The Indian Catholic priest and astrophysics researcher who found conclusive evidence of a long lost galaxy, the third biggest after Andromeda and the Milky Way, said that like many others before him he nearly gave up on the search.
Speaking to the media from the University of Michigan USA, where he made the discovery, Fr Richard D’Souza said the journey seemed destined for disappointment until they made the breakthrough.
“People had given up on this and had moved to other problems. We kept plodding along, and finally we had a breakthrough. We realised that we had to unlearn and abandon so many things we thought we knew,” Fr D’Souza said.
Part of the problem lay in the fact that a galaxy like Andromeda was expected to have consumed hundreds of its smaller companions. The researchers thought this would make it difficult to learn about any single one of them.
More importantly this discovery and its method will now pave the way for the discovery of other galaxies that have been cannibalized by other larger galaxies.
“We knew we could recover some information from the existing data, but it also gave us a way forward to solving similar problems with other galaxies,” he said.
Using new computer simulations, the scientists were able to understand that even though many companion galaxies were consumed by Andromeda, most of the stars in the Andromeda’s outer faint halo were mostly contributed by shredding a single large galaxy.
D’Souza, a Jesuit priest who hails from Goa’s Mapusa town and is a staff astronomer attached to the Vatican observatory in Rome, is currently pursuing his post-doctoral research at the University of Michigan’s Department of Astronomy.
He along with fellow researcher Eric Bell hit upon conclusive evidence of galaxy named M32p that was “shredded and cannibalised” by the Milky Way’s galactic neighbour Andromeda about two billion years ago.
This disrupted galaxy was the third-largest member of the local group of galaxies, after the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. Using computer models, D’Souza and Bell were able to piece together this evidence, revealing this long-lost sibling. Their findings were published in Nature Astronomy earlier this month.
Discovering and studying this decimated galaxy will help astronomers understand how disk galaxies like the Milky Way evolve and survive large mergers. “This project was a big risk, but I am glad it paid off. The main thing is that we learned a lot, and we had great fun doing the project,” he said.
Their discovery could alter the traditional understanding of how galaxies evolve. The duo realized that the Andromeda’s disk survived an impact with a massive galaxy, which would question the common wisdom that such large interactions would destroy disks and form an elliptical galaxy.
The timing of the merger may also explain the thickening of the disk of the Andromeda galaxy as well as a burst of star formation two billion years ago, a finding which was independently reached by French researchers earlier this year.
The Indian-American community is punching way below its weight in philanthropy, despite having the highest per capita income of any ethnic group in the U.S., a comprehensive survey has found. The Indiaspora Community Engagement Survey, conducted by Dalberg Advisors, was released in conjunction with Indiaspora’s all-day philanthropic summit held at Georgetown University on July 17.
One of its major findings was that while its volunteerism is double that of the national average, when it comes to giving, the community’s “giving gap” was in the range of $2 billion to $3 billion, hardly 1.5 percent compared to the national average of 4 percent. The survey noted that while Indian-Americans are keen philanthropic volunteers, they lag in financial donations.
A survey of Indian-Americans who contribute both time and money to charitable activities has set leaders in the community thinking about how to target the potential of this high-achieving group, which also nevertheless has its own needy population.
Though 90 percent of the respondents in the “Indian American Community Engagement Survey” commissioned by the advocacy non-profit, Indiaspora, surveyed those who were already donors, skewing the results somewhat, the survey’s main finding could help target strategies for making a bigger impact nationally and locally.
The survey revealed that Indian-Americans volunteer significant time toward philanthropic causes but that a large money “giving gap” exists between the potential and the actual – that they were meeting $1 billion of their $3 billion potential for annual giving.
Indiaspora’s summit, “For Givers, Doers, and Thinkers,” explored whether Indian-Americans are good or poor givers, particularly even in alignment with the causes the community is most passionate about. Discussions were also permeated by the motivations and self-reported giving behavior.
In his welcoming remarks, Indiaspora founder and chairman M.R. Rangaswami, called the group a “philanthropic catalyst. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur and angel investor said: “We are in the early stages of strategically planning what we should do to move the needle — which is to say, increase the amount of Indian-American philanthropic giving in America and to India, and make it more effective.”
“At over $3 billion dollars annually, the giving potential of Indian-Americans is enormous,” said Dalberg Advisors’ regional director for the Americas, Joe Dougherty. He noted that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation distributes $4 billion to $5 billion across the entire globe every year. “Imagine the kind of impact the diaspora could create if they met their giving potential. We hope that the results of this study help galvanize philanthropic efforts among this important — and influential — community.”
The India-born, U.S.-raised Totapally — the point person behind the survey — noted that after a stint on Wall Street she “decided I was done with corporate greed and moved to Mumbai to work with Dalberg and dedicate my life” to philanthropy. Her PowerPoint presentation demonstrated that the Indian-American community contributes about $1 billion annually, much below its conservative giving potential of $3 billion to $4 billion annually.
Drs. Pallavi and Kiran Patel of Florida, began giving to higher education institution, capping it with setting up the Dr. Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions at the University of South Florida as far back as 2005. The couple’s foundation has committed hundreds of millions since then, among them to set up a School of Medicine and School of Health Sciences at USD.
Deepak Raj, founder and managing director of Raj Associates in New Jersey, is chairman of the non-profit Pratham USA. He established a chair in Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, recently funded the creation of Impact Project and Impact Fund to support Indian-American political aspirants. He believes Indian-American philanthropy has grown exponentially in the last 5 to 10 years, even in his own engagements. “So as time goes on, it will reflect the giving of the rest of America. I see very positive trends and am very optimistic about the direction of giving,” he told News India Times, adding that he has seen the next generation which has had the benefit of a good education and “terrific” opportunities, rising to give more.
Karthick Ramakrishnan, associate professor at University of California, Riverside, and founder of AAPIdata, says random sample surveys done by his organization showed the rates of giving were lower for Asian Americans compared to the national average, which can be explained by their more recent immigration. Donations to religious organizations were higher than to other causes, he found.
The Indiaspora survey, despite its limitations, said Ramakrishnan who was an advisor for it, is a very important step in trying to get Indians to pay attention to philanthropy, which is not just about money but also about expertise. Shikha Bhatnagar, executive director of the California-based non-profit South Asian Network, told News India Times she has seen the “incredible” amount of money that organizations are able to raise too send back to India, and was “astonished” with the gap between money for India and that for U.S. organizations. She launched the U.S. office of Akshay Patra Foundation, and was executive director of Teach for India in Pune, and has two decades of programming, advocacy, and policy experience on global and domestic issues. Bhatnagar contends many Indian- Americans believe they came with little and built their lives so why can’t others do the same, unaware of problems within the community.
As M.R. Rangaswami, founder of Indiaspora, said at the July 17 conference on philanthropy among Indian- Americans, “… We are in the early stages of strategically planning what we should do to move the needle – which is to say, increase the amount of Indian American philanthropic giving in America and to India, and make it more effective.”
Actress Priyanka Chopra, 36, and pop singer Nick Jonas, 25, are engaged after two months of dating, the US media has reported amidst news that the former Miss World has opted out of Bollywood film “Bharat” for a “very special” reason.
“Bharat” director Ali Abbas Zafar announced on Twitter that Priyanka is no longer going to be a part of the Salman Khan-starrer movie, and that the decision came in “the Nick of time”, making a clear pun on her relationship with Jonas.
“Yes, Priyanka Chopra is no more part of ‘Bharat’ and and the reason is very very special, she told us in the Nick of time about her decision and we are very happy for her… Team ‘Bharat’ wishes Priyanka Chopra loads of love and happiness for life,” Zafar tweeted.
While neither Priyanka nor Jonas have made an official announcement, US media widely reported about their engagement. People.com quoted a source as saying the couple got engaged on Priyanka’s 36th birthday on July 18 when the two were in London.
Jonas closed down a Tiffany store in New York City to buy an engagement ring, according to the insider. “They are so happy,” the source told people.com.
A source close to Jonas said the singer is “very, very happy.”
“His friends and family have never seen him like this, and they’re all really excited for him. He’s definitely very serious about her,” the source added. Priyanka and Jonas have been making several appearances together, often walking hand in hand.
Earlier this year, they walked on the Met Gala red carpet, making everyone wonder whether they are dating. At the Met Gala, Priyanka had just laughed off a romance with Jonas, insisting they simply shared an agent and were friends. She had also said they went to the Met Gala together as they were both wearing ensembles by Ralph Lauren.
Later, they walked arm in arm at Jonas’ cousin’s wedding in New Jersey, apart from being seen roaming around on a boat with friends over America’s Memorial Day weekend in May.
Priyanka was photographed cuddling up to him in a group photograph while they attended a Dodgers baseball game in New York together the same month.
Priyanka was also seen celebrating July 4 — the American Independence Day — with Nick’s family, and Nick visited India last month with the “Quantico” actress to meet her friends and family. The couple had also been sporting similar gold rings.
The India Chapter of Women in Aviation (WIA) International, in association with the Airport Authority of India (AAI), celebrated Girls in Aviation Day at Agartala Airport in Tripura on July 26. With the vision to encourage girls to take up aviation subjects and explore career opportunities in related industries, the initiative is aimed at showcasing opportunities in the aviation and aerospace sectors. This initiative also aligns with the Government of India’s Skills India initiative.
As part of the program, Women in Aviation International (India Chapter) invited 50 students from various schools for a tour of Agartala Airport. Visiting students were given an opportunity to explore, learn, and discover the various aspects of aviation and aerospace such as air traffic controller, airline dispatch, pilot, aviation maintenance technician, aeronautical engineer, or aviation management. In addition, the girl students were given a tour of the ATC Tower, Airside, Terminal Building, and AOCC, and all their queries and questions were answered by the officials working in the respective departments.
Speaking on the occasion, Mrs. Radha Bhatia, President of Women in Aviation International (India Chapter), shared: “This is the third year that the WAI India Chapter is celebrating ‘Girls in Aviation Day,’ and we are delighted to host the same at Agartala. This day is celebrated for the young girls to encourage them to choose aviation as a viable career opportunity. World over, India has the maximum number of female pilots, but there are many other avenues that are still unknown. With this celebration, our aim is to see girls from the state of Tripura explore exciting careers available to them as engineers, air traffic controllers, and dozens of other jobs within the aviation [field].”
“We will continue our endeavor to introduce young girls to role models and educate them in a fun and supportive atmosphere. We are very fortunate to be able to partner with Airport Authority of India for this initiative. Their efforts in leading youth into STEM careers is truly commendable,” added Mrs. Bhatia.
Post the airport tour, the students were given a small presentation about the industry and its intricacies. Also, a representative from the Women in Aviation India Chapter – Ambalika Saikia, Head of MAAS (Meet and Greet Service) BWFS India – organized an impromptu quiz competition addingt to the delight of the students who also won small tokens as prizes. Students also received an opportunity to interact with Shri Tathagata Roy, Governor of Tripura, who was the chief guest for the event, as well as Mr. S. D. Barman, Airport Director at Agartala Airport.
Women in Aviation International India Chapter is a non-profit organization dedicated to the encouragement and advancement of women in all aviation career fields and interests. The India Chapter provides networking, mentoring, and scholarship opportunities for women who are striving for challenging and fulfilling careers in the aviation and aerospace industries.
It had become an article of investor faith on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley: Quarter after quarter, year after year, the world’s biggest technology companies would keep raking in new users and ever-higher revenue. And with that, their share prices would continue to march upward, sloughing off any stumbles.
This week, that myth was shattered. And investors responded Thursday by hammering the stock of Facebook, one of the world’s most valuable companies. Shares of the social media giant fell 19 percent, wiping out roughly $120 billion of shareholder wealth, among the largest one-day destruction of market value that a company has ever suffered.
Investors dumped Facebook shares after the company reported disappointing second-quarter earnings, in which the company warned of a sharp slowdown in sales growth in coming quarters along with rising spending on security and privacy enhancements.
The sudden drop also amounted to a test of the giant, technology-focused stocks that have carried the market for much of the year. Before Facebook’s tumble, more than half the returns in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index this year had been provided by just a handful of technology-related stocks, said Savita Subramanian, an equity strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
In recent years, investors — from individual traders to the world’s largest hedge funds — have snapped up shares in these companies, which include Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google’s parent company, Alphabet. These tech giants were viewed as having nearly unassailable revenue streams that could deliver profit growth regardless of economic conditions.
As a result, their share prices soared. This year alone Apple is up some 15 percent; Alphabet has gained more than 20 percent; Amazon has surged more than 50 percent; and Netflix is up nearly 90 percent.
Facebook’s stumble suggests that some of these stocks — as well as the broader market — could be particularly vulnerable if their financial results don’t live up to investor expectations.
Until Thursday, Facebook was enjoying enormous gains. The stock was up more than 23 percent for the year, before it reported earnings after Wednesday’s close. By Thursday afternoon, all of its gains for the year had vanished.
It was the details of Facebook’s report that seemed to spook investors. The company’s quarterly revenue fell slightly short of meeting the expectations of Wall Street analysts. And executives warned that the company would invest heavily in privacy and security, and that revenue growth would most likely slow in coming quarters.
Still, Facebook’s sharp drop seems to have had a limited effect on the broader market, which has shown signs of gaining traction in recent weeks as companies largely reported strong second-quarter earnings.
It’s quite possible that Facebook’s shares could recover and continue to climb. In March, the company’s handling of user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal contributed to a backlash against the size and reach of the biggest tech businesses and raised concerns that regulators may soon crack down on these firms. Shares of Facebook fell 17 percent in the days after news broke. By May, the company had erased those losses.
Still, the sheer size of Facebook’s fall on Thursday became a focus for investors. The decline in Facebook’s market value was roughly equivalent to the entire value of some of the country’s best-known companies, including McDonald’s, Nike and the industrial conglomerate 3M.
There are few examples of single-day losses so large. In September 2000, as the tech stock boom turned to bust, the chip maker Intel warned that its sales could slow, sending its stock price down by more than 20 percent. The rout knocked $91 billion off its market value in a day. Adjusted for inflation, that loss would be more than $130 billion in 2018 dollars, greater than the value Facebook lost on Thursday.
But given the vast market value of today’s tech giants, and the fact that 20 percent declines in share prices are not unheard-of, the size of the losses shouldn’t be surprising.
Apple is now worth more than $950 billion. Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft are not far behind, with market values of more than $800 billion. Even after the drop Thursday, Facebook is the fifth-largest publicly traded company, by market value, at more than $500 billion.
India stood a poor 100th among 119 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) that was released in October last year.
Decrying persisting malnutrition in the country at “unacceptable levels”, Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday last week called for making agriculture nutrition-sensitive to address the problem.
There is no improvement despite the efforts taken by successive governments at Centre and in various states, which is “quite distressing”, he said while addressing the National Consultation on Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition organised by MS Swaminathan Research Foundation.
“A considerable section of the population in our country suffers from malnutrition consisting of under-nutrition, hidden hunger caused by micronutrient deficiencies and obesity…We must make agriculture nutrition-sensitive and it is critical that we explicitly make this vital connection between agriculture and nutrition,” he said, as per a release.
His remarks came against the backdrop of three sisters that were found to have starved to death in east Delhi and doctors held severe malnutrition as the main cause for their deaths.
India stood a poor 100th among 119 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) that was released in October last year.
Naidu further said the central government has adopted The National Nutrition Strategy, which recognises the imperative need to have a relook at the agriculture policy.
He said Indian agriculture must diversify food production by moving away from mono-cropping of major cereals to a system that integrates a variety of food items including small millets, pulses, fruits, and vegetables.
“Millets like jowar, bajra, ragi and little millets like kutki, kodo, sawa, kangni and cheena are known to be nutrient-rich. Since cultivation of millets requires less water, efforts must be to promote their cultivation as part of crop rotation,” he said.
Naidu said that government, civil society, scientists and researchers must share knowledge and expertise with farmers to make agriculture sustainable and nutrition-rich.
Pope Francis on July 29, 2018, repeated his plea for an end to human trafficking, noting that Monday, July 30, is World Day Against the Trafficking of Persons, promoted by the United Nations.
His comments came after praying the noonday Angelus with a crowd of some 25,000 pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square. He had strong words on the subject:
“This plague reduces many men, women, and children to slavery for the purpose of labor and sexual exploitation, the sale of organs, of vagrancy and forced delinquency, also here, in Rome. Migration routes are also often used by traffickers and exploiters, to recruit new victims of trafficking. It’s the responsibility of all to denounce the injustices and to oppose firmly this shameful crime.”
Youth are in “a privileged place to encounter the survivors of human trafficking,” the Pope said Feb. 12. “Go to your parishes, to an association close to home, meet them, listen to them.”
Change starts with encounter, he said, so “don’t be afraid to encounter them. Open your hearts, let them enter, be ready to change.”
He urged youth who have been victims to speak out to others in order to help protect them and make them aware of the risks.
“Everyone who has been a victim of trafficking is an inexhaustible source of support for new victims and it’s important [to listen to them],” the Pope said, adding that “youth who have encountered organized crime can play a key role in describing the dangers.”
He also encouraged young people to overcome fear and learn the warning signs of trafficking.
Pope Francis spoke off-the-cuff Monday at a question-and-answer session falling a few days after the World Day of Reflection Against Human Trafficking.
During the encounter, Francis received questions from five youth – four women and one man – both migrants and non-migrants, who asked about how young people in the Church can fight the conditions in which trafficking thrives and how they can help other young people from falling into the illusions presented by traffickers.
Pope Francis stressed the importance of encounter. He thanked all the parishes, schools and institutions that listened to his 2015 appeal for every parish, shrine, religious community and monastery in Europe to welcome a family of refugees.
“I ask you present here today to work in favor of opening to the other, above all when they are wounded in their own dignity,” he said.
Social networks and media can also play a key role in helping to create these spaces, the Pope said, explaining that “the internet can offer great possibilities for encounter and solidarity among everyone, and this is a good thing, it’s a gift from God.”
However, these networks can also be misused, he said, noting that “for every instrument that is offered to us, the choice that man decides to make is fundamental.”
Underlying the scourge of human trafficking, the Pope said, is not only a significant amount of ignorance, but also “little will to understand the extent of the problem.”
This, he said, is because it touches our consciences: “A country that does or allows trafficking doesn’t like that this comes to light, because it would embarrass them a lot, so they cover it.”
Hypocrisy from those who condemn human trafficking while at the same time taking advantage of trafficked laborers or sex slaves presents a major obstacle to the abolition of trafficking, he said.
Speaking out against this can be an easier task for youth, the Pope said, because “they are less structured in their thought, less obscured by prejudices, more free to reason with their own mind. Youth don’t have anything to lose.”
He called trafficking a “crime against humanity” and a form of slavery which is “unfortunately increasingly widespread, which involves every country, even the most developed, and touches the most vulnerable people in society: women and young girls, children, the disabled, the most poor, whoever comes from situations of familial or social disintegration.”
State-owned carrier Air India has sought Rs 2121 crore ($309 million) of additional equity from the government for the fiscal year 2018-19 to make pending payments to its vendors, a source at the airline told Reuters on Monday.
Air India owes about Rs 1800 crore to its vendors, including lessors and banks that have demanded payment from the beleaguered airline, after the government’s unsuccessful efforts to find a buyer for its 76% stake.
The airline expects to receive the additional equity within the next 7 to 10 days after which it will be able to clear all dues, the source said, adding that this is above the 6.5 billion rupees it has already received for the year.
India last month shelved a plan to sell a majority stake in Air India due to lack of interest from bidders, in the latest setback in its ambitious efforts to rescue the ailing airline that has survived for years using taxpayer funds.
The government will continue to support the loss-making airline’s financial requirements while it works on alternatives, Junior Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha had said, without giving a specific timeline for a new plan.
Three banks and two aircraft leasing firms have served default notices on Air India over the last few weeks, the Business Standard newspaper reported earlier on Monday, raising concerns about the state-owned carrier’s finances and credit-worthiness.
San Francisco, United States-based Wells Fargo Trust Services and UAE’s state-owned Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) have sent letters of demand for pending rental payments, the newspaper said, citing sources
A DAE spokesman told Reuters that they were not owed $10 million by Alliance Air, and that they had not issued a notice of default to Alliance. Alliance Air is a unit of Air India that operates regional flights to smaller towns and cities in India. Wells Fargo could not be reached outside usual US business hours.
Three lenders from a 22-bank consortium have also written to Air India raising concerns that the company is turning into a non-performing asset, Business Standard said. The three banks are Standard Chartered Bank, Dena Bank and Bank of India Ltd.
The airline has received a notice from banks for non-payment of dues that is being looked into by the government, the source confirmed. A Standard Chartered spokesman in India declined to comment. Bank of India and Dena Bank did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Last week in a radio broadcast, hosts at NJ 101.5 repeatedly referred to New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal as “turban man,” and added, “If that offends you, then don’t wear the turban and maybe I’ll remember your name.” In response to these ignorant comments about Mr. Grewal and the Sikh community, the Sikh Coalition immediately urged for a public apology from the hosts and station, provided media resources on Sikhi for the entire radio station and offered cultural and religious sensitivity training for all staff members. As the station takes our guidance and recommendations, we will provide updates.
The Sikh Coalition’s media and communications rapid response work helped bring local and national attention to the media-amplified offensive language in a climate in which our communities are subject to discrimination, harassment and violence, including news coverage in the Associated Press, ABC News, NPR station WHYY, and PIX11. In addition, NJ.com published Executive Director Satjeet Kaur’s op-ed on turning this incident into an educational opportunity. The station moved to suspend the two hosts and issued a public apology to Mr. Grewal and the Sikh community.
“We applaud the station’s swift action in suspending the two radio hosts while conducting an investigation – not because the action was punitive, but because it sets a precedent for what is not acceptable in our society,” said Executive Director Satjeet Kaur in the op-ed. “This is especially important at a time when racism and xenophobia are becoming increasingly normalized.”
Earlier this year, Mr. Grewal made headlines as the first Sikh attorney general in the United States. His appointment joined a number of Sikhs achieving recent groundbreaking political successes across the United States, including in the states of New Jersey, Washington and California.
“We will continue to do whatever we can to ensure that the radio station is held responsible and that we turn this ugly incident into an opportunity for awareness and education,” said Senior Manager of Policy and Advocacy Sim J. Singh.
The Sikh Coalition continues our tireless work to combat bigotry in all its forms through legal, policy, education, media and community empowerment work.
According to the late cliometrician Angus Madison and other economic historians, the great divergence between the global North and South, between developed and developing countries, began around five centuries ago, from the beginning of the European, particularly Iberian colonial conquests.
From about two centuries ago, around the time of the Industrial Revolution, divergence accelerated with uneven productivity advances. During the 20th century, national level inequalities went down in many developed countries in the period after the First World War until around the 1970s with the rise of labour, peasant and other popular mobilizations.
Inequality, not only at the national level, but also at the international level, seems to affect the pattern of aggregate demand, particularly in developing countries, which in turn influences future investment and growth prospects and patterns.
Thus, the immediate post-Second World War period saw relatively high growth during what some Anglophone economists call the ‘Golden Age’, due to a combination of Keynesian policies at the national level in developed economies, and partially successful development policies in many newly-independent countries of Asia and Africa. However, this eventually came to an end in the 1970s for a variety of reasons.
Recent trends
Since then, inequalities have begun to grow again at the national level in many countries, but international divergence has declined in more recent decades. This recent convergence is due to significantly accelerated growth in some developing countries as expansion in some developed countries slowed. Among developing countries, growth was initially largely confined to East Asia and, to a lesser extent, South Asia, bypassing much of the rest of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Africa suffered a quarter-century of stagnation from the late 1970s until the beginning of this century when commodity prices rose once again and China began investing in the continent. There was at least one lost decade in Latin America in the 1980s, and arguably, a second one for many on the continent in the following decade.
Such variation needs to be recognized. The recent convergence overall obscures very mixed phenomena of greater national-level inequalities in many economies, but also some international convergence due to more rapid growth in some major developing economies.
However, this convergence has begun to slow again, following the collapse of commodity prices since late 2014. This initially began with petroleum, but eventually affected almost all other commodities, especially mineral prices, slowing the decade of growth in Africa.
Divergence
The recent phenomena which many term globalization are often linked to international economic liberalization, but the strengthening of property rights has also been important. This has not only consolidated traditional property rights, but also extended property rights in novel ways, e.g., ostensibly to clarify supposedly ambiguous entitlements.
These have involved not only national legislation, but also free trade agreements and investment treaties at the international level, e.g., to consolidate ostensible asset-related entitlements, including so called intellectual property rights.
While few economic commentators may openly advocate increasing inequality, or blatantly espouse divergence, the consequences of many policies and positions associated with the conventional wisdom tend to increase divergence. For example, agricultural trade liberalization has undermined productive potential as only rich countries can afford subsidies, which most developing countries cannot afford.
For a long time, Africa used to be a net food exporter until the 1980s. Since then, it has become a net food importer. With trade liberalization, Africa was supposed to realize its true potential. Instead, Africa has lost much of its existing productive potential, not only in manufacturing, but also in agriculture.
To make matters worse, African farmers cannot compete with subsidized food imports from the EU and the USA. For example, as US consumers have a strong preference for chicken breasts, wings and legs from the US are not only flooding the Americas, but increasingly, Africa and Asia.
It is also important to consider the prospects for possible convergence in the long term due to the increased availability and affordability of capital. Besides recent Chinese international financing initiatives, quantitative easing, other unconventional monetary policies, recycling of petrodollars and private East Asian capital, as well as novel, and often illicit international financial flows may transform the horizon of possibilities.
Not unlike the Cold War and the aftermath of 9/11, the resurgence of European ethno-populism in reaction to growing economically and politically driven immigration into developed Western economies has reminded the world of the squalid conditions still prevailing in much of the global South, especially in Africa.
Perhaps more importantly, geography, rather than class, is increasingly viewed by many as the major determinant of income and welfare levels, with vastly different living standards associated with location rather than educational qualifications, occupation or productivity.
Thus, without the prospect of rapid convergence, not only nationally between wealth classes, but also internationally between rich and poor nations, the failure of economic globalization to deliver on its implicit promise of liberalizing cross-border human migration will haunt international relations, human rights and political liberalism for some time to come.
Sam Brownback, United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, on July 24, 2018, called for action by governments, individuals, and activist organizations to work together to protect religious freedom around the world.
His remarks came in Washington in opening remarks to the first Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, sponsored by the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The event is July 24-26 and focuses on concrete outcomes that reaffirm international commitments to promote religious freedom and produce real, positive change. Participants include a broad range of stakeholders, including foreign ministers, international organization representatives, religious leaders, and civil society representatives, to discuss challenges, identify concrete ways to combat religious persecution and discrimination, and ensure greater respect for religious freedom for all.
“We need to use all the might, machinery, and moral authority we have to stop those nations and actors that trample on free souls,” Brownback said. “The lack of religious freedom anywhere is a threat to peace, prosperity, and stability everyone.”
The ambassador recalled a comment from the previous day during an event at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, when someone commented on how unimaginable evil is. But he said our job is to stop it.
“People around the world are being brutalized or killed for practicing their faith,” Brownback said. “This cannot be allowed to continue.”
In a July 4, 2018, speech in Rome, US Ambassador to the Vatican Calista Gingrich also stressed the importance of religious freedom, urging the Vatican and the United States to work together on this important issue.
“Today, millions of people around the world suffer under oppression and tyranny – deprived of freedom, security, and prosperity,” Gingrich said. “Faced with these great challenges, the United States and the Holy See share a deep and enduring commitment to advancing freedom and justice around the world.”
Brownback pointed out that the conference included people from every faith community: “everyone who cares about religious freedom and will join us in the cause. Religious freedom is a right given by God, a beautiful part of our human dignity.”
A number of political and human rights leaders are speaking at the event. Also on the agenda are several people who have survived religious persecution or who representing persons currently imprisoned.
“The right to believe or not believe is the most fundamental of freedoms,” said US Vice President Mike Pence on July 26, 2018. “When religious liberty is denied or destroyed, we know that other freedoms — freedom of speech, of press, assembly, and even democratic institutions themselves — are imperiled.”
His remarks came in Washington on the final day of the first Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, sponsored by the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The event ran July 24-26 and focused on concrete outcomes that reaffirm international commitments to promote religious freedom and produce real, positive change. Participants included a broad range of stakeholders, including foreign ministers, international organization representatives, religious leaders, and civil society representatives, to discuss challenges, identify concrete ways to combat religious persecution and discrimination, and ensure greater respect for religious freedom for all.
Pence singled out several examples of religious persecution currently happening around the world. In particular, he cited the situation in Nicaragua, which has been an ongoing concern of Pope Francis and the Vatican.
“The list of religious freedom violators is long; their crimes and oppressions span the width of our world,” Pence said. “Here in our own hemisphere, in Nicaragua, the government of Daniel Ortega is virtually waging war on the Catholic Church. For months, Nicaragua’s bishops have sought to broker a national dialogue following pro-democracy protests that swept through the country earlier this year.
But government-backed mobs armed with machetes, and even heavy weapons, have attacked parishes and church properties, and bishops and priests have been physically assaulted by the police.”
The vice president continued with an affirmation of the commitment to religious freedom and working with other nations to further its cause. “Since the earliest days of our nation, America has stood for religious freedom,” Pence said. “Our earliest settlers left their homes to set sail for a New World, where they could practice their faith without fear of persecution. Our forebears carved protections for religion into the founding charters and their early laws.
“And after this great nation secured our independence, the American Founders enshrined religious freedom as the first freedom in the Constitution of the United States. And America has always, and will always, lead the world by our example.”
The growing influence of doctors of Indian heritage is evident, as increasingly physicians of Indian origin hold critical positions in the healthcare, academic, research and administrative positions across the nation. With their hard work, dedication, compassion, and skills, they have thus carved an enviable niche in the American medical community. Nearly one in seven patients being treated across the United States are by physicians of Indian origin. Almost 10%-12% of medical students entering US schools are of Indian origin.
It’s not surprising that a new list of prominent physicians, especially in the New York region has several Indian American physicians. Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., which says its mission is to help consumers find the best healthcare, named numerous Indian-American physicians in its lists on ‘Top Doctors’ in New York in different specialties. The shorter, more exclusive list, was published in The New York Times Sunday Edition of the July 15 as a three-page supplement, in which six Indian-American physicians were identified among the 41 “Top Doctors’ in the region.
The youngest among the six is Dr. Purvi Parikh, president of the storied New York Allergy and Asthma Society, the oldest regional allergy society in the U.S. formed in 1937. Dr. Parikh, a specialist in allergy and immunology, is currently affiliated with NYU Langone Health. The other 5 featured in The Times include Dr. Roma Tickoo, a “Clinician educator” on the faculty at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, who has been on various lists of Castle Connolly, including in the category ‘Exceptional Women in Medicine 2017.
Cardiologist Dr. Samin K. Sharma who is dean of International Clinical Affiliations, and a professor of medicine and cardiology at Mount Sinai; Dr. Mayank Shukla, president at Harmony Center New York, who is board certified in Sleep Medicine, Peddiatric Critical Care Medicine, Pediatrics, and Pediatric Pulmonology; Dr. Vivek Maheshwari who specializes in gastrointestinal cancers; and Dr. Sheeraz Qureshi, an associate attending orthopedic surgeon at Hospital for Special Surgery and associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Kapil Chalil Madathil, an Indian American-led research team at Clemson University in South Carolina, is studying the dangers of viral videos on social that are leading to several deaths including suicides.
Industrial engineering assistant professor Kapil Chalil Madathil and his team of researchers will be analyzing these publicly available videos, from Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter and YouTube, and will interview those between the ages of 13 and 25 who have participated in these self-harming challenges. According to a press release, the funding for the project will be provided by the National Science Foundation.
Some of these challenges have encouraged participants to do random and weird tasks such as eat laundry detergent, set them on fire and stay awake for 48 hours.
This is the latest attempt to diminish the impact of these viral videos as while they may seem fun to teens, they have become a nightmare for parents as several deaths have occurred around the world.
“This will be the first empirical study to descriptively and critically analyze the content and potential harm posed by social media challenges, as well as identifying the characteristics that may contribute to their viral spread,” Madathil was quoted saying in the press release.
Madathil said the team decided to begin the project after they noticed several instances of self-harm caused from participating in such challenges, thus the project could lead to more research and ultimately to new ways of preventing suicides overall.
Social media sites have also begun to offer help to those who have taken up these self-harming challenges on social media sites. Twitter, Reddit and YouTube even bring up the phone number for The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
In the first phase of the study, the group from Clemson will collaborate with researchers at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham School of Medicine in Kerala, India as they interview the victims and the second phase of the study will analyze 250 posts from the five social media sites, according to a press release.
Pooja Jesrani, an Indian American will lead mission control for a variety of new operations at NASA, the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas along with Marcos Flores, Allison Bolinger, Adi Boulos, Rebecca Wingfield and Paul Konyha, according to a July 10 statement issued by NASA announcing its 2018 class of flight directors.
Jesrani was born in England and came to the U.S. as a child. She began interning with United Space Alliance before she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 2007.
While working with the alliance and NASA later on, Jesrani has supported the space station flight control team by managing the life support and motion control systems and has been a capsule communicator, speaking directly with astronauts who are in space.
Her recent work is to integrate mission operations for upcoming commercial crew flights. According to a NASA press release, the new flight directors will begin extensive training on flight control, vehicle systems, operational leadership and risk management, before they can start their mission.
“This is an outstanding group of future tactical leaders for the Flight Operations Directorate. We are excited to have them come on board,” Brian Kelly, director of Flight Operations at Johnson, was quoted saying in the press release.
The group will join the current 26 active flight directors and they will have the opportunity to oversee a variety of human spaceflight missions involving the International Space Station, including integrating American-made commercial crew spacecraft into the fleet of vehicles servicing the orbiting laboratory, as well as Orion spacecraft missions to the Moon and beyond.
They will also head teams of flight controllers, research and engineering experts, and support personnel around the world and make the real-time decisions critical to keeping NASA astronauts safe in space.
Former Indian American U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy was recently honored by the Association of Recovery in Higher Education, among 15 others.
Murthy served as the 19th U.S. Surgeon General during President Barack Obama’s administration from 2014 to 2017.
Murthy received the Spectrum Award for outstanding contributions to the advancement of recovery, at a July 9 event, themed “The Art of Recovery,” held at the University of Houston.
According to his website, in 2017, Murthy focused his attention on chronic stress and isolation as prevalent problems that have profound implications for health, productivity and happiness.
He then partnered with the Veterans Health Administration and led a meeting that brought together leading thinkers, researchers and practitioners to identify scientifically proven ways we can cultivate emotional well-being and fitness to help us thrive among the most challenging circumstances.
In addition to his role as America’s ‘top doctor’ as the vice admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, Murthy commanded a uniformed service of 6,600 public health officers, serving the most underserved and vulnerable populations in over 800 locations domestically and abroad.
Murthy received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and his medical degree and M.B.A. from Yale University.
Murthy completed his internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and later joined Harvard Medical School as faculty in internal medicine.
Trisha Shetty, founder and CEO of SheSays, a nonprofit that provides Indian women with the resources to act against sexual violence, is among the 12 rising social change-makers from around the world selected as the first class of Obama Foundation Scholars at Columbia University in Manhattan.
The university said in a release June 28 that the scholars from Asia, Africa, South America, South Asia, and Europe, have each shown a commitment to finding practical solutions to complex challenges facing society.
“When President Obama left office, he challenged us to believe — not in his ability to bring about change, but ours,” said Obama Foundation CEO David Simas. “Through our partnership with Columbia with this new scholars’ program and through all of the foundation’s work, we are living this call to action. I am incredibly impressed with the talented young leaders who will be joining Columbia and the Foundation this fall and looking forward to helping support and scale their work,” Simas said.
According to its website, SheSays aims to end gender based discrimination and advance women’s rights in India by engaging with the youth and activating them as agents of social change to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
“Equality, Safety and Autonomy should be a guaranteed right and reality for women around the world,” the organization says. Shetty holds India’s leaders to account as evident from a SheSays post on Facebook post April 15, which read – “”We are asking for accountability. We are asking for answers.” Our Founder, Trisha Shetty vehemently condemns all politicans who have failed the girls and women of this country.”
Portraying an activist grassroots agenda, the Facebook post goes on to say, “We cannot be mere bystanders anymore. We cannot let politicians get away with making abhorrent statements. We deserve more from our representatives. Speak up. Take to the streets. Find out where protests are taking place in your area and lend your voice and your support.”
The new, year-long academic program based at Columbia hopes to strengthen the expertise and knowledge of individuals who have demonstrated the ability to be transformative leaders in their communities, nations, and the world. The goals are consistent with the Obama Foundation’s mission to inspire, empower, and connect the next generation of civic leaders, the University says.
“When President Obama left office, he challenged us to believe — not in his ability to bring about change, but ours. Through our partnership with Columbia with this new Scholars program and through all of the Foundation’s work, we are living this call to action. I am incredibly impressed with the talented young leaders who will be joining Columbia and the Foundation this fall and looking forward to helping support and scale their work,” Obama Foundation CEO David Simas is quoted as saying in the press release.
The 12 Obama Foundation Scholars at Columbia University will have the opportunity to interact with the separate but affiliated Obama Foundation Scholars cohort based at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.
The program will include a core seminar led by Columbia faculty that will run the length of the academic year, an experiential learning component that will engage the Scholars in the work of policy development and implementation, involving the Obama Foundation and Columbia World Projects, an initiative designed to apply the best evidence-based academic research to the creation and application of practical solutions to real-world challenges and a non-core seminar coursework that will provide Scholars with the flexibility to select one or two courses at Columbia, according to the press release.
A global trade war has broken out. The United States fired the first salvo and there has been retaliation by the European Union, Canada, China and even India. Tariffs on certain imported goods have been increased in a tit-for-tat reaction.
Analysts see it as a limited war in the understanding that Donald Trump is all for “free-trade”. But this view denies the fact that a tectonic shift is taking place in the world. It is a war for ascendency to global leadership; a contest between the US and China.
China is heaving its might on the world. President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative is an open call for its global influence. In July 2017, China launched the ambitious plan to invest in the technology of the future—artificial intelligence.
There are dark (unconfirmed) whispers about how it is going about acquiring many new-age technologies by rolling over western companies operating in vast markets.
The last century belonged to the US and Europe with Russia as the communist outlier. China became mighty all because of the emergence of the free trade regime in the world. Just some 35-odd years ago, it was behind the iron curtain.
But then the World Trade Organization (WTO) was born in January 1995. China’s trade boomed. It took over the world’s manufacturing jobs. India, too, found its place by servicing outsourced businesses like telemarketing. “Shanghaied” and “Bangalored” entered the lexicon—as jobs (and pollution) moved continents. This way, globalization fulfilled its purpose to usher in a new era of world prosperity. Or so, we thought.
Instead, globalization has made the world more complicated and convoluted. In early 1990s, when the discussions on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were at its peak, there was a clear North-South divide.
The then-developed world pushed for opening up of trade. It wanted markets and protection through rules on “fair” trade and intellectual property. The then developing world was worried what the free trade regime would do to its nascent and weak industrial economies.
More importantly, there were fears of what these new open trade rules would do to its farmers, who would have to compete with the disproportionately subsidised farmers of the developed world.
In 1999 tensions flared up at the WTO ministerial meet in Seattle. By this time, reality of globalisation had dawned and so it was citizens of the rich world who protested for labour rights, worried about outsourcing of their jobs and environmental abuses.
But these violent protests were crushed. The next decade was lost in the financial crisis. The new winners told the old losers that “all was well”.
Today Trump has joined the ranks of the Leftist Seattle protesters, while India and China are the new defenders of free trade. The latter in fact want more, much more of it.
But again, is it so straightforward? All these arrangements are built on the refusal to acknowledge the crisis of employment. The first phase of globalisation led to some displacement of labour and this is what Trump is griping about.
But the fact is that this phase of globalisation has only meant war between the old elite (middle-classes in the world of trade and consumerism) and the new elite. It has not been long enough or deep enough to destroy the foundations of the livelihoods of the vast majority of the poor engaged in farming. But it is getting there.
But this is where the real impact of globalisation will be felt. Global agricultural trade remains distorted and deeply contentious. The trade agreements targeted basics like procurement of foodgrains by governments to withstand scarcity and the offer of minimum support price to farmers.
Right now, the Indian government is making the right noises that it will stand by its farmers. But we will not be able to balance this highly imbalanced trade regime if we don’t recognise that employment is the real crisis.
It is time that this round of trade war should be on the need for livelihood opportunities. Global trade talks must discuss employment not just industry. It must value labour and not goods.
This is what is at the core of the insecurity in the world. It is not about trade or finance. It is about the biggest losers: us, the people and the planet. The link to the original article follows: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/
Ika Ravi and Guthikonda Srinivas, who hail from Andhra Pradesh, donated Rs. 13.5 to the temple ‘Hundi’ and various trusts run by the Tirupati temple authorities. Ravi, Founder CEO of Rx Advance, a pharmaceutical company based in Boston, donated Rs. 10 crore to ‘Hundi’, while Srinivas, CEO of JCG Technologies, a software development and consulting firm based in Florida, donated Rs. 3.50 crore to the trusts.
They met the officials of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD), which manages the richest Hindu temple in the world, handed over the cheques in the presence of Andhra Pradesh’s Industry Minister Amarnath Reddy. The Minister lauded the gesture of the NRIs.
Thousands of devotees, who visit the hill shrine every day, make their offerings in ‘Hundi’ while some devotees make their donations online. TTD runs several trusts engaged in social, religious, literary and educational activities. According to TTD officials, the temple’s earnings during 2018-19 are expected to be Rs. 2,894 crore, of which the offerings in temple ‘Hundi’ are likely to be Rs.1,156 crore.
Tirupati Balaji temple or Sri Venkateshwara Swami temple is one of the most famous landmarks of the world on the hills of Tirumala in the Chittoor district of Andha Pradesh, India. This is the richest temple on the earth with overwhelming contributions and donations from the public and the most famous pilgrim destination on the earth attracting the greatest number of people on any given day. It is said that Lord Vishnu manifested himself in this temple in order to guide the people of Kali age towards emancipation. Therefore this temple is also called as Bhuloka Vaikuntam (the abode of Vishnu on the earth) and Lord Balaji is called as Kaliyuga Pratyaksha Daivam (the manifested lord of the Kali age).
The highly sacred and antique nature of the Tirupati Balaji temple is evident through a large number of mentions in several puranas including the Varaha Purana and the Bavishyottara Purana. All the major dynasties that ruled over the Southern peninsula had taken immense interest in paying homage to Lord Balaji as well as make huge contributions and endowments to the temple.
Some such notable dynasties include the Pallavas of Kancheepuram (9th Century), Cholas of Tanjore (10th Century), Pandyas of Madurai (14th Century) and the rulers of the Vijayanagar (14th and 15th Centuries).
Hindu mythology mentions the story of Balaji. Once sage Brighu wanted to find out who is the supreme one among the Hindu triad. Not being satisfied with the hospitality given by Brahma and Shiva, the sage went to Vaikunta and kicked Lord Vishnu on the chest to grab his attention.
Since Vishnu’s consort Lakshmi was residing in the chest of the Lord, she felt insulted and left Vaikunta to the earth. Lord Vishnu came to the earth in search of Lakshmi who had taken birth in the family of a king in the name Padmavati and married her on the Tirupati hills and got enshrined there forever to save the people of the Kali age.
A famous verse from the puranas speak of the greatness of tirupati Balaji temple: —–Venkatadri Samasthanam Brahmande Nasti Kinchana—– Venkatesha Samo Devo Na Bhuto Na Bhavishyati
The construction of Tirupati Balaji temple began in 300 AD with subsequent additions made from time to time. In the history of the temple, much of its wealth and size was gained during the reign of the Vijayanagara rulers who poured gold and diamonds into the treasury of the temple. When the emperor Krishnadevaraya visited the temple in 1517, he ordered for the gilding of the inner roof of the temple.
The rulers of the Kingdom of Mysore and the Gadwal Samsthan visited the temple regularly and contributed so much valuables. During the mid part of the eighteenth century, Maratha general Raghoji I Bhonsle established a permanent body to administer the temple worship. The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) was instituted through the TTD Act in 1932.
At the 2018 Corporate Insights Summit hosted by Asia Society’s Global Talent Initiatives last week, diversity and inclusion leaders across industries shared their experiences, ideas, and best practices, addressing corporate diversity issues that Asian — and other minorities — are facing today.
At Asia Society Global Talent Initiatives 2018 Corporate Insights Summit, diversity and inclusion leaders across industries shared their experiences, ideas, and best practices, addressing corporate diversity issues that Asian — and other minorities — are facing today.
The two-day conference began with the inaugural Market Place Forum, which featured keynote remarks and case-studies on the power of Asian spend among consumers and investors. Keynote presentations were made by Tom Doctoroff, author and chief cultural insights officer at Prophet, kicked the day off with an engaging presentation on the Chinese consumer needs and how they differ from other parts of Asia and the West, and Vivek Sankaran, president and COO of Frito-Lay North America, who discussed how an American brand found its place globally by leaning on diversity. Attendees also heard from panelists that have successfully led strategy that has tapped into the lucrative Asian and Asian-American spending power. Speakers included Daphne Kwok, vice president of multicultural leadership, Asian American & Pacific Islander audience strategy at AARP, Jeff Lin, co-founder of Admerasia, Niharika Shah, vice president of global marketing communications at Prudential, Ada Lien, senior vice president of marketing at La Mer, Emad Bibawi, risk consulting partner and advisory office leader at KPMG, and Katy Chen, director of global sales strategy at Tiffany & Company.
The day was capped off by the 9th Annual Best Employer Awards Dinner, which recognized companies empowering Asian talent.
On the second day of the Corporate Insights Summit Josette Sheeran, Lulu & Anthony Wang president and CEO of Asia Society, Priya Dogra, senior vice president of mergers and acquisitions at WarnerMedia, and Ramy Inocencio, Bloomberg Television anchor and forum emcee, kicked off the Diversity Leadership Forum with opening remarks.
Uber Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer Bo Young Lee gave the day’s keynote lecture, discussing her own experiences in the past navigating the corporate world as an Asian American woman, as well as the work she is currently doing at the ride-sharing company. Following the keynote, attendees participated in several breakout sessions for more candid and focused discussions on diversity subjects like recognizing unconscious bias, creating workplace culture to enable the advancement of Asian women, using cultural competency to grow U.S. market share, increasing impact through business resource groups, and showcasing strategic initiatives that have proven to attract and retain Asian talent.
The day concluded with a final panel on how leadership on the subject of diversity plays an important role in driving innovation. Panelists included Janet Pien Roller, senior director of CX innovation at Marriott International, Umran Beba, global diversity engagement and talent officer at PepsiCo, and Ann Anaya, chief diversity officer of human resources at 3M.
Pratham USA announced today that artist and philanthropist lla Paliwal has been appointed to its board of directors effective immediately. A classically trained vocalist and composer, Paliwal has contributed to the popularization of Indian music across the globe. She has performed at several renowned venues such as Carnegie Hall in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Dubai World Trade Centre, and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai. In addition, she works with local organizations to promote Indian classical music in the US.
“Ila is highly respected in her field, and we are delighted to welcome her to our board of directors,” said Pratham USA Chairman Deepak Raj. “Her dedication to the humanities and philanthropy both in the US and abroad will further strengthen our board. We look forward to working with Ila as we continue to build Pratham.”
Paliwal has lived in six countries on four continents, during which time she has served on international school boards and chaired numerous cultural committees. She supports many philanthropic organizations through her family’s charitable foundation. Alongside her husband, Dinesh Paliwal, president and CEO of Harman International Industries (a subsidiary of Samsung), she has been involved with Pratham for several years.
“I have always admired Pratham for its innovative programs and dynamic leadership team, and I’m honored to be joining their board,” said Paliwal. “I have tremendous respect for what Pratham has accomplished and am excited to contribute to its efforts to provide quality education to the underserved.”
Raised in a literary family where music, art, literature and education were deeply revered, she earned a BA in English, economics, music and fine arts from Dayalbagh University, Agra and an MA in fine arts from Agra University. She also received an MA (sangeet praveen) with a distinction in Hindustani classical vocal music from Prayag Sangeet Samiti, Allahabad and a BA in Mandarin from the Language and Culture Institute, Beijing.
Established in the slums of Mumbai in 1995, Pratham is now one of India’s largest non-governmental education organizations, having affected the lives of more than 50 million underprivileged children in the past two decades. To achieve its mission of “every child in school and learning well,” Pratham develops practical solutions to address gaps in the education system and works in collaboration with India’s governments, communities, educators, and industry to increase learning outcomes and influence education policy.
Pratham USA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a consistent four-star rating from Charity Navigator that seeks to raise awareness and mobilize financial resources for its work in India. For more information, visit prathamusa.org.
Talk about one industry that’s growing by leaps and bounds in India, aviation gives a tough beating to most others. The market is expected to cater to 478 million passengers by 2036. * And India seen as the third largest aviation market by 2025. According to global airlines’ body IATA, India has been successfully winning the crown for being the world’s fastest growing domestic aviation market for the three straight years till 2017. **
An important factor behind this burgeon is government schemes like UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) and NABH Nirman. While the first aims to connect 56 unserved airports and 31 unserved helipads across the country, the latter targets to expand airport capacity by more than five times to handle a billion trips in a year.
What does this massive expansion translate to? Well, to start with, there are going to be an enormous number of jobs – almost 2.5 to 5 lac job opportunities are being created by the aviation sector. As planned under UDAN, leading airlines such as Vistara & Indigo are procuring more aircraft to fill the supply & demand gap in tier 2 & 3 cities. This will give a major boom to jobs in customer service, operations, logistics, airport management, retail, medical tourism, and many more sectors. If the aviation market excites you, you could easily pursue it. The best way is to get your undergraduate & postgraduate degree in aviation.
It is a thing of the past when the Indian aviation industry was a government-owned industry; it is privately held today. With approximately 15 domestic airlines & above 60 international airlines being operating in India and up to 100% foreign equity allowed by the means of automatic approvals pertaining to the establishment of Greenfield Airports and up to 74% to the existing airports, getting trained in aviation management is a smart move. A BBA in aviation management teaches 12 pass students the fundamentals of Aviation, Travel, and Tourism industry functions, basics of business communication and economics, Aviation Operations, Safety and Security and role of human resource in the aviation industry.
With Indian companies intending to buy 2100 new planes worth US$ 290 billion, and factors such as infrastructure modernization, huge investment, expanding air fleet and an ever-growing economy making aviation the hottest sector in terms of career, you might want to join the party sooner than later. Getting a unique and well-structured MBA programme in aviation management is the cornerstone promising a great career graph. You are not only trained with a specialized domain, providing specialized knowledge and training of areas to be served in the aviation industry – fleet management, ground handling, cargo, safety & security, customer service, medical tourism, crew scheduling, and ticketing.
The Institute of Logistics and Aviation Management (ILAM), with its state-of-the-art campuses in major metro cities, offers competitive and specialised BBA &MBA aviation programs in partnership with companies such as Indigo, Spicejet, Jet Airways as its recruiters. These programs are not only unique but also come with inbuilt live practical sessions pertaining to emergency exit of the Airbus 320, aircraft ground handling and safety training, and Galileo software training to name a few. It is amazing to see how this course can provide a blend of practical and classroom teaching which makes you a preferred candidate for your future employer. If you were to count the benefits of pursuing a career in the aviation industry, bright professional opportunities, a rewarding salary package, the chance to travel around the world, are some attractive factors. To know more, visit ILAM’s website here.
There are four Indian American-led companies that are among the World Economic Forum’s 2018 cohort of Technology Pioneers, that have been chosen among the group of 61 early-stage companies from around the world, including Cohesity, CognitiveScale, ThoughtSpot and Drive.ai.
The cohort of companies, according to WEF, are pioneering new technologies and innovations ranging from the use of artificial intelligence in drug discovery, the development of autonomous vehicles, advancing cybersecurity and reducing food waste, to applying blockchain to a decentralized engagement platform.
“Innovation comes from all corners of the earth and from a very diverse group of entrepreneurs, and with this selection we recognize that,” said Cheryl Martin, head of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and member of the managing board at the World Economic Forum. “The next step is to help these pioneers bring their solutions to complex world-critical problems to global markets and to take action for the public good.”
In joining this community and the two-year journey where they become part of the forum’s initiatives, activities and events, they bring cutting-edge insights and novel perspectives to world-critical discussions, WEF said.
“Technology and start-ups are not just about computer software, consumer apps and social networks,” said Fulvia Montresor, head of Technology Pioneers at the World Economic Forum. “Technology Pioneers 2018 are tackling complex challenges such as environmental sustainability, efficient energy use and access to healthcare.”
Cohesity, founded in 2013 in San Jose, Calif., is led by founder and chief executive officer Mohit Aron. The company is an industry-leading platform for hyperconverged secondary storage solutions. Cohesity offers native copy data management on intelligent web-scale storage, end-to-end data protection, and in-place analytics, all on one data platform, WEF said.
“Cohesity is transforming the way organizations manage and extract value from their secondary applications and data by revolutionizing modern data center and cloud operations with a hyperconverged, web-scale, data platform,” Aron said in the company’s bio.
Aron was recently named a finalist in Ernst & Young’s U.S. Entrepreneur of the Year competition. The 2014-founded Austin, Texas-based CognitiveScale, led by chief executive Akshay Sabhikhi, is developing a new generation of augmented intelligence cloud software powered by artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
“CognitiveScale pairs humans and machines to augment and extend human ingenuity. AI has the potential to transform the economy and society by unlocking human potential and creating new opportunities, and we are on a mission to make it happen,” Sabhikhi said in the company bio page on the WEF website.
It makes sense of unstructured data by emulating cognitive functions like perception, abstraction, reasoning and learning. It finds hidden meaning within all available data to ensure enterprises and their customers have the right answers to and advice for problems they want to solve, WEF said.
Drive.ai develops AI software for autonomous vehicles using deep learning. The Calif.-based company, founded in 2015 and led by CEO Sameep Tandon, designs retrofit kits that are integrated software and hardware solutions, which includes sensors such as radar, high-definition cameras and light detection and ranging, its bio said.
It has developed custom sensor locations enabling a vehicle to gain a full 360 degree understanding of its environment and enabling sensor redundancy to ensure safety.
Drive.ai’s custom sensor locations maintain high fidelity in all data collected as the vehicle drives autonomously and optimizes the performance in Drive.ai’s proprietary deep learning algorithms.
“Drive.ai uses artificial intelligence to create self-driving systems that improve the state of mobility today. We work with public and private partners to solve transportation challenges quickly and safely, with geofenced self-driving solutions,” Tandon said in the bio.
Founded in 2012, ThoughtSpot, a search and artificial intelligence-driven analytics platform, is based in Palo Alto, Calif. It was co-founded by Ajeet Singh, who serves as the company’s CEO.
ThoughtSpot is helping companies succeed in the digital era by putting the power of a thousand analysts in every business person’s hands, its bio said.
Businesses can take advantage of Google-like search to automatically analyze billions of rows of data and gain insights based on this data – all with a single click. The platform connects with any on-premise, cloud, big data or desktop data source, deploying 85 percent faster than legacy technologies.
“With ThoughtSpot’s search and AI-driven analytics, the world’s one billion knowledge workers each have the power of 1000 analysts in the palm of their hands, allowing them to search data in the same way they use Google to search the internet,” Singh said.
The newly selected Technology Pioneers will meet at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2018 in Tianjin, People’s Republic of China, on Sept. 18 to Sept. 20.
Some of them will also participate in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, in January. As leaders of innovation, they will be supported by the Forum’s new Centre of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and contribute to fostering the innovation ecosystem and delivering critical mass to solve global challenges, WEF said.
Sen. Kamala Harris, a rising star in the Democratic Party who is sometimes cited as a possible presidential contender in 2020, has a book deal.
Penguin Press announced that Harris’ “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey” will come out Jan. 8, 2019. According to Penguin, Harris will write about “the core truths” in American life and how to learn what they are.
The 53-year-old Harris was formerly California’s attorney general. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016.
For politicians, books have long been a standard part of developing a national profile, from John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage” to Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope.”
Scott Moyers, vice president and publisher of Penguin Press, according to the Times praised Harris’s “authentic” voice, and said her back story was especially compelling, including her “fascinating and formidable” mother.
The memoir and current-events primer, in a mixture well-known to campaign books, will include sketches of both Ms. Harris’s upbringing and her governing principles.
It’s the second book by Harris. The first, “Smart on Crime,” was published in 2009 — the year before she was elected California attorney general. Harris won her Senate seat in 2016.
Publishing books is a rite of passage for presidential prospects. Harris is the latest possible Democratic contender to publish a book since the 2016 presidential election. She joins former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro’s book is expected this fall, and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who published a book last year, has another one — titled “Where We Go From Here” — due after November’s midterm elections.
Penguin said that in the book Harris is “reckoning with the big challenges we face together, drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her.”
“Through the arc of her own life, on into the great work of our day, she communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values,” Penguin said. “In a book rich in many home truths, not least is that a relatively small number of people work very hard to convince a great many of us that we have less in common than we actually do, but it falls to us to look past them and get on with the good work of living our common truth. When we do, our shared effort will continue to sustain us and this great nation, now and in the years to come.”
Amazon.com’s stock market value reached $900 billion on Wednesday for the first time, marking a major milestone in its 21-year trajectory as a publicly listed company and threatening to dislodge Apple as Wall Street’s most valuable jewel.
After Jeff Bezos founded the online book-selling company in his garage in 1994, Amazon survived the dot-com crisis and then expanded across the retail industry, altering how consumers buy products and setting off a Darwinian struggle among brick-and-mortar stores.
After announcing on Wednesday that it sold more than $100 million products during its annual Prime Day sale, the Seattle, Washington company’s stock briefly touched $1,858.88, giving Amazon a stock market value of $902 billion. It later reversed, trading down 0.16% for the session.
Amazon’s stock has surged more than 57% in 2018, bringing its increase to over 123,000% since it listed on the Nasdaq in 1997. An investor who bought 1 share of Amazon for $18 in the IPO would now have an investment worth more than $22,200, including three stock splits in the 1990s.
Amazon, video streaming service Netflix and a handful of heavyweight technology companies have fueled Wall Street’s rally in recent years and they remain key parts of portfolio managers’ portfolios.
Apple replaced Exxon Mobil in late 2011 as the US company with the largest stock market value. The Silicon Valley company’s shares have risen 12 percent in 2018, bringing its stock market value to $935 billion.
The calculations for Apple and Amazon’s market capitalizations are based on the number of shares outstanding in their March-quarter reports. Amazon has increased its share count by over 1 million shares per quarter in recent years, and if it continued that in the June quarter, its stock market value may already have exceeded $900 billion.
Amazon reports its results on July 26 and Apple, which has been reducing its share count through buybacks, reports its June-quarter results on July 31.
As Amazon expands into grocery retail through its acquisition of Whole Foods Market last year, and as more businesses move their IT departments onto the cloud, its stock price has been red hot, recently trading at 111 times expected earnings, compared to more-profitable – but slower growing – Apple’s valuation of 15 times earnings.
Amazon dislodged Microsoft Corp as the No. 3 US company by market capitalization in February. Since then, Microsoft has been overtaken by Google-owner Alphabet.
Legendary classical vocalist Pandit Jasraj unveiled his first authorized biography during a book release ceremony at the TV Asia auditorium in Edison, NJ on July 17.
Titled, “Rasraj Pandit Jasraj,” the biography is written by Sunita Budhiraja and published by New Delhi-based Vani Prakashan.
The event was jointly hosted by the Consulate General of India in New York, TV Asia and the Pandit Jasraj Institute and broadcast live on TV Asia across the US as part of its “Focus Live” nightly show. The event was also the first public gathering in the US announcing the launch of the biography, before the official India release later this year.
The biography’s release was followed by a 90-minute interaction on TV Asia’s “Focus Live” with Pandit Jasraj; Consul General Sandeep Chakravorty; Durga Jasraj, Pandit Jasraj’s daughter; author Sunita Budhiraja; publisher Arun Maheshwari and TV Asia host and senior producer Vikas Nangia, followed by a question-answer session with the audience.
During the panel discussion, Budhiraja said that while Pandit Jasraj’s ragas were soulful, the book focused on several untold struggles that went behind those renditions. “The book is essentially the story behind his music, the challenges and many other yet unknown inspiring aspects of Panditji’s life,” she added.
When asked about the importance of lyrics, Pandit Jasraj said he believed in immersing himself into the words before singing.
“Words are absolutely important in my songs because I want to live them, understand them, go into their depths and then sing the song. The process for me is to completely understand the words and then immerse myself in those words, that world,” he said. He also recalled during the conversation how thankful he was to former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee for calling him “Rasraj,” which has been borrowed in the tittle for the biography.
One of India’s best known classical vocalists, Pandit Jasraj, 88, was born in Hisar, Haryana, in a family of classical musicians of the Mewat gharana. His father, Pandit Motiram, a noted classical singer, passed away when Pandit Jasraj was just 4. From a young age, Pandit Jasraj began accompanying his elder brother and first guru vocalist Pandit Maniram as a tabla artiste. At 15, stung by a musician’s snide remark about his lack of understanding of classical music because he was a minor artist, Pandit Jasraj decided to take up singing. He gave his first public concert at 22. He was honored by the Indian government with both the Padma Bhushan (1990) and Padma Vibhushan (2000).
Blessed with a soulful and sonorous voice, which traverses masterfully, Pandit Jasraj’s vocalizing is characterized by a harmonious blend of the classic and opulent elements, giving his music a unique and sublime emotional quality.
The live TV event was interspersed with audio-visuals of Pandit Jasraj’s concerts as well as a brief story of his life, frequently applauded by the audience.
Consul General Chakravorty said during the panel discussion that despite Pandit Jasraj’s legendary status as a musician, his “tolerance and respect” for all types of music was unique and a testament to his character.
Durga Jasraj spoke about what it meant to be growing up in a family, where his father was continuously traveling on concerts. “He has a high expectation from himself even at this age. All of us in the family, including our father, have sacrificed for music, but we have also learned so much from Panditji about mental and physical tenacity.”
Earlier, while introducing Pandit Jasraj, TV Asia chairman and CEO H R Shah offered an analogy, saying the legendary classical vocalist was a “rare gem” with a large fan-following despite the challenging nature of his music that yet transcended all age groups.
More than 200 guests, including several prominent members of the Indian American community, attended the book release. Among those present, included Tripti Mukherjee, senior disciple of Pandit Jasraj as well as founder and director of Pandit Jasraj Institute; Dr Naveen Mehta, chairman of Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan USA; president of FIA of NY-NJ-CT Srujal Parikh, who along with FIA board of trustee Ram Gadhvi, presented Pandit Jasraj with a plaque of appreciation; Sunil Nayak, AINA president and Peter Kothari, IACS president.
XinQi Dong, director of Rutgers University’s Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research and the lead researcher of the Population Study of Chinese Elderly in Chicago (PINE), published 20 articles based primarily on his teams’ examination of the health and wellbeing of Chinese older adults globally. For the study, researchers interviewed more than 3,000 Chinese Americans between 60 and 105 over a two-year period to explore their psychological wellbeing, involvement in their community and neighborhood, quality of life, and acculturation and use of traditional Chinese medicine.
“Aging Asian-Americans are underrepresented in the discussion of health disparity issues in the United States,” said Dong, who guest-edited the special issue focusing on Asian-American health. “This journal compilation is the first substantive step in trying to understand the health of this population.”
The research challenges the pervasive “model minority myth” — the belief that U.S. Asian populations have fared better than other ethnic groups in socioeconomic status, social relationships and health. The Chinese-Americans in the studies reflect the overall Asian-American population, which face a high prevalence of psychological distress and disorders, dementia and cancer, especially in advanced age. “These conditions usually go untreated for multiple reasons, such as a desire to ‘save face’ and a lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate treatment and prevention methods,” Dong said.
The articles address a gap in understanding health equity issues in the Asian community — in the United States and globally — and offers insight on how health care professionals and policymakers can provide support through understanding cultural values, such as filial piety, collectivism, individualism and sense of harmony in families.
Six of the papers examine the risk factors and impact of psychological distress among global Chinese populations. The researchers found that while depression and loneliness may negatively impact cognitive function, those effects may be buffered by individual, social and family resources. “We found the more older adults talked about their concerns, the lower the likelihood they experienced depressive symptoms,” Dong said. “Individuals who were frequently demanded upon or criticized were more likely to experience depressive symptoms.”
The studies show that a well-connected community, active social life and high acculturation are essential to improving older Chinese adults’ health and lowering depression. Actively social individuals were found to participate more in preventative health screenings for diseases like cancer, while negative neighborhood conditions, such as crime or decrepit buildings, was shown to potentially increase the risk of self-neglect. “We also found that immigrants who had been in the United States longer were at higher risk of tooth symptoms, which shows that more studies are needed to better understand the relationship between acculturation and oral health in Chinese-American populations,” Dong said.
Individuals who were employed and those who lived in rural areas reported a higher quality of life than those who did not work or lived in urban settings. The studies revealed that a higher perceived gap in acculturation between grandparents and grandchildren negatively impacted their relationships, which in turn could undermine the health and wellbeing of the older generation. “This tells us that acculturation should be looked at on a family level as well as an individual level,” Dong said.
Family relationships and cultural backgrounds also factor in to end-of-life care, a complex concept in the Asian-American community, Dong said. “Our research indicates that a comprehensive end-of-life care plan should include cultural considerations and traditional family values in addition to physical, psychosocial and spiritual needs,” he noted.
The studies revealed that traditional Chinese medicine is still widely used among Chinese older adults in the United States in conjunction with non-western and western forms of health care, especially with respect to preventive care.
“Health is multifaceted,” Dong said. “These studies reinforce the idea that we cannot just look at the individual, but must take into account the person’s social, community, national and cultural contexts. More systematic and integrated approaches are needed to generate and translate knowledge in Asian populations in order to move the needle on health equity in our increasing diverse populations.”
A liberal woman of color with zero name recognition and little funding takes down a powerful, long serving congressman from her own political party.
When Tahirah Amatul-Wadud heard about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning upset over U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley in New York’s Democratic primary last month, the first-time candidate saw parallels with her own longshot campaign for Congress in western Massachusetts.
The 44-year-old Muslim, African-American civil rights lawyer, who is taking on a 30-year congressman and ranking Democrat on the influential House Ways and Means Committee, said she wasn’t alone, as encouragement, volunteers and donations started pouring in.
“We could barely stay on top of the residual love,” said Amatul-Wadud, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal’s lone challenger in the state’s Sept. 4 Democratic primary. “It sent a message to all of our volunteers, voters and supporters that winning is very possible.”
From Congress to state legislatures and school boards, Muslim Americans spurred to action by the anti-Muslim policies and rhetoric of President Donald Trump and his supporters are running for elected offices in numbers not seen since before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, say Muslim groups and political observers.
Many, like Amatul-Wadud, hope to ride the surge of progressive activism within the Democratic Party that delivered Ocasio-Cortez’s unlikely win and could help propel the Democrats back to power in November.
Still, the path to victory can be tougher for a Muslim American. Some promising campaigns already have fizzled out while many more face strong anti-Muslim backlash.
In Michigan, Democrat candidate for governor Abdul El-Sayed continues to face unfounded claims from a GOP rival that he has ties to the controversial Muslim Brotherhood, even though Republican and Democratic politicians alike have denounced the accusations as “conspiracy theories.”
In Rochester, Minnesota, mayoral candidate Regina Mustafa has notified authorities of at least two instances where anti-Muslim threats were posted on her social media accounts.
And in Arizona, U.S. Senate candidate Deedra Abboud received a torrent of Islamophobic attacks on Facebook last July that prompted outgoing U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, the Republican lawmaker Abboud is hoping to replace, to come to her defense on Twitter.
“I’m a strong believer that we have to face this rhetoric,” said Abboud, who has also had right-wing militant groups the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights and the Proud Boys stage armed protests her campaign events. “We can’t ignore it or pretend like it’s a fringe element anymore. We have to let the ugly face show so that we can decide if that is us.”
There were as many as 90 Muslim-Americans running for national or statewide offices this election cycle, a number that Muslim groups say was unprecedented, at least in the post-9/11 era.
But recent primaries have whittled the field down to around 50, a number that still far exceeds the dozen or so that ran in 2016, said Shaun Kennedy, co-founder of Jetpac, a Massachusetts nonprofit that helps train Muslim-American candidates.
Among the candidates to fall short were California physician Asif Mahmood, who placed third in last month’s primary for state insurance commissioner, despite raising more than $1 million. And in Texas, wealthy businessman Tahir Javed finished a distant second in his Democratic primary for Congress, despite an endorsement from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
Nine candidates for Congress are still in the running, according to Jetpac’s tally. At least 18 others are campaigning for state legislature and 10 more seek major statewide and local offices, such as governor, mayor and city council. Even more are running for more modest offices like local planning board and school committee.
The next critical stretch of primaries is in August.
In Michigan, at least seven Muslim Americans are on the Aug. 7 ballot, including El-Sayed, who could become the nation’s first Muslim governor.
In Minnesota, the decision by Keith Ellison, the nation’s first Muslim congressman, to run for state attorney general has set off a political frenzy for his congressional seat that includes two Muslim candidates, both Democrats: Ilhan Omar, the country’s first Somali-American state lawmaker, and Jamal Abdulahi, a Somali-American activist.
But historic wins in those and other races are far from assured, cautions Geoffrey Skelley, an associate editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political analysis website run by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Omar’s chances of emerging from a field of five Democratic candidates in Minnesota’s Aug. 14 primary was bolstered by a recent endorsement from the state Democratic Party, but El-Sayed is an underdog in his gubernatorial race, he said.
Other Muslim-American candidates might fare better in Michigan, which has one of the nation’s largest Arab-American populations, Skelley added.
There, former state Rep. Rashida Tlaib has raised more money than her Democratic rivals in the race to succeed Democratic Rep. John Conyers, who resigned last year amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Former Obama administration official Fayrouz Saad is also running as a Democrat in the wide open race to succeed Republican Rep. David Trott, who isn’t seeking re-election.
Either could become the first Muslim woman elected to Congress, which has only ever had two Muslim members: outgoing Ellison and Rep. Andre Carson, an Indiana Democrat seeking re-election.
Saad, who served most recently as director of Detroit’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, recognizes the importance of representing her community in an era of rising Islamophobia.
The 35-year-old broke from the conservative Republican politics of her Lebanese immigrant parents following the 9/11 attacks because she felt Arabs and Muslims were unfairly targeted.
“I felt the way to push back against that was to be at the table,” said Saad, adding that her parents’ political leanings have also since moved to the left. “We have to step up and be voices for our communities and not wait for others to speak on behalf of us.”
But not all Muslim candidates feel that way. In San Diego, California, 37-year-old Republican congressional candidate Omar Qudrat declined to comment on how Islamophobia has impacted his campaign, including instances when his faith have been called into question by members of his own political party.
Instead, the political newcomer, who is one of at least three Muslim Republicans running nationwide this year, provided a statement touting his main campaign issues as faces Democratic U.S. Rep. Scott Peters in November: addressing San Diego’s high number of homeless military veterans, improving public education and expanding economic opportunities for city residents.
“Running for public office is about advancing the interests of your constituents and the American people,” Qudrat’s statement reads. “Nothing else.”
US authorities has announced the sentencing this week of 21 members of a “Telefraud Scam” run out of India-based call centers that defrauded Americans and legal immigrants of millions of dollars, threatening them with arrest, deportation, imprisonment and fines for “alleged” unpaid dues owed to the government.
All the 21 sentenced are either Indians or naturalized Americans of Indian descent, and several of them have agreed to be deported back to India after the completion of their jail terms, up to 20 years for some. And all them were linked to call centres based in Ahmedabad. Five of them were sentenced on Friday by the same federal court in Texas that had sentenced the rest earlier in the week. Including three sentenced earlier, the total is up 24, making it perhaps the single largest arrest and sentencing of Indians and people of Indian descent in a single case.
Announcing the sentencing, the US department of justice said 32 India-based conspirators were also named in the indictment, but have not yet been arraigned — presumably because they remain in India. Five India-based call centres have also been named, with similar charges.
Indian authorities have been cooperating in this case. Many people were reportedly arrested and call centres found to be involved were shut down. An alleged leading member of the conspiracy is Sagar “Shaggy” Thakkar, who was arrested by Mumbai police in April 2017. He is alleged to have been in touch with Hardik Patel, a co-owner of one of the call centres involved and a key player who has been sentenced to more than 15 years.
They are said to have duped thousands of Americans of millions of dollars between 2012 and 2016, when they were put out of business, indicted, charged and arrested.
A senior police officer, who investigated the call centre scam busted by Thane police, said, “Our investigations did not lead us to Hardik Patel. He is not an accused in the case. We do not have any idea of his links with Sagar Thakkar.”
One of the world’s leaders in call-centre business, India has also emerged over the years as home to fraudsters and scammers using the same business model to target Americans. One US law enforcement agency found Indians behind tech support — when a virus alert freezes the screen, the number to call to unlock it has been traced in many occasions to India.
“The stiff sentences imposed this week represent the culmination of the first-ever large scale, multi-jurisdiction prosecution targeting the India call centre scam industry,” said attorney general Jeff Sessions, announcing the sentencing. “This case represents one of the most significant victories to date in our continuing efforts to combat elder fraud and the victimization of the most vulnerable members of the US public.”
The elderly and recent immigrants were the preferred targets of these fraudsters. Callers from the India-based call centres would call them up impersonating as officers of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS — the American version of the Indian income tax department) or the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS — the dreaded acronym for the US agency that oversees the entry, stay and exit of foreigners).
The victims were picked from data brokers and other sources, and were sometimes old women and men or recently naturalized immigrants. The callers, trained to perfection on an American accent, “threatened (them) with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation if they did not pay alleged monies owed to the government”.
Most victims paid up, agreeing to one of the payments methods offered by the scammers — to buy a prepaid stored value card or by wiring money. Those arrested and charged in the US were mostly “runners”, operatives who collected the extorted money and transferred it to Indian accomplices through a different and complex set of procedures.
Here is how the US justice department broke it down. “Once a victim provided payment, the call centres turned to a network of runners based in the United States to liquidate and launder the extorted funds as quickly as possible by purchasing reloadable cards or retrieving wire transfers.
“In a typical scenario, call centres directed runners to purchase these stored value reloadable cards and transmit the unique card number to India-based co-conspirators who registered the cards using the misappropriated personal identifying information (PII) of U.S. citizens.
“The India-based co-conspirators then loaded these cards with scam funds obtained from victims. The runners used the stored value cards to purchase money orders that they deposited into the bank account of another person.”
Miteshkumar Patel (42): The Illinois resident was sentenced to serve 240 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release on the charge of money-laundering conspiracy. According to the factual basis of his plea agreement, Miteshkumar served as the manager of a Chicago-based crew of “runners” that liquidated and laundered fraud proceeds generated by callers at India-based call centers. Patel was held accountable for laundering between $9.5 and $25 million for the scheme.
Hardik Patel (31): Also from Illinois, he was sentenced to 188 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release on the charge of wire-fraud conspiracy. Hardik consented to removal to India upon completion of his prison term. According to the factual basis of his plea agreement, he was the co-owner and manager of an India-based call centre involved in the conspiracy. Hardik was held accountable for laundering between $3.5 and $9.5 million dollars for the scheme.
Sunny Joshi (47): The Texas resident was sentenced to 151 months in prison on the charge of money laundering conspiracy and 120 months in prison on the charge of naturalisation fraud (to run concurrently) followed by three years of supervised release. According to the factual basis of his plea agreement, Joshi was a member of a Houston-based crew of runners that he co-managed with his brother, co-defendant Mike Joshi alias Rajesh Bhatt. Joshi was held accountable for laundering between $3.5 and $9.5 million. Additionally, in connection with his sentence on the immigration charge, Judge Hittner entered an order revoking Joshi’s US citizenship and requiring him to surrender his certificate of naturalisation.
Indian Overseas Congress, USA will be holding a one-day national conference on this coming Saturday, July 28, 2018, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel near JFK airport (138-10 135th Ave, Jamaica, NY 11436). Delegates from across the country are expected to attend. Mr. Sam Pitroda, Chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress, AICC will be presiding over the conference.
The purpose the conference is to bring together like-minded people from around the country who believe in the values and principles of the Congress party that gained independence for India and helped to build the nation into one of the top economic powerhouses in the world based on a secular democracy that preserved freedom, liberty and justice for each and every citizen regardless of the caste, color, regional or linguistic differences.
The conference will be discussing the current challenges to the democracy in India and exploring the possibilities of strengthening the Overseas Congress Units in the U.S and expanding the cooperation between the NRIs and their motherland. The meeting will also be seeking inputs from the delegates as to how to strengthen the pillars of democracy in India through knowledge sharing in social media and via volunteerism with the upcoming 2019 elections in mind.
Speakers at the meeting include Mr. Sam Pitroda, Dr. Surinder Malhotra, George Abraham, Shudh Prakash Singh, Mohinder Singh Gilzian, Rajinder Dichpally, Harbachan Singh and AICC secretaries Himanshu Vyas and Madhu Yaskhi.
Those who are interested in attending the conference are urged to register at http://www.inocusa.org or call 917-544-4137 or 646- 646-732-5119 or 917-749-8769 for further information.
AAHOA, the largest hotel owners association in the world, proudly announced a strategic partnership with GlobalHotelNetwork.com, a highly-respected global media brand and resource for the hospitality industry. The partnership will focus on content development and sharing for both GlobalHotelNetwork.com and AAHOA’s members and facilitating a discussion on topics such as domestic implications of global hospitality trends and the industry’s issue advocacy at the state and national level.
AAHOA President and CEO Chip Rogers said, “GlobalHotelNetwork.com is an excellent channel for hotel industry professionals to get timely, relevant, and dependable information on trends and ideas that develop in the hotel industry around the globe. We look forward to working with them and connecting them with AAHOA’s members to facilitate a dialogue about where our industry is headed.”
GlobalHotelNetwork.com CEO and Publisher Robert Harp said, “AAHOA is an industry-leader when it comes to advocacy and organizing its membership to promote policies that support all hoteliers. I am pleased that Chip Rogers will share his insight into advocacy-related issues with GlobalHotelNetwork.com’s readership, and I look forward to providing AAHOA’s members with ideas from some of the influential thought leaders that help shape the global travel and tourism industry.”
Founded in 2000, GlobalHotelNetwork.com (GHN) provides actionable Market Insights and Thought Leadership to CEOs, presidents and decision makers in the global travel and tourism industry. GHN’s Advisory Board consists of 25 hotel company presidents & CEOs. GHN has established a global network of 100+ industry Thought Leaders and is a Sponsor/Supporter of 50+ industry conferences worldwide.
AAHOA is the largest hotel owners association in the world. The nearly 18,000 AAHOA members own almost one in every two hotels in the United States. With billions of dollars in property assets and hundreds of thousands of employees, AAHOA members are core economic contributors in virtually every community. AAHOA is a proud defender of free enterprise and the foremost current-day example of realizing the American dream.
Three cricket matches are to be hosted by the Jamaica Tallawahs in August at Central Broward Regional Park in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, the same stadium where India played the West Indies two years ago.
As a part of the ‘Biggest Party in Sport,’ the Hero Caribbean Premiere League, the Tallawahs will be against the Guyana Amazon Warriors on Saturday, August 18, the Trinbago Knight Riders on Sunday, August 19 and the Barbados Tridents on Wednesday, August 22.
The Tallawahs are led by T20 superman Andre Russell who was a standout player for the Kolkota Knight Riders, making 316 runs and 13 wickets
Pakistani cricket player Shahid Afridi will play cricket for the first time in the U.S. and he will be accompanied by New Zealand’s Ross Taylor, Florida-born Steven Taylor, USA bowler Elmore Hutchinson, David Miller, Samuel Badree and Imad Wasim.
The Warriors team includes former Indian under 19 World Cup and American College Cricket pace bowler Saurabh Netravalkar, a new addition who is known for his tight control and swing and will be a bowler to watch in the CPL this year, along with Sohail Tanvir, Shoaib Malik, Devendra Bishoo, Jason Mohammed, Rayad Emrit, Luke Ronchi and Imran Tahir.
The Trinbago Knight Riders include Sunil Narine, Chris Lynn, Brendan McCullum, Darren Bravo and Dinesh Ramdin, and the Barbados Tridents include Martin Guptil, Shakib al Hassan, Hashim Amla, Dwayne Smith, Nicholas Pooran, Wahab Riaz and Shai Hope.
Tickets are available at Tallawahs.com, Bookmyshow.com or CPLT20.com
Sometimes called a blood moon, a total lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth moves directly between the sun and the moon. Earth’s shadow moves over the moon, blocking the sunlight that ordinarily reflects off its surface and giving it a reddish glow.
Stargazers around the world—with the exception of North America—will be able to catch at least a partial glimpse of the July 2018 lunar eclipse during the nearly four hours it will be visible in the sky. However, the totality will only last for one hour and 43 minutes of that time, just shy of the longest possible totality length of one hour and 47 minutes.
“Totality is the moment that the moon is passing through the darkest part of the Earth’s shadow,” Dr. Jackie Flaherty, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, tells TIME. “I think most people can relate to what it’s like to hang back in a shadow. On sunny days many of us head for the shade, maybe a tree or a building or even another person. Believe it or not, giant celestial bodies like the Earth and the moon also cast shadows out in space. The sun is the flashlight and the planets are rigid bodies that can block the beaming sun rays. So during totality, those of us on Earth are watching the moon fall in to our shade.”
Different phases of the lunar eclipse will be visible across much of Asia, Africa, Europe, South America and Australia at various points in time on July 27. However, only people in certain areas will be able to view the eclipse from start to finish.
Here’s when totality will begin in the regions where the entire eclipse will be visible.
Central and Eastern Africa
The entire eclipse will be visible in Central and Eastern Africa, with totality beginning in major cities like Cairo and Nairobi at 9:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. local time, respectively.
Eastern Europe
The total eclipse will start in Eastern European hubs like Bucharest and Moscow at 10:30 p.m. local time.
The Middle East
Limassol and Dubai will offer some of the best views of the full eclipse beginning at 10:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m local time.
Central and Southeast Asia
Stargazers in New Delhi should look to the sky at 1 a.m. local time for totality while those in Bangkok can catch the lunar phenomenon at 2:30 a.m.
Western Australia
In Perth, the total eclipse will become visible around 3:30 a.m. local time.
For more detailed information on exactly when you can view the July 2018 lunar eclipse, plug your location into NASA’s Lunar Eclipse Explorer.
“Let’s go over my plan, shall we?”, said Mindy Kaling into my ear. I was halfway into her second audiobook, “Why Not Me?”, and Ms. Kaling was describing her expectations for the show she was developing.
“My natural assumption was that NBC would put my new show on the air as part of a revitalized ‘Must See TV’ and make 200 classic episodes — no lazy clip shows — finishing with a 90-minute finale that everyone agreed was a sweet and satisfying send-off,” she said. “I would emerge from the show’s legacy as a modern version of Larry David and Mary Tyler Moore, retiring to a tasteful mega-compound on Martha’s Vineyard, where I would write plays and drink wine with Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen at least several times a week.”
The only thing her elaborate daydream didn’t prepare her for? “The slightest setback.”
Ms. Kaling’s books, “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns),” released in 2011, and “Why Not Me?” from 2015, aren’t self-help, but her anecdotes and advice helped ease much of my anxiety as a young professional woman of color.
“Confidence is just entitlement,” said Mindy Kaling in her memoir, “Why Not Me?”CreditKendrick Brinson for The New York Times
“Is Everyone Hanging Out” came out while Ms. Kaling was still playing Kelly Kapoor on “The Office” and includes reflections on her childhood and her early 20s, when she was still living in New York, trying to break into television. “Why Not Me?” is more emotionally candid; Ms. Kaling laments that, in her 30s, she often goes to weddings, which she hates (“when you are a bridesmaid, you are required to be a literal maid for the duration of the wedding”), just to see her friends. In another chapter, she explains her “weird as hell” relationship with B.J. Novak; “B.J. and I are soup snakes,” she said, an “Office” reference to a gaffe by Michael Scott, who misreads “soul mates” in his handwritten note to his love interest, Holly.
I’m also a consummate daydreamer. Just last week, I had one good idea, a snippet of dialogue that I might build a short story around, and my mind spiraled: I flash-forwarded a very realistic two years; my yet-unwritten debut novel had been published to critical and commercial success. The book was optioned for television, and I’d moved to Santa Monica, to an oceanfront apartment with a balcony, where I did all my writing. How I could afford this luxury did not come up.
Real-life trajectories are rarely as neat as the ones you map in your head. NBC, which aired “The Office” and had long been Ms. Kaling’s dream network, passed on her project. “It’s weird when you feel your dream slipping away from you,” said Ms. Kaling, adding the quip, “Especially when you have no other dreams.” Listen to a Sample of Mindy Kaling’s “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)”
When I started applying for jobs, I landed an interview at my dream magazine. For the first time, I was confident in my edit test, because I knew the publication, which caters to a diverse demographic, would see value in my ideas. After meeting with the editors, I was convinced I’d get the job; even more, I thought it was the only job in media I might have a chance of getting. But they didn’t hire me. I had a fixed view of my career, so the deviation felt like a setback.
I ended up at Glamour; Ms. Kaling’s show, on Fox, and later in “Why Not Me?”, after experiencing the whiplash of seeing “The Mindy Project” canceled and immediately picked up by Hulu, Ms. Kaling emphasized the importance of adaptability. She said that’s all show business was: “transitioning panics,” from losing a job to having more work than you can handle; from being afraid your dreams won’t come true to realizing they’ve changed.
In “Why Not Me?”, Ms. Kaling also addressed ambition and her conflicting feelings about wanting to leave “The Office.” “I had a dream job; was I ungrateful to wonder what more there might be for me? Or complacent if I didn’t?”, she asked. “And who was I to try to seek anything better?”
Ms. Kaling joked that she was finally experiencing “white people problems,” because of the privileged position she was in, but her feelings echo the struggle of many women of color in all-white spaces: to convince themselves they’re worthy of their dreams when their environment and society says otherwise. I struggle with this, too, and a recent study found that for people of color, the effects of impostor syndrome — feeling like a fraud in your field despite high achievement — are compounded with discrimination or a lack of representation in the workplace. These factors combined cause higher levels of anxiety and “discrimination-related depression.”
Ms. Kaling advises on dealing with impostor syndrome in the last chapter of “Why Not Me?” She recalls a Q. and A. in Manhattan a year earlier, when a young Indian girl asked her where she gets her confidence from and Ms. Kaling gave a lackluster reply. She reconsiders here, for the sake of “that girl who went out of her way to be vulnerable in front of so many people.”
“Confidence is just entitlement,” she said, adding that, though the word has gotten a bad rap, “Entitlement is simply the belief that you deserve something.” Ms. Kaling’s advice is to earn your confidence by studying your craft and working hard; “I’m usually hyper-prepared for whatever I set my mind to do,” she said, “which makes me feel deserving of attention and professional success.”
But what about the mental barriers to the work itself? I often find myself stuck in a failure loop, my mind sprinting laps around a story, a problem or an idea, to the point of exhaustion. I convince myself a story isn’t good enough before I even start it and am often preoccupied with questions of acceptance, representation and inadequacy. Is the only way to expel that feeling really just to work through it, as Ms. Kaling suggests?
Though in the introduction of “Is Everyone Hanging Out,” Ms. Kaling said she is only “marginally qualified to give advice,” I disagree. It was fun listening to her precipitate the events of her life in her essays. In “Is Everyone Hanging Out” she mentions the Ocean’s franchise when listing movies she’d like to reboot; she co-stars in the women-led version of “Ocean’s 8,” in theaters now. In “Why Not Me?”, she said that she hopes her next book will be about starting a family, as well as her “awesome movie career.” She now has a daughter, Katherine.
Her books teach, in a nutshell, that “it’s cool to want more,” and have helped me stop questioning whether the life I envision for myself is too improbable or far away. Her life is proof that I just might get there. Concepción de León is the digital staff writer for the Books desk at The Times. aSelf-Helped is a monthly column devoted to the books that have changed the way we live.
As a 7-year-old living in a small town near the border of Washington state and Canada, there was no dance studio to join. So she taught herself from DVDs.
At 12, her family moved to a town big enough to offer three dance studios. She persuaded her mom to enroll her at all three. And that’s when the trouble started.
Shree Saini
First came the discovery of a heart problem, followed by surgery to fix it. Then came the teasing. The bullying. The shunning.
It was enough to break anyone’s spirit. Except Shree loved dancing too much. If anything, the physical challenges and social pressures fueled her – all the way to the Joffrey Ballet and beyond, including winning the title of Miss India USA.
For this, the biggest performance of her life, Shree choreographed it around her life. It began with a heartbeat and shifted to a song featuring the hook: “You shoot me down, but I won’t fall. I am titanium.” It culminated with her receiving the crown and sash.
Since earning the title in December, Shree has used her platform to spread her story of perseverance, tolerance and heart health. The stakes go up this December when she competes for Miss India World.
I’ll be rooting for her. Once you learn the rest of her tale, I’m sure you will be, too.
***
In the early 2000s, Sanjay and Ekta Saini were living in Punjab, India, with two kids and several thriving businesses. Then Sanjay’s father died, and he decided to do something different. Very different.
He moved the family to the United States. After starting on the East Coast, he wound up owning a gas station in Colville, Washington, a town of about 4,500 in the northeastern part of the state.
Dancing was a solo pursuit for Shree. Through school, she joined team sports: softball, basketball and cross country.
Running seemed like a great outlet for her boundless energy. Yet she finished last in every race. Her parents bought a treadmill and she ran five miles nearly every day. She still finished last.
***
Shree Saini and her parents, Sanjay and Ekta.
The summer before Shree entered seventh grade, the Sainis bought a truck stop in Moses Lake, Washington, and moved there. With more than 20,000 people, it was a metropolis compared to Colville.
Shree’s new hometown boasted a ballet academy and two other dance studios. Now she could take classes in jazz, ballet, hip-hop, clogging and more.
All the studios required a physical exam. That’s how she learned her heart was beating only 20 times per minute. A normal heart rate for someone ages 6 to 15 is 70 to 100 beats per minute.
“You need to have surgery – now!” said the doctor, astounded that the girl was so active with such a slow heart rate.
Shree went home with a heart monitor. It showed that she sometimes went five seconds between heartbeats, long enough to cause many people to pass out.
Now Shree understood why she couldn’t keep up in cross country. Her grandmother in India, however, couldn’t believe that this girl “so full of light and joy” could have a heart problem. Nobody on either side of the family had heart problems.
At her grandma’s insistence, Shree went to India for tests from the country’s top cardiologists. They agreed with the folks in Moses Lake: Shree needed a pacemaker.
***
Shree smiles as she recovers following her pacemaker implantation.
On the day in June 2009 that her new peers performed a recital, Shree underwent a procedure to implant the device.
She came away with a scar on her chest and her left arm in a cast. She wasn’t allowed to raise the arm for several weeks for fear of jarring the device and the leads threaded into her heart.
Because of this fragility, doctors encouraged Shree to give up dancing.
Not a chance. Her parents didn’t bother trying to persuade her otherwise.
“They knew I would find a way to dance again, with my pacemaker,” she said.
***
Seventh grade is an emotional roller coaster for everyone. Shree went into it as the new girl with the scar and the cast and the different name and a heritage foreign to classmates in the town named after a Native American leader from the 1800s.
“You’re Indian?” kids said. “What tribe?”
“No, not that kind of Indian,” she said. “The country in Asia.”
Finally dancing with a heart that pumped at a normal rate, her talent blossomed. She advanced three levels in a single year.
So now the outsider was threatening the established pecking order.
Girls rolled their eyes at her. Sometimes they’d talk about Shree loud enough for her to hear them.
“Sometimes they’d do it right in front of me!” she said.
The social poison infected some instructors, she said. Fearing backlash from other parents, they refused to give her private lessons.
So Shree taught herself.
She watched videos of ballet moves like fouette (French for “whipped turn”) and middle leap, slowing the replays to break down each nuance. Working alone, she challenged herself with inner dialogue such as: “Can’t do more than three turns in a row? Now see if you can do six.”
***
Shree Saini speaking with Miss World 2017 Manushi Chhillar of India.
The better Shree became, the more vicious the bullying.
For years, she left the studio crying. While the tears soaked the feelings of energy and freedom that dancing gave her, they couldn’t douse the flame.
“When life gives you those tests, you can either grow up or fall down into a pattern of bitterness and anger,” she said. “I knew what I stood for. I had my moral values.”
Those values were forged by her parents and bolstered by stories she read of people such as Nelson Mandela.
“While he was jailed, he wanted to go to his son’s funeral, but the jailer didn’t allow him to go. When he was free, he invited that exact same jailer to his presidential inauguration,” Shree said. “So he taught me the value of forgiveness, of kindness, of choosing love over hate.”
It worked.
Her former tormentors are now her fans. Via social media, she’s received their congratulations – and apologies.
***
After high school, Shree took a gap year. That’s when she worked with the Joffrey Ballet.
She also volunteered with a project fighting human trafficking in Nepal, studied acting at Yale, and took classes at Harvard and Stanford. She’s now a full-time student at the University of Washington.
Along the way, she began entering pageants, climbing the ladder from Miss India Washington to the national title, beating 51 other contestants.
In the first six months of her reign, she participated in more than 50 events across 10 states and four countries. Her Facebook feed is filled with pictures of her alongside Miss World, Miss USA, televangelist Joel Osteen, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, Bill Gates’ mom and more. Now she’s sharing her story on behalf of my organization, the American Heart Association.
It’s a hectic pace for anyone, much less someone who’s overcome a congenital heart defect. Shree sees a cardiologist regularly and knows she may need new batteries in her pacemaker in the next year or two.
“I don’t want to think of my pacemaker as a disability – ever,” she said. “It gives me the ability to do everything I love doing. It makes me even more grateful that I’m able to dance.”
The French national soccer team was crowned world champions after defeating an underdog Croatian team 4-2 in the World Cup final in Moscow on Sunday, July 15th, capturing its second World Cup title and its first since it hosted the 1998 tournament 20 years ago. For the second time, France is champion of the world, and for the first time, this team has its own place in history.
In a match that featured anything you could have ever imagined, a self goal, a goalkeeper gaffe, pitch invaders and a teenager wunderkind finding the back of the net, France rolled to a convincing 4-1 lead and managed to hold on to earn its second star.
Les Bleus manager Didier Deschamps was the captain in 1998 when his team shocked Brazil in Paris, and he became the third to ever win the World Cup as a player and coach. Deschamps is just the third person to win the World Cup as a player and as a coach. Kylian Mbappé is only the second teenager to score in the final, after Pelé. They have etched their names among the greats.
The most watched sports game ended in the victory that France deserved. Not, necessarily, for what it did here in Moscow. As both Dejan Lovren and Luka Modric observed, Croatia could rightly regard itself as the better team. No, France’s victory was warranted for what it had done over the last month. Or, more precisely, for what it had not done.
As the New York Times reported, Deschamps’s team has been exceptional in Russia in more ways than one. Everyone else here seemed determined to make this World Cup as nerve-shredding and logic-defying as possible. Germany fell first to Mexico and then to South Korea. Argentina and Portugal, and Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, limped on a little longer, and then melted away, too. Spain and Brazil slipped to Russia and to Belgium. This was a World Cup that first defied expectation and then prediction, a glorious mayhem, a month that captivated the planet with its volatility and its caprice.
Croatia, regarded by most as underdogs, had the ball, had the initiative. Twice in the first half, France took the lead, but it was not entirely clear how: It had not created a single chance. Instead, it benefited from a self goal — Griezmann’s free kick skimming Mario Mandzukic’s head — and, after Ivan Perisic’s equalizer, a penalty, awarded by Néstor Pitana, the Argentine referee, for a hand ball by Perisic after several consultations both with the video referee and a video screen.
Croatia did all it could to be the exception. It scrapped and it clawed to stay in contention; it played with the intensity of a team that knew this chance would not come again.
No team has contributed more to this World Cup than Modric — deservedly awarded the Golden Ball as the tournament’s best player — and his teammates; after three games that extended to extra time, they arrived in the final having played 90 minutes, an entire match’s worth, more than the French, so arduous has been their path. Croatia’s Luka Modric was named the tournament’s best player.
There was more to come, as it turned out. In those six minutes, Pogba and Mbappé scored; in those six minutes, France hit a rhythm Croatia could not bear; in those six minutes, France took the game, and the crown, beyond its opponents. Those six minutes spoke volumes for the measure of French superiority over the past six weeks: a team so potent that it does not need to play well for sustained periods, so rich in talent that it only has to shine briefly to shine impossibly brightly, so good that it can do in flashes, in seconds, what others might need an hour and half to do. It is a team of blinding light.
France is the world champion because it can shine brighter than anyone else, even if it only needs to do so for a moment. Because it came to win games and would worry later about hearts. Because it never lost control: of itself, of its opponents, of its destiny. They celebrated at the final whistle, of course, their 4-2 victory over Croatia confirmed: Hugo Lloris led his teammates in an Icelandic thunderclap.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was cutting loose — leaping to his feet, punching the air. Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, presented France’s players with the trophy that they had craved for so long, that their country and their heroes last held 20 years ago, that all of the emotion, constrained from the moment they arrived in Russia, came rushing out in waves.
Brett M. Kavanaugh, 53, has been chosen to replace Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, by President Trump. If confirmed, Judge Kavanaugh, who is expected to be a reliable conservative, would replace Justice Kennedy, a Reagan appointee who often voted with the court’s liberal wing on social issues like abortion and gay rights. Judge Kavanaugh is estimated to be more conservative than 66 percent of all other current and former federal judges nominated since 1980.
Before joining the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Kavanaugh held several posts in the administration of George W. Bush, ultimately serving as his staff secretary. He also worked under Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton. Judge Kavanaugh sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (the most influential circuit court) and is reportedly commanding wide and deep respect among scholars, lawyers and jurists.
In an opinion piece in a major daily, Akhil Reed Amar, an Indian American professor at Yale Law School, has hailed the nomination. “The nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be the next Supreme Court justice is President Trump’s finest hour, his classiest move,” Prof. Amar wrote.
Judge Kavanaugh has already helped decide hundreds of cases concerning a broad range of difficult issues. Good appellate judges faithfully follow the Supreme Court; great ones influence and help steer it. Several of Judge Kavanaugh’s most important ideas and arguments — such as his powerful defense of presidential authority to oversee federal bureaucrats and his skepticism about newfangled attacks on the property rights of criminal defendants — have found their way into Supreme Court opinions.
According to Prof. Amar, Judge Kavanaugh has taught courses at leading law schools and published notable law review articles. More important, he is an avid consumer of legal scholarship. He reads and learns. And he reads scholars from across the political spectrum. (
Prof. Amar, who was one of Judge Kavanaugh’s professors when he was a student at Yale Law School, wrote, “This studiousness is especially important for a jurist like Judge Kavanaugh, who prioritizes the Constitution’s original meaning. A judge who seeks merely to follow precedent can simply read previous judicial opinions. But an “originalist” judge — who also cares about what the Constitution meant when its words were ratified in 1788 or when amendments were enacted — cannot do all the historical and conceptual legwork on his or her own.
“Judge Kavanaugh seems to appreciate this fact, whereas Justice Antonin Scalia, a fellow originalist, did not read enough history and was especially weak on the history of the Reconstruction amendments and the 20th-century amendments. A great judge also admits and learns from past mistakes. Here, too, Judge Kavanaugh has already shown flashes of greatness, admirably confessing that some of the views he held 20 years ago as a young lawyer — including his crabbed understandings of the presidency when he was working for the Whitewater independent counsel, Kenneth Starr — were erroneous.
“Judge Kavanaugh is, again, a superb nominee. Judge Kavanaugh could be confirmed with the ninety something Senate votes he deserves, rather than the fifty something votes he is likely to get,” Prof. Amar wrote.
Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (http://www.fetna.org) an umbrella organization of more than 50 Tamil associations across North America held between June 29th – July 1st at the Dr. Pepper Arena in Frisco, TX, focused onHeritage, Youth & Women.
“The focus of the convention was multifold, and it also included an exclusive one-day entrepreneur conference and two days of Tamil heritage programs,” said Sriram Krishnan, one of the organizers. An estimated 5,000 people from all over the U.S. and some from abroad gathered in Frisco, Texas to reconnect to their roots, their culture and their tradition during the 31st National Tamil Convention.
The convention, among other things, celebrated the culmination of global efforts to raise US$ 6 MM to setup a Tamil Chair at Harvard University. Tamil language is one of the oldest classical languages of the world and the only Indian language to be recognized as an official and/or minority language in countries like Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Canada, Mauritius and South Africa. The founders and directors of Harvard Tamil Chair as well as several key volunteers were recognized. The 2018 convention also witnessed the resurrection of youth competitions and introduction of several new competitions.
The convention also celebrated the 120th birthday of Thilliayadi Valliammai, the first woman from the Indian diaspora who worked with Mahatma Gandhi and gave her life for liberty and freedom in South Africa. It also celebrated Than Thai Selva, a Sri Lankan Tamil lawyer and politician who is considered a father figure among Sri Lankan Tamils.
The entrepreneur and business conference comprised of a Tamil Entrepreneurship Forum (TEF) that was attended by about 1,200 people. As many as 30 world-class business leaders, CIOs, social entrepreneurs and community leaders spoke at the daylong event. It was keynoted by C.K. Kumaravel, the founder of Naturals, one of India’s top hair and beauty salons. Kumaravel shared with the audience how his venture into uncharted territory led to success. Other speakers included Senthamarai Prabhakar, president of the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America; Lakshmanan Chidambaram, president of Tech Mahindra’s Americas Strategic Verticals; Muru Murugappan CIO of BNSF, a Berkshire Hathaway Company; Ganesh Radhakrishnan CEO of Wharfedale Technologies; Prashanth Ram, founder and CTO of Gold Coast IT Solutions, and Latha Pandiarajan, cofounder of MaFoi Consultants.
Arul Murugan of 11-11 Ventures awarded $5,000 in prize money to the winners of TEF Junior, a VC pitch contest for students 16 and younger. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthy (D-Ill.) delivered the closing address of the business conference, urging greater involvement in civic matters.
Lena Kannappan, COO and head of Cloud IAM business for 8KMiles, announced the launching of the Dallas Chapter of American Tamil Entrepreneurs Association (ATEA). A serial entrepreneur with 24 years of software industry experience, Kannappan was instrumental in starting the TEF talk in such gatherings a few years ago to promote entrepreneurship spirit among Tamil entrepreneurs and to inspire the young generation.
One of the highlights of the convention was the recreation of the Thanjavur Brihadeeshwara Temple, constructed some 1,000 years ago by one of the greatest emperors of India, Raja Cholan. The location is a UNESCO heritage site. Several hundred volunteers worked for nearly nine months to recreate the temple that was the center of attraction at the convention.
The festivities included motivational speeches and discourses including one from the chancellor of Vellore Institute of Technology, G. Viswanathan. A global Tamil hour program included participation by Tamil scholars. It also had performances by Narthagi Natarajan, award-winning play troupe Manal Magudi and Tamil Isai by Sanjay Subrahmanyan.
The convention was conducted under the auspices of Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (FeTNA) and organized by Metroplex Tamil Sangam, Dallas which celebrated its 50th year. The cultural programs at the convention included Mangala Isai, the traditional
Nadaswara performance, followed by Tamil Thai Vazhthu, American National Anthem and a mega Broadway style dance recital by nearly 150 children, trained under renowned Bharatanatyam exponent Narthagi Natarajan. There were also performances involving traditional Tamil art forms – Pambai, Parai, Silambam, Karagam, Gummi – and a discussion on Tamil heritage. There was also a light music performance by singer Karthik, drummer Sivamani and Shaktisree Gopalan.
Nearly 40 parallel sessions were held on a wide range of topics,including Thurumular Pranayama, art workshops, a science fair, continuing medical education and medical symposium, and Tamil Isai, a movement that promotes pure form of ancient Tamil music.
The Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan urged Non Resident Keralites to invest in ‘Intellectual Capital’ at the 18th biennial convention of the Federation of Kerala Associations in North America (FOKANA) held from July 5-8 at the Valley Forge Convention Center in Pennsylvania.
More than money, Kerala is in need of the community’s expertise and intellectual collaboration to foster its development, the Marxist chief minister told the 2,000 people at the convention, stating that it was nonresident Keralites who changed Kerala after land regulation. “It is the contribution of the NRKs that gives the state its stature,” Vijayan was quoted as saying in a press release. The last state chief minister to attend the convention was E.K. Nayanar, also a Marxist, who went to the gathering in Dallas 22 years ago.
This year’s convention was also attended by Opposition Leader in the state assembly Ramesh Chennithala who belongs to the Congress party. Also attending was K.K. Sailaja, minister for health, Katakampalli Surendran, minister for tourism and state lawmakers Raju Abraham, Monce Joseph, Chittayam Gopakumar and V.P. Sajeendran.
Vijayan noted that although Keralites adapt to local cultures around the globe when they resettle, they keep their identity, language and culture intact. He said people celebrate their culture and language more when they live in other countries.
“Our language and our land of the forefathers give the identity to us. If you go away from the language and culture we inherited from our fathers, we lose our address. Organizations like FOKANA should work to impart the culture and language to the new generation,” the chief minister said.
He said Kerala has changed much where the government and the opposition work together for projects important for the state. He said many projects, which were considered impossible earlier, are being completed. “New projects are coming up. We believe in development that is inclusive of all. It should benefit all,” he said. Chennithala said work opportunities are drying up and the governments cannot ignore them.
Vijayan said in a market-oriented society everything becomes a commodity and people will value things if they are useful to them. In such a society people will discard anything that is not found useful — including old or invalid parents who may be viewed as a burden. “We should tell the children to be successful without forgetting values. The children who grow up without values are the ones who shot their classmates,” he said.
The chief minister also called for uniting with the rival Federation of Malayalee Associations of Americas (FOMAA), the mother organization,and asked FOKANA leaders to take the initiative on this. He said that 10 percent of the estimated four million Indians living in the U.S., are from the Malayalee community. He called for dual citizenship and for voting rights for all NRIs.
The chief minister earlier visited the Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore to discuss about possible collaboration for the Institute of Advanced Virology Center being built in Kerala. Dr. Robert Charles Gallo, institute director credited for his work in helping discover the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, in 1984, promised intellectual collaboration.
During the convention, Prabha Thomas (Philadelphia) was crowned the Ms. Malayalee Manka FOKANA 2018. Asha Agustine (Philadelphia) was the First Runner up winner. Reethu Sreekanth was the Second Runner up. Fifteen married women competed in 2018 Malayalee Manka FOKANA 2018. That group was narrowed to 8 finalists who competed last weekend in Kerala Set Mundu Round, Talent Round, Saree Round at the 18th FOKANA National Convention 2018 held at the Valley Forge Convention Center in Pennsylvania on Friday July 6, 2018. Contestants had to be married.
The MANKA competition showcased contestant’s intelligence, talent, personality, confidence, beauty and leadership skills under the leadership of Mini Aby, Bala Kearke, Sosamma Andrews and Anitha George (MC). The performers included Aji Panicker dance group, Isabela Ajit, Biju Abraham. The judges were Malini Nair, Nimmy Das, and Khala Shai. The committee members included Anitha Panicker (Sound System), Celine Oalickal, Marykutty Michael, Mary Philip, Usha Narayan, Jessy Joshy, Usha George and Aleymma Mathew.
Just over seven decades after the declaration of India’s independence in 1947 and the emergence of a modern art movement in India, Asia Society presents a landmark exhibition of more than 80 works by members of the Progressive Artists’ Group, which formed in Bombay, now known as Mumbai, in the aftermath of independence. The Progressive Revolution: Modern Art for a New India examines the founding ideology of the Progressives and explores the ways in which artists from different social, cultural, and religious backgrounds found common cause at a time of massive political and social upheaval.
Though the group disbanded in 1956, the ideas and discussions of its members continued to animate and give visual expression to India’s modern identity, with many of the Group’s artists creating their most iconic works after this period. Works in the exhibition—primarily oil paintings from the 1940s to 1990s—underscore how these artists gave visual form to the idea of India as secular, diverse, international, and united. Like their counterparts in the West, India’s modern masters mined multiple sources of inspiration including the subcontinent and Asia, as well as the wider world. They forged their own distinctive styles that were international in outlook while resonating with Indian sensibilities.
The exhibition is organized by guest curator Dr. Zehra Jumabhoy, Associate Lecturer, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London and Boon Hui Tan, Vice President for Global Arts and Cultural Programs and Director of Asia Society Museum in New York. A fully illustrated catalogue featuring essays by leading scholars of Indian art and modern history accompanies the exhibition.
“The works in this exhibition reflect the diversity of Asian modernities, which are not a mirror of the Euro-American experience,” says Boon Hui Tan. “Art was also a way for the Progressive Artists’ Group to validate and celebrate a new secular republic that emerged from a rich, multi-religious tradition in ways that remain relevant today. Asia Society is pleased to present the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of the Progressives undertaken in the United States in recent decades.”
“The Progressives’ Artist Group have come to be seen as the ‘quintessential Indian Moderns,’” notes Zehra Jumabhoy. “They came from all walks of life: rich, poor, Dalits, Muslims, Brahmins, Roman Catholics. They genuinely embodied Indian Prime Minister Nehru’s dream of unity in diversity and his version of an ‘Indian secularism’ that was multi-religious and inclusive. Given the political climate in both India and the U.S. today, I think this principle of tolerance – part and parcel of the Group’s DNA – is vital to rekindle.”
The exhibition comprises important and visually arresting works from the Group’s core founders—K. H. Ara, S. K. Bakre, H. A. Gade, M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza, and F. N. Souza—as well as later members and those closely affiliated with the movement: V. S. Gaitonde, Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar, Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee, and Mohan Samant. A selection of masterpieces of South Asian and East Asian art, including works from the Asia Society Museum Collection—Rajput miniatures, a sandstone figure, two Chola bronzes, and a Japanese landscape hanging scroll—is also included to show how the Progressives were inspired by South Asian and East Asian iconography and traditional forms in the creation of a new visual language for a new Indian nation.
The exhibition is organized into three major sections plotting the artistic development of the Group’s celebrated artists. The first section, “Progressives in Their Time,” considers the Group’s origins and early formation, and the context in which the artists were working. A section titled “National/International” examines the Progressives’ use of multiple sources of inspiration, including India’s high art and folk traditions, and ways that they borrowed from a range of styles to create a distinct mode of expression. The third section of the exhibition, “Masters of the Game,” comprises some of the artists’ most iconic works created after the Group dissolved in the 1950s and its most prominent members had traveled to foreign lands.
The exhibition includes rarely seen historic works from the first and earliest shows of the Progressives. Other highlights include two paintings from M. F. Husain and F. N. Souza that were exhibited in the first exhibition of the Progressives in 1949, and a painting by S. H. Raza that was included in the seminal exhibition Trends in Contemporary Painting from India. The exhibition traveled to institutions and galleries throughout the United States between March 1959 and March 1960 as one of the largest presentations of modern Indian painting in this country. Also included is a large-scale crucifixion painting by F. N. Souza that has not been shown in more than six decades.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Asia Society presents a special season of public programs exploring India’s dynamic past, present, and future through performance, film, literature, design, and cuisine. For more information, visit AsiaSociety.org/NY.
Major support is provided by Amita and Purnendu Chatterjee, Blanca and Sunil Hirani, Sangita Jindal, Sheryl and Chip Kaye, and Sana H. Sabbagh. Generous support is provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Rajiv and Payal Chaudhri, Kent and Marguerite Charugundla, The Darashaw Foundation, Sonny and Michelle Kalsi, Indra and Raj Nooyi, and The Rajadhyaksha Family.
Additional support is from Jon Friedland and Shaiza Rizavi; Peter Louis, Chandru Ramchandani, and Lal Dalamal; The Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation; and Kelly and Sundaram Tagore.
Founded in 1956, Asia Society is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational institution based in New York with state-of-the-art cultural centers and gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Houston, and offices in Los Angeles, Manila, Mumbai, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo, Washington, D.C., and Zurich.
Asia Society Museum is located at 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), New York City. The Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. and Friday 11 A.M. to 9 P.M. (mid-September through June). Closed on Mondays and major holidays. General admission is $12, seniors $10, students $7; and free for members and persons under 16. Find out more at AsiaSociety.org/NY and @AsiaSocietyNY.
Ministry of External Affairs, Govt. of India has been organizing Know India Programmes (KIPs) for the Indian Diaspora youth who have never visited India before. The purpose of conducting KIP is to engage and make the students and young professionals of Indian Diaspora feel a sense of connect with their ancestral roots, to be motivated and inspired by the transformational changes taking place in India and to give them an exposure to various facets of contemporary India’s forms of art, heritage and culture.
Since the current KIP allows participation of young Diaspora representing 3rd generation onwards who have never visited India before and in view of the growing popularity of KIPs, Ministry has been receiving requests from various Indian Associations for organisation of KIPs with no such conditions attached to enable more PIO Diaspora youth to be part of KIP.
In order to meet the aspirations of the Diaspora community, it has been decided to arrange a Know India Programme on Self Financing Basis on the following terms: i) The KIP will be available to PIO/OCI card holders in the age group 18-35 years irrespective of their generation and previous visits to India. ii) The Programme will be organised by the same Event Management Company (EMC) that is approved for the regular KIPs and at the same rates and conditions.
The participants will have to bear the total cost of international and domestic travel, boarding and lodging, management fee of the EMC, international medical insurance, etc. iii) Air-tickets to/ from India and international medical insurance will be purchased directly by the participants. The logistic arrangements in India will be made by the EMC on payment basis and the money will be payable directly by the participants to the EMC. iv) Ministry will identify one or two state(s) to be visited by the participants, draw a structured programme schedule in coordination with the EMC and coordinate with the organisations concerned for waiver of entrance fee to various historic sites. v) Other conditions like provision of gratis visa by the Mission, orientation programme at FSI, deployment of a liaison officer with the KIP group, etc. will remain the same as for a regular KIP.
The portal www.kip.gov.in enables Indian-origin youth to apply online for KIP programmes. In the Application Form, the applicant should indicate his preference for each KIP, in the order or priority. Ministry will attempt to allot the first preference of each applicant to the extent possible. For more details please visit www.kip.gov.in
Weeks after being pardoned by President Donald Trump, Dinesh D’Souza is unveiling the trailer for his latest movie. Quality Flix opens the conservative’s latest documentary film, Death of a Nation, in 1,000 theaters on Aug. 3.
The film likens Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump — saying that the situations they found themselves in as U.S. presidents are very similar, according to the filmmaker.
“Lincoln was elected to unite a country and stop slavery. Democrats smeared him; went to war against him; assassinated him. Now, their target is Trump,” D’Souza intones at the top of the trailer before announcing the movie is produced by Gerald Molen, the Oscar-winning producer of Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park.
D’Souza’s first three films, 2016: Obama’s America; America: Imagine a World Without Her; and Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, were huge hits as far as documentaries go.
They were also very controversial, and D’Souza’s newest effort promises to be doubly so, considering its favorable treatment of Trump comes on the heels of a presidential pardon for the filmmaker, who was on probation for using straw donors to give more to a friend’s campaign for U.S. senator than the law allows.
Snippets seen in the two-minute trailer above include actor Pavel Kriz as Adolf Hitler in scenes filmed at Zeppelin Field where Nazi rallies took place eight decades ago, plus reenactments of the Civil War and of slaves being unmercifully beaten.
“Lincoln saved America the first time. It’s now up to us to save it a second time,” he says at the trailer’s end.
“The primary theme of the movie is racism and fascism,” D’Souza tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Look at the timeliness of this with the immigration debate, where Trump is being called a ‘Nazi,’ ‘fascist’ and ‘racist.’ This tells me that people don’t have a clue, not only about the history of fascism and racism, but where it exists today.”
D’Souza was convicted in 2014 on campaign finance fraud charges and sentenced to five years’ probation. Former Indian American U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara led the investigation into D’Souza, who was charged with using straw donors to illegally funnel $20,000 to the 2012 U.S. Senate campaign for New York Republican Wendy Long. President Trump pardoned the high-profile Indian American May 31. (Read earlier India-West story here.)
According to the film’s official description, “Death of a Nation” cuts through “progressive big lies to expose hidden history and explosive truths through stunning historical recreations and a searching examination of fascism and white supremacy.”
The trailer shows an actor portraying Adolf Hitler, reenactments of Nazi rallies, and Civil War, showing black slaves being mistreated by white men. “A nation dies when its people are not free,” D’Souza adds.
Jayshree Ullal and Neerja Sethi have made in into the latest Forbes List, “America’s Richest Self-Made Women” released on July 11, 2018. In the 4th edition of the annual list by Forbes magazine, these 60 women have a record combined net worth of $71 billion.
Forbes said that net worth of these 60 women is up 15% from $61.5 billion in 2017 and that they have shattered ceilings and scaled new heights, making fortunes in everything from genetic testing to slimming shapewear. The minimum net worth to make Forbes’ fourth annual ranking of these top women jumped 23 percent to a record $320 million. Twenty-four of these women are billionaires, another record, up from 18 last year.
Indian-origin technology executives Ullal is ranked 18th in the list with a net worth of $1.3 billion and Sethi is ranked 21st with a net worth of $1 billion. Ullal, the 57-year-old president and chief executive officer at computer networking firm Arista Networks. The head of Arista since 2008, Ullal, of Saratoga, Calif., owns about 5 percent of the company’s stock, some of which is earmarked for her two children, niece and nephew, Forbes said. The company in 2017 recorded revenues of $1.6 billion.
Arista and Cisco, Ullal’s former employer, have been locked in a multi-year legal battle over alleged patent infringement, which Arista denies. Ullal, the Ernst & Young U.S. Entrepreneur of the Year in 2015 (see India-West article here), earned a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from San Francisco State University and a master’s in engineering management from Santa Clara University.
Sethi, the vice president of IT consulting and outsourcing company Syntel, which she co-founded with her husband Bharat Desai in 1980 in their Troy, Mich., apartment, came in at No. 21 on the list. The 63-year-old executive who resides in Fisher Island, Fla., has a net worth of $1 billion. She started out with an initial investment of a mere $2,000 which resulted in first-year sales of $30,000.
In 2017, Syntel, which now employs roughly 23,000 individuals globally – 80 percent of whom are in India – made $924 million in revenues. Sethi earned a bachelor’s in mathematics and an M.B.A. in operations research from Delhi University, and a master’s in computer science from Oakland University.
Topping the Forbes list was Diane Hendricks, the co-founder of ABC Supply, with $4.9 billion. Marian Ilitch of Little Caeser’s fortune ($4.3 billion), Judy Faulkner in the health IT industry ($3.5 billion), Meg Whitman of eBay ($3.3 billion) and Johnelle Hunt of the trucking industry ($3.2 billion) round out the top 5. Other notable individuals in the top 10 include Oprah Winfrey (No. 6, $3.1 billion) and Doris Fisher of the Gap (No. 8, $2.8 billion).
Over 10,000 children and youth between the ages of 8 to 22 were split into three groups and participated in three-day programs from July 1 to 10 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. The 10-day event, unprecedented in the history of Hindus in North America was built around Moksha as life’s greatest pursuit that generates unwavering happiness to be experienced here and now.
According to BAPS, the 10-day event was “unprecedented” in the history of Hindus in North America. And it was built around the theme of “Moksha Now” (ultimate liberation) as life’s greatest pursuit. This broad theme led to a social conversation around “Moksha Now”, a theme that carried throughout the convention.
It was more than two years ago that volunteers of BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, around the country began canvassing Hindu youth to learn about their likes, dislikes, desires, challenges and ambitions. Those surveys were distilled into the template for the 10-day BAPS North American Youth Convention 2018.
Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, or BAPS for short, is a ubiquitous presence in the lives of many Hindu families and their children in the United States since it began its ministry in this country in 1971 under the leadership of Pramukh Swami Maharaj, who is now succeeded by Mahant Swami Maharaj, the sixth spiritual head of the global organization.
The delegates learned that the means to achieve Moksha could also allow them to enjoy the world, especially when every task and activity undertaken focuses on keeping God and the Guru in mind. The comprehensive concept of Moksha was taught by explaining the efforts and context of Dharma (roles and responsibilities), Artha (worldly pursuits), and Kaam (desires).
Speeches and presentations by senior swamis from India, Sadguru Pujya Ishwarcharandas Swami and Pujya Anandswarupdas Swami, as well as many others from across North America, simplified how to make Moksha-centered decisions in everyday living. They explained that living life with the goal to attain moksha leads to an elevated experience of daily interactions and an unfailingly optimistic perspective of life and the world around us.
Delegates experienced a grand multi-faceted stage program where the life and challenges of several characters were portrayed creatively and practically as they navigated everyday scenarios that brought out dilemmas of desires versus values. Instead of looking for instant gratification, the young adults were asked to contemplate various perspectives that could lead to a higher way of life.
“We had taken two years to delve into this concept of Moksha, and had to present in two days, what we had learnt ,” said Akhil Patel, 33, event-lead who has been involved in previous youth conventions of 2004, 2007, and 2013, and was part of the logistics planning for this one, involved with the content and guidance for the grade school and college level youth.
Speeches and presentations by senior swamis from India, as well as many others from across North America, dwelt on how to make Moksha-centered decisions in everyday living. “Attendees took home a message of how to be less concerned about what others think of them, and more concerned about what they think of themselves,” organizers contended.
Today, BAPS has a network of more than 3,850 centers around the world, and according to its website, has a million or more followers. This Hindu organization was established in 1907 in India, and today has a global reach. The North American chapter of BAPS describes itself as a “socio-spiritual Hindu organization” rooted in the Vedas, and “founded on the pillars of practical spirituality.”
Hinduism, or Sanatana Dharma (Eternal Way), is the world’s oldest living religion. It is a richly diverse family of philosophies, traditions, and practices that have been followed primarily throughout Asia for thousands of years. Today, Hinduism is a global religion with adherents living on every continent, and comprising majorities in three countries: India, Nepal, and Mauritius.
The 17th World Sanskrit Conference, the premier international forum for Sanskrit scholars, recognized Bhagwan Swaminarayan’s Akshar-Purushottam Darshan as the first new independent school of Vedanta since the 16th century. The recently authored ground-breaking Sanskrit works on the Akshar-Purushottam Darshan, the Swaminarayan Bhashyam and the Swaminarayan Siddhanta-Sudha by Sadhu Bhadreshdas of the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, were also launched in the conference’s inaugural session on 9 July 2018 in Vancouver, Canada.
More than 600 eminent Sanskrit scholars and educators had gathered from over 40 countries for this historic event. The triennial World Sanskrit Conference, which for the last half-century has been bringing the finest minds in the world of Sanskrit together to advance understanding of Sanskrit language and literature, was held for the first time in Canada, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. World Sanskrit Conference organizing committee member and senior Sanskrit scholar from the University of British Columbia, Professor Ashok Aklujkar said, “Bhadreshdas Swami is one of the most amazing personalities of the religious traditions of India that I have ever met. His scholarly genius is jaw-dropping, and his commentaries on the Prasthantrayi are a truly great achievement. I think all of us at the World Sanskrit Conference are fortunate to have a bhashyakar in our midst. Just as Śrī Kāśī Vidvat Parisad acknowledged Swaminarayan Bhagwan’s Akshar-Purushottam Darshan as a distinct darshan in the Vedanta tradition, we are honored to do the same from the platform of the World Sanskrit Conference.”
Mahamahopadhyaya Bhadreshdas Swami, an eminent Sanskrit scholar and ordained swami of the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, completed the Swaminarayan Bhashyam, a five-volume comprehensive Sanskrit commentary on Hinduism’s three Vedic canonical texts (Prasthanatrayi) – the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita and Brahma Sutras – in 2007. These three texts form the foundation for the philosophical beliefs of Hindu Vedanta (commentarial) traditions. In 2017, Bhadreshdas Swami also completed the Swaminarayana-Siddhanta-Sudha, a classical Sanskrit dialectic treatise that offers an exposition, justification, and defense of the Akshar-Purushottam Darshan’s theological and philosophical principles.
The significance of Bhadreshdas Swami’s achievement was highlighted by Professor Deven Patel of the University of Pennsylvania. He said, “The World Sanskrit Conference is proud to honor this new and truly historic achievement in the world of Sanskrit philosophical culture. It is the first Sanskrit commentary on the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita in nearly 200 years and the first commentary on the complete set by a single acharya in over 1200 years. This five-volume commentary, known as the Swaminarayan Bhashyam, interprets the Prasthantrayi through the lens of Bhagwan Swaminarayan’s Akshar-Purushottam Darshan. We are fortunate to have present before us today, in Bhadreshdas Swami, the acharya who, in the tradition of Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Nimbarka, Vallabha, and others, has composed these commentaries.”
World-renowned Sanskrit scholar from the University of Pennsylvania, Professor George Cardona aptly detailed the importance of Bhadreshdas Swami’s work in establishing Akshar Purushottam Darshan saying, “This is a very important classical Sanskrit commentary that very clearly and effectively explains that Akshar is distinct from Purushottam.”
In the conference’s inaugural address, Bhadreshdas Swami explained the principles of the Akshar-Purushottam Darshan, the classical name of this distinct school of Vedanta. This darshan was revealed by Bhagwan Swaminarayan in the 19th century and propounded by His Holiness Shastriji Maharaj, the third spiritual successor of Bhagwan Swaminarayan and the founder of the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha. Bhadreshdas Swami further explained: “The essence of Akshar-Purushottam Darshan is to offer devotion to Purushottam, the supreme being, with loving servitude having qualitatively realized oneself as Akshar, who takes the form of the exemplary living guru.”
This was followed by the blessings of Ishwarcharandas Swami, the International Convener of the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, who appreciated the great work of the World Sanskrit Conference and encouraged Sanskrit research and learning.
The World Sanskrit Conference’s inaugural session concluded with all the assembled scholars collectively recognizing Bhagwan Swaminarayan’s Akshar-Purushottam Darshan as a distinct school of philosophy in the Vedanta tradition.
On the morning of Tuesday, July 10, a special darshanic scholarly session was held on the Akshar-Purushottam Darshan in which professors and learned Swamis presented papers. Bhadreshdas Swami spoke on “Bhagwan Swaminarayan’s Akshar Purushottam Darshan: Ontology, Soteriology, and Identity”; Paramtattvadas Swami presented a paper on “Deconstructing ‘brahmajignasa’ in the Brahmasutra-Swaminarayan-Bhashya: A Study of Grammar, Hermeneutics, and Theology”; Aksharananddas Swami presented a paper on “The Akshar-Purushottam Darshan and the Gita Verse: ‘Brahmabhutah Prasannatma…’”; Prof. Deven Patel of the University of Pennsylvania presented a paper on “The Role of the Guru Within the Akshar-Purushottam Darshan”, and Aksharvatsaldas Swami presented a paper on “The Tradition of the Shikhara Within Mandir Architecture – A Study Based on Ancient Treatises and the Akshar-Purushottam Darshan.”
In the evening, Akshar-Purushottam Darshan Vidvat Goshti, a scholarly forum in Sanskrit and English was held on the significance of the Swaminarayan Siddhant Sudha, composed by Bhadreshdas Swami. Several of the world’s foremost experts on Sanskrit, including Prof. George Cardona (University of Pennsylvania), Prof. Sadananda Das (University of Leipzig), C. Rajendran (University of Calicut), Staneshwar Timalsina (San Diego State University), Shrikant Bahulkar (Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute), and Bhadreshdas Swami discussed the impact of the Akshar-Purushottam Darshan.
Spiritual leader Jashan Pahlajrai Vaswani, popularly known as Dada JP Vaswani died at his abode in Sadhu Vaswani Mission in Pune on Thursday morning, just 21 days before his 100th birthday on August 2.
The Mission in a tweet, said, “0901hrs IST July 12 2018, on sacred Guruvaar day, our Beloved Revered Dada J.P. Vaswani passes on, from the seen to the unseen. Ever-loving, ever-giving, may he continue to bless us from the beyond.”
“Dadaji breathed his last at 9.01 a.m. today. He was 99. His body has been kept for final darshan at his ashram, Sadhu Vaswani Mission,” the spokesperson said.
Dada Vaswani was admitted to a city-based private hospital a few days ago and was discharged on Wednesday night. Known for his ardent promotion of vegetarianism and animal rights, his mortal remains will be kept at the Mission till 2pm on Friday for followers to pay their last respect.
The Mission was planning a grand celebration on Vaswani’s 100th birthday in August that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was expected to attend. “I am saddened beyond words on the passing away of Dada JP Vaswani. He lived for society and served the poor and needy with compassion. Blessed with immense wisdom, he was passionate about educating the girl child, cleanliness and furthering peace as well as brotherhood,” Modi said in a tweet.
Born on August 2, 1918, to a Sindhi couple Pahlajrai and Krishnadevi Vaswani of Hyderabad (Sindh) in undivided India, Dada Vaswani – as he was revered by the community – was one among seven children – three sisters and four brothers.
He headed the Sadhu Vaswani Mission – founded by his uncle and spiritual Guru, the late Sadhu T.L. Vaswani in Hyderabad in 1929, which has now branched out all over the world. Following his demise in 1966, Sadhu J.P. Vaswani was anointed his successor and he carried forward the legacy of his Guru’s Mission globally.
A proponent of world peace, vegetarianism, girls’ education, compassion for the poor, among others, Sadhu Vaswani addressed the British House of Commons, Global Forum of Spiritual Leaders in Oxford, World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, Millenium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders at the UN, and Parliament of World Religions in South Africa,.
He initiated a global peace initiative – The Moment of Calm, when people observe two-minutes of silence to forgive all, on August 2, with eminent personalities like the Dalai Lama joining it. Among various national and international honours conferred on Sadhu Vaswani were the U Thant Peace Award in 1998, jointly with Pope John Paul II.
Years of low fertility, emigration, political strife, economic contraction and natural disasters have contributed to population losses in some global cities, according to data released by the United Nations. Most of the cities with falling populations are located in Asia and eastern Europe, such as Japan, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine, where overall population sizes have been either stagnating or in decline.
As of 2018, Tokyo is still the world’s largest city with 37 million inhabitants, but it’s growth has plateaued and is projected to begin declining around 2020, while Delhi continues the ascend to become the most populous city in the world in 2028.
In the Land of the Rising Sun population declines are widespread. Between 2030 and 2035, 63 urban areas, out of a total of 1,800 in the world, with a population of 300,000 inhabitants or more in 2018, are expected to shrink. Of which, 33, or more than half of them are in Japan. By the end of the century there could be 50 million fewer Japanese than there were at its peak.
Looking at approximately one generation’s time from 2000 to 2030, the population of three industrial cities in China’s Yichun, in the northeast province of Heilongjiang, Youngstown in Ohio, United States and Hamhung, in the Hamgyong province of North Korean are expected to fall in size significantly.
Among the most populous cities in 2000, some will make a dramatic change by 2030. New York-Newark metropolitan area, will be pushed out of top 10. Paris, France, the only Western European entry in 2000, will place number 35 in 2030, with a forecast of 11.7 million people. Seoul, South Korea, with an estimated annualized growth rate of less than 0.1%, second lowest to Osaka, Japans negligible rate of growth will be pushed to No. 42 in 2030, a 24 place drop in rank.
Actress Priyanka Chopra is the ‘hottest woman on the planet,’ according to Maxim India. For the fifth year in a row, the magazine has named the “Quantico” star on its ‘Hot 100’ list.
In the caption introducing their cover featuring Chopra, Maxim India writes that she has “the talent, she’s got the brains and she’s definitely got the looks – is it any surprise that after millions of fans showed their support, @priyankachopra is back to top the 2018 Maxim India Hot 100 list and grace the cover for a record-breaking fifth time? Welcome back, PC.”
Dressed in an all-white bodysuit that’s covered in a sheer pantsuit and a messy bun to go with it, Chopra looks smoking hot. In a prelude to their cover story, Maxim India adds: “She’s more than the Indian abroad, more than our girl in Hollywood, more than one of India’s biggest stars. Who is she? Find out in our Special Hot 100 issue.”
The 34-year-old has been in the headlines lately because of her blossoming romance with singer Nick Jonas. The two were recently spotted celebrating the Fourth of July in New York, with Jonas’ family. While her ABC thriller, “Quantico,” is in its last season, she is getting ready to reunite with Salman Khan in “Bharat,” a collaboration fans are anxiously waiting for.
Chopra has been roped in director-writer Shonali Bose’s next titled “The Sky Is Pink” and has already started prepping for the Hindi film. Priyanka on July 8 night shared a photograph of the film’s draft on her Instagram stories. The draft also mentioned that the film is written by Bose.
She captioned it: “And it begins… Prep. Hindi movie.” The “Mary Kom” actress later posted a photograph of herself in a car enjoying looking at the Mumbai rains. “The Sky Is Pink'” reportedly revolves around Aisha Chaudhary, who became a motivational speaker after being diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis at the age of 13. Bose has previously directed films like “Amu” and “Margarita with a Straw.” She even produced the 2012 film “Chittagong.”
India’s iconic Taj Mahal has been threatened in recent weeks by insect poo – environmentalists say that bugs from the polluted Yamuna river nearby are invading the monument, leaving greenish-black patches of waste on its pristine white marble walls. Over the years, the 17th Century monument has been threatened by pollution, unabashed construction, a crematorium and even bombs.
India’s Supreme Court has criticised the government for what it calls a “failure” to protect the Taj Mahal. The court said both the federal and state government had shown “lethargy” in taking steps to tackle the monument’s deteriorating condition.
The court’s comments came in response to a petition citing concerns about the impact of pollution on the 17th Century monument. The Taj Mahal is one of the world’s leading tourist attractions. It draws as many as 70,000 people every day.
In May this year, the court had already instructed the government to seek foreign help to fix the “worrying change in color” of the marble structure. The court had said then, that the famous tomb, built from white marble and other materials, had turned yellow and was now turning brown and green.
An invasion of the insect called Chironomus Calligraphus (Geoldichironomus) is turning the Taj Mahal green, says environmental activist DK Joshi. Joshi has filed a petition in the National Green Tribunal – a special tribunal set up by the government to deal with environmental disputes – saying that the “explosive breeding” of the pests in the polluted Yamuna river is marring the beauty of the monument.
“Fifty-two drains are pouring waste directly into the river and just behind the monument, Yamuna has become so stagnant that fish that earlier kept insect populations in check are dying. This allows pests to proliferate in the river,” Mr Joshi told the BBC by phone from the northern city of Agra where the Taj is located.
The stains the bugs leave on the marble are washable and workers from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have been trying to scrub the walls clean, but Mr Joshi says frequent scrubbing can take the sheen off the marble. He says the problem has a simple solution – just clean up the Yamuna.
Built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth, Taj Mahal is often described as one of the wonders of the world. It is also India’s biggest tourist attraction, visited by heads of states, celebrities and millions of Indian and foreign tourists every year. But pollution from the industries in Agra and a nearby oil refinery have seen the white marble yellowing over the years.
To restore the monument’s beauty, the ASI has been applying “mud packs” on its walls to draw out the pollutants.
Pollution, construction and insect dung are said to be among the causes. The government told the court that a special committee had been set up to suggest measures to prevent pollution in and around the monument.
It has already shut down thousands of factories near the monument, but activists say the white marble is still losing lustre. Sewage in the Yamuna River, which runs alongside the monument, also attracts insects which excrete waste on to its walls, staining them.
New Delhi’s Connaught Place has moved one position higher to become ninth most expensive office location in the world with an annual rent of $153 (Rs 10, 512 approx) per sq ft, according to property consultant CBRE.
Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) slipped to 26th position with an annual prime rent of $96.51 per sq ft (Rs 6, 600 approx) from 16th rank. The central business district (CBD) of Nariman Point also moved down to 37th position commanding an annual prime rent of $72.80 per sq ft (Rs 5,000 approx) from 30th rank last year.
BKC and Nariman Point were at 16th and 30th positions, respectively, last year. “Delhi’s Connaught Place moved one notch up to be the ninth most expensive office location with an annual prime rent of USD 153.26 per sq ft from last year’s 10th most expensive office location,” CBRE said.
The consultant released its annual Global Prime Office Occupancy Costs survey. The cost reflect rent, plus local taxes and service charges for the highest-quality prime office properties. CBRE’s Chairman – India & South-East Asia – Anshuman Magazine said, “Delhi, being a prime market, continues to witness significant activity and has moved one step ahead to the 9th position owing to stable vacancy, rents and absorption.” He expressed optimism about the Mumbai market and expected an upswing in the coming months.
According to the report, Hong Kong (Central) is at the first position with an annual rent of $306.57 per sq ft, followed by London (West End), Beijing (Finance Street) in China, Hong Kong (Kowloon) and Beijing (CBD) in China.
New York (Midtown- Manhattan) ranked sixth with an annual rent of $183.78 per sq ft, while New York (Midtown-South Manhattan) is at 7th position commanding rent of $171.56 per sq ft.
In the top 10 list, Tokyo (Marunouchi/Otemachi), Japan is at the eighth position and London (City), UK, is at the 10th rank. Global prime office occupancy costs rose 2.4% year-over-year. The cost in America was up 3.2%, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) 2% and Asia Pacific 1.7%.
The survey highlighted that prime office occupancy cost growth was consistent across all regions in the past 12 months. On the Indian commercial real estate market, Magazine said, “Strong demand from finance, technology and the e-commerce sectors has fueled the growth momentum in prime occupancy costs from last year and commercial office market remains a strong growth propeller for the real estate sector.”
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., June 28 announced that attorney Jay Khosla will join his office as chief economic policy counsel. Khosla, who was to begin his new position July 9, will oversee tax, trade, banking and other economic policy issues, a press release issued by Sen. McConnell said. Khosla previously served as staff director for the Senate Finance Committee.
Khosla currently serves as staff director for the Senate Finance Committee. Prior to serving as staff director, the Indian American attorney held multiple senior roles at the Finance Committee including policy director and chief health counsel.
“Jay is an all-star and I’m thrilled to have him join our team,” McConnell said in a statement. “Jay was a driving force helping deliver historic tax reform and I know he is eager to help deliver more wins for the American people. He is one of the brightest minds we have in the tax, trade, and banking fields and his expertise will be an asset to the entire Republican Conference.”
Senate Finance Committee chair Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chimed in on the addition of Khosla, saying the new chief economic policy counsel is an “indispensable asset.” “Jay hasn’t just been an indispensable asset to me and every member of this committee, he’s been a trusted adviser and friend. His instincts and ability to solve complex issues are second to none,” said Hatch. “And, I frankly don’t know how we would’ve tackled tax reform without him. Every member of this committee will miss him – I know I will, but I’m glad he’s not going too far – Leader McConnell is fortunate to have someone like Jay joining his team.”
Khosla began his Senate career with former Majority Leader Bill Frist and later served in senior policy roles for the Senate Budget Committee and Hatch. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he was Arizona Senator John McCain’s senior policy adviser for health care, labor and entitlement reform.
A Virginia native, Khosla earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University and his law degree from the University of Richmond Law School.
Khosla will start in the leader’s office July 9. He will oversee tax, trade, banking and other economic policy issues.
‘The recent court case filed against Shashi Tharoor, M.P, is nothing but a political witch hunt designed to silence a strong and steady voice of pluralism and democracy’ said George Abraham, Vice-Chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress, USA. “What the BJP government is engaged in is politics of personal destruction to demonize and destroys the opposition by weaponizing the law enforcement agencies” Mr. Abraham added.
Shashi Tharoor who has served as the Under-Secretary-General and ran and lost the election to the top post at the United Nations is not only an ardent advocate of India and its heritage but also an eminent scholar, thinker, and writer who is well respected throughout the world.
The death of his wife is a truly tragic incident and but to politicize it through criminal prosecution because he is an influential member of the opposition is a black mark on India’s democracy and the system of jurisprudence.
The utter hypocrisy on display from the side of BJP on these matters is quite astounding. A recent report highlights a BJP Union minister Jayant Sinha garlanding murder convicts who have lynched Alimuddin Ansari on suspicion that he was carrying beef in his car! The recent verdicts on Mecca Masjid and Loya case also have indeed shaken the confidence of many of an independent judicial system in India.
If real democracy is to survive, there have to be freedom of expression and competing political parties who would vie for people’s confidence without fear or repercussions. However, in India today an increasing sense of foreboding is gripping the nation where the ruling party has vowed to make India, ‘Congress-free.’ The growing prosecution of political adversaries is not a sign of a maturing democracy but somewhat political vendettas practiced mainly in banana republics.
Thousands of farmers have committed suicides since the BJP has taken reins of power. Some of these deaths can be directly attributed to the misguided policies of the current government that includes demonetization. Maybe, it is high time to ask who abetted the deaths of these poor farmers!
A digital billboard placed on a main highway in Chicago flashes a message about the World Hindu Congress (WHC) every 40 seconds and has been seen, at last count, by 1.5 million drivers.
The windy city will play host to the WHC and welcome icons, thought influencers, prominent leaders and members of the Hindu community from September 7th – 9th, 2018. They will gather to connect, discuss, energize and push awareness about critical issues facing Hindus worldwide and figure ways on how the community can be globally significant and impactful. The event is being hosted at Hotel Westin in Lombard, Illinois.
Registration coordinator Amitabh Mittal stated that registration has been closed two months prior to the event due to the tremendous response. A few spots for co-sponsors are all that’s left and some spots have been reserved, on a case by case basis, for delegates from countries outside or North America.
Over 2000 Hindus from across the globe and 250 thought leaders are expected to fly in to attend the gathering. They include heads of countries with a sizable Hindu population, top tier corporate heads from both India and the US, dynamic Hindu leaders and media personalities. RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat is one of the key speakers. Tibetan leader HH Dalai Lama, Art of Living Guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Chinmaya Mission Head, Swami Swaroopananda, Swami Brahmavihari Das Head of International Relations from BAPS, Swami Purnatmananda from Bharat Sevashram Sangh and Pranav Pandya from Gayatri Parivar will also be present at the event that has been dubbed as “the biggest Hindu gathering of leaders to date.”
The conference is being organized by the World Hindu Foundation headed by IIT, Kharagpur graduate Swami Vigyananand. It will commemorate 125 years of Swami Vivekananda’s historic Chicago address on September 11, 1893. This is the second such conference, the first was held in New Delhi in 2014.
The theme of WHC 2018 is “Sumantrite Suvikrante” — think collectively, achieve valiantly. With over 3.23 million Hindus in the US and a little over one billion worldwide, making Hindus count globally is a key issue.
Senior leaders of the organization elaborated on the significance of the conference. According to WHC founder Swami Vigyananand, wealth creation, quality education, a robust Hindu presence in mass media, Hindu leadership, unique strengths of Hindu women and Hindu organizations must be encouraged to “graduate to collective success.” This, he said, is the only way to increase our sphere of influence and have a positive societal impact.
Convener Dr. Abhaya Asthana highlighted the importance of “boosting the profile of Hindus” on the world stage. Hindus, he emphasized, need to come together collectively and establish their presence, and only then can they wield their clout to make a positive difference.
The goal of WHC, Chair S.P. Kothari said, is to “make the world understand the Hindu way and view of life not just at the spiritual and social level but also at the economic and educational level” while WHC Vice Chair Raju Reddy reflected that “Hindus are viewed as great doctors, engineers and entrepreneurs, as positive role models but they need to become change makers. This requires them to be organized.”
Leaders of the organization are confident that this will be “historic and a not to be missed gathering of Hindus from all over the world.”
Maheshwari Mahasabha of North America (MMNA) held its 9th Biennial Convention, the International Maheshwari Rajasthani Convention (IMRC), at the Marriott in Santa Clara, California, from June 30 to Maheshwari Mahasabha of North America (MMNA) held its ninth biennial convention, International Maheshwari Rajasthani Convention (IMRC), at Santa Clara Marriott from June 30th through July 3rd 2018. The convention is a forum to celebrate and preserve Rajasthani culture as well as to foster relationships within the relatively small Maheshwari community living in North America.
Over 750 attendees from North America and around the globe congregated in the heart of Silicon Valley. This grand event was engineered by our innovative team of 100+ volunteers who worked relentlessly over 15 months planning all the details. The host committee was led by Vijayshri Choudhary – Convener, Anand Daga and Vrushali Tapadiya – Co-conveners, Devu Heda – Chapter President, Swapnil Laddha – Chapter Vice President, and Vandana Daga – Sakhi Chair with support from Sureshji Deopura, Chapter Mentor and MMNA Board of Trustee.
Ambassador Venkatesan Ashok (Consul General of India – San Francisco) and Mayor Lisa Gillmor (Santa Clara), graced the opening ceremony by lighting diyas (lamps). Distinguished guests speakers included Padma Bhushan Shri Ved Nanda, Shri Ramesh Partani from Akhil Bharatvarshiya Maheshwari Mahasabha, along with eminent business leaders from MMNA community including Shri. Suresh Deopura, Shri Pratik Gattani, and Shri Vasant Rathi as well as Smt Snehal Mantri from India. Shri Vimal Sodhani was felicitated with the Lifetime Achievement award for his contributions to MMNA.
“Each and every one of us have been blessed with a uniqueness (a gift), representing a different aspect of the Brahman. Our purpose in life is to utilize that uniqueness in the service of others. This is the shortest path to the Divine.” said Vimal Sodhani.
During the three day event, attendees were able to engage in a variety of social and cultural activities, enjoy delicious ethnic cuisine, and participate in intellectually stimulating workshops and networking events. Participants gained from breakout sessions focused on health, wellness, technology, investment, life planning, and social causes catering to different ages and interests.
The youth group, RAYS, orchestrated cultural discussions as well as personal and professional networking sessions. They mentored and facilitated discussions for junior RAYS (13-20 years of age) to make them better appreciate the Rajasthani culture and help them navigate through high school and college life.
Other MMNA’s key initiatives such as Sakhi, Business & Entrepreneurship Track (BET), Philanthropy, Matrimonial, Education and Rajasthani Abroad Senior Samaj, also played a role in formulating educational workshops. MMNA members showed their generosity by donating $65K for educational assistance and youth development programs during a brief fundraiser.
Prince Bhojwani, RAYS Co-President said, “The mission for RAYS is to form connections among Marwari youth living in North America through shared culture and heritage. We connect almost 400 Maheshwari youth across the country by hosting annual events. By raising funds, RAYS will be able to do double down on this mission by creating a world class mentorship program, assist communities connected to our members, and sponsor the wide array of non-profit projects started by our youth.”
“Six dynamic industry leaders of Maheshwari background spoke on wide ranging topics, from the challenges and joy of the start-up journey, to highlighting business opportunities made possible by emerging cutting-edge technologies.” – Raj G. Asava, BET Chair.
IMRC 2018 cultural team’s vision instilled an added sense of pride with Rajasthan and India. The host chapter team’s tribute to India and its diversity on the opening night triggered patriotic sentiments with the audience. The cultural highlight for the next day included scintillating Rajasthani folk dance, Kalbeliya, performed by Aakansha Maheshwari’s group. For the finale gala night, Ravi Jakhotia, otherwise known around the world as DJ RAVIDRUMS, along with stellar music band Dhwani, turned the ballroom into a concert hall.
Vikas Bhutada, President of MMNA summed up the event as, “I believe that I can speak for almost everyone here when I say that IMRC2018 was one of the most memorable experiences of my lifetime. A big Thank you to the West Coast North Chapter – the conveners, volunteers, participants, guest speakers, and the list goes on. Thank you for making this weekend unforgettable for our community and for the generations to come.”
MMNA is a 34-year old non-profit organization with 4000+ members across 10 chapters in USA and Canada. MMNA’s mission is to create a spirit of cohesiveness and camaraderie among all sharing the bond of a common ancestry. MMNA promotes togetherness and social welfare through its ten chapters across North America.
The Indian National Overseas Congress, USA – Telangana Chapter organized a meet and greet event for former member of parliament- NRI Madhu Yashki and MLA Revanth Reddy at the Royal Albert’s Palace in New Jersey on July 5th, 2018.
The event was attended by over 200 people on a working day. The event started with Shravanth Poreddy welcoming the guests and informing the people of some statistics on the lack of governance in telangana by the present ruling TRS party. Pradeep Suvarna (Vice President of telangana chapter) spoke on the leadership of Madhu Yashki and Revanth Reddy.
Chaithanya Reddy spoke on the role of Madhu Yashki in getting the US consulate to Hyderabad instead of Bangalore and also spoke on his work in organizing job melas in telangana. Rajender Dichpally (National General Secretary of Overseas Congress) spoke on how the telangana chapter played a very important role in organizing the grand reception for the Congress President Shri Rahul Gandhi in September 2017 and hoped that the Congress Party in telangana will win the elections in the state and will revive the Congress Party like it did in the late 70’s under Indira Gandhi.
Sharat Vemuganti spoke on the role of the Congress Party in building modern India and the role of NRI’s in the Congress Party who went onto become legendary leaders in India. Vijay vennem spoke on the need of NRI’s to support the Congress Party in telangana for better governance.
Madhu Yashki spoke on how the worlds largest democracy and oldest democracy – USA and India have similar values and said that both the countries have become closer with stronger ties during the years in which the congress party ruled india from 2004 to 2014 and gave some examples like the US-India Civil Nuclear deal. He also spoke on some of his contributions as member of parliament during these years in working on stronger ties between the two countries. He also spoke on his role and support in the formation of the state of Telangana and hoped that the people of Telangana will realize that the state was formed due to the support of the congress party under the leadership of Smt.Sonia Gandhi and hoped that the people will vote the congress back to power in the state for better governance.
Revanth Reddy spoke on the shortcoming of the present telangana Government under Chief Minister Chandrashekar Rao and said that all the hard work of getting the agitation for the new state was done by young people and students who sacrificed their lives and it was the Congress that granted the new state due to the intervention of Sonia Gandhi. He spoke on how the present government never recognized the sacrifices of over 1200 people who had died for the cause of formation of the Telangana state and said that the present government of Telangana was run by one single family that was involved in massive corruption. He said that the people of Telangana were sure to vote the Congress back to power in 2019 election. The meeting ended with a question and answer session followed by sumptuous dinner.
Ramesh Chennithala, the opposition party leader in Kerala urged the NRIs in America to take an active part in defense of democracy and freedom in India. He was expressing his opinion in a dinner meeting hosted by Mr. Mohinder Singh Gilzian, President of INOC, USA.
“It is the Congress party that paid the high price for freedom with the blood and sweat of the people who believed in those values and that very freedom should not be taken for granted” Chennithala added.
Chennithala is on an official visit to the United States to attend the FOKANA convention to be held in Philadelphia. The INOC leaders who were present at the meeting requested Chennithala to urge the Kerala community in the U.S. to come together in unity and support the organization.
George Abraham, Vice-Chairman of IOC, Mr. Harbachan Singh, Secretary-General of INOC, USA, Malini Shah, Vice-President, Jasvir Singh Nawanshar, President, Punjab Chapter, Thomas T.Oommen, Chairman, Kerala Chapter, Jose Jacob, Treasurer, Kerala Chapter, Varghese Thekkekara, VP of Kerala chapter, Koshy Oommen, Executive Member also participated in discussions. Dr. George Mathew, Chairman of the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi was also present as special guests.
Chicago IL: The Jain Society of Metropolitan Chicago (JSMC), Bartlett Illinois, celebrated a milestone – the 25th Anniversary of its temple, with great enthusiasm, color and pride, from June 22 to July 1, 2018 at Bartlett, IL. About 4000 people from US and outside witnessed this historical celebration over the 10 days. This is the first Jain temple in North America with “Shikhar” or dome to complete 25 years. A number of dignitaries, speakers, and faith leaders from US and India graced the occasion.
The event was graced by political dignitaries including Illinois State Governor Bruce Rauner, Consul General of India Ms. Neeta Bhusan, US Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi and Peter Roskam, State representatives Christine Winger and Laura Murphy, State senator Tom Cullerton and Bartlett Village trustees.
Over the 10 days of celebration, numerous scholars and dignitaries from India, including Muni Shri Jinchandraji, Acharya Dr. Lokesh Muniji, Swami Shrutpragyaji, Charukeerti Bhattarakji, Gurudev Shri Rakesh Bhai Zaveri, Shri Dipakbhai Bardoliwala, Shri Sanjeevji Godha, Smt. Pramodaji Chitrabhanu, Smt. Tarlaben Doshi and Samanijis delivered thought provoking spiritual discourses to an eager audience. Keynote speeches on important topics were delivered by Padmashri Kumarpal Desai, Dr. Dipak Jain, Rahul Kapoor and Sajan Shah. Vidhikar Shri Hiteshbhai, Shri Narendra Nandu, Shri Lalitbhai Dhami, Megh Nandu and Veer Sainik Jinaybhai performed unique poojans and rituals for the first time in the US. Singers Ashish Mehta and Vicky Parekh enthralled the audiences with beautiful musical scores. JSMC’s home musical production Nem Rajul and Karmic Forces received an overwhelming response as much as the professional productions Sheth Motisha and Veer na Varasdaar played by Rangat Productions of Mumbai.
Many activities for the youth including sports day, field day as well as youth-focused seminars and shibirs kept the youth engaged. Amazing work was done in creating replicas of sacred places of worship Ashtapad and Giriraj Shatrunjay.
One of the highlights of the celebration was a 1.5-mile parade & procession starting at Bartlett’s Eastview Middle School and ending at the Jain temple. The Sanghpati’s of the 25th Anniversary Celebrations (Jayendra and Leena Shah, Kishor and Rashmi Shah, Prabodh and Lata Vaidya, Sanjay and Hemali Shah and Dr. Shailesh and Mayuri Zaveri) and other sponsor families walked with 12 superbly decorated floats, Bhaghwan Palkhi and Rath, live religious music and dance, motorcycles and horse carriage. Despite nearly 100 degree temperature, the parade had participation from more than 1000 members. The parade ended with a ceremonial flower shower from a helicopter. JSMC also created history by inaugurating the first memorial (Jeevant Smarak) of Gurudev Chitrabhanuji who is credited to have strengthened Jainism and united Jains in the US in the last 40 years. Gurudev’s bust was sponsored by Ravindra & Pallavi Kobawala and Satish & Kinna Shah.
Since 1970s, Jain population in Chicago has exploded from less than thirty families to over 1900 families. With the mission of preserving and sharing the Jain way of life, the community built a beautiful Temple & Community Center in 1993 in Bartlett, IL on a 14 acre lot. Today this monumental temple and center standing on a 17.5 acre land with expanded facilities of 84,000 sq. ft.
President of JSMC executive committee Mr. Vipul Shah was ecstatic and mentioned that, “In this milestone year for all Jains around Chicago and indeed all of US, we have delivered a great experience to all our dignitaries, guests and members blending religion, education, culture and entertainment. All our programs have been received with tremendous enthusiasm”. Chairman and Board of Trustees of JSMC, Mr. Atul Shah added, “Our unity, dedicated volunteers, generous donors and all other supporters have helped us to set a very high bar”. Every day during the celebration, JSMC provided 3 sumptuous meals to all attendees and visitors. Many guests from Chicago and outside were thrilled with the overall execution and planning by the dedicated team of volunteers, Executive Committee members and Board of Trustees.
PR & Media co-leads Mr. Hemant Shah (past Chairman) and Dr. Mukesh Doshi (past Chairman) also explained, “We are building on a very successful legacy of 48 years of JSMC.” Chicago is very fortunate to have remarkable history of the first Jain who landed 125 years ago – when Shri Virchand Raghavji Gandhi pioneered Jainism in western world and represented Jains in first parliament of World religious conference held in Chicago in 1893. Since 1970, this society is standing on contributions of generous donors, dedicated volunteers and passionate leadership of visionaries. We are humbled to be part of this society that is regarded as symbol of unity and harmony among all Jains.
Founded in 1970, JSMC caters to the religious, educational, cultural and community needs of Jains in and around Chicago. After building North America’s first Jain temple with Shikhar in 1993, the organization undertook a major expansion in 2008-09. With more than 1900 families as life members, JSMC has maintained its unity of Shwetamber, Digambar, Sthanakvasi and Shrimad sects over the years and has continued to inspire the Jain values of non-violence, multi-pluralism and non-possessiveness.
These members engage in various religious, cultural, educational, and social and community activities on close to 160+ days in a typical year. Over 500 students register in the Pathshaala that meets every 1st and 3rd Sunday. The Center has also become a preferred location to host other events – given its state of the art community hall and dining facility. A 7-person elected Board and a 13-person elected Executive Committee manage JSMC with support from many /committees.
Jainism is a religion and a way of life for Jains around the world. The primary purpose of JSMC is to increase the awareness of the principles of Jainism, achieve the unity of all Jains, provide a platform wherefrom to project the voice of Jain religion, promote the feeling of amity and unity among Jains and to promote inter-faith understanding. Jainism, which originated in India, at least five thousand years ago, has largest number of followers (about 4 million) in India. It has nonetheless, influenced the world peace through its message of non-violence and forgiveness. Jainism, indirectly influenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, as he followed the example and non-violent methods of Mahatma Gandhi in his struggle for equality and civil rights for all minorities in USA.
Jains have been on a path of Non-Violence, Non-Absolutism (Anekantvad), and Non-possesion (Aparigrah) for thousands of years. For thousands of years, Jains have believed in meditation, yoga, animal compassion, vegetarianism, environmentalism, equal rights for women, respect for other cultures and forgiveness. Jains believe that universe is eternal and that Jain religion, which explains the rules of the universe, is therefore eternal, with no beginning and no end. Last perfected soul known (Tirthankar) to us is Lord Mahavir, who was born in 599BC, near Patna in Bihar, India.
Uttam Dhillon, an Indian-origin lawyer serving in the White House, has been named the acting administrator of the drug enforcement administration (DEA), the agency that combats the smuggling and use of narcotics in the US. Dhillon has already started working on his new assignment.
“With one American dying of a drug overdose every nine minutes, there can be no doubt that we are facing the deadliest drug epidemic in our history,” US attorney general Jeff Sessions said on Monday. “The work of the drug enforcement administration is critical to fighting this crisis, and President (Donald) Trump and I are committed to continuing to give it the strong leadership it deserves. That is why I am pleased to appoint Uttam Dhillon as acting administrator.”
As deputy counsel and deputy assistant to Trump, Dhillon had been a part of the discussions that led to the firing of FBI director James Comey in May 2017.
Dhillon has had a long career battling drug traffickers and violent crime, according to the justice department. In 2006, he became the first director of the office of counternarcotics enforcement at the department of homeland security.
Prior to that, he served as an associate deputy attorney general in the justice department, in which role he headed the attorney general’s anti-gang coordination committee and led efforts to formulate policies and programs to combat violent crime and criminal gangs.
Dhillon earlier served as an assistant US attorney in California for more than six years.
Indian American attorney Uttam Dhillon, who has been serving in the White House since the advent of the Trump Administration, was appointed as the acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency July 2.
Dhillon currently serves as Deputy Counsel and Deputy Assistant at the White House. He is perhaps best known as the White House attorney who tried to stop President Donald Trump from firing former FBI Director James Comey last year; Dhillon was concerned that if Comey were fired, the Trump presidency could be imperiled, because it would force the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether Trump was trying to derail the Russia investigation, reported The New York Times. Dhillon argued that the president needed cause to fire Comey; Trump went with the advice of a junior attorney who said Comey was like any other employee and could be fired for any reason.
Dhillon, who served in the Justice Department early in his career, worked for Comey from 2003-2006 as associate deputy attorney general. Comey was deputy attorney general from 2003-2005.
“With one American dying of a drug overdose every nine minutes, there can be no doubt that we are facing the deadliest drug epidemic in our history,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in an announcement released July 2.
“The work of the Drug Enforcement Administration is critical to fighting this crisis, and President Trump and I are committed to continuing to give it the strong leadership it deserves. That is why I am pleased to appoint Uttam Dhillon as Acting Administrator.”
“Uttam is a dedicated public servant who has served with distinction in the White House, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, Congress, and as a career federal prosecutor taking on drug traffickers at the highest levels,” said Sessions in the announcement.
Dhillon will replace Robert Patterson, who has served as DEA administrator for 30 years. He began serving in the new role on the same day the announcement was made.
Dhillon has had a long career battling drug traffickers and violent crime, according to the statement released by the Attorney General’s office. In 2006, Dhillon was confirmed by the Senate as the first director of the Office of Counter-narcotics Enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security. In that role, Dhillon served as the primary policy advisor on counter-narcotics issues, focused on combating the connections between illegal drug trafficking and terrorism, and developed regional counter-narcotics strategies for DHS.
At the Justice Department, Dhillon chaired the Attorney General’s Anti-Gang Coordination Committee, and led efforts to combat violent crime and criminal gangs. Earlier on in his career, Dhillon worked as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Central District of California, and was appointed to the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force; he led a multi-agency effort to investigate violent gangs and major narcotics trafficking organizations.
Dhillon has also served as Chief Oversight Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee.
Dhillon received his law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley; an M.A. from the University of California, San Diego; and a B.A. from California State University, Sacramento.
Indian American entrepreneur Amit Bhandari and his wife Arpita of Houston, Texas, have donated $50,000 to Ekal’s Digital Literacy Program, the largest single amount from an individual the charity has ever received.
The $50,000 will be used to create a bus with 10 laptops for the Ekal-on-Wheels Mobile Computer Labs program, according to a press release. The Mobile Computer Labs initiative is working to enhance digital literacy and has helped over 50,000 children become computer literate.
The solar powered bus has pre-installed self-learning software developed by IIT Mumbai and accommodates two students per computer as one trainer, assisted by the local Ekal teacher will provide two and a half hours of training in one village.
The bus, which will serve the Khargone district of Madhya Pradesh near Indore, was inaugurated by Amit and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.
The Bhandaris are known to give out generous donations to a number of support groups, including the Jain Society of Houston, land for the Gujarati Samaj center in Houston, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s Fund for Hurricane Harvey relief work, paying off the loans of a temple in Phoenix and raising $3 million for Magic Bus.
Bhadari is a native of Indore, Madhya Pradesh, and though his parents were professors, the family was financially challenged but it did not stop them from supporting a handicapped school along with a helping hand, anywhere it was needed.
Bhadari gained interest in business when he was in middle school and was accepted in the Rotary Student Exchange Program and attended High School in Hicksville, Ohio.
He then attended Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he studied chemical engineering after which he started working at ExxonMobil.
In 2006, Bhandari started his own company BioUrja, a company that trades in ethanol, petroleum products, crude oil, grains, metal tubing for the oil production sector as well as renewable energy, and is ranked as one of the most successful companies in Texas.
The Bhandaris have one daughter, Aanya and one son, Ansh, both of whom have taken part in various Magic Bus programs.
The Ekal movement was started in 1989 to transform India, one village at a time and today it has a school in 70,000 villages, which offer free schooling, vocational training, digital competence and agricultural education. The Ekal movement has impacted four million children and 10 million families to date.
The Democratic National Committee has tapped Seema Nanda to serve as its new CEO and handle day-to-day operations, the committee announced last week. As midterm elections continue and the 2020 election draws closer, hiring the management-oriented Nanda is a move away from more explicitly political executives who have led the troubled party in the past.
“I’m beyond excited that Seema is bringing her talent and brilliance to the DNC,” DNC Chair Tom Perez said in a statement. “She is a seasoned manager who has a proven track record of success.”
“People are hurting all across our country. I believe that Democrats are offering the positive solutions so desperately-needed right now – solutions forged by the strength of our diversity, the rigor of our ideas and the decency of our values,” Nanda said in a statement. “I am grateful to chairman [Tom] Perez and Mary Beth for selecting me, and I look forward to joining my new DNC colleagues in the fight for our nation’s values and future.”
Nanda previously worked as Perez’s chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Labor. She replaces interim CEO Mary Beth Cahill, who took the helm of the DNC in February after replacing Jess O’Connell, a seasoned operative who left after less than a year on the job.
Nanda also worked on the DNC transition team for Perez, which “took a fresh look” at the committee’s operations after the 2016 election, according to a DNC statement. She has a background in labor and employment law, and has worked in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.
“As we head toward a crucial election, I’m one hundred percent certain that Seema’s leadership will help the DNC capitalize on the unprecedented grassroots energy and enthusiasm surging throughout the country,” Perez said in a statement
According to an article in Glamour, Nanda is stepping in as the Democrats try to build on primary successes that have given women of color a chance at making history in November.
The curse of the World Cup winners continues. A “shocked” Germany became the third straight reigning champion to be knocked out in the group stage at the next World Cup — following Italy and Spain — after losing 2-0 to South Korea in Group F on Wednesday, June 27th.
In an embarrassingly poor performance Germany went behind in the game’s closing stages when Kim Young-gwon scored following a video review, with Son Heung-min then breaking away — German keeper Manuel Neuer was by this stage in the South Korean half — to add the second.
Other nations that were pushed out of the world cup included Argentina and Portugal, both of them were knocked out of the FIFA World Cup 2018 on Saturday.
Of the six sides most fancied before the World Cup began (Brazil, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Belgium and France), only Belgium and France have had passages in to the knockout stages that were not fraught with tension, vulnerability, moments of being on the very edge of the precipice and hauling themselves back from it.
World soccer stars, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were knocked out of the World Cup on the same day as Argentina and Portugal came unstuck and the illustrious pair failed to break their knockout-stage goal droughts.
Argentina’s 4-3 defeat to France left Messi without a goal in 756 minutes of World Cup knockout football, while Ronaldo failed to find the net as Portugal lost 2-1 to Uruguay, extending his goalless streak outside the group stage to 514 minutes.
Messi provided two assists as Argentina were beaten in a thrilling match in Kazan but he has now appeared in the knockout stages of four World Cups and failed to score in any of them.
Ronaldo was every bit as frustrated as his Barcelona rival after his fruitless attempts to penetrate Uruguay’s defense left him without a World Cup knockout stage goal in his career as he prepared to go home from his fourth World Cup at the age of 33.
Till the 95th minute of Germany’s group game against Sweden, the score remained 1-1. Which meant that the defending champions would be eliminated before the World Cup entered the knockout stage. Germany, one of the favorites, who have won the tournament four times, and have never fallen before the semi final in this century, were on the brink. They had been stunned by Mexico in their first game. And now they were being held 1-1 by Sweden.
Then, of course, Germany did what Germany do best: escapology. Toni Kroos was their Houdini on the night. The champions won 2-1.
But there would be no second Houdini act. In Germany’s final group game against South Korea, the score stayed goalless for 91 minutes. Then South Korea did to Germany what Germany do so often to others. They scored in the dying minutes. Twice. For the first time in 80 years, Germany had been knocked out in the first round of a World Cup.
Two-time champions Argentina, having drawn with Iceland and been thumped by Croatia, were four minutes away from being knocked out till salvation arrived in the form of a Marcos Rojo goal.
Spain, champions in 2010, and a frontrunner for this year’s title, scraped through against Iran and were held 2-2 by Morocco en route to qualifying for the next stage.
Russia shocked Spain in a down-to-the-wire finish by outlasting them in penalty kicks, ousting one the World Cup favorites in the Round of 16. The 1-1 draw (4-3 in PKs) marks the first time Russia has reached the quarterfinals of the World Cup since 1970, when it was known as the Soviet Union.
Spain, which was a favorite to win the tournament, came out strong with a goal off Russia’s Sergei Ignashevish’s foot, but then evened the match with a goal of his own.
After the match went back and forth into extra time, Russian goalie Igor Akinfeev came up huge with two saves in penalties, denying Spain its chance to another World Cup title.
A series of shock upsets have rocked the 2018 World Cup to its core and Japan looked like adding another to the tally as it went up 2-0 early in the second half against Belgium. But Belgium launched a stunning comeback that culminated in Nacer Chadli scoring the winner with the last kick of the game to win 3-2.
Neymar, voted man-of-the-match, was stopped by Tite afterwards as he was about to reply to reporters’ demands to clarify the incident.
Tite was adamant: “They stepped on him. I saw it on the screen.” Neymar attempted to play down the incident.
“Look, I think it’s more an attempt to undermine me than anything else,” said the Brazilian. “I don’t care much for criticism, or praise, because this can influence your attitude.
“In the last two matches I didn’t talk to the press because I don’t want to I just have to play, help my teammates, help my team.
“I’m here to win. I can always improve. Today I feel much better and I’m very happy for this win.”
Belgium came back from two goals down to win an extraordinary game, and a place in the quarter-finals, with two seconds of stoppage time to play on a thriller on July 2nd. Similarly, favorites Mexico went down to Brazil by losing by 2:00 in the knock out round held on July 2nd.
Neymar’s strike and a late second from Roberto Firmino saw a strangely low-key Brazil edge past Mexico 2-0 to book a spot in the World Cup quarter-finals.
Tite’s men are yet to hit full stride at Russia 2018, and on this evidence they still have more to come, but Neymar’s 51st-minute goal and Firmino’s tap-in after coming off the bench means the tournament favourites progressed with relative comfort in the end,and avoided the early exit that has already befallen the likes of Spain, Germany and Argentina.
Mexico were the dominant force in the opening 20 minutes in Samara, but they were unable to make their superiority count and eventually allowed their muted opponents to scrap their way into the game.
US President Donald Trump has appointed an Indian-American official, Raj Shah, to a key role in the contentious process of the appointment of the next justice of the Supreme Court, the White House announced on Monday.
Spokesman Raj Shah will take leave from his role in the press office to work full time on “communications, strategy and messaging coordination with Capitol Hill allies.” And Justin Clark, the director of the Office of Public Liaison, will oversee White House coordination with outside groups.
Shah will now concentrate on getting the President’s nominee through the Senate approval process, White House Spokesperson Sarah Sanders said.
“Raj Shah will oversee communications, strategy and messaging coordination with Capitol Hill allies,” Sanders said in her statement. Trump has said he is focusing on up to seven potential candidates, including two women, to fill the vacancy of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote on the nine-member court. He also has said he will announce his nominee to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy July 9.
Getting a successor to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who announced his resignation last week, approved by the Senate before the current session ends this year is a crucial task for Trump.
One of the candidates in a short list of 25 potential nominees announced by Trump during his campaign included Judge Amul Thapar, who is now a federal judge in Kentucky.
With Trump saying he’ll pick from a list of 25 potential nominees he’s compiled with guidance from conservatives, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said any of them would be “virtually certain” to favor overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that affirmed women’s right to abortion. They would also be “very likely” to back weakening President Barack Obama’s 2010 law that expanded health care coverage to millions of Americans, he said.
The South Asian Council for Social Services, a community-based nonprofit assisting the South Asian community, has received a $700,000 grant from the OneCity Health Innovation Fund to implement its project, Culturally Responsive Collaborative of Queens (CRCQ).
OneCity Health selected eight community partners to receive funding from its $5 million Innovation Fund to implement programs that will reduce avoidable hospitalizations, improve community health outcomes, and address food security, health literacy and other factors that impact people’s health.
In collaboration with Voces Latinas, Polonians Organized to Minister to Our Community, The Young Women’s Christian Association of Queens Inc., the grant funding will serve the diverse needs of hard-to-reach populations to increase health literacy outcomes and connection to critical healthcare services, according to a SACSS news release.
This collaborative effort aims to bridge the health disparities by promoting health literacy and increase access to healthcare by connecting individuals to health insurance or culturally competent primary care provider, it added.
“We are thrilled with this award that will ensure the health and well-being of our communities. We believe that this encouragement from OneCity Health will serve as a strong step towards the realization of the DSRIP mission,” Sudha Acharya, Indian American executive director of SACSS, said in a statement.
In collaboration with Queens nonprofits Voces Latinas, Polonians Organized to Minister to Our Community (POMOC) and The Young Women’s Christian Association of Queens, Inc. (YWCA), the grant funding will serve hard-to-reach populations.
The $5M Innovation Fund was open to all OneCity Health partners, which includes more than 160 community-based organizations, hospitals, physician practices, pharmacies, behavioral health practitioners and others. OneCity Health encouraged partners to collaborate and submit joint applications, and ultimately received 41 applications from 55 partners.
SACSS was founded in 2000 with a mission to empower and integrate underserved South Asians and other immigrants into the economic and civic life of New York. We assist individuals and families in the areas of healthcare access,senior services, civic engagement, and other benefits. We provide basic and advanced English and computer classes. SACSS runs the first South Asian food pantry in New York. All of our programs are free and are provided by culturally competent staff members who speak 11 South Asian languages (Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Nepali, Tamil, and Telugu) Creole, Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish and English.
Unchecked climate change will dent India’s GDP by 2.8 per cent and depress the living standards of nearly half the population by 2050, with people living in the severe “hotspot” districts of central India, particularly Vidarbha, staring at the prospect of an over 10 per cent dip in economic consumption.
These are the findings of a first-of-its-kind World Bank study that quantifies the economic impacts of rising temperatures and changes in rainfall in different parts of the country due to global warming.
The study, South Asia’s Hotspots, released on Thursday, projects a 2 per cent fall in the country’s GDP — in terms of per capita consumption expenditures — even if the 2015 Paris Agreement goals of containing global warming to 2 degrees C is achieved.
A 2.8 per cent drop in GDP, as projected in the business-as-usual scenario, will cost India $1.1 trillion by 2050. The loss in the severe hotspot districts, with an average 9.8 per cent drop in consumption, will amount to over $400 billion, the study says. What is a climate hotspot?
It’s a location where gradual changes in average temperature and rainfall patterns will have negative impacts on living standards in future
The report finds that inland regions are at far higher risk of economic losses due to rising temperatures than coastal or hilly areas, with the maximum impact likely to be felt in central and north India. Among states, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are projected to witness over 9 per cent dip in living standards by 2050 in the “carbon-intensive” or business-as-usual scenario.
The Vidarbha region, a ground-zero of farm distress in the country, is projected to be in the centre of climate-related misery as well. Seven of the 10 major “hotspot” districts mentioned in the report, are in Vidarbha. In each of these districts, unchecked climate change could led to over 11 per cent dip in living standards by 2050.
“Temperature rise is a slow-moving disaster that’s not talked about much,” said economist Muthukumara Mani, the lead author of the study. “A lot of focus of climate change studies is on extreme events so people tend to ignore these gradual changes happening for the last 50-60 years.”
The effects of temperature rise could be substantial, with implications for agricultural productivity, health, migration and other factors, says the report. By 2050, annual average temperatures in India are estimated to increase 1-2 degrees C under the climate-sensitive scenario (where action is taken to curb emissions) and 1.5-3 degrees C under the carbon-intensive scenario. The study analysed climate data in combination with household surveys to arrive at how changes in average weather are likely to affect living standards. It found that nearly 600 million people in India today live at places that will become moderate or severe hotspots by 2050 under the unchecked climate-change scenario.
“Our methodology has been extensively peer-reviewed, both inside and outside the World Bank. We are very confident of the robustness of the analysis,” Mani said.
The study has drawn up hotspot maps of India, 2050, based on both the carbon-intensive and climate-sensitive scenarios. The carbon-intensive scenario shows far more severe hotspots, places likely to see an over 8 per cent dip in living standards, underlining the huge economic losses India stands to avoid if the world takes action on GHGs.
“Our work points the way for policymakers. They can choose to invest in areas that are more impacted by warming and make best use of their resources for climate change,” explained Mani.
More than 100 people attended the Hindu American Foundation (HAF)’s third annual policy conference this past Monday, June 18 in our nation’s capital. Taking place in the Rayburn House Office Building in the U.S. House of Representatives, the event focused on key policy concerns for Hindu Americans, including U.S.-India relations, immigration policy, and gun safety reform.
Keynoting the event was Nisha Desai Biswal, President of the US-India Business Council. Biswal, who was honored in 2015 by HAF for her previous work in the State Department, spoke to the growing realization in America of the immense opportunity that India represents.
“Businesses are seeing India as a primary focus for investment,” Biswal went on to say. That indeed there would be points of friction between the US and India on trade, “but I would not see them as a point of alarm, but as a point of opportunity,” she concluded.
Biswal’s keynote was followed by a lively and frank panel discussion on the need for immigration policy reforms to the way in which green cards are allotted and the challenges facing spouses of immigrants working in the United States under the H-1B high skilled worker visa program. The panel was moderated by HAF Managing Director Samir Kalra, Esq. and featured immigration advocate Padma Katapalli of GC Reforms, immigration lawyer Akanksha Kalra, Esq., and HAF National Leadership Council member Swami Venkataraman, who spoke about his own experience navigating the US immigration system.
Issues highlighted by the panelists included: the increasingly long time it takes to obtain a green card due to arbitrary per-country caps on the number of green cards given annually; the precarious nature of employment for H-1B visa holders, and their spouses, waiting for green cards; and how the current trends in US immigration policy are driving away tourists, students, and potentially high skilled workers and the business that hire them.
Akanksha Kalra described these latter changes as already building an “invisible wall” against future immigration.
The afternoon began with an emotional and poignant conversation between HAF Executive Director, Suhag Shukla, Esq. and Ms. Shanthi Viswanathan, a teacher from Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida whose quick thinking and bravery is credited with saving the lives of her 27 students during the shooting there this past February.
After detailing the horrifying sequence of events of the tragic day when a teen gunman killed 17 people and wounded 17 more at the school, Ms. Viswanathan made a passionate plea for more effective regulations of firearms, as well as giving her frank opinions on what needs to be done to make our schools safer places.
“I understand the Second Amendment, hunting rifles, shotguns, but an assault rifle? What is the need for that?” she asked the audience rhetorically.
Viswanathan said she’s asked this question of ardent gun rights supporters. The answer she’s told is that they need these weapons for ‘freedom’’. But, “how does holding an assault rifle give you a sense of freedom?” she wondered. “I wouldn’t know how to explain ahimsa (non-violence) to them,” Viswanathan noted. “You don’t have to have that gun. Life is still good without it.”
The day concluded with a brief clip of the film “From India With Love”, directed by Mandar Apte. The film documents the journey to India, by a group of former gang members, racial justice activists, and other survivors of violence, who follow in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King’s trip to India nearly 60 years ago to explore the homeland of Mahatma Gandhi. The group becomes transformed by the spiritual and cultural journey, by their time together, and by the discussions and meditation experienced on the trip.
After the film, Apte, the 2018 winner of HAF’s Advancement of Dharmic Arts and Humanities Award, spoke of his work promoting the Hindu concept of ahimsa (non-violence) as a way to mediate conflict to major police departments across the country, foremost of these being the Los Angeles Police Department.
The U.S. chapter of “Life Global” held an event to familiarize the Indian American community with the various social projects conducted by the organization, at the Royal Albert Palace on June 27th. Dr. Sudhir Parikh, founder and chairman of Parikh Worldwide Media, was joined in this new initiative by Meetal Koticha Shah and Rushikesh Pandya, Project ‘Life’ representatives who came from India.
Chief Guest at the launch event was Consul General of India in New York, Sandeep Chakravorthy, who spoke about the commendable features of Life Global service in Gujarat, India. Ambassador of India shri Dr Sandeep Chakravorthy spoke about the necessity of medical and surgical camps not only in Gujarat but other states of India and gives involvement in supporting various projects. Consul General did emphasized on education by providing monetarily support in rural villages, clean water services and medical help by inviting supporters as investors in future and not a view of donations.
Others who who were present at the launch included former New Jersey Assemblyman, who is now Commissioner on the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, Upendra Chivukula, Senator Freddie Thompson (D-NJ), peace activist Acharya Lokesh Muni; Chairman of the Federation of Indian Associations (FIA NY-NJ-CT) Ramesh Patel and President of FIA NY-NJ-CT Srujal Parikh along with 200 other guests.
“One way to nurture our love for India among the next generation is to do some kind of philanthropic work. This commitment to philanthropy to help the underprivileged in India is not only deeply satisfying on a personal level but more importantly it is the uniqueness of India that makes it even more satisfying,” said Dr. Parikh as he encouraged everyone to pitch in. Dr. Parikh and his wife Dr. Sudha Parikh have been involved with Project ‘Life’ for many years now and it is because of their help that the organization has reached such a stupendous level.
“I would like to thank Dr. Sudhir Parikh and Dr. Sudha Parikh for organizing this event, keeping us together on this platform and it is because of them, we have come together today as they have spent some quality time at Project ‘Life,’” said Shah, the daughter of founder, Chandrakant Koticha.
“As I look back in time, the fact that a mission that was just a dream, has come to such a global level, is really hard to believe. Project ‘Life,’ a temple of humanitarian services, was born in the Saurashtra and Katyavad region of Gujarat and is now spreading its wings globally. We have been influenced by St. Mother Theresa and short but heart-touching phrase ‘live simply so others can simply live.’ She was the first distinguished guest to visit our blood-bank on Feb. 25, 1982, just 81 days after its inception,” Shah continued.
“The journey of Project ‘Life’ is full of miracles, unbelievable miracles and the association of exceptional people like you. My grandmother became a widow at the age of 23 and though she was married at the age of 14, she understood the value of education and it is because of her vision and rigorous hard work, I am standing here in front of you. My uncle and my dad lead a strong foundation of Project ‘Life’ in 1978 with an aspiration to support, sustain and enrich the lives of the underprivileged,” Shah added.
Shah also mentioned that the blood-bank is the mother of all interventions and as of today they have issued 592,567 units of blood components, saving more than 300,000 lives. Meetal Koticha Shah and Padma Shri Dr. Sudhir Parikh present a token of appreciation to the Share and Care organization. (Photo: Peter Ferriera)
From a state-of-the- NABH (National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers) & AABB (American Association of Blood Banks, USA) blood bank, the Koticha brothers expanded Project ‘Life’ beyond blood donation.
In 1990, Project ‘Life’ introduced their second intervention, the Life Greenfield Centre, which has distributed and re-planted more than 257,813 plants out of which 63 are indigenous, 23,000 have grown to be six to 15 feet and 17,000 plants are being nurtured for a three to four year period.
Project ‘Life’ was started on December 6, 1981 by brothers Shashikant Koticha and Chandrakant Koticha, as a blood-bank in Rajkot, Gujarat, India with the vision to support, sustain and enrich the lives of the poor and underprivileged in India through environmental protection, thalassemia prevention, education, health initiatives and women’s empowerment projects, as a way of giving back to the society.
Three years later, the organization started a Life Thalassaemia Prevention Centre where they screened 656,518 people for Thalassemia, which is a blood disorder that involves less than normal amounts of an oxygen-carrying protein and can be life-threatening. Today, they have screened over 1,442,152 people, preventing 117 births with Thalassaemia.
After the prevention of Thalassaemia, Project ‘Life’ decided to take up the initiative of education and though it was started in the year 2000, the Life Education Centre did not make an impact until the year after when Gujarat was struck with a 7.6 magnitude earthquake, which destroyed many buildings, including schools.
Today, Project ‘Life’ has constructed 78 Primary Schools in the rural areas of the state of Gujarat and it benefits 24,000 students each year as it has awarded 12,644 scholarships while 11,539 girls have received grants.
In 2003, Project ‘Life’ established a Life Health & Wellness Centre from which more than 579,403 people have benefited through Yoga ‘Shibirs’ and the Universal Healing Program, including 6,585 prisoners from 23 jails throughout Gujarat who benefited from Preksha Dhyan Shibir, a meditation camp.
The success of the project in Gujarat has been identified as one of the six Non-Resident Gujarati Centers and to facilitate connectivity of the Non Resident Gujaraties and Nonresident Indians with their love for homeland and to serve to uplift humanitarian activities Dr Sudhir Parikh provided structural podium for Indian Americans who want to help underprivileged people in India and did opening of new chapter of Life Global in New Jersey.
More than 10,000 children have been killed, maimed, raped, sexually assaulted while others were forced to serve the army or were caught in attacks at schools and hospitals. A total of more than 21,000 violations of children’s right were reported in 2017 a sharp increase from the previous year, according to the annual “Children and Armed Conflict” report.
The UN blames a US-backed Arab coalition fighting in Yemen for at least half of the more than 1,300 child deaths or injuries recorded in that poor nation.
They were victims of aerial and ground attacks by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Houthi rebels opposed to Yemen’s internationally recognised government.
Among the casualties tallied in the report were child soldiers as young as 11 fighting in Yemen’s civil war and in other countries, the UN said.
“The point is, these kids should not be treated like children of a lesser God; they deserve the same rights as every kid to live their lives at least meaningfully and to be given a chance at recovery,” said Virginia Gamba, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict.
She said the report left UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres feeling “outraged”. The 21,000 violations of children’s rights included 10,000 who were slain or maimed, especially in Iraq, Myanmar, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen, the report said.
The total was a dramatic increase from 15,500 such cases counted in 2016. “The secretary-general is outraged at this number, a significant increase compared to previous years,” said his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
Among the report’s findings, almost half the 881 verified child casualties in Nigeria resulted from suicide attacks, including the use of children as human bombs. Over 1,900 children were detained because of their or their parents’ alleged association with the Boko Haram militant organization.
At least 1,036 children were held in Iraqi detention facilities on national security-related charges, mostly for their alleged association with the Islamic State group. Around 1,221 children were recruited and used as soldiers in South Sudan.
The al-Shabab extremist group in Somalia allegedly abducted more than 1,600 children, some recruited and armed and others who became victims of sexual violence. Children in Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen were prevented from receiving life-saving support and were trapped in besieged areas amid deteriorating living conditions.
Gamba said government forces in various nations were responsible for about 9,000 violations.
“The report details the unspeakable violence children have been faced with, and shows how in too many conflict situations, parties to conflict have an utter disregard for any measures that could contribute to shielding the most vulnerable from the impact of war,” Gamba said.
When your own house or your school can be attacked without qualms, when traditional safe havens become targets, how can boys and girls escape the brutality of war? It’s despicable.
A new investigation of how children reason about religious rules reveals a remarkable level of acceptance of different religions’ rules and practices.
The study, appearing in the June 13 online editionof Child Development, found that both Hindu and Muslim children in India thought that Hindu children should follow Hindu norms and Muslim children should follow Muslim norms.
“Even in a region with a long history of high religious tension, we see impressive levels of religious tolerance among children,” said study co-author Audun Dahl, assistant professor of psychology at UC Santa Cruz. “Children think that people in different religions should follow their own norms—and that’s a starting point, a reason for optimism.”
Very little research has been done on how children reason about religious norms, despite the fact that differences between religious norms underpin conflicts around the globe, including Catholic/Protestant clashes in Europe and differences among Sunni and Shia Muslims, noted Dahl. Religious norms dictate practices from clothing and land ownership to reproduction, he said, with adult adherents frequently wanting others to adhere to their norms.
“Children expressed preferences for their own religion, but we found no evidence of children rejecting the norms of the other religion,” said Dahl, adding that such tolerance is the first step toward greater harmony.
Exploring religious tolerance
Dahl and coauthors Mahesh Srinivasan at UC Berkeley and Elizabeth Kaplan at Syracuse University wanted to see if children would extend their thinking about their own religious norms to other groups. In other words, would Hindu children think that all children should follow Hindu norms? And would Muslim children believe that all children should follow Muslim norms?
“As it turned out, both Hindu and Muslim children thought that the norms of a religion applied only to followers of that religion. For instance, almost no participants thought Muslim kids should follow Hindu norms, but at least half thought Muslim kids should follow Muslim norms,” said Dahl. Rather than applying their own religious norms to all others, children endorsed the right of each religion to have its own religious norms.
The study took place in Gujarat, India, a region with a history of Hindu-Muslim violence. Investigators worked with 100 children ages 9 to 15, focusing on different Hindu norms, such as the prohibition against eating beef, and Muslim norms, such as the prohibition against worshipping an idol. They also asked the children about hitting people to explore the youngsters’ reasoning around moral norms.
“The tendency to restrict the norms of one’s own religion only to followers of that religion, and to expect members of another religious group to follow their own customs, may contribute to peaceful coexistence,” said Dahl.
Religious norms as distinct from other social norms
The researchers also asked children about moral norms about how to treat others. Fully 95 percent of children—regardless of religion—asserted that it’s not okay to hit people. Perhaps more surprisingly, most children thought it was wrong to hit someone even if hitting was permitted by religious authorities or a god. Dahl said this speaks to the difference between religious norms and moral norms.
Yet, children also viewed religious norms as different from social conventions or personal preferences. “Religious beliefs are about truth and falsehood. They are about which god, or gods, exist, and which gods are right,” he said. “They don’t lend themselves to pluralism as easily as personal preferences or social conventions do.”
Most religious people believe their god is the true god, so the researchers thought there was a good chance that Hindu children, for example, would think that Muslim children—as well as Hindu children—should follow Hindu norms.
“In the Hindu religion, the cow is a holy animal, so you could expect Hindu children to say it is wrong for anyone to kill and eat cows,” said Dahl. “But that’s not what we found. Most Hindu children thought Muslims could eat beef, and should follow Muslim rather than Hindu norms.”
Dahl and Srinivasan plan to further explore how children integrate religious norms as distinct from social norms regarding what’s right and wrong, including hitting others. “Religions often aren’t explicit about the scope of their norms and whether they apply to non-followers, so there’s a question about how children apply the fundamental concepts to actual, complicated scenarios of real life,” Dahl said. “It’s fascinating.”
These findings offer hope that exposure to conflicts over religious differences, like those experienced by children in many regions of the world, need not lead children to develop negative attitudes toward the religious practices of other groups. “Rather, perhaps these levels of understanding will play a role in reducing conflict over time,” said Dahl.
Four students from India have developed what could be the world’s lightest satellite which will be launched from a NASA facility in the US by August.
The first-year engineering students from Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science near Chennai built the 4cm ‘cube’ satellite ‘Jaihind-1S’ with a 3D printed outer casing from polylactic acid (PLA) nylon material, making it lighter than a medium sized egg, at just 33.39 grams.
KJ Harikrishnan, P Amarnath, G Sudhi and T Giri Prasad, students of Hindustan Institute of Technology, have developed a 4cm cube satellite that weighs 33.39grams. The satellite has been designed and fabricated for the ‘Cubes in Space’ competition conducted by Colorado Space Grant consortium, NASA and idoodle-learning. It will be flown on a scientific balloon up to an altitude of 70km.
The previous lightweight satellite developed by Rifath Sharook, also from Tamil Nadu, and launched in the same competition in 2017 had weighed 64 grams. “We designed the satellite to conduct three experiments – measure 20 weather parameters, test the nylon material in microgravity and track the trajectory while it is being flown. What makes the satellite unique is that all three experiments will be conducted at the same time,” said K J Harikrishan, one of the team members. “It cost us ?15,000, so it is also the cheapest satellite,” he added.
Harikrishan worked with his three teammates P Amarnath, G Sudhi and T Giri Prasad for two weeks to assemble the satellite and feed in the program. As the balloon flies to an altitude of about 70km, the sensor modules in the satellite will begin measuring parameters like temperature, humidity, pressure and UV ray intensity as well as the movement and the trajectory of the balloon. The sensors will send the data to an onboard SD card through a microcontroller. Once the balloon reaches the desired altitude, the satellite will disengage from the balloon and fall. It will then be collected for data retrieval while the durability of the nylon material will also be assessed.
“The satellite has sensor modules that are programmed to measure and record four different parameters per second. So, we will get a large amount of data as the balloon flies to an altitude of 70km for almost a day,” the student said.
Professor G Dinesh Kumar, who was the faculty advisor, said the team improved the efficiency of the satellite by reducing its weight and opting for sensor modules that can measure more than one parameter at a time. “We tested the satellite up to a height of 40 feet. We will be sending it to the US later this week,” the professor said.
Thousands of Texans across the state came together to celebrate the 4th International Day of Yoga in partnership with the Consulate General of India in Houston and local organizations. They moved in harmony, stretching and breathing mindfully in guided yoga sessions across parks, schools, temples and community centers.
According to a 2016 Yoga Journal report, 36.7 million people practice yoga in the US, up from 20.4 million in 2012. The yoga market is now worth $16 bn (£12 bn) in the U.S.
Houston
In Houston, over 500 yoga practitioners showed up in their yoga gear at Midtown Park on June 21st. Non-Indians clearly outnumbered desis in the record turnout, proving that yoga has entered mainstream America.
New additions to the program included a demonstration of some of the most difficult yoga poses by Melissa Riedel, Reggie Ahmad, Austin Dunn and Nicklous Dutcher.
Yoga coordinator for Houston, Sharad Amin thanked the weather gods for a beautiful day and stated that the program “demonstrated universal oneness which can be achieved by Yoga, India’s gift to world.”
President and founder of Patanjali Yogpeeth USA and renowned yoga teacher, Shekhar Agrawal described yoga as a great step to “awaken the sleeping giant within us,” and invited the city’s top yoga teachers to take the gathering through some yoga asanas, relaxation techniques and meditation practices.
A concluding prayer was invoked to “channel our energies in the right direction” after which participants broke out in a lively exchange of powdered colors or Holi as it is known in India.
The Hindu Temple of the Woodlands hosted a yoga session on the morning of June 23. The young volunteers of their Vision to Reality project and Community Outreach Program by the Education Youth Service (EYS), organized the event in Town Green Park. Consul General of India, Dr. Anupam Ray and retired Vascular Surgeon, renowned Yoga Therapist & Ayurveda practitioner Dr. Dilip Sarkar were the Chief Guests. The session opened with a Sanskrit prayer wishing for peace and protection. International yoga educator Cat McCarthy took the stage and led the group through several movements. India House also hosted a yoga event which saw an attendance of 100 people.
Dallas
The Mahatma Gandhi Memorial of North Texas organized IDY at the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Plaza in Irving, Texas on June 17th. Over 350 yoga enthusiasts in all age groups followed yoga instructor Vijay in the exercises, meditation and pranayama sessions for an hour. Breakfast was served for the participants and they were also given a Certificate of Appreciation. Vice Consul of India in Houston Ashok Kumar spoke about the significance of IDY and encouraged people to participate in the celebrations.
Austin
Austinites rolled out their yoga mats in front of the stately State Capitol building on June 16th in solidarity with the world on this day of peace and harmony. The event was presented by the Art of Living and co-sponsored by the Consulate General of India in Houston. The Austin community was unified once again for the fourth time in a row with a record turnout of close to a 1000 people which included City Council members, State representatives as well as members from the Veterans Yoga Project. The Mayor of Austin showed his support with a Proclamation and message for the event. The event also saw the participation of several yoga studios and like-minded organizations.
The 60 minute session of yoga, meditation and pranayama was followed by a striking demonstration of AcroYoga. The session concluded with Art of Living kirtan music and a classical Indian fusion dance.
San Antonio
San Antonio took the prize for the sheer number of yoga events in the city. This year, organizers heeded Consul General of Houston Dr. Anupam Ray’s suggestion and took yoga to the military and veteran community. Wounded Warriors who had lost their limbs in war and had been rehabilitated through yoga demonstrated several exercises at the San Antonio military base.
Maggie Grueskin, one of the main organizers in a message to the organizers in Houston wrote: “I feel amazed at the impact each of our cities are having on our communities, and feel gratitude for imparting the wisdom and community-building aspects of yoga with such a devoted group of people.”
In addition, about 47 multiple yoga events were held throughout the city on June 9th including a large yoga class of about 200 people at the iconic San Antonio Riverwalk, a presentation at the City Council District, an elementary school where 115 children participated, Libraries, Senior Centers and the County Court where the Bexar County court employees practiced yoga in front of the County Court.
Speaking to a cross section of people gathered at these events about what drew them to yoga, responses ranged from a search for spiritual awakening to yoga as an “avenue to heighten and grow” in the spiritual journey. One young lady spoke of “leaving everything at the yoga studio door” for an hour of peace and calm and then leaving the studio inspired to do good.
Some came to raise the vibrational frequency of the planet, connect with themselves and their bodies on a deeper level or get a perfect workout for the body, mind and soul.
Common responses to how it helped in daily life included being happier, fewer mood swings, increased concentration and energy, heightened productivity and a dramatic lowering of stress levels.
Yoga teacher Regie Ahmad, whose gravity defying yoga poses astounded the crowds, described yoga as his primary physical and spiritual practice. Five years ago when he told people he practices yoga, they looked surprised but now, he says, “it’s such a normal and mainstream thing to get into.”
Pranav Desai, an Indian American IT Professional, showcased his new phone app for people with disabilities, at the United Nations this month. The app will help create mass awareness and inspire government officials, engineers, civic planners and business community in efforts to ensure a life of dignity and equality for people with disabilities. According to a PTI report, Desai himself is a polio-survivor and is the founder of the Voice of Specially-Abled People.
Pranav Desai, a polio-survivor and founder of the Voice of Specially-Abled People(VOSAP), last week addressed a session during the 11th Conference of State Parties (COSP) to the Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities here.
The VOSAP is a global advocacy organisation with its over 4,000 volunteers workingfor empowerment of persons with disabilities by inspiring everyone in society to take inclusive actions and pursue individual social responsibility towards the specially-abled.
During the session, the VOSAP explained its unique approach for creating inclusivesociety for persons with disabilities and how member countries can adopt this developing country model to benefit from this approach.
Desai has been spearheading campaigns to ensure an inclusive and accessiblesociety for persons living with disabilities, specially in India.
In 2016, Desai, a Silicon Valley-based IT professional, had welcomed the passage of the landmark Disabilities Bill by the Indian Parliament.
Having campaigned for the cause, he had said the bill will have a far-reaching impact and lay the foundation for transforming the country’s disability sector and bringing it on par with the developed world.
Desai is an adviser to the Department of Persons with Disabilities in India’s Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and was also appointed adviser to the ‘Accessible India’ campaign aimed at making transport, public spaces and information and communication technology accessible to differently-abled people.
During the UN session on June 14, Desai showcased to an audience, comprising UNdiplomats and civil society members, the VOSAP mobile app and its features such as the ‘Take Volunteer Pledge’ that can accelerate mass movements and encouragepeople’s involvement by creating local communities, globally.
Through it, volunteers can map out the accessibility level of key buildings in communities and call foraction in upgrading the accessibility facilities by spreading awareness among government officials, engineers, civic planners and the business community.
Desai said VOSAP focuses on inspiring everyone in the society for their individual social responsibility towards the specially-abled and this sensitisation, mass awareness and collective actions by leaders and volunteers has yielded huge social impact over the last four years.
“Its key message is that ‘everyone is temporarily-abled’ so people should not ignore the needs and rights of the ‘Divyang jan’ and instead create accessible and inclusivesociety,” he said, adding that when everyone embraces their individual social responsibility, the disability rights movement can achieve its goals much faster.
Addressing the inaugural day of the conference, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had said that cementing and protecting the rights of around 1.5 billionpeople around the world in accordance withthe Convention on the Rights of Personswith Disabilities is a “moral imperative”.
He described the Convention as one of the most widely-ratified international human rights treaties, which reaffirms that people with disabilities are entitled to the same treatment as everybody else.
Dr. Andy Khawaja, an Indian American has been appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). US Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) appointed the founder and CEO of Allied Wallet, a leading online payment service provider headquartered in Los Angeles to the independent US Body. He founded Allied Wallet in 2005 and the company now has a presence in Germany, India, Macau, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.
“USCIRF welcomes the appointment of Dr. Andy Khawaja to the Commission. With threats to freedom of religion or belief around the globe growing rapidly, we look forward to adding his voice and efforts to the vital work of the Commission,” said USCIRF Chair Tenzin Dorjee.
In addition to his work as an entrepreneur, Dr. Khawaja has shared his knowledge of various issues, including the Middle East, cybersecurity, and banking, with government officials at the national, state, and local levels. He has met with officials from current and previous presidential administrations as well as Members of Congress.
Dr. Khawaja also has delivered keynote and commencement speeches at Sheikh Zayed University, Abu Dhabi University, Lebanese American University, the Lithuanian Youth Summit, and the Baltic States University. He has been featured in numerous publications including Forbes, Time Magazine, Bloomberg, The Guardian, and Wired Magazine.
In 2016, he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree in Humanitarian Studies by the Lebanese American University. Dr. Khawaja is fluent in five languages, including Arabic, French, and German.
Comprised of nine commissioners, USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan federal body that is principally responsible for reviewing the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally and making policy recommendations to the President, Secretary of State, and Congress. The President and leadership of both political parties in the Senate and House of Representatives appoint USCIRF Commissioners.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission, the first of its kind in the world. USCIRF reviews the facts and circumstances of religious freedom violations abroad and makes policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress. USCIRF Commissioners are appointed by the President and the Congressional leadership of both political parties.
The question being asked yesterday was “why is the rupee falling against the dollar”. The answer is very simple. The demand for American dollars was more than that of the Indian rupee leading to the rupee rapidly losing value against the dollar.
This situation is likely to continue in the days to come with the demand for dollars in India being more than their supply. And this will have a huge impact on the dollar-rupee exchange rate, which crossed 60 rupees to a dollar for the first time yesterday.
Collapse of Indian rupee to a lifetime low of 69.10 against the U.S. dollar will not give an extra edge to domestic exporters, but provide a level-playing field in global market, FIEO said.
Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) director general Ajay Sahai said that the development will not provide any additional support to exporters as currencies of other emerging economies, including China, too are depreciating. “It will provide a level playing field to our exporters. It will not provide the much needed support as India is not singled out,” he said.
India’s exports grew 20.18% to $28.86 billion in May — the highest in six months — even though trade deficit widened to a four- month high of $14.62 billion. The rupee had touched a lifetime low of 69.10 against the U.S. dollar as rising crude oil prices deepened concerns about India’s current account deficit and inflation dynamics.
According to government data released on Friday, Indians have deposited 44 per cent higher advance personal income tax in the first quarter of 2018-19 (April-June) than they did in the same period last year. In the corporate tax front too, companies have paid 17 per cent higher advance tax this quarter than last year.
What has cheered the government is the over 40 per cent growth for the second year in a row on the personal tax front, while there are signs that the corporate sector is performing better with the growth rate more than doubling from 8 per cent in June 2017, despite the weak show put up by banks.
Increase in collection of personal income tax indicates more people are in the tax net than earlier. Finance minister Arun Jaitley seconded this view in a blog post published on Friday. “Increase in the amount of collections in category of personal income tax is also due to more people coming within the tax net,” he wrote. On the other hand, increase in corporate tax payment means India Inc is seeing increase in sales and expects profits to improve in the days to come.
While the Modi government in India had promised to bring back Black Money hoarded abroad and within the country, the money parked by Indians in Swiss banks rose over 50 per cent to CHF (Swiss franc) 1.01 billion (Rs 7,000 crore) in 2017, reversing a three-year downward trend amid India’s clampdown on suspected black money stashed there.
In comparison, the total funds held by all foreign clients of Swiss banks rose about 3 per cent to CHF 1.46 trillion or about Rs 100 lakh crore in 2017, according to the official annual data released today by Swiss National Bank (SNB), the central banking authority of the Alpine nation.
The surge in Indian money held with Swiss banks comes as a surprise given India’s continuing clampdown on suspected black money, stashed abroad, including in banks of Switzerland that used to be known for their famed secrecy walls for years.
The Indian money in Swiss banks had fallen by 45 per cent in 2016, marking their biggest ever yearly plunge, to CHF 676 million (about Rs 4,500 crore) — the lowest ever since the European nation began making the data public in 1987.
According to the SNB data, the total funds held by Indians directly with Swiss banks rose to 999 million Swiss franc (Rs 6,891 crore) in 2017, while the same held through fiduciaries or wealth managers increased to CHF 16.2 million (Rs 112 crore). These figures stood at CHF 664.8 million and CHF 11 million, respectively, at the end of 2016.
As per the latest data, the Indian money in Swiss banks included CHF 464 million (Rs 3,200 crore) in the form of customer deposits, CHF 152 million (Rs 1,050 crore) through other banks and CHF 383 million (Rs 2,640 crore) as ‘other liabilities’ such as securities at the end of 2017.
The funds under all three heads have risen sharply, as against a huge plunge across all categories in the previous year, the SNB data showed.
The funds held through fiduciaries alone used to be in billions till 2007 but began falling after that amid fears of regulatory crackdown.
The total funds held by Indians with Swiss banks stood at a record high of CHF 6.5 billion (Rs 23,000 crore) at 2006-end, but came down to nearly one-tenth of that level in about a decade.
Since those record levels, this is only the third time when there has been a rise in Indians’ money in Swiss banks — in 2011 (12 per cent), 2013 (43 per cent) and now in 2017 by 50.2 per cent — the maximum increase since 56 per cent way back in 2004.
The latest data from Zurich-based SNB comes months after a new framework having been put in place for automatic exchange of information between Switzerland and India to help check the black money menace.
While Switzerland has already begun sharing foreign client details on evidence of wrongdoing provided by India and some other countries, it has agreed to further expand its cooperation on India’s fight against black money with a new pact for automatic information exchange.
There were several rounds of discussions between Indian and Swiss government officials on the new framework and also for expediting the pending information requests about suspected illicit accounts of Indians in Swiss banks.
The funds, described by SNB as ‘liabilities’ of Swiss banks or ‘amounts due to’ their clients, are the official figures disclosed by the Swiss authorities and do not indicate to the quantum of the much-debated alleged black money held by Indians there.
SNB’s official figures also do not include the money that Indians, NRIs or others might have in Swiss banks in the names of entities from different countries.
Amid a decline seen in Indian money over the previous three years, there was a view that Indians who had allegedly parked their illicit money in Swiss banks in the past may have shifted the funds to other locations after a global crackdown began on the mighty banking secrecy practices in Switzerland.
Swiss banks have earlier said Indians have “few deposits” in Swiss banks compared to other global financial hubs like Singapore and Hong Kong amid stepped-up efforts to check the black money menace.
On directions of the Supreme Court, India had constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe cases of alleged black money of Indians, including funds stashed abroad in places like Switzerland.
A number of strategies were deployed by the government to combat the stash-funds menace, in both overseas and domestic domain, which included enactment of a new law, amendments in the Anti-Money Laundering Act and compliance windows for people to declare their hidden assets.
The Tax department had detected suspected black money running into thousands of crores of rupees post investigations on global leaks about Indians stashing funds abroad + and has launched prosecution against hundreds of them, including those with accounts in the Geneva branch of HSBC.
The issue of black money has always been a matter of big debate in India and Switzerland has been long perceived as one of the safest havens for such funds.
Earlier in 2015, the money held by Indians in Swiss banks had fallen by nearly one-third to CHF 1,217.6 million (over Rs 8,000 crore). Prior to that, these funds fell by 10 per cent to CHF 1.8 billion in 2014, after a rise of 43 per cent in 2013 to CHF 2.03 billion.
The total assets of Swiss banks in India, however, fell by about 18 per cent in 2017 to CHF 3.2 billion in second consecutive year of decline. This does not include any tangible assets like real estate and properties. The amount owed by Indian clients to Swiss banks fell by 48 per cent in 2017 to CHF 210 million.
What started as innocent online phenomenon has ended up being the lifeline for everyone on the Internet. Social media is, of course, fun and a great way to stay connected to people. However, the pressure to be popular or viral has made people do illogical things just to grab attention. The risks of oversharing on social media are simply way more than what meets the eye.
Users often unknowingly share information about their exact location – exposing another layer of personal information – because they are confident of their online safety. Hackers have proven otherwise, stealing $172 billion from 978 million consumers in 20 countries in the past year, according to the global 2017 Norton Cyber Security Insights Report.
June 30 is marked as ‘Social Media Day’ and while you would want to celebrate this on your Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram accounts, here are five dangerous habits you must quit to avoid being victims of stalking, cyber-bullying, identity theft or simply getting trolled, as per Norton.
Sharing everything with everybody is not a clever thing to do. All social media sites give the option to limit post viewing to specific audiences. Take the time to explore these settings, try different options to suit the best privacy setting. For instance, both Facebook and Twitter let you create custom lists of people who are allowed to view specific posts. As you get better at using the privacy settings, bear in mind that not all privacy settings “translate” between websites. For instance, some Facebook users have reported that photographs they set to “private” on Facebook were still indexed publicly in Google Image Search—and could be found by searching for their names. If you don’t want it found publicly, simply don’t post it.
Years ago, social media users competed with one another to have the largest number of connections. Today, however, smart users know that the more people you are connected to, the harder it is to control what happens to the information you post. Make sure you know the people you add on social media, in real life if possible. Don’t hesitate to use the “block” feature when the situation seems to call for it.
“Social engineering” involves attackers using whatever information they can glean from your public profiles – date of birth, education, interests – to try to get into your accounts on all sorts of services. Just imagine how easily someone can find out the name of your first pet or school from your social media profile, then think about how many services use them as security questions. Keep as much of your profile private as you can and think twice before posting every aspect of your life online.
If you are using a public computer, make it a ritual to log out—and log out of private devices from time to time as well. Logging out helps ensure that other people won’t snoop your social media profile and use it to attack your friends, change your personal information to embarrassing or slanderous comments, or worse, change your password and lock you out of your own account entirely.
It’s a pain, but it is also absolutely essential that you don’t use the same password for Twitter as you do for, say, Facebook, Instagram and other social media websites. Using a single password makes it easy for hackers, as gaining access to one means gaining access to all – and imagine how painful it will be when you find you’re locked out of your entire online life. When you use one password for multiple services, you’re only as safe as the least secure service you use.
India’s Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu has cautioned against practicing intolerance in the name of cow protection, Love Jihad and eating habits, saying such actions spoil the name of the country and people can’t take law into their hands.
“We need to guard against intolerance on the part of certain misguided citizens. We have been occasionally witnessing such words and deeds of intolerance by some citizens in the name of so-called cow protection, Love Jihad, eating habits, watching films.
“Such incidents lead us to the point that individual freedoms can be in full play only when every citizen respects such freedoms of fellow citizens. Post-Emergency, the State apparatus would think twice before riding roughshod over the liberties and freedoms of citizens. But it is enlightened citizens who would enable fuller manifestation of such liberties and freedoms,” Naidu said.
He was speaking at a function organised by Vivekananda International Foundation to release the Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and Gujarati editions of the book `The Emergency – Indian Democracy’s Darkest Hour’ authored by A. Surya Prakash, Chairman of Prasar Bharti and a veteran journalist.
The Vice President said such actions of individual intolerance spoil the name of the country. “You cannot take the right to hang anyone. One has to be tolerant of the views of others while one must also be tolerant of the verdict of the people. Dissent also has a place. Freedom must be valued and rights of citizen should be guarded.”
He also referred to the debate over nationalism and patriotism and wondered why some people had problem with even saying “Bharat Mata ki Jai”. The expression is not merely geographical and love for the land but it is love for all opinions, religions, communities and people.
Naidu said India was secular not because of political parties but it was in the DNA of people and added that democracy and secularism were there in the Indian civilization through ages. Referring to the infamous Emergency of 1975, he said no sensible government would dare to resort to Emergency after the resounding pro-democracy verdict of people in 1977. “Now the threat to individual freedoms is from some misguided citizens. The Emergency was clearly a state-sponsored intolerance to democracy and individual freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.”
He asserted that the core Indian values and ethos have no place for intolerance due to which all major religions of the world flourish in India. “On the 43rd anniversary of Emergency, I would like the message to go out that any citizen who violates the freedoms of fellow citizens would have no right to be called an Indian. It is because he is hurting the Constitution of India and all that India stood for.”
Naidu said it was time the “dark age of Emergency” became a part of the curriculum so that the young learnt to value the democratic freedoms they enjoy. “It is time the dark age of Emergency becomes a part of the curriculum so that present generations are ensitized to the dreaded events of 1975-77 and they learn to value the democratic and personal freedoms they enjoy today.
“While our history books and textbooks talk of medieval dark days and the British Raj, the fallacious causes and consequences of Emergency is not made a part of the learning of the young,” he added.
He stressed that a crucial lesson of Emergency was that it was the responsibility of each citizen to uphold liberties and freedom of fellow citizens and that “intolerance” should not be accepted.
Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan and late veteran actress Sridevi were named the Best Actors at the 19th edition of the IIFA Awards, for their remarkable work in films “Hindi Medium” and “Mom”, respectively. The award function also honored late actors Vinod Khanna, Shashi Kapoor and Sridevi. Veteran actor Anupam Kher was honored with the Outstanding Achievement award.
At a grand event on Sunday here at the Siam Niramit theatre, a story of an ambitious and enterprising housewife, “Tumhari Sulu” bagged the Best Picture honour, while Saket Chaudhary took back the Best Director Award.
Late Sridevi’s husband-producer Boney Kapoor took the award for her performance in “Mom”. He was emotional as he received the award from actress Kriti Sanon. “I dedicate this award to the entire team of ‘Moma’,” said an emotional Boney.
Vinod’s award was accepted by veteran filmmaker Ramesh Sippy. Rishi Kapoor took Shashi Kapoor’s award. While actor Anil Kapoor and Boney broke down in tears while talking about Sridevi at the gala.
“I have mixed emotions today. I miss her every minute and second of my life. I still feel she is around here….I want you all to support Janhvi like you supported her mother…” said a teary eyed Boney.
“It is a great feeling when your own peers celebrate your achievements and as I have been saying, this is just the interval point of what I am doing and my seconds half of journey starts now. It started with my 500th film….I told myself this is the interval point with The Big Sick and after that I have done 15 films in the last one year both international and national,” Anupam told the media.
The 2000-seater Siam Niramit theatre saw thousands of Bollywood fanatics coming to the event to catch a glimpse of their favourite stars. A string of A-listers like Ranbir Kapoor, Varun, Arjun, Kriti Sanon, Bobby Deol and Shraddha set the stage on fire with their power packed and electrifying performances.
Varun danced on numbers like “Sau Tarah Ke”, “Tama Tama,” and “High Rated Gabru”. Bobby danced with Romanian TV presenter and singer Iulia Vantur on numbers like “Gupt Gupt, “Soldier soldier”, “Tera Rang Balle Balle” and tracks from his latest release “Race 3”. Kriti, Arjun and Shraddha also danced to tracks from their films respectively.
Shah Rukh Khan, Soumitra Chatterjee, Naseeruddin Shah, Tabu, Madhuri Dixit, Ali Fazal and Anil Kapoor, apart from producers Aditya Chopra and Guneet Monga, as well as music artistes Usha Khanna and Sneha Khanwalkar are among the Indians invited to be a part of the Oscar Academy’s Class of 2018.
The announcement was made on Monday on the official website of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The new invitees are an effort on the Oscar-giving body to include more women, people of color and international filmmakers.
“Dangal” editor Ballu Saluja, costume designers Manish Malhotra and Dolly Ahluwalia, cinematographer Anil Mehta, actress Madhabi Mukherjee, production designers Subrata Chakraborthy and Amit Ray are also a part of the list.
Ali Fazal, who featured with Judi Dench in “Victoria and Abdul,” tweeted: “So so humbled to be included with the greats. Thank you The Academy for this membership. I look forward to this friendship for a long long time.Sending my love from India.”
Monga, known for producing “The Lunchbox” and “Masaan,” wrote on Instagram: “Honoured to have been invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Class of 2018 !!!!! Thank you The Academy.”
The Academy extended invitations to a record 928 artistes and executives who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to theatrical motion pictures across the world. Those who accept the invitations will be the only additions to the Academy’s membership in 2018, read a statement.
Among the invitees, 17 are Oscar winners, while 92 are Oscar nominees, including Timothee Chalamet and Daniel Kaluuya. Forty-nine percent of the class of 2018 are female, and, should all accept membership, that will bring overall percentage of women in the Academy to 31 percent.
Thirty-eight percent of the new invitees are people of color, which, should they all accept, would bring their overall percentage of the Academy to 16 percent, according to hollywoodreporter.com.
Tiffany Haddish, Kal Penn, Kumail Nanjiani, Blake Lively, Dave Chappelle, Mindy Kaling, George Lopez, Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, Evan Rachel Wood, Naveen Andrews, Melissa Etheridge, Jada Pinkett Smith, Kendrick Lamar and J.K. Rowling are among the popular names on the list which ranges from actress Quvenzhane Wallis, who, at age 14, is the youngest, to composer Sofia Gubaidulina, who, at 86, is the oldest.
The backlog of pending applications for immigrants legally in the country trying to become U.S. citizens has “skyrocketed” under President Donald Trump, according to a new report from an immigrant rights organization.
“The Trump admin has built a second wall that prevents legal immigrants in the U.S. from becoming voting U.S. citizens,” Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the partnership, told NBC News.
He said the backlog at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services means processing rates have reached as high as 20 months, raising concerns in a critical mid-term election year that some people will be unable to vote. Last year, over 925,000 people applied for U.S. citizenship, according to the report.
“They may be waiting for as much of 20 months after submitting a 21-page application, paid the $730 fee, submitted their fingerprints for a security a check and then sat and waited to take an exam,” he said.
As of Dec. 31, 2015, under Obama, the backlog was 388,832, according to the report. “This is either absolute gross incompetence affecting close to a million legal immigrants who want to become U.S. citizens, or it is an intentional second wall that is designed to slow the pace at which lawfully present immigrants can become voters,” he said.
The report also found that certain states saw “enormous spikes” in denials of citizenship applications in the last quarter, noting changes in Alabama, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Utah.
From Oct. 1, 2017, to the end of last December, the backlog increased in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and several 19 states, including Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Utah, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin, according to the report.
The states with the largest increase in pending applications over the last fiscal year included Utah with an increase of more than 53 percent, Texas with an increase of over 50 percent and Washington with over 46 percent, according to the report.
A United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesman strongly contested the reports findings Monday afternoon. “The truth is that the total number of people the U.S. naturalizes each year has remained virtually unchanged. What we’re looking at is a dishonest and desperate attempt by open borders advocates to undermine the work of Homeland Security officials, law enforcement and the administration to protect the integrity of our immigration system and uphold the rule of law,” said spokesman Michael Bars in a statement. “The current pending workload does not equate to a backlog — it’s a statistic used in the USCIS report to include every application for naturalization filed including those filed in recent days and weeks — and is being inaccurately portrayed as evidence of delays”
“Many of these cases, which can remain pending from one quarter to the next, are well within the processing time goal established by the agency with variances being a direct result of geography and capacity. USCIS will continue to process all applications and petitions in a judicious and comprehensive manner and will do so as efficiently and expeditiously as possible in accordance with the law,” he added. “We reject the inaccurate claims of those fundamentally opposed to this effort.”
The agency naturalizes approximately 700,00 to 750,000 as citizens a year, according to USCIS, and naturalized 716,000 people in fiscal year 2017.
The partnership announced the report’s findings later Monday at a news teleconference with Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill., and other immigrant rights groups.
The members of Congress also sent a congressional sign-on letter asking the director of USCIS to explain the backlogs and would call for congressional hearings and legal action to address the backlog, The backlog was denying potential citizens the right to vote, and also left some at risk for potential deportation under Trump’s policies while their applications are pending, said Gutiérrez.
“The rules have changed — legal permanent residency does not protect you from deportation under Donald Trump,” he said. “People want to participate in the democratic process, they also want to protect themselves.”
Angelica Salas, executive director of the immigrant advocacy group the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), said, “More and more every day you have a situation in which legal permanent residents, even for minor violations decades old, are being visited by ICE.”
Salas said during the teleconference that their naturalization campaign for 2018 was looking towards the 2020 elections to support legal residents seeking the right to vote, despite the “insurmountable hurdles they face.”
“If you want to vote in November of 2020, you’ve basically got to apply in the next 60 to 90 days. That is something unconscionable,” he said during the teleconference.
Hoyt said the advocates were also working with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, for a mayoral sign-on letter. Sign-on letters are used by lawmakers to come together and express a view on a policy or political matter. He added that the group was planning to file a Freedom of Information Act request looking for internal communications and numbers regarding the backlog.
When it comes to relationships, most of us are winging it. We’re exhilarated by the early stages of love, but as we move onto the general grind of everyday life, personal baggage starts to creep in and we can find ourselves floundering in the face of hurt feelings, emotional withdrawal, escalating conflict, insufficient coping techniques and just plain boredom. There’s no denying it: making and keeping happy and healthy relationships is hard.
But a growing field of research into relationships is increasingly providing science-based guidance into the habits of the healthiest, happiest couples — and how to make any struggling relationship better. As we’ve learned, the science of love and relationships boils down to fundamental lessons that are simultaneously simple, obvious and difficult to master: empathy, positivity and a strong emotional connection drive the happiest and healthiest relationships.
“The most important thing we’ve learned, the thing that totally stands out in all of the developmental psychology, social psychology and our lab’s work in the last 35 years is that the secret to loving relationships and to keeping them strong and vibrant over the years, to falling in love again and again, is emotional responsiveness,” says Sue Johnson, a clinical psychologist in Ottawa and the author of several books, including Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love.
That responsiveness, in a nutshell, is all about sending a cue and having the other person respond to it. “The $99 million question in love is, ‘Are you there for me?’” says Johnson. “It’s not just, ‘Are you my friend and will you help me with the chores?’ It’s about emotional synchronicity and being tuned in.”
“Every couple has differences,” continues Johnson. “What makes couples unhappy is when they have an emotional disconnection and they can’t get a feeling of secure base or safe haven with this person.” She notes that criticism and rejection — often met with defensiveness and withdrawal — are exceedingly distressing, and something that our brain interprets as a danger cue.
To foster emotional responsiveness between partners, Johnson pioneered Emotionally Focused Therapy, in which couples learn to bond through having conversations that express needs and avoid criticism. “Couples have to learn how to talk about feelings in ways that brings the other person closer,” says Johnson.
According to Carrie Cole, director of research for the Gottman Institute, an organization dedicated to the research of marriage, emotional disengagement can easily happen in any relationship when couples are not doing things that create positivity. “When that happens, people feel like they’re just moving further and further apart until they don’t even know each other anymore,” says Cole. That focus on positivity is why the Gottman Institute has embraced the motto “small things often.” The Gottman Lab has been studying relationship satisfaction since the 1970s, and that research drives the Institute’s psychologists to encourage couples to engage in small, routine points of contact that demonstrate appreciation.
One easy place to start is to find ways to compliment your partner every day, says Cole — whether it’s expressing your appreciation for something they’ve done or telling them, specifically, what you love about them. This exercise can accomplish two beneficial things: First, it validates your partner and helps them feel good about themselves. And second, it helps to remind you why you chose that person in the first place.
When it comes to the brain and love, biological anthropologist and Kinsey Institute senior fellow Helen Fisher has found — after putting people into a brain scanner — that there are three essential neuro-chemical components found in people who report high relationship satisfaction: practicing empathy, controlling one’s feelings and stress and maintaining positive views about your partner.
In happy relationships, partners try to empathize with each other and understand each other’s perspectives instead of constantly trying to be right. Controlling your stress and emotions boils down to a simple concept: “Keep your mouth shut and don’t act out,” says Fisher. If you can’t help yourself from getting mad, take a break by heading out to the gym, reading a book, playing with the dog or calling a friend — anything to get off a destructive path. Keeping positive views of your partner, which Fisher calls “positive illusions,” are all about reducing the amount of time you spend dwelling on negative aspects of your relationship. “No partner is perfect, and the brain is well built to remember the nasty things that were said,” says Fisher. “But if you can overlook those things and just focus on what’s important, it’s good for the body, good for the mind and good for the relationship.”
Ultimately, the quality of a person’s relationships dictates the quality of their life. “Good relationships aren’t just happier and nicer,” says Johnson. “When we know how to heal [relationships] and keep them strong, they make us resilient. All these clichés about how love makes us stronger aren’t just clichés; it’s physiology. Connection with people who love and value us is our only safety net in life.”
When I first became governor, state debt was climbing, families and job creators were overtaxed, and Florida’s economy was hurting. Even in the face of these dismal realities, state leaders were hesitant to reel back their wasteful spending and take real steps to protect taxpayer dollars. Thankfully, unlike in Washington, Florida’s budget process includes the line item veto – an important tool that encourages responsible spending by allowing the executive branch to remove any project that wastes taxpayer dollars.
Every year we saw hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of unreasonable projects slip into the state budget – at the expense of Florida taxpayers. And every year, I carefully and deliberately reviewed the budget line by line to eliminate reckless spending. It was important to me that state leaders, communities and Floridians understood why each project was removed, which is why I explained the reason for each veto, such as no return on investment, having federal or local funding already available, or funding never even being requested. Ultimately, the only way to make government function is to say no to some spending requests. The federal government currently tries to do too much, but by vetoing more than 1,800 pet projects here in Florida over the past seven and half years, we saved Florida taxpayers more than $2.4 billion.
This new focus on responsible spending in Florida meant more funding was available to pay down state debt, cut taxes and invest in what matters most to our families, like securing historic funding to support our education system and protect our environment. Florida’s economy has experienced an incredible economic turnaround and families and businesses from all across the country are coming to Florida to succeed. But while Florida has set an example for wise spending, Washington continues to fall farther and farther behind.
That’s why the third proposal of my ‘Make Washington Work Plan’ will help hold Congress accountable for wasteful spending by providing the executive branch with the constitutional ability to remove individual budget projects through a line item veto. Washington should be creating budgets that serve Americans, not the political ambitions of career politicians. And when politicians in D.C. slip pet projects in the budget in an attempt to score political points – with no regard for the taxpayers who pay for it – the president should have the authority to eliminate this waste, just as the governor does in Florida.
I know there will be politicians who say this cannot be done, or that it has been tried and failed before – but that’s no reason to not fight for what is clearly best for American families. That’s why it’s time to elect new leaders with new ideas, and why my “Make Washington Work” Plan is meant to reform the tired old ways of thinking in Washington and make sure Congress actually works for families across the nation – not just for career politicians. My first two proposals were implementing term limits in Congress and requiring a supermajority vote of two-thirds of each house of Congress to approve any tax or fee increase before it can become law.
Politicians in Washington love to tell you about all the common sense, smart things that cannot be done. We need to get rid of the politicians who always tell us what we cannot do. There is no excuse to not bring Florida’s way of thinking to Washington. Career politicians from both parties have one thing in common – they love spending taxpayer money. But now is the time to put a stop to Congress’ enthusiasm for wasteful spending. After all, it’s not the government’s money – it’s the money of hardworking American families and job creators, and a line item veto makes certain Americans are getting the most value for their investment.
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Rick Scott, Governor of Florida, released the above op-ed highlighting the third proposal of his “Make Washington Work” plan to end wasteful spending in Washington by providing the executive branch with the constitutional ability to remove individual budget projects through a line item veto.)
Anukreethy Vas, a 19-year old beautiful and talented young woman from Tamil Nadu, triumphed over 29 contestants from all over India to clinch the ‘Femina Miss India World 2018’ title on Tuesday, last week. She was crowned by Miss World 2017 Manushi Chhillar, who brought home the coveted ‘Miss World’ crown the first time since 2000.
Vas, raised by a single mother, was crowned at a star-studded grand finale of the beauty contest on June 19 night at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Indoor Stadium in Mumbai. Meenakshi Chaudhary, 21, from Harayana was declared the first runner-up, while Andhra Pradesh’s Shreya Rao Kamavarapu , 23, became the second runner-up in the annual beauty pageant.
A student of Chennai’s Loyola College, Vas is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in French to become an interpreter, but she works closely with an NGO for the education of transgenders – a cause close to her heart. She wishes to become a supermodel as she loves facing the camera, but Bollywood is not her focus right now. Her eyes are set on winning the Miss World crown for India again, Vas told IANS over phone from Mumbai.
The Femina Miss India show saw participants proving their aptitude by facing some tricky questions from the judges’ panel, which included Bobby Deol, Kunal Kapoor, Malaika Arora, fashion designer Gaurav Gupta and cricketer Irfan Pathan, along with Chhillar.
Talking about Miss India 2018, Manushi had earlier said, “I think there is no set formula and there is no one path that can be taken to the crown as every one has their own way. Even when you look at past winners of Miss World, everyone was unique. So you can’t give a set example but all I can tell them is to learn as much as they can and be themselves…We do have a lot of expectations from India. It’s going to be a tough one for whosoever wins.”
The event was hosted by Bollywood filmmaker Karan Johar and actor Ayushmann Khurrana. Bollywood was prominently present at the grand finale, as Jacqueline Fernandez set the stage on fire by shaking a leg on “Desi Girl.”
Dancing diva and actress Madhuri Dixit Nene performed a beautiful dance number during the India round, with her co-dancers presenting various forms of Indian classical dance. She also hummed a few lines from her latest Marathi release, “Bucket List,” during an interaction with the hosts. Kareena Kapoor Khan looked ravishing in her stage performance on “Tareefan” from her latest film, “Veere Di Wedding.”
All the selected participants were groomed by Neha Dhupia, Rakul Preet Singh, Pooja Chopra and Pooja Hegde. The organizing team of the beauty pageant toured all 30 states of the country, including Delhi, and crowned one representative from each state, all aspiring for the coveted Miss India crown.
Anukreethy Vas will now represent India at Miss World 2018 while the two runners-up will represent the country at Miss Grand International 2018 and Miss United Continents 2018 respectively.
Kavita Rai, Anusha Tandon, and Ina Bhoopalam, three Indian American teens, are among the 24 teenage girls selected as “Girl Up” advisers heading to Washington, D.C., for the upcoming United Nations Women Empowerment Summit. Rai, of Camillo, Calif.; Tandon, of Acton, Mass.; and Bhoopalam, of Lincoln, Neb., will join the 21 other teen advisers for the summit July 8 through July 11.
The purpose of the summit is to improve the lives of other girls, and Rai is hoping she can play a part in achieving that goal, according to a Camarillo Acorn report. “It’s important not to live in a bubble,” the 16-year-old daughter of Rajinder and Mukesh Rai said in the report. The teens were selected to head to the summit by Girl Up, an empowerment campaign of the United Nations Foundation, to speak at the organization’s annual summit on issues facing girls and women, the report said.
Some 400 girls from 17 states and five countries who are active in the Girl Up campaign in their communities applied to be teen advisers, the publication added. The advisers who were selected “share the common goal of supporting girls around the world and achieving global gender equality,” spokesperson Beth Nervig said. Along with several adult speakers scheduled to appear at next month’s summit, the teen advisers will share their stories with about 400 other girls expected to attend, the report added.
Tandon, 17, is a senior at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School in Acton, Massachusetts and she first joined Girl Up in sixth grade because she wanted to use her voice to help people around the world, according to the Girl Up website.
“I was enticed by Girl Up’s unique format that allows girls to be at the forefront of change, because I had never seen a campaign that was basically run by girls. I helped found a club in my middle and high school, and have taken leadership roles ever since. I feel like I have grown so much over the years and I’ve loved seeing the amazing women in my club grow up along with me,” Tandon stated on the website.
Bhoopalam is a student at both East High School in Cornhusker State, Nebraska and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“My experience with Girl Up starts a little over a year ago, when I made a promise to myself that I would no longer stay silent in the face of so many problems. It was around that time when I heard about Girl Up from a friend and was immediately hooked,” Bhoopalam stated on the website.
Rai is a senior at Newbury Park High School in California and she started a Girl Up chapter at her school, two years ago. “My advocacy for women’s rights has been a passion of mine for years now,” she stated on the Girl Up website. Rai is involved in YMCA Youth & Government where has discussions on prison reform, gun control and women’s reproductive rights.
According to their website, since its launch in 2010, Girl Up has been partnering with the United Nations to support comprehensive programs that give adolescent girls in six developing countries including India, an equal chance for education, health, social and economic opportunities, and a life free from violence.
The United States withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday last week over what it called chronic bias against Israel and a lack of reform, a move activists warned would make advancing human rights globally even more difficult. Washington’s withdrawal is the latest US rejection of multilateral engagement after it pulled out of the Paris climate agreement and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has sought major changes on the council throughout her tenure, issued a blistering critique of the panel, saying it had grown more callous over the past year and become a “protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias.” She cited the admission of Congo as a member even as mass graves were being discovered there, and the failure to address human rights abuses in Venezuela and Iran.
“I want to make it crystal clear that this step is not a retreat from our human rights commitments,” she said during a joint appearance with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the department. “On the contrary. We take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights.”
Haley slammed Russia, China, Cuba and Egypt for thwarting US efforts to reform the council. She also criticized countries which shared US values and encouraged Washington to remain, but “were unwilling to seriously challenge the status quo.”
“Look at the council membership, and you see an appalling disrespect for the most basic rights,” said Haley, citing Venezuela, China, Cuba and Democratic Republic of Congo. She did not mention Saudi Arabia, which rights groups pushed to be suspended in 2016 over killings of civilians in the Yemen war.
Among reforms the United States had pushed for was to make it easier to kick out member states with egregious rights records. Currently a two-thirds majority vote by the 193-member UN General Assembly is needed to suspend a member state.
Haley also said the “disproportionate focus and unending hostility towards Israel is clear proof that the council is motivated by political bias, not by human rights.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the U.S. decision.
The United States has long shielded its ally Israel at the United Nations. In citing what it says is bias against Israel, the administration of President Donald Trump could further fuel Palestinian arguments that Washington cannot be a neutral mediator as it prepares to roll out a Middle East peace plan. Washington also relocated its embassy to Jerusalem after recognising it as the capital of Israel, reversing decades of US policy.
The United States is half-way through a three-year term on the 47-member Geneva-based body and the Trump administration had long threatened to quit if it was not overhauled. Rights groups have criticised the Trump administration for not making human rights a priority in its foreign policy. Critics say this sends a message that the administration turns a blind eye to human rights abuses in some parts of the world.
It also comes as the United States faces intense criticism for detaining children separated from their immigrant parents at the US-Mexico border. UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein on Monday called on Washington to halt its “unconscionable” policy. “Given the state of human rights in today’s world, the US should be stepping up, not stepping back,” Zeid said after Haley announced the US withdrawal.
Reuters reported last week that talks on reforming the council had failed to meet Washington’s demands, suggesting the Trump administration would quit. “The Human Rights Council enables abuses by absolving wrongdoers through silence and falsely condemning those that committed no offence,” Pompeo said.
Diplomats have said the US withdrawal could bolster countries such as Cuba, Russia, Egypt and Pakistan, which resist what they see as UN interference in sovereign issues. Haley said the withdrawal “is not a retreat from our human rights commitments”.
Twelve rights and aid groups, including Human Rights First, Save the Children and CARE, warned Pompeo the US withdrawal would “make it more difficult to advance human rights priorities and aid victims of abuse around the world”. Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Human Rights Program, said Trump’s “misguided policy of isolationism only harms American interests”.
The Human Rights Council meets three times a year to examine human rights violations worldwide. It has mandated independent investigators to look at situations including Syria, North Korea, Myanmar and South Sudan. Its resolutions are not legally binding but carry moral authority. When the Council was created in 2006, US President George W Bush’s administration shunned the body. Under President Barack Obama the United States was elected for a maximum two consecutive terms on the council by the UN General Assembly. After a year off, Washington was re-elected in 2016 for its current third term. UN officials said the United States would be the first member to withdraw from the council.
Haley said a year ago that Washington was reviewing its membership. The body has a permanent standing agenda item on suspected violations committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories that Washington wanted removed.
The council last month voted to probe killings in Gaza and accused Israel of using excessive force. The United States and Australia cast the only “no” votes.
“The UN Human Rights Council has played an important role in such countries as North Korea, Syria, Myanmar and South Sudan, but all Trump seems to care about is defending Israel,” said Human Rights Watch executive director Ken Roth.
The US plans to announce its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday, media reports said.
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, who had last year threatened to pull out of it given longstanding US complaints that it is biased against Israel, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, plans to announce the withdrawal at the State Department here at 5 p.m., Bloomberg reported, quoting two people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity.
On Monday, the Geneva-based council began its latest session. The announcement came a day after UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein slammed US President Donald Trump’s immigration policy separating migrant children from their parents, The Times of Israel reported, also quoting sources. The Trump administration earlier pulled out of the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal.
President Donald Trump, under mounting political pressure from angry members of his own party, signed an executive order Wednesday reversing his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border and allowing families to instead be detained together. “It’s about keeping families together while ensuring we have a powerful border,” Trump said.
It was a dramatic turnaround for Trump, who has been insisting, wrongly, that his administration had no choice but to separate families apprehended at the border because of federal law and a court decision. The news in recent days has been dominated by searing images of children held in cages at border facilities, as well as audio recordings of young children crying for their parents — images that have sparked fury, question of morality and concern from Republicans about a negative impact on their races in November’s midterm elections.
Until June 20, the president, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other officials had repeatedly argued the only way to end the practice was for Congress to pass new legislation, while Democrats said he could do it with his signature alone. That’s what he did. “We’re going to have strong, very strong borders, but we’re going to keep the families together,” said Trump, who said he didn’t like the “sight” or “feeling” of children separated from their parents.
He said his order would not end the “zero-tolerance” policy that criminally prosecutes all adults caught crossing the border illegally. The order aims to keep families together while they are in custody, expedite their cases, and ask the Department of Defense to help house families.
Justice Department lawyers had been working to find a legal workaround for a previous class-action settlement that set policies for the treatment and release of unaccompanied children who are caught at the border. Still, Trump’s order is likely to create a new set of problems involving length of detention of families, and may spark a fresh court fight.
The Hindu American Foundation, in response to Trump’s earlier actions, called them “unconscionable.” In a statement issued June 19, HAF said: “As immigrants or children of immigrants, as parents, as Hindus, we can find no legal, moral, or ethical justification for such actions.”
HAF’s Indian American executive director Suhag Shukla added: “Hindus place great importance on the family. Whether attempting to enter the United States to seek asylum, fleeing violence in their home country, or seeking better economic opportunities, separating children from their parents is abhorrent. Treating young, vulnerable children in such a degraded way is beyond not only Hindu values, but American values.”
India and the United States will hold the inaugural 2+2 meeting of their defense and foreign ministers in Washington on July 6, the US state department announced Thursday, ending months of uncertainty dogged by postponements and cancellations over scheduling and personnel changes.
US secretary of state Michael R Pompeo and secretary of defense James Mattis will host external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and minister of defence Nirmala Sitharaman for the first meeting. The two sides are expected to share perspectives on strengthening their strategic and security ties and exchange views on a range of bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement.
This will be the first simultaneous meeting of the Indian defence and external affairs ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Sushma Swaraj and their US counterparts James Mattis and Mike Pompeo in a format announced last August after a call between Prime Minister Narendra modi and President Donald Trump.
The dialogue is seen as a vehicle to elevate the strategic relationship between the two countries. And in the subsequent weeks, the US was focussed solely on President Trump’s meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. India has proposed July 6, as reported by Hindustan Times earlier, but had to wait for a confirmation from Washington DC, which finally came through.
The two sides will be expecting to discuss a whole range of issues in defence and external affairs such as cooperation on counter-terrorism, which is always accorded high priority by the countries, and Afghanistan, which received a significant pitch in President Trump’s new South Asia strategy.
At the July meeting, officials will “focus on strengthening strategic, security, and defense cooperation as the United States and India jointly confront global challenges”, said the state department in a statement. Officials expect to discuss, specifically, the indirect impact of US sanctions on Russia and Iran. A major Indian defence deal for the Russian S-400 air defence systems is at risk of attracting secondary sanction from the US unless an exception was made, as proposed and backed by Mattis and Pompeo.
The meeting will take place among growing defense and diplomatic ties and convergence but increasing trade differences caused by President Trump’s decision to slap a tariff of 25% and 10% on steel and aluminium imports. India has retaliated with its own tariffs on imports from the US and has also challenged Trump’s tariffs at the World Trade Organization. Trade is a separate discussion but and new and continuing issues are being thrashed out by the two countries in other forums.
Earlier this year, the ‘2+2 dialogue’ had been postponed due to uncertainty over the confirmation of Mike Pompeo as President Donald Trump’s new Secretary of State. Pompeo was later confirmed as Secretary of State in April.
“I think it is a dramatic signal suggesting that DOD (department of defense) is taking the challenges of managing the unified Indo-Pacific space seriously,” Ashley Tellis, a leading US expert on South Asia and Asia had said at the time. “It is a task well begun but far from finished,” he had added.
The Maharashtra government and a U.S.-India panel have announced three new projects in the state, an official said June 18. The state will sign an agreement with the Network for Global Innovation to develop a clean tech incubator ecosystem in Maharashtra to accelerate adoption of sustainable technologies and encourage trade and investment in these sectors.
The announcements were made during Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ visit to Washington D.C. last week at a public forum co-hosted by the CSIS Wadhwani Chair and India Initiative at Georgetown University, which he addressed.
Fadnavis spoke about his goals to make Maharashtra the first trillion-dollar economy across India, which he will do by leveraging foreign investments in various sectors, the news release added. “We have focused on building infrastructure, which has subsequently opened up lot of opportunities for international investors in the state,” the chief minister said at the forum.
Along with the U.S.-India State and Urban Initiative, it will collaborate on the development and implementation of a ‘High Performance Innovation Ecosystem’ including planning, funding, build-out and ongoing operations, with plans to invite a state-based nominee organization to become a member of the NGIN.
The Georgia Institute of Technology will launch a new pilot research project to understand the consumer dynamics and responsiveness to adoption of new technologies in the state electricity sector. The project, “The Impact of Consumer Behavior on Efficiency and Sustainability in India’s Power Sector,” will be led by Georgia Tech Indian American professors — assistant professor Anjali Thomas Bohlken and associate professor Usha Nair-Reichert — with support from the Strategic Energy Initiative.
Finally, the Pune Municipal Corporation will host an Urban Mobility Lab in August as part of the Lighthouse City initiative launched after a competition last year, jointly with NITI Aayog and Rocky Mountain Institute, Colorado.
The Urban Mobility Lab will advance the design, integration and implementation of new solutions for complex transportation challenges and how these ideas can be replicated and scaled. The goal would be to upgrade transportation services to cater to the needs of rapidly growing cities, with operational efficiency, and simultaneous reduction of pollution, congestion and petroleum demands.
Funded by the Department of State, the U.S.-India State and Urban Initiative promotes energy security and energy sector reform through direct engagement between Washington and Indian sub-national entities.
It builds productive partnerships that can help India achieve its energy goals; and establish close, sustainable working relationships among Indian sub-national officials with their US counterparts and other civil society organizations working in the areas of governance and energy, besides roping in the private sector.
The U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum hosted Fadnavis during his trip to the United States, the forum announced in a June 15 news release. The Forum kicked off the chief minister’s roadshow with U.S. investors at a roundtable in New York City, and hosted him the next day at an event with member companies in Washington, D.C., it said.
The state of Maharashtra, with its progressive measures to facilitate investments and investors, has worked towards the goals it had announced during the “Make in India” initiative in 2014, USISFP said.
To continue to be the preferred business destination for foreign investors, Fadnavis has supported private-public partnerships to promote growth through foreign investments across all sectors. He asked USISPF and Friends of Maharashtra in the U.S. to serve as one nodal point for all U.S. investments into Maharashtra. Both organizations will coordinate and liaise with the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation, the USISPF added.
With an emphasis on further development of Mumbai and other townships, Fadnavis has supported private-public partnerships to promote this growth, and insisted that his state’s objective of job growth, along with economic development, will be fulfilled through investments across sectors, according to USISPF.
“Maharashtra is growing at a rapid pace and the state is the first choice for many of our U.S companies that manufacture in India,” USISPF president and CEO Mukesh Aghi said.
The government’s top ethics official said some of President Trump’s business dealings “raise serious concerns” but that the office lacks the authority to launch an investigation requested last month by congressional Democrats.
More than 60 Democrats, led by Rep. David N. Cicilline of Rhode Island, had written to the Office of Government Ethics in May asking that the agency investigate reported Chinese government support of an Indonesian real estate development that will include several Trump-brand properties.
David J. Apol, acting director and general counsel at the ethics office, responded last week that he thought concern was warranted. But because the president is not bound by the same conflict-of-interest laws as most federal employees, he said, Congress is responsible for holding the president in check.
“Under the Constitution, the primary authority to oversee the President’s ethics rests with Congress and ultimately, with the American people,” Apol wrote in his Monday response.
At issue is a report in the South China Morning Post saying the Chinese government is issuing $500 million in loans for the project in Jakarta, Indonesia. Days later, Trump announced his support for Chinese-backed telecommunications firm ZTE, a departure from his previously aggressive stance toward Chinese industry.
There is no evidence the two issues are linked. However, the Democrats raised concerns about the deal that amplify arguments being made against the president and his company, the Trump Organization, in a series of court cases.
In their letter, they argued that the loan may be a violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses that forbid the president from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments.
The Trump administration has “completely failed to address the suspicious timing between this policy reversal and the Chinese government’s loan to a Trump-backed project,” they wrote. Language in a recently introduced appropriations bill would place restrictions on the use of government funds to purchase equipment produced by ZTE.
“At the outset, I agree that the information cited in your letter raises serious concerns,” Apol said. However he said the agency had “no authority to opine on Emoluments Clause issues.” The office declined to comment further.
Neither White House nor Trump Organization officials responded to requests for comment. Trump resigned his positions with the company upon entering office but retained his financial stake in the business, which includes office buildings, hotels and residential properties in America and abroad.
This is not the first time congressional Democrats have urged the ethics office to take action, and they have received similar rebuffs previously.
A year ago, Democrats, led by Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (Pa.), made a similar request of the ethics office, only to be told by then-Director Walter M. Shaub Jr. that it was outside his purview.
Shaub, now working for the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, has become a fierce critic of the president. “Unless the Department of Justice decides to pursue this as a criminal matter, only Congress has jurisdiction to conduct oversight here, and the Congressional majority has made clear that it’s out of the business of conducting meaningful oversight of the executive branch as long as Trump is president,” Shaub said in an email.
The Trump Organization has retained an outside ethics adviser, Washington attorney Bobby R. Burchfield, to review new deals the company proposes to try to ensure that business partners aren’t seeking political advantage with the president and would pay a fair price in the transactions.
In comments published in the Texas Review of Law and Politics earlier this year, Burchfield compared Trump’s business activities to those of previous officials, including President George Washington, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. “President Trump has gone beyond the legal requirements to insulate himself and his businesses from ethical issues,” Burchfield wrote.
A former Holy See envoy to Washington was sentenced here Saturday to a five-year prison term for viewing and sharing child pornography, the first time on record that the Vatican has convicted one of its own onetime diplomats for such crimes.
The punishment for Monsignor Carlo Capella, which included a fine of 5,000 euros, was just shy of the five year, nine-month term that prosecutors requested. The code of this city-state calls for imprisonment of up to five years for possessing and distributing child pornography but says penalties can increase if a “considerable quantity” of material is involved.
“The mistakes that I have made are clear,” Capella said in a statement just before his sentencing, where he said his interest in child pornography came during a period of emotional “weakness.”
The two-day trial brought quick closure to a case in which Capella was recalled from Washington last year after the Vatican rebuffed a U.S. attempt to drop diplomatic immunity. Capella, who also faced charges in Canada, will serve his sentence in a cell within the Vatican police barracks. He could also be removed from the priesthood in an upcoming canonical trial.
Capella’s criminal trial came as the Roman Catholic Church finds itself under pressure to more forcefully address the issues of clerical abuse and enact stricter punishments for those convicted of sex crimes. The church is dealing with high-profile abuse cases around the world, and Pope Francis faces a major decision about how to handle a crisis in Chile, whose bishops have offered to resign en masse over the coverup of sex abuse crimes in their nation.
Capella’s case had little precedent. Five years ago, a Polish archbishop, Józef Wesolowski, was recalled from a diplomatic posting and later ordered to stand trial on child sex abuse-related charges. He died before the trial began. Saturday, with several pool reporters in the courtroom, a tribunal president read the verdict and said Capella was “guilty of the charge levied against him.”
“It’s certainly a strong punishment,” said Michael Sean Winters, a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter. “I think there was a mistake — [Capella] should have been tried in the U.S. or Canada. Still, they’re going after these guys. That is how it should be.”
Francesco Zanardi, an Italian survivor of clergy sex abuse and president of the Abuse Network, said that people who share and view child pornography energize the market, which in turn “actually produces plenty more victims.”
At the opening of his trial Friday, Capella said that during his time at the Holy See’s embassy in Washington — a posting that began in 2016 — he had become a compulsive viewer and sharer of child pornography, although he came to see his behavior as “repugnant.” He said he had started to view child pornography after falling into a crisis that he associated with the move to the District, where he said he had little fulfilling work to do. A police investigator said during the trial that he had found several dozen files — photographs, drawings and videos — on Capella’s electronic devices, including footage of a small child in an explicit sexual act.
“I am sorry that my weakness has affected and caused pain to the diocese, the church, and the Holy See,” Capella said Saturday. He said he was “repentant” but hoped “this situation can be considered just an accident along the path of my life as a priest.”
The Global Organization of People of Indian Origin – Central New Jersey Chapter (GOPIO-CJ) honored Indian American achievers and community leaders at its 10th Anniversary Gala & Awards Banquet on Sunday, June 3rd at Ember Banquet, Monmouth Junction, NJ. Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. was honored as Friend of India. Ten Indian Americans were being honored for their achievements in their profession and service to the community.
Ambassador Sandeep Chakravorty, the Consul General of India in New York was the Chief Guest. Other dignitaries include New Jersey State Assemblyman Raj Mukherji and Andrew Zwicker, West Windsor Mayor Hemant Marathe and South Brunswick Mayor Charles Carley and Council Woman Archana Grover. Close to 400 people attended the gala dinner and award ceremony which included entertainment choreographed and presented by Rina Shah, founder of AUM Dance Creations.
Ambassador Chakravorty, in his speech, praised GOPIO for its work, noting that the Government of India looks to this organization when it is engaged in policymaking for the diaspora. He appealed to Indian- Americans to encourage youth to apply for the Know- India program which sends second generation diaspora youth to India.
The program started welcome remarks by Dr. Rajeev Mehta, who founded the chapter in 2008 who is also the Secretary of GOPIO International followed by lighting of the lamp by immediate past president of the chapter Mr. Dinesh Patel, who also serves as Chairman of GOPIO International’s Chapter Review Committee and Automation.
During the event, Dr. Tushar Patel took over as president of GOPIO-CJ which was formed 10 years ago, from outgoing president Suresh Reddy. Dr. Patel told the media that his agenda was to increase the membership and take the organization to the next level to help the local community on issues such as health, discrimination, domestic violence, seniors issues, etc.
Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr., D-NJ, representing District 6, was inducted as a ‘Friend of India’ in absentia. He has served as co-chair of Indian Caucus in the U.S. Congress; The Shri Krishna Nidhi (SKN) Foundation was recognized for its longstanding community service with a mission to improve total well-being; Ashok Luhadia, founder of US Pharma Labs, and Siby Vadakekkara of MarLabs, were recognized as an outstanding entrepreneur; Rina Shah, the director and founder of AUM Dance Creations, was honored for her contributions to the performing arts.
Two awards were also presented for achievement in media to Dr. Parikh, philanthropist, and chairman and publisher of Parikh Worldwide Media Inc., the largest Indian-American publishing group in the United States, which recently also acquired the television channel ITV Gold. Dr. Parikh has worked to improve U.S.-India relations, and encouraged second generation Indian- Americans to engage with the political process; and H.R. Shah, the chairman and CEO of TV Asia, who supports various social works, cultural, educational and related activities.
A special award was presented to Sparsh Shah (aka Purhythm), a 15-year-old multi-talented singing prodigy who was born with an incurable disease called Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a condition that makes his bones extremely fragile and brittle.
Amit Jani, the president and co-founder of the NJ Leadership Program was recognized for his contribution to the Indian American community’s political involvement. He serves in Governor Phil Murphy’s Administration. Pinakin Pathak, was recognized for his contributions to Public Service. He is an entrepreneur and community activist, a member of the Hindu-Jewish coalition, BAPS, and March of Dimes.
North American Telugu Association (NATA) President Rajeswar Gangasani Reddy was recognized for community service. In his acceptance speech at the event, Dr. Parikh reminded the audience of the need to do more for the community and for India. He also urged GOPIO to use his newly acquired TV channel to broadcast community events and for the public good.
TV Asia’s H.R, Shah told the audience that the community organizations should use TV Asia to convey its message to the Indian Diaspora community. The event was a “huge success.” Only 200 people were expected but some 370, attended, Dr. Mehta noted. “These awardees are role models and recognition of their achievements will motivate our new generations to contribute to our community and society at large,” Dr. Mehta said at the event.
“With a fast-growing Indian American population, we had a large number of nominations and we picked the best in the various categories.” GOPIO-CJ past-president Dinesh Mittal who is the Chair of GOPIO International’s Chapter Validation Committee said.
Dr. Thomas Abraham, founder of the umbrella GOPIO back in 1989, also spoke at the meeting. “I bring greetings from GOPIO-International. Which has a global network of several hundred Life Members and about 100 chapters in 35 countries,” he said, and noted the achievements of Indian-Americans on the national stage and in local elections, and in New Jersey in particular this past year, which saw an Attorney General, a Senator, Assemblyman, and Mayor as well as several other offices won by members of the community.
The June 3 gala included a cocktail reception, the awards ceremony, entertainment, dinner and dancing. GOPIO-CJ Founder President Dr. Rajeev Mehta who now serves as the Secretary-General of GOPIO International, said, “These awardees are role models and recognition of their achievements will motivate our new generations to contribute to our community and society at large.”
Atul Gawande, an Indian American surgeon, writer and public health innovator has been named as the CEO of a new U.S. employee health care company, in a joint venture between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. Gawande, 52, will start on July 9 and the new company will be headquartered in Boston, operating as an independent entity that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints, according to a PTI report.
“I have devoted my public health career to building scalable solutions for better health care delivery that are saving lives, reducing suffering and eliminating wasteful spending both in the US and across the world,” Gawande told media.
“Now I have the backing of these remarkable organizations to pursue this mission with even greater impact for more than a million people, and in doing so incubate better models of care for all. This work will take time but must be done. The system is broken, and better is possible,” he added.
Gawande, a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, is probably best known for his work writing about health care for The New Yorker and in books that include the influential Checklist Manifesto.
He was also the founding executive director of Ariadne Labs, a joint project between Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, that tries to put some of his ideas about improvingcare during critical moments, such as childbirth and surgery, into practice.
The three-company partnership was announced in January. At the time, the CEOs were short on details and long on ambition. The nonprofit venture was formed to figure out “ways to address healthcare for their U.S. employees, with the aim of improving employee satisfaction and reducing costs.”
In early June, CNBC reported that Dr. David Feinberg, CEO of Pennsylvania-based health system Geisinger Health System, was among the top picks to lead the health care venture. But he later said that he was staying put. CNBC said that during the CEO selection process, 10 candidates “were asked to write a white paper on how they would fix the health care system.” Three of them were interviewed.
Gawande has written four New York Times bestsellers: Complications, Better, The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal and has received numerous awards for his contributions to science and health care. “All felt that better care can be delivered and that rising costs can be checked. Jamie, Jeff and I are confident that we have found in Atul the leader who will get this important job done,” Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, said in a statement.
“Together, we have the talent and resources to make things better, and it is our responsibility to do so. We’re so grateful for the countless statements of support and offers to help and participate, and we’re so fortunate to have attracted such an extraordinary leader and innovator as Atul,” Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, said in a statement.
“We said at the outset that the degree of difficulty is high and success is going to require an expert’s knowledge, a beginner’s mind, and a long-term orientation. Atul embodies all three, and we’re starting strong as we move forward in this challenging and worthwhile endeavour,” Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, said in a statement.
The health firm will be independent from the three firms, whose leaders formed the group as a way of contending with what Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett called a “tapeworm” eating the U.S. economy, the report said.
Gawande is a prominent name in health-care policy circles, though he hasn’t run a major business. Many details of the new venture – its name, size, budget and authority — weren’t immediately available, Bloomberg added.
“Almost of the same import is who does Atul hire as his COO,” said Vivek Garipalli, the CEO of Clover Health, a closely held health insurer that serves Medicare patients, and has focused on coordinating their care to try and cut costs, according to the report. “That vision has to be translated by somebody who understands the nuances” of contracting with doctors and hospitals, health insurance markets and other details, it added.
Gawande, 52, rose to prominence among health-care policy experts with a 2009 New Yorker article, “The Cost Conundrum,” that examined why health care was vastly more expensive in some parts of the U.S. than others, despite little difference in the sickness or health of people getting it, Bloomberg reported. The piece focused on McAllen, Texas, and why the Medicare program spent $15,000 a year on the town’s older patients, thousands of dollars more than in other areas, it said.
At the time, the article also attracted the attention of Buffett and his business partner Charlie Munger. Gawande “had an article last summer that was absolutely magnificent,” Buffett told CNBC in March 1, 2010, according to a transcript of the appearance, the report went on.
“You have these enormous variances around the country. And, you know, if you had some really smart people running it that knew a lot about medicine, they’re going to — they could do a lot about it,” Buffett said in the appearance.
Munger thought the article was so socially useful that he blindly mailed Gawande a $20,000 check, Buffett told CNBC at the time, according to Bloomberg’s piece published June 20. Gawande donated the money to an international project to improve surgical equipment in developing countries, according to the report, citing the Huffington Post.
The United Kingdom clarified that Indian students would face no change in the visa application even as New Delhi takes note of British decision to exclude Indian students from a new list of countries considered “low risk” in order to facilitate an easier visa application process to UK universities.
“Indian students will experience no change as a result of this announcement – there is no limit on the number of genuine Indian students who can come to study in the UK. The fact that the year ending March 2018 saw a 30% increase in Tier 4 visas issued to Indian students is proof that the current system allows for strong growth in this area”, said the spokesperson of British High Commission in New Delhi.
On a question why Indian students were not part of the “low risk” category, the spokesperson said “This was a routine review of the Appendix H list conducted by the Home Office, which is regularly updated due to the fact that countries’ risk profiles change over time. Analysis of objective data has shown that India remains below the level required to consider a change at the current time.”
In changes to its immigration policy tabled in Parliament on Friday, the UK Home Office announced a relaxation of the Tier 4 visa category for overseas students from around 25 countries. The list includes countries like the US, Canada and New Zealand, the Home Office added China, Bahrain and Serbia as countries from where students would face reduced checks.
Commenting on the development, an Indian official said “We have taken note of the recent announcements. We always maintained that the easy mobility of students and professionals are an important aspect of ties.”
Lord Karan Bilimoria, Indian-origin entrepreneur and President of the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA) described the move of not including India in the “low risk” group as an “insult” to India and another example of Britain’s “economically illiterate and hostile attitude”.
As many as 52 men from India are among the asylum seekers being held in US federal prisons in Trump administration’s continuing zero-tolerance crackdown on illegal immigration that has led to the separation of families and, most controversially, removal of children from their parents.
The Indians, who were mostly Punjabi and Hindi speakers, are being held in a federal detention center in Oregon, Washington state, where they were transferred as part of a larger group of 123 people held allegedly for crossing into the US illegally along the border with Mexico weeks ago.
According to a local news daily The Oregonian, some of the Indians identified themselves as Sikhs and Christians who claimed they were fleeing persecution by Hindu majority in India. It could not be immediately confirmed if they had been separated from their families.
Hindustan Times is also awaiting response from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), one of the agencies that enforces immigration laws, if there were more Indians being held elsewhere. This group in Oregon was discovered during a tour of the facility by a delegation of US lawmakers.
The others in this group of 123 — all men, ICE has said — were from China, Guatemala, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan and Ukraine.
They told the lawmakers that they are locked up 22 to 23 hours a day, three to a cell, according to The Oregonian report. Those with families have said they have no information about their wives and children and their recent meeting with some lawyers were their first contacts with the outside world in days.
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups have been in touch with the detainees while some other bodies have sought volunteers from the Indian American community for those from India, most of whom can only speak and understand Punjabi or Hindi.
Asylum seekers are facing increased scrutiny under the Trump administration and those showing up illegally are being subjected to a zero-tolerance policy that has led to an outcry because of the splitting of families.
The administration said 10,000 of the 12,000 children in US detention facilities were those who were sent by their parents alone to be smuggled illegally into the United States and the remaining 2,000 were separated from the their parents when their families crossed over illegally.
“We must always arrest people coming into our country illegally,” President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday defending his administration against growing outrage among conservatives and liberal alike. The policy also invited criticism from all four living former first ladies, in rare public statements.
But President Trump has shown no sign of ending the practice and has continued to falsely blame Democrats for it. “Democrats are the problem,” he wrote in a tweet. “They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country (sic).”
Democrats have pushed back and accused the president of leveraging the plight of the children to seek support for his immigration plan of enhanced border security — including funding for a wall along the border with Mexico — and end to family-based migration and diversity visa.
From next Saturday (June 30) passengers flying to the United States may not be allowed to carry more than 12 ounce or about 350 grams of powdery substance in hand bags. The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has enacted this rule after a foiled attempt to put an improvised explosive device using powder explosives on a Gulf carrier in Australia last year. Airlines are advising US-bound flyers to put such things in check-in bags to avoid extra screening of the same and possibly being thrown if the security personnel are not sure what it is.
Air India has a number of daily nonstops from Delhi and Mumbai to US destinations+ like New York, Newark, Chicago, Washington an San Francisco. United has a daily direct from Newark to Delhi and Mumbai. Delta will start flights to Mumbai next year. From next Saturday everyone traveling with powdery substances including dry spices, talcum or cosmetic powders will need to check them in if carrying more than 350 grams that stuff.
TSA says “powder-like substances greater than 12 ounce/350 ml must be placed in a separate bin for X-ray screening. They may require additional screening and containers may need to be opened. For your convenience, we encourage you to place non-essential powders greater than 12 ounce in checked bags.”
Airlines have accordingly started advising passengers. Singapore Airlines says on its website in a June 18 post: “Additional security measures for non-stop US-bound flights: TSA may require customers travelling on non-stop flights to US to undergo enhanced security measures. Such checks may include the inspection of powder-like substances where powder-like substances that are 12 ounce (350ml) or larger will not be allowed for carriage in the cabin. Customers are advised to place such items in their checked baggage.” “Medically-prescribed powder-like substances, baby formula, human remains and duty-free powder containers inside a properly sealed secure tamper evident bag (STEB) may be brought into the cabin. Customers are advised to proceed to the boarding gates early to allow sufficient time for the enhanced security measures,” Singapore Airlines says.
American Airlines’ website says: “Carry-on restriction: powder-like substances. For international travel to the US, powder-like substances over 12 ounce/350 ml should be placed in checked bags. Powders over 12 ounce/350 ml in carry-on bags may be prohibited. Effective June 30, 2018.”
Despite adverse impact on GST implementation, India saw a 20 per cent increase in both the number of dollar millionaires and their wealth in 2017 to emerge as the fastest growing market for high net population, a report said today.
The report, which comes amid growing concerns over social ramifications of asymmetry in wealth distribution, said the number of high net worth individuals grew 20.4 per cent to 2.63 lakh people, while their collective wealth grew 21 per cent to over $1 trillion.
“India was the fastest-growing market globally,” the report by French tech firm Capgemini said. The country’s growth on both the number of HNIs and wealth is faster than the global average of 11.2 per cent and 12 per cent, respectively, the report by French tech firm Capgemini said.
The US, Japan, Germany and China are the biggest HNI markets in the world, it said, adding that the show in 2017 has increased India’s ranking to 11th. A HNI is defined as one who has investable assets of over $1 million, it said.
One of the major reasons for the growth was an over 50 per cent surge in market capitalisation during the year, along with an average 4.8 per cent increase in realty prices and the 6.7 per cent GDP expansion, which is faster than the world.
Following a rigorous schedule of talent identification combines hosted in eight cities across the country, a group of 39 players has been invited by the Selection Panel to attend the final men’s selection camp in Houston. Among the group of 39 players, mostly Indian Americans, have been invited by USA Cricket’s Selection Panel to attend the final men’s selection camp in Houston, Texas.
The second half of 2018 marks another exciting time for USA Cricket, with an eye firmly set on the World Cricket League Championship and World T20 qualification, with this camp shaping as a fantastic opportunity for these players to push their case to be included in those plans. All players invited to Houston have demonstrated the requisite skills, work ethic, and a commitment to the selection process and the desired player traits as outlined in the USA Cricket Selection Policy.
In acknowledgement of the tremendous talent observed at the youth level around the country, six youth have been invited to attend the camp commencing today. Having these talented youngsters work with the national coaches and alongside the full men’s squad will be hugely beneficial as they look to graduate and earn representative honors in the coming years. While many youth impressed at the combines, which has everyone excited for the future of USA Cricket, the six youth invited showed various skills that the Selection Panel were eager to see in this final stage.
“This set of Combines has been hugely rewarding, having uncovered many new faces in each city across the country. The upcoming week in Houston will be vitally important as we work hard to stake our claim on the international stage. It was also exciting to see how well the U.S. cricket community embraced these USA Cricket Combines,” said Ricardo Powell, the Chairman of Selectors. Players will arrive in Houston for a series of T20 and 50-over matches, which are to be hosted at the Moosa Cricket Stadium in Pearland, Texas.
Here is a list of selected players who have a potential to be on the U.S. National Team:
Ibrahim Khaleel (Bolingbrook Super Kings, Bolingbrook Premier League)
Indian actress Freida Pinto has signed on to star in director John Ridley’s time-travel drama, “Needle in a Timestack.” Pinto will star alongside Leslie Odom Jr., Cynthia Erivo, and Orlando Bloom.
Bron Studios has come on board to produce the movie, which was set up last year at Miramax. Zanne Devine, David Thwaites, Bron’s Aaron L. Gilbert, and Matt Kennedy are producers, but Miramax is no longer involved. Ridley, Jason Cloth of Creative Wealth Media, Christopher J. Conover, and Hope Farley will exec produce.
Ridley will direct and is adapting from a short story by Robert Silverberg. The movie follows a couple struggling to hold their marriage together in a world where time travel is possible, and the past and present are ever fluctuating.
Odom Jr. is best known for his performance in the Broadway smash “Hamilton” and was recently seen in Fox’s “Murder on the Orient Express.” Pinto will next be seen in Andy Serkis’ “Jungle Book” adaptation, “Mowgli,” as well as in Tabrez Noorani’s “Love Sonia” and Takashi Doscher’s indie drama “Only.”
Pinto has also been paired with Tony-winning “Hamilton” star Odom, Jr. in Takashi Doscher’s thriller, “Only,” which is currently in post-production. (Read earlier India-West story here.)
The “Slumdog Millionaire” actress, who previously collaborated with Ridley on his Showtime miniseries, “Guerilla,” is also awaiting the release of Andy Serkis’ upcoming Jungle Book adaptation, “Mowgli,” starring Indian American actor Rohan Chand. She also has another movie due out in 2018, “Love Sonia,” a film about sex trafficking alongside Demi Moore.
Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra arrived in Mumbai early on June 22 with American singer-songwriter Nick Jonas, amid speculation that they are more than just friends. Chopra, 35, tried evading the paparazzi at the airport with a black curtain in the backseat maintaining privacy for the passengers. While the cameras could only capture slight glimpses of the two, they were seen later while emerging out of a car.
When the two were spotted by paparazzi, they covered their faces in a thick, dark veil to avoid getting clicked. Photograper Viral Bhayani shared pictures from the spotting. “Remember I mentioned #NickJonas is coming to Mumbai. Yes he just did along with #priyankachopra as they arrived secretly but they did not do any pictures,” he captioned his photos.
Later, he posted another photograph in which Jonas is seen in a beige t-shirt and jeans, while Priyanka is seen in a high waist peach floral skirt and a black coat, as they came out of a car. “Welcome to Mumbai Nick Jonas, Priyanka Chopra,” Bhayani wrote.
The actress, who became popular in American showbiz with a lead role in “Quantico,” has been creating a buzz with her appearances with Jonas, 25. In December last year, Jonas, while promoting “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” had expressed a desire to visit India.
“I’ve never been (to India). But I’m dying to go, and I have now heard from Priyanka, my new friend a lot about it. Just given me a lot of names of place to go if I go there,” Jonas had said in a statement to IANS. The statement came after the two had walked on the Met Gala red carpet, making everyone wonder whether they were dating.
Back then, on his relationship with Priyanka Chopra, Jonas had said: “We met through a mutual friend who she did ‘Quantico’ with, this guy Graham and we met up like in New York the first time and the same day I think we found out that we are both going to the Met gala with Ralph Lauren.
“And as strange as it sounds but we couldn’t have planned it. We just had a great time. She’s a lovely person, and I’m dying now to go to India.”
At the Met Gala, Chopra had just laughed off a romance with Jonas, insisting they simply shared an agent and were friends. She had also said they went to the Met Gala together as they were both wearing ensembles by Ralph Lauren. A few days ago, they walked arm in arm at Jonas’ cousin’s wedding in New Jersey.
They were also seen together at the 2017 Met Gala in New York, apart from being seen roaming around on a boat with friends over America’s Memorial Day weekend last month. Priyanka Chopra was photographed cuddling up to him in a group photograph while they attended a Dodgers baseball game in New York together in May.
After being screened at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival’s Marche du Films section, Indian filmmaker Aneek Chaudhuri’s silent film, “White,” that talks about sexual assault on women, is now an official selection for the 2018 Indian Film Festival of Melbourne. The festival is set for August 2018.
“Being a part of such an honorable event will fetch more credibility to the film,” Chaudhuri said in a statement. “Since ‘White’ is an independent venture aiming at film festivals, of course we would like to earn more laurel leaves and the Melbourne inclusion in a huge booster for the team.”
In “White,” the Kolkata-based indie filmmaker attempts to tell stories of three women who have survived sexual assaults and are now fighting back to lead a stronger life. “White” conjoins three tales based on a similar theme, however, each woman has her own life and a way of leading it. The film stars Kaushik Roy and Arjaa Banerjee.
“Rape is an issue that is universal; no verbal language is enough to decode the pain and suffering,” Chaudhuri said. “Moreover, I wanted global approach and I believe that a silent film would take away any kind of language barrier from the film; this in turn, would make it approachable by a wider spectrum of audiences throughout the globe.”
The first tale is of a factory girl getting abused at work and her story of survival; the second story follows a single mother and her inability to face her own child after the heinous crime. This is a story of the child’s upbringing in an orphanage and her return to her childhood home after two decades; and the third and the last tale is how a husband accepts a child born out of rape of his wife by another man in the village and gives the child his name.
An art exhibition bringing together Hindu artists – who had to flee Indian-administered Kashmir – with their Muslim counterparts has struck an emotional chord with locals, reports Sameer Yasir. Avtar Krishan Raina, a Kashmiri Hindu or Pandit, has returned to the home he fled for the first time since he left in 1990 in order to participate in a unique exhibition that has brought artists and sculptors from his community together with Muslim artists.
Raina is one of an estimated 200,000 people in his community who were forced to leave the state in the early 1990s under threat from Muslim militants who had initiated a violent insurgency against Indian rule in the region.
One day, he says, he came home to find that separatist militants had stuck a poster outside his home. It demanded that he poison his dog, which barked whenever they were around. He realised they could all be killed during that “terrifying month” when a majority of the Hindus left.
“I took nothing with me and fled,” said Mr Raina, who now works as a painter in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. “I could never come back and had no interest in doing so either.” But when he arrived at the exhibition, he was greeted by an old friend – Mohammad Ashraf.
The former top bureaucrat had brought along a painting. He said it was the only thing he had saved from his home when Kashmir was ravaged by floods in 2014. “Remember, it was you who painted it in 1985,” Ashraf told Raina. “I fled the house with nothing but this painting.” Raina held the painting in his hands as tears rolled down his cheeks.
It is exactly this kind of reconciliation that the organisers of this exhibition have been hoping for. “Art is dialogue and conversation about difficult subjects,” said Mujtaba Rizvi, a Kashmiri Muslim art promoter, who decided to host this exhibition along with contemporary artist Veer Munshi. “A lot of barriers and misconception were removed. The art can become a medium of social intervention.”
Housed in the ruins of a century-old building that was once a famed silk factory in the state capital Srinagar, the seven-day exhibition runs until Sunday. “Only art has the power to build bridges between communities,” said Ratan Parimoo, a Kashmiri Hindu and art historian.
The temporary gallery is filled with art that reflects the depth of conflict suffered by the region. In one piece, a naked man bound by barbed wire sports a defiant smile – a sacred thread strung across his torso is the only indication that he is a Kashmiri Hindu.
“This is the story of the common man in Kashmir – whether they are Muslim or Hindu,” said artist Chushool Mahaldar, whose painting is a self-portrait titled Struggling Smile.
One installation by Mr Munshi features spinning objects. “It portrays how difficult it is to come out of conflict once you are in it,” said Mr Munshi, also a displaced Hindu. In the centre of the exhibition space lies an installation which, according to the artists, shows how Kashmir has been turned upside down in recent times. “It is important to look at the other side of the boat, which is always under water,” said Mr Munshi.
At the entrance to the exhibition is a 30ft (9.1-metre) long painting by Mamoon Ahmad, a Kashmiri Muslim artist. The ink drawing depicts a forest in which you see bones and trees – a reference to life amid death. The piece was inspired by the Urdu word ruveda, which means to “walk gently”. This, he added, tells the story of conflict in Kashmir – “by walking on its side, we are walking to bridge the gap between Hindus and Muslims”.
Despite the current political uncertainty – the fall of the coalition state government between India’s ruling Hindu nationalist BJP and the regional PDP – hundreds of curious residents thronged the venue “It is heart wrenching, but a difference experience,” said Saiba Khan, an art student at a local college. Khan said she had never seen a Kashmiri Pandit in her life, let alone an artist from the community. “It is as if their work, paintings and installations make this show complete.”
