state which not only thrives on agriculture but also one that has a long history of farmer unionism have been leading since Day 1.

Under the leadership of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, consisting of over five hundred farmers’ organizations across the country, along with the All India Kisan Sangharsh Co-ordination Committee (AIKSCC), the farmers arrived at the borders of Delhi in late November, with thousands of tractors from Punjab. They staged historic sit-ins at Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur throughout the cold winter months. The farmers have also staged roadblocks and rail blockades, peacefully and democratically to communicate their points to the largely unresponsive government and the middle-class power holders in India’s cities.

However, the Govt., continuing its anti-people and authoritarian approach, refused to listen to the farmers who complained that they were never consulted in the process of enactment of these laws, despite being the primary stakeholders. The Govt, its right-wing affiliates and lapdog media houses made multiple attempts to vilify the farmers’ movement, spread fake narratives, clamp down on the protest, inflict injury, undertake arrests etc. The Centre even imposed a de facto economic and transportation blockage of Punjab. However, none of these modes of repression worked in the face of the tremendous resistance of the farming-toiling class.

With their increased participation and leadership, the women farmers and elderly farmers also gave a befitting reply to the disparaging and misogynist comments by that CJI, asking why they were ‘kept’ in the protest. The central role played by women farmers in keeping the movement alive at the borders of Delhi, in the villages of Punjab and elsewhere is awe-inspiring.

Over the months, the movement snowballed across the length and breadth of the country, intensifying the demand for a complete repeal of the three Farm Acts and the Electricity Bill, calling for a legally guaranteed MSP for all crops, for slashing of diesel prices and the implementation of the Swaminathan Committee Report (in particular C2+50). The government’s refusal to accept the farmers’ demands, despite repeated meetings, eventually strengthened the struggle and over the last two months, the movement took wings throughout Western Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Rajasthan. Multiple maha-panchayats and rallies have been convened, in which lakhs of people participated, with the inspiring presence of women in some of them. Today, the protestors have blocked major roads leading to Delhi and resolved to continue their struggle till the demands are met.

As we extend our solidarity, we deeply appreciate the historic achievements of the movement so far. Within Punjab, it has been able to galvanize the non-farming sections and create a region-wide political churning against centralized pro-corporate Hindutva rule. The movement has brought back the “farmer” at the heart of the political discourse, as a category of people pitted against corporate rule. This is an important achievement in times when we stand in real danger of Hindutva-corporate rule being normalized.

Unsurprisingly, and significantly, such a political process has promised to heal the religious polarization in Western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had engineered through communal riots in 2013, from which it had reaped massive electoral benefits. The Govt was also forced to enter into multiple rounds of consultations with the farm unions, although it was never sincere in its commitment to understand and address the core issues. The pressure from the movement made the Govt announce shelving of the Electricity Amendment Bill and the Ordinance to ‘Check Air Quality Deterioration in NCR’, which sought to impose heavy fines on the farmers. Even the Supreme Court had to take cognizance of the protests and stayed away from interfering with the farmers’ right to agitate peacefully.

Recently, the movement has been able to enlist the support of several non-BJP political parties and the central trade unions – by extending solidarity to the latter’s stance against the Labour Codes – and joined the No Vote to BJP Campaign that has been going on in election-bound Bengal. In other words, the farmers’ movement has moved towards building a cross section social movement and weaved alliances with social movements, trade unions and political parties, in order to throw up a potent political opposition to the BJP’s anti-federal, Hindutva/corporate rule.

NAPM salutes all the farmers of the country and in particular those camping at Delhi for 100 days, braving the biting cold and the cold-hearted government. We respectfully remember each of the 248 farmers whose lives were lost in the past few months, only because of this callous regime. We firmly believe that it is high time the entire nation stood resolutely by the farmers who are fighting a crucial battle for the present and the future generations.

(The above statement was issued by National Alliance of People’s Movements)

Massachusetts and Connecticut Hold 8 Out of the Top 10 Best Places to Live

March 10, 2021March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Economy, Lifestyle 0

Expertise.com, a resource that evaluates and publishes the best local experts, has published a comprehensive report on the safest cities and towns in the U.S. The study ranks the safest to most dangerous cities and towns with a population of 10,000 or more. Research experts collected data from the FBI Crime Database and used a detailed methodology to assess each municipality.

The top five safest cities are Wayland, Massachusetts, Frederick, Colorado, Weston, Connecticut, Clinton, Massachusetts, and Sagamore Hills, Ohio. Massachusetts and Connecticut held 8 out of the top 10 best places to live, three cities from Connecticut and five from Massachusetts.

In contrast, the five most dangerous cities and towns are spread across various states. The lowest ranking areas on the list are Muskegon Heights, Michigan, Tukwila, Washington, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Memphis, Tennessee, and Little Rock, Arkansas.

“The pandemic has created more opportunities to work remotely, and people now have the flexibility to explore other cities,” says David Franklin, General Manager of Expertise.com. “This study was conducted to help Americans assess different relocation options and address public safety concerns.”

Researchers at Expertise.com accessed crucial data from the FBI’s 2019 National Incident-Based Reporting System. Each city was evaluated based on the number of violent crimes, other crimes to persons, and other crimes to property per 1,000 residents. The report highlights 1,434 cities and towns and the final scores were generated using a percentile rank formula.

Top 10 Safest Cities and Towns in America

Wayland, MA
Frederick, CO
Weston, CT
Clinton, MA
Sagamore Hills, OH
Newtown, CT
Madison, CT
Franklin, MA
Medway, MA
Hopkinton, MA.

Ankh Jad Di – A Sensational Music Video Released By Pratibha Jairath’s For Memories Of Young Love

March 10, 2021March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterEntertainment 0

Chicago IL: Can you take a sweet Punjabi song and amp it up to be a pulsating club number? Apparently, you can and the proof is in the fabulous latest Punjabi song Ankh Jad Di music video produced by Pratibha Jairath. The song premiered on YouTube on February 22 and has been viewed already over 1500 times within 4 days of its release. So, what is the secret to its success? Foot tapping music, melodious singing, heart-catching lyrics, sweet backstory or the sensational choreography. It appears that this video is much more than the sum of its parts.

The lyrics of the song are written by the multi-talented Madhu Uppal, who penned the song and composed the music for the CD Rang Punjabi. Pratibha Jairath, the very well-known singer and entertainer, sang the song for the original album. During Covid lockdown, Pratibha started thinking about adding some musical twist to the original song. Through her musical contacts, Pratibha got connected to two talented musicians, Shahzad Markas and Kafi Khan, who recognized the potential of the song and jumped at the chance to create some additional musical tracks for the song. Using guitar and drums, they did the remixing and the result was something that immediately seemed ready for a new audience. The next step was to plan a music video that would capture the beauty of the lyrics.

That is where Pratibha’s natural talent for drama burst out. Enlisting the budding performers Ashley Singh and Adi Kukreja, Pratibha has created the vision of young love that blossoms from a chance encounter. Time passes and the two lovers find that they can get through misunderstandings and other hurdles of life as long as they remember their sweet courtship and what made them fall in love with each other. Suneel Mundle, a very busy equity actor, jumped at the chance to be in the video and his charm shines throughout the video.

The very talented dancers of SR Dance Academy were enamored with the music and have presented beautiful dancing under the superb choreography of Elizar Rodriques. The video was directed by Fahad Zuberi and the cinematography is by Taha Rizvi. Here is the link for the beautiful video https://youtu.be/p1m49Ji18lM

India Beat England, Book Spot In WTC Final

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterSports 0

India booked their berth in the World Test Championship final by beating England by an innings and 25 runs on the third day of the fourth and final Test at Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad on Saturday last week. After resuming the third day on 294/7, India were guided to a total of 365 by the eighth-wicket partnership between Washington Sundar (96*) and Axar Patel. Trailing by 160 runs, England sent out their openers just before the lunch break. But spinners Ravichandran Ashwin (5/47) and Axar Patel (5/48) dominated the rest of the two sessions. The visitors were bowled out for 135 with Daniel Lawrence top-scoring with a fifty.

The pitch on this occasion was blameless. A beleaguered England were pummeled in the series finale fourth Test on Saturday by home strong India in just three days.

India’s 3-1 series victory seals their berth in the inaugural World Test Championship (WTC) final, where they will meet New Zealand in June at Lord’s. After a surprising first Test defeat against a confident England fresh off a romp in Sri Lanka, India turned it around with comprehensive victories in the next two Tests albeit controversially due to rank turning pitches that heavily favored them.

Perhaps a battered England’s confidence was already shot, but India proved they were a class above at home with an innings and 25 runs thrashing in Ahmedabad to win their 13^th straight home series stretching eight years.

It’s hard to see anyone beating them at home. Much like four years ago against Australia, India were stunned in the series opener before wearing down their opponents in unforgiving conditions for tourists.

Playing India on their terrain has become simply the toughest challenge in Test cricket. Once travelling to the Caribbean was an impossible task with the West Indies undefeated for 22 years then Down Under became a graveyard site for tourists with Australia unblemished from 1993-2008.

Those two teams are clearly the measuring stick for Test greatness over the last 50 years. Can India join them? The signs are looking rather ominous for the rest of the cricket world. India’s momentous series victory in Australia in January will perhaps be remembered as their harbinger moment.

India’s dominance of world cricket has felt inevitable given their sheer population, fanaticism to the sport and its governing body’s deep pockets and undeniable influence. Even though they have won ODI and T20 World Cups, India has never dominated Test cricket because they’ve struggled abroad, particularly in Australia and England.

This current India team, however, is building something formidable. The batting has become less reliant on talisman Virat Kohli – who didn’t even play the bulk of the Australia series – and developed a strong backbone down the order to frustrate opponents reminiscent of those mighty Australia teams.

Rishabh Pant, man-of-the match in the fourth Test for another audacious, game-changing century, is simply Adam Gilchrist 2.0. He’s changed the course of matches multiple times in just the past couple of months, but he has the extra safety valve knowing there is assistance beneath him. No longer do India fall away with the tail with Ravichandran Ashwin and breakout stars Washington Sundar and Axar Patel extremely capable at the crease.

India actually looked in trouble in the fourth Test with their wobbly top order struggling before the now familiar rescue act from Pant et al. Sundar agonizingly missed out on a maiden ton finishing 96 not out after sharing in a century stand with Patel.

There is scary depth now in India’s batting, which allowed them to paper over the sub-par performances batting stars of Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahanae.

Left-armer Patel was mesmerizing with the ball as he and Ashwin snared all of England’s second innings wickets through masterful spin bowling, which deceived the ashen-faced batters through canniness and supreme skill rather than overt assistance from the pitch.

They were barely needed in these conditions, but India has a battery of high-quality quicks to ensure they should be extremely competitive overseas – as they showed in Australia.

It’s a pivotal year for India’s bid for Test supremacy. Things have started extremely promising for Kohli’s men – and make no doubt India’s captain is revving his charges knowing he has the chance to aRe-dedication Celebration of Ghosh-Dastidar Family-Established 15th Cent Sri Bishnu Temple in Barisal District, Bangladesh Axar Patel has started his Test career in incredible fashion.

India faces New Zealand for the fight of the first ever WTC crown. This convoluted championship – designed to rejuvenate the slumping Test format – is hardly an egalitarian system. For example, bitter rivals India and Pakistan can never play each other – except in a final – due to political squabbles. And the Covid-19 pandemic meant a truncated WTC, yet the two best teams are probably there and deserve their place.

India will be challenged in seaming conditions and were famously bundled out of the 2019 World Cup semi-finals by the plucky Kiwis. New Zealand also easily beat India at home 12 months ago, so the WTC final is probably an even money bet.

India will then play five Tests against England in the U.K. – a site of humiliation for them having lost seven of 10 tests in 2014 and 2018. If India really want to be an all-time great team, they need to end their U.K. hex and beat this flawed England team.

England’s bid for a truly memorable Test upset fell apart after such a bright start but to even win one match in India is probably a decent result for them. Their much-critiqued rotation policy will be further under the microscope and they seemingly erred at the selection table. But like all challenges since Andrew Strauss’ famed team in 2012-13 – a series triumph that continues to grow in mystique – India simply had all the answers at home.

It’s easy to cast ahead and envision India dominating the decade much like West Indies in the ‘80s and 2000s Australia. But before we start getting into big picture narratives, India will have to twice take care of business in the U.K.

Will COVID-19 Vaccine Passports Be The Next Must For All Travelers?

March 10, 2021November 8, 2022 Staff ReporterTourism, Travel 0

In a move welcomed by many of Europe’s traumatized travel destinations, the European Union’s leadership is considering a digital health pass that would allow E.U. citizens who have received a COVID-19 vaccine to travel for work or tourism.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, tweeted that the goal of such a “Digital Green Pass” is to provide “proof that a person has been vaccinated; results of tests for those who couldn’t get a vaccine yet; [and] info on COVID-19 recovery” enabling residents to move safely within the E.U. and abroad.

Israel, which has successfully vaccinated 39% of its population, has already implemented a similar program, called a “green pass” that allows the vaccinated access to gyms, concerts and restaurants, while Denmark has already announced its own plans to introduce a digital health passport.

There are also several private-sector and non-government digital health passports already being rolled out, including the IATA Travel Pass, which was developed by the International Air Transport Association for travellers. Another getting significant traction is CommonPass, developed by The Commons Project Foundation, a non-profit that builds digital data platforms for public good, which will be used by Jet Blue, Lufthansa and United in coming weeks. The organization is also in talks with hotels, concert venues and sports leagues in the United States.

The idea is not without controversy, particularly among human rights activists, data protection advocates and countries with limited access to vaccines. Nonetheless, vaccine passports, if implemented well, offer one of the fastest routes to controlling the coronavirus while shoring up economies devasted by COVID-induced restrictions. Should the rest of the world catch up?

Where would vaccine passports be used?

The tourism industry is the most eager to put them into practice. Airlines such as Qantas are already demanding proof of vaccination or recovery for international flights; so too are certain cruise lines. Spain and Greece, whose tourism-dependent economies desperately need a robust summer travel season, are considering opening up travel corridors with the U.K. and Israel, respectively, to citizens who can prove their vaccination status.

There are applications beyond travel as well: Universities could open up with confidence knowing that their students are vaccinated, employers could start hiring again, movie theaters and concert venues could once again open their doors.

How would vaccine passports work?

Typically, they will entail an app that users can show officials to prove their status. The CommonPass app notifies users of entry rules, such as a vaccine or a negative COVID-19 test, then helps verify that they have met the requirements, either by connecting with the relevant clinic, health authority or pharmacy that provided the service, or by having the consumer download test results or vaccination information to their phone. The data itself is not stored on the user’s phone; instead the app generates a QR code that can be scanned just like a digital boarding pass, confirming that the customer has met the requirements. Customers without smart phones can print out the confirmation codes instead.

Unlike country- or industry-specific digital health apps, CommonPass does not set the rules. It allows gatekeepers to set their own parameters, whether they are specific test providers, authorized vaccination clinics or recovery criteria, and provides the platform to ensure they are met. “Ultimately, what we’re really building is a common trust network,” says CEO Paul Meyer — an internationally recognized registry of verified health organizations, so that a country or venue can be confident that their specific needs are met.

I have a paper that says I am vaccinated. Shouldn’t that be enough proof?

It’s true that countries in Africa and Asia have long demanded proof of vaccination against yellow fever and other diseases from visitors. But the “yellow card’ used for verification is easy to forge and hard to replace (getting an additional vaccine is often easier than getting a new card, even if it’s not medically advised).

Having these kinds of vaccine “cards” for COVID-19 would be even more complicated. With great demand and limited supplies of vaccines, the potential for fraud is high. So too is the possibility of confusion: there are multiple vaccines currently in use globally, with more in the pipeline. And people who have already had the virus may, in the future, need different vaccine requirements.

Juggling those multiple criteria would present a major challenge for immigration officials, airline check-in counters and other doorkeepers. Governments may want travel and commerce to resume as quickly as possible, says Meyer. But their first obligation is to the health and safety of their populations. “If everyone’s wandering around with pieces of paper in random languages about some test they allegedly got on the other side of the planet, it’s hard to make the decision to open up,” he says. “What a universally recognized health pass achieves is confidence that the person who wants to come into my country is the same person who actually got that vaccine. I know what kind of vaccine it was, and how long ago. I know what kind of test was given, and that was it from a reputable lab instead of some fly by night clinic that happened to have a printer.”

How long will it take before vaccine passports are widespread?

A couple of months at least. European nations like Spain and Greece are hoping to have systems set up in time for the summer travel season, but it will take time to get all the regulations in place.

The bigger problem in the E.U. is access to vaccines. The United States says it will have enough vaccines for its entire population by end of May, and the United Kingdom anticipates that all over-50s will be vaccinated by that time. But, due to the slow rollout of vaccines on the continent, it won’t be until September that E.U. citizens will be in a similar position, long after the peak holiday season. This summer could resemble something out of an E. M. Forster novel, with vaccine-rich Americans and Brits taking over southern Europe’s holiday hotspots, while locals are forced to stay at home.

That disparity could actually lead to an increase in cases, says Francisco Femenia-Serra, a tourism specialist at Nebrija University’s Social Sciences School in Madrid. While vaccines stave off severe COVID-19 cases in vaccinated individuals, it is not yet clear if they can prevent transmission. “We will have tourists who are protected by the vaccine, and that is important, but what about local communities? If our tourism and hospitality industry workers are not protected it could be another disaster.”

Isn’t it unfair to require vaccine passports when not everyone can get one, or wants to get one?

That’s the argument of countries like France and Germany, and organizations such as the World Health Organization, who say that health passes tied to vaccinations will increase inequality until everyone has an opportunity to get vaccinated. The U.K’s Equality and Human Rights Commission says vaccine requirements for travel or access to venues could lead to “unlawful discrimination.” Belgium’s acting foreign minister, Sophie Wilmès, tweeted that while the idea of a standardized European vaccine verification system was a good one, there should be “no question of linking vaccination to the freedom of movement around Europe. Respect for the principle of non-discrimination is more fundamental than ever since vaccination is not compulsory and access to the vaccine is not yet generalised.”

The proposed health passes will likely increase inequality, says Anthony Dworkin, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, but they will still be vital for economies reeling from lockdowns and travel restrictions: “Some element of unfairness is the price we will have to pay for a kind of partial reopening.”

Ok, I’m fully vaccinated, I downloaded the app, and I’ve booked my tickets. Can I throw away my mask?

Nope. Even with health passports in hand, social distancing measures will still have to stay in place for a long while yet. Not everyone can or will get the vaccine, and the risk of new variants looms large. Until vaccines are universally available, that means even holiday hotspots will have to ensure that venues are well-ventilated, patrons wear masks, and everyone keeps washing their hands.

“A vaccine passport alone won’t bring us back to normal,” says Femenia-Serra. “It’s just one small step towards healing the economic devastation [in the tourism sector]. A passport or a negative test shouldn’t be an excuse to do whatever I want. Once I get to wherever I am going, I still need to behave in the right way. Because if we don’t, there is another disaster waiting for us after the summer is over.”

Expanding US Supreme Court

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterNation USA 0

The Biden administration has created a bipartisan commission to study reforms within the Supreme Court as well as a broader review of the court system and the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee recently held hearings on the need for more federal judges and other court reforms.

Ryan Vacca, a professor at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law with an expertise in federal judiciary reform, and who recently advised the House in advance of the hearing, is available to discuss the problems plaguing the federal judicial system, how and why previous efforts have failed, arguments for and against court packing, and how the reforms might be structured to avoid past problems.

“For the commission to succeed and actually solve the serious problems plaguing the federal judiciary, the most important thing the commission can do is to understand how and why previous efforts have failed and to devise a plan to overcome those barriers,” said Vacca.

Vacca points out that the federal judiciary serves as a critical part of the foundation of the American republic and reform has never come easily or quickly. As co-author of an article in the California Law Review, Revisiting and Confronting the Federal Judiciary Capacity “Crisis”: Charting a Path for Federal Judiciary Reform, he details the history of reform efforts; analyzes the data on federal court caseloads and performance; explores the political, institutional, and human causes of the logjam; and offers an antidote to overcome these hurdles—a commission that recommends reforms that do not go into effect for a decade, which he refers to as the “2030 Commission.” By delaying implementation of the recommendations, the commission members and other stakeholders, like members of Congress and current judges, are effectively working behind a veil of ignorance that enables them to fairly focus on the best interests of future generations of citizens, judges and practitioners while still drawing on their own experiences.

US Suspends Tariffs On Single Malt Scotch Whisky

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Economy 0

The US has agreed to suspend tariffs on UK goods including single malt whiskies that were imposed in retaliation over subsidies to the aircraft maker Airbus. Tariffs will also be lifted on UK cheese, cashmere and machinery.

The duties will be suspended for four months while the two sides seek a long-term settlement. On 1 January, the UK dropped its own tariffs on some US goods, put in place over a related dispute about US subsidies to Boeing.

It is the latest twist in a decades-old trade row that has seen the EU and the US target billions of dollars worth of each other’s exports with taxes.

The UK is part of the dispute as a former EU member. Airbus makes wings and other parts in the UK, but assembles its commercial aircraft in the EU. It has hit Scotch whisky producers particularly hard as the US is a key export market. Distilleries have reported £500m of losses since 2019 due to the tariffs.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the trade truce, due to come into force on Monday, would boost British business. “From Scotch whisky distillers to Stilton-makers, the US decision to suspend tariffs on some UK exports today will benefit businesses right across the UK,” he tweeted.

“Fantastic news as we strengthen the UK-US trading relationship and work to build back better from the pandemic.” Simon Cotton, boss of Speyside-based textiles firm Johnston’s of Elgin, says he’s “absolutely delighted” the tariffs have been suspended.

The company, which employs 850 people, has been taking a “25% hit” on every knitwear product it exports to the US – “a significant cost” at a time when Covid and Brexit also pose challenges.

In Speyside many other businesses have felt the impact of the US tariffs, including whisky distilleries and shortbread makers.

“This has been a particularly difficult tax for the businesses here, so it’s a huge relief for the region,” says Mr Cotton. “We’re hoping this paves the way for a permanent removal of these tariffs.”

Karen Betts, head of the Scotch Whisky Association, called the suspension “fabulous news”. “The tariff on single malt Scotch whisky exports to the US has been doing real damage to Scotch whisky in the 16 months it has been in place, with exports to the US falling by 35%,” she said.

“So today, everyone in our industry – from small companies to large – is breathing a sigh of relief.” For more than a decade, the EU and US accused each other of propping up their home aviation markets with tax breaks, research grants and other aid.

But tensions flared in 2019, when former US president Donald Trump retaliated by putting tariffs on $7.5bn (£5.4bn) of EU goods, including UK products such as whisky.

Since it left the EU, the UK has been lobbying Washington to drop the duties on its goods as it seeks a wide-ranging trade deal with the US. Talks with Washington abruptly broke off in January but resumed after Joe Biden became US president.

Biden’s top trade nominee, Katherine Tai, has said she will make it a priority to resolve the row with the EU and Britain – although for now US tariffs continue to apply to EU goods. In a joint statement on Thursday, the UK and the US said that the suspension would “ease the burden on industry and take a bold, joint step towards resolving the longest-running disputes at the World Trade Organization”.

The two countries added that it would also allow time to focus on negotiating “a balanced settlement to the disputes, and begin seriously addressing the challenges posed by new entrants to the civil aviation market from non-market economies, such as China”.

Airbus welcomed the removal of “lose-lose tariffs” and urged the UK and US governments to reach a long-term settlement. More than £500m-worth of whisky sales have been lost since October 2019, when the 25% tariff was introduced on single malt Scotch. Smaller distillers were hit hardest.

The US is the biggest single-nation export market by value. President Trump’s US Trade Representative reckoned it was a good source of political leverage in the 17-year trade dispute over aircraft manufacturing.

Scottish cashmere sweaters were also targeted. In the political calculation of trade disputes, the US did not include Irish whiskey or Italian cashmere, giving them the opportunity to exploit the rift and grow market share.

It was not until last autumn that the European Union and the UK won the right, at the World Trade Organisation, to hit back over Boeing subsidies by US governments. That levelled the field on which to negotiate a resolution.

Donald Trump used trade tariffs as a bludgeon intended to protect American jobs, and although Joe Biden is not noted as an enthusiast for globalisation and free trade, this suspension of tariffs signals his administration is in the business of negotiated deals between partners.

It acknowledges the trans-Atlantic partners should perhaps focus more on manufacturing competition from China. But there is work to be done: the EU, UK and US have not only the Boeing/Airbus dispute to resolve, but another one over steel and aluminium, which explains the 25% tariff currently on imported American whiskey.

For Liz Truss and the UK government’s attempts to secure post-Brexit trade deals, this is a significant step forward. It seems the Biden administration is not prioritising the European Union ahead of Britain. However, a UK-US free trade deal is a long way from here.

BRAHMASTRA Releasing Only in Theaters

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCinema, Entertainment 0

Actress Alia Bhatt has shared with her 76 million social media followers the newest exclusive photos from the set of Bollywood’s biggest epic production of 2021 – BRAHMASTRA. Releasing only in cinemas later this year, this motion picture event film also stars Ranbir Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan and is directed by Ayan Mukerji.

Uday Shankar (Chairman, Star and Disney India) said that Brahmastra is the ‘biggest-ever movie made in this country’. He also dropped a hint about the staggering budget of the film starring Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and Amitabh Bachchan.

Ayan Mukerji’s supernatural drama Brahmastra, starring Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt in the lead, has a budget ‘way over’ Rs 300 crore and is the biggest film that has ever been made in India. Uday Shankar (Chairman, Star and Disney India) revealed the details at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2020. The film is expected to release next year.

“It is the biggest-ever movie made in this country,” he told Anuradha Sengupta of CNBC-TV18. When she brought up its rumoured budget of Rs 300 crore, he refused to give away the exact number. However, he said, “Just to tell you, it is way more than that.”

Brahmastra, which has been in production since 2018, marks the first collaboration of real-life couple Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt. The film, the first of a proposed fantasy trilogy, also stars Amitabh Bachchan, Nagarjuna Akkineni and Dimple Kapadia.

Since it went on floors, Brahmastra has seen quite a few delays. In an earlier statement, Ayan had said that the film will offer the audience ‘something that’s really new and amazing and next level’. He explained the delay in release saying that they ‘need more time in order to get the VFX right, to get the sound and music right, to get the film right’.

Brahmastra was scheduled to release in theatres on December 4, 2020. However, it has been further pushed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Work on the film is on in full swing; Ranbir and Alia have been spotted at dubbing studios throughout this month. According to reports, the makers will zero in on a release date once the situation returns to normalcy.

We Need To Foundationally Transform Cloud: Nadella

March 10, 2021March 12, 2021 Staff ReporterMedia, Science, Technology 0

In order to herald the next generation of innovation in Cloud technology, tech companies need to foundationally transform how Cloud can drive the next level of broad economic growth that everyone can participate in, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has stressed.

Addressing the Microsoft ‘Ignite 2021’ virtual conference, Nadella said that it’s time for us to reflect on how the Cloud will change over the next decade.

“As computing becomes embedded everywhere in our world — transforming how we interact with people, places and things — and as physical and digital worlds converge, we will require more sovereignty and decentralised control. Cloud and edge computing will evolve to meet all of these real-world needs,” he emphasised.

The volume, variety and velocity of data will go through explosive growth in the cloud — and in particular at the edge devices, driving the decentralised architecture of compute.

“In this world, data will be more private, more sovereign. Data governance and provenance will take on new importance. We will develop new methods of federated machine learning to drive the next generation of personalized and yet privacy-preserving services,” the Microsoft CEO added.

At the digital conference, Microsoft unveiled the public preview of Azure Percept, a platform of hardware and services that aims to simplify the ways in which customers can use Azure AI technologies on the edge.

Roanne Sones, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s edge and platform group, said the goal of the new offering is to give customers a single, end-to-end system, from the hardware to the AI capabilities, that “just works” without requiring a lot of technical know-how.

The Azure Percept platform includes a development kit with an intelligent camera, Azure Percept Vision.

There’s also a “getting started” experience called Azure Percept Studio that guides customers with or without a lot of coding expertise or experience through the entire AI lifecycle, including developing, training and deploying proof-of-concept ideas.

Nadella said that in the artificial intelligence (AI) we create using all this enormous power of the cloud, we will look for increasing levels of predictive and analytical power, common sense reasoning, alignment with human preferences –and perhaps most importantly, augmenting human capability.”

“Our economy will find a new balance between consumption and creation. We believe the next decade will require technology advances that radically democratise creation,” he noted. (IANS)

Earth Has Life Span Of Nearly 1bn Years More: Study

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterEnvironment, Science 0

The future life span of Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere is approximately one billion years, a new study reveals.

According to the study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Earth’s surface environment is highly oxygenated — from the atmosphere to the deepest reaches of the oceans, representing a hallmark of active photosynthetic biosphere.

However, the fundamental timescale of the oxygen-rich atmosphere on Earth remains uncertain, particularly for the distant future.

“For many years, the lifespan of Earth’s biosphere has been discussed based on scientific knowledge about the steadily brightening of the sun and global carbonate-silicate geochemical cycle,” said researcher Kazumi Ozaki, Assistant Professor at Toho University.

To examine how Earth’s atmosphere will evolve in the future, the team constructed an Earth system model which simulates climate and biogeochemical processes.

Because modelling future Earth evolution intrinsically has uncertainties in geological and biological evolutions, a stochastic approach was adopted, enabling the researchers to obtain a probabilistic assessment of the lifespan of an oxygenated atmosphere.

The team ran the model more than 400,000 times, varying model parameter, and found that Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere will probably persist for another one billion years before rapid deoxygenation renders the atmosphere reminiscent of early Earth before the Great Oxidation Event around 2.5 billion years ago.

“The atmosphere after the great deoxygenation is characterized by an elevated methane, low-levels of CO2 and no ozone layer. The Earth system will probably be a world of anaerobic life forms,” said Ozaki.

Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere represents an important sign of life that can be remotely detectable. However, this study suggests that Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere would not be a permanent feature, and that the oxygen-rich atmosphere might only be possible for 20-30 per cent of the Earth’s entire history as an inhabited planet, the researchers said.

Oxygen (and photochemical byproduct, ozone) is the most accepted biosignature for the search for life on the exoplanets, but if we can generalize this insight to Earth-like planets, then scientists need to consider additional biosignatures applicable to weakly-oxygenated and anoxic worlds in the search for life beyond our solar system, the team added. (IANS)

Top American Pandemic Expert Lists 9 Govt Actions Behind Plummeting Covid Cases in India

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Health 0

There has been a global puzzlement at how India has managed to dramatically lower the spread of Covid-19 cases and fatality rates over the last few months, with some experts calling it a “mystery”, but American scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam has said credit should go to the government for being able to identify and leverage its strengths to limit the spread of the infection.

Bar-Yam, who specialises in quantitative analysis of pandemics, said underlying factors such as previous successful response efforts in pandemics, less urbanisation that limits travel and rates of community transmission, limited travel and localised tourism were all important in mitigating the impact of Covid-19.

But he pointed out that swift government action of “restricting/regulating movement to increasing public health capacity to meet the increasing demands of the pandemic,” were equally essential as India seems to have done enough to emerge successful in limiting the impact of the virus.

In September last year, India was confirming nearly 1 lakh cases a day, but that figure has dropped to approximately 12,000 as the country has effectively flattened the curve. The case fatality rate has also dropped sharply.

Highlighting steps taken by the government, Bar-Yam said that in particular decisions to impose severe restrictions on travel, stop gatherings, targeted localized lockdowns, school closures, had proven effective in controlling the outbreak. Other major steps like effective public communication, improvements in case identification, rapid ramping of industrial production of masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing capacity, have also contributed, he added.

Bar-Yam said that India’s success showed that time and travel are key to controlling pandemics. “The message to go out from India therefore is ‘restrict travel in areas wherein cases are there, isolate cases and don’t allow them to transmit infection’,” he wrote.

In a paper published on his website endcoronavirus.org, he listed the nine major government actions because of which India had managed to tame the infection as well as it has:

He described the zoning of the country into three zones – red, orange and green – for localised lockdowns as probably the most effective step taken by the government last April. While severe restrictions were imposed in affected districts, there was partial lifting of restrictions in unaffected districts, along with the opening up of some sectors to meet the economic challenge.
Restriction on travel was the second most important step, as travel was regulated through issue of e-pass with checks on state borders across the country. The regulation of travel continues into 2021 as travel has not been fully de-regulated, he said.
Isolation and contact tracing of individuals who test positive to Covid-19, and quarantining of primary high-risk contacts has been an effective strategy.
The government shut down all colleges and schools for an extended period, and the recent reopening has been partial and only in the context of the very low number of cases recently.
Bar-Yam said highlighted the contribution of the Indian industry, which he said responded like never before by producing masks and personal protective equipment at great pace not only to meet the country’s requirements, but also to supply to the world.
India has gone from a single lab that could perform RT-PCR tests for Covid-19 to over 2300 in a short span of time, and this number has reduced the test result return time and also strengthened isolation and quarantine strategy.
From cautionary caller tunes on phones to heavy fines for not wearing masks, spreading public awareness about Covid-19 risks has been a major initiative of the government, and this has meant the population more willingly accepted restriction guidelines.
The American scientist also praised the response in high-density urban areas, which posed the greatest challenge, but the refinement of lockdowns, travel restrictions, rapid case identification, and communication found in other locations, has helped limited the spread.
He said that the vaccination drive, which is the largest in the world, is also expected to have an increasingly significant impact on the outbreak control in India.

In Pope Francis, Biden Has A Potential Ally — Who Shares The Same Catholic Detractors

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCulture, Profile, Religion 0

The second Roman Catholic president in American history is a devout man who makes no secret of the importance of faith in his life. President Joe Biden is a regular churchgoer, often quotes St. Augustine and carries a rosary that belonged to his late son Beau. In one of the first images released of him in the Oval Office, a photo was visible behind his desk showing him with Pope Francis.

The Argentine-born pope and the new American president have both staked out liberal stances on issues like climate change and economic disparity, and have taken different positions from their “culture warrior” predecessors.

Biden diametrically differs from former President Donald Trump in his support for a more inclusive society, on issues ranging from immigration and health care to LGBTQ equality. Francis has moved away from Pope John Paul II’s and Benedict XVI’s emphasis on sexual morality, preferring to focus on social justice and the rights of the poor and marginalized. He has repeatedly lashed out at what he describes as the destructive effects of laissez-faire capitalism on society and the environment.

The pope and the president have a lot in common, says Paul Elie, a scholar of Catholicism at Georgetown University.

“Their informality, the fact that they were elected late in life, the fact that they seem to take issues as they come, listening, discerning and then acting,” he says. “And both of them, I think, have surprised their people by turning out to be more progressive than was expected.”

In the November election, just over half of American Catholics voted against Biden, in great part because of his support for laws such as those guaranteeing abortion rights that run contrary to Church doctrine.

Nevertheless, the new president has a friend — and potential ally — at the Vatican. On Inauguration Day, Pope Francis sent Biden a warm note saying, “Grave crises facing our human family call for farsighted and united responses.”

Relations between Pope Francis and Trump were at best chilly. When Trump was still a candidate in 2016, Pope Francis suggested he was “not a Christian” for his campaign vow to deport more immigrants and build a wall along the border with Mexico. A year later, the pope wondered how Trump could claim to be “pro-life” while ordering policies that broke up the families of immigrants and asylum seekers.

Biden’s election was welcomed by the Vatican — but without mention of his support for abortion rights, says Villanova University theology professor Massimo Faggioli.

“It’s clear that they see this moment as a return to some sanity. This is what the Vatican really holds dear,” says Faggioli, “so that that there is a predictability in the relations between countries and leaders.”

Faggioli, the author of Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, argues that under the influence of the previous two papacies, the U.S. Catholic Church leadership became increasingly traditionalist, ignoring any discourse on racism, rule of law or voting rights — and has thus become more closely allied with the political right.

He points out that Biden and the pope share the same detractors among American Catholic leaders — the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which he says “is dominated by ultraconservative Catholic bishops whose political sympathies lie very clearly with the Republican Party, and not just on the abortion issue.”

The Vatican was reportedly annoyed by a bishops’ conference statement on Inauguration Day. Signed by the group’s leader, Archbishop José H. Gomez, the statement lamented that “our new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender.” It added that “for the nation’s bishops, the continued injustice of abortion remains the preeminent priority.”

An unnamed senior Vatican official told the Catholic publication America, “It is most unfortunate and is likely to create even greater divisions within the Church in the United States.”

“So, there is an extremist wing of the Catholic Church,” says Faggioli, “which is a handful of bishops, but a bigger chunk of the clergy.”

For example, last August, the Rev. James Altman of La Crosse, Wisc., posted a video to YouTube in which he proclaimed, “You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat, period. Their party platform absolutely is against everything the Catholic Church teaches. Repent of your support of that party and its platform or face the fires of hell.” It has been viewed more than a million times.

Not all conservative Catholics strike such an apocalyptic tone toward Democrats. But many share a message of condemnation.

In a podcast last month with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank, George Weigel, an author and political analyst who has written extensively about the Catholic Church, said the new president seems quite sincere in his personal piety. But he went on to attack Biden, saying he “facilitates grave moral evils. Mr. Biden is an incoherent Catholic and incoherent Catholics should not be presenting themselves for Holy Communion as if they were living in full communion with the church.”

As both Francis and Biden ignore their Catholic critics, presidential historian Timothy Naftali sees potential parallels now with a period at the peak of the Cold War six decades ago.

Six months after the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the precipice of nuclear annihilation in 1962, Pope John XXIII issued the Pacem in Terris encyclical. Addressed not just to Catholics but to all people “of good will,” it called for peacemaking through negotiation.

A week later, President John F. Kennedy cited the document in a major speech, and was subsequently able to win domestic support for a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union.

Naftali believes the pope and Biden could join forces against climate change — the great threat facing humanity today.

“Given the prominence of Pope Francis on this issue, the fact that he has identified climate change as an existential threat,” says Naftali, “there is a natural partnership with a secular leader who has also identified climate change as an existential threat. These are two leaders powerful in different realms. That’s an opportunity. And it’s not an opportunity that comes every generation.”

Naftali is convinced that amid so much disinformation on the coronavirus pandemic and vaccines, these two prominent Catholics could also work together to convince more people that science and faith are not mutually exclusive.

4000+ Eminent And Concerned Citizens Raise A Strong Collective Voice

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Women 0

Deeply distressed by the regressive statements of the CJI asking a rapist to marry the victim and condoning marital rape in court on 01 March 2021, over 4000+ concerned citizens, from representatives of India’s women’s movements, progressive groups and feminists, from students to senior citizens to advocates to filmmakers got together and issued an open letter to the CJI demanding an apology, retraction of his remarks and said ‘propriety demands you step down without a moment’s delay!’.

The CJI was hearing the petition for protection from arrest, of a man accused of stalking, tying up, gagging, repeatedly raping a minor school going girl, and threatening to douse her in petrol and set her alight, to hurl acid at her, and to have her brother killed. Stating that the facts of the case are that the rape came to light when the minor school-going victim attempted suicide, the letter condemned the comment by CJI and said that “it fills us with rage that women bear the burden of having to explain the meaning of ‘seduction’, ‘rape’, and ‘marriage“.

The letter cites the second case (Vinay Pratap Singh vs State of UP) also reported in the media, where the CJI commented that, ‘If a couple is living together as man and wife, the husband may be a brutal man, but can you call the act of sexual intercourse between a lawfully wedded man and wife as rape?’ Criticising the comment, the letter stated that it not only legitimises any kind of sexual, physical and mental violence by the husband, but it normalises the torture that Indian women have been facing within marriages for years without any legal recourse.

Further the letter states that, “From the towering heights of the post of CJI of the Supreme Court, it sends the message to other courts, judges, police and all other law enforcing agencies that justice is not a constitutional right of women in India. This will only lead to the further silencing of girls and women, a process that took decades to break. To the rapists, it sends the message that marriage is a licence to rape; and that by obtaining such a licence, the rapist can post facto decriminalise and legalise his act.”

The strongly worded letter has been endorsed by:

Well known women’s rights activists such as: Annie Raja, Mariam Dhawale, Kavita Krishnan, Kamla Bhasin, Meera Sanghamitra, Arudhati Dhuru, Maimoona Mollah, Zakia Soman, Chayanika Shah, Hasina Khan. About 50 groups and networks including All India Progressive Women’s Association, All India Democratic Women’s Association, National Federation of Indian Women, Saheli, Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression, THITS, Forum Against Oppression of Women, Bebaak Collective, Bharatiya Muslim Mahila aandolan, Domestic Workers Union, Dalit Women’s Fight, BASO, Women and Transgender Orgs Joint Action Committee, Feminists in Resistance, Gather Sisters, Mahila Sampark Samiti, Human Rights Forum, Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Samiti, Jan Chetna Manch, Ekal Nari Shakti Sangathan, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Women Against Sexual Harassment, Orinam Collective, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, New Socialist Initiative, National Allaince of People’s Movements

Eminent citizens, intellectuals, writers, journalists, and cultural artists such as Admiral L Ramdas, Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Pamela Phillipose, Anand Sahay, Devaki Jain, John Dayal, Laxmi Murthy, Apoorvanand, Farah Naqvi, Ayesha Kidwai, Anja Kovacs, Geeta Seshu, Maya Rao, Sooni Taporevala, Anjali Monteiro, K.P Jayasankar, Nupur Basu, Anamika Haksar

For more info: saheliwomen@gmail.com; Kavita Krishnan: 9560756628; Anuradha Banerji: 8860824559

Tata, Spicejet now in the fray for Air India

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Travel 0

Tata Group and private airline Spicejet remain in the fray for buying Air India as all the other bids have been rejected, according to sources close to the development.

Bids by others have been rejected after the evaluation of the expressions of interest (EoI) where multiple bids were received.

The transaction advisors have been in touch with the interested bidders regarding several queries and the qualified bidders will be intimated only after the government is satisfied with the responses from the bidders.

Apart from Tata Sons and Spicejet, Tata Sons and the New York-based Interups Inc backed by strategic NRI investors from the US and Europe are said to be the interested bidders for the national carrier.

DIPAM Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey had earlier said that the government has received multiple expressions of interest for the strategic disinvestment of Air India.

The process has been divided into two stages. In stage one, expressions of interest have been submitted by the interested bidders and they will be shortlisted based on the eligibility criteria and other terms mentioned in the Preliminary Information Memorandum (PIM).

In stage two, the shortlisted interested bidders will be provided with a request for proposal (RFP) and thereafter there will be a transparent bidding process.

A group of 209 employees of Air India had also put in a bid. Essar and Pavan Ruia of Dunlop and Falcon Tyres had also put in bids for Air India.

After several years of heavy financial losses and complaints of poor quality services by passengers, AIR INDIA, the national carrier is likely to return to its original owners, the Tata Group of Companies. Tata Group, who has been in the aviation sector for a long time, has expressed a keen interest in taking over Air India for quite some time now. .

The Tata group has already begun due diligence and is likely to put in a formal bid soon, close to the deadline. Air India Express, a low-cost subsidiary of the airline and the Air India’s real estate assets; a part of the airline will also be on sale.

Tata sons holds a 51% stake in AirAsia India. Tata Group also has a joint venture in the airline business by the name Vistara. Thereafter, if the Tata bid is deemed accepted, the 90 day period for handover shall commence and end by November 30 or at the most, by December 31. So, one possible scenario is for Tata to take control of Air India by January 1, 2021.

While the other bidders are not known yet, globally, airlines are under severe stress due to the Covid-19 pandemic and resultant disruption on air travel and tourism. Tata is widely believed to emerge as the sole bidder for Air India and the salt to software conglomerate is likely to place a bid before August 31, the last date for bids for Air India, which the government has repeatedly said it will not be extended. According to reports, the Tata group has already begun due diligence and is likely to put in a formal bid soon.

On the ensuing structure for the airline business, there is speculation that Tata is planning to merge its existing stake in AirAsia with Air India into a single entity. Air India has been passing through a critical financial condition from much before the Covid-19 onslaught. The crippling effect of the pandemic, especially in the aviation sector, has further brought its finances to a precarious position. Recently, its pilots and other employees are on the warpath as Air India has laid off employees and started a Leave Without Pay (LWP) scheme.

From Tata Airlines and Air India to Vistara and AirAsia India, the Tata group has been an important part of the growing aviation sector in India. From Tata Air Lines and the long-since nationalised Air India to strategic joint ventures with AirAsia Berhad and Singapore Airlines (SIA) for AirAsia India and Vistara, respectively, Tata has been present in the aviation sector. The two joint venture airlines operate independently with their respective business models – low-cost (AirAsia) and full-service (Vistara).

Air-India began operating in 1932 as Tata Airlines, named after J. R. D. Tata, its founder. The line carried mail and passengers between the Indian cities of Ahmadabad, Bombay, Bellary, and Madras, and Karachi, Pakistan. Within a few years Tata Airlines’ routes included the Indian cities of Trivandrum, Delhi, Colombo (in Sri Lanka), Lahore, and other locations in between.

In 1946, at the conclusion of World War II, the airline became a public company and was renamed Air-India Limited. In just two years, with the government having a 49 percent share in the company, the airline was flying further outside of India, with regular flights to Cairo, Geneva, and London. The line’s name changed again to reflect its new scope of operations, becoming Air-India International Limited. Now, after several decades, the ownership is likely to return to the Tata Group, who had started the airline, now known as AIR INDIA.

Global Encyclopedia On Ramayana To Release On Saturday

March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCulture, Education 0

The government in Uttar Pradesh is going to give a unique gift to Ram devotees across the world. The first edition of the Global Encyclopaedia of the Ramayana is ready for publication.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath will release the historical edition on the occasion of Janaki Navami on Saturday.

The version of the Global Encyclopaedia of the Ramayana, prepared by the Ayodhya Research Institute, will also be launched as an e-book.

The first edition of the Encyclopaedia will be released in the English language. A month later, the first edition in Hindi and Tamil languages will be published.

The Uttar Pradesh Department of Culture, in collaboration with the Ministry of External Affairs, is involved in this mega project by combining the tangible and intangible legacy of the Ramayana from 205 countries of the world.

For this, a workshop was organised by the department which included 70 scholars from West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Delhi.

According to Shishir, Director of Culture, Uttar Pradesh, there is a plan to publish the Ramayana Encyclopaedia in 200 volumes.

For this, the Ayodhya Research Institute has set up a board of editors and advisors around the country and the world. The first edition has been designed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

The publication of Ramayana will also be released in Oriya, Malayalam, Urdu and Assamese languages along with the first edition of the Global Ramayan Encyclopaedia.

Also, the oldest and authentic book about Ayodhya, ‘Ayodhya Mahatma’ will be released in the English language to expand it globally.

It was in May 2018, that the chief minister had directed to conduct a survey and publication of all the Ramayana sites of the world at the review meeting of Ayodhya Research Institute, Ayodhya.

Globally, evidence of the Ramayana’s tangible heritage, architecture, sculpture and painting is found in countries around the world including Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Europe since about 5000 years ago.

According to the scholars, almost all countries of Europe accepted Ram as their first ancestor.

Scholars claim that ‘Ram Takht’ was received in Gandhara region in 2500 BC and many villages in Gandhar have their names on Ram and Sita.

Taxila is named after the elder son of Bharat, Taksh.

The entire Gandhara region of Pakistan is rich in Ramayana culture.

According to scholars, there is evidence of a Ramayana civilisation in Italy before the Roman civilization in Europe. Vatican City, France, Germany, Netherlands also have elements of this culture. (IANS)

What Is In For You In The $1.9 Trillion COVID-19 Relief Bill Congress Passed?

March 3, 2021March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Economy, Nation USA 0

The Democrat controlled US House of Representatives approved a massive $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, advancing President Joe Biden’s top agenda item and providing more resources to schools and businesses, boost funding for vaccinations and testing, and grant financial relief to Americans across the country.

Democrats passed the measure early Saturday morning, Feb. 27^th in a party-line vote, with Republicans united against the bill calling for slimmer, more-targeted relief. All but two Democrats supported the bill in the 219-212 vote, and no Republicans backed the package.

Democrats have advanced the coronavirus legislation using the budget reconciliation process, in a bid to avoid the Senate’s 60-vote threshold and pass their package with a simple majority of votes, given the slim 50-50 divide in the upper chamber.

The Senate is expected to take up the legislation next week, after the chamber’s parliamentarian ruled that Democrats could not include a $15 minimum wage in the proposal over budgetary concerns. “This started almost a year ago,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said of the pandemic ahead of the House vote. “Today’s vote is a crucial step in our fight to defeat COVID-19.”

The American Rescue Plan would provide $1,400 stimulus checks to millions of Americans across the country and extend federal unemployment benefits through the summer. It would also provide hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to state and local governments, schools and vaccine and COVID-19 testing efforts — in addition to nutritional and child care assistance.

While Democrats and the White House have touted public polls showing broad bipartisan support for the measure, and the endorsements of state and local GOP leaders, House Republicans are expected to vote against the bill as a bloc. For weeks, they have argued that Democrats’ proposal is too expensive and ignores the $4 trillion in coronavirus relief approved by Congress last year, some of which remains unspent.

“This isn’t a relief bill,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Friday. “It takes care of Democrats’ political allies while it fails to deliver for American families.” Americans “want us to actually work together, to come together and solve the problems in a bipartisan way,” Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, R-Ohio, said on the House floor. “I think that message was clear. And the more the majority ignores it, the shorter their majority will be.”

Biden had briefly engaged with a group of 10 Senate Republicans pushing an alternative to his plan, but rejected their $600 billion counteroffer as too meager, arguing it did not meet the moment and would cut spending on key programs included in his legislation.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., announced they would offer an amendment to the budget bill, once it comes over from the House, that would penalize “large, profitable corporations” through the elimination of tax deductions” if those companies do not raise the minimum wage for their workers to “at least $15 an hour.” The two chairmen also said that measure would offer incentives to small businesses to raise worker wages.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats would still “absolutely” pass the package without the minimum wage increase, and members of the caucus reaffirmed their commitment to the issue on Friday. “I’m not going to stop till we get it,” Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., said Friday.

Look at some highlights of the legislation:

The legislation provides a rebate that amounts to $1,400 for a single taxpayer, or $2,800 for a married couple that files jointly, plus $1,400 per dependent. Individuals earning up to $75,000 would get the full amount as would married couples with incomes up to $150,000.
The size of the check would shrink for those making slightly more with a hard cut-off at $100,000 for individuals and $200,000 for married couples.
Some Republicans want to cut the size of the rebate as well as the pool of Americans eligible for it, but Biden has insisted on $1,400 checks, saying “that’s what the American people were promised.” The new round of checks will cost the government an estimated $422 billion.
Under current law, most taxpayers can reduce their federal income tax bill by up to $2,000 per child. The package moving through the House would increase the tax break to $3,000 for every child age 6 to 17 and $3,600 for every child under the age of 6.
The legislation also calls for the payments to be delivered monthly instead of in one lump sum. If the secretary of the Treasury determines that isn’t feasible, then the payments are to be made as frequently as possible.
Also, families would get the full credit regardless of how little they make in a year, even just a few hundred dollars, leading to criticism that the changes would serve as a disincentive to work. Add in the $1,400 per individual checks and other items in the proposal, and the legislation would reduce the number of children living in poverty by more than half, according to an analysis from the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.
The legislation would send $350 billion to state and local governments and tribal governments. While Republicans in Congress have largely objected to this initiative, Biden’s push has some GOP support among governors and mayors.
Many communities have taken hits to their tax base as millions of people have lost their jobs and as people stay home and avoid restaurants and stores to prevent getting COVID-19. Many areas have also seen expenses rise as they work to treat the sick and ramp up vaccinations.
But the impact varies from state to state and from town to town. Critics say the funding is not appropriately targeted and is far more than necessary with billions of dollars allocated last spring to states and communities still unspent.
The bill calls for $130 billion in additional help to schools for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The money would be used to reduce class sizes and modify classrooms to enhance social distancing, install ventilation systems and purchase personal protective equipment. The money could also be used to increase the hiring of nurses, counselors and to provide summer school.
Spending for colleges and universities would be boosted by $40 billion, with the money used to defray an institution’s pandemic-related expenses and to provide emergency aid to students to cover expenses such as food and housing and computer equipment.
The bill provides another round of relief for airlines and eligible contractors, $15 billion, so long as they refrain from furloughing workers or cutting pay through September. It’s the third round of support for airlines.
A new program for restaurants and bars hurt by the pandemic would receive $25 billion. The grants provide up to $10 million per entity with a limit of $5 million per physical location. The grants can be used to cover payroll, rent, utilities and other operational expenses.
The bill also provides another $7.25 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program, a tiny fraction of what was allocated in previous legislation. The loans are designed to help borrowers meet their payroll and operating costs and can potentially be forgiven.
Expanded unemployment benefits from the federal government would be extended, with an increase from $300 a week to $400 a week. That’s on top of what beneficiaries are getting through their state unemployment insurance program.
The bill provides money for key elements of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 response, while also trying to advance longstanding Democratic priorities like increasing coverage under the Obama-era Affordable Care Act.
On “Obamacare,” it dangles a fiscal carrot in front of a dozen states, mainly in the South, that have not yet taken up the law’s Medicaid expansion to cover more low-income adults. Whether such a sweetener would be enough to start wearing down longstanding Republican opposition to Medicaid expansion is uncertain.
The bill provides $46 billion to expand federal, state and local testing for COVID-19 and to enhance contract tracing capabilities with new investments to expand laboratory capacity and set up mobile testing units. It also contains about $14 billion to speed up the distribution and administration of COVID-19 vaccines across the country.

RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE

The bill would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by June 2025 and then adjust it to increase at the same rate as median hourly wages. However, that provision is not expected to survive in the final bill. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that it cannot be included in the COVID-19 economic relief package under the process Democrats chose to undertake to get a bill passed with a simple majority.

Biden had predicted such a result. Still, the ruling was a stinging setback for most Democratic lawmakers who had said the higher minimum wage would increase the pay for millions of Americans. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had projected the new federal minimum wage would lift some 900,000 people out of poverty once it was fully in place. But Republicans said the mandatory wage hikes would make it harder for small businesses to survive and they pointed to the CBO’s projection that about 1.4 million jobs would be lost as employers looked for ways to offset their higher personnel costs.

Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 Vaccine Approved For Use

March 3, 2021March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Health, Science 0

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisers voted Sunday, Feb 28th to recommend the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine for the US. It is the first of the three authorized Covid-19 vaccines that comes in a single dose.

In a unanimous 22-0, a panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration recommended that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson be authorized for emergency use in adults during the pandemic.

The vote in favor of the vaccine, which requires only one shot for protection, was taken to answer this question: Do the benefits of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine outweigh its risks for use in people 18 years of age and older. The FDA typically follows the advice of its expert advisers. If the agency agrees, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine would be the third one cleared for use in the U.S.

A quick decision is expected given the state of the pandemic. The FDA authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines one day after the same panel recommended them for clearance during separate meetings last December.

Two weeks ago, Dr. Mathai Mammen, Janssen’s global head of research and development, said if the vaccine is authorized for emergency use, “Our plan is to have supply immediately upon launch.” Even those who got moderate cases of Covid-19 in the trial tended to develop a milder course and fewer symptoms, said Dr. Mathai Mammen. From one month after the shot, all hospitalizations and deaths occurred in the placebo group.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was tested in an international study of about 40,000 people, half of whom got the vaccine and half of whom got a placebo. The study found the company’s vaccine to be 66% effective overall in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 disease. For disease judged severe or critical, the effectiveness was 85%. The study was conducted in the U.S., South America and South Africa.

The main study included in the company’s application found that 28 days or more after immunization, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine prevented hospitalizations and death related to COVID-19. The overall efficacy figures are lower than Pfizer’s 95% for preventing COVID-19 disease and 94% for Moderna.

As the pandemic has drawn on, the coronavirus has mutated. Variants first seen in South Africa and Brazil, where the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was tested, mutated in ways that help them evade the immune response prompted by vaccines developed against the original form of the virus.

The vaccine was tested in more than 44,000 people in the US, South Africa and Latin America. Globally, it was 66.1% effective against moderate to severe/critical Covid-19 at least four weeks after vaccination, according to an FDA analysis. In the US, it is considered 72% effective, and offered 86% protection against severe forms of the disease.

Among more than 6,000 study participants who were queried within a week of vaccination, the most common side effects were pain at the site of injection (49%), headache (39%), fatigue (38%) and muscle pain (33%). These side effects were mostly mild or moderate.

The authorization of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine would help expand the supply of COVID-19 shots. The company said 4 million doses of vaccine would be available in the U.S. as soon as the FDA gives its OK. A total of 20 million doses would be ready by the end of March, and Johnson & Johnson has committed to deliver 100 million doses under its contract with the federal government by the end of June.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is a group of vaccine and public health experts that helps set guidelines for the CDC concerning the best practices with vaccinations. Members voted unanimously, with one recusal for a potential conflict of interest, to recommend the vaccine. They did not make any recommendations about specific groups who should receive the vaccine.

“I just want to state explicitly how very grateful I am that we now have three highly effective vaccines,” said ACIP member Dr. Matthew Daley of the Institute for Health Research with Kaiser Permanente Colorado.

The vaccine, made by Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine arm, can be kept at regular refrigerator temperatures, which experts said would make it much easier to distribute than vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech.

“During a pandemic, the data show that the best utilization of resources is to employ all available vaccines with acceptable vaccine efficacy. This will save cost and lives,” the CDC’s Dr. Sara Oliver told the ACIP meeting. A single-dose vaccine has an advantage, particularly in settings where a second dose “would be challenging.” For example, it could be used to help protect the homeless, people in the justice system, and those with limited access to health care like people who are homebound or live in rural areas, Oliver said.

Overall, non-fatal serious adverse events were infrequent, according to the FDA’s analysis, and there were no reported cases of anaphylaxis following vaccination in the trial. There have been a small number of severe allergic reactions with the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines. For example, in the first week of the Pfizer vaccine rollout, there were only 29 cases out of 1.9 million doses administered, according to the CDC. More research is needed to now for sure, but the FDA analysis also hinted that the J&J vaccine may help prevent asymptomatic infections.

“These are three highly efficacious vaccines,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “I can tell you I have been fully vaccinated with one that was available. It was the Moderna. If I were not vaccinated now and I had a choice of getting a J&J vaccine now or waiting for another vaccine, I would take whatever vaccine would be available to me as quickly as possible.”

“We want to get as many people vaccinated as quickly and expeditiously as possible,” Fauci said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “So this is good news because we have another very good vaccine in the mix.”

The US has ordered 100 million doses and the company has been manufacturing it while it has been testing the vaccine. Typically, companies wait to make the vaccine after its been approved, but that changed during the pandemic. Johnson & Johnson says it can meet its 100 million dose commitment by June.

Bollywood’s Sense Of Women’s Beauty Is To Fair Skin

March 3, 2021March 10, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Profile, Women 0

We often hear comments such as these from women, especially in the fancy Bollywood world: “The managers like me more because I am fair and I look like a foreigner.” “You should apply haldi [turmeric] to your skin. If you don’t become fair, who will marry you?” “I was dark when I was born, but my parents bathed me in brandy to make me fair. Your parents should have tried it too.”

Fair-skinned women have often thought of themselves as superior. They have displayed a sense of entitlement because of their fairness. For Bollywood, beautiful women have fair skin, according to an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based computer analysis which reveals that conception of beauty has remained consistent through the years in the film industry centered in Mumbai. The automated computer analysis was led by Indian-origin researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the US.

The research revealed that babies whose births were depicted in Bollywood films from the 1950s and 60s were more often than not boys; in today’s films, boy and girl newborns are about evenly split. In the 50s and 60s, dowries were socially acceptable; today, not so much.

The researchers, led by Kunal Khadilkar and Ashiqur KhudaBukhsh of CMU’s Language Technologies Institute (LTI), gathered 100 Bollywood movies from each of the past seven decades along with 100 of the top-grossing Hollywood moves from the same periods.

They then used statistical language models to analyse subtitles of those 1,400 films for gender and social biases, looking for such factors as what words are closely associated with each other. “Most cultural studies of movies might consider five or 10 movies,” said Khadilkar, a master’s student in LTI.

“Our method can look at 2,000 movies in a matter of days.”

For instance, the researchers assessed beauty conventions in movies by using a so-called cloze test.

Essentially, it’s a fill-in-the-blank exercise: “A beautiful woman should have BLANK skin.”

A language model normally would predict “soft” as the answer, the researchers noted.

But when the model was trained with the Bollywood subtitles, the consistent prediction became “fair”.

The same thing happened when Hollywood subtitles were used, though the bias was less pronounced, said the study.

To assess the prevalence of male characters, the researchers used a metric called Male Pronoun Ratio (MPR), which compares the occurrence of male pronouns such as “he” and “him” with the total occurrences of male and female pronouns.

From 1950 through today, the MPR for Bollywood and Hollywood movies ranged from roughly 60 to 65 MPR.

Looking at words associated with dowry over the years, the researchers found such words as “loan,” “debt” and “jewelry” in Bollywood films of the 50s, which suggested compliance.

By the 1970s, other words, such as “consent” and “responsibility,” began to appear. Finally, in the 2000s, the words most closely associated with dowry — including “trouble,” “divorce” and “refused” — indicate noncompliance or its consequences.

“All of these things we kind of knew,” said KhudaBukhsh, an LTI project scientist, “but now we have numbers to quantify them. And we can also see the progress over the last 70 years as these biases have been reduced.” The findings were presented at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence virtual conference earlier this month. (IANS)

What It Will Take to Get Life Back to Normal

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterCulture, Health 0

At last, Covid vaccine shots are going into arms in significant numbers, but too many people could still fall through the cracks. Vaccines have brought the United States tantalizingly close to crushing the coronavirus within its borders. After months of hiccups, some 1.4 million people are now being vaccinated every day, and many more shots are coming through the pipeline. The Food and Drug Administration has just authorized a third vaccine — a single-dose shot made by Johnson & Johnson — while Pfizer and Moderna are promising to greatly expand the supply of their shots, to roughly 100 million total doses per month, by early spring.

If those vaccines make their way into arms quickly, the nation could be on its way to a relatively pleasant summer and something approaching normal by autumn. Imagine schools running at full capacity in September and families gathering for Thanksgiving.

But turning that “if” into a “when” will require clearing additional hurdles so that everyone who needs to be vaccinated gets vaccinated. This is especially true for racial minorities, who are being disproportionately missed by the vaccination effort.

There’s plenty of disagreement among experts as to why America is still having problems with vaccine uptake. Some officials have suggested that the main cause is that too many people are hesitant to get the vaccine. Others point the finger at overcautious public health officials who they say have undersold the promise of the vaccines. Still others point to long lines at clinics as proof that far more people want the vaccine than can actually get it.

There is probably some truth to all of these hypotheses, and the underlying problems are not new. Vaccine hesitancy had been growing steadily in America long before the current pandemic, so much so that in 2019 the World Health Organization ranked it as one of the leading global health threats. At the same time, poor health care access and other logistical constraints, such as a lack of public transportation and limited internet access, have long impeded public health efforts in low-income communities.

To maximize the number of Americans getting vaccinations, policymakers need to tackle each of these crises with greater urgency than they have so far.

As supply increases, health officials should mount ambitious vaccination campaigns modeled on ones that have worked to curb diseases in other countries. That will mean not relying solely on web portals for scheduling vaccine appointments. It will mean going block by block and door to door, through high-risk communities especially. It will mean setting up employee vaccination sites at schools, grocery stores, transit hubs and meatpacking plants, and community clinics at houses of worship, with local leaders promoting and running them.

“The easier you can make it for people to get vaccinated, the more likely your program will be to succeed,” said Dr. Walter Orenstein, a former director of the national immunization program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It’s really that simple.”

Outreach efforts cost money. But they’re far less expensive than allowing the pandemic to fester. Congress has appropriated some money to help states with vaccine rollout. It should offer more, and states should put as much of those resources as possible toward vaccination efforts that meet people where they are.

Health officials should also recognize that vaccine hesitancy has many root causes — deliberate disinformation campaigns, mistrust of medical authorities in marginalized communities, ill-considered messaging by health officials. The best way to counter that is with campaigns that are locally led, that clearly outline the benefits of vaccination and that frame getting the shot as not just a personal choice but a collective responsibility.

Doctors and scientists can help those pro-vaccine messages stick by minding their own public communications. It’s crucial to be transparent about what vaccines will and won’t do for society — overselling now will only sow more mistrust later.

That said, underselling is its own problem. It’s true that these vaccines will not immediately restore the world to total normalcy. But they will eventually allow people to hug their loved ones, to return to their offices — and to be protected from dying from or becoming seriously ill with Covid-19. Health officials should be clear about that.

Policymakers at the highest levels of government should press social media companies and e-commerce sites to curb the most aggressive purveyors of vaccine disinformation.

To not only quell this pandemic but to try to prevent the next one, America will need to improve its health system and its public health apparatus, both of which have significant holes. “The problem with a lot of the response is that it was predicated on the idea that we have a good system in place for doing adult immunizations across the country,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at Baylor College of Medicine. “The fact is, we really don’t.”

In the end, lawmakers and the people who vote them into office will have to address the much broader problems that this pandemic has exposed.

When Will The Vaccine Be Available To Children In US?

March 3, 2021March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Health, Youth 0

Children in high school — roughly ages 14-18 in the United States — should be able to get the vaccine “sometime this fall,” Fauci told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday last week. The mass vaccination of school-age children will allow millions of children to return sooner to in-person learning and ease the burden on millions of parents now caring for their offspring at home.

The United States could start vaccinating older children against Covid-19 by the fall and younger ones by year-end or early 2022, the White House’s top pandemic advisor Anthony Fauci said Sunday.

The mass vaccination of school-age children will allow millions of children to return sooner to in-person learning and ease the burden on millions of parents now caring for their offspring at home.

School reopenings, an intensely debated matter, have varied sharply across the country, with some private and religious schools opening before public schools and teachers in some areas protesting any early return.

But the decision Saturday by the US Food and Drug Administration to grant emergency use authorization to a new single-dose vaccine from Johnson & Johnson has boosted the prospects for earlier reopenings. “We now have three really efficacious vaccines,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.”

With vaccines becoming available to protect against COVID-19, we’ve made a big step toward slowing down the virus that causes this deadly disease. The first vaccines released are authorized for use in adults and teens who are at least 16 years old. High-risk groups such as frontline workers and elderly people are first in line to receive the vaccines, with other adults and teens likely to have access later this spring.

Research shows these new vaccines to be remarkably effective and safe. The American Academy of Pediatrics urges teens and adults to get the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it is available to them.

Before COVID-19 vaccines become available for younger teens and children, clinical trials need to be completed. This is to ensure they are safe and effective for these age groups. Children are not little adults; we can’t just assume a vaccine will have the same effect on a child as it does for someone older.

While there are current studies that include children as young as 12 years of age, it is critical that children of all ages be included in more trials as quickly as possible.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to take a terrible toll on children’s lives. We need more data on vaccines for children so they can be protected from this virus and the pandemic can be controlled. Once this information is available, the AAP will review it and make vaccine recommendations for children and adolescents.

For now, none of the three authorized vaccines in the US (also including Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna) has been cleared for children under 16, but trials on children are under way.

Saudi Crown Prince Approved Operation To Kill Jamal Khashoggi

March 3, 2021March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterGlobal, Media 0

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince approved the operation that led to the brutal 2018 death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the U.S. intelligence community said in a report released Friday.

President Biden has been critical of Saudi Arabia and the report is expected to further harm the increasingly fraught relations between the two longtime allies. He said Friday that he will hold Saudi Arabia accountable for human rights abuses.

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill” Khashoggi, said the report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“Since 2017, the crown prince has had absolute control of the kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the crown prince’s authorization,” it added.

Shortly after the report was released, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines gave an exclusive interview to NPR.

“The fact that the crown prince approved that operation … is likely not to be a surprise,” she told NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly. “I am sure it is not going to make things easier, but I think it’s also fair to say that it is not unexpected.”

Asked how this might affect the U.S.-Saudi relationship, she said: “I think there will be ways to weather the various storms that we have in front of us.”

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia said it rejected completely “the negative, false and unacceptable” finding of the U.S. intelligence community, adding “that the report contained inaccurate information and conclusions.”

The basic facts of the killing have long been clear. Khashoggi, 59, was a Saudi citizen living in Northern Virginia and writing columns for The Washington Post that were often critical of the Saudi monarchy. He was killed during a visit to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. His body was dismembered, and his remains have never been found.

Saudi Arabia initially denied knowledge of what happened to Khashoggi. But in the face of intense international pressure, the kingdom blamed his death on “rogue” security officials. However, the crown prince’s involvement in the killing has long been suspected.

Two months after Khashoggi’s death, in December 2018, then-CIA Director Gina Haspel returned from a trip to Turkey and briefed Senate leaders on her findings. The senators emerged from that meeting convinced that the crown prince was responsible.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “is a wrecking ball. I think he is complicit in the murder of Khashoggi in the highest possible level,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

In a 2019 report, U.N. human rights investigator Agnes Callamard said Khashoggi “has been the victim of a deliberate, premeditated execution, an extrajudicial killing for which the state of Saudi Arabia is responsible under international human rights law.”

The U.N. report said a 15-member team of Saudi agents flew to Istanbul specifically to meet Khashoggi. The team included a forensic doctor and people who worked in the crown prince’s office.

The U.S. intelligence report released Friday says seven of the team members were part of the crown prince’s “elite personal protective detail.” It says that group, called the Rapid Intervention Force, “exists to defend the crown prince” and “answers only to him.”

“We judge that members of the RIF would not have participated in the operation against Khashoggi without Mohammed bin Salman’s approval.”

Saudi courts have sentenced five men to death for Khashoggi’s murder, but the sentences were later reduced to 20 years. Three other men received lesser sentences.

Biden has already made it clear that he plans to take a more critical position toward Saudi Arabia, which has had close ties with many U.S. presidents, including President Donald Trump.

Trump’s first foreign trip as president was to Saudi Arabia in 2017, where he described the kingdom as a regional leader and praised it for the billions of dollars the Saudis spend on U.S. weapons.

During last year’s presidential campaign, Biden called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” and was critical of its human rights record and its intervention in Yemen’s civil war, which has contributed to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

“The president’s intention, as is the intention of this government, is to recalibrate our engagement with Saudi Arabia,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday. Psaki said earlier this month that Biden would conduct relations with Saudi Arabia “counterpart to counterpart.”

“The president’s counterpart is King Salman,” Psaki said. Biden said he has read the intelligence report produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees all 18 of the U.S. intelligence agencies.

According to the White House, Biden spoke by phone Thursday with King Salman. They discussed a range of issues, and Biden “affirmed the importance the United States places on universal human rights and the rule of law.”

Shortly after the report was released, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. is imposing “visa restrictions on 76 Saudi individuals believed to have been engaged in threatening dissidents overseas, including but not limited to the Khashoggi killing.”

The U.S. Treasury also announced sanctions against the Rapid Intervention Force and Ahmad Hassan Mohammed al Asiri, the former deputy head of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency, who it says was “assigned to murder” the journalist. The designation blocks all property and interests in property they own in the U.S. It also freezes their relevant property “in the possession or control of U.S. persons.”

Analysts who follow Saudi Arabia say that the king, 85, has been in poor health for years and that the crown prince, 35, is the driving force in the kingdom. Friday’s announcement of U.S. sanctions conspicuously did not include the crown prince.

The U.S.-Saudi partnership has often been described as transactional. The U.S. has long imported Saudi oil and relied on the kingdom’s output to help stabilize world oil prices. The Saudis, in turn, buy U.S. weapons in bulk and view the U.S. as its main protector. The two countries have also cooperated in counterterrorism efforts against radical Islamist groups such as al-Qaida.

But critics say the U.S. and the Saudis share little in terms of values. Many U.S. administrations have been all but silent on Saudi Arabia’s lack of democracy, the restrictions it places on women and its human rights violations.

The Obama and Trump administrations assisted the Saudi military campaign in Yemen against the Houthis, a group backed by Iran. But with no military solution on the horizon, and the impoverished country shattered by years of war, the Biden administration says it will press the Saudis to find a diplomatic solution in Yemen.

Hundreds In New York Rally Against Anti-Asian Hate

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Media 0

More than 300 people joined some of New York’s top elected officials and community leaders on Saturday afternoon to speak out against the increase in anti-Asian violence in the city and nationwide on Saturday, Feb 27th.

The Rise Up Against Asian Hate rally, organized by the Asian American Federation (AAF), took place at Foley Square in downtown Manhattan, two blocks from where a 36-year-old Asian man was stabbed on Thursday night.

The rally was joined by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democratic Congresswoman Grace Meng, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as well as victims of violence against Asian-Americans.

Taking to Twitter on Sunday, Schumer said: I’m proud to stand with the @AAFederation at today’s #RiseUpRally in New York City to stop hatred against Asian-Americans.

“The surge in attacks against Asian American communities is alarming, ignorant, and dangerous. We cannot and will not tolerate racism and discrimination.”

Addressing the rally he said: “Bigotry against any of us is bigotry against all of us … We must redouble our fight. We must stand strong.

“New York, we love diversity. We know the more of us who are together from every different background in race, creed, colour, orientation and gender, the stronger we are. We love immigrants.”

Among the speakers was a recent victim: 61-year-old Filipino-American Noel Quintana, whose face was slashed on the subway earlier this month. “I called for help, but nobody came to help,” he said. “If they took a video of this, the perpetrator would be identified easily.” He urged people to be safe and aware, and to record and report incidents. As he walked off the stage, the crowd chanted his name.

Democratic Congresswoman Grace Meng, who represents New York’s 6th District and authored a resolution in the House last September to denounce hatred against Asian-Americans, said, “We need to make sure that we are not fighting racism with more racism. That we are fighting racism with solidarity. That we are not ever, ever pitting one group against the other. It is everyone against racism. We are American, too.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer harshly criticized former President Donald Trump, whose use of terms like “Chinese virus” and “kung flu” for the coronavirus helped fuel anti-Asian sentiment over the past year. “Bigotry against any of us is bigotry against all of us,” Schumer said.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio promised that “anyone who commits an act of hate against the Asian-American community will be found, will be arrested, will be prosecuted.”

Attorney General Letitia James, who AAF Executive Director Jo-Ann Yoo referred to as an “ally,” urged the community to report incidents to authorities. “Come to my office so that we can do something about it. Come to my office, so that we can go after those individuals who hate us, and shut them down,” she said.

James and many others shared messages of unity with the AAPI community. They also endorsed Yoo’s calls for more directed action, saying, “We need a patrol which is staffed by police officers. A full-time, dedicated bureau … that patrol the streets, patrol the subways and keep the Asian community safe from harm.” The AAF and a larger group of organizations have called for community-based solutions to combat bias incidents and hate crimes against Asian-Americans, including recovery programs, language services, mental health services and more.

According to data collected by AAF, Stop AAPI Hate, the NYPD and the NYC Commission on Human Rights, nearly 500 Asians in New York were targets of bias incidents or hate crimes in 2020, ranging from verbal to physical assaults, including acid attacks. The community has suffered a significant rise in unemployment since the pandemic began. Nationwide, at least half of Asian Americans continued to experience cases of direct racism, nearly 1 in 5 of which were physical assaults.

Celebrities have also gotten involved. Actor William Lex Ham, who has been leading marches and rallies across the country since last summer, made an appearance on Saturday. Actress Olivia Munn tweeted out a video of an attack on a woman in Flushing, New York. Daniel Dae Kim and Daniel Wu put up a $25,000 reward for the identification of a suspect who fatally shoved 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee to the ground in Oakland, California. Governments have made an effort to stand with the community, passing resolutions at the state and federal levels. But these, and President Biden’s executive order in February denouncing anti-Asian hate, are largely symbolic, and more concrete action is needed, activists say.

Late last year, the NYPD established an Asian Hate Crimes Task Force. In California, another state that has seen an exponential rise in attacks against the AAPI community, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will devote nearly $1.5 million to tracking anti-Asian hate crimes.

Warren Buffett Admits To A Rare ‘Mistake’

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterFinance/Economy 0

In his annual letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB), investing guru Warren Buffett disclosed that the company took an $11 billion writedown last year on its 2016 purchase of Precision Castparts, describing it as “a mistake.”

The 90-year-old billionaire, Berkshire’s chairman since 1970, said in the company’s annual letter to shareholders that the “ugly” write-down had a simple explanation. “I paid too much for the company,” he said. “My miscalculation was laid bare by adverse developments throughout the aerospace industry.”

Despite that loss and fallout from the pandemic in general, the company’s operating businesses enjoyed a solid end to 2020. The sprawling conglomerate, which owns Geico, Dairy Queen, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Company, Duracell batteries and many other consumer, financial, industrial and energy companies, said Saturday it posted a net profit of $35.8 billion in the fourth quarter, an increase of 23%. Berkshire’s operating profit rose nearly 14% in the quarter, to $5 billion.

In the letter, Buffett also disclosed that Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting on May 1, normally held in Buffett’s home town of Omaha, Nebraska, will instead be livestreamed from Los Angeles so that vice chairman Charlie Munger, who lives in Southern California, can attend.

The 97-year old Munger did not attend last year’s virtual shareholder meeting in Omaha due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Instead, Buffett was joined on stage by another Berkshire vice chairman, Greg Abel.

“I missed him last year and, more important, you clearly missed him,” Buffett said of Munger, who is also chairman of California newspaper publisher Daily Journal (DJCO), which held its own shareholder meeting on Wednesday in Los Angeles.

Buffett said Abel and Berkshire’s third vice chairman, Ajit Jain, will also be on stage in LA to answer questions during the virtual May 1 meeting, which is scheduled to last from 1:30 p.m. ET until 5:30 p.m. Buffett said he hoped Berkshire can once again hold an in-person meeting in Nebraska in 2022. As he often does in Berkshire’s annual letter to shareholders, Buffett — who has a net worth of some $90 billion — dispensed some words of wisdom about the current state of the market.

Staying away from bonds and buying back more Berkshire stock

He is not currently a fan of bonds because despite a recent uptick, yields remain historically low. “Bonds are not the place to be these days,” he wrote, adding that the yield on the 10-year Treasury, now hovering around 1.46%, was 15.8% in 1981.

“In certain large and important countries, such as Germany and Japan, investors earn a negative return on trillions of dollars of sovereign debt. Fixed-income investors worldwide — whether pension funds, insurance companies or retirees — face a bleak future,” Buffett noted.

He also defended Berkshire’s propensity for using cash to buy back its own stock. The company spent $24.7 billion last year to repurchase shares. Some investors have argued that Berkshire could find a better use for its cash, which totaled more than $138 billion in cash at the end of 2020. Berkshire could it use to make more acquisitions.

“In no way do we think that Berkshire shares should be repurchased at simply any price,” Buffett wrote. “American CEOs have an embarrassing record of devoting more company funds to repurchases when prices have risen than when they have tanked. Our approach is exactly the reverse.”

Still, some wonder if Buffett has lost his Midas touch. Berkshire Hathaway’s stock is up just 11% over the past year, compared to a nearly 23% gain for the S&P 500. The company has lagged the broader market during the past five years, too, despite being a major investor in Apple (AAPL).

Buffett, however, defended the company’s investment strategy, describing it as like a classic diner. “At Berkshire, we have been serving hamburgers and Coke for 56 years. We cherish the clientele this fare has attracted,” Buffett wrote.

Although he has dipped his toe into higher techs like Apple and Amazon (AMZN) recently, the majority of Berkshire’s investments are in slower growth “value” stocks such as Chevron (CVX), Verizon (VZ), American Express (AXP) and, yes, Coca-Cola (KO). (Buffett is an avid drinker of Cherry Coke.)

In other words, don’t expect Buffett to start investing in meme stocks like GameStop (GME) or momentum darlings such as Tesla (TSLA).

“The tens of millions of other investors and speculators in the United States and elsewhere have a wide variety of equity choices to fit their tastes. They will find CEOs and market gurus with enticing ideas,” he said. “Many of those investors, I should add, will do quite well.”

But Buffett stressed a more patient approach to investing. “All that’s required is the passage of time, an inner calm, ample diversification and a minimization of transactions and fees,” he said.

US Debt Soars To $29 Trillion, Owes India $216 Billion

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterEconomy, Finance/Economy, Nation USA 0

The US, the world’s largest economy, owes India USD 216 billion in loan as the country’s debt grows to a record USD 29 trillion, an American lawmaker has said, cautioning the leadership against galloping foreign debt, the largest of which comes from China and Japan.

In 2020, the US national debt was USD 23.4 trillion, that was USD 72,309 in debt per person. “We are going to grow our debt to USD 29 trillion. That is even more debt owed per citizen. There is a lot of misinformation about where the debt is going. The top two countries we owe the debt to are China and Japan, not actually our friends,” Congressman Alex Mooney said.

“We are at global competition with China all the time. They are holding a lot of the debt. We owe China over USD 1 trillion and we owe Japan over USD 1 trillion,” the Republican Senator from West Virginia said on the floor of the US House of Representatives as he and others opposed the latest stimulus package of USD 2 trillion.

In January, US President Joe Biden announced a USD 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package to tackle the economic fallout from the pandemic, including direct financial aid to average Americans, support to businesses and to provide a boost to the national vaccination programme.

“The people who are loaning us the money we have to pay back are not necessarily people who have our best interest at heart. Brazil, we owe USD 258 billion. India, we owe USD 216 billion. And the list goes on the debt that is owed to foreign countries,” Congressman Mooney said.

America’s national debt was USD5.6 trillion in 2000. During the Obama administration, it actually doubled.

“Since the eight years Obama was President, we doubled our national debt. And we are adding another—projected here—a completely out of control debt-to-GDP ratio,” he said urging his Congressional colleagues to consider this national debt issue before approving the stimulus package.

“So I urge my colleagues to consider the future. Don’t buy into the—the government has no money it doesn’t take from you that you are going to have to pay back. We need to be judicious with these dollars, and most of this is not going to coronavirus relief anyway,” he said.

Congressmen Mooney said that things have gone completely out of control. The Congressional Budget Office estimates an additional USD 104 trillion will be added by 2050. The Congressional Budget Office forecasted debt would rise 200 per cent.

“Today, as I stand here right now, we have USD 27.9 trillion in national debt…That is actually a little more than USD 84,000 of debt to every American citizen right here today,” Mooney said.

Reliance Acquires Majority Stake In US-Based Skytran Inc

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Finance/Economy 0

Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Limited (RSBVL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), announced on Sunday that it has acquired majority stake in its investee company skyTran Inc for a consideration of $26.76 million.

With this transaction, RSBVL has increased its shareholding to 54.46 per cent on a fully diluted basis, RIL said in a statement.

Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of RIL, said: “Our acquiring majority equity stake in skyTran reflects our commitment to invest in building futuristic technologies that would transform the world. We are excited by skyTran’s potential to achieve an order of magnitude impact on highspeed intra and inter-city connectivity and its ability to provide a high speed, highly efficient and economical ‘Transportation-As-Service’ platform for India and the rest of the World.”

“We firmly believe that non-polluting high speed personal rapid transportation system will help facilitate environmental sustainability through efficient use of alternative energy and make an impactful reduction in air and noise pollution,” he added.

SkyTran is a technology company incorporated under the laws of Delaware in the US in 2011. It has developed breakthrough passive magnetic levitation and propulsion technology for implementing personal transportation systems aimed at solving the problem of traffic congestion globally. The technology has been developed by skyTran to create smart mobility solutions, said a company statement. (IANS)

India Claims At UNHRC, It Showed Utmost Respect To Protesting Farmers, Engaged In Dialogue

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Nation India 0

India’s Ambassador Indra Mani Pandey, Permanent Representative of India, said that the India has set a goal of doubling the income of farmers by 2024. Farmers raise slogans during a protest against the new farm laws, at the Delhi-Ghazipur border in New Delhi on Thursday. (ANI Photo)

The government has shown the utmost respect for protests by farmers and has remained engaged in dialogue with them to address their concerns pertaining to the farm laws, said India on Friday.

Speaking at the General Debate on Oral Update of the High Commissioner at the 46th Session of Human Rights Council, Ambassador Indra Mani Pandey, Permanent Representative of India, said that the India has set a goal of doubling the income of farmers by 2024. The purpose of enacting three Farm Acts is to enable farmers to realise better price for their produce and enhance their income.

“The Government of India has set a goal of doubling the income of farmers by 2024. The purpose of enacting three Farm Acts is to enable farmers to realise better price for their produce and enhance their income. It will particularly benefit small farmers and offer more choices to those farmers who opt for them. The Government has shown utmost respect for protests by farmers and has remained engaged in dialogue with them to address their concerns,” Pandey said.

Scientists Talked To People In Their Dreams. They Answered

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterEducation, Science 0

Researchers say two-way communication is possible with people who are asleep and dreaming. Specifically, with people who are lucid dreaming — that is, dreaming while being aware you’re dreaming.

In separate experiments, scientists in the U.S., France, Germany and the Netherlands asked people simple questions while they slept. Sleepers would respond by moving their eyes or twitching their faces in a certain way to indicate their answers.

“Since the ’80s, we’ve known that lucid dreamers can communicate out of dreams by using these signals,” says Karen Konkoly, a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University who is the first author on the study published this month in Current Biology.

“But we were wondering, can we also communicate in? Can we ask people questions that they could actually hear in their dreams that we could kind of have a more meaningful conversation?”

They were studying rapid-eye-movement sleep, which is the stage of sleep where people dream most vividly. In REM sleep, “every muscle in your body is completely paralyzed, except you can twitch and you can move your eyes,” Konkoly tells Scott Simon on Weekend Edition. “So if you become lucid in a dream and you want to communicate, then when people are dreaming, they just look left-right, left-right, really dramatically. And then we know that they’re communicating out.”

Lucid dreaming is not common. So to study it, researchers recruited people who had experience with it and also trained people to try to make lucid dreaming more likely.

Before the participants went to sleep, they were also trained on how to communicate their answers. Special sensors measured people’s eye movements or experts would judge their facial movements.

For example, a typical question would be to ask what is 8 minus 6. A 19-year-old American man was able to respond by moving his eyes left-right, left-right — two times — to signal “2.” Researchers asked the question again, and he moved his eyes the same way two times again.

Out of the 158 trials among 36 participants, about 18% of the time, they were able to give correct answers. In another 18%, it wasn’t clear whether participants were responding or not. They were wrong 3% of the time. Most often, 61%, participants didn’t respond at all.

For the people dreaming, they didn’t always interpret the questions they were hearing as a simple question from researchers. “Sometimes stimuli were perceived as coming from outside the dream, but other times, the stimuli emanated from elements of the dream, contextualized in a way that made sense in relation to ongoing dream content,” the researchers write. One participant “heard the questions transposed over their dream as though it was God talking to them,” Konkoly says.

The researchers write that their findings present “new opportunities for gaining real-time information about dreaming, and for modifying the course of a dream” and “could usher in a new era of investigations into sleep and into the enigmatic cognitive dimensions of sleep.”

Konkoly says there’s the possibility of one day doing a sort of “dream therapy” for talking down people experiencing lucid nightmares.

And if more reliable communication methods can be worked out, it could help people with creative activities and ideas. “People often use lucid dreaming or dreaming for a kind of artistic, creative inspiration,” she says. “But in that dream state, your resources thus far are only the ones that you have in the dream.”

So with the help of an awake person, Konkoly says it could be possible to “combine those logical advantages of wake with the creative advantages of dreams and maybe have some more applications.”

(Samantha Balaban and Ed McNulty produced and edited the audio interview. Courtesy: NPR)

Gasoline Could Be Around The Corner — Unless OPEC And Russia Start Pumping More Oil

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Economy 0

OPEC and Russia’s unprecedented production cuts last spring lifted oil prices out of a death spiral. Nearly a year later, the group is under pressure to cool off the red-hot market. US crude has raced back above $60 a barrel. That’s a far cry from the depths it reached last April when oil crashed below zero (negative $40.32 a barrel, to be exact) for the first time in history. Prices at the pump are starting to creep higher, too. The national average hit $2.70 a gallon Friday, according to AAA. That’s well above the April low of $1.76 per gallon.

Investors are betting the pandemic will soon be under control — and that in turn will unleash pent-up demand for road trips, cruises, flights and other oil-consuming activities.

Against this backdrop, OPEC and its allies, known as OPEC+, are scheduled to meet Thursday to deliberate whether to add more barrels into to the hungry market. They’ve certainly got the firepower, and the price incentive, to do just that.

Last year, OPEC+ slashed output by a record-shattering 9.7 million barrels per day. The emergency steps, along with production cuts by US and other producers, drove a strong rebound in prices. That recovery has accelerated in recent months as millions of people around the world have gotten vaccinated against Covid.

OPEC+ could soon announce the market is now healthy enough to step up production this spring. “Given the allure of higher prices, there should be more supply coming onto the market,” said Ryan Fitzmaurice, energy strategist at Rabobank.

Indeed, sources within OPEC+ told Reuters last week that an output increase of half a million barrels per day beginning in April is possible without building up inventories, although a final decision had not been made.

“Given where prices are, how will anyone tell Russia that they need to curtail production?” said Jim Mitchell, head of Americas oil analysts at Refinitiv. There are several good reasons for OPEC+ to release more barrels.

First, higher prices mean countries like Saudi Arabia that rely on oil to balance their budgets can bring in badly-needed revenue. Second, if OPEC+ doesn’t start producing more, other countries will. That includes frackers in Texas who were sidelined by the oil crash.

Bank of America strategists told clients in a recent note that OPEC+ will “preserve market share” by pumping more soon. During the second quarter alone, Bank of America expects OPEC+ to add more than 1.3 million barrels per day of supply.

There’s another reason OPEC+ will want to act before it’s too late: self-preservation. If gasoline prices keep rising and hit $3 a gallon — and beyond — it will only accelerate clean energy investments and persuade more drivers to dump their gas-guzzling SUVs for electric vehicles. “If oil shoots up to extreme levels,” said Rabobank’s Fitzmaurice, “that only helps the renewables story and eats away at oil demand.”

The switch to electric means more costly recalls

Hyundai is recalling 82,000 electric cars globally to replace their batteries after 15 reports of fires involving the vehicles. Despite the relatively small number of cars involved, the recall is one of the most expensive in history.

The numbers: The recall will cost Hyundai 1 trillion Korean won, or $900 million. On a per-vehicle basis, the average cost is $11,000 — an astronomically high number for a recall.

The episode signals how electric car defects could create hefty costs for automakers — at least in the near future, report my colleagues Chris Isidore and Peter Valdes-Dapena.

The recall is another indication of just how expensive EV batteries are relative to the cost of the entire car. Until the cost of batteries comes down, through greater production worldwide and economies of scale, the cost of making electric vehicles will remain higher than comparable gasoline cars.

Once batteries do become less expensive, as is expected in the coming years, electric cars could become much cheaper to build because they have fewer moving parts and require as much as 30% fewer hours of labor for assembly compared to traditional vehicles.

Fewer parts on electric vehicles could also mean that auto recalls become less common in the future. But for now, there could be significant costs if battery fire problems require battery replacements.

Indian-Americans Launch New Hotel Franchise Promising Better Terms To Hoteliers

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Community 0

A group of experienced Indian American hoteliers, who have dealt with franchises for over 50 years, launched their first-ever Indian American hotel franchise named Membership Hotel Organization, MHO Hotels, Feb. 16 at Royal Albert’s Palace in New Jersey. The event was attended by 100 invited guests and many others via Zoom, a press release from MHO said.

The motto of MHO Hotels is “We do better together” and its mission is to help hotel owners become successful by reducing overhead costs and increasing their revenue. MHO chairman C.Z. Patel briefed those at the meeting about the new organization.

A group presentation moderated by Joe Johal was part of the event. The panelists included founder/CEO and president Mahendra Z. Patel, CTO Pratic Patel and senior vice-president and COO Keshin Patel.

The event was attended by India’s Consul General in New York Randhir Kumar Jaiswal, Deputy Consul General Shatrughna Sinha, Albert Jasani, owner and CEO of Royal Albert’s Palace/ TV 9 and MHO Hotels franchise advisory board chairman; and H.R. Shah, CEO/chairman of TV Asia.

Attendees congratulated and extended their best wishes to the MHO Hotels board officials for their new endeavor. Executives from the current and past Asian American Hotel Owners Association, New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association and Fair Franchise Initiative were among the other invited guests at the event who expressed their support for this initiative.

A detailed presentation on why hotel owners should join MHO Hotels was made by executive board members, according to the press release, which added that some of the benefits discussed were to include no hidden fees, no logo requirements, no need to purchase overpriced items from approved vendors, no liquidation fees and no long-term contracts which can save hotel owners from high franchise costs and increase their profits. Dr. Tushar Patel served as the emcee and DJ/singer Rakesh Raj provided entertainment for the evening.

Attorney Kiran Ahuja Appointed By Biden To Head Office Of Personnel Management

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

President Joe Biden has appointed Kiran Ahuja, a civil rights lawyer and an advocate for Asian Americans, to head the Office of Personnel Management. Ahuja, whose nomination was announced Feb. 23 by the White House, is joining at least 20 other Indian Americans nominated by Biden to senior positions in his administration.

As a member of Biden’s transition team, she was in charge of ensuring a smooth move by the agency to the new administration. OPM oversees the federal government’s civil service, coordinating the recruitment of government employees, and manages their health insurance and retirement benefits programs.

In former President Barack Obama’s administration Ahuja had served in the OPM as chief of staff. She will have to be confirmed by the Senate in her new position. Ahuja is now the CEO of Philanthropy Northwest, a network of charitable organizations across six states.

The White House said Ahuja grew up in Savannah, Georgia, “as a young Indian immigrant in the wake of the civil rights era.” She shares an educational background with Vice President Kamala Harris having attended a historically Black institution like her. Harris went to Howard University for her bachelor’s degree and Ahuja to Spelman College in Atlanta.

With a law degree from the University of Georgia, Ahuja “began her career as a civil rights lawyer at the U.S .Department of Justice, litigating school desegregation cases, and filing the department’s first student racial harassment case,” according to the White House.

Initially in the Obama administration she had been the executive director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, “leading efforts to increase access to federal services, resources and programs for underserved Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders,” according to the White House.

She also founded the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, an advocacy and membership organization. As yet, none of the Indian American nominees requiring Senate confirmation have come up for a vote before it.

Ahuja grew up in Savannah, Georgia as a young Indian immigrant in the wake of the civil rights era and earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Spelman College and a law degree from the University of Georgia.

The Washington Post said Ahuja would have a mandate to reverse course on former president Donald Trump’s policies on the civil service, which he and his top aides often derided as a deep state of Democratic bureaucrats. Many agencies lost experts in a range of fields during the Trump era, and Biden has pledged to revitalize the workforce, the daily reported.

“President Biden has made an excellent choice in his nomination of Ahuja to serve as OPM director,” Congresswoman Judy Chu said. “With over two decades of experience serving in government, non-profit and philanthropic sectors, Kiran is uniquely qualified to lead OPM at this critical juncture as we work to build a federal workforce that reflects the full diversity of our country,” she said. “As the former chief of staff to the director of OPM and the former executive director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders under the Obama administration, she will bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to OPM that will enable her to hit the ground running on day one,” Chu added.

Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, said Ahuja is a civic-minded leader and an outstanding choice for this important job. “Her exceptional qualifications include more than two decades of non-profit leadership and public service, including at OPM and the White House, and a track record of solving human capital issues through innovation and collaboration,” he noted.

CIS Reverts to the Simpler 2008 Version of the Naturalization Civics Test

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterImmigration 0

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced today it is reverting to the 2008 version of the naturalization civics test beginning March 1, 2021.

On Dec. 1, 2020, USCIS implemented a revised naturalization civics test (2020 civics test) as part of a decennial test review and update process. USCIS determined the 2020 civics test development process, content, testing procedures, and implementation schedule may inadvertently create potential barriers to the naturalization process. This action is consistent with the framework of the Executive Order on Restoring Faith in Our Legal Immigration Systems, which directs a comprehensive review of the naturalization process to eliminate barriers and make the process more accessible to all eligible individuals.

The 2008 civics test was thoroughly developed over a multi-year period with the input of more than 150 organizations, which included English as a second language experts, educators, and historians, and was piloted before its implementation. USCIS aspires to make the process as accessible as possible as directed by President Biden’s request to review the process thoroughly.

The civics test is administered to applicants who apply for U.S. citizenship through naturalization and is one of the statutory requirements for naturalizing. Applicants must demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of the history, principles, and form of government of the United States. The decision to naturalize demonstrates an investment in and commitment to this country. USCIS is committed to administering a test that is an instrument of civic learning and fosters civic integration as part of the test preparation process.

Applicants who filed their application for naturalization on or after Dec. 1, 2020, and before March 1, 2021, likely have been studying for the 2020 test; therefore, USCIS will give these applicants the option to take either the 2020 civics test or the 2008 civics test. There will be a transition period where both tests are being offered. The 2020 test will be phased out on April 19, 2021, for initial test takers. Applicants filing on or after March 1, 2021, will take the 2008 civics test.

The test items and study guides can be found on the Citizenship Resource Center on the USCIS website. USCIS has also updated the Policy Manual (PDF, 444.11 KB) accordingly; see Volume 12, Part E, English and Civics Testing and Exceptions, Chapter 2, English and Civics Testing.

For more information on USCIS and its programs, please visit uscis.gov or follow us on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s Memoir Is On New York Times Bestsellers List

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterCinema, Youth 0

Actor, producer, activist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Priyanka Chopra Jonas has always been an overachiever and she added another feather to her cap, that of author, when she recently released her memoir titled Unfinished.

Unfinished, a memoir by multi-award-winning actor and producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas is the newest to join the New York Times (NYT) bestseller list in the hardcover nonfiction category. Jonas is one of the many South Asian (Indian and Indian-American) authors on the bestseller lists.

The Dil Dhadakne Do actor took to her Instagram to share a video clip that featured the cover of her memoir along with some pictures marking major milestones and pivotal moments from the We Can Be Heroes actor’s life. The White Tiger actor captioned the video with words of gratitude for her fans, writing, “Soooo this happened…in less than a week… The New York Times Best Sellers list!! Thank you so much to everyone who has supported #Unfinished. Endlessly grateful.”

The memoir talks about the Bajirao Mastani actor’s life and career till date, featuring fun anecdotes and painful incidents that shaped the actor into who she is today through the book that has been described as a series of ‘personal essays, stories, and observations’. The “thoughtful and revealing” memoir takes readers on a journey through Priyanka’s childhood in India, the teenage years she spent in the United States living with her extended family in the Midwest, Queens and also the suburbs of Boston, where she faced racism.

The book then moves on to her India return, from where her journey surprisingly won her the titles of Miss India and Miss World, leading up to her Bollywood launch. Priyanka had spoken about her upbringing in a statement, “I am a product of traditional India and its ancient wisdom, and modern India and its urban bustle. My upbringing was always an amalgamation of the two Indians, and, just as much, of East and West.”

Unfinished, which was released on Feb. 9, offers insights into Jonas’s childhood in India; her formative teenage years in the United States; and her return to India, where she won the national and international beauty competitions that launched her global acting career.

Whether reflecting on her nomadic early years or the challenges she has faced as she has doggedly pursued her calling, Priyanka shares her challenges and triumphs with warmth and honesty, reads the book bio.

From her dual-continent twenty-year-long career as an actor and producer to her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, from losing her beloved father to cancer to marrying Nick Jonas, the memoir contains it all.

Indian-American US Vice President Kamala Harris’s memoir, The Truths We Told has been on the NYT bestseller list in the paperback nonfiction category for 19 weeks now. Ambitious Girl by Meena Harris, lawyer and Kamala Harris’s niece, which is about the celebration of female ambition, has been on the NYT bestseller in the children’s picture books category for four weeks now.

A New Phase for Eye Foundation of America, Founded By Dr. V K Raju

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Profile 0

Renowned ophthalmologist and president and founder of the Eye Foundation of America, Dr. VK Raju’s crusade for the past four decades has been to achieve his vision of a world without avoidable blindness. In 1977, he began traveling home to India to offer his services as an ophthalmologist to those who could not afford, or access, desperately needed eye care. The Eye Foundation of America founded by an Indian-American physician, is entering a new phase in its mission of ending avoidable blindness by collaborating with GAPIO (Global Association of Physicians of Indian Origin) and AAPI (American Association of Physicians of India Origin). These preventive services and medical and surgical interventions were delivered in the form of eye camps in the early days, and the EFA was initially founded to allow for easier transfer of state-of-the-art equipment and medicine from the United States to India. As the Foundation matured, it became so much more. The EFA is now a global organization responsible for treating millions of patients, performing hundreds of thousands of surgeries, and training hundreds of eye care professionals to join in the global fight against preventable blindness. The EFA’s work spans 30 countries over several continents. One focus of current outreach efforts is in the prevention of diabetes. Diabetes-related complications typically strike during the prime of life and include the development of cataracts at an earlier age than normal, a two-fold increased risk of glaucoma, and small blood vessel damage (i.e., diabetic retinopathy). Retinopathy can cause blindness; however, early detection and treatment can prevent blindness in up to 90% of cases. The International Diabetes Foundation estimates that 20% of the diabetic world population resides in India, approximately 61.3 million diabetics. In 2018, 34.2 million Americans had diabetes. There are 229,000 people with diabetes in West Virginia and 8.3% of adults are borderline diabetic. West Virginia is ranked the #2 state for deaths involving diabetes. According to Dr. Raju, the prevalence of diabetes among Indians in India and West Virginians in the United States continues to rise rapidly, and in many ways, the diabetes epidemic in West Virginia is similar to that of India, as the populations share similar characteristics: they tend to be rural, poor, and underserved. Born in Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh, Raju earned his medical degree from Andhra University and completed an ophthalmology residency and fellowship at the Royal Eye Group of Hospitals in London. The Indian American physician is board certified in ophthalmology, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and the American College of Surgeons. He moved to the United States in 1976 and has since resided in Morgantown, West As Dr. Raju points out, prevention is more beneficial than disease management, and lifestyle changes can be preventive. His organization’s programs, which aim at prevention through education and lifestyle modifications, include the 100,000 Lives campaign in India and the WV Kids Farmer’s Market Program in West Virginia. A child in India undergoes vision screening Project in Aragonda, Andhra Pradesh. Photo courtesy Eye Foundation of America The goal in India is to reach at least 100,000 rural diabetic Indians suffering with or at risk of diabetic retinopathy, where it is believed that 51% of diabetics are undiagnosed due to lack of access to medical care. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one child goes blind every minute and that 1.4 million children are blind worldwide. Many blind children reside in rural areas and live in poverty, thus restricting their access to preventative services and medical care. The prevalence of blindness is 10 times greater in India than in the U.S. and many cases of pediatric blindness can be prevented, Dr. Raju contends. However, 70–80% of children do not have access to an ophthalmologist. In an effort to provide affordable and accessible eye care, the EFA has helped to build the Goutami Eye Institute, which has a wing dedicated exclusively to children, and has launched an initiative to screen newborns for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). Approximately 3.5 million infants are born premature in India each year. The incidence of ROP is increasing in India due to improved neonatal survival, and ROP is the leading cause of infant blindness. The Goutami Eye Institute has screened more than 8,000 babies and treated over 600.

Roivant Grows Computational Drug Discovery Engine with Acquisition of Silicon Therapeutics

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Health 0

Roivant Sciences today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Silicon Therapeutics for $450 million in Roivant equity, with additional potential regulatory and commercial milestone payments.

Silicon Therapeutics has built a proprietary industry-leading computational physics platform for the in silico design and optimization of small molecule drugs for challenging disease targets. The platform includes custom methods based on quantum mechanics, molecular dynamics and statistical thermodynamics to overcome critical bottlenecks in drug discovery projects, such as predicting binding energies and conformational behavior of molecules.

Silicon Therapeutics’ computational platform is powered by a proprietary supercomputing cluster and custom hardware enabling accurate all-atom simulations at biologically meaningful timescales. This computational platform is tightly integrated with experimental laboratories equipped for biophysics, medical chemistry and biology in order to facilitate the rapid progression of drug candidates by augmenting simulations with biophysical data. The company has used these capabilities to discover multiple drug candidates.

The acquisition of Silicon Therapeutics bolsters and complements Roivant’s targeted protein degradation platform. That platform will be powered by VantAI’s advanced machine learning models trained on proprietary degrader-specific experimental data and by Silicon Therapeutics’ proprietary computational physics capabilities, which help address many of the modality-specific challenges of degrader design and optimization. Integrating Silicon Therapeutics and VantAI will enable Roivant to distinctively capture the power of both computational physics and machine learning-based approaches to drug design; for instance, by incorporating proprietary computational physics simulations as training data for VantAI’s degrader-specific deep learning models.

The combination of Silicon Therapeutics and VantAI also gives Roivant distinctive advantages in designing other types of novel small molecule drugs against difficult targets, such as allosteric inhibitors, molecular glues and high-affinity ligands. Silicon Therapeutics’ drug discovery efforts are led by Drs. Woody Sherman, Huafeng Xu and Chris Winter, who will join Roivant’s drug discovery leadership.

Dr. Sherman is a recognized leader in computational chemistry and biomolecular simulations who spent 12 years as a senior scientific executive at Schrödinger, where he served as vice president and global head of applications science. Dr. Sherman is an authority in the emerging field of physics-driven drug design who has developed novel methods for free energy simulations, conformational modulation, virtual screening, improved force fields, lead optimization and precision selectivity design.

Dr. Xu is a pioneer in novel molecular dynamics methods who spent 12 years at D. E. Shaw Research where he led development of the methods and software for free energy calculations that are now widely used in the pharmaceutical industry, including the Anton chip and Desmond software.

Dr. Winter is an accomplished drug discovery biologist who has delivered 11 targeted cancer therapies into clinical development. Before joining Silicon Therapeutics, Dr. Winter served as Sanofi Oncology’s head of discovery biology. He joined Sanofi from Blueprint Medicines, where he served as head of biology. Prior to Blueprint, Dr. Winter held senior research positions at Merck Research Laboratories and Exelixis.

“We are delighted to integrate Silicon Therapeutics into Roivant as we continue to expand our capabilities in computationally-powered drug discovery,” said Matt Gline, chief executive officer of Roivant Sciences. “We intend to leverage our established development apparatus as we rapidly advance promising compounds from our drug discovery engine into clinical studies.”

“Silicon Therapeutics was founded with a vision of transforming the pharmaceutical industry through use of technology,” said Lanny Sun, co-founder and chief executive officer of Silicon Therapeutics. “By joining forces with Roivant, we can significantly accelerate making this vision a reality. Roivant has an impressive track record in clinical execution and building and deploying technology platforms to power pharmaceutical research, development and commercialization.”

“The combination of Silicon Therapeutics’ integrated approach, platform and highly capable team with Roivant’s technologies and commitment to transforming the pharmaceutical industry represents a new and exciting paradigm in drug discovery and development,” said Roger Pomerantz, M.D., F.A.C.P., chairman of the board of directors of Silicon Therapeutics.
The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions including receipt of requisite regulatory approvals.

Roivant’s mission is to improve the delivery of healthcare to patients by treating every inefficiency as an opportunity. Roivant develops transformative medicines faster by building technologies and developing talent in creative ways, leveraging the Roivant platform to launch Vants – nimble and focused biopharmaceutical and health technology companies.

Fishermen in Sothern Indian State Ask Govt To Scrap Fishing Project

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Economy 0

Traditional fishermen are opposing a multimillion-dollar overseas deep-sea fishing project in Kerala that they say threatens the livelihood of ordinary fisher people in the southern Indian coastal state. Permitting overseas firms to join deep-sea fishing will further impoverish Kerala’s traditional fishermen, they say.

Following criticism from opposition leaders and rights groups, the communist-led state government withdrew two memoranda of understanding it signed with a US-based firm that allegedly violated the state’s fishing policy and the rights of poor fisher people.

The goverment on Feb. 24 withdrew from the MoU signed with EMCC International India Pvt Limited, a US-based firm, for a US$680 million project that purportedly aims to revamp and modernize the state’s fishing industry.

The government also canceled another MoU with the same firm for manufacturing 400 deep-sea fishing vessels and developing the state’s fishing harbors at a cost of some $400 million.

“But still we are not sure if it has scrapped the entire project. We want an assurance from the government that it will not move ahead with the project,” said Father Jacob G. Palackappilly, deputy secretary-general of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council. Many suspect the government quickly pulled out of the MoU a week after criticism began to surface in the media in the state, where elections are due in April-May.

Christian leaders like Father Palackappilly say the project would push Kerala’s fishermen further into poverty as the multinational operation would take away the lion’s share of an already dwindling catch.

Further, deep-sea fishing would eventually reduce fish wealth in the littoral zone on which thousands of Kerala fishermen on country craft depend for their daily sustenance.

“The government claims the projects will ensure the welfare of all, but our past experience shows that such government promises are seldom translated into reality,” Father Palakappilly told UCA News on Feb. 25.

The state of 33 million people has some 200,000 fishermen active on the Arabian Sea, at least half of them Catholics, mostly in the coastal districts of Trivandrum, Kollam, Alappuzha and Kozhikode.

“Our fishermen are so traditional that they are unable to cope with challenges from the multinational companies (MNCs) entering into the field with highly mechanized boats and trawlers,” said Father Kudiamssery, public relations officer of Alappuzha Diocese.

“If MNCs venture into their traditional work, the poor will be left jobless,” Father Kudiamssery, who was supporting the fishermen’s protest against the project, told UCA News on Feb. 25.

Father Thomas Tharayil, general secretary of the Kerala Region Latin Catholic Council, said traditional fishing using motorized boats is restricted within 12 nautical miles distance from the shore.

“Climate change has substantially reduced their catch within the permissible distance. Now, many of them step into deep-sea fishing as well,” said the priest.

Overseas firms coming for deep-sea fishing “will automatically lead to fighting between them and traditional fishermen. Instead, the state should empower the local fishermen for deep-sea fishing,” Father Tharayil added.

“The Catholic bishops want the government to clarify whether it has scrapped the project entirely or only canceled the MoU.”

Work on the project began in 2018. “So much work has been done in two years. Therefore, church leaders and fishermen suspect the government will continue with the project after the election,” Father Tharayil said.

Kerala’s communist-led government is hoping to be re-elected to power in the 140-member state assembly before the five-year term of this government ends on June 1.

Why Christo-Racist Nationalism and Anti-Muslim Rhetoric Are Gaining Ground in Kerala

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterCulture, Religion 0

The solo Indian flag that made an appearance among the vast swathe of Trump supporters storming the Capitol building in Washington D.C. recently, caught the attention of many. It was even more of a surprise when it was revealed that a Malayali Christian named Vinson Palathingal was responsible for it.

However, truth be told, Palathingal is just one of the many Malayali Christians who are fervent advocates of the Christo-racist nationalism represented and championed by Donald Trump and his band of supporters. For those wondering how an exclusivist White supremacist anti-Muslim ideology and rhetoric that underpins Trumpian politics appeals to these migrants and their ilk from the Global South, the answer may be found in the latter’s own social location within the Kerala society in India.

Syrian Christians and Kerala’s caste hierarchy

Beyond the general term Christian, there lies a more nuanced identifier for the community that people like Palathingal hail from – Syrian Christians. A traditionally privileged and landed community, they claim their origin from the proselytisation mission of Jesus Christ’s disciple St. Thomas in the first century CE. There are visible tendencies among the Syrians, who are also called St. Thomas Christians, to go back and revive what they imagine to be their Syriac liturgical tradition.

The most popular myth about their origin is that they hail from Brahmins who were proselytised by St. Thomas. While inquiring into the veracity of these claims is not what I intend to do in this article, I think it is indeed an indication of the “superior” status that they seek to utilise to distinguish themselves from their fellow Christians who are mostly from “lower” castes.

Cambridge historian Susan Bayly, in her book, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, points out that in the pre-colonial era, Syrian Christians were very much incorporated into the savarna sections of the caste hierarchy within the Kerala society. Although the tectonic changes brought into the social organisation of Kerala by the colonialists altered this position, and Syrian Christians switched from being mostly a martial and trading group to one of land-owning agriculturalists, they were still able to retain their traditional privileges.

C. Zachariah points out in his book, The Syrian Christians of Kerala: Demographic and Socio-Economic Transition in the 20th Century (2006), that the community is the largest per household landholder in the state. They also lead other prominent groups in terms of housing. They also do relatively well in terms of access to both government jobs and educational institutions. Citing the Kerala Migration Study (1998) conducted by the Centre for Development Studies, Zachariah concludes that “Syrian Christians are the most advanced community in Kerala (p197)” with respect to overall socio-economic indices.

A simplistic application of the category of caste in the case of Syrian Christians might blunt the analytical edge. However, for the purposes of this article, I will stick to the notion of caste, for want of a better terminology, as it is still used as a method of social stratification.

For instance, Syrian Christians practice strict endogamy, which is central to preserving hereditary socio-economic capital. This practice is so strongly adhered to that Syrian denominations that are in communion with the Catholic Church still do not enter into matrimonial relationships with their fellow Latin Catholics who are mostly considered “lower” castes, belonging to fisherman or Dalit communities.

The tropes of ‘love jihad’, halal food, and minority benefits

However, despite being amongst the most privileged in Kerala society, recently, the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church (the largest denomination among the Syrians) kicked up a public frenzy claiming that ‘Christians’ are being systematically discriminated against, by the two mainstream political parties who come to power in Kerala alternatively. The major accusation is that the state governments favour Muslims over Christians, when it comes to resource allocation through minority benefits.

This rhetoric is clearly based on a reductionist understanding of ‘minority’ as a purely numerical category, rather than as one referring to a community that is vulnerable or threatened by the majority power structure. This tendency is also witnessed in the hype over the imagined ‘love jihad’ campaigns by Muslims to ‘snatch’ (Syrian) Christian women, even after central and state law enforcement agencies repeatedly found no evidence to prove the same. Priests and laity leaders constantly issue advisories to parents to protect their daughters from falling for such non-existent ‘love jihad’ traps.

As surprising as it would seem, this has also spilt into campaigns various Syrian Christian groups calling for a boycott of restaurants and shops selling halal food items. The recent decision by Turkish President Erdogan to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque is portrayed as another instance of a global Muslim scheme against Christians, conveniently hiding the fact that 13th-century crusaders were the first to ransack Hagia Sophia. The Orthodox Patriarch had to run for his life while the marauding Catholics converted Hagia Sofia into a Catholic place of worship.

Just like Vinson Palathingal in the US, there were community groups in Kerala that put up billboards professing their unflinching support for Trump and prayed for his return to power. Moreover, Syrian Christian family WhatsApp groups and social media are teeming with conspiracy theories targeting Muslims. In many of the cases, this communal vitriol is led by Syrian Catholic priests themselves, like Noble Parackal, who is also a popular face on social media. It suffices to say that these conspiracy theories and victim narratives have found legitimacy and a life independent of reality.

Mainstream political parties in Kerala are all wary of this reality, especially with state assembly elections just around the corner. Through various ways, the community has also started publicly positioning BJP as a potential ally and political alternative. On its part, the BJP, which is struggling to establish a foothold in the state with 47% of the population comprising minorities, has been trying to woo Syrian Christians in a major way. The fact also remains that the first and last MP to win for NDA from Kerala was P. C. Thomas from the Syrian Catholic community, in 2004.

Syrian Christians’ appropriation of ‘Christianity’

Among all the various Syrian Christian denominations, why is it that the Syrian Catholic church is expressly, and almost exclusively, the proponent of this anti-Islam campaign? Further, what are the repressed insecurities of the community that has manifested in such a phenomenon?

Most importantly, at a time when Hindu majoritarianism is extending its grip over India, why is it that the Kerala Christian group has chosen to target another fellow minority group, instead of the Hindu nationalists? Studies need to address this deep-seated insecurity of the community to unpack the unconscious and underlying reasons manifesting in the current public outburst of anger aimed at Muslims.

Antagonism towards Muslims is not new and has been a popular, but private, sentiment among the members of the community majorly in the erstwhile central Travancore region. As such, one needs to ask why, suddenly, this made its entry into the public sphere with such fervour. For one, it is clear that ‘love jihad’, the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque, halal food controversy, terrorism etc, have been used instrumentally to plug the local antagonism towards Muslims into the global discourse, adding much-needed legitimacy to the anti-Muslim social imagination. This also helps in rhetorically translating the antagonism in such popularly recognised ‘common sense’ terms that would look normal and legitimate.

‘Entirety of Christianity’

One last and most important facet of this phenomenon I wish to highlight is how the Syrian Christians, championing this narrative, always mobilise the entirety of ‘Christianity’ in their rhetoric. This is contradictory. This calls for critical attention, considering how Syrians have always fervently tried to distinguish themselves from the rest of the Christians in everything else that matters. Their exceptionalism and savarna mindset clearly point to a Christianity-caste nexus that actively facilitates the maintenance of caste privileges.

Even their origin stories, related to the first century CE proselytisation mission of St. Thomas, is itself used to distinguish them from those mostly ‘lower’ caste faithful, who are pejoratively called ‘converted Christians’ referring to their more recent turn to the faith. The extent of this caste distinction and discrimination becomes amply clear while considering the fact that Syrian Catholics, with full approval and encouragement of the clergy, refuse to even marry Latin Catholics.

To avoid appearing explicitly casteist, myths like family ‘cultural differences’ which are pitched as monolithic and hereditary, are cited. Moreover, this caste blinded-ness is also a reason why the self-proclaimed protectors of ‘Christianity’, fighting against a so-called global Muslim conspiracy, choose to ignore the long history of violence inflicted by Hindutva organisations on Dalit and other ‘lower’ caste Christians in other parts of India. As such, it is imperative that we need to make visible the caste violence being furthered by ‘savarna‘ Syrian Christians, as they pitch the fiction of unified Christianity in their rhetoric against Muslims.

Bipin Sebastian is a PhD student at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. He studies discursive formations on religion, caste and secularism in India and can be reached at bipinsebastian@u.northwestern.edu

U.S. Trade Report Calls ‘Make In India’ Policy As “Trade Restrictive”

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Nation USA, USA 0

The U.S. tried to resolve “long-standing market access impediments affecting U.S. exporters” with India during 2020, says the 2021 President’s Trade Agenda and 2020 Annual Report — an annual report submitted by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to Congress. The report terms India’s policies “trade-restrictive” and saying the “Make in India” campaign epitomises the challenges to the trade relationship.

“While India’s large market, economic growth, and progress towards development make it an essential market for many U.S. exporters, a general and consistent trend of trade-restrictive policies have inhibited the potential of the bilateral trade relationship. Recent Indian emphasis on import substitution through a “Make in India” campaign has epitomized the challenges facing the bilateral trade relationship,” the report says. The Make in India campaign was launched by Prime Minister Modi in 2014 to incentivise production in India.

The report describes the Trump administration’s revocation of India’s preferential trading status under the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) program in June 2019 and the ensuing discussion to achieve a mini trade deal (“package”) throughout 2020.

“U.S. objectives in this negotiation included resolution of various non-tariff barriers, targeted reduction of certain Indian tariffs, and other market access improvements. The United States also engaged with India on an ongoing basis throughout 2020 in response to specific concerns affecting the full range of pressing bilateral trade issues, including intellectual property (IP) protection and enforcement, policy development affecting electronic commerce and digital trade, and market access for agricultural and non-agricultural goods and services,” the report said.

These issues remain unresolved, leaving inconclusive, negotiations that lasted until close to the end of the Trump administration.

In a country-wise section on Digital Service Tax (DST), a Section 301 investigation on India’s DST, which began in June last year, is highlighted. The investigation is ongoing, as per the report.

India finds a total of 179 mentions in the report which is over 300 pages long. Many of the mentions are in a chapter on trade enforcement activities — describing disputes brought by the U.S. at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Kevin Rudd on The Avoidable War: The Decade of Living Dangerously

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterGlobal 0

“The Avoidable War: The Decade of Living Dangerously,” a collection of Asia Society President Kevin Rudd’s essays, articles, and speeches on the events of 2020, is now available for download at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) website. The collection is the third volume in ASPI’s annual Avoidable War series, which features Rudd’s analysis into the key trends affecting the world.

Rudd’s works provide insight into the devastating events of 2020, a year destined to be remembered as a major global inflection point — from the COVID-19 pandemic, through an implosion of multilateral governance, and to the impact on China’s domestic political economy. He shows how the year illustrated the true extent of our globalized, interconnected world, revealed dysfunction present in our institutions of national and international governance, and unmasked the real level of structural resentment, rivalry, and risk present in the world’s most critical great power relationship — that between the United States and China.

These essays, articles, and speeches — some originally published in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Foreign Affairs — offer an invaluable resource for observers wishing to reflect on a tumultuous year as well as understand the forces shaping the years to come.

Download the complete collection here. Read t he first volume of The Avoidable War here and the second volume here.

Madhuri Dixit On Secret To Memorable Dances In Bollywood Career

March 3, 2021March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterEntertainment, Fashion, Women 0

It may have been a while since Bollywood’s timeless beauty Madhuri Dixit Nene graced the silver screen and flashed her ‘butterflies in stomach’ inducing smile. However the Dedh Ishqiya is always sharing stunning pictures of herself, dressed to perfection and oozing grace and blessing our social media feeds with her stunning looks.

Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit Nene says performances like Choli ke piche kya hai, Chane ke khet mein, Ke sera sera, Ek do teen and Tamma tamma put her to test. “There are a lot of songs which were difficult for me. But the ones which really put me to test were performances like Choli ke piche kya hai, Chane ke khet mein, Ke sera sera, Ek do teen and Tamma tamma,” Madhuri, who is currently seen as judge in “Dance Deewane 3”, said.

“While these were some of the most difficult songs that I danced on, they are also the most memorable ones,” she added. Madhuri feels choreography in films has become more challenging. “Choreography in movies is definitely more challenging today. These days, dance involves a lot of leaps and there are several new techniques for lifts as well. The choreography these days has a lot of physical movements compared to before,” she said.

The actress pointed out that there were no stunts in dance before, but now if one wants to become an all-round dancer, one should be skilled in stunts, too. “It is definitely more challenging. The young kids who are six and seven also dance well at such a small age. I wonder what magic they will do later!” she said. (IANS)

Last week, the ever green star treated fans to stunning all smiles pictures. The Devdas actor hopped on to Instagram and shared some beautiful pictures posing in traditional attire. The pictures featured in the post see Madhuri sporting a royal blue georgette saree with accentuated scalloped gold floral designs towards the border as well as a very heavily embroidered half-sleeved blouse. With her luscious locks open, the actor looked stunning with a subtle bronze, smokey eye and deep red lips. She accessorized her glamorous avatar with heavy diamond and stone studded earrings, as well as kadas and rings. The Hum Aapke Hain Koun star’s million-dollar smile seemed enough to make the fan’s heart skip a beat.

The Dil Toh Pagal Hai star captioned the post, “Blue hue,” and added a blue heart. Celebrity followers including Lara Dutta Bhupathi and more than 4.7 million fans liked the post with scores of them leaving adorable comments. Nora Fatehi left heart eyes and smiley face emoticon while others left heart and fire emoticons over the post. Madhuri’s stunning blue saree with the embroidered blouse is the Royal Blue tiered ruffle sari set with beige gold linear embroidery by ace couturier Arpita Mehta priced at ₹98,000 on the designer’s website, while her stunning jewellery is from Falguni Mehta’s Jadau Jewellery

Kerala Center Honors Medical Professionals, Holds Seminar on Covid 19

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity 0

The Indian American Kerala Cultural and Civic Center (http://keralacenterny.com) recognized and honored close to hundred healthcare workers and police officers from Queens and Long Island and surrounding areas at virtual Zoom meeting for their praiseworthy service during the pandemic and conducted a seminar and interactive session on Covid 19 attended by experts in various fields of health.

The program began on Sunday, February 21, 2021 with the introduction of the MC for the program, Jose Stephen, by the Executive Director of the Kerala Center, Thambi Thalappillil. Kerala Center Youth Secretary Jaimy Abraham sang the prayer song. Kerala Center President Alex K. Esthappan delivered the welcome speech.

The chief guest was Consul A.K. Vijayakrishnan, Consul for Community Affairs from the Indian Consulate who praised the Indian healthcare workers for their devotion and commitment to fight Covid-19. New York State Senator Kevin Thomas noted the outstanding service performed by Malayalee healthcare workers during the pandemic and that many had to work very hard along with the risk of infecting family members. Senator Thomas announced that a state proclamation congratulating the Kerala Center for its great work will be issued.

GOPIO Chairman Dr. Thomas Abraham, FOMAA President Aniyan George, Loka Kerala Sabha Member E. M. Stephen, FOKANA President Georgy Varghese, NYPD Captain Shibu Madhu, American Malayalee Law Enforcement United (AMLEU) President Thomas Joy, Dr. Agnes Therady (Franciscan Health SVP & CNO), Jose Kadapuram (Director of Kairali TV in the USA), Prof. Suja Mohan (Director of Nursing, HHC Queens) and Mary Philip (New York Nurses Association) spoke as special guests. Many people have commented that this meeting, which honored healthcare workers personally, was a special one.

The recognition ceremony was followed by seminar and panel discussion related to Covid 19 and related health issues as the second part of the Zoom meeting, Dr. Robin Koshy (infectious disease), Dr. Rajan Krishnamani (Cardiology), Dr. Madhu Bhaskaran (Nephrology), Dr. Sanjaya Satapathy (Hepatology), Dr. Rajiv Jayadevan (Kerala), Dr. P. V. Cherian (Bahrain) and Dr. Agnes Therady (Hospital Administrator) spoke regarding issues in their field of expertise. They answered questions from the audience during the Q&A session. The seminar was put together by Dr. Madhu Bhaskaran of Northwell Health, who also served as the moderator of the seminar and ineractive session.

Kerala Centre Directors Abraham Thomas, P. T. Paulose, James Thottam, Raju Thomas and Matthew Vazhappally worked behind the scene to coordinate the program and Secretary Jimmy John proposed a vote of thanks at the conclusion of the meeting.

The Kerala Center was founded in 1993 when an old YMCA building in Elmont was bought by the group. It is a secular, civic, cultural and educational institution promoting Malayalam language and literature and serves the Kerala and Indian community. The center offers Yoga classes currently through Zoom. Every year it organizes its Annual Awards, where outstanding achievers and contributors to society are honored.

New Jersey’s Indian-American Business Leaders Discuss India’s Consul General On Ways To Help India’s Development

March 3, 2021March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Community 0

Several leading New Jersey business- owners of Indian origin met with Consul General of India in New York on Feb. 16, 2021 and discussed on ways they could contribute to help India’s economic development and grow U.S.-India relations, according to a report by Parikh Media.

The meeting took place at Royal Albert’s Palace in Fords, New Jersey, and included among others, Consul General Randhir Jaiswal, Deputy Consul General Shatrughna Sinha, Padma Shri Dr. Sudhir Parikh, who operates more than twenty clinics in the tri-state area; Padma Shri H.R. Shah, founder and chairman of TV Asia, Ankur Vaidya, chairman of the Federation of Indian Associations-NYNJCT, and Mahesh Bhagia, chairman of the Edison Democratic Organization, who is a candidate for Mayor of the city.

“It is always a pleasure to visit Edison, New Jersey. You said that it is Little India. For me it is a big family. This is how I look at it,” Consul General Jaiswal said in his speech. “This place has very deep history connected to Thomas Edison. With your hard work and success, commitment and dedication, you only burnish the history of Edison,” he told the Indian-American business gathering of around twenty entrepreneurs.

“I’m sure in the days ahead when history is going to be written again, the contribution of Indians and all that they have done, the progress, the prosperity, for science and technology, for the well being of humankind, your name, and the (Indian) community’s name will be written in golden words,” Jaiswal said.

Dr. Parikh welcomed CG Jaiswal to Edison, describing the township as “India out of India,” and said the community was at the service of the Consulate. “Fifty years ago, when I used to head the Indian American Forum for Political Education, IAFPE, we used to give a lot of internships in the summer months and from that we got (leaders) like Bobby Jindal, Upendra Chivukula and Kris Kolluri,” Dr. Parikh said.

Jindal is the former Louisiana Governor and Congressman; Chivukula is a former New Jersey Assemblyman of 12 years standing, and current commissioner on the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities; and Kolluri is a former Capitol Hill senior staffer, who served as Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Transportation and is currently head of the NJ Schools Development Authority since 2008.

“We all have worked very hard in the last 50 years to promote our community and indirectly for India-U.S. relations,” Dr. Parikh went on to say. “Let us know what we can do Consul General – what we can do for the government of India and for Mother India,” he added.

Noting that those present at the meeting included business leaders from many sectors such as real estate, pharmaceuticals, nursing homes to name a few, Dr. Parikh said his own medical practice includes 25 clinics, one of which is in Edison on Oak Tree Road.

“And two months from now, there will be an ITV Studio, and a big auditorium to accommodate 500 people. That is for the community,” Dr. Parikh said. Deputy CG Sinha said Indian-Americans are at the heart of the U.S.-India relationship.

Ankur Vaidya, chairman of the Federation of Indian Associations-NYNJCT – speaks at the Feb. 16, 2021 meeting at Royal Albert’s Palace, New Jersey, of select Edison business-owners with India’s Consul General in New York. Photo: ITV Gold

Vaidya of FIA noted how in the past, “For many (Indian) migrants who came to America with a dream but don’t know anyone. From JFK (Airport) in the early days, and now its Newark, they would come here (Edison) and knock on your door and ask to stay. And there are many who are success stories (now).”

Bhagia noted how 2020 had been a difficult year for the community. But “One great thing is all of the community, including FIA, worked very hard,” holding food drives and collecting masks for distribution, etc. “We did a lot of work in this town. Now we must make sure to get vaccinated.”

H.R. Shah noted that Edison has some 75 ethnic groups, and those of Indian origin have been “very, very strong.” Joyce Mehta, a member of FIA, told ITV Gold, “We can see that our community has gone from strength to strength. And now moving forward, if we all unite and collaborate, there is nothing we cannot do.”

The Surprising Link Between Marriage and Heart Health

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterCulture, Lifestyle 0

People in marriages that steadily get sweeter have lower cholesterol and healthier weight than marriages that stay the same, according to a new 16-year study. But both were preferable to marriages that got worse: couples in them were more likely to develop high blood pressure later in life.

The study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, isn’t the first to suggest a link between marital quality and heart health. But most research has only looked at relationship satisfaction at one point in time, which makes it tough to determine whether marriage really has a protective effect on health, or if healthier people simply tend to be in happier marriages.

The new research measured marital ups and downs over the years to see if they went along with changes in heart health. To do so, researchers analyzed data from a long-running study of parents and children in Britain, in which fathers were surveyed about their marriage quality when their children were about 3, and again at about age 9.

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More than 2,000 people completed the survey once at the start of the study and again six years later, and 620 completed a follow-up analysis about a decade after the study’s start. At that time, the men had their blood pressure, resting heart rate, body mass index (BMI), cholesterol and fasting glucose levels measured, all of which indicate heart-disease risk factors.

Interestingly, there was very little difference in cardiovascular risk profiles between men who had consistently good relationships and those who had consistently bad ones during the study. But after adjusting for several influencing factors, including age, education, height and household income, the researchers noticed small but distinct patterns for men whose marriages had either improved or deteriorated during that time.

Men who said their marriage got better over the years had lower LDL—or “bad”—cholesterol and healthier weights (about 1 BMI unit less) at the end of the study, compared to those whose relationship satisfaction was consistently good for those years.

Meanwhile, those whose relationships got worse ended up with blood pressure an average of 2.74 points higher than those with consistently good marriages.

The researchers write in the paper that it makes sense that changes in marital quality could trigger these types of changes in cardiovascular health, and that they may not become obvious until after a “latency period” of several years.

The fact that people in consistently good marriages fared no better than those in bad ones is contradictory to other research, but the researchers say their data about marital quality over time may paint a more complete picture. People in unchanging relationships may become habituated to their circumstances, the authors hypothesize, which may keep them from benefiting as much as those whose relationships steadily improve.

The study, however, can’t draw cause-and-effect conclusions. The authors point out that a large number of people dropped out before the final measurements were taken and that those who remained were more likely to report better marriage quality and fewer health and financial problems.

Because the people in the study are still relatively young, it’s also unclear whether more risk factors will actually lead to more heart disease. The researchers also don’t know if their findings would apply to women—but in the paper, they refer to a 2014 study in which worsening relationships were linked to worsening cardiovascular health more strongly for wives than for husbands. (Men “may be less likely to internalize a poor relationship than women,” the authors of that study speculated.)

There are still a lot of unknowns about the link between marital quality and heart health. But in their paper, the authors raise the possibility that working to improve the former may help improve the latter. “Further research needs to determine if effective marriage counseling, or when appropriate, abandoning a deteriorating relationship, has longer term physical health benefits over and above psychological well-being,” they write.

Like Wine, Environmental Conditions Impact Whiskey Flavor

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterEnvironment, Lifestyle 0

Flavor differences in whiskey can be discerned based solely on the environment in which the barley used to make the whiskey is grown, a new study suggests.

This is the first scientific study that found the environmental conditions, or terroir, of where the barley is grown impacts the flavor of whiskey, according to researcher Dustin Herb from the Oregon State University.

“Understanding terroir is something that involves a lot of research, a lot of time and a lot of dedication. Our research shows that environmental conditions in which the barley is grown have a significant impact,” Herb said.

Initially, the team focused on the contributions of barley to beer flavour. Their research found notable differences in the taste of beers malted from barley varieties reputed to have flavour qualities.

Then, the team attempted to answer the question of whether terroir exists in whiskey.

Herb designed a study, published in the journal Foods, that involved planting two common commercial varieties of barley in Ireland, Olympus and Laureate, in two distinct environments — Athy, Co. Kildare and Buncloudy, Co. Wexford in 2017 and 2018.

Athy is an inland site and Buncloudy is a coastal site. They were selected in part because they have different soil types and different temperature ranges and rainfall levels during the barley growing season.

The crops of each barley variety at each site in each year were harvested, stored, malted and distilled in a standardized way. Once distilled, the product is called “new make spirit.” (It isn’t called whiskey until it is matured in a wooden cask for at least three years.)

The researchers used gas chromatography mass spectrometry and the noses of a six-person trained sensory panel to determine which compounds in the barley most contributed to the aroma of the new make spirit.

That analysis, along with further mathematical and statistical analysis, found that the environment in which the barley was grown had a greater contribution to the aroma of the whiskey than the variety of the barley.

In Athy, it was more positively associated with sweet, cereal/grainy, feinty/earthy, oily finish, soapy, sour, stale and moldy sensory attributes and in Bunclody it was more associated with dried fruit and solventy attributes. (IANS)

Renaming World’s Largest Cricket Stadium After PM Modi, Elicits Criticism

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterNation India, Sports 0

India renamed the world’s largest cricket stadium after Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday last week, a move that drew criticism from many. The name change to the Narendra Modi Stadium was unveiled at the 132,000-seat venue formerly known as Sardar Patel Stadium in Ahmedabad, in the western state of Gujarat, where India are playing England in the third match of a four-game test series.

The site on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Modi’s political home town in the state of Gujarat, was recently rebuilt as the world’s largest cricket venue with capacity for 110,000 spectators. Modi has sought to use a slate of signature projects — such as building the world’s tallest statue and remaking India’s parliament — to project himself as the country’s most transformative and powerful prime minister in decades.

“It’s quite stunning,” said Ronojoy Sen, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore and author of a book on the history of sport in India. He argued that “the symbolism — the largest, the biggest, the best — being built in Ahmedabad” was central to Modi’s political brand. “This is the first time in my memory at least that a living Indian [prime minister] has named a stadium after themselves,” he added. The stadium was previously named after Sardar Patel, a leading figure in the independence movement and one of Modi’s political heroes.

“World’s largest stadium dedicated to the world’s largest personality!,” Priti Gandhi, a BJP spokeswoman, said in a tweet. Others said the decision reflected a cult of personality surrounding Modi. “The people of Gujarat will not bear this insult to Sardar Patel,” said Hardik Patel, president of the opposition Congress party in the state.

Sardar Patel was India’s first interior minister, long revered for his tough approach on national issues. Authorities have named the larger complex surrounding the stadium after him. Dedicating sports stadiums to former prime ministers is common in India, but renaming such a high-profile venue for a sitting leader is rare.

Many of India’s public institutions and projects have been named after members of the Congress’ Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that governed India for decades and which Modi’s party long criticized as the dominance of one family.

“Both the BJP and Congress are busy perpetuating political branding,” Sanjay Jha, a former Congress official and political commentator, said. Archit Khare, a 29-year-old student at the game, said: “I don’t know why it has been changed. Sardar Patel is more iconic. Sardar Patel was the iron man of India, it should have remained.”

Gaurav Pandhi, who runs social media for the opposition Congress party, called it the “heights of narcissism . . . Megalomaniac!” Modi served as chief minister of Gujarat before his ascent to the premiership in 2014. The newly rebuilt stadium hosted Donald Trump when he visited India last year, but its debut as a cricket venue was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. The name change was revealed only a couple of hours before the start of the third test match on England’s tour of India. The ground was at half capacity on Wednesday, hosting about 50,000 fans, thanks to a precipitous nationwide drop in Covid-19 infections.

Ashwin Among Top Three Cricketers As Indians Make Rapid Gains In ICC Test Rankings

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterSports 0

Ravichandran Ashwin, who became the fastest Indian bowler to 400 Test wickets in the third Test against England, climbed four spots to break into the top three of the International Cricket Council (ICC) Test rankings for bowlers on Sunday. Ashwin picked up seven wickets in the Ahmedabad Test that saw him go to the third spot, two points adrift of second placed Neil Wagner.

India cricketers Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, and Rohit Sharma made significant gains in the ICC Test rankings thanks to their brilliant performances in the ongoing series against England.

Ashwin, who became the second fastest to claim 400 Test wickets in the day-night fixture, broke into the top three after jumping four places thanks to his remarkable consistency.

Ashwin’s spin-bowling partner and Player of the Match in the pink-ball Test Axar Patel also made solid gains. Left-arm spinner Patel’s 11-wicket match haul has helped him gain 30 slots to reach 38th position.

Opener Rohit Sharma touched his career-best eighth position with a six-place jump after his impressive sh in the low-scoring third Test in Ahmedabad. Rohit top-scored in the first innings with 66 and remained unbeaten on 25 in the second to move ahead of compatriot Cheteshwar Pujara among others. His rating points aggregate is 742, 20 more than his best of 722 in October 2019 when he was ranked 10th.

India’s opening batsman Rohit Sharma, who was the highest scorer in the Ahmedabad Test, attained a career-best ranking of 8th among batsmen.

Rohit is now the third Indian batsman along with Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara in the top 10. Kane Williamson remains the top-ranked batsman in the longest format of the game while Australian pacer Pat Cummins is still the No.1-ranked Test bowler.

Axar Patel, playing just his second Test, picked up five-wicket hauls in both innings of the Ahmedabad Test — a match haul of 11 wickets — and he leapfrogged 30 spots to take 38th position in bowlers’ rankings.

James Anderson, who went wicketless in the third Test against India, lost three places and slipped to sixth place. Moreover, Jasprit Bumrah and Stuart Broad, who didn’t get to bowl much on a surface that assisted spinners, dropped one place each. The third Test between India and England was a low-scoring encounter that ended inside two days.

Day Two saw 17 wickets tumble with India winning the match by 10 wickets to take 2-1 series lead in the four-match series. The fourth and final Test will be played in Ahmedabad from March

U.S. Citizenship Act of 202 Benefits for Indian Americans Awaiting Path to Legal Status

February 24, 2021March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Community, Education, Immigration 0

According to the State Department, Indians with advanced degrees whose immigration applications were approved in 2009 and skilled workers and professionals whose applications were okayed in 2010 are still waiting for their green cards because each country regardless of size are allowed only 26,000 green cards each year, except for Canada and Mexico. Those wait times are only for those who applications are already approved, and it could run to centuries for those in the immigration queue.

Republican Senator Mike Lee has said that the wait times for Indian professionals stuck in the “awful, hellish green card backlog” because their applications are awaiting approval the wait is 195 years and could go up to 450 years in ten years without reforms. According to the think tank Cato Institute 200,000 Indian professionals in the green card pipeline would die of old age before their turn.

There are nearly 500,000 illegal immigrants from India and many Dreamers would benefit if the bill passes. The children under the category are known as “Dreamers” for their pursuit of the American Dream, which was initially part of the Obama Plan, which Trump had sought to cancel.

The bill introduced by Senator Bob Menendez and House of Representatives member Linda Sanchez seeks to remove the annual limits on green cards for each country, a measure that would allow more immigration from India.

The Bill wants to allow more permanent immigrant status or green cards for professional Indians, who have the longest wait for immigration, and cut their wait times. For some of those professionals, as per current wait period, it is as long as 80 years, due to cap on country-based Green based Green Card System.

Another important part of the bill that is more widely welcomed by the South Asian community is the provision to help children of those on H1-B professional employment visas who would have become ineligible for green cards if they reach 21 years before their parents qualify for immigration. They would be allowed to continue with H1-B visas. Under current regulations, the children lose their right to remain in the US when they turn 21 years if their parents are still waiting for green cards. Spouses of H1-B workers would also be allowed to work, a provision that former President Donald Trump tried to revoke.

Rep. Sanchez said in a statement that the reforms would grow “our economy by making changes to the employment-based immigration system, eliminating per-country caps, making it easier for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) advanced degree holders from US universities to stay, improving access to green cards for workers in lower-wage industries, and giving dependents of H-1B holders work authorization, and preventing children of H-1B holders from aging out of the system”.

It would also “create a pilot program to stimulate regional economic development and (it) incentivizes higher wages for non-immigrant, high-skilled visas to prevent unfair competition with American workers,” she added. The wage provision would set higher minimum wages for H1-B workers on par with prevailing local wages for comparable jobs.

Benefitting the relatives of immigrants, the Bill will allow them into the US to join their families while they await their green cards. Introducing the bill, Menendez said, “We have an economic and moral imperative to pass big, bold and inclusive immigration reform that leaves no one behind.”

The Bill has been widely recognized by the South Asian community in the US. Anirban Das, president of Skilled Immigrants in America (SIIA), an advocacy organization for H-1B visa holders and families, said, “The bill has some good points that we have always pushed for like eliminating country caps, exempting PhDs from American universities in STEM fields. At the same time, we are obviously concerned by the size of the bill,” Das told News India Times. “Things always get sticky with such bills with lots of amendments that eventually kill the bill.”

Das notes that currently there are around 1 million Indian immigrants in the backlog, or an estimated 300,000 families. Since 2010, no one has been given their green card. “It will take anywhere to 150 years for an Indian who files for a Green Card now to get it, so they do not have a chance,” Das notes.

SAALT, a coalition of South Asians in the US in a statement has welcomed the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. “Today, marks the introduction of the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, by Representative Sanchez (D-CA-38) and Senator Menendez (D-NJ). The bill is a historic piece of legislation that proposes a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants, including more than 650,000 undocumented South Asians.”

Another Sad Milestone For US, As Covid Claims 500,000 Lives

February 24, 2021March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth 0

After a year that has darkened doorways across the U.S., the pandemic surpassed a milestone Monday that once seemed unimaginable, a stark confirmation of the virus’s reach into all corners of the country and communities of every size and makeup.

The United States has recorded its unfathomable 500,000th death from Covid-19 paradoxically at a moment of rare hope in the pandemic. Yet the tragic landmark has occurred even as the United States makes all efforts under the Biden-Harris administration to stop the spread and prevention of Covid pandemic across the nation.

The toll, accounting for 1 in 5 deaths reported worldwide, has far exceeded early projections, which assumed that federal and state governments would marshal a comprehensive and sustained response and individual Americans would heed warnings.

The symbolic power of the half a million figure emphasizes the horror of the nightmare that seized the country a year ago. On February 23, 2020, ex-President Donald Trump crowed that “we have it very much under control” and “we’ve had no deaths,” revealing his unpreparedness for the disaster that was about to unfold on his watch.

In a contrast to the former President, who rarely shouldered the nation’s collective grief, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden plan to mark the 500,000th American death from Covid-19 with a candle-lighting ceremony at the White House Monday that will include Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff.

The crisis swept away one President — who didn’t sufficiently prioritize the health of his nation over his own political prospects — and is now testing another, who is vowing this week to be “laser focused” on a $1.9 trillion Covid relief package designed to hasten the end of the pandemic and to ease its awful economic consequences.

A warning from Dr. Anthony Fauci on CNN Sunday that Americans could be wearing masks into 2022 came as leading medical associations pleaded for extended vigilance from people exhausted by months of self-isolating and the punishing economic impact of the worst public health calamity in 100 years. But the national dichotomy between fear and hope was exemplified by an announcement that more vaccines than ever are being sent to states and a fast ebbing of new cases of the novel coronavirus across most of the country.

“It’s terrible, it’s really horrible,” Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases specialist, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” “People decades from now are going to be talking about this as a terribly historic milestone in the history of this country, to have these many people to have died from a respiratory-borne infection,” Fauci said.

Reasons for hope amid fresh warning signs

“It’s very hard for me to imagine an American who doesn’t know someone who has died or have a family member who has died,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics at the University of Washington in Seattle. “We haven’t really fully understood how bad it is, how devastating it is, for all of us.”

Experts warn that about 90,000 more deaths are likely in the next few months, despite a massive campaign to vaccinate people. Meanwhile, the nation’s trauma continues to accrue in a way unparalleled in recent American life, said Donna Schuurman of the Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families in Portland, Oregon.

Perhaps more than at any previous moment of the current crisis, there are reasons for optimism that even if normality is months away, the hopelessness of the darkest winter in modern American history may be lifting.

New Covid-19 cases are falling sharply across the country, amazingly down by a quarter week-on-week. Deaths, a lagging indicator, are also beginning to ease. The vaccine effort is cranking up and is likely to overcome a slowdown caused by a blitz of winter weather by the middle of the week. More than 63 million vaccine doses have been administered and Biden says there will be enough shots available for every American by the end of July. More studies suggest that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines authorized in the US may also prevent infection and not just symptomatic disease, a key factor in ending the pandemic. The arrival of spring in a few weeks, and warmer weather that makes it harder for the virus to spread, may bring more than the usual sense of renewal this year.

Still, there are many reasons to be cautious. The arrival in the US of viral variants from the UK and South Africa underscores how the country is in a race against time to vaccinate before the virus mutates further. New US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on Sunday showed 1,700 cases in the US of the fast-spreading variants, which experts fear could dominate home-grown infections within weeks. And the struggle to open schools after some kids have been stuck in nearly a year of online learning is a lesson in just how difficult it will be to get the economy and the country fully and safely open again.

The uncertainty was one reason why Fauci said that it was “possible” mask wearing might still be necessary into 2022, depending on the level of virus that remains in the community over the next year or so. “When it goes way down, and the overwhelming majority of the people in the population are vaccinated, then I would feel comfortable in saying, we need to pull back on the masks, we don’t need to have masks,” Fauci said.

UN Environment Assembly Kicks Off With a Call to Make Peace with Nature

February 24, 2021March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterEnvironment, Women 0

Its time for the world to radically change our ways if we are to make peace with the planet and create the environmental conditions so that all of humanity can thrive, delegates attending the Fifth Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) heard this morning.

The assembly, world’s top environmental decision-making body attended by government leaders, businesses, civil society and environmental activists, met virtually today under a theme “Strengthening Actions for Nature to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals”. It concludes Feb. 23.

Ahead of the assembly, IPS interviewed Joyce Msuya, the Deputy Executive Director for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), to find out what to expect from the two-day event.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): What outcome should African countries expect from the fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA)?

Joyce Msuya (JM): UNEA is the highest international authority on environmental issues, and is focusing on nature and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

In terms of African countries, I will put three things on the table. One is Action. Science has already spoken. Climate change is an issue, and biodiversity loss is happening at a faster rate than ever before, and lastly, pollution, especially plastic pollution is a big problem. So what we need is to bring the African voices and leadership to UNEA, to collectively see what African countries plan to do in terms of actions in delivering around these three planetary crises.

The second thing is partnerships. Environmental issues are development issues and they are everybody’s issues. Citizens can make little changes in their households, communities can make little changes for example on waste management, and those who live around the oceans can take care of the blue economy. So we need to see how the governments work together with the private sector, indigenous communities, with the youth and even children to address the environmental changes.

The third issue is the support to the UNEP. UNEP is the only United Nations largest entity located in the Southern Hemisphere. So this is the time it needs to be supported not just by the government of Kenya, but by African governments.

IPS: How is the COVID-19 situation going to affect these outcomes?

JM: COVID-19 has already impacted and is still going to impact the meeting in three ways. The pandemic has actually shown us the interconnectedness of environment as well as of human health. Last June for example, UNEP released a study on zoonotics to show the connection between nature and viruses.

In terms of the impact on the meeting, this is the first virtual meeting with over 100 countries participating online. This virtual connectivity was driven by COVID-19.

Thirdly, because of the virtual connectivity, countries and member states that are not represented in Nairobi will be able to join through internet connectivity. So the inclusive multilateralism will also be showcased as part of the meeting.

IPS: What informed the choice of UNEA-5’s theme, ‘Strengthening Actions for Nature to achieve the 2020 agenda on SDGs’?

JM: The design and the agreement of the theme was grounded on a consultative process. For example in Africa, there was the African ministerial meeting looking at environmental issues. The theme was proposed for member states consideration and so they debated for its relevance, it’s implication for different countries and they collectively decided on this theme. It is a timely theme for the nature, but also for the SDGs. We are nine years away for the 2030 deadline for the SDGs.

As the UN Secretary General has already said, this is the UN decade for action when it comes to agenda 2030.

IPS: The UN Secretary General has also said that this is the year he is pushing for commitments from all member states for zero emissions by 2050, and the COP is the most appropriate forum where this should materialize. What does the UNEP want to see in terms of commitments?

JM: We work under various teams under the Secretary General and what he said is actually what has been guiding our work. We work very closely with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP) on climate change and we are providing science to help the discussions. As well, we should not forget about the COP on biodiversity, which will be hosted by China because nature and climate change go hand in hand.

In addition, we are providing science to inform for example businesses. Recently we launched the Global Environmental Outlook for Business to provide data and science to help businesses understand what role they can play in reducing the impact of climate change.

IPS: In many African countries, people have invaded wetlands with buildings being constructed in such areas especially in urban areas to accommodate the surging population. Is this a concern to you? If so, how can it be addressed?

JM: In UNEP we believe that wetlands are important in maintaining micro-climates in the areas where they occur, as well as releasing moisture into the atmosphere through evaporation.

At the global level we advocate for the preservation of the wetlands. We have worked with a number of countries in sharing experiences that are working very well on preservation of wetlands from one country to another. Our science also helps inform how wetlands can be preserved and in Kenya here for example, we work with the government at their request to provide technical assistance and science to support their efforts in protecting the wetlands.

Overall in many African countries, we are starting a discussion with ministries of environment where we are advocating for the preservation of wetlands.

IPS: What kind of policies do we need to put in place to reverse the biodiversity loss across the world?

JM: One of the places where UNEP has been working with the Biodiversity Secretariat is on the post 2020 Biodiversity Framework. Parties, member states and the environment community have been looking at the lessons learned from previous studies. And now there is a new biodiversity framework that will be discussed at the COP.

So, one, is providing substantive support to the work of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The second, for example in Kenya, we are working with the Ministry of Interior on tree planting. The government has set out a goal of planting millions of trees over the next two years, and through our Africa department. We are supporting those efforts. We have had some of our staff members join hands with local communities to plant trees.

Then third area is on partnerships. Trees are important not only for the environment, but also for the agriculture sector. So we are joining hands with other parts of the UN to advocate and support tree planting.

IPS: How has COVID-19 and subsequent lockdowns impacted on climate action globally?

JM: That is a very interesting question. From the time the pandemic came in place almost a year ago, a number of countries shut down including offices and economic activities. What anecdotal evidence seems to suggest is that air pollution has been addressed. This is because there were no many cars in the streets, and there was no much pollution into the air.

However, we should not forget that the pandemic is still a humanitarian problem and a crisis because people have lost jobs and many more have lost lives. We have been working with the World Health Organisation for example to try and understand the link between nature and health.

We are also mindful that this is also an economic problem, and we are seeing a number of countries now rebuilding their economies.

But the post COVID-19 era provides us with an opportunity for a green reconstruction of our economies. So the pandemic has been a reflecting time, but it has also shown that UNEP, member states and multilateralism can still function virtually.

Drishyam 2: Mohanlal Film Is A Solid, Satisfying Sequel

February 24, 2021March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterCinema, Entertainment 0

By any yardstick, the 2013 blockbuster Drishyam is a hard act to follow. Writer-director Jeethu Joseph’s crime thriller starring Mohanlal, Meena, Asha Sharath and Siddique was so well-rounded in the writing and execution of its murder-and-subsequent-cover-up mystery and such a box-office superhit that it was remade in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Kannada, headlined by some of the biggest male stars of those industries, in addition to foreign revisitations in Sinhalese and Mandarin.

At the time, Jeethu was questioned about his script drawing on Japanese novelist Keigo Higashino’s The Devotion of Suspect X, but he denied the charge and said he was inspired instead by a real-life incident. Be that as it may, Drishyam 2: The Resumption is all the redemption he needs.

In the sequel, which opens six years later, we reunite with Georgekutty, now the prosperous owner of a cinema theatre, his wife Rani (Meena), and daughters Anju (Ansiba Hassan) and Anu (Esther Anil). There are visible changes in their lifestyle. Georgekutty drives a fancy car, the younger daughter goes to an expensive school, and they all look a little sleeker. But the residue of that death lingers over them, like miasma, lifting and settling, but never going away entirely. Can you kill someone and get away with it? Does your moral centre shift? How do you live with yourself if you have blood on your hands?

Those unsettling unanswered questions imbue this follow-up, and make it more than just a police procedural. As viewers, we know right from the outset where the body is, because we were made witnesses in the original film. And we see that the family hasn’t really been able to put that incident behind them. The person most impacted is the elder daughter Anju, who suffers from epileptic fits, and who starts shaking whenever she catches sight of cops. Rani spends all her time watching over Anju like a hawk, when she’s not holding up the spirits of her new neighbour, who has an abusive husband.

Things start speeding up when the case is re-opened, and a bunch of characters, both familiar from the first film and freshly added to the plot, stir up trouble. The parents of the dead boy, especially the enraged mother (Asha Sarath), a former cop herself, are demanding closure-cum-retribution. An eyewitness from six years back, conveniently having gone missing all these years, pops up. Is this the end for Georgekutty, who has been busy trying to produce a film and giving ideas to a well-known scriptwriter?

Mohanlal is spot-on as the man who is in a spot. Georgekutty’s past as a movie lover (he used to run a cable TV service and spent all his spare time watching thrillers) has led him to be where he is. We get some amusing throwaway remarks about him waiting to release ‘Mammootty films’ in his theatre. And the idea that real life can imitate reel life is still a pivot this time around. Mohanlal holds the film together, never letting his easy, relaxed mien sag into a frown, never letting down his watchful guard, even when his co-actors sink occasionally into loudness and obviousness. Yes, the noose is getting tighter, but

Georgekutty is always going to be one step ahead of the law. It’s not easy to craft murder-mystery sequels. ‘Drishyam 2’ jumps over the familiarity hurdle by broadening its ambit on crime and punishment. If the victim was not a ‘good’ person, does the killing carry as much weight? Equally, can terminating a life, even if accidental, ever be justified? ‘Drishyam 2’ is a solid, satisfying sequel.

Trump Loses Battle In Supreme Court, Unable To Prevent Release Of Tax Returns To NY Prosecutor

February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterNation USA 0

In a significant defeat for Donald Trump, the US Supreme Court on Monday declined to step in to halt the turnover of his tax records to a prosecutor in New York City. Considered a massive blow to Trump, the highest court has cleared the way for a New York prosecutor to obtain former President Donald Trump’s tax returns. Trump has fiercely fought to shield his financial papers from prosecutors. The documents will be subject to grand jury secrecy rules that restrict their public release.

The ruling is a bitter loss for Trump, even if the tax records are shielded from public disclosure, after he consistently argued that the subpoena issued by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance was overbroad and issued in bad faith. It means that the grand jury investigation into alleged hush money payments and other issues will no longer be hampered by Trump’s fight to keep the documents secret. The ruling was issued without comment or noted dissent. Vance celebrated the order, saying in a tweet, “The work continues.”

Last July, the Supreme Court, voting 7-2, rejected the Trump’s broad claims of immunity from a state criminal subpoena seeking his tax returns and said that as president he was not entitled to any kind of heightened standard unavailable to ordinary citizens. The justices sent the case back to the lower court so that the president could make more targeted objections regarding the scope of the subpoena.

In October, a federal appeals court said “there is nothing to suggest that these are anything but run-of-the-mill documents typically relevant to a grand jury investigation into possible financial or corporate misconduct.”

Trump’s tax records were once the holy grail of US political and investigative reporting, after he refused to follow common practice and release them during his run for president in 2016.

In September, under the headline “Trump taxes show chronic losses and years of tax avoidance”, the New York Times published sensational details, among them that Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017.

Trump’s personal lawyers then took the case back to the Supreme Court, urging the justices to put the lower court ruling on hold while the justices considered whether to take up the appeal.

“The subpoena is geographically sprawling, temporally expansive, and topically unlimited –all attributes that raise suspicions of an unlawful fishing expedition,” William Consovoy wrote. “Even if disclosure is confined to the grand jury and prosecutors,” he said “once the documents are surrendered” confidentially “will be lost for all time.”

The subpoenas span documents from January 2011 to August 2019, including his tax returns, from Trump’s long time accounting firm, Mazars. The documents relate to the Trump Organization’s employment of Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen and hush money payment Cohen allegedly made to two woman who claimed to have had extramarital affairs with Trump.

Having left the White House on 20 January, Trump has lost the legal protections of office. He faces jeopardy on multiple fronts.

In New York, on top of the investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, the state attorney general, Letitia James, is investigating the Trump Organization.

In Georgia, prosecutors are investigating Trump’s attempts to strong-arm local Republican officials into overturning his election defeat.

Trump has also been sued for inciting the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, when a mob of his supporters sought to stop the counting of electoral college votes. Lawmakers were threatened and five people died, one an officer of the Capitol police.

Neera Tanden, Biden’s Nominee For US Budget Office Runs Into Senate Opposition

February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterNation USA, Women 0

President Joe Biden’s Indian-American nominee for a cabinet post is at risk of not getting the Senate’s approval after a Democratic Senator announced he would not vote for her.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., a key moderate Democrat, announced Friday he would oppose President Joe Biden’s nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget, throwing her nomination into jeopardy. Appointments of members of the cabinet and senior officials have to be confirmed by the Senate.

“Her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget,” he said.

A loyalist of former Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, she had alienated both Republicans and Democrats with her caustic tweets which have now come back to haunt her.

Although a final Senate vote on Tanden’s nomination has yet been scheduled, Manchin’s opposition could scuttle her confirmation because of the Senate’s 50-50 split between Republicans and Democrats. She would need to pick up at least one vote from a Republican and for Vice President Kamala Harris to break a potential tie to secure the simple majority needed for confirmation.

The White House signaled it would press ahead with Tanden’s confirmation. It seems unlikely that any Republican would support her nomination in the evenly divided 100-member Senate.

GOP Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah will vote against confirming Neera Tanden to lead the Office of Management and Budget, further putting Tanden’s nomination in peril in the evenly divided Senate.

“Congress has to be able to trust the OMB director to make countless decisions in an impartial manner, carrying out the letter of the law and congressional intent. Neera Tanden has neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency,” Collins said in a statement. “Her past actions have demonstrated exactly the kind of animosity that President Biden has pledged to transcend.”

The defeat of Tanden’s nomination would mark the first defeat for Biden in the Senate, which has so far approved seven appointees with the support of many Republicans. They include the secretaries of state, defense, treasury and homeland security. It would also point to the rough road ahead for Biden in keeping all the 50 Democrats in his fold to get the budget and some other legislation through.

“You wrote that Susan Collins is the worst, that Tom Cotton is a fraud, that vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz. You called leader McConnell: Moscow Mitch and Voldemort, and on and on,” he said. As an adviser to the Clinton campaign, Tanden had made personal attacks on Sanders.

She faced an embarrassing situation when she appeared before the Senate Budget Committee, which is chaired by Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent aligned with the Democrats who had run for that party’s presidential nomination against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Tanden has apologized for her tweets telling the Senate Homeland Security Committee last week, “I deeply regret and apologize for my language and some of my past language.” At that committee’s hearing, Republican Senator Rob Portman brought up some of her tweets.

She admitted, “I must have meant them, but I really regret them.”

Sanders has not indicated how he would vote, but during the hearing the leftist leader grilled her about the donations of 33 million the Centre for American Progress that she headed had received from big business.

Tanden, who leads the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, faces a steep battle to confirmation, as her history of combative tweets targeting senators on both sides of the aisle rankled Republicans, in particular.

The Maine Republican also criticized Tanden’s decision to delete tweets before President Biden announced her nomination last year, saying the move “raises concerns about her commitment to transparency.” Tanden has admitted to deleting more than 1,000 tweets in November 2020 around the time Biden had named her to be OMB director.

However, Biden stood firmly by Tanden saying a firm “No”, when reporters asked him if he would withdraw her nomination. His Spokesperson Jen Psaki said, “Tanden is an accomplished policy expert who would be an excellent Budget Director and we look forward to the committee votes next week and to continuing to work toward her confirmation through engagement with both parties.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday he is working to “find the extra votes” to carry her across the finish line.

If her nomination were to be approved by the Senate, she would be the second Indian-American to serve on the US cabinet. The first was Nikki Haley, who was given a cabinet rank by Trump when she was the US permanent representative to the United Nations

Dr. Amit Chakrabarty And Colleagues Volunteer In Odisha Pandemic Relief Efforts

February 24, 2021February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Profile 0

“There are very few Doctors from the state of Odisha in the United States,” says Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, Secretary of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), the largest ethnic medical association in the US. “I am one of the very few physicians from my home state, who are active and members of Odisha Doctors International Association (ODIA) and working towards expanding ODIA with members from across the globe. As the Treasurer of Odisha Society of Americas Health and Wellness Group, I am honored to work collaboratively with other members for the cohesive work the organization has been doing during the pandemic, while representing the great and historical state of Odisha at the national AAPI leadership”

Among the several initiatives, Dr. Chakrabarty and his colleagues in the US from the state of Odisha have initiated and established a new organization, Doctors of ODIA collaborating with local organizations and to provide healthcare to Odisha people, as pandemic impacts their livelihood.

Dr. Chakrabarty, the multi-talented, generous and hardworking leader of AAPI says, “With a deep sense of commitment to serve the people of Odisha, we have, under the leadership of Dr. Debashis Ray of Georgia, now expanded our organization to international standards with participation of 37 countries.”

Lamenting that Odisha has always been “under-represented and underserved and relatively a poor state in India with regards to medical collaborations in this country,” Dr. Chakrabarty says, “We are a small group of dedicated people who want to make a difference for our home state. For this reason I have put my heart and soul to make our state Medical Organization a great Resource to help our home state.”

The group of Doctors at Odisha Doctors International Association recently organized an international webinar on February 6th for the general public benefitting the local population in the state of Odisha to educate and answer the questions on Covid and vaccines. “I believe, we can make a huge difference by providing the people of Odisha necessary services and supplies hat will go a long way in the upliftment of the health status of the people of the state of Odisha.”

“The launch of the Covid 19 vaccine amidst the crisis and havoc created by the pandemic gives us all HOPE,” says Dr. Chakrabarty. “Team ODIA geared up to present in extensive details about the Coronavirus, the new mutant viruses and the different types of COVID-19 vaccines and global experience with the vaccine so far, answering the questions and concerns surrounding the Covid 19 vaccine.”

The global seminar lasting over three hours was inaugurated by Mr. Dhamendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas and was attended across zoom Facebook and YouTube in large numbers Odisha actor and humanitarian and ODIA brand ambassador Mr. Sabyasachi Mishra graced the seminar by his presence.

Physician teams of ODIA from 11 countries and presenters included from state of Odisha. Dr. Niranjan Mishra, Department of Public Health, who showed the audience on the efficient ways Odisha has been planning the vaccine rollout. Other participants were from UK Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Ireland, UAE, Oman, Maldives, in addition to USA.

In October of 2020 the Health and Wellness group of The Odisha Society of America’s donated a mobile Covid screening unit to the Health and Family Welfare department of the Government of Odisha. “The purpose of this unit is to provide screening at multiple places during the Covid pandemic and be available for use by the government in remote and rural areas of the state. The organization’s brand ambassador actor has represented us at all of our projects in Odisha and helped carry forward our Mission during the pandemic with sheer care and diligence,” says Dr. Chkarabarty. “Our second mobile Covid screening donated by one of our senior founder member of Health and Wellness group is also complete and has been in use by the Government of Odisha since the end of December 2020.”

In December 2020 the Health and Wellness group supported the Government of Odisha with 500 Dr. Diaz adult fingertip Pulse oximeters, to be used by healthcare workers in Odisha in remote areas lacking adequate triaging facilities, helping those severely compromised by Covid. “Our mission and vision is to continue to provide medical necessities and healthcare related support to the people of Odisha in future,” adds Dr. Chakrabarty.

“As an active member of ODIA, I am happy and immensely satisfied that I could be part of this noble organization that is committed to serve the poorest of the poor in India,” says, Dr. Chakrabarty, whose leadership qualities have come to be recognized by the larger AAPI general body, who have elected him to be the national AAPI Secretary in 2020, and he is looking forward to serve the largest ethnic medical organization as the Vice President and beyond, with his vision to take AAPI to newer heights.

“It is amazing how quickly these two years have passed by. With the help of Dr. Annu Terkonda, I helped revive the Indian Medical Council of St Louis (IMCStL), that had been dormant for more than 8 years to become one of the most vibrant chapters of the American Association of Physician of Indian Origin (AAPI), culminating in hosting the National AAPI governing body meeting during our upcoming Diwali Gala,” said Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, President of IMCStL 2018 and 2019, and currently the National AAPI Secretary said, after receiving an Award recognizing his contributions to the growth of AAPI and the revival of Indian Medical Council of St Louis. Dr. Suresh Reddy, Immediate Past President of AAPI honored Dr. Amit Chakrabarty during the Mini Convention held in Chicago on Saturday, September 26^th, 2020.

Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, who was honored with the National AAPI Distinguished Service Award 2018 and the President’s Award for Services in 2019 by the Indian American Urological Society, says, “I consider myself to be a leader and shine in the fact that I can get people motivated. I lead by example that motivates people. I am fun loving and have always striven to brush off any obstacles that come in the way.”

Dr. Chakrabarty has been the President of two AAPI subchapters, namely Alabama Association of Physicians of Indian Origin 2012-2014 and Indian Medical Council of St Louis 2018-2020 reviving them from obscurity and inactivity to make them one the most vibrant chapters of AAPI. Under his leadership, Alabama AAPI produced 13 out of the last 15 Regional directors and the St Louis Chapter hosted the most productive and successful AAPI governing body within 3 years of its revival from 10 years of inactivity. He also serves as the Chairman, Board of Trustees, Huntsville India Association and was the President, Indian Cultural Association of Birmingham, and led an Indian Delegation to Japan at the International Youth Year in 1985.

It’s been a long journey with American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) for Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, from being an ordinary member of the largest ethnic medical society in the United States to a Regional Leader, currently serving as the Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees (BOT) of national AAPI, and now looking forward to lead the organization that he calls as his second family and has come to adore. “Since my membership to AAPI In 1997, for more than two decades I have been a dedicated foot soldier for the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin,” Dr. Amit Chakrabarty a Consultant Urologist, Poplar Bluff Urology, Past Chairman of Urologic Clinics of North Alabama P.C., and the Director of Center for Continence and Female Pelvic Health.

In his endeavor to play a more active role and commit his services for the growth and expansion of AAPI that represents the interests of over 100,000 Indian American physicians, Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, the Alabama-based Indian American Physician wants this noble organization to be “more vibrant, united, transparent, politically engaged, ensuring active participation of young physicians, increasing membership, and enabling that AAPI’s voice is heard in the corridors of power.”

A Patron Member of AAPI for 25 years, Dr. Chakrabarty has been an active AAPI Governing Body Member for over a decade. He has served AAPI in several capacities. He has served with distinction as an AAPI Regional Director from 2004 to 2006. There is hardly any Committee of AAPI that he was not part of in the past two decades. He was the Chair of AAPI Ethics and Grievances Committee in 2011-2012, and had served as the Chair of AAPI Journal Resource Committee in 2012-2013. He has served as a Member of AAPI IT committee, Journal Committee, Website Committee, Bylaws Committee, Alumni Committee, Ethics and Grievances Committee, and AAPI Charitable Foundation. “I have attended more than 100 AAPI events including Annual conventions, Governing Body meetings, Global Summits and Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in the past 20 years,” he recalls.

A multi-talented physician, Dr. Chakrabarty has not only showcased his musical talents at almost every major AAPI event, he was the Founder and Creator of AAPI’s Got Talent, at AAPI Annual Convention 2010 in Washington DC. He was the Founder and Conductor of “Mehfil” @ AAPI Annual Convention in Atlanta 2008, and has been conducting the ever popular AAPI’s Got Talent and Mehfil every year at Annual Conventions. “I love people and having good times,” he describes self. “I rarely get depressed or feel down with any failures and bounce right back. I believe in seeing the silver lining in each cloud. If life gives me lemons, I make lemonade!”

Dr. Chakrabarty has been a dreamer and devoted his talents for charity and noble deeds from childhood onwards. “Since my childhood I have been motivated for philanthropic activities that includes several school fund raising activities, organizing inter college meets in college forming a musical group in India and here primarily for fund raising.” And, as an ardent and active member of AAPI, Dr. Chakrabarty has continued these noble deeds as an adult.

One of the major goals for AAPI in recent years has been the financial stability of AAPI. Describing fund raising as his strength, he points out to his special talents and skills in raising money for AAPI in the past two decades. He says with pride that “I have been a leader in Fund Raising for AAPI and the several causes we have committed to support.”

He organized and raised funds during AAPI-Mahadevan show in Atlanta, raising almost $300,000 for AAPI in 2013. Other concerts/events he has helped organize and raise funds include: The 10 city Sukhwinder Singh Tour, 9 City Talat Aziz Fund, Pankaj Udhas Show, Hema Malini Concert, , as well as towards AAPI Hurricane Harvey Fund by conceiving and organizing “musical performance by my group Geetanjali Music.”

In addition, “I had spearheaded a fund rising in 2013 at Huntsville, Alabama collecting almost $80,000 for AAPI scholarship fund and National AAPI childhood obesity awareness program. Many of these events/concerts I had organized myself, spending my own money for travel and logistics.” Contributing his personal money as seed money for AAPI, he had single-handedly spearheaded planning a fund-raising tour called “DADA vs DADA” for AAPI Charitable Foundation in 2005. The show did not take place due to Hurricane Katrina devastating the region.

Recognizing the role of Young Physicians in AAPI, Dr. Chakrabarty wants to invest heavily in Medical Student/Residents and Young Physician (MSR/YPS) section of AAPI and in giving them leadership roles in mainstream AAPI, which will create more enthusiasm in our young members towards their parent organization. Without them there will be no AAPI in 20 years. “Give some prime time slots in the main convention to AAPI YPS, at least one night main stage should be devoted to and managed by them,” he suggests.

Realizing how hard it is for the physicians in India to come to the US for training, Dr. Chakrabarty “raised almost $100,000 for the Society of Indian American Clinical Urology for a scholarship fund for Clinical Indian Urologists to come for a month training in US.” He participated in two back to back fund raising shows 2015 and 2016 for the Hindu Temple of St. Louis raising more than $ 300,000 each year, featuring

Geetanjali musical group’s performance.

A physician with compassion, brilliance, and dedication, Dr. Chakrabarty has excelled in every role he has undertaken. As an educator at AAPI’s CMEs and Workshops, he has authored several articles/publications in Medical Journals, Chair of Entertainment Committee, and as a Founder member of Geetanjali Music Group (www.geetanjalimusic.com) that performs fund raising shows in several AAPI governing body and state chapter meetings, this AAPI leader has given his best for AAPI.

Another goal he wants to pursue for AAPI is to “Continue partnership in health care education and provide economic and material aid across the globe, working towards making AAPI, along with Indian physicians in other countries, a global health leader. I want AAPI to be a part of the decision-making process of World Health Organization and United Nations health policies especially those affecting south Asians.”

Dr. Chakrabarty says, he wants to have AAPI Charitable Foundation to be the main frame of AAPI make it more accountable. Making our noble efforts known to the society is important, he says, “We need to make their services more prominently advertised. Anytime we do press conference we use primarily them as example of what we are doing but we do not give them the support that they need.”

As a leader of AAPI, Dr. Chakrabarty wants to “form a separate political action committee (PAC) and make it financially sound so that AAPI can hire lobbyists on Capitol Hill who will help to move forward policies that are important to AAPI. VISA issues for our colleagues should top the list.”

A Gandhian at heart, Dr. Chkarabarty says, “I have always believed in Gandhiji’s principles “Satyameva Jayate” (Truth always wins). I am a Bengali from Odisha and have lived in small AAPI subchapters like Alabama and Missouri, I have no special state or chapter affiliation, I take pride in reaching across the aisle and have friends from all states and backgrounds not only in AAPI but also in my personal life participating in all ethnic festivities as my friends from Huntsville can testify.”

“I have the diverse experience to achieve each of these goals,” Dr. Chakrabarty says with confidence. “Having been a member and leader of AAPI for over two decades, I have perfected the skills necessary to move AAPI forward through the office of AAPI’s national Secretary. My mission/goal in life is to leave back a legacy of work that people will remember me fondly and proudly after I am gone.”

Eight Persons of Indian Origin on TIME’s 100 Most Influential People

February 24, 2021February 25, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Profile, Women 0

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Rishi Sunak, Apoorva Mehta, Vijaya Gadde, Shikha Gupta, Rohan Pavuluri, Chandra Shekhar Aazad, Ranga Dias are among the 100 Most Influential People on the prestigious TIME’s List for the year 2021 and Beyond, who are “emerging leaders who are shaping the future.”

The 2021 TIME100 Next, released on Wednesday, is an expansion of TIME’s flagship TIME100 franchise of the most influential people in the world and highlights 100 emerging leaders who are shaping the future. “Everyone on this list is poised to make history. And in fact, many already have,” Dan Macsai, the editorial director of the TIME100, said.

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan

When you’re a minority woman with your own show, you gotta represent. It’s a tough job to be in that spotlight, where you are scrutinized for your every action, but it’s exhilarating too. People come up to you at the airport or online and say those three magic words: “I feel seen.” It’s a huge responsibility—and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is exactly the kind of talented young woman who is up to the task.

While she might come off as a carefree teen in her hilarious TikToks and Instagram videos, Maitreyi—who plays the lead role in Never Have I Ever—is a gifted comic actress. She studies her craft and takes it seriously. Moreover, she’s an artist who cares deeply about the material she’s performing, and what it’s saying. She has an activist’s heart and wants to use her platform to help others.

What’s most extraordinary about Maitreyi is that when you’re with her, you think you’re simply talking to a cool, smart teenager, but later, when you see her work onscreen, you realize you were actually interacting with a great artist at the beginning of her journey.

(By Kaling, an actor, writer and producer and the co-creator of Never Have I Ever)

Rishi Sunak

Little more than a year ago, Rishi Sunak was an unknown junior minister in the British government. But after the 40-year-old former hedge-fund partner was appointed to lead Britain’s Treasury in February 2020, he quickly became the benevolent face of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, approving large handouts for many citizens whose jobs were disrupted by the virus. (The already unemployed and self-employed received less support.) Sunak also oversaw a policy that, when infections were low over the summer, subsidized dining out at restaurants in an attempt to revive the economy. The perceived generosity—and his youthful charm—earned him a legion of fans, but his policy was blamed when cases of COVID-19 began to rise shortly after. Critics also point out that because he has consistently advocated for early relaxation of lockdown rules, Sunak bears perhaps more responsibility than most for Britain’s failures in responding to the virus, which has left more than 115,000 people dead—the fifth highest toll in the world. Nonetheless, Sunak remains the country’s most popular politician, according to the pollster YouGov. And he’s the oddsmakers’ favorite to be Britain’s next Prime Minister. (By Billy Perrigo)

Apoorva Mehta

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Instacart faced a tidal wave of orders, as people with means opted en masse to pay the service’s workers to buy groceries for them. Apoorva Mehta, the company’s 34-year-old founder and CEO, calls that period a “wartime moment”: “We just didn’t have enough shoppers.” Instacart went on a hiring binge in March 2020, bringing on 300,000 gig workers in a matter of weeks; the next month, it announced it would hire a quarter-million more.

But as usage soared, Instacart faced new criticism about the way it treated its workers, including labyrinthine sick-pay policies, frequent rule changes for shoppers and demanding performance metrics. And after pouring more than $20 million into a controversial ballot initiative in California, Instacart—alongside other firms such as Uber and Lyft—decisively won that bid last fall to avoid classifying their workers as employees under state law.

Mehta says, “This is going to be a conversation that we’re going to have as a society over the next decade or so,” about the gig economy: “The ecosystem that we want to build is one that recognizes that flexibility is going to be an important part of people’s work.”In the meantime, Instacart—which raised more than $500 million in venture-capital funding last year—continues to expand. “The smartphone is the supermarket of the future,” Mehta says. “We are going to help co-create that.” (By Alejandro de la Garza)

Vijaya Gadde

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was on a private island in the Pacific when he found out President Trump had been suspended from his platform. Conveying the news, on Jan. 6, was Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top lawyer and head of policy. In a phone call, first reported by the New York Times, Gadde told Dorsey that the decision had been taken to reduce the risk of further violence after the attack on the Capitol earlier that day. Within two days, Gadde and a team of other employees had persuaded a hesitant Dorsey to ban Trump permanently.

Gadde, 46, is one of Twitter’s most powerful executives. Her boss, Dorsey, has delegated to her Twitter’s content-moderation decisions; she was the architect of the 2019 decision to ban all political advertising, and is responsible for the warning labels that Twitter applied to COVID-19 and election-interference misinformation in 2020. While Twitter is still home to much misinformation and harassment, Gadde’s influence is slowly turning the company into one that sees free speech not as sacrosanct—but as just one human right among many that need to be weighed against one another.

(By Billy Perrigo)

Shikha Gupta

In a crisis, small acts can make a big impact. And in extraordinary times, ordinary people, driven by service, can do extraordinary things. The early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were some of the darkest in America’s history. A leadership vacuum from the White House contributed to health care professionals across the country lacking the personal protective equipment they needed to stay safe and save lives.

Dr. Shikha Gupta wasn’t on the White House Task Force. She wasn’t a governor or a member of Congress. She held no title other than doctor and citizen. But when she and her colleagues saw a need—and a hashtag—they met the moment and took action. Powered by a dedicated coalition of medical professionals and other team members, the Get Us PPE organization—where Gupta is the executive director—has helped distribute more than 6.5 million pieces of PPE to frontline workers.

Their fight, like this pandemic, is not done. But across the country, millions of people working to save lives can do so with confidence because of Gupta and her colleagues’ small acts and incredible impact.

(By Kim, a Democratic Congressman from New Jersey

Chandra Shekhar Aazad

Chandra Shekhar Aazad, 34, is a Dalit—a member of India’s most oppressed caste group. The movement he leads, the Bhim Army, runs schools to help Dalits escape poverty through education. It also practices a distinct brand of assertiveness, sweeping into villages on loud motorbikes to protect victims of caste-based violence and organizing provocative demonstrations against discrimination.

In September 2020, when police in the state of Uttar Pradesh delayed investigation of the fatal gang-rape of a 19-year-old Dalit woman, allegedly perpetrated by four dominant-caste men, Aazad and the Bhim Army spearheaded a campaign for justice. The protests and public outcry that followed eventually led to the accused rapists’ arrests. (They deny the charges.) Aazad has also lent his support to several other progressive movements, including recently to farmers protesting against corporate agricultural reforms.

He hopes to turn the reach of the Bhim Army—and his own growing popularity—into wins at the ballot box, and in March 2020 launched a political party. Its first real test comes during elections next year in Uttar Pradesh, where Hindu nationalists are politically dominant.

Despite the Bhim Army’s muscular stance, Aazad has also cultivated an aura of charismatic approachability through deft use of social media; even Aazad’s luxuriant mustache—a style seen by some dominant castes as a status symbol—is a form of resistance. By challenging the notion that Dalits should be deferential, says Dhrubo Jyoti, a Dalit journalist at the Hindustan Times, Aazad and the Bhim Army “have visually and psychologically changed the pitch of caste resistance in India.”

Rohan Pavuluri

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to put Americans in financial distress, more and more people have lost jobs, incurred expensive medical bills and faced other hardships. Filing for personal bankruptcy can be an effective way to eliminate debt and re-enter the economy, but high legal fees and complex paperwork can make it difficult to seek that relief, especially for low-income families. That’s why, in 2018, 25-year-old Rohan Pavuluri founded Upsolve, a nonprofit that offers a free online tool to help users fill out bankruptcy forms on their own. To date, Upsolve has helped U.S. users relieve more than $300 million in debt. “We’ve found a way to use technology to address a civil rights injustice at scale,” Pavuluri says. (By Mariah Espada)

Ranga Dias

Let’s be clear: hoverboards, magnetic levitation trains and resistance-free power lines are not coming this year or next. But thanks to Ranga Dias, they’re closer than they ever were. Those technologies (and many more) rely on developing new superconductors: materials through which energy can move with no resistance.

The catch is that supercold temperatures have long been necessary for superconductors to work, making them impractical. So Dias, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Rochester, came up with a solution that could pave the way for future innovations: a room-temperature superconductor that’s superdense instead of supercold.

Dias developed a material made of hydrogen, sulfur and carbon, squeezed at a pressure equivalent to 2.5 million atmospheres. The extreme compression eliminates electrical resistance, allowing energy to traverse with ease. Dias is aware of the breakthrough nature of his work. “People have been trying to develop superconductors for a century,” he says. They missed their chance in the 20th. In the 21st, thanks to Dias, they just might succeed. (By Jeffrey Kluger)

The COVID-19 Virus Is Mutating. What Does That Mean for Vaccines?

February 24, 2021February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterEducation, Health, Science 0

As we enter the second year of living with the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the virus is celebrating its invasion of the world’s population with yet more mutated forms that help it to spread more easily from person to person.

One, first detected in the U.K. in December, has already raised alarms about whether the COVID-19 virus is now escaping from the protection that vaccines just being rolled out now might provide. The variant has also been found in the U.S. Already, U.K. officials have tightened lockdowns in England, Scotland and Wales, and over the holidays, more than 40 countries banned travelers from the region in an effort to keep the new strain from spreading to other parts of the world.

Health officials are also concerned about a different strain found in South Africa that could become more resistant to vaccine protection. This variant includes a few mutations in key areas that antibodies, generated by the vaccine, target.

Exactly how the new strains affect people who are infected—such as whether they develop more severe symptoms—and whether they can lead to more hospitalizations and deaths, aren’t clear yet. But scientists are ramping up efforts to genetically sequence more samples from infected patients to learn how widespread they are. So far, there are enough hints to worry public health experts.

The fact that SARS-CoV-2 is morphing into potentially more dangerous strains isn’t a surprise. Viruses mutate. They must, in order to make up for a critical omission in their makeup. Unlike other pathogens such as bacteria, fungi and parasites, viruses have none of the machinery needed to make more copies of themselves, so they cannot reproduce on their own. They rely fully on hijacking the reproductive tools of the cells they infect in order to generate their progeny.

Being such freeloaders means they can’t be picky about their hosts, and must make do with whatever cellular equipment they can find. That generally leads to a flurry of mistakes when they sneak in to copy their genetic code; as a result, viruses have among the sloppiest genomes among microbes.

The bulk of these mistakes are meaningless—false starts and dead ends—that have no impact on humans. But as more mistakes are made, the chances that one will make the virus better at slipping from one person to another, or pumping out more copies of itself, increase dramatically.

Fortunately, coronaviruses in particular generate these genetic mistakes more slowly than their cousins like influenza and HIV—scientists sequencing thousands of samples of SARS-CoV-2 from COVID-19 patients found that the virus makes about two errors a month. Still, that’s led so far to about 12,000 known mutations in SARS-CoV-2, according to GISAID, a public genetic database of the virus. And some, by sheer chance, end up creating a greater public health threat.

Just a few months after SARS-CoV-2 was identified in China last January, for example, a new variant, called D614G, superseded the original strain. This new version became the dominant one that infected much of Europe, North America and South America. Virus experts are still uncertain over how important D614G, named for where the mutation is located on the viral genome, has been when it comes to human disease. But so far, blood samples from people infected with the strain show that the virus can still be neutralized by the immune system.

That means that the current vaccines being rolled out around the world can also protect against this strain, since the shots were designed to generate similar immune responses in the body. “If the public is concerned about whether vaccine immunity is able to cover this variant, the answer is going to be yes,” says Ralph Baric, professor or epidemiology, microbiology and immunology at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, who has studied coronaviruses for several decades.

The so-called N501Y variant (some health officials are also calling it B.1.1.7.), which was recently detected in the U.K. and the U.S., may be a different story. Based on lab and animal studies, researchers believe this strain can spread more easily between people. That’s not a surprise, says Baric, since to this point, most of the world’s population has not been exposed to SARS-CoV-2.

That means that for now, the strains that are better at hopping from one person to another will have the advantage in spreading their genetic code. But as more people get vaccinated and protected against the virus, that may change. “Selection conditions for virus evolution right now favor rapid transmission,” he says. “But as more and more of the human population become immune, the selection pressures change. And we don’t know which direction the virus will go.”

In a worst case scenario, those changes could push the virus to become resistant to the immune cells generated by currently available vaccines. The current mutants are the virus’ first attempts to maximize its co-opting of the human population as viral copying machines. But they could also serve as a backbone on which SARS-CoV-2 builds a more sustained and stable takeover.

Like a prisoner planning a jailbreak, the virus is biding its time and chipping away at the defenses the human immune system has constructed. For example, the virus may mutate in a way that changes the makeup of its spike proteins—the part of the virus where the immune system’s antibodies attempt to stick to in order to neutralize the virus. And that one mutation may not be enough to protect the virus from those antibodies. But two or three might.

The biggest concern right now, says Baric, is that there are already two or three variants of SARS-CoV-2 that have mutations in just such places, “where additional mutations can make a more significant change in terms of transmissibility or virulence.”

The best way to monitor that evolution is by sequencing the virus in as many people who are infected, as often as possible.

Only by tracking how SARS-CoV-2 is changing can scientists hope to stay ahead of the most dangerous and potentially more lethal mutations. In Nov., the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) launched a sequencing program that will ask each state to send 10 samples every other week from people who have been infected, in order to more consistently track any changes in SARS-CoV-2’s genome. But it’s a voluntary program. “It’s still not a national effort, it’s voluntary, and there is no dedicated funding for it,” says Baric.

“Come on, we’re in the 21st century—let’s enter the 21st century.”

Without substantial federal funding dedicated specifically to sequencing SARS-CoV-2 genomes, most of the work in the U.S. is currently being done by scientists at academic centers like the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the University of Washington. Since early last year, the CDC has been working to better characterize SARS-CoV-2 viruses from patient samples in partnership with some of these academic labs, as well as state and local health departments and commercial diagnostic companies, in the SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology and Surveillance (SPHERES) consortium.

“If we sequence one out of 200 cases then we’re missing a lot of information,” says Baric. “If we’re sequencing about 20% of cases, then we might start to see something and we would be in the ball game to find new variants. We probably could be doing a better job of that here in the U.S.”

Other countries are also working on this effort. The U.K. has long been a leader in genetic sequencing, and likely because of their efforts were able to identify the new variant relatively quickly after it emerged. Globally, scientists have also been posting genetic sequences from SARS-CoV-2 to the public GISAID database.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and chief medical advisor to President-elect Joe Biden, says that his teams are sequencing and studying the new variants to better understand what effect they might have on disease, how close they might be to causing more severe illness and, more importantly as more people get vaccinated, whether the new variants can escape the protection of the vaccines we know work today.

The good news is that if the mutant strains do become resistant to the current vaccines, the mRNA technology behind the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna should enable the companies to develop new shots without the same lengthy developing and testing that the originals required. “The mRNA platform is eminently flexible to turn around,” says Fauci.

If a new vaccine were needed, it would be treated by the Food and Drug Administration as a strain change in the virus target, similar to how flu shots are modified every year. “You could get that out pretty quickly,” says Fauci, after showing in tests with a few dozen people that the new vaccine produced satisfactory amounts of antibodies and protection against the mutant virus.

Tracking every change the virus makes will be critical to buying the time needed to shift vaccine targets before SARS-CoV-2 leaps too far ahead for scientists to catch up. “We are taking [these variants] seriously and will be following them closely to make sure we don’t miss anything,” says Fauci.

Worried About The UK Or South African Strains? India Has 240 Strains

February 24, 2021February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Health 0

With the fifth consecutive day of rising Covid-19 cases in the country, fears of India on the brink of a second Covid-19 wave appear to be gaining ground. From reporting under 10,000 fresh cases last week, India’s daily fresh Covid-19 cases climbed back to over 14,000 on Saturday — with the bulk of new cases emanating from the five states of Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.

While Kerala, which gained global fame in the initial days of the pandemic for effectively controlling the spread of the novel coronavirus, is now the second worst affected state, the worst affected, Maharashtra, is not just battling a laxity on adherence to Covid-19 protocols but also a multiplicity of strains of the novel coronavirus.

According to Dr Shashank Joshi, member of Maharashtra’s Covid Task Force, India has 240 new strains of SARS-Cov-2 in circulation, which is causing a resurgence in the number of positive cases, especially in Maharashtra. Adding to the concern, Dr Randeep Guleria, Director of the Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), said that these new strains could be highly contagious and more lethal.

The presence of hundreds of new strains also makes it difficult to attain herd immunity, Guleria added as at least 80% of India’s population will need to be infected with Covid-19. Moreover, there’s the possibility that the new strains could also cause re-infection among those who have recovered from Covid-19, negating the presence of antibodies they have developed.

Reinforcing the need “to go back to aggressive measures of testing, contact tracing and isolating infections”, Guleria, while speaking with NDTV said the virus variants have an “immune escape mechanism”, which allows them to circumvent either vaccination-imbued or disease-caused immunity. However, he added, getting vaccinated may still be the best shot in controlling Covid-19 — as even if their efficacy against new variants is less, the infection will be milder.

Indian Jesuit’s Fears Over Planted Evidence Gain Ground

February 24, 2021February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterNation India 0

An elderly Indian Jesuit priest languishing in jail on a treason charge has sought a copy of his laptop hard drive after a US-based digital laboratory reported that a hacker had planted incriminating evidence in the computer of another accused in the same case.

Father Stan Swamy, 84, is among 16 people accused of collaborating with a banned Maoist group to organize violence in the Bhima Koregaon area of Maharashtra after a clash there killed one person and injured several on Jan. 1, 2018.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), a federal anti-terror combat agency, arrested Father Swamy on Oct. 8 and remanded him in custody in a jail in Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra. His bail applications have been repeatedly rejected.

“Father Swamy has sought a cloned copy of his laptop and hard drive, which the NIA should have given him following his arrest, but to no avail,” Father A. Santhanam, who is closely following the case, told UCA News on Feb. 14.

Father Swamy’s counsel presented a detailed argument before the NIA court on Feb. 12 for his demand for a cloned copy of the laptop and hard drive. The court directed the lawyer to approach the NIA office.

The court also heard another bail application of the priest but the NIA, which continues to investigate the case, sought time until Feb. 16 to submit the case diary to help the court decide on bail.

Father Santhanam, a Jesuit lawyer practicing in southern India, regretted that the NIA was obstructing the bail demand of Father Swamy, who is suffering from Parkinson’s disease among other age-related health issues.

Before his arrest, Father Swamy had expressed concern that investigators could manipulate his computer, which they confiscated from him, to plant proof of his collaboration with Maoists and other allegations against him.

His fears gained ground as Arsenal Consulting, a Massachusetts-based digital forensic laboratory, said on Feb. 11 that a hacker had planted incriminating evidence in the computer of Rona Wilson, among the accused in the case.

The US firm analyzed an electronic copy of Wilson’s laptop and concluded that an attacker used malware to infiltrate the laptop and plant documents on it.

The attacker created a hidden folder and at least 10 incriminating letters were delivered into it without the knowledge of Wilson, who is also languishing in jail like Father Swamy.

The NIA arrested Wilson and accused him of colluding with Maoist rebels in conspiring to assassinate Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, mostly based on the incriminating documents.

The unidentified attacker, the report said, used malware to control and spy on the laptop. Subsequently, Wilson received emails that appeared to be from a fellow activist urging him to click on a link to download an innocuous statement from a civil liberties group. But this link deployed the malicious software that allowed a hacker to access Wilson’s computer.

The report shows how the attacker had retained access to Wilson’s computer for over 22 months, starting June 13, 2016, and used a remote access facility for planting the incriminating letters while conducting the surveillance on his activities without Wilson getting a hint of it.

The forensic lab also found that the malware logged Wilson’s keystrokes, passwords and browsing activity, raising doubts about the credibility of the NIA evidence against those arrested.

Rights groups say all the 16 arrested are rights workers who at some point criticized or opposed policies of the federal government run by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP).

Two top academies to Govt: new webinar rules could halt all scientific discussion

A recent order, issued on January 15 asks all government entities, including publicly funded educational institutions and universities, to “seek approval” of the respective “administrative Secretary” for organizing any “online/virtual international conferences/seminars/training etc”.

India’s two largest and oldest science academies have written to the Ministry of Education — and the third is considering joining in — to say that its recent order mandating institutions to seek Government clearance for all webinars could “lead to a complete halt of all topical scientific discussions” and “impede” the interest of science among the young.

The Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, India, together include more than 2,500 of India’s top scientists. The first two have sent separate letters to Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal seeking withdrawal of these “blanket restrictions.” Sources said the third is considering supporting this petition.

The order, issued on January 15 — in the wake of new procedure notified by the Ministry of External Affairs last November — asks all government entities, including publicly funded educational institutions and universities, to “seek approval” of the respective “administrative Secretary” for organizing any “online/virtual international conferences/seminars/training etc”.

It also says that the Ministry, while granting permission to hold such events, must ensure that the subject matter of the event did not relate to the “security of the State, border, northeast states, UT (union territory) of J&K, Ladakh, or any other issues which are clearly/purely related to India’s internal matters”.

Earlier, organisers needed political clearance for foreign guest speakers at (non-virtual) seminars to come to India but no prior approval was needed for the subject on which they were speaking. There was also no specific category banned as “India’s internal matters.”

In his letter to Pokhriyal, Partha Majumder, president of Indian Academy of Sciences, said: “The Academy strongly believes that security of our nation needs to be protected. However, imposing a blanket requirement for obtaining prior permission to organize virtual scientific meetings or training programmes ‘which are clearly/purely related to India’s internal matters’ – without defining what is meant by ‘India’s internal matters’ – is too constraining for the progress of science in India.”

Majumder, one of India’s most distinguished bio-statisticians and the founding director of Kalyani-based National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, said the order did not even define “India’s internal matters” or make it clear what was meant by “international” in the context of online events.

“Even if all speakers and trainers are scientists of Indian institutions, it is possible for scientists from institutions outside of India to listen to a lecture delivered online, ask questions and participate in discussions. It is unclear to the Academy, whether such events will be considered an ‘international’ (one), and prior clearance needs to be sought. If so, it is tantamount to obtaining clearance for all collective scientific events, which will lead to a complete halt on all topical scientific discussions within India, since a large number of applications would be waiting for approval at any point of time and timely clearance of applications will not be obtained,” Majumder wrote.

His letter also points out that the order is applicable only to government institutions. “This imposes a severe constraint on scientific pursuits in public, but not in private institutions. The Academy considers this inappropriate,” he wrote.

Speaking to the media, Majumder said webinars and online events had opened new horizons for the country’s scientists, especially the younger ones and students. “It used to be extremely difficult to invite a Nobel laureate, for example, for your event. For the webinars, however, even smaller and lesser known institutes can invite and listen to the most renowned subject experts.”

But the new rules, he wrote, “will impede the growth of educational opportunities and interest in science for the younger generation in India.”

Chandrima Shaha, a biologist at the Delhi-based National Institute of Immunology who is president of the Indian National Science Academy, told The Indian Express: “On behalf of Indian National Science Academy, I have also sent a letter to the Education Minister, supporting the ideas expressed in Majumder’s letter.” Majumder said he would not seek government approval for the upcoming events that he was organizing.

“We are doing a series of events on Gandhian science. These do not involve any discussion on internal matters, as I understand it, or any other thing mentioned in the government order. So, there is no need to seek prior approval,” he said.

Majumder’s letter was copied to K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and Sanjay Dhotre, Minister of State for Education. The Indian Express contacted the offices of Raghavan and Pokhriyal but they were unavailable for comment.

India Issues New Guidelines For International Arrivals

February 24, 2021November 8, 2022 Staff ReporterImmigration, Tourism, Travel 0

The Government of India has refreshed its guidelines for international arrival in a bid to curb the spread of the coronavirus, with a specific focus on those arriving from the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa.

Which international passengers are these new guidelines applicable to?

These new Standard Operating Procedures are applicable for all incoming international travelers coming in from the UK, Brazil or South Africa transiting through flights originating from the UK, Europe and Middle East. The broader categorization for these locations has been done because there are no direct flights between India, and Brazil and South Africa; and most of the passengers arriving from these countries arrive through transiting flights from Europe or Middle East.

What are the guidelines for international passengers arriving from these places?

In addition to the usual procedures of filing out a self-declaration form and submitting it on the Air Suvidha portal at http://www.newdelhiairport.in, those arriving on flights from the UK, Europe and the Middle East will have to get an RT-PCR test done prior to their flight and will be mandatorily subjected to self-paid confirmatory molecular tests on arrival at the Indian port of entry. If the outcome of these tests at the airport is negative, the passengers have to undergo home quarantine for seven days and then get re-tested. If they again test negative, they must self-monitor their health for another seven days. However, in case they test positive at any stage after arrival, they will be put in isolation and the treatment protocols will be applicable.

What do passengers needs to keep in mind?

For passengers taking onward flights to smaller airports after arriving at one of the international hubs in India like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi, etc it will be mandatory to declare their final destination while filling out the self-declaration form prior to taking the flight. Upon arrival at the port of entry, like all other passengers in this category, they will have to go through the mandatory self-paid confirmatory molecular tests, and will be allowed on their connecting flights only if they test negative. Therefore, the government has recommended that for all those taking connecting flights within India, there should be a gap of at least 6-8 hours between the two flights. For example, if someone taking a flight from Johannesburg to Ranchi via Dubai and Delhi, there should be at least 6-8 hours of time between the flight arriving into Delhi from Dubai and the one departing from Delhi to Ranchi.

How will passengers arriving from Brazil, the UK and South Africa be identified?

The government has asked airlines to identify the international travellers arriving from or transiting through United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa (during past 14 days) and segregate them in-flight or while disembarking to facilitate the authorities to follow the due protocol in respect of these travellers. The immigration officers of these airports will also ensure identification of travellers from their passports, who originated or transited from the UK, Brazil and South Africa during past 14 days.

What about other international passengers?

For other passengers not falling in this category, the rules remain the same and they will be subject to the existing exemptions and quarantine norms upon arrival. However, all those who came in contact of travelers arriving from UK, South Africa and Brazil who test positive (either at the airport or subsequently during home quarantine period), shall be subjected to institutional quarantine in separate quarantine centers and would be tested on the seventh day (or earlier if develop symptoms). These will supersede all guidelines issued since August 2, 2020.

“This Standard Operating Procedure shall be valid w.e.f. 22nd February 2021 (23.59 Hrs IST) till further orders,” the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a statement on Wednesday.

The guideines have been divided in three sections based on the origin of travel.

All international travellers except those coming through flights originating from United Kingdom, Europe and Middle East will be required to submit a self-declaration form on the online ‘Air Suvidha’ portal before the scheduled travel.

They would also need to upload a negative Covid-19 RT-PCR test report. This test should have been conducted within 72 hours prior to undertaking the journey.

“Each passenger shall also submit a declaration with respect to authenticity of the report and will be liable for criminal prosecution, if found otherwise,” the guidelines said.

According to the guidelines, all international travellers coming or transiting through flights originating from the United Kingdom, Europe and Middle East have to additionally submit a Self-Declaration Form (SDF) for Covid on the online ‘Air Suvidha’ portal before the scheduled travel and will be required to declare their travel history of the past 14 days.

“While filling SDF, apart from providing all other information required in the SDF, passengers need to select: Whether they plan to disembark at the arrival airport or take further flights to reach their final destination in India.”

“Based on this selection, the receipt of SDF will display ‘T’ (Transit) in easily readable and bigger font than other text. The passengers will need to display this receipt to the state authority or government officials at the airport for segregation.”

As per the guidelines, travelers from the UK, Brazil and South Africa taking connecting flights from the international airport they land at will have to give a sample at designated area and exit the airport only after confirmation of negative test report which may take 6-8 hours.

“Those transit travelers from UK, Brazil and South Africa who are found negative on testing at the airport shall be allowed to take their connecting flights and would be advised quarantine at home for 7 days and regularly followed up by the concerned state or district IDSP. These travelers shall be tested after 7 days and if negative, released from quarantine, and continue to monitor their health for a further 7 days.” (IANS)

Preeti Sinha Is UNCDF Executive Secretary

February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Women 0

An Indian American investment and development banker has been appointed as the Executive Secretary of UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).

The New York-headquartered organization named Preeti Sinha has one of its highest leadership ranks in the institution. Her tenure as UNCDF Executive Secretary commenced on Monday, February 15.

In a statement, it said that she will “oversee the organization’s efforts to deliver scalable impact in order to make the international financial architecture work for the world’s frontier and pre-frontier markets; with a specific emphasis on supporting sustainable development for women, youth, small and medium-sized enterprises, smallholder farmers, and other traditionally underserved communities.”

Sinha said her goal would be to make ‘C’ in UNCDF to be “highly catalytic in mobilizing manifold the public and private finance for the LDCs it serves and in developing a new era of engagement with capital markets in 2021 and onwards.”

Sinha succeeds Judith Karl, who retired in February after concluding her 30-year career in the United Nations, the agency said.

Welcoming Sinha, UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner said: “UNCDF’s support for the world’s Least Developed Countries is critical, and I look forward to continuing the strong partnership between our organizations into the future.

Sinha will lead UNCDF’s work to harness the untapped growth potential of the LDCs, to enable and empower communities, local governments and small businesses to address the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic while building more resilient and inclusive economies, the agency said.

As Executive Secretary, Sinha will oversee UNCDF’s last mile’ finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.

She has three decades of global experience across investment and development finance during which she managed institutional public and private development capital.

The UNCDF statement said Sinha served as CEO and President of FFD Financing for Development LLC, a specialist development finance firm in Geneva, focusing on resource mobilization, donor relations, innovative capital markets, partnerships, strategy, business development, and impact investment advisory to finance the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Previously, she managed the YES Global Institute, a practicing private sector think-tank for socio-economic development in New Delhi, building the impact investment ecosystem in India, the agency said, adding that she also served in senior resource mobilization roles at the African Development Bank.

Sinha graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Executive Education program in Public Financial Management. She holds a Master’s in Global Leadership from the World Economic Forum and a Master’s in Public and Private Management (MPPM)/MBA from the Yale School of Management.

She is an alumnus of Dartmouth College, where she completed her Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Computer Science. UNCDF “makes public and private finance work for the world’s 46 least developed countries (LDCs) to harness their untapped growth potential.”

Its program “help to empower women, and are designed to catalyze larger capital flows from the private sector, national governments and development partners, for maximum impact towards the internationally agreed developments goals.

Bitcoin Hits $1 Trillion Market Cap, Soars To Another Record High

February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterBusiness, Finance/Economy 0

The world’s most popular cryptocurrency jumped to an all-time high above $54,000, setting it on course for a weekly jump of more than 11%. It has surged roughly 64% so far this month and was last up 5.5% at $54,405.

All digital coins combined have a market cap of around $1.7 trillion.(REUTERS)

Bitcoin touched a market capitalization of $1 trillion as it hit yet another record high on Friday, countering analyst warnings that it is an “economic side show” and a poor hedge against a fall in stock prices.

Bitcoin’s gains have been fueled by signs it is gaining acceptance among mainstream investors and companies, from Tesla and Mastercard to BNY Mellon.

All digital coins combined have a market cap of around $1.7 trillion.

“If you really believe there’s a store of value in bitcoin, then there’s still a lot of upside,” said John Wu, president of AVA Labs, an open-source platform for creating financial applications using blockchain technology.

“If you look at gold, it has a market cap $9 or $10 trillion. Even if bitcoin gets to half of gold’s market cap, that still growth of 4X, or $200,000. So I don’t know when it stops rising,” he added.

Still, many analysts and investors remain skeptical of the patchily regulated and highly volatile digital asset, which is little used for commerce.

Analysts at JP Morgan said bitcoin’s current prices were well above estimates of fair value. Mainstream adoption increases bitcoin’s correlation with cyclical assets, which rise and fall with economic changes, in turn reducing benefits of diversifying into crypto, the investment bank said in a memo.

“Crypto assets continue to rank as the poorest hedge for major drawdowns in equities, with questionable diversification benefits at prices so far above production costs, while correlations with cyclical assets are rising as crypto ownership is mainstreamed,” JP Morgan said.

Bitcoin is an “economic side show,” it added, calling innovation in financial technology and the growth of digital platforms into credit and payments “the real financial transformational story of the Covid-19 era.”

Other investors this week said bitcoin’s volatility presents a hurdle for it to become a widespread means of payment.

On Thursday, Tesla boss Elon Musk – whose tweets have fueled bitcoin’s rally – said owning the digital coin was only a little better than holding cash. He also defended Tesla’s recent purchase of $1.5 billion of bitcoin, which ignited mainstream interest in the digital currency.

Bitcoin proponents argue the cryptocurrency is “digital gold” that can hedge against the risk of inflation sparked by massive central bank and government stimulus packages designed to counter Covid-19.

Yet bitcoin would need to rise to $146,000 in the long-term for its market cap to equal the total private-sector investment in gold via exchange-traded funds or bars and coins, according to JP Morgan.

Swati Mohan At NASA’s Perseverance Rover Mission

February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterScience, Women 0

When NASA’s Perseverance rover gently touched down on the surface of Mars on Thursday after seven months in space, it was an Indian-American named Dr. Swati Mohan, who first confirmed that the rover had survived a particularly tricky plunge into the Martian atmosphere.

“Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life,” a calm and composed bindi-clad Mohan announced soon after the rover landed, as cheers erupted in NASA’s mission control room in California.

Mohan, who successfully spearheaded the development of attitude control and the landing system for the rover, was among the team of scientists behind the historic mission. The attitude control system is responsible for pointing the rover in the direction it needs to be and also helps figure out where the spacecraft is oriented in space.

The Cornell graduate has been associated with the Perseverance Mars Mission since its inception and has been part of a number of other NASA missions over the years. Notably, she also worked on NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn.

On Thursday, Mohan made history yet again, when she steered the controls and landing system of the rover and navigated a rather difficult touchdown, while the whole world watched with bated breath.

The NASA scientist first emigrated from India to the United States when she was just a year old. Most of her childhood was spent in the Northern Virginia-Washington DC area. Mohan traces her love for space back to the American science fiction series ‘Star Trek’, which she first watched at the age of 9. While she wanted to become a paediatrician until she was 16, she later decided to become an engineer and pursue her interest in space exploration.

Not only is Mohan a pivotal player in the effort to determine whether there was ever life on the red planet; she’s also a reflection of the progress NASA has made in reflecting the nation it represents.

Her passion for space started with ‘Star Trek’

Mohan has been interested in space ever since she saw her first “Star Trek” television episode at age 9. It opened up her world to the beauty and expanse of the universe.

“I remember thinking ‘I want to do that. I want to find new and beautiful places in the universe,'” she recalled in a Q&A on NASA’s website. “The vastness of space holds so much knowledge that we have only begun to learn.”

Still, she thought she would grow up to become a pediatrician. It wasn’t until she took her first physics class at age 16 that she began considering a career in engineering, which would allow her to follow her childhood dreams of exploring space.

Mohan went on to study mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University, followed by a masters degree and doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Eventually, she landed at NASA.

Before her work on Perseverance, Mohan was a part of space exploration efforts such as Cassini, a spacecraft that unearthed countless discoveries about Saturn, and GRAIL, a mission that sent twin spacecraft around the moon.

She started working on the Mars 2020 mission in 2013, and ultimately became the lead engineer for guidance, navigation and controls operations. She helmed the mission’s attitude control system, which helps make sure the spacecraft is heading in the direction it needs to be.

“During the cruise phase heading toward Mars, our job is to figure out how we are oriented, make sure the spacecraft is pointed correctly in space (solar arrays to sun, antenna to Earth), and maneuver the spacecraft to get it where we want to go,” Mohan explained in a NASA Q&A. “During entry, descent, and landing on Mars, GN&C determines the position of the spacecraft and commands the maneuvers to help it land safely.”

And on Thursday, she was one of two voices heard in the control room and around the world — explaining major milestones in NASA’s first mission to search for signs of life on another planet.

“I’ve been on Perseverance longer than I’ve been at any school,” Mohan told the newspaper Florida Today. “I’ve been on Perseverance longer than my younger daughter is alive. It’s just taken up such a large portion of my life for so long.”

This was a diverse mission

It wasn’t just Mohan, either. The Perseverance rover mission was diverse by a number of measures: race, gender and sexuality. That the team behind the historic spacecraft included folks like landing lead Allen Chen, and engineers such as Moogega Cooper, Cj Giovingo and Gregorio Villar, shows it was representative of the nation’s demographics.

That array of names and faces is a sign of the progress NASA has made since it was founded in 1958. White men were long seen as the face of the space exploration program, despite significant contributions from women and people of color over the years. The agency had only ever selected White men as astronauts until 1978, when it admitted a class that included the first female, first African American and first Asian American astronauts.

There is still progress to be made, but NASA’s workforce now looks much more like the nation. Of the more than 17,000 people who work for NASA, 72% are White, 12% are Black, 8% are Asian American or Pacific Islander, 7% are Hispanic or Latino, 1% are American Indian or Alaska Native and less than 1% are more than one race, according to agency data

Rover Touches Down On Mars In Search Of Past Life Form

February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterScience 0

Nasa’s Perseverance, the most advanced robotic rover ever sent to Mars, touched down safely on an ancient lakebed in the Jezero Crater on the Red Planet on Thursday, seven months after it was launched from Florida. NASA dubbed the spacecraft’s descent and landing during a complex series of man oeuvres “the seven minutes of terror”.

The robotic vehicle sailed through space for nearly seven months, covering 293m miles (472m km) before piercing the Martian atmosphere at 12,000mph (19,000km/h) to begin its approach to touchdown on the planet’s surface.

The six-wheeled Perseverance, weighing about 1,025 kilograms, will search for signs of past organisms in the first life hunt conducted on the Martian surface since NASA’s twin Viking landers ceased operations in the early 1980s. Note: Perseverance is focused on life forms from the distant past.

Jezero Crater is a good bet, explains Space.com, as it has hosted a lake the size of Lake Tahoe long ago and also sports an ancient river delta. Perseverance will collect about 40 samples from promising sites and seal them inside special tubes. This material will then be brought back to Earth by a joint NASA-European Space Agency campaign, perhaps as early as 2031.

Perseverance’s payload also includes demonstration projects that could help pave the way for eventual human exploration of Mars, including a device to convert the carbon dioxide into pure oxygen. Such equipment, if scaled up, could help humanity get a foothold on Mars down the road, NASA said.

Another round of cheers and applause erupted in the control room as the images of the surface arrived minutes after touchdown. Partially obscured by a dust cover, the first picture was a view from one of the Perseverance’s hazard cameras. It showed the flat, rocky surface of the Jezero crater.

A second image taken by a camera on board the spacecraft showed a view from behind the rover of the Jezero crater. The rover appeared to have touched down about 32 metres (35 yards) from the nearest rocks.

“It really is the beginning of a new era,” Nasa’s associate administrator for science, Thomas Zurbuchen, said earlier in the day during Nasa’s webcast of the event.

A Full Year Of Americans’ Life Expectancy Lost Due To Covid

February 24, 2021February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterEconomy, Lifestyle 0

Life expectancy in the United States fell by a full year in the first six months of 2020, the federal government reported on Thursday, the largest drop since World War II and a grim measure of the deadly consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

Life expectancy is the most basic measure of the health of a population, and the stark decline over such a short period is highly unusual and a signal of deep distress. The drop comes after a troubling series of smaller declines driven largely by a surge in drug overdose deaths. A fragile recovery over the past two years has now been wiped out.

The data gives the first full picture of the pandemic’s effect on American expected life spans, which dropped to 77.8 years from 78.8 years in 2019. It also showed a deepening of racial and ethnic disparities: Life expectancy of the Black population declined by 2.7 years in the first half of 2020, slicing away 20 years of gains. The life expectancy gap between Black and white Americans, which had been narrowing, is now at six years, the widest it has been since 1998.

“I knew it was going to be large but when I saw those numbers, I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” Elizabeth Arias, the federal researcher who produced the report, said of the racial disparity. Of the drop for the full population, she said, “We haven’t seen a decline of that magnitude in decades.”

Still, unlike the drop in life expectancy caused by the long-running, complex problem of drug overdoses, this one, driven largely by Covid-19, is not likely to last as long because deaths from the virus are easing and the population is slowly getting vaccinated. The last time a pandemic caused a major decline in life expectancy was 1918, when hundreds of thousands of Americans died from the flu pandemic. Life expectancy declined by a whopping 11.8 years from 1917 to 1918, Dr. Arias said, bringing average life spans down to 39 years. But it fully rebounded the following year as deaths eased.

Data released by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC) has revealed that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused a decline of one year in the life expectancy of Americans during the first half of 2020 as the first wave of novel coronavirus hit the country. This is the biggest fall in life expectancy in the US since World War 2.

Life expectancy at birth is defined as the number of years a baby born today can expect to live. A baby born between January-June 2020 in the US had a life expectancy of 77.8 years, which is a full year shorter than the 78.8 years a baby born in 2019 is expected to live. In terms of gender divide, it was 75.1 years for males and 80.5 years for females.

The hardest hit has been the Black community, which saw a drop of 2.7 years in their life expectancy, to 72, followed by the Hispanics whose life expectancy declined 1.9 years to 79.9 years and Whites, who saw a drop of 0.8 years in their life expectancy to 78. The 6 year glaring chasm between the life expectancy of the Blacks and the Whites reverses a trend of narrowing the gap since 1993. There was no preliminary data for Asians and Native Americans

Uninsured Rates Among Young People Dropped Under ACA: Urban Institute From PIERCE Healthcare

February 24, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Health 0

Young adults were among the most likely to be uninsured prior to the Affordable Care Act, but the law’s Medicaid expansion had a significant impact on those rates, according to a new study.

Research published by Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank, this week shows the uninsured rate for people aged 19 to 25 declined from 30% to 16% between 2011 and 2018, while Medicaid enrollment for this population increased from 11% to 15% in that window.

The coverage increases were felt most keenly between 2013 and 2016, when many of the ACA’s key tenets were carried out, including Medicaid expansion and the launch of the exchanges, according to the study.

“Before the ACA, adolescents in low-income households often aged out of eligibility for public health insurance coverage through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program as they entered adulthood,” the researchers wrote. “Further, young adults’ employment patterns made them less likely than older adults to have an offer of employer-sponsored insurance coverage.”

States that expanded Medicaid saw greater declines in the number of young people without insurance, the study found.

On average, the uninsured rates among young people declined from nearly 28% in 2011 to 11% in 2018, according to the analysis. In non-expansion states, however, the uninsured rate decreased from about 33% to nearly 21%.

In expansion states, Medicaid enrollment for people aged 19 to 25 rose from 12% in 2011 to close to 21%, according to the study, while enrollment in non-expansion states remained flat.

Urban’s researchers estimate that Medicaid expansion is linked to a 3.6 percent point decline in uninsurance among young people overall, and had the highest impact on young Hispanic people. Uninsurance decreased by 6 percentage points among Hispanic young people, the study found, and that population had the largest uninsured rate prior to the ACA.

“The effects of Medicaid expansion on young adults’ health insurance coverage and health care access provide evidence of the initial pathways through which Medicaid expansions could improve young adults’ overall health and trajectories of health throughout adulthood,” the researchers wrote.

“Beyond coverage and access to preventive care, Medicaid expansion may affect young adults’ health care use in ways not examined in our report. Thus, ensuring young adults have health insurance coverage and access to affordable care is a critical first step toward long-term health,” they wrote.

Judicial defeats

Where would vaccine passports be used?

How would vaccine passports work?

I have a paper that says I am vaccinated. Shouldn’t that be enough proof?

How long will it take before vaccine passports are widespread?

Isn’t it unfair to require vaccine passports when not everyone can get one, or wants to get one?

Ok, I’m fully vaccinated, I downloaded the app, and I’ve booked my tickets. Can I throw away my mask?

TheUNN Corporation

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