(RNS) — Is a belief in God a prerequisite for being a moral person? Most Americans say it is not, and majorities of adults in other countries with advanced economies agree.
Pew Research Center released the findings — that also hold true among most of those affiliated with a religion — from its Global Attitudes Survey on Thursday (April 20).
“Even among people who are religiously affiliated, most do not think it is necessary to believe in God to have good values,” states the new report on questions asked in the spring of 2022. “In most countries surveyed, half or more of people who say they belong to a religion also say it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral.”
“Even among those affiliated with a religion, most say it’s not necessary to believe in God to be moral” Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center
In the U.S., 56% of the religiously affiliated said morality and good values do not have to be linked with a belief in God. Globally, countries with the highest percentages of religiously affiliated people agreeing with that statement included Sweden (86%) and Australia (75%).
But differences are more striking in some countries whose general populations were surveyed.
While at least 60% of Europeans and North Americans do not say belief in God and morality must be linked, Israelis are more split on that, with 50% agreeing and 47% saying such a belief is essential. About one-fifth of Malaysians say people can be moral without a belief in God, while more than three-quarters disagree with that view.
Based on research in 16 countries beyond the U.S., a median of about two-thirds of adults say people can be moral without a belief in God, a bit higher than the U.S. share.
Across the globe, there are different views depending on religious and political affiliation.
In the U.S., about 9 in 10 who say religion is not at all important or not too important to them believe morality and belief in God do not need to be linked, but just half of those who think it is somewhat or very important to them agree.
“Most Americans say it’s not necessary to believe in God to be moral, but views differ by religion” Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center
Black Protestants (39%) and white evangelicals (42%) were least likely among Americans to say it’s not essential to believe in God to be moral, while the religiously unaffiliated (88%) were the group most in agreement with that stance.
Democrats and those who lean Democratic are more likely than their Republican counterparts to say it is not essential to believe in God to be moral (71% compared with 59%). Americans younger than 50 and older adults reflect a similar difference in response.
“In nearly every country where political ideology is measured, people who place themselves on the political left are more likely than those on the political right to say that belief in God is not necessary to have good values,” the report states.
“In addition, younger adults in about half of the countries surveyed are significantly more likely than older respondents to say that a belief in God is not connected with morality.”
More than 4 in 5 Greek adults younger than 30, for instance, unlink morality from a belief in God, in contrast with half of Greek adults who are 50 and older (84% compared with 51%). Substantial age differences also occur in Canada, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
Although the new report focused on countries with advanced economies, 2019 Pew research found that, among 34 nations, including some with developing or emerging economies, higher shares of people in nations with lower gross domestic products said believing in God was crucial for morality.
The new report’s findings were based on a survey of 3,581 U.S. adults from March 21-27, 2022, who took part in an online survey panel, with an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. Outside the U.S., the report relied on nationally representative surveys of an overall total of 18,782 adults from Feb. 14-June 3, 2022. In some countries the surveys were completed by phone and in others by face-to-face interviews or an online panel. The margin of error ranged from plus or minus 2.8 percentage points in Australia to plus or minus 4.5 percentage points in Hungary.
President Biden has formally announced his campaign for re-election in 2024, asking Americans for four years to “finish this job”, possibly setting up an extraordinary rematch with Donald Trump.
Biden said: “When I ran for president four years ago, I said we were in a battle for the soul of America – and we still are.”
Announcing his intention on Tuesday, April 25th, 2023 with a three-minute video, opening with pulsing images of the US Capitol attack, Biden warned that the US remains under threat from the anti-democratic forces unleashed by his predecessor, who he beat in 2020.
Biden launched his re-election campaign on the fourth anniversary of his return to politics in 2019, when he declared his third presidential run. Since then, the political landscape has changed.
Picture : Swarajya
The US is still grappling with the scars of a pandemic that killed more than 1.1 million and with inflation that has eased from historic highs but remains painful. Americans remain deeply divided, convulsed by the loss of federal abortion rights, near-weekly mass shootings and worsening climate disasters.
Already the oldest president, Biden would be 86 before the end of a second term, nearly a decade older than Ronald Reagan was when he left the White House in 1989. Trump is 76.
In his video, Biden warned that “Maga extremists” – Trump’s slogan is “Make America Great Again” – were working to strip away “bedrock freedoms”.
“Cutting social security that you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy,” Biden said. “Dictating what healthcare decisions women can make, banning books and telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.”
Biden is dogged by low approval ratings and concerns about his age. Only a quarter of Americans want him to run again, according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Among Democrats, that figure is 50%. Should Biden win the nomination, as expected, most Democrats will support him.
Hours after making his candidacy official, Biden was greeted by chants of “four more years” during remarks to union workers at a conference in Washington DC.
“Our economic plan is working,” the president said in a speech rife with references to his working-class upbringing in Scranton, Pennsylvania. “Let’s finish the job,” he declared.
Biden hasmade clear he plans to run on accomplishments secured in the first half of his presidency, when Democrats had majorities in Congress.
Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, delivering financial assistance to those hit hard by Covid. He also approved a $1 trillion infrastructure bill; signed the first major federal gun safety bill in nearly 30 years; pursued initiatives to both treat veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and boost the semiconductor industry;and made Ketanji Brown Jackson the first Black woman on the supreme court.
Perhaps Biden’s most significant legislative achievement to date is the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant US response to the climate crisis. While Biden’s policies are broadly popular, he has struggled to earn credit. He has spent the last few months attempting to sell his economic policies and rally Americans before a showdown with congressional Republicans over the federal debt limit.
On the world stage, Biden has rallied a global coalition behind Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion while seeking to strengthen US defenses against China. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, however, was among the lowest points of Biden’s presidency, even as he fulfilled a promise to end America’s longest war.
Republicans greeted Biden’s campaign announcement by assailing his handling of immigration and the economy. “Biden is so out-of-touch that after creating crisis after crisis, he thinks he deserves another four years,” said Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee. “If voters let Biden ‘finish the job’, inflation will continue to skyrocket, crime rates will rise, more fentanyl will cross our open borders, children will continue to be left behind, and American families will be worse off.”
In his campaign video, Biden warned that individual freedoms are under attack by far-right Republicans who have trampled reproductive, voting and LGBTQ+ rights. “This is not a time to be complacent,” he said. “I know America. I know we’re good and decent people.”
After nearly a half-century in public life including 36 years as a senator from Delaware and eight years as the vice-president to Barack Obama, Biden called himself a “bridge” to the next generation of Democrats. But only two fringe candidates have challenged him for the nomination: the self-help author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr.
The Republican field continues to grow. Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, has entered the race. The South Carolina senator Tim Scott has taken steps to run. The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is widely expected to announce soon. Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, is weighing a run.
Trump announced his candidacy after the midterms in November. He and Biden both face federal investigations over their handling of classified information. In Biden’s case, documents were discovered at his office and home. His lawyers have stressed they are cooperating.
In his video, Biden said: “Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they’ve had to defend democracy. Stand up for our personal freedoms. Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights.”
Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood mega star, SS Rajamouli, director of the Oscar winning RRR, Padma Lakshmi an award winning chef and a Titan of her industry, owning many restaurants in addition to being a television celebrity, and Salman Rushdie, American-British-Indian award winning novelist are featured among the 100 most influential people in 2023, according to a List published by TIME last week.
First published in 1999 in Time Magazine (print), appearing on this list is seen as an honour, and Time ensures that entrants are recognized for their contributions to modern society.
New York’s nationally renowned host of the television show Top Chef, and globally known cultural icon, author and commentator, Padma Lakshmi, is among Time Magazine’s 2023 Top 100 ‘most influential people. She was joined by 2 other luminaries of Indian origin – Bollywood’s megastar and moviemaker Shah Rukh Khan, and Oscar-nominee film maker S.S. Rajamouli of ‘RRR’ fame and Oscar-winning song Naatu Naatu.
Comedian and actress Ali Wong wrote the profile on Padma Lakshmi saying, “It’s Padma’s genuine love of food—and how freaking smart she is—that makes her electric to watch as the host of Top Chef, currently in its 20th season, and Taste the Nation With Padma Lakshmi, which returns for a second season in May. It also helps that she’s drop-dead gorgeous.”
Wong went on to describe Lakshmi as “an incredible writer” with a strong point of view, who is “honest and unafraid” of being disliked. “I’m always in awe of Padma because, yes, she really is that beautiful, talented, and charismatic. She’s iconic.”
On the news of her listing by Time, April 14, 2023, Lakshmi, posted a memorable photo on Facebook of herself with her own mother, noting: “This little girl is a #Time100 honoree.” Lakshmi is 4 years old in that picture, the cultural icon said in a detailed account of her journey from her arrival in New York as a child.
“At age 4 I joined my mom in America, arriving in New York to build a new life with her. From the start, I clung to the familiar foods of my motherland. Food was a link to my grandparents in India, to quieter streets with familiar street vendors, to what I knew,” Lakshmi recounted.
“Later, when we moved from New York to LA, I missed the after-school pizza slices and my neighbour’s empanadas. With every big move, I’d add new dishes to my personal canon. Laid out, they told the story of my life. Dish by dish, they also tell the story of America,” Lakshmi said, connecting her journey to that of legions of immigrants over the years who connect with their heritage through food and blend old recipes with the new culture.
“Once you realize that every dish has a story, you can’t stop looking for them… Over the years, the more I’ve eaten, the more curious I’ve become,” Lakshmi said, giving a shout-out to her upcoming 2nd Season of her show, Taste the Nation.
“I’ve loved learning about our history through this lens, one city and culture at a time. And I’m so honoured that the response has been as positive as it has, that it’s helped put me on a list among people I so admire. Whether it’s being shared with friends or screened in classrooms, I’m just happy knowing there are more hungry, curious people in the world,” Lakshmi added.
Author and former husband of Lakshmi, Salman Rushdie, globally famous for being the target of terrorists after publication of his book Satanic Verses, also made to the list. His brief is written by singer, activist, philanthropist of the world famous band U2, Bono, who noted that Rushdie, “has refused to be terrorized.” On Aug. 12, 2022, Rushdie was attacked while speaking at a book release event in upstate New York. The author lost an eye as a result of the attack.
“I was not surprised the great novelist was able to describe the attack on him on Aug. 12, 2022—as he was speaking about the U.S. as a safe place for exiled writers—with frame-by-frame specificity,” Bono says. “Salman didn’t miss a detail as he recounted the crisis he had prepared for since 1989. What did surprise me was that he made me laugh. “Really?” he recalled thinking. “After 30 years? Amongst these most kindly, casually dressed readers in Chautauqua, New York?” Rushdie said in bono’s recollection quoted in the Time brief.
Shah Rukh Khan’s profile on Time is written by fellow Bollywood star Deepika Padukone who recalls meeting Khan 16 years ago after arriving in Mumbai from Bangalore. “Shah Rukh Khan will forever be known as one of the greatest actors of all time. But what truly sets him apart is his mind, his chivalry, his generosity. The list goes on …,” Padukone says.
Shah Rukh Khan, 57, a household name in India, also sometimes called King Khan or Baadshah of Bollywood, was born in New Delhi to Meer Taj Mohammed Khan and Lateef Fatima Khan, graduated from Hansraj College. Khan lost his father in 1981 and his mother in 1991, after which he moved to Mumbai, where he found his calling, according to IMDB. Khan has been in more than 90 films. His latest one is Pathaan in which Padukone is in the lead role and his love interest.
SRK is married to Gauri Chibber and the couple has three children. Khan has won numerous awards during his career, and taken up humanitarian causes as well.
Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt writes the brief on film director S. S. Rajamouli, whose film RRR was nominated for the Oscar, and the signature song in the film, Naatu Naatu, composed by M.M. Keeravani, won the Oscar in 2023 for Best Original Song.
“Being directed by him in RRR was like going to school all over again. He knows the audience he’s serving. He knows what beats to hit, what turns to take. I call him the master storyteller,” Bhatt says. “India is a massive country with diverse demographics, tastes, and culture. But he gets that—and he unites us through his movies,” she adds.
Srisaila Sri Rajamouli, 49, who is involved mainly in Telugu cinema, was born in Amreshwara Camp in Karnataka to parents V. Vijayendra Prasad and Raja Nandini. He was brought up in Andhra Pradesh. His father was also a well-known writer and producer, according to IMDB. He is married to Rama since 2021, and the couple has two sons, S.S. Karthikeya and S.S. Mayookha.
Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has had his appeal for a stay on his conviction in a criminal defamation case rejected by a court. The decision means that the uncertainty over whether he can contest in next year’s national elections continues. Gandhi was sentenced to two years in jail in 2019 for comments he made about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surname at an election rally. His lawyer, Kirit Panwala, told the BBC that they will challenge the decision in the Gujarat high court.
While Gandhi won’t be arrested until he has exhausted all legal appeals, he has already lost his seat in parliament due to a Supreme Court order which states that a lawmaker convicted in a crime and sentenced to two or more years in jail is disqualified with immediate effect. The Congress has criticised Gandhi’s conviction and accused the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of political vendetta. The BJP, on the other hand, has denied this, stating that due judicial process was followed in the case.
The defamation case against Gandhi was brought by BJP lawmaker Purnesh Modi and revolved around comments Gandhi made in Karnataka state in 2019 during an election rally. In his speech, Gandhi said, “Why do all these thieves have Modi as their surname? Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi, Narendra Modi.” Purnesh Modi alleged that the comments had defamed the entire Modi community, but Gandhi said that he made the comment to highlight corruption and it was not directed against any community.
Despite the conviction and loss of his parliamentary seat, Gandhi has filed appeals to suspend his sentence, secure bail, and suspend his conviction in a court in Surat. The court had granted him bail to appeal against his conviction, but it’s the stay or suspension of his conviction that’s crucial to reinstating him as an MP. Gandhi’s lawyer has stated that they will continue to pursue legal avenues to challenge the decision.
The uncertainty surrounding Gandhi’s political future has raised questions about the role of criminal defamation laws in India, which have been criticized for being used to stifle dissent and criticism of those in power. In recent years, several high-profile cases have been brought against journalists, activists, and politicians, raising concerns about freedom of speech and the independence of the judiciary. As India heads towards its next general election, the outcome of Gandhi’s legal battle could have far-reaching implications for the country’s political landscape.
The US Supreme Court has granted a full stay in a case over the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. The court’s decision was a 7-2 vote and preserves access to the drug as the Biden administration and manufacturer Danco Labs appeal a lower court’s ruling that would impose restrictions on the drug. The decision was applauded by the White House, which has pledged to continue to fight restrictions on the medication.
The case centers on the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, which was challenged in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of anti-abortion doctors and associations. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointee, ruled in favor of the group in April, stating that the FDA exceeded its authority when it approved the drug in 2000.
The case has divided the nation, with more than 150 Republican lawmakers supporting the conservative plaintiffs, while Democrats and leading medical associations have pushed for mifepristone’s continued availability. Medication abortion quickly became the new focus of legal battles over abortion access following the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Roe v. Wade last June.
“If allowed to take effect, the lower courts’ orders would thwart FDA’s scientific judgment and undermine widespread reliance in a healthcare system that assumes the availability of mifepristone as an alternative to more burdensome and invasive surgical abortions,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the Supreme Court in a filing this week. The Biden administration and Danco Labs have warned of possible wide-ranging consequences if the federal agency’s expertise were to be second-guessed. However, the Alliance Defending Freedom, representing opponents to the abortion pill countered the administration’s concerns amounted to a “sky-is-falling-argument.”
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on May 17th. The case has been watched closely by reproductive rights advocates and opponents, as any decision could have far-reaching implications for access to medication abortion across the country.
Mifepristone, also known by the brand name Mifeprex, is used in combination with misoprostol to terminate early pregnancies of up to 10 weeks’ gestation. The medication has faced restrictions in various states, including mandatory waiting periods and in-person visits with healthcare providers. The COVID-19 pandemic has made access to medication abortion even more difficult, with some states seeking to restrict access to telemedicine appointments and mail-order delivery of the medication.
The FDA approved Mifeprex in 2000 after reviewing extensive clinical data showing the medication to be safe and effective. The medication has been used by more than 4 million individuals in the US and is considered a safe alternative to surgical abortion, which requires anesthesia and often includes an overnight stay in a healthcare facility.
The case before the Supreme Court has implications not only for access to medication abortion but also for the FDA’s authority to regulate prescription drugs. It will be closely watched by medical and legal experts as well as advocacy groups on both sides of the abortion debate.
“As a result of the Supreme Court’s stay, mifepristone remains available and approved for safe and effective use while we continue this fight in the courts,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “I continue to stand by FDA’s evidence-based approval of mifepristone, and my Administration will continue to defend FDA’s independent, expert authority to review, approve, and regulate a wide range of prescription drugs.”
The day Osman Salahuddin turned 27 was also the day he launched his political campaign. He announced his candidacy to run for City Council in Redmond, a city on America’s west coast where he grew up.
The city of Redmond, located 15 miles east of Seattle, in Washington state, with a population around 80,000, prides itself on its diversity and as a centre of technology – it is home to Microsoft, Nintendo, and AT&T, among other well-known companies.
Salahuddin is among a growing number of South Asians in the US taking up public office to serve their communities over the conventional fields of engineering, medicine, or law. As a Pakistani-American, Salahuddin is well aware that he is going against the grain for the ‘desi’ (South Asian) community.
“This actually might not be popular amongst the parents,” he said at his inaugural campaign meeting, addressing the youth in the room. Inviting them to join him in pursuing a career in public service instead of going into tech or medicine he added, “Your parents will tell you otherwise, but this is really important work.”
Growing pattern
His situation reflects a pattern of first-generation immigrants working in traditional ways to settle in and establish themselves in their adopted country, while the next generation can explore and make independent life choices.
A similar example is the Ahmed family in Bowie, Maryland – father Shukoor, an Indian-origin tech entrepreneur, and his pharmacist Pakistan-origin wife Nabeela support their daughters Raaheela and Shabnam in running for local elections so that they can represent religious minorities and people of colour. After losing her first election at the age of 18, Raaheela has held public office since she was 23.
Another notable case is that of Bushra Amiwala, a Pakistani-American student who stood for elections in Skokie, Illinois, and became the youngest Muslim woman ever to be elected to the US government at age 21. She has since become the subject of two documentaries.
Like Ahmed and Amiwala, Salahuddin too found his calling in public service during his University years. While studying neurobiology at the University of Washington, Seattle, as a pre-med student, he ran for student body president and was elected to serve over 45,000 students. He found the work so enriching that he took on community leadership roles after graduating.
A particularly humbling experience as student body president, he says, was the time he helped pass legislation that helped undocumented students (HB1488 from 2017-18) gain eligibility for the College Bound Scholarship. This increased access to funding opportunities to help them attain higher education.
“I really quickly figured out my true passion was serving the community,” says Salahuddin. Guests enjoying lunch at Osman Salahuddin’s campaign launch on February 25, 2023. Photo: Shailaja Rao / Sapan News
Widening support base
Salahuddin’s top priority is empowering the youth “who are our future – by offering new programmes and ensuring that we are keeping them as engaged as possible.” He also aims to support small businesses and protect and improve public parks and open spaces.
At the festive, invitation-only lunch meeting at a hotel in Redmond on February 25, 2023, the gathering of over 200 comprised mainly leaders and members of the local Pakistani community, with a sprinkling of Indian-origin Americans, many in their ethnic wear. Some non-Southasian supporters also joined.
Salahuddin has garnered several endorsements from elected officials and community leaders and has substantial South Asian support beyond the Muslim and Pakistani communities. This includes his boss, King County council member Sarah Perry, for whom he works as a communications and community engagement manager. A strong ally of the local South Asian community, Perry calls Salahuddin “a gem”, someone with strong leadership skills and a strong drive to accomplish any task he takes on.
Another supporter is Hamdi Mohamed, Seattle Port Commissioner and the first Somali woman elected to serve in Washington state. She knows firsthand how difficult it is for someone “different” to run for public office. She received hate mail when she first did that, targeted for her race and ethnic background. Some supporters even advised her to change her name. “My identity was attacked, something I did not have control over!” she said at Salahuddin’s campaign launch, urging him to remain steadfast and not let things get to him.
Born in Seattle, Osman Salahuddin has lived most of his life in Redmond. His father, Kamran Salahuddin, a small business owner, grew up in Islamabad, Pakistan, and came to the US in the 1980s to pursue a Master’s degree at Oregon State University. Osman’s mother, Sania Salahuddin, a long-time special education teacher for autistic preschool students, hails from Karachi.
The younger Salahuddin says he owes his perseverance and entrepreneurial spirit to his father. He looks up to his mother the most, constantly awed by her patience, selflessness and compassion.
Pakistani roots
The oldest of three, Salahuddin, grew up in a multi-generational household. He learned about India and Pakistan from his grandparents, imbibing the importance of holding onto his roots in America.
Salahuddin believes that his home, America, provides the opportunity to bridge the divide left by a brutal Partition, ongoing Hindu-Muslim tensions, and the continual conflict between India and Pakistan.
He believes his grandparents’ emphasis on cultural values – food, festivals, traditions, family – helps him “meet and connect” with those of different backgrounds.
Salahuddin hopes to win a large number of votes from Indian-American citizens. His strategy is “to learn exactly what our Indian-American community members want from representation and incorporate these learnings with some of our shared cultural backgrounds.”
Prominent supporters among the Indian community include Lalita Uppala, executive director of Indian American Community Services; Rituja Indapure, a council member from Sammamish; and Rita Meher, executive director of Tasveer South Asian Film Festival, Seattle.
Strategising his path forward, he says, “There are many steps to ensure a win. Some initial steps include urging people to donate to the campaign, knocking on as many doors as possible to connect with the voters, and hosting and participating in various community gatherings.”
The final candidate’s list on May 19, 2023, will tell whether there will be others running against him. In that case, there will also be a primary on August 1, 2023. If not, Osman Salahuddin will head straight to the general election on November 7, 2023. (The author is the board president of Tasveer South Asian Film Festival and a contributing editor at Sapan News. By special arrangement with Sapan)
India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman emphasized the global challenges facing countries of the North and the South, and highlighted India’s role as G20 President, during the Spring 2023 World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund meetings April 10- 16.
One of the main meetings was the Second G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBG) Meeting, under India’s Presidency. Sitharaman said many proposals discussed by India were very well received by participating members. She also emphasized that there has been a lot of momentum gained since the First G20 FMCBG held in February in Bengaluru this year.
India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman participating in a roundtable organized by USISPF and FICCI on April 11, 2023, at the Willard InterContinental in Washington DC. PHOTO: T. Vishnudatta Jayaraman, News India Times
Picture : Press Information Bureau
During her visit for the Spring Meetings, and on its sidelines, Sitharaman followed a hectic schedule, participating in a series of events including a fireside chat on “Resilience of the Indian economy amidst tightening of financial conditions” hosted by Petersen Institute for International Economics (PIIE); a roundtable on “Investment opportunities for the long term: India on the rise” co-hosted by Confederation of Indian Industry and US-India Business Council; a roundtable on “Investing in the India Decade” organized by US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI); another roundtable on “Multilateral Development Bank Evolution: Building Shareholder Consensus” hosted by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. She also met with First Deputy Managing Director of IMF, Gita Gopinath, US Ex-Commerce Secretary, Penny Pritzker, and visited NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Speaking at a press conference April 13, following the FMCBG meetings, she said, “The discussions were very intense in the sense they were a lot of substantive inputs coming from the members. We were very happy to see most of India’s proposals have been well supported and there’s been an active engagement.”
Some 350 delegates with 13 invitee countries, and international and regional organizations participated in the FMCBG meeting which was grouped into three sections including sustainable finance, financial inclusion, and international taxation. The meetings wrapped up discussing progress made on India’s G20 Presidency, strengthening of Multilateral Development Banks, and challenges posed by Crypto Assets and debt distress in middle-income countries.
Sitharaman shared six key takeaways: recognition by members of the urgency to address debt vulnerability including strengthening multilateral coordination towards addressing the increasing debt distress in low income and middle-income countries; the issue of reforming multilateral development bank was very well received; the discussion on climate finance and sustainable financing of climate and climate related matters heading in a positive direction; Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion, where digital public infrastructure has had tremendous traction; international taxation issues were discussed in detail with the members; and the issue of Crypto Assets were discussed taking into account all the risks.
About strengthening global financial architecture, she said “There’s been a lot of discussion getting into details of how exactly the global financial architecture should be strengthened and what are the next steps and so on. So, through the India Presidency, I think we will be having several sessions to get into the details of how we want to look at the National architecture itself.”
Later addressing a panel discussion on “Empowering Women as Entrepreneurs and Leaders” at the World Bank, along with President of World Bank Group, David Malpass, Sitharaman recalled that the Financial Inclusion program was launched in 2014 when she was a junior Minister of Finance and went on to credit Prime Minister Narendra Modi for empowering women. She said “Prime Minister Modi’s first line, and that line continues till today – is that it has to be a women-led development for India rather than just women centric… So Prime Minister Modi gave a very prominent statement saying, I’m the Prime Minister of the country and I’m the guarantee for these loans, please give them the loans without a guarantee the government stands guarantee.”
When asked about specific initiatives that have enhanced economic conditions of women in India, she pointed to initiatives such as the National Rural Livelihood Mission, Floating Supermarket in Kerala, and Prerna Canteen run by women in Uttar Pradesh.
As the first quarter of India’s presidency of G20 comes to an end, it is time to assess the grave challenges that G20 faces today and the unique opportunities it has in near future. It is the first G20 meeting to take place in South Asia. Recent global events may prove to be turning points and they should be part of that overall assessment. They are seemingly unconnected but deeply entangled like the underground web of the roots of giant trees. The slow and silent spread of the roots has the potential to uproot the massive structures on the way. These recent events have the very potential to literally encroach on the regime of stability and uproot the existing systems and cause disruption.
Picture : World Economic Forum
G20, under India’s presidency, offers a unique opportunity to make transformational changes in the world order in wake of these events. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the host of G20 by rotation, has the capacity and mandate to make a difference. G20 preparatory meetings under India’s presidency till now are well conceived and planned with creativity. Though many events are India-centric, the scene is getting set for the main summit of G20 leaders to be held later in the year. As that summit gets nearer, there is an urgent need to assess these events that are likely to have a bearing on the expected outcome of the final G20 communique.
G20 started as a wider and more inclusive group than G7 which was considered a “partitioned pack of parallel power” to the United Nations. The roots of G20 are still dipped in an economic and financial cauldron; however, to be fair it has learned the lessons from the United Nations gallant efforts on Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, and the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs. Peace on the planet is essential for economic growth and harmony with the nature ensures financial stability needed for the business and governments were those two key lessons. Partnership with the Global South is the sine qua non for the peace process.
G20 is a balanced representation of a total of 19 countries, developed and developing, plus the EU. Its members represent 85 per cent of the global GDP, 75 per cent of international trade and two-thirds of the world’s population, 80 percent of global greenhouse emissions and 80 percent of the world’s forest cover. In a way, G20 follows the 80:20 rule – 20 countries represent 80 percent of the world and 80 percent of the world’s problems are closely connected to the policies and actions of 20 per cent of the countries.
The first of these events is the intense inflection point for global negotiations on climate change. It is about much talked about ‘climate justice’ that is globally agreed upon but has remained without delivering one. Modi frequently highlights climate inequality in a number of his speeches on international fora including the UN. But it has remained a quixotic concept.
Game-changing UN resolution
A game-changing UN General Assembly resolution drafted by a group of 17 Small Island Developing States (SIDS), including four from South Asia, and pioneered by Vanuatu, a tiny Pacific Island country, has now given practical shape to that concept.
That resolution has now been formally adopted by United Nations General Assembly calling for the advice of the top UN judicial body, the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The resolution emerged out of frustration that the world is witnessing the abysmal gap between agreed action and routine rhetoric on the climate crisis and the SIDS are the worst sufferers. Disillusioned and dejected by the existential threat looming large as their territory sinks fast under rising sea waters, the SIDS are reaching their limit of patience. Climate migration has already started with a major part of their population moving to other nearby safer countries. SIDS now has decided to test the water of the UN’s ability to deliver justice. Those who have contributed the least to the climate crisis are suffering the most and the first. Those who created and contributed the most still continue to aggravate the problem and negate the ‘polluter to pay’ principle.
The resolution, co-sponsored by nearly 120 countries, the majority of the member states of UN, basically requests advisory opinion from the ICJ on the issue of climate injustice. The opinion from ICJ is non-binding, but the start of the very process of interaction with ICJ has signalled a new era of international law-making for climate justice. Giving teeth to the climate-related lawsuits around the world and empowering vulnerable nations in international climate negotiations is big leap forward. The resolution was adopted unanimously. It is interesting that four G20 countries – USA, Russia, India and China – were not part of the 120 countries that explicitly co-sponsored the resolution. However, they did not oppose its adoption by the General Assembly either, probably seeing that majority is in favour of the resolution.
Modi has the opportunity to be with the SIDS by reassuring them that issue of climate justice is not only closer to the heart of large developing countries like India. Small Island countries are also part of ‘ Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ (the world is one family), a mantra of G20. He should proclaim that ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’ (with all, development for all) is not only a national but also a global slogan. Talk on climate justice has now been set on the right path starting with open dialogue with ICJ. Modi should catalyze inclusive cooperation by G20 in the process of seeking climate justice. Modi should invite the literally-sinking SIDS – Vanuatu, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Singapore – as special guests to G20 along with former Maldivian president and present Majlis (parliament) speaker Mohamed Nasheed and Erick Solheim, former environment minister of Norway, who strongly connects South Asia’s climate future to global peace.
IPCC guiding posts
The second event that should matter to G20 is the 6th Assessment of IPCC ( Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) called AR6. ‘Final bell’, ‘Shrill warnings’, ‘Battle lines are drawn’, and ‘Can we really be back on track?’, were the messages flashed after AR6 was released. It is the last report before the planetary scale catastrophe is likely to set in by 2030, if the world does not bend down the rising curve of greenhouse gas emission. By 2030 global emissions should be reduced by 45 per cent as compared to the 2010 level as per AR6.
The limit of global warming by 1.5 deg C above the pre-industry level is now about to be breached. AR6 clearly states that warming is already reaching 1.2 deg C. That limit was pledged in Paris Climate Agreement at the insistence of the very SIDs that are now seeking the opinion from ICG to deliver climate justice for setting the new world order. The world is hanging on a cliff and G20 must now go beyond the debates and conferences on energy transition, carbon trading and climate resilience. They must now start accelerating energy transformation, renewable-energy trading and climate justice. The agreed promises of financial assistance to the developing countries, initiate massive mitigation of emissions along with stringent penal non-compliance measures are needed. G20 should even propose to become the implementation arm of COPs under UNFCCC.
G20 is coming just before the UN climate conference COP28 in the UAE. The window of opportunity to limit global warming to 1.5 deg C is a crack open as per AR6. Though the climate time-bomb is ticking, the IPCC’s report could serve as a how-to manual for defusing the climate time bomb. IPCC has not stopped just by blowing the emergency siren. It has laid out the milestones and guiding posts to achieve the targets of the Paris Climate Agreement as a matter of emergency. The dire message from AR6 is arrow-straight. We must start a massive mitigation drive literally, NOW! G20 needs to send that message not by stating how India is contributing to the emission reduction but by proposing systemic changes by inducting rigorous implementation mechanisms in the process of COP and UNFCCC, introducing the compliance provisions in the Green Climate Fund, which has a miserable record till now, having failed to replenish even 1 per cent of the agreed climate fund. There is a need to carry out financial reforms in World Bank, funding from which still includes aid and loans for electricity generation by fossil fuels.
In March 2023, International Energy Agency (IEA) hosted the COP28 president-designate Dr Sultan Al-Jaber for a roundtable discussion at its headquarters in Paris on ways to accelerate climate action. COP28 will mark the first global stocktake of emissions, enhanced NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions) pledges, and plans since the Paris Agreement. The world is way off track in emission reduction as per the 2022 emission gap report of UNEP.
Dr Ali Jaber should be invited
“The bottom line is: the world needs to cut emissions by 43 per cent in the next seven years to keep (hope for limiting global warming to) 1.5 alive,” said Dr Al-Jaber at the IEA conference in Paris. “In the course of those same 7 years, the global population will exceed 8.5 billion and is on its way to 10 billion by 2050. Meeting the scale of the world’s fast-growing energy needs, while dramatically reducing emissions is one of the most complex challenges humanity has ever faced. Nothing short of transformational progress will do across mitigation, adaptation, climate finance and loss and damage.” added Al Jabar.
Modi should invite Dr Al Jaber to G20 as president-elect of COP28 not only to lay out his vision but to also engage him in a global programme of climate action as a legacy of his presidency. Masdar Solar venture was Al Jabar’s master stroke just like International Solar Alliance was promoted by Modi. Al Jabar as a visionary business leader sees the future in energy transformation by reducing the role of the oil and gas industry through ‘system-wide transformation’ and by recanalization of profits from the oil and gas industry for a GHG-free world. He has already achieved that to a certain extent through the Masdar Solar project in UAE and in other countries through investments there. That vision of transformation resonates well with the message of the UN Secretary-General that “massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe are needed. Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”
Is ‘system transformation’ possible?
Indeed, such a transformation of mindset and lifestyle is needed considering the fast-closing window of opportunity and cracking open main doors of solutions to win the battle against the climate crisis.
The words, “system transformation”, by Dr Al Jabar is the clarion call for the revolution in waiting. When the CEO of an oil company and Minister of Industry and Innovation of the country whose prosperity has emerged from the oil and gas, gives a call that “we need to step up efforts to hit net-zero emissions by adopting renewable and zero-carbon energies, decarbonising the current energy system and investing in proven and new mitigation technologies”, one gets the intense feeling that the revolution of “system transformation” has already begun. (Read more at: https://www.southasiamonitor.org/spotlight/can-modi-seize-moment-g20-india-can-be-global-changemaker-and-climate-pioneer)
(Chicago, IL: April 16, 2023) “Congratulations and best wishes to the new team of AAPI leadership, who have been elected to lead AAPI in the coming years,” Dr. Ravi Kolli, President of AAPI, and Chief Election Officer Dr. Kusum Punjabi and Past BOT Chair of AAPI, jointly announced here today. “We thank the election officers Dr. Ashok Jain, Dr. Sunita Kanumury, Dr. Sharad Lakhanpal, and Dr. Shashi Shah, and all the members of AAPI for participating in the democratic election process and exercising their role as the electoral college members.”
While thanking the tens of thousands of Indian American physicians, who are active members of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), and the record number of large number voters who participated in the election process, Dr. Kolli said, “We have successfully concluded our elections for the year 2023-24 for AAPI leadership positions. We want to thank AAPI members who enthusiastically participated in the AAPI’s electronic voting process and have elected a new, diverse, balanced, and experienced team to lead AAPI, the largest ethnic medical organization in the United States in the coming year and beyond.”
Picture : TheUNN
Dr. Kusum Punjabi, Chief Election Officer – 2023, who along with the election committee conducted the elections and counting process in the virtual presence of all the candidates and their representatives communicated the results of the election to the AAPI president to be released to all the members of AAPI and noted that Dr. Amit Chakrabarty has been elected as the Vice President of AAPI, Dr. Sumul Raval was elected as the Secretary, and Dr. Sreeni Gangasani was elected Treasurer of AAPI for the year 2023-24.
Dr. Syamala Erramilli, Dr. Hetal Gor, and Dr. Narendra Maheshwari have been elected to the AAPI’s Board of Trustees for a three-year term. Dr. Vijay Gunuganti has been elected as the South West Central Regional Director of AAPI, and Dr. Anuradha Mann will be the new Regional Director of AAPI’s South East Central Region.
“As the incoming President of AAPI, I would like to congratulate my incoming new team for the fiscal year 2023-24,” said Dr. Anjana Samadder, who will assume charge as the President of AAPI during the 41st annual convention in Philadelphia, PA in July this year. “I’m very honored and consider myself fortunate to be bestowed with the responsibility of leading the four-decades-old strong organization with the cooperation and collaboration of an excellent team of dedicated, hardworking, and loyal officers and executive committee members who are with me to take AAPI to newer heights,” she added.
Dr. Sammader did not have to contest the election this year, as she has been serving as the President-Elect during the past year. Dr. Satheesh Kathula, who has been serving as the Vice President in the current year also did not have to face elections, as he automatically becomes the President-Elect of AAPI for the coming year.
Dr. Anjana Samadder, the only 5th woman president of AAPI in its 41 years long history, will have a dynamic and diverse team comprising of Dr. Satheesh Kathula as the President-Elect, Dr. Amit Chakrabarty as the Vice President; Dr. Sumul Raval as the Secretary; Dr. Sreeni Ganagasani as the Treasurer; and Dr. Lokesh Edara – as the Chair, Board of Trustees; Dr. Ravi Kolli will continue to guide AAPI as the Immediate Past President of AAPI.
Dr. Lokesh Edara will serve as the Chair of the AAPI Board of Trustees for the year, 2023-24. “As the BOT Chair, I am looking forward to working towards strengthening the goals and mission of AAPI and to help make AAPI a healthcare leader in the US and globally and work in the best interests of our Physicians and our community here in the US and serve our motherland, India,” said Dr. Edara. “We will work together to promote our values of professionalism, collegiality, and excellence in patient care and enhance AAPI’s reputation as a premier professional organization offering educational programs and advocacy.”
While congratulating the newly elected leaders to the Executive Committee, Dr. Kathula, the President-Elect in 2023-24 said here in a statement: “I want to congratulate all the winners of the election. I want to especially thank all the candidates for their passion and dedication to serving AAPI and regardless of the outcome, we need you as a valuable team member of our beloved AAPI.”
Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, who won the election to be the next Vice President of AAPI, said, “I am humbled and honored to be bestowed with this responsibility. Thank you all for your support and for making my 25 years quest come true. I thank all for believing in me. I will work to the fullest of my abilities to reach our goals, address the challenges, and advance the issues important to our members. I look forward to working with you and making AAPI a powerful force. I am a live example that dreams do come true with dogged perseverance, dedication, and loyalty to AAPI.”
Dr. Sumula Raval, Secretary-Elect of AAPI said, “It is with great joy and gratitude that I stand before you today as the newly elected Secretary of AAPI for the year 2023-2024. I am humbled by the overwhelming support and trust you have placed in me, and I am deeply honored to serve this esteemed organization in such a significant role. I am committed to building upon past achievements and leading AAPI with integrity, transparency, and innovation. I will focus on promoting diversity and inclusion in healthcare, advocating for the needs of our members, and fostering collaboration. Let us continue to work hand in hand to make a positive impact on healthcare and uphold the values of AAPI.”
Dr. Sreeni Gangasani, the newly elected Treasurer of AAPI said, “I am thrilled and deeply humbled to have been elected as AAPI Treasurer for 2023-24. It is an honor to have your trust and confidence in me to help manage the finances of this fantastic organization. I promise to uphold the highest standards of transparency, accountability, and integrity in managing our finances. I will work to ensure that our resources are used effectively to further our mission of promoting excellence in patient care, research, and education. I am excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for our organization.”
Dr. V. Ranga, the outgoing BOT Chair thanked the Election Committee for their meticulous planning and organizing the elections with integrity and fairness. He said, “I congratulate the winners and the new leadership who are entrusted with the responsibility of leading AAPI in the year 2023-24 and beyond. I wish them the very best and my wholehearted support.”
While conceding the election to Dr. Amit Chakrabarty to be the next Vice President of AAPI, Dr. Krishan Kumar said, “Thank you so much for supporting me all these years. I am glad to see the healthy spirit of all candidates (winners or not) for the association.” In his message, Dr. Raj Bhayani, while conceding the election said, “I am thankful to my supporters who gave me their precious vote honoring my many years of service for AAPI.”
Dr. Sujeeth Punnam in his message to the elected leaders, said, “Congrats to all the winners. We sacrifice time from family, practice, and resources to work in this great organization. The only reward is the ultimate feeling that we are contributing to the greater good of Indian physicians in the US and humankind in general. I wish Dr. Sumul Raval the best of luck as he moves forward with his new responsibility.” Dr. Mukesh Nigam in his congratulatory note to Dr. Gangasani and all the winners, said, “I will continue to serve this great association, AAPI. AAPI is a big family full of talented people. I cherish every moment of being part of it.”
The growing influence of physicians of Indian heritage is evident, as increasingly physicians of Indian origin hold critical positions in healthcare, academic, research, and administrative positions across the nation. We the physicians of Indian origin are proud of our great achievements and contributions to our motherland, India, our adopted land, the US, and in a very significant way to the transformation of Indo-US relations.
Serving 1 in every 7 patients in the US, AAPI members care for millions of patients every day, while several of them have risen to hold high-flying jobs, shaping the policies and programs, and inventions that shape the landscape of healthcare in the US and around the world.
“Since its inception in 1982, AAPI has been at the forefront, representing a conglomeration of more than 125,000 practicing physicians in the United States, seeking to be the united voice for the physicians of Indian origin. I trust and believe that the new Team under Dr. Anjana Samadder will continue the noble mission and strengthen our efforts to make AAPI reach greater heights,” said Dr. Ravi Kolli. For more details about AAPI, please visit: www.appiusa,org
“Just keep swimming” to “We finally reached the shore”, the 2022 bestselling author of the books ‘It Ends With Us and It Starts With Us’, Colleen Hoover, gave a great serve for the readers. Her journey from self-published author to bestselling author brought out many addicting storylines and story-plots. The genre of her books falls into the category of new adult and young adult, with readers ranging from teenagers to young adults to adults.
Her books are known for their thrilling romantic plots with twists and turns filled with heartbreaks, mental health struggles, sexual assaults, trauma, and abusive relationships. Many of the young readers waited for Colleen Hoovers ‘It Starts With Us’ at the beginning of 2023. The sudden surge in sales for ‘It Ends with Us was seen to be influenced by its massive popularity on TikTok, which comes under the #booktok subculture. Soon, the rest of Hoover’s books—Ugly Love, Reminders of Him, All Your Perfects, Verity, November 9, and others—reached fame.
But what is mostly overlooked and not addressed about the books are their features of abuse and sexual assaults without trigger warnings and their depictions of toxic men as romantic and desirable. These methods could be misleading and triggering for many young readers. Soon, other readers and communities started to share cryptic notes and thoughts about Hoover’s books. People found some of it questionable and uncomfortable.
The author’s attempt to release a colouring book based on “It Ends With Us” sparked the controversy. But as it turns out, the book was heavily centred on the content of domestic violence and trauma. The readers rose to address the sensitivity of the situation and criticised Hoover’s approach as be ‘tone-deaf.’ Later, Hoover took the issue to her Instagram and apologised for it.
The movie adaptation of her best-selling book, “It Ends With Us,” which will feature Blake Lively as Lily, was announced late in January 2023. The casting for the movie is also getting its fair share of criticism on Tik Tok and Instagram.
The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) strongly condemns and vehemently refutes India’s Finance Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Nirmala Sitharaman’s claim that Muslims are not being subjected to violence and persecution because their population, “is only growing in numbers.”
Speaking at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), a Washington, D.C. based think tank, Sitharaman claimed that there was a “negative Western perception” regarding India after PIIE President Adam S. Posen asked her how foreign investors’ perception of the country is affected by Western reporting on India’s political climate, including on the persecution of Muslims.
In response, Sitharaman outrightly denied Muslim persecution while backing it with the Hindu far-right conspiracy theory of, “Muslim population growth. [This is] not to even imply that I accept the perception that you’re referring to – India has the second largest Muslim population in the world, and the population is only growing in numbers,” Sitharaman said.
According to the Census data from 2001-2011, the growth rate of the Muslim population decreased to 24.6% compared to 29.5% in the decade prior. Data from India’s National Family Health Survey shows that over the past 25 years, the total fertility rate among Muslims decreased the sharpest out of all religious groups, including Hindus, from 3.6 in 1998-99 to 2.36 in 2019-21.
Sitharaman’s statement echoes the popular Hindu supremacist propaganda claim that the Muslim population is increasing at a rate disproportionate to Hindus. The idea that Muslims are “overpopulating” and “overtaking” Hindus in India is then used by BJP leaders and Hindu militant groups to whip up Islamophobia and violence against Muslim minorities.
“Sitharaman’s use of ‘population growth’ myth to justify the systemic oppression of Indian Muslims is nothing more than a twisted propaganda tactic widely used by the Hindu far-right to mask the reality of Muslim persecution and discrimination in India,” said IAMC Executive Director Rasheed Ahmed.
“Her statement is not just a flagrant denial of human rights abuses but also a dangerous attempt to spread disinformation and gaslight the global community about the atrocities committed against Indian Muslims. Sitharaman’s rhetoric must be debunked and condemned to ensure that human rights violations do not go unnoticed or unchallenged,” Ahmed added.
Most of these reports have noted that over the last nine years, the BJP government has openly promoted a divisive and discriminatory agenda that led to surge in the targeting of Muslims and other minorities.
The government has passed discriminatory laws like the Citizenship Amendment Act, which, combined with the National Register of Citizens (NRC), is designed to render Muslims stateless and has led to widespread protests and violence against the Muslim community throughout India. The beef ban laws, the anti-conversion laws, and the Hijab ban in Karnataka are only meant to marginalize Muslims further.
Hindu militant groups affiliated with the BJP and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), have been given a free hand to commit violence against Muslims, including pogroms, mob lynchings, and attacks on their homes, businesses, and places of worship.
In the past three months alone, at least 10 Muslims were lynched throughout India over the baseless accusations of transporting/ consuming beef or theft. In February, Bajrang Dal militants killed and burned the bodies of two Muslims over suspicion of transporting cattle in BJP-ruled Haryana State.
Furthermore, the government’s complicity in the horrific anti-Muslim pogroms in Delhi in 2020, which resulted in the death of over 50 people, mostly Muslims; the rampant bulldozing of Muslim homes, businesses, and mosques; the ongoing human rights violations in Kashmir and extreme surge in hate speeches calling for Muslim genocide are well-documented.
Two weeks back, the Supreme Court judges called the state “impotent” for failing to curb anti-Muslim hate speeches nationwide.
Just a week before Sitharaman spoke at the PIIE, Hindu extremist mobs during the Hindu festival of Ram Navami stormed Muslim localities in at least 6 Indian states, where they pelted stones, brutalized Muslim residents, torched vehicles, desecrated mosques, looted homes and businesses. These actions demonstrate a clear pattern of persecution and violence against Muslims in India, and Sitharaman’s comments only serve to minimize and trivialize the gravity of the situation.
In 2022, Genocide Watch, an NGO that monitors countries for signs of impending genocide, placed India at Stage 8 (persecution) of genocide on Dr. Gregory Stanton’s 10 Stages of Genocide. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum said India was among the top ten likeliest places for new mass killings in the world. USCIRF, a bipartisan, independent commission in the US, has designated India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for three consecutive years over its egregious violations of human rights and religious freedoms of minorities.
IAMC calls on the Indian government to immediately retract Sitharaman’s insensitive and inaccurate comments and take concrete steps to stop Hindu extremist violence against its Muslim citizens. We also call on the international community to hold the Indian government accountable for its actions and to take steps to ensure the protection of the rights of all religious minorities in India.
The Biden administration is expanding federal health care services to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipients. According to a White House statement, the Department of Health and Human Services will shortly propose a rule amending the definition of “lawful presence,” for purposes of Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage, to include DACA recipients.
DACA recipients often referred to as Dreamers are eligible immigrants who came to the United States as children dependent on their parents’ work visas. While they have grown up and received their education in America they are not recognised as U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. The program does not grant them official legal status or a pathway to citizenship.
Picture : Idaho Capital sun
According to the statement, President Biden believes that the Dreamers strengthen U.S economy, and enrich schools and the community. His administration’s proposed plan will allow Dreamers to apply for coverage through the health insurance marketplace and through the state Medicaid agency just like other citizens.
“We are not done fighting for their pathway to citizenship, but we’re getting them the opportunities they deserve in the meantime,” Biden said making the historic announcement.
The democratic government aims to protect and strengthen the federal health insurance agencies by lowering costs and expanding coverage so that every American has the peace of mind that health insurance brings and the inclusion of DACA recipients is a step in that direction.
“The Administration continues to urge Congress to provide a pathway to citizenship to Dreamers, providing them the ultimate peace of mind they need and deserve,” the White House statement emphasized.
At present, schemes and programs available to DACA recipients include; AmeriCorps VISTA Program (to assist local organizations in alleviating poverty), a range of outdoor programming, environmental education, and volunteer service programs, and American job centers to help job seekers obtain employment and training to further their careers.
With “the largest Bihu performance at a single venue”, Assam made history and cemented its place in the record books. The massive attempt to break the Guinness World Record involved over 11,000 nasonis (dancers) and dhuliyas (drummers). The record was set around 5.45 pm on April 13 at the Sarusajai Stadium in Guwahati.
Two new Guinness World Records were created at the Sarusajai Stadium in Guwahati, Assam, as about 11,000 drummers and folk dancers performed the traditional Bihu dance in an effort to commemorate Bohag/Rongali Bihu.
Picture : NDTV
The first-of-its-kind performance set two records in the presence of State Chief Minister Himanta Biswas Sharma and Guinness World Records Officials. The first record was for the largest Bihu dance performance and the second for the largest performance by traditional folk musicians employing instruments including the “dhol,” “pepa,” “gogona,” and “toka.”
The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi appreciated the performers on achieving the historic feat and presented the Guinness record certificates to Sarma on April 14 during his one-day visit to Guwahati.
“Our festivals are not just cultural extravaganza but are a medium to unite everyone and inspiration to move forward together”, the Prime Minister said. “Rongali Bihu is a festival of heart and soul for the people of Assam. Removes differences and is a symbol of perfect harmony between humans and nature.”
India TV News
Organized by the Assam government with the intention of highlighting the state’s rich cultural history, the performance featured artists from across the 31 districts of the state.
CM Sarma expressed optimism that the event will help to put Assam and its cultural history on the map throughout the world.
The chief minister also stated that the state government has set a goal for two world records: the largest Bihu dance in a single frame and the largest (dhuliya) drummer group. On the occasion, the certificate for the GI tag-recognised ‘Assamese gamusa (a type of towel)’ was also presented to the state government.
Earlier in March, the Guinness World Records had recognized a compilation of 42.9 lakh essays on Ahom commander Lachit Borphukan as the largest online photo album of handwritten notes.
Guinness World Records adjudicator Swapnil Dangarikar handed over the official letter of recognition to Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma at the Janata Bhawan in Guwahati. The certificate for the mega attempt will be handed over later.
A panel of five judges with expertise in technology and hospitality chose Virdee’s guest experience technology platform from a field of eight finalists. Virdee Virtual Reception Software is aimed at helping properties become more efficient. Whether it’s to help front-of-house staffing, provide guests with their keys, or help them pay for their stay, their goal is to free up staff in a way that allows them to deliver a true guest experience.
The competition is designed to help identify and elevate companies with innovative ideas and products that will help the hospitality industry as hoteliers continue to face challenges, like labor shortages, from the pandemic.
Picture : TheUNN
“It’s super exciting when you start a company, and you start selling the product, and the first thing you want to do is get product market fit and start building your client base. And then any sort of recognition like this is a huge honor for us. So really, it’s a cool experience and a great feeling,” said the winner, Branigan Mulcahy, Co-Founder of Virdee, “There’s a lot of great things we learned from the other companies that presented. There are things that help housekeeping be more efficient, and hiring and in tipping, and all of these other technologies that come into the flow.”
“The AAHOA Tech Pitch competition gives us a small glimpse into the future,” said AAHOA President & CEO Laura Lee Blake. “I am grateful for the participants who shared their vision and original products to show us how technology is changing the way the hospitality industry does business. AAHOA remains committed to helping hospitality-focused tech companies share the next big idea on hospitality’s biggest stage at the AAHOA Convention & Trade Show.”
AAHOA is always searching for the latest and greatest technologies that are solving everyday issues for hotel owners, their team members, and their guests. Select companies pitched to seasoned professional judges with expertise in technology and hospitality. The winner received a complimentary booth at AAHOACON24, tremendous exposure to more than 7,000 attendees in Los Angeles, CA, and much more!
“Congratulations to all the contestants. There were a ton of amazing ideas brought to the competition, and we know it was hard to choose just one winner,” said incoming AAHOA Chairman Bharat Patel. “Virdee makes their software user-friendly, so any hotelier, regardless of their technology background, can utilize this platform, leave the hard work to the experts, and be up and running within a few days.”
Anthony Melchiorri, Hospitality Expert and TV Personality
Mukesh Mowji, AAHOA Past Chairman (2006-2007)
Frank Wolfe, CEO of HFTP
“It was just amazing to be invited. There are a lot of amazing companies that presented as part of the tech pitch competition,” added the winner, Mulcahy. “I learned a lot about some of these other platforms, and it was great for us to be able to get our message out. We’ve been attending AAHOACON since we started the company, since the very first year back from the pandemic. So, we’ve met a lot of people here, we’ve established a lot of great relationships, and some of our investors are AAHOA Members and former chairs, so it’s good to be part of this organization, and we love the community here.
AAHOA is the largest hotel owners association in the nation, with Member-owned properties representing a significant part of the U.S. economy. AAHOA’s 20,000 members own 60% of the hotels in the United States and are responsible for 1.7% of the nation’s GDP. More than one million employees work at AAHOA member-owned hotels, earning $47 billion annually, and member-owned hotels support 4.2 million U.S. jobs across all sectors of the hospitality industry. AAHOA’s mission is to advance and protect the business interests of hotel owners through advocacy, industry leadership, professional development, member benefits, and community engagement.
Amid the massive ongoing layoffs in the tech sector, a group of lawmakers from Silicon Valley has written to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) enquiring about the federal agency’s efforts to ensure highly-skilled H-1B visa holders can remain in the country after losing their jobs.
With a bevy of employees laid off across tech giants including Microsoft, Google, Meta, in the past couple of months, the H-1B visa holders have been left in a limbo with a mere 60-day grace period to find another job, or leave the country.
“This group of immigrants possesses skills that are highly valuable in today’s knowledge-based economy and forcing them to leave the US is harmful to our nation’s long-term economic competitiveness,” the lawmakers wrote.
“This issue is of great importance to our constituents because layoffs in the tech sector have accelerated in recent months. The number of tech jobs lost since the beginning of 2023 has already surpassed the total number of layoffs in 2022,” they said.
The lawmakers urged the USCIS to extend the 60-day grace period for laid-off H-1B holders to secure a new job before losing their legal status.
They also requested that USCIS release data detailing the impact of the layoffs on affected immigrants, and inquires about whether the agency has issued guidance to adjudicators in response to the layoffs.
The USCIS had earlier stated that extending the grace period would require a lengthy rulemaking process that would take too long to benefit immigrants who are currently at risk of losing their legal status.
“While we understand that such a change may take time, we nonetheless urge USCIS to pursue an extension of the grace period, either as a standalone regulatory change or as part of a broader effort to reform the H-1B program,” the letter read.
The lawmakers said that extending the grace period will strengthen the country’s ability to retain immigrant talent in the future.
The USCIS recently said that the sacked H-1B workers have multiple options to stay in the country, and it is wrong to assume that they have no option but to leave within 60 days.
The number of tech jobs lost since the beginning of 2023 has already surpassed the total number of layoffs in 2022.
With the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank causing further disruptions in the tech sector, the lawmakers said they feared that the trend would continue.
Led by Representative Anna G. Eshoo, the letter was signed by Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna, Zoe Lofgren, former Chair of the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, and Representatives Jimmy Panetta and Kevin Mullin.
It sent a list of five questions to the immigration agency requesting it to respond by May 5.
The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa that permits US companies to hire foreign workers in speciality occupations, which require theoretical or technical expertise.
It is the most sought-after work visa among foreign professionals, including Indians. (IANS)
In a letter they underlined significance of immigrants in knowledge-based economy and that forcing them to leave is harmful to country’s long-term economic competitiveness.
A group of lawmakers from Silicon Valley have raised concerns over the ongoing wave of tech sector layoffs and urged the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to extend the 60-day grace period for laid-off H-1B holders to secure a new job before losing their visa status.
In a joint letter to the USCIS’ director, Ur M. Jaddou, Representatives Anna G. Eshoo, Zoe Lofgren, Ro Khanna, Jimmy Panetta, and Kevin Mullin enquired about the agency’s efforts in retaining high-skilled immigrants in the U.S. after losing their jobs, and their employment-based visas.
Highlighting the 60-day grace period after which the H-1B visa status of a laid off employee gets invalid, the lawmakers said in the letter, “forcing them to leave the U.S. is harmful to our nation’s long-term economic competitiveness.” They argued that extending the grace period will strengthen the country’s ability to retain immigrant talent in the future.
Moreover, the lawmakers sought a response from USCIS on certain issues including number of H-1B visa holders who have successfully maintained legal status after losing their jobs and how many have departed the country or accrued unlawful presence; approval and denial rates on requests made by newly unemployed H-1B visa holders to change their visa status into visitor visa; time consumed to process such requests and penalty for applying for B-1/B-2 visitor visas by newly unemployed H-1B visa holders. They demanded a response by May 5, 2023.
Amid massive ongoing layoffs in the tech sector, the top 30 H-1B visa employers hired 34,000 new workers in 2022 and laid off at least 85,000 workers in 2022 and early 2023, an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) analysis found.
According to EPI researchers, tech and outsourcing companies are exploiting the highly-skilled H-1B visa program, created to fill labor shortages in professional fields, by laying-off a bevy of workers employed in firms like Meta, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc.
“Most employers hire H-1B workers because they can be underpaid and are de facto indentured to the employer,” the EPI research said.
Also, 13 of the top 30 H-1B visa employers were outsourcing firms that underpay migrant workers and offshore US jobs to countries where labor costs are much lower.
“Its implementation has been bungled by the US Departments of Labor and Homeland Security,” the analysis said, adding that since employers aren’t required to test the US labor market to see if any workers are available before hiring an H-1B worker or pay their H-1B workers a fair wage, employers have exploited the program.
ECI said, in 2022, 48,000 employers registered with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in hopes of hiring at least one H-1B worker, and nearly 30,000 employers ultimately hired at least one new H-1B worker.
Citing an example, the ECI research said Amazon was at the top of the list in terms of both new H-1B workers and layoffs. It hired 6,400 new H-1B workers in 2022, and hired the most new H-1B workers in 2021 as well, when it hired nearly 6,200 workers. The tech giant has either recently laid off or plans to lay off 27,150 of its employees — more than twice the number of H-1B workers it hired in 2021 and 2022 combined.
Google and Meta, both long-time top H-1B employers, together hired over 3,100 new H-1B workers last year.The duo laid off 33,000 employees, almost 11 times the number of new H-1B workers they hired in 2022.
The H-1B program is the largest US temporary work visa program, with a total of approximately 600,000 workers employed by 50,000 employers. Most of these workers are employed in occupations like computer systems analysis and software development.
Visas for new workers are capped at 85,000 per year, but many employers are exempt from that annual cap, including universities and their affiliated nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organizations, and government research organizations.
The study urged President Joe Biden to “implement regulations and policy guidance to prevent misuse of the program, stop the exploitation of college-educated migrant workers, and ensure the program is consistent with congressional intent”. (IANS)
The US will begin accepting petitions for H-2B visa workers for the late second half of fiscal year 2023 under the supplemental cap temporary final rule, the federal agency for immigration services announced.
Under this rule, which was announced in December last year, there are 10,000 visas limited to returning workers regardless of country of nationality, for the late second half of fiscal year 2023, that is May 15 to September 30.
“The 10,000 visas made available under this allocation are limited to returning workers who were issued H-2B visas or held H-2B status in fiscal years 2020, 2021, or 2022,” the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said.
These supplemental visas are available only to the US businesses that are suffering irreparable harm or will suffer impending irreparable harm without the ability to employ all the H-2B workers requested in their petition, as attested by the employer on a new attestation form.
On December 15, 2022, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Labor (DOL) jointly published a temporary final rule increasing the cap on H-2B non-immigrant visas by up to 64,716 additional visas for all of FY 2023.
Of the 64,716 additional visas, 44,716 are available only for returning workers (workers who received an H-2B visa or were otherwise granted H-2B status in one of the last three fiscal years).
The remaining 20,000 visas are set aside for nationals of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (collectively called Northern Central American countries) and Haiti, who are exempt from the returning worker requirement.
As of April 10, 2023, USCIS has received petitions requesting 11,537 workers under the 20,000 visas set aside for nationals of Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
USCIS is continuing to accept H-2B petitions under this allocation.
This is the first time the Departments have issued a single rule making available H-2B supplemental visas for several allocations throughout the entire fiscal year, including an allocation for the late second half.
The temporary final rule features several provisions to protect both, the US and H-2B workers, from exploitation and abuse.
The H-2B visas are issued for seasonal/temporary jobs which allow employers to hire skilled or unskilled workers to fulfil the shortage of workers in the US.
The employer must obtain a Department of Labor certification before the visa application can be initiated. (IANS)
The task force was created in coordination with the Biden administration’s U.S.-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET), which seeks to grow technological and industrial collaboration between the two nations.
A group of renowned Indian-origin academicians were appointed with varying roles to the newly created task force of The Association of American Universities (AAU), that aims to expand research and higher education partnerships between the United States and India.
The co-chairs of the AAU Task Force include Pennsylvania State University president Neeli Bendapudi, University of California San Diego chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla, University at Buffalo president Satish K. Tripathi, and current Johns Hopkins University Provost, senior vice president for Academic Affairs Sunil Kumar, who is set to become president of Tufts University on July 1, 2023.
The task force was announced by AAU President Barbara Snyder during the launch of the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology which was jointly launched by U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi in May 2022.
As per the mandate, the task force will make efforts to advance academic and research partnerships between both sides. The group of academicians are set to meet monthly to determine key focus areas for bilateral research and education cooperation, to identify existing programs that could provide blueprints for future partnerships, and to formulate strategies on how best to move forward, AAU said in a statement.
In addition to the co-chairs, several Indian-origin members from various universities were inducted into the task force. They include dean of engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Venkataramanan Balakrishnan, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, Emory University, Ravi V. Bellamkonda, vice president for research and economic development, University at Buffalo, Venu Govindaraju, chief, Division of Infectious Diseases, Johns Hopkins University, Amita Gupta, professor and Qualcomm endowed chair, to name a few.
AAU is composed of America’s leading research universities. Association’s member universities collectively help shape policy for higher education, science, and innovation; promote best practices in undergraduate and graduate education; and strengthen the contributions of leading research universities to American society.
The Ascend Foundation aims to increase recognition of pan-Asian leadership through initiatives like the 5-Point Action Agenda, the Ascend Impact Fund, and other research, education, volunteerism and advocacy efforts.
Indian-origin business leaders from diverse sectors were honoured for their resiliency and success during times of economic uncertainty by The Ascend Foundation during their A-List Award Gala at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on April 3, 2023.
The list of 30 honorees includes the chief health officer of Elevance Health Dr Shantanu Agrawal, executive leader in the workplace investing business for Fidelity Investments Sangeeta Moorjani, chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer of Deloitte, Kavitha Prabhakar, chief operating officer of Citi Anand Selvakesari, vice chair of EY Americas Consulting Raj Sharma and president and chief executive officer of Perkin Elmer Prahlad Singh.
Baltimore resident and Cambridge alumnus, Dr Agrawal is passionate about improving health outcomes and reducing disparities and serves on numerous boards and committees that deepen his commitment to advancing health, his profile reads.
India-born, Moorjani is known for approaching business strategy, fresh perspective and innovative thinking to meet the need of business. She received her bachelor of commerce degree in 1988 and her MBA in marketing in 1990, both from the University of Pune in India.
A woman in technology, and champion for social change, Prabhakar spearheaded the release of Deloitte’s DEI Transparency Report, first issued in 2020, and is credited for setting a new standard for racial, ethnic, and gender data transparency and accountability.
Having begun his career at Citi India in 1991, Selvakesari has over 30 years of experience in consumer banking, wealth management and commercial banking, across multiple markets globally.
In his role with EY Americas Consulting, Sharma leads 25,000 consultants across the Americas service line, according to the company. He holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Information Systems from the University of Miami and a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer Science from the Birla Institute of Technology, India.
Singh held various leadership roles in different companies. Northeastern University alumnus, Singh earned a doctoral degree in chemistry from the University of Missouri-Columbia. His research work has resulted in several issued patents and publications in peer-reviewed journals, according to his profile.
Founded in 2005, Ascend is the first and largest global network advancing API professionals in the workplace. Ascend’s 60+ chapters partner with global organizations to cultivate and empower API talent as they rise to their full potential.
Jyoti Thottam’s book shares the lives of six Sisters who traveled from Kentucky to India to establish a hospital more than seven decades back.
Indian –American author and journalist Jyoti Thottam was awarded the 74th Christopher Award for her book “Sisters of Mokama- The Pioneering Women Who Brought Hope and Healing to India” (Viking/Penguin Random House).
Her book highlights the story of the six Sisters of Charity of Nazareth nuns who established Nazareth Hospital in Mokama, Bihar. In 1947 the sisters served everyone, regardless of caste or religion, and offered new opportunities to women there looking to pursue careers in the medical field, according to the book release. Thottam’s mother was part of an extraordinary group of Indian women who challenged the odds and travelled to Bihar to train to be a nurse at Nazareth Hospital.
Fascinated by her mother’s inspiring journey, Thottam researched Nazareth Hospital and authored the book Sisters of Mokama, the release added.
The New York Times editor Thottam was Times South Asia Bureau Chief in New Delhi from 2008 to 2012, where she wrote numerous cover stories, including award-winning stories about the Ganges River and the Mumbai terrorist attacks, her profile shared.
India-born Thottam grew up in Texas and graduated from Yale and Columbia. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, her profile shared.
The Christophers is a nonprofit founded in 1945 by Maryknoll’s Father James Keller. The Christopher Awards celebrate writers, producers, directors, authors, and illustrators whose work affirms the highest values of the human spirit and reflects the Christopher motto.
Humans will be able to upload consciousness and sensibility in computers by the end of 2023, claims an Indian-origin computer scientist.
Dr Pratik Desai has asked people to start recording their loved ones’ voices, which will “live” even after their death.
In other words, users can create a computerised avatar that resembles their loved one before their death, which can live forever on their screens.
“Start regularly recording your parents, elders and loved ones,” Desai recently wrote on Twitter.
“With enough transcript data, new voice synthesis and video models, there is a 100 per cent chance that they will live with you forever after leaving physical body.
“This should be even possible by end of the year,” he noted.
Desai is not the only one who has claimed this.
Previously, metaverse company Somnium Space offered an AI-based “live forever” mode. It aims to allow individuals to talk with their loved ones in the metaverse.
In an interview with Motherboard, the company’s founder and CEO Artur Sychov said his project will allow people to store the way they talk, move, and sound until after they die, when they can come back from the dead as an online avatar to speak with their relatives.
“Literally, if I die — and I have this data collected — people can come or my kids, they can come in, and they can have a conversation with my avatar, with my movements, with my voice,” Sychov was quoted as saying to Vice.
“You will meet the person. And you would maybe for the first 10 minutes while talking to that person, you would not know that it’s actually AI. That’s the goal,” he added.
Another US-based company Deepbrain has also developed a programme called “Re;memory” which allows users the opportunity to walk down a memorial hall dedicated to a late loved one and even interact with the person “through an actual conversation”. (IANS)
As Apple firms up its plans to put India on its global manufacturing and retail map, the company’s CEO Tim Cook will be in India next week to inaugurate Apple’s brick-and-mortar stores in Mumbai and Delhi.
Reliable sources told IANS that Cook will inaugurate Apple’s own branded retail stores — at Jio World Drive Mall in Mumbai and at Select CityWalk mall in Saket, Delhi — that will be the first for the tech giant which has doubled down on its India growth plans.
Apple set another all-time revenue record for the India market in the quarter that ended December 31, 2022.
In the analysts’ call after posting its quarterly results, Cook said, “India is a hugely exciting market for us and a major focus.
“We brought the online store there in 2020. We will soon bring Apple Retail there,” Cook had announced.
“I’m very bullish on India,” he added.
According to the India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA), Apple’s ‘Make in India’ smartphone now constitutes 50 per cent of total exports.
Reports surfaced earlier this year that Cook-led Apple will quickly shift some of its China manufacturing to India and Vietnam in the next 2-3 years.
India is likely to produce 45-50 per cent of Apple’s iPhones by 2027, at par with China, where 80-85 per cent of iPhones were produced in 2022, according to estimates.
India accounted for 10-15 per cent of iPhones’ overall production capacity at the end of 2022.
Apple became the first smartphone player in India to have exported $1 billion worth iPhones in the month of December.
It currently manufactures iPhones 12, 13, 14 and 14 Plus in the country.
As Apple gears up to throw open the gates of its first branded retail store in India this month, its physical stores have left an indelible impression on millions worldwide.
For millions of Indians, visiting an Apple Store in the country will be a delightful experience. Those who have a constant yearning to be ‘delighted’ at Apple Stores at world-famous tourist spots, India will soon be on the Apple’s retail global map. (IANS)
The company was accused of acquiring B-1 visas which allow immigrants to conduct temporary business in the U.S rather than the more expensive H-1B visas for their staff.
Indian multinational tech company, Larsen & Toubro Technology Services will pay US$9,928,000 as settlement for committing visa fraud between 2014 to 2019, a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of South Carolina said.
Picture : TheUNN
According to the authorities, the firm has admitted to violating the False Claims Act by acquiring inexpensive B-1 visas, rather than more expensive H-1B visas for its personnel employed at the offices in Edison New Jersey. During the time of the crime, B-1 visas, which do not allow holders to work in the United States, ranged from $200 to $300 while H1-B visas were between approximately $4,000 to $6,000.
The investigation into the case began after a whistleblower filed a complaint in the United States District Court in Charleston, South Carolina. Investigations were carried out by Homeland Security Investigations, the USCIS Nebraska Service Center Fraud Detection Unit, the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Inspector General, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General, and the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, a news release noted.
“This settlement is a success in deterring companies in seeking to evade and violate the laws and regulations governing the non-immigrant visa programs managed by the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security,” said Chris Hileman, special agent in charge, Department of State, Office of Inspector General.
“The U.S. Attorney’s Office will hold accountable those who skirt this country’s visa requirements,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of South Carolina Adair F. Boroughs. “Our immigration laws are intended to protect American jobs for American workers, and we will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to ensure companies securing work visas for foreign nationals strictly comply with those laws.”
Youngsters between ages 6 to 20 from Cincinnati and Dayton participated in the symposium in 5 different groups. The Sikh Youth Alliance of North America (SYANA) in Ohio, USA, recently organized its annual Sikh Youth Symposium 2023, a public speaking competition at Guru Nanak Society of Greater Cincinnati Gurdwara Sahib in Cincinnati.
Supported by the Sewadar Committee, the event was attended by youngsters between ages 6 to 20 from Cincinnati and Dayton, who participated in 5 different groups, the news release revealed.
The local convener for the Symposium Sameep Singh Gumtala disclosed that each group was given a book three months in advance to answer three questions given to them in the form of speech for 5-7 minutes. “This year first group was given the book, “Basic Knowledge of Sikhism”, the second group, “Sikh Sakhis for the Youth”, the third group, “The Turban”, and the fourth group, “Guru Granth Sahib – A Supreme Treasure,” Gumtala said.
The program commenced with the recital of Ardas and Hukumnama. Harjinder Singh, who earlier volunteered as local convener in 2006, addressed the gathering saying the symposium provides youth with a platform to learn and reflect on many topics, including the basics of Sikhi and an in-depth study of Gurbani. His son Jaipal Singh recollected how the Sikh youth were taught and mentored year after year.
Weekly classes continue to happen at Gurdwara Sahib in public speaking and Gurmat concepts. The participants were awarded trophies and books, such as “Fauja Singh Keeps Going”, “The Garden of Peace”, and “Why Am I Here.”
Gyani Amrik Singh, chief Granthi of the Gurdwara Sahib, thanked all participants, parents, volunteers, and Sewadar Committee members for making the event a success.
Noted Indian-American mathematician and statistician Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao has been awarded the 2023 International Prize in Statistics for his work more than 75 years back, which continues to exert a profound influence on science. The award is often considered the “Nobel Prize” of math and statistics.
Rao, 102, will receive the prize, which comes with a $80,000 award, this July at the biennial International Statistical Institute World Statistics Congress in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
“In awarding this prize, we celebrate the monumental work by C.R. Rao that not only revolutionized statistical thinking in its time but also continues to exert enormous influence on human understanding of science across a wide spectrum of disciplines,” said Guy Nason, Chair of the International Prize in Statistics Foundation, in a statement.
Rao demonstrated three fundamental results that paved the way for the modern field of statistics and provided statistical tools heavily used in science today in his 1945 paper published in the Bulletin of the Calcutta Mathematical Society.
Combined, these results help scientists more efficiently extract information from data.
Rao is currently a professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and Research Professor at the University at Buffalo.
Born in 1920 in Karnataka, he was the eighth child born in a family of six brothers and four sisters.
He secured an MSc in Mathematics at Andhra University in 1941, an M.A. in statistics from Calcutta University in 1943 and a PhD degree at King’s College in Cambridge University in 1948.
Cambridge University awarded him the prestigious Sc.D. degree in 1965, and he has received 31 Honorary Doctoral degrees from universities in 18 countries.
In India, under the direction of P.C. Mahalanobis, Rao worked to set up statistical bureaus in different states and developed a network of statistical agencies at the district level for collecting data.
India honoured Rao with a Padma Bhushan in 1968 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2001. It has also instituted a biennial national award in Statistics known as the ‘The Professor C.R. Rao’ award.
In his honour, the Pennsylvania State University has established a C.R. and Bhargavi Rao Prize in Statistics.
The first International Prize in Statistics was awarded in 2017 to David R. Cox for the development of the Cox proportional hazards model, which allows researchers to investigate patient survival rates in complex studies.
Awarded biennially at the ISI World Statistics Congress, the International Prize in Statistics aims to enhance public understanding of the depth and scope of statistics.
The Global Luxury Jewelry Market is anticipated to grow at a 7.85% CAGR and is estimated to be worth USD 95.78 Billion by the end of 2030.
Luxury Jewelry is well-known for its sophisticated designs and utilization of the most precious and uncommon unrefined substances. The Luxury Jewelry Market is vigorous and quickly developing. It’s also exceptionally divided and determined by buyer conduct and style. In the nearing years, huge market development is normal, from increasing extra cash and amplifying buyer consumption of extravagant merchandise. Assimilating the luxury gems industry with diversion and allure businesses has set new open doors for the market.
One of the main points herding the Luxury Jewelry Market is boosting discretionary cash flow. When the population’s discretionary cash flow develops, so does their purchasing power, bringing about amplified interest and utilization of luxury gems. Also, the traditions embracing extravagant metals are necessary components driving the interest in extravagant adornment pieces.
Amplifying interest in men’s adornments addresses viable freedom for the development of the market over the figure time frame. Generally, ladies are more minded than men toward buying luxury gems. Be that as it may, this pattern is remodelling, inferable from expanding the focal point of men on self-grooming and graceful allure.
The Global Luxury Jewelry Market is segmented into five regions; North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa.
Europe represented the biggest portion of the global industry on the lookout, followed by North America. These areas comprise created nations with high per capita pay, just as significant luxury brands, filling the market development. Also, the high female workforce interest rate in these countries is a significant factor that adds to the development of the market. Besides, the Asia- Pacific area is expected to have a high CAGR during the estimated time frame.
Asia Pacific dominated the market for luxury jewelry and was considered for the largest revenue share of 65.4% in 2021. China and India are the two largest markets for luxury jewelry in the region. The latest styles and the requirement for high-quality jewelry among top customers are two eloquent drivers driving the market for luxury jewelry in this region.
The region is anticipated to see an increase in the popularity of online distribution. The majority of luxury jewelry is bought for special occasions or events like marriages and engagements. Further, due to continuous restrictions on international travel and the augmentation of domestic duty-free zones in China, demand from younger customers as well as those who shop domestically is anticipated to climb.
The global Luxury Jewelry Market’s prominent key players are Buccellati Holding, Italia SPA, Chopard International SA, Mikimoto & Co. Ltd., Bulgari S.P.A., Graff Diamond Corporation, Companies Financiere Richmond S.A., Tiffany & Co., Societe Cartier, Harry Winston Inc., Guccio Gucci S.P.A., Chanel, LVMH Moet Hennessy, Signet Jewellers, Cartier International SNC, Rajesh Exports Ltd.
The Indo-American Arts Council has announced its upcoming Literary Festival scheduled for November 2023. We will be celebrating and exploring the vibrant and diverse cultures of India through the written word, including works written by Indian and diaspora authors as well as those who have been inspired by the many facets of the country. We invite submissions of published books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama and children’s literature that illuminate this year’s theme Courageously Creative. We are looking for works that examine and showcase the beauty, challenges, complexity, diversity and richness of Indian culture and its relationship to society, history, politics, spirit and the human experience. We accept original works in the languages of India with English translations.
Chosen entries will be featured in New York City at an in-person event, featuring renowned and emerging voices. These energetic, interactive discussions will be complemented by a series of recorded programs that will be exclusively launched on our online platform.
In the past, the IAAC Literary Festival has had the honor of hosting prominent authors such as Salman Rushdie, Suketu Mehta, Dr. Amartya Sen, Indra Nooyi, Barkha Dutt, Deepti Naval, Deepak Chopra, Anupam Kher, Rakesh Kaul, Dr. Ravi Shankar, Newbery Honor recipient Veera Hiranandani, Booker Nominee Avni Doshi, Dr. Sudha Murthy, Narayan Hegde, Megha Majumdar, International Booker Prize winner Daisy Rockwell, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Dr. Kailash Satyarthi, Kal Penn, Vishakha Desai, Anupam Kher, Ambassador Haksar and Member of Parliament Dr. Shashi Tharoor.
We have organized book launches for eminent authors such as Ramchandra Guha, and Madhur Jaffrey, and in 2021 launched Acrobat by Nandana Sen, and the official biography of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Interest in the IAAC Literary Festival has continued to garner international attention with its spotlight on topics such as Women’s Empowerment, Health & Wellness, Diversity, and Equity. IAAC strongly believes in sustaining community to help create a world where literature can thrive and has partnered with several prominent organizations such as Poets & Writers, Kundiman, and the Asian American Writers Workshop.
The only criteria besides a focus on India or work by an Indian or diaspora author is literary excellence, whether you are a children’s book author or a poet…
IAAC recognizes the impact that COVID-19 has had on the literary community. It has therefore expanded its support for artists generally and authors specifically. IAAC will:
Pay an author honorarium
Pay a moderator honorarium
Allocate a social media budget for each author on top of the IAAC marketing
Include the Publisher logo with approval in all IAAC media marketing
Include links to author and moderator social media handles
The Indo-American Arts Council is a not-for-profit arts organization passionately dedicated to promoting, showcasing, and building an awareness of the arts and artists whose heritage lies in the Indian subcontinent in the performing arts, visual arts, literary arts, and folk arts. IAAC supports all the artistic disciplines in classical, fusion, folk, and innovative forms influenced by the arts of India. They work cooperatively with colleagues around the United States to broaden collective audiences and create a network for shared information, resources and funding. The IAAC’s focus is to help artists and art organizations in North America as well as to facilitate artists from India to exhibit, perform and produce their work in the United States. www.iaac.us
The decision by Twitter to label National Public Radio (NPR) as “state-affiliated media,” which it then changed to “government-funded media” after a barrage of criticism, underscores the need to rethink the role of major social media platforms as critical gatekeepers in the public sphere, the need for better labels for news media, and the importance of insulating these designations from political interference or mercurial interventions by billionaire founders.
When Twitter placed a state-affiliated media label on NPR last week, it put the award-winning public media outlet in the same category as Russia’s RT, the state-controlled international media network, and China’s Xinhua News Agency, providing fodder to partisans around the world who would happily denigrate public service media by equating it with state-owned media.
On April 12, NPR announced that it will no longer post on its 52 Twitter channels to protect its credibility, though its journalists are still able to use the platform for newsgathering.
Figuring out which news media are propaganda or arms of the states that fund them, and which ones provide a public service and are insulated from editorial interference by the government, has once again become a flashpoint in the debate over content moderation and discrimination on social media—not long after major social media platforms began instituting labels on some media accounts.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) called it “an insult to the notion of a free press to conflate an editorially independent nonprofit organization like NPR with state-controlled propaganda mills” in Russia and China. Meanwhile, Republicans, who have long pushed to defund NPR and object to its public interest mandate, cheered the new label.
In an apparent response to the outcry, Twitter established—at least for now—a new “government funded” label on both NPR and BBC accounts, despite the fact that less than two percent of their budgets come from public funds. This term is equally misleading, since many news outlets around the world receive government funding through subsidies, state advertising, and emergency relief during the pandemic.
In Canada, for example, the government has provided millions of dollars directly to media outlets through direct cash infusions and tax breaks. The U.S. and Europe support public interest media around the world through overseas development assistance, providing critical state funding to media working in challenging conditions around the world. In these and other examples, does that make them either state-affiliated or government-funded?
The terms state-controlled and government-funded raise questions about the utility of employing such blunt terms and not including information about how other news media are funded and operate. The selective application of labels to some news media and not others also raise concerns about perception and consistency.
Public media outlets, such as NPR, are editorially independent, provide transparency into their budgets, masthead, and editorial processes, and publish their standards and provide corrections when necessary. The fact that these outlets receive some funding from the U.S. federal government does not make them “state-affiliated” in the same sense as outlets like RT and Xinhua, which are fully state-funded and provide minimal transparency regarding either their operational or editorial processes. Media outlets like NPR and the BBC are better characterized as public interest and publicly funded media.
Efforts to categorize news media are not only about labels; they also impose restrictions on advertising, targeting, and algorithmic amplification. Twitter’s move to reclassify NPR directly impacts its reach, since Twitter’s policy states it “will not recommend or amplify” accounts that receive the state media label. Shadow banning tactics, which suppress the reach of a social media account without outright deactivating it, can also affect the visibility and monetization of their news content, with implications for news media sustainability. These results could happen despite the original intent of adding such labels, which is to provide social media users with additional information about the content they were seeing and create a signal that algorithmic systems could use to moderate content or enable certain features.
Content labeling harms independent media
Media outlets care about the label they get. Al Jazeera, which was originally labeled as funded by the Qatari government, lobbied successfully to persuade Facebook it was editorially independent and shouldn’t get a label. “The reason we object so forcefully is because for us, perception is reality in the world in which we live,” Michael Weaver, Al Jazeera’s Senior Vice President Business Development and Growth, Digital Division, told me at the time. “If we’re being undermined by other platforms, it spreads across not only what Al Jazeera is doing but it spreads across all these geopolitical conflicts that are happening in the area. It could be a death blow to the network.”
The risks of conflating editorially independent outlets with state-controlled propaganda mills not only detracts from the media and information literacy goals of such labeling, but also undermines the safety of journalists working for the outlet. Labeling independent public interest media as state-affiliated provides cover to authoritarian governments to designate those organizations and their journalists as foreign agents or spies, which could have significant implications for their safety.
In this sense, NPR’s decision to withdraw, at least partially, from using Twitter sends a principled message that will help insulate its reporters in the field from backlash. Ideally more media outlets, including the BBC, which now has the same label as NPR, would consider doing the same and break out of Twitter’s stranglehold on journalism. Unlike Google and Facebook, which form the backbone of the digital advertising and audience infrastructure upon which the news media rely, Twitter is a considerably more important platform for journalists, politicians, and other elite who believe it to be the digital public square.
The vaccine technology America learned about during the pandemic was originally aimed at cancer, but its use against infectious diseases took off in the pandemic. Now a new study suggests specially designed mRNA shots can help prevent recurrences of melanoma, a dreaded skin cancer.
The study, presented Sunday at a research conference, showed that after nearly two years, patients who received a personalized mRNA vaccine made by Moderna and Merck were 44% more likely to be alive and avoid new tumors than those who received only the standard of care.
If the results hold up in a larger, longer study planned to start later this year, it will mark a dramatic turnaround for cancer vaccines, which have been tested and failed for decades.
“It’s probably the first real data that suggests that this personalized approach to vaccination may be worth exploring further,” said Dr. Ryan Sullivan, an oncologist at Mass General Cancer Center, who was a co-author on the study.
Instead of using a vaccine to try to prevent or shrink a tumor, the new mRNA vaccines are aimed at reducing the chances of a high-risk cancer recurring.
“This represents a big shift in how we’re using cancer vaccines,” said Dr. Robert Vonderheide, who was not involved in the study but is the program committee chair of the American Association for Cancer Research’s annual meeting, where the study was presented.
The pandemic proved that mRNA vaccines, already in development for cancer, could be used safely and developed quickly, said Vonderheide, who also directs the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Benefits seen in melanoma, a cancer known to be controlled by the immune system, are likely to hold up in other cancers that are affected by the immune system, he and several other experts said. The next one to be tested will be non-small-cell lung cancer, which kills about 100,000 Americans a year.
But it made sense to try first in melanoma.
“No cancer is as immunotherapy sensitive as melanoma is,” said Dr. Rodabe Amaria, a melanoma oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who was not involved in the study. “You have to prove it in melanoma before you try it in other cancers.”
How would an mRNA cancer vaccine work?
These vaccines are designed to prevent cancer recurrences, not an initial run-in with the disease.
After surgical removal of a tumor or a separate biopsy, scientists send a sample of tissue and blood for genetic sequencing, looking for proteins that are unique to the cancer and not present in healthy tissue.
The mRNA vaccine is then designed to target 34 of these distinctive proteins, getting the immune system to recognize them and hopefully kill the cells that make them without damaging healthy tissue.
Because there are so many possible neoantigens, resulting from a patient’s own genetics and the evolution of their tumor cells, the vaccine must be bespoke, designed specifically for each person.
Researchers aren’t sure how many neoantigens to target or which are likely to offer the most benefit, “so we cram in as many potential neoantigens as possible,” said Dr. Eliav Barr, chief medical officer of Merck, which supported the trial.
Each vaccine takes about eight weeks to manufacture and is based on tumor cells removed during surgery. While the patient waits for their personalized vaccine, they start taking the drug pembrolizumab (brand name Keytruda), made by Merck, which unleashes the immune system to attack cancer.
Pembrolizumab is given as a 30-minute infusion every three weeks for a year. Patients receive two or three doses of pembrolizumab and then, when their vaccine is ready, they get nine doses along with their next nine infusions, before completing pembrolizumab.
According to findings released Sunday by the researchers, but not yet peer reviewed, among 107 volunteers who received both the experimental vaccine and pembrolizumab, the cancer returned in 24 (22%) within two years. There were 20 recurrences (40%) among the 50 people who received only pembrolizumab.
(Keytruda sells for a list price of $185,000 a year, although most people will not pay the list price, according to Merck. It’s too soon to know how much companies will charge for mRNA vaccines.)
Melanoma is diagnosed in about 100,000 Americans per year. If caught early, nearly everyone survives for at least five years, but only one-third of patients whose cancer has spread widely survive that long.
“Pembro” already dramatically decreased recurrences, but the new study showed a 44% extra benefit with the addition of the mRNA vaccine, called mRNA-4157/V940.
“We’re already reaping those benefits (from pembro), and now, in such a short period of time to have an additional therapeutic agent that builds on that progress is a very exciting thing,” Amaria said.
Side effects of mRNA vaccine for cancer
The addition of the mRNA vaccine did not seem to add substantially to the side effects already seen with pembrolizumab.
Pembro often affects the endocrine system, Amaria said, causing diabetes and potentially permanent thyroid problems. Other common side effects include exhaustion, muscle pain, rash, diarrhea, fever, cough, decreased appetite, itching, shortness of breath, constipation and nausea.
As more patients live longer with melanoma, these side effects are becoming more noticeable, Amaria said. “In some patients, the benefit goes hand-in-hand with the toxicity,” so side effects may be a sign the treatment is working.
“In some patients, we’re fundamentally changing their quality of life,” she said, but “most people do have normal lives, recovered from side effects.”
What is mRNA?
Messenger RNA carries instructions from a cell’s DNA code to the cellular machinery that manufactures proteins, telling it what to make. Delivered as a vaccine, the short-lived mRNA turns cells into factories that produce desired proteins.
With COVID, mRNA vaccines produce the spike protein found on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, training the immune system to recognize and wipe out viral cells.
In the case of these cancer vaccines, the mRNA triggers the body to produce the 34 neoantigens, training the immune system to recognize and target them.
In cancers that have spread beyond an initial tumor, surgeons can’t remove all the cancerous cells. In people with Stage 2 melanoma or above, this dangerous spread has already begun and the risk of recurrence after surgery is very high.
The vaccine should help prevent these dangerous recurrences, Barr said.
The mRNA vaccine can’t be used to prevent disease, as it is with COVID, because the neoantigens don’t exist until the tumor does, Barr said. But it appears to work well when designed to target a specific person’s cancer and hopefully providing long-term memory, so even future cancer cells will be killed.
BioNTech, the German company that helped develop the other mRNA vaccine against COVID, is also working on cancer vaccines, including against ovarian and lung cancer, as are several other companies.
It’s not really clear why an mRNA vaccine would be effective against cancer when so many other approaches have failed, several experts said. The technology may simply spur more reaction from tumors, Sullivan said.
What happens next?
The new study, launched in 2018, was relatively small and only lasted a few years, so Merck hopes to start a large, Phase 3 trial later this year. It will be open to people with Stage 2 or Stage 3 melanoma.
Amaria said she and her colleagues at MD Anderson are considering participating. Patients often come to her asking for an mRNA vaccine against their cancer, she said.
Dr. Jeffrey Weber, who led the new study and is the deputy director of the Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone, said he’s optimistic about the future of mRNA vaccines against cancer.
“It’s got a ways to go, but I do believe that these results will hold up over time,” he said.
Nandini Gupta, 19 from the state of Rajasthan has been crowned Femina Miss India World 2023. Nineteen-year-old Nandini hails from Kota, one of biggest coaching hubs in the country for engineering and medical aspirants. The beauty with brains holds a degree in Business Management, Nandini is dedicated to taking up challenges and succeeding. Nandini dreamt of competing in the Miss India pageant since she was 10 years old.
The 59th edition of India’s most prestigious pageant pulled off another season’s grand finale in a historic ceremony at the Indoor Stadium, Khuman Lampak, Imphal, Manipur — the beautiful city which played the perfect host to the mesmerizing event. Along with her, Delhi’s Shreya Poonja became the first runner-up, while Manipur’s Thounaojam Strela Luwang was crowned the 2nd runner-up.
The star-studded extravaganza celebrated the ethos of beauty in diversity and featured memorable performances by India’s heartthrobs, the ever-so-dashing Kartik Aaryan, and the very pretty Ananya Panday. Another performance that became the highlight of the evening was one put together by the former winners, Sini Shetty, Rubal Shekhawat, Shinata Chauhan, Manasa Varanasi, Manika Sheokand, Manya Singh, Suman Rao and Shivani Jadhav, who took the stage in exquisite and finely crafted lehengas from Mohey. The emcees for the evening were none other than the very witty Maniesh Paul and the very vivacious Bhumi Pednaker, who kept the engaged with impromptu antics.
The grand event featured the best in fashion in the form of multiple rounds dedicated to fashion, featuring the beautiful and intelligent winners from 30 states, showcasing stunning collections by fashion greats, Namrata Joshipura for Trends, Rocky Star and Robert Naorem, with whose help the beauties showcased impressive traditional costumes.
The state winners were judged by a panel of judges consisting of Femina Miss India Universe 2002 and Mentor Neha Dhupia, Indian boxing icon Laishram Sarita Devi, ace choreographer Terence Lewis, filmmaker and writer Harshavardhan Kulkarni and ace designers Rocky Star and Namrata Joshipura. The state winners had insightful interactions with the jury panel and answered all their questions with great determination.
Pageant aspirants from various parts of the country battled for the national title to win a platform to put their aspirations across. A nationwide hunt was organized to select representatives from 29 states (including Delhi) and a collective representative for all Union Territories (including J&K), adding up to 30 participants.
Fox News settled Dominion Voting Systems’ blockbuster defamation lawsuit just as it was about to go to trial, agreeing to pay it $787.5 million, media reports stated. “The parties have resolved this case,” Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis said in court Tuesday afternoon.
It is the largest publicly disclosed settlement for a defamation lawsuit in US history. Davis, who has been presiding over the case, previously decided to push back the start of the case one day, giving lawyers for both sides an extra day to devote to settlement discussions.
Dominion CEO John Poulos criticized Fox for broadcasting lies about the company and thanks election officials throughout the US. “Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees, and the customers that we serve,” he said. “Nothing can ever make up for that.”
In a statement, Fox News said it was “pleased to have reached a settlement” which it claimed represented a commitment to journalistic standards. “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” a Fox spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”
Fox News hosts will not be required to issue retractions or many any other statements under the terms of the agreement, a person familiar with its terms told Insider. In a press conference after Davis announced the settlement, Justin Nelson, an attorney for Dominion, said the $787.5 million payout represented “vindication and accountability.”
“People across the political spectrum can and should disagree on issues even of the most profound importance,” he said. “For our democracy to endure for another 250 years and hopefully much longer, we must share a commitment to facts.”
At the same time, on the court docket, each side slung filings arguing over technical issues that could determine how much Dominion would be able to claim in damages in the trial.
On Tuesday morning, the case still seemed headed to trial as Davis completed jury selection. Dominion and Fox each had about two dozen lawyers present in court.
But Davis extended the jurors’ lunch break by more than two hours as he retreated to his chambers — beckoning attorneys from both parties to join him — and gave rise to more speculation among the journalists assembled in court that a settlement was imminent.
Dominion filed its lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., in March 2021. It alleged the network defamed it when its hosts Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and Lou Dobbs brought on conspiracy theorist lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell as guests.
Trump hired Giuliani and Powell to challenge his loss in the 2020 election. The two spun a fantastical, false tale claiming Dominion — in cahoots with rival election technology company Smartmatic — rigged the election by switching votes from Trump to now-President Joe Biden.
Fox News hosts, Dominion alleged, either endorsed or didn’t sufficiently push back against those claims when they invited Powell and Giuliani on their shows.
In brief remarks on Tuesday afternoon, Davis thanked the jurors for their service and praised attorneys from both Fox and Dominion for their professionalism and the quality of their legal briefs. “I’ve been on the bench since 2010, and I think this is the best lawyering I’ve ever had — ever,” he said.
Fox News’s secrets have already been spilled
Two years of litigation have already dealt Fox heavy blows. In court filings leading up to the trial, Dominion shared excerpts from numerous depositions, texts, and emails from Fox’s executives, hosts, and producers. They depicted a newsroom desperately trying to stay on Trump’s good side while fending off competition from Newsmax, a further-right media network that more explicitly embraced his election lies. Fox News was more interested in protecting its viewership ratings than reporting the news, Dominion argued.
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson wrote as he lost the 2020 election. “I truly can’t wait.” Murdoch had recognized that Fox News’s audience was in Trump’s thrall and said it “would have been stupid” to alienate them. After the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, he said it was time to make Trump a “non-person.”
Throughout this period, Dominion sent Fox 3,600 fact-checking messages, which it said were widely circulated throughout the network. One executive “received Dominion’s fact check so many times that on November 14 he wrote a colleague: ‘I have it tattooed on my body at this point,'” Dominion lawyers wrote in a filing.
After being told that Dobbs ran false information about election fraud on one of his shows, one producer responded, “Jesus Christ. Does anyone do a fucking simple google search or read emails?” according to a filing. A top executive said “the North Koreans do a more nuanced show” than Dobbs.
The case has also been beset by late twists. The judge has admonished Fox’s lawyers for withholding certain discovery evidence until right before the start of the trial. And Abby Grossberg, a former producer for Carlson and Bartiromo, alleged that Fox’s attorneys coached her answers in a deposition given for Dominion’s lawsuit. “They’re activists, not journalists,” Grossberg said of Fox News producers in court filings.
It was a common sentiment on Twitter: Fox News has disgraced American democracy by pushing lies that the 2020 election was stolen, Fox’s detractors say. A reckoning in a courtroom, where a judge has no patience for falsehoods, is an important way to bring a reckoning, these people say. A settlement — on the eve of a trial, no less — would let Fox News escape accountability once again, the argument goes.Fox is not out of the woods
The prospect of shareholder lawsuits may complicate any payout to Dominion. One such lawsuit, already working its way through Delaware Chancery Court, alleges Fox Corp. breached its fiduciary duties by allowing Fox News to broadcast election lies and expose it to litigation from Smartmatic and Dominion.
A settlement, First Amendment experts say, may also make Fox the target of future defamation lawsuits from plaintiffs who believe they’ll get a payout. Murdoch already has a record of settling lawsuits: A Washington Post analysis found his companies paid out nearly $750 million over the past 13 years to settle legal claims, including sexual harassment and hacking allegations.
“Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign. Smartmatic will expose the rest,” Smartmatic attorney J. Erik Connolly said in a statement Tuesday. “Smartmatic remains committed to clearing its name, recouping the significant damage done to the company, and holding Fox accountable for undermining democracy.”
Vice President Harris has found herself at the center of multiple key policy pushes and national debates in recent weeks, giving her a significant platform as she and President Biden ready a reelection campaign.
Harris became the highest-ranking Biden administration official to visit Africa when she traveled to the continent late last month. Last week, she made a quickly arranged trip to Nashville after two Black Democrats were expelled from the state legislature for engaging in gun violence protests.
And Harris has again found herself as the administration’s leading voice on protecting reproductive rights in the face of a judge’s ruling against a popular abortion drug and a Florida ban on the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy.
“I’ve been thrilled to see her in the spotlight on these two issues in particular over the past couple of weeks here. And it makes sense as we’re really starting to focus on the reelection campaign here,” said David Thomas, a Democratic strategist who was an aide to then-Vice President Al Gore.
“These are two issues, guns and abortion, that are really such stark contrasts between Democrats and Republicans, and the fact she’s out there being really active on these outside of Washington, D.C., is exactly where she should be,” Thomas added.
Picture : Citrus County Chronicle
The vice president stepped into the foreign policy spotlight late last month when she traveled to Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia as part of a week-long trip to Africa. Harris’s presence was intended to reiterate the Biden administration’s commitment to the continent, and it was backed up by billions of dollars in government and private sector investments in bolstering economic opportunities for women and efforts to adapt to the changing climate.
The trip also took on a personal tone for Harris, who is the first African American woman to serve as vice president. After touring an old slave trading post in Ghana, she delivered somber remarks about the need to remember history and learn from it.
Upon returning to the U.S., Harris quickly found herself at the center of a major national news story when she flew to Nashville with little notice to meet with the “Tennessee Three,” a trio of state lawmakers who were targeted for expulsion because of protests over gun violence on the state House floor following a school shooting.
Former government officials were particularly impressed with how rapidly the trip came together, as Harris was on the ground speaking with lawmakers in Tennessee within 24 hours of the expulsion votes.
This week, Harris has reprised her role as the White House’s leading voice on the issue of reproductive rights, with key developments over access to abortion playing out in the courts and statehouses.
A federal judge invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of mifepristone, a popular abortion medication, in a decision the Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court, which issued a temporary stay on Friday afternoon.
Meanwhile, in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate, signed into law a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, though many women do not yet know they are pregnant by that point. Advocates have expressed concern that the Florida law will drastically limit abortion access across the South.
Harris on Wednesday hosted a meeting of the White House’s task force on reproductive health care to discuss ways to protect patient privacy. On Saturday, she appeared at a Los Angeles rally in support of reproductive rights.
On Tuesday, she will travel to Nevada for an event with actress Rosario Dawson and Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve to discuss how the fight for abortion access impacts young Americans.
“Let us clearly understand the moment we are in: a moment in which our hard-won freedoms are under attack,” Harris told a crowd of supporters Friday at the National Action Network’s convention.
A spokesperson for Harris stressed that the vice president has been active in addressing gun violence and abortion access throughout the Biden administration, noting her response to a shooting in Highland Park, Ill., and her visit to Buffalo, N.Y., after a shooting at a grocery store.
The recent stretch in the spotlight has been notable for Harris, who frequently attracts scrutiny from Republicans, particularly over her role as the White House’s point person on addressing migration from Central America.
Conservatives have repeatedly zeroed in on the influx of migrants at the southern border, placing the blame on Harris and questioning whether she’s qualified for the job.
Among Democrats, Harris’s performance has at times sparked speculation about whether Biden should consider picking a different running mate for 2024 — or if Democrats would unite behind Harris should Biden opt not to run for a second term. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) made waves in January when she was asked if Harris should remain Biden’s running mate and said she’d defer to Biden.
A March 21 survey from Monmouth University found Harris with a 36 percent approval rating, 5 percentage points lower than Biden’s in the same poll. The vice president’s approval rating in that poll among Democrats was 76 percent, 10 percentage points lower than Biden’s with the same group.
Biden and his team have repeatedly voiced public support for Harris, and some Democratic strategists and Harris allies believe the vice president has shown she can be a valuable asset when she is outside of Washington, discussing issues such as gun violence and abortion, which have proven to be key drivers of turnout for the party.
Rev. Al Sharpton, a leading civil rights activist, welcomed Harris on Friday as a keynote speaker at the National Action Network’s convention in New York, hailing her as a symbolically and substantively important politician and comparing the vice president to the Biblical figure Esther.
“She was built for this. She was born for this. She was raised for this. She can take every shot you shoot, because she’s been through shots worse than this,” Sharpton said. “She’s tough enough, she’s strong enough.”
Florida hotelier Bharat Patel, CHO, CHIA, is the new Chairman of AAHOA’s Board of Directors. Patel became chairman at the conclusion of the 2023 AAHOA Convention & Trade Show in Los Angeles, CA., which set a record level of booth sales for the Trade Show, making it the largest in AAHOA history.
“I am honored to serve America’s hotel owners as the newest AAHOA Chairman,” Patel said. “Like the theme from AAHOACON23, I look forward to honoring the past and creating a bolder future by working with AAHOA’s nearly 20,000 Members to ensure we reestablish strong partnerships with our state associations, grow the AAHOA PAC to new record levels, and make advocacy front and center to AAHOA’s mission and vision.”
Patel has been an active member of AAHOA since 2008. He served as an Ambassador for several years before his election to the Board of Directors as the Regional Director for Florida in 2015.
Bharat is a second-generation hotelier who learned the hotel business through hands-on experience at properties owned by his parents. Today, he is Partner at Gulf Coast Hospitality, a company based in Sarasota, Fla.
From a young age, I wanted to make a difference, which is why I wanted to join AAHOA,” Patel said. “AAHOA Leadership meets with legislators at the highest levels of government, and we’re doing so while simultaneously showing the industry, and beyond, that representation matters.”
Bharat plays an active role in his community and previously served on the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association Board of Directors, the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation Hotel and Restaurant Advisory Council, the Sarasota County Tourism Development Council, and the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office Advisory Board.
“Congratulations to Bharat Patel on becoming AAHOA’s newest Chairman,” said AAHOA President & CEO Laura Lee Blake. “Working alongside you as Vice Chairman over the past year has been a pleasure, and I am looking forward to all that you will accomplish in the year ahead.”
Patel is a graduate of the University of Florida and resides in Sarasota with his wife, Manisha, and their two children.
“My main focus is all about AAHOA priorities, strategic planning, and laying the path for the future of AAHOA,” Patel said. “We will continue to create educational and networking opportunities for the next generation, create new revenue streams for AAHOA, new sponsorship opportunities, and focus on how AAHOA can provide more value for our members and loyal industry partners for years to come.”
Rahul Patel of Bradenton, Florida, is the new AAHOA Secretary. Patel is the Proprietor of Wisdom Group, LLC.
AAHOA Members also elected the following ten members to the Board of Directors:
Arkansas Regional Director: Danny (Chintu) Patel
Florida Regional Director: Chetan (Chris) Patel
Georgia Regional Director: Vikesh (Vik) Zaver
Greater Los Angeles Area Regional Director: Naresh (ND) Bhakta
North Central Regional Director: Bhavesh N. Patel
North Pacific Regional Director: Ankit Panchal
North Texas Regional Director: Dhiren Masters
Director at Large Western Division: Nalin (Neil) Patel
Young Professional Director Eastern Division: Dylan Patel
Women Hoteliers Director Eastern Division: Purnima Patel
“Congratulations to our new AAHOA Secretary, Rahul Patel, and all of our newly elected board members. It is truly encouraging to see so many members volunteering to serve America’s hotel owners,” said incoming AAHOA Chairman Bharat Patel. “Together, we are continuing to showcase the value and importance of AAHOA, the largest hotel owners association in the world, and I am thrilled to start working alongside the new AAHOA Officers, our Board of Directors, and the entire AAHOA Team.”
“Congratulations to Rahul Patel and to all our newly elected board members. These individuals are excellent additions to the Board of Directors of America’s premier hotel owners association,” said AAHOA President & CEO Laura Lee Blake. “I am thankful for their dedication to our members and to the hospitality industry, and it is truly an honor to work with our Officers, Board of Directors, and the entire AAHOA team as we continue to lead this industry as the largest hotel owners association in the world.”
AAHOA is the largest hotel owners association in the nation, with Member-owned properties representing a significant part of the U.S. economy. AAHOA’s 20,000 members own 60% of the hotels in the United States and are responsible for 1.7% of the nation’s GDP. More than one million employees work at AAHOA member-owned hotels, earning $47 billion annually, and member-owned hotels support 4.2 million U.S. jobs across all sectors of the hospitality industry. AAHOA’s mission is to advance and protect the business interests of hotel owners through advocacy, industry leadership, professional development, member benefits, and community engagement.
The pink auto has again taken the route of the US Embassy in India and this time, dropped off America’s ambassador Eric Garcetti has taken over as the new envoy. Garcetti, who arrived in India on Tuesday, April 11, 2023, came in a “pink auto” and met all the members of the Embassy, according to the video shared by US Embassy in India on its official Twitter account.
“Excitement fills the air as we welcome Ambassador-Designate Eric Garcetti to India! We are excited to personally greet him and confident the U.S.-India partnership will advance through his leadership. #USIndiaTogether,” US Embassy in India tweeted.
On Garcetti’s arrival in India, Indian Embassy in the US tweeted, “Namaste, Ambassador-Designate Eric Garcetti! We’re thrilled to welcome you to #IncredibleIndia and work with you to build even stronger ties between our two great nations.”
On March 24, Garcetti was sworn in by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris as the new US Ambassador to India, after the U.S. Senate on March 15 confirmed the nomination of the former mayor of Los Angeles.
Garcetti, who is a close ally of Joe Biden, was nominated for the post by the US president in 2021. But his appointment was held up after allegations that he had overlooked accusations of sexual harassment against an aide when he was mayor. Garcetti denies any wrongdoing.
The US has not had an ambassador to India since January 2021 even though the two countries have strong security and trade ties.
Garcetti won the mandate by a vote of 52 to 42, a major victory for US President Joe Biden as well, who stuck by his political ally in the face of the allegations and the prolonged process that has left the world’s most populous democracies without US representatives.
After the result, Garcetti said in a statement, “I’m thrilled with today’s outcome, which was a decisive and bipartisan decision to fill a critical post that has been vacant for far too long. Now the hard work begins.”
Garcetti’s appointment also comes at a time when Russia has become a major irritant between Delhi and Washington. India’s neutral stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has frustrated the US. Delhi has not explicitly condemned the war but has talked about the importance of “the UN Charter, international law, and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states”.
India is also the biggest market for Russian military equipment and continues to import huge quantities of crude oil from the country, ignoring bans in the US and parts of Europe. “The United States-India relationship is extremely important,” Senator Chuck Schumer said after a test vote on Wednesday. “It’s a very good thing we now have an ambassador.”
A graduate of Columbia University, Garcetti was an officer in the US Navy for 12 years before he made his foray into politics. In 2013, he became the youngest mayor of LA in 100 years and the first Jewish person to be elected for the role. He held the post until 2022.
“I’m deeply grateful to President Biden and the White House for the confidence and support throughout this process, and to all Senators on both sides of the aisle — whether they voted for me or not — for their thoughtful consideration. I’m ready and eager to begin my service representing our critical interests in India,” he added.
India’s ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu was conferred the ‘Sikh Hero Award’ along with other eminent Sikh Americans by Sikhs of America at an event organized in Washington DC on April 8, 2023.
Commenting on the honor, the seasoned bureaucrat expressed his gratitude and remembered the tenets of Sikhism. “Delighted to receive Hero Award from Sikhs of America. Spoke about important tenets of Sikhism: seva, brotherhood, equality, inclusion & honesty. Highlighted the strengthening of US-India partnership and tech and infra transformation taking place in India and huge opportunities for the youth,” he tweeted after the event.
Refering to the recent acts by Sikh separists, Sandhu said, “Khalsa, which was created on the Baisakhi day, by Guru Gobind Singh is a uniting and not a dividing force.”
The ambassador also highlighted the Sikh community’s valuable contribution in different sectors including the economy, health and entrepreneurship, according to a release. In his call to Punjab and the youth in Punjab to connect with the multi-dimensional revolution happening in India, he underlined,“The government, people and in particular the youth must take advantage of the expanding partnership with the US in various fields that Prime Minister Modi and President Biden are trying to put in place.”
In his opening statement, the chairman of Sikhs of America, Jasdip Singh Jassee shared the contributions of the recipients of the ‘Sikh Hero Award’ in their respective fields and said that violence has no place in society.
Former New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Singh Grewal, entrepreneur and philanthropist Darshan Singh Dhaliwal, former Hoboken Mayor Ravi Singh Bhalla, and entrepreneur Manraj Singh Kahlon were earlier awarded the ‘Sikh Hero Award.’ Late Sikh police officer Sandeep Dhaliwal was also presented the award posthumously.
Singer Dhvani Bhanushali, who is known for her tracks like ‘Vaaste’, ‘Ishare Tere’ and ‘Leja Re’, has clocked 1.5 billion views for her song ‘Vaaste’ on YouTube.
Among the Indian songs that have crossed the 1 billion milestone are the devotional song ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ topping the list followed by regional songs like the Punjabi song ‘Lehanga’ and a Haryanvi song ’52 Gaj Ka Daman’ making Dhvani’s song the fourth most viewed song nationwide.
This has made Dhvani the youngest Indian musician to achieve the milestone. ‘Vaaste’ has been composed by Tanishk Bagchi and written by Arafat Mehmood, with Nikhil D’Souza featuring as the co-singer, the music video is directed by Radhika Rao and Vinay Sapru.
Expressing her gratitude, Dhvani said: “‘Vaaste’ is like that magical thing that happened in my life. I’ll always be grateful to all the people who have watched it more than a billion times on YouTube. It was the team of Tanishk, Arafat, Nikhil, Radhika Ma’am, Vinay Sir and Siddharth that we could break so many records back then and even today. Most importantly it’s all the love and support by the audiences; it only inspires me to work harder and create more magic. I want to thank everyone who was involved in making this beautiful song with me, our mark will live on forever.”
Dhvani made her debut in the pop world with ‘Ishare Tere’ and followed it up with another hit, ‘Leja Re’. However, it was ‘Vaaste’ that catapulted her to the A-list of Indian musicians.
The song became a massive hit and was also listed among the top 10 most-liked music videos globally, with Dhvani featuring as the only Indian music artist in YouTube Rewind 2019. The song was released under the label of T-Series. (IANS)
US pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson has proposed to pay almost $9 billion to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits the company faces in North America over claims that its baby powder and other talc-based products cause cancer, the media reported.
The healthcare giant said it still believed the claims were “specious” but was hoping the new settlement offer would help conclude its legal battle, the BBC reported.
The figure marks a big boost over the $2 billion it had proposed previously. The new offer has significant support from people tied to the case, it said.
The company is facing more than 40,000 lawsuits from former customers who say using its talc-based baby powder caused cancer, including some who allege the product contained cancer-causing asbestos.
It stopped US sales of its talc-based baby powder in 2020, citing “misinformation” that had sapped demand for the product, applied to prevent nappy rash and for other cosmetic uses, including dry shampoo.
Last year, it announced plans to end sales globally. Before that decision, the company had sold the baby powder for almost 130 years. It continues to sell a version of the product that contains cornstarch.
The company has been trying to resolve the lawsuits in bankruptcy court since 2021, after creating a subsidiary responsible for the claims.
But its efforts ran into trouble after an earlier bankruptcy court ruling found the subsidiary was not in financial distress and could not use the bankruptcy system to resolve the lawsuits.
“The company continues to believe that these claims are specious and lack scientific merit,” said Erik Haas, worldwide vice president of litigation for Johnson & Johnson.
“Resolving this matter through the proposed reorganisation plan is both more equitable and more efficient, allows claimants to be compensated in a timely manner, and enables the company to remain focused on our commitment to profoundly and positively impact health for humanity.”
Johnson & Johnson said it had won a majority of the talc lawsuits against it. But it has been stuck with some significant losses, including one decision in which 22 women were awarded a judgement of more than $2 billion.
The company said it had commitments from about 60,000 current claimants to support the new settlement terms. (IANS)
Following the immense success of Pathaan, Yash Raj Films (YRF) will be producing a film starring Bollywood heavyweights Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan. The news was shared by Bollywood trade analyst, Taran Adarsh on Twitter, who revealed that the film will be directed by Pathaan director Siddharth Anand.
Touted to be the biggest Bollywood film till date, Tiger VS Pathaan is expected to go on floors in 2024. According to media reports, the film is part of the YRF Spy Universe, which is centered on a series of spy action-thriller films, featuring various fictional RAW agents duch as Tiger (Salman Khan) in Ek Tha Tiger, Kabir (Hrithik Roshan) in WAR and Pathaan(SRK) in Pathaan.
The upcoming movie will mark the onscreen return of Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan in USAlead roles after their last performance together in the 1995 film Karan Arjun. Since then, the duo collaborated on and off on movies, making special appearances in each other’s films, including their latest Tiger, Pathaan, Zero, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, and Hum Tumhare Hai Sanam. According to the media, Shah Rukh is said to be appearing in a cameo in Salman and Katrina Kaif’s third instalment of the Tiger franchise. Salman Khan’s Tiger 3 will feature Emraan Hashmi playing the role of an antagonist. The film will hit the theatres on November 10.
The Huanan seafood and wildlife market in China has been a focal point in the search for the origin of the coronavirus that has impacted the world as none other in the past three years. People around the world have been seeking to identify the origin of the deadly virus.
Now a research team in China has published analysis of samples taken more than three years ago from the market linked to the outbreak of Covid-19. This is the first peer-reviewed study of biological evidence gathered from the market back in 2020.
By linking the virus with animals sold in the market, it could open new lines of inquiry into how the outbreak began. The research reveals swabs that tested positive for the virus also contained genetic material from wild animals.
Some scientists say this is further evidence that the disease was initially transmitted from an infected animal to a human. But others have urged caution in interpreting the findings and it remains unclear why it took three years for the genetic content of the samples to be made public.
The Chinese research team posted an early version of their study online back in February 2022, but they did not publish the full genetic information that was contained in the samples gathered from the market.
This new analysis, which has been validated by other scientists before being published in the journal Nature, includes more important detail about the content of those samples, which were collected from stalls, surfaces, cages and machinery inside the market. Before the 2020 outbreak, scientists took photos of animals, including racoon dogs, being sold in the Huanan market
The Chinese research team’s paper showed that some samples – collected from areas where wildlife was being sold – had tested positive for the virus. Their analysis also showed that animals now known to be susceptible to the virus, particularly raccoon dogs, were being sold alive in those locations.
But the Chinese researchers have pointed out that their discoveries fall short of definitive proof of how the outbreak started. “These environmental samples cannot prove that the animals were infected,” the paper explains. The possibility remains, it adds, that the virus was brought into the market by an infected person, rather than an animal.
Prof David Robertson, from the University of Glasgow, is a virologist who has been involved in the genetic investigation into the origin of SARS-CoV-2 since it emerged in 2020. He told BBC News: “The most important thing is that this very important dataset is now published and available for others to work on.”
But he added that the contents of the samples were “compelling evidence that animals there were probably infected with the virus. It’s the whole body of evidence that’s important,” he said. “When you bring this together with the fact that the early Covid-19 cases in Wuhan are linked to the market, it’s strong evidence that this is where a spillover from an animal in the market occurred.”
According to BBC, the published findings come amid signs that the lab leak theory is gaining ground among authorities in the US. The Chinese government has strenuously denied suggestions that the virus originated in a scientific facility, but the FBI said it now believes that scenario is the “most likely”, as does the US Department of Energy.
Various US departments and agencies have investigated the mystery and produced differing conclusions, but on March 1st, the FBI’s director accused Beijing of “doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate”, and disclosed the bureau had been convinced of the lab leak theory “for quite some time now”.
The FBI has not made their findings public, which has frustrated some scientists. The lead researcher of the new report, from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) in Beijing, has been contacted by the BBC for comment.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, 69-year-old son of assassinated Senator Robert F Kennedy and nephew of President John F Kennedy has filed election paperwork to run for US president in 2024 as a Democrat.
The environmental lawyer’s campaign treasurer, John E Sullivan, confirmed the filing on April 5thm 2023. Kennedy is an outspoken anti-vaccine campaigner. Instagram removed his account in 2021 for “repeatedly sharing debunked claims”, the company said.
Both Democratic and Republican parties hold their own contests – called primaries – to find their presidential nominee. Kennedy will be a rank outsider for the Democratic nomination.
President Joe Biden has indicated he will run for re-election, though he has not yet formally declared his candidacy. He was previously expected to launch his campaign in early April, but aides say his timeline has shifted. CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, has reported that he is expected to formally announce a run in early summer. Last month, another Democrat, Marianne Williamson, joined the presidential race.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump was first to declare his candidacy and he has been joined by others including former US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley.
In March, Kennedy said on Twitter he was considering a run for president At the time, he said: “If I run, my top priority will be to end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power that has ruined our economy, shattered the middle class, polluted our landscapes and waters, poisoned our children, and robbed us of our values and freedoms.” Kennedy told a New Hampshire crowd in March that he had “passed the biggest hurdle” – his wife greenlighting the run.
As the co-founder of an environmental law firm, Kennedy won plaudits for campaigning on issues such as clean water, including working to clean up the Hudson River in New York. But his anti-vaccine views go back years and have provoked a strong backlash, including from his own family. In 2021 his sister, Kerry Kennedy, called him “very dangerous” on the issue.
In 2019, three other family members penned an op-ed in the news outlet Politico, denouncing Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views. His sister Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, brother Joseph P Kennedy II and niece Maeve Kennedy McKean said his views were “tragically wrong” and have “deadly consequences”.
In 2022, Facebook and Instagram removed accounts for an anti-vaccine group founded by Mr Kennedy, Children’s Health Defense, for “repeatedly” violating company policies on medical misinformation.
Although Kennedy’s vaccine scepticism long predates Covid, he found a new audience during the pandemic, when revenues to Children’s Health Defense doubled to $6.8m (£5.5m). Kennedy also published a book, The Real Anthony Fauci, in which he accused the former US infectious disease chief of “a historic coup d’etat against Western democracy”.
He also invoked Nazi Germany during an anti-vaccine speech in Washington, DC last year. Kennedy has a voice disorder, spasmodic dysphonia, which affects the muscles in his voice box. He married actress Cheryl Hines in 2014 and lives in Los Angeles, California. (Courtesy: BBC)
Long-time Mideast rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia took another significant step toward reconciliation last week, formally restoring diplomatic ties after a seven-year rift, affirming the need for regional stability and agreeing to pursue economic cooperation.
The agreement was reached in Beijing during a meeting between the Iranian and Saudi foreign ministers, a month after China had brokered an initial reconciliation agreement between the two regional powerhouses.
Picture : TOI
The latest understanding further lowers the chance of armed conflict between the rivals, both directly and in proxy conflicts around the region. It could bolster efforts by diplomats to end a long war in Yemen, a conflict in which both Iran and Saudi Arabia are deeply entrenched.
The announcement also represents another diplomatic victory for the Chinese as Gulf Arab states perceive the United States slowly withdrawing from the wider region.
But it remains to be seen how far the reconciliation efforts will progress. The rivalry dates back to the 1979 revolution that toppled Iran’s Western-backed monarchy, and in recent years the two countries have backed rival armed groups and political factions across the region.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian laid out details of the agreement in a tweet, after his talks with Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud. The minister wrote that Thursday marked the beginning of “official diplomatic relations … economic and commercial cooperation, the reopening of embassies and consulates general, and the emphasis on stability, stable security and development of the region.” Amirabdollahian said that the issues are “agreed upon and on the common agenda.”
The official Iranian news agency, IRNA, said that in addition to reopening embassies in the two capitals, diplomatic missions would start operating in two other major cities — Mashhad in Iran and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The report said both sides also agreed to study the prospects of resuming flights and official and private visits between the two nations, in addition to how to facilitate the visa process for their people.
China’s Foreign Ministry last month reported that both sides had agreed to reopen their embassies and missions within two months. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the two foreign ministers signed a joint statement and expressed their determination to improve ties in line with their talks in Beijing last month.
The state-run Saudi Press Agency carried a brief news item on the meeting, saying “discussions were held on joint relations and ways to enhance cooperation in many fields,” with both sides aiming to “enhance the security, stability, and prosperity of the two countries and peoples.”
Thursday’s talks in Beijing marked the first formal meeting of senior diplomats from the two nations since 2016, when the kingdom broke ties with Iran after protesters invaded Saudi diplomatic posts there. Saudi Arabia had executed a prominent Shiite cleric with 46 others days earlier, triggering the demonstrations.
The warming of ties shows that “regional countries have the will and ability to take the lead” in maintaining peace, Mao said at the briefing. She said China is ready to support both sides in fostering good relations, urging the international community to help the Middle Eastern countries resolve their differences. “The colonial hegemonic tactics of stirring up contradictions, creating estrangement and division should be rejected by the people all over the world,” she said.
The United States has welcomed diplomatic progress between Saudi Arabia, with which it has a close but complicated alliance, and Iran, which it considers a regional menace. But U.S. officials have also expressed skepticism about whether Iran will change its behavior.
“If this dialogue leads to concrete actions by Iran to curb its destabilizing activities in the region, including the proliferation of dangerous weapons, then of course, we would welcome that,” said Vedant Patel, the principal deputy State Department spokesman.
While the reopening of embassies would mark a major step forward, the extent of the rapprochement could depend on peace efforts in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has been at war with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels since 2015, following the rebels’ capture of the capital and much of northern Yemen.
Saudi Arabia is also deeply suspicious of Iran’s nuclear program, which has advanced significantly since the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from a 2015 agreement with world powers to curb Iran’s atomic activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
“I know from my conversations with the Saudis, they are going to be watching the Yemen space,” Tim Lenderking, the Biden administration’s envoy for Yemen, told a think-tank audience in Washington earlier this week.
“If the Iranians want to show that they’re really turning a corner on the conflict, then there won’t be smuggling of weapons to the Houthis anymore in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.” He pointed to alleged Iranian involvement in smuggling narcotics as well.
Lenderking cited Iran’s support for an ongoing truce there as a recent positive sign, and called on Iran to support political efforts for a lasting peace agreement.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the restoration of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran is “a very important development” to increase stability in the region, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Thursday.
Five Indian Americans are in Barron’s fourth annual list of the 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance for achieving positions of prominence in the financial-services industry and are helping to shape its future.
The list includes Anu Aiyengar of JP Morgan, Rupal J. Bhansali of Ariel Investments, Meena Lakdawala-Flynn of Goldman Sachs Group, Sonal Desai from Franklin Templeton and Savita Subramanian of BofA Securities.
Aiyengar is the global head of Mergers and Acquisitions at JP Morgan — a role she assumed in January after serving as co-head of the division since 2020. She offers clients equal measures of expertise and steadiness when navigating challenging markets.
According to Barron’s, she “has long credited her love of number crunching, legal contracts, and building client relationships for bringing her to the mergers-and-acquisitions sphere”.
Bhansali, 55, chief investment officer and portfolio manager of Ariel Investments’ global equity strategies, sees the current state of the market as a time when investors should reposition their portfolios, because what worked in the past is “unlikely to work in the next decade”.
She believes that managing money is what she was born to do, and is passionate about encouraging women to work in finance.
Desai, 58, became the first woman chief investment officer in Franklin Templeton’s history in 2018. She oversees $137 billion in assets. She joined the firm in 2009 after working for the International Monetary Fund, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, and Thames River Capital.
Lakdawala-Flynn, Co-Head, Global Private Wealth Management, Goldman Sachs Group, wears several hats, including co-chairing the global inclusion and diversity committee. She did an internship at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group, working on the institutional equity sales desk.
According to Barron’s, her career in finance began soon after a sports injury. A zealous gymnast who at one point wanted to compete in the Olympics, Lakdawala-Flynn had to stay at George Washington University one summer to rehabilitate her knee.
Subramanian is head of US equity and quantitative strategy at Bank of America Securities. She is responsible for recommending US sector allocations for equities and determining forecasts for the S&P 500 and other major US indices, as well as developing and marketing the firm’s quantitative equity strategy to institutional and individual clients.
Barron’s is a leading source of financial news, providing in-depth analysis and commentary on stocks, investments and how markets are moving across the world.
The Water Bank Foundation (WBF) Trust, a non-profit, held five events at the United Nations World Water Day conference which falls annually on March 22.
The WBF Trust introduced 100 top innovations from India around World Water Day, related to water conservation, according to an April 3, 2023, press release from the organization.
The events included the global launch of next generation drinking water purifier, kick-starting tech enabled mission BarterWATER for sustainability, as well as virtual events to boost the role of social institutions like Academia & Panchayat for water action.
Picture : American Bazaar
The webinars in conjunction with the UN 2023 Water Conference, “allowed almost 250 experts to brainstorm to align to boost UN’s recognized Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) via India’s local self-governance model – Panchayat,” the press release said.
More than 30 academics, politicians, world leaders, and industry professionals took part in the March 24 sessions in New York, highlighting the “benefits of Healing Water Meditation, to highlight the importance of water within us, and around us.”
The global launch of OáS Well Drinking Water Purifier, a leap in clean-water technology, part of the Top 100 innovations in India, topped the list of innovations in WASH (Global Water, Sanitation and Hygiene). The day ended with the introduction of Water Bank Foundation’s flagship mission, BarterWATER for sustainability, “to make water the basis of a local-sustainable economy, and to use drinking water as the basis to boost the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
At the live event, Rajat Gupta, chairman of WHEELS Global Foundation and Ruyintan (Ron) Mehta, president of WIN Foundation, signed an MOU with VAS Bros. Enterprises Pvt. Ltd., (Organic Aqua Solutions) in an effort to pilot a sustainable model for Arsenic-mitigation, in one panchayat (a cluster of Arsenic-poisoned villages) in Bihar.
“Apart from providing a sustainable solution to avail arsenic-free, pure, safe, and healthy drinking water to the villagers, we aim to demonstrate a robust rural WASH model using bartering water for the behavior change in sanitation,” Saket Kumar, president and managing trustee of Water Bank Foundation Trust, is quoted saying in the press release.
Founded by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumni, WGF focuses on their six pillars; water, health, education, energy, livelihood, and sustainability while WIN Foundation supports and facilitates innovation in the areas of Water and Sanitation (WatSan) and Maternal and Child Health (MCH), primarily in India and apply it in empowering and improving the lives of underprivileged sections in a sustainable manner.
The final UN event hosted by Water Bank Foundation focused on highlighting the role of academia to boost sustainable technology development, an event in which more than a dozen water action agenda commitments were taken by WBF, and its partner organizations.
The Committee for Yoga/Meditation Stamp has been campaigning with US Postal Service since 2016, when I and a few friends joined to establish the organization. We have yet to see concrete results of that campaign. However, last year in a response dated May 26, 2022, the USPS informed the Committee that this topic remains under consideration as a possible future postage stamp. This topic will remain under consideration until the Citizen’s Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC) assigns it to a program year.
We must press ahead to expand our lobbying for this ancient Indian practice, make it a household name, even though by now it is more popular in America than ever before.
Yoga is time-tested, scientifically embraced and globally accepted. Additionally, it has wide support and is of national interest. American physicians’ organizations like the American Medical Association, and Fortune 500 companies have advised and allowed its practice to their patients and employees for better physical and emotional well-being.
Many experienced people have made Yoga instruction their career. Higher educational institutions from Harvard, to Toronto and around the world have verified and approved the practice of Yoga.
Currently, 20-25% of the U.S. population with mental health issues can benefit from Yoga.
According to my estimate from research, 40 million Americans practice Yoga regularly, and an overwhelming number of Caucasian women are in that group.
I am a Doctor. I practice Yoga every day and I see the benefits of it. And the need for Yoga was heightened during the pandemic, during which I believe more people have used it and found it beneficial. And correctly so.
Our Committee has an ongoing online petition campaign on Change.org, and so far close to 500 people have sent petitions to USPS through that. And through snail-mail, we have received thousands of letters in support, and have forwarded them periodically to USPS.
We want to keep the pressure on. We have tried to make it so simple to sign on to the petition by just going on Google with the words – ‘Yoga stamp petition’
I also periodically attach articles from newspapers, magazines, etc., that speak of the benefits of Yoga, to the USPS.
Our Committee has also approached lawmakers, including the so-called ‘Samosa Caucus,’ of Indian-American elected leaders in Congress.
We need to do more. That is why I decided to write this appeal to our Indian-American and South Asian community – to join the campaign and approach your lawmakers and other influencers become part of the petition drive to the USPS, about issuing a Yoga stamp.
Yoga is an ascetic discipline, a part of which, rendering breath control, simple meditation and adoption of specific bodily posture, is widely practiced for health, relaxation, well-being and tranquility. It also leads to a life of self-discipline useful for holistic health of individuals and the world.
The committee requests all those in support of this campaign to write to the CSAC (Citizen’s Stamp Advisory Committee), 475 L’Enfant Plaza SW # 3300 Washington, DC 20260-3501, or find us easily on Change.org to sign the petition. For further information, please call (301) 477-2990. (Dr. Shailendra Kumar, Chairman of the Committee for Yoga/Meditation Stamp.)
Ahead of the global debut of the streaming spy series ‘Citadel’, Priyanka Chopra Jonas is getting into business with Amazon Studios again, this time with John Cena and Idris Elba in ‘Heads of State’. The movie’s cameras roll in May.
‘Nobody’ filmmaker Ilya Naishuller is directing off a script by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec, with an initial draft by Harrison Query based on Query’s original idea, reports Deadline.
Plot details are being kept under wraps, but the film, which we first told you about, is being described as Air Force One meets Midnight Run. Producers are the Safran Company’s Peter Safran and John Rickard. EPs are Cena, Elba and Marcus Viscidi.
As per ‘Deadline’, in February 2021, Priyanka became a New York Times bestselling author with her memoir ‘Unfinished’. She’ll be starring with Richard Madden in Prime Video’s ‘Citadel’, set to begin streaming on April 28.
On the film side, she will next star in Sony’s ‘Love Again’ and most recently starred in Netflix’s Oscar-nominated feature ‘The White Tiger’, which she also executive produced.
Chopra Jonas’ production banner Purple Pebble Pictures is currently under a first-look film and TV deal with Amazon Studios and has also partnered with Paramount Global to create original content focused on diversity and inclusion for its entertainment and youth channels.
The who’s who of the arts and entertainment world, both Indian and international, gathered for the grand inauguration of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) at the Jio World Gardens, Bandra-Kurla Complex, Mumbai, on Friday evening.
The Ambani family was in full attendance at the opening of Nita Ambani’s dream cultural project — Mukesh Ambani arrived with his daughter Esha and her father-in-law, Dilip Piramal, Akash Ambani came with wife Shloka Mehta, and Anant Ambani with fiancee Radhika Merchant.
Picture : India Forums
Topping the list of A-list attendees were ‘Euphoria’ star Zendaya in a flowing sultry deep blue sari with a playful floral border and gold-embellished blouse and supermodel Gigi Hadid, who exuded in the words of ‘Vogue’, “a modern Devdas look with an ivory and gold sari”, with a gold bangle stack and jewelled blouse to complete the look. Zendaya’s significant other, ‘Spider-Man’ Tom Holland, stuck to a black suit and bow tie.
The red carpet saw a procession of celebrities, from ‘Citadel’ star Priyanka Chopra and her husband Nick Jonas, who had landed in Mumbai on Friday afternoon, along with their daughter Malti Marie, and cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar (with wife Anjali and daughter Sara), to Bollywood’s Great Khans — Shah Rukh (with wife Gauri, Aaryan and Suhana), Salman, Aamir (dressed down in casual kurta and blue jeans, and with his many children).
The A-plus list included ‘Thalaivar’ Rajinikanth, who came in tees, jeans and sandals, Uddhav, Rashmi and Aditya Thackeray, celebrated sculptor Jeff Coons, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and daughter Aaradhya, ‘Never Have I Ever’ star Poorna Jagannathan, and the American supermodel Gigi Hadid.
Giving them competition in getting paparazzi attention were Saif Ali Khan and Kareena (striking in red), Ranveer Singh and Deepika (looking lovingly into each other’s eyes for the cameras), Alia Bhatt (with Mahesh Bhatt and Soni Razdan), Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput, Sidharth Malhotra and Kiara Advani, Ektaa Kapoor with father Jeetendra and brother Tusshar, Varun Dhawan, Kriti Sanon and Sonam Kapoor.
The centre opens with an exhibition titled ‘Sangam/Confluence’, which features the works of artists Bharti Kher, Bhupen Khakhar, Ranjani Shettar, Ratheesh T., and Shantibai, and international trend-setters such as Anselm Kiefer, Cecily Brown, Francesco Clemente, Lynda Benglis, and Raqib Shaw.
The second opening exhibition is centred around the world of fashion and history. Curated by Hamish Bowles, global editor-at-large, ‘Vogue’, and designed by Patrick Kinmonth and Rooshad Shroff, the exhibition will showcase Western couture inspired by India.
The Centre’s opening will also feature the expansive musical, ‘Civilization to Nation: The Journey of Our Nation’. Playwright and director Feroz Abbas Khan has put up this kaleidoscopic narration of Indian history and culture told through the Natya Shastra, the ancient Sanskrit treatise on the performing arts. This performance boasts over 700 performers and will feature dance, music, and puppetry.
The United States of America (USA) and United Arab Emirates (UAE) have qualified for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup Qualifier after finishing in the top two places of the six-team ICC Mens Cricket World Cup Qualifier Play-off in Namibia.
USA finished on top of the table with four wins from five matches, ahead of the UAE on head-to-head, who scored a final-day win over Jersey to level with the USA on points. Hosts Namibia and Canada put in some strong performances but fell just short of progressing with three wins each from their five games.
“It’s a great feeling to be able to progress to the Qualifiers in Zimbabwe, even though we see this as a big accomplishment for USA Cricket, we the players also know that it’s going to require lots of improvements for us to compete with the bigger teams.
The players and support staff has worked tirelessly prior and during this event, and the hard work paid off. As I said prior to the play-offs, we have an opportunity to play in two World Cups in less than twelve months, and this group continues to believe and work towards that goal,” USA captain Monank Patel was quoted as saying by the ICC.
The USA and UAE will now be vying with eight other teams during the qualifier tournament in Zimbabwe for two places in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup to be held in India in October-November.
In the qualifying tournament, the three automatic qualifiers from ICC CWC League 2 — Scotland, Oman and Nepal will be present in addition to the bottom five-placed teams in the ICC ODI Super League.
Currently, Netherlands, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, West Indies are confirmed to feature at the Qualifier in Zimbabwe, while Ireland must beat Bangladesh 3-0 in their upcoming Super League series to leapfrog South Africa and gain direct entry to the World Cup.
“We are absolutely delighted to confirm our spot for the qualifiers in Zimbabwe. Heading into the tournament in Namibia, we had a clear objective of delivering our best and playing positive and fearless cricket. I want to thank the players and our entire support staff for their untiring efforts that have resulted in our success.
Our batters have been exceptional for us recently and the bowlers and fielders have backed them up really well. The entire team needs to perform at the same level and display the same commitment and passion for us to excel in Zimbabwe,” said Mohammad Waseem, UAE captain.
Namibia’s Gerhard Erasmus was named Player of the Tournament in the qualifier play-off, with 279 runs in five games at an average of 69.75. USA’s Ali Khan topped the wicket charts with 16 wickets at an average of 12.37. (IANS)
The global economy is heading for the weakest period of growth since 1990 as higher interest rates set by the world’s top central banks drive up borrowing costs for households and businesses, the head of the International Monetary Fund has warned, a media outlet reported.
Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, said that a sharp slowdown in the world economy last year after the aftershocks of the Covid pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine would continue in 2023, and risked persisting for the next five years, The Guardian reported.
In a curtain raiser speech before the fund’s spring meetings in Washington DC next week, she said that the global growth would remain about 3 per cent over the next five years – its lowest medium-term growth forecast since 1990.
“This makes it even harder to reduce poverty, heal the economic scars of the Covid crisis and provide new and better opportunities for all,” Georgieva said.
In a downbeat assessment as the world grapples with the worst inflation shock in decades, she said economic activity was slowing across advanced economies in particular. While there was some momentum from developing nations – including China and India – low-income countries were also suffering from higher borrowing costs and falling demand for their exports, the media outlet reported.
Ahead of the IMF publishing revised economic forecasts next week, Georgieva said global growth in 2022 had collapsed by almost half since the initial rebound from the Covid pandemic in 2021, sliding from 6.1 per cent to 3.4 per cent. With high inflation, rising borrowing costs and mounting geopolitical tensions, she said global growth was on track to drop below 3 per cent in 2023 and remain weak for years to come.
As many as 90 per cent of advanced economies would experience a decline in their growth rate this year, she warned, with activity in the US and the eurozone hit by higher interest rates, it added.
Comparing the challenge to “climbing one ‘great hill’ after another”, Georgieva said there were still more problems to overcome: “First was Covid, then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, inflation and a cost of living crisis that hit everyone.”
“So far, we have proven to be resilient climbers. But the path ahead – and especially the path back to robust growth – is rough and foggy, and the ropes that hold us together may be weaker now than they were just a few years ago,” she was quoted as saying by the media outlet. (IANS)
Your phone rings and it’s someone claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service. Ominously, they say the police will be knocking on your door in minutes if you don’t pay your taxes right then and there.
Don’t fall for it. It’s not the IRS getting in touch with you.
Since 2018, more than 75,000 victims have lost $28 million to scammers impersonating the IRS over the phone, email, texts and more.
That’s according to data from the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces consumer protection laws, including those against fraud. The true number is almost certainly even higher, including reports to other agencies and victims who don’t make reports. And there are other types of tax scams altogether, like phony tax preparers and tax identity theft.
“Email and text scams are relentless, and scammers frequently use tax season as a way of tricking people,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a news release last month.
As Tax Day approaches, here’s how the IRS actually contacts taxpayers and how you can spot imposters.
How the IRS will really contact you
“If the IRS contacts you, they’re never going to contact you first via email or telephone — they’re going to contact you in writing a letter,” says Christopher Brown, an attorney at the FTC.
A call or a visit usually only happens after several letters, the IRS says — so unless you’ve ignored a bunch of letters about your unpaid taxes, that caller claiming to be from the IRS is probably lying.
The IRS won’t threaten to have the police arrest you or demand that you make an immediate payment with a specific payment type, like a prepaid debit card. “That’s a sure sign that it’s a scam,” Brown says.
Taxpayers can always question or appeal what they owe, according to the IRS. Caller ID can be faked, so don’t think it’s real just because the caller ID says IRS, Brown says.
If you think a caller claiming to be from the IRS might be real, the IRS says you should ask them for their name, badge number and callback number, which you can verify with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration by calling 1-800-366-4484. Then, you can either call the IRS back or report the scammer here.
What scams often look like
Aggressive and threatening scam phone calls impersonating the IRS have been a problem for years. Callers demand immediate payment, often via a specific payment method, and threaten arrest, driver’s license revocation and even deportation if you fail to pay up or provide sensitive personal information.
There isn’t data on the most common contact methods specifically for IRS imposter scams, but for government imposter scams overall, phone calls are the most common, Brown says.
These scams spread into emails and texts. Known as phishing and smishing scams, respectively, they were featured on this year’s “Dirty Dozen” list, an IRS campaign to raise awareness about tax scams.
“People should be incredibly wary about unexpected messages like this that can be a trap, especially during filing season,” Werfel, the IRS commissioner, said.
People get texts or emails that say “Your account has been put on hold” or “Unusual Activity Report” with a fake link to solve the problem. Clicking on links in scam emails or texts can lead to identity theft or ransomware getting installed on your phone or computer.
But scammers are always evolving. “Initially what we saw more was the threat with a demand that you make a payment, but then there was that new twist, which is, ‘Let’s not threaten, let’s sort of entice,’ ” Brown says.
That newer tactic of luring people with promises of a tax refund or rebate is more often employed over email or text as a phishing or smishing scam, Brown says. But both the threatening and enticing tactics are still prevalent, and they can be employed through any method of contact.
Regardless of the specifics, here’s a good rule of thumb from the FTC for spotting scams: “The government doesn’t call people out of the blue with threats or promises of money.” (NPR)
Chief Justice John Roberts’s stated mission to preserve the integrity of the Supreme Court suffered another setback this week when it was revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas had, for years, failed to disclose the acceptance of lavish gifts from a wealthy conservative donor.
A story published by ProPublica on the unreported gifts Thomas accepted — which included multiple trips on private jets and yachts owned by Texas billionaire and conservative donor Harlan Crow as well as stays at the mogul’s luxury retreat — put new pressure on Roberts to establish a binding ethical code of conduct for the nation’s highest court, experts said.
“Something needs to be done, and as long as Chief Justice Roberts sits on his hands he is baiting Congress to do something, and meanwhile undermining himself and the court,” Donald Sherman, deputy director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Yahoo News.
Since being confirmed to the court in 2005, Roberts has led internal discussions about whether to establish a code of conduct for the justices. In 2019, Justice Elena Kagan said the court was studying the issue. But so far nothing has come of it.
Picture : CoStar
Roberts has said the justices are encouraged to consult the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which governs the behavior of most federal judges, but they are not bound by it. Still, the 1978 Ethics in Government Act requires judges to disclose most gifts over $415, and Thomas may have violated that statute by not disclosing the gifts from Crow, experts told ProPublica.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., has tried to tighten the requirements of the 1978 law so it applies to the Supreme Court. But in the wake of the Thomas story this week, even Whitehouse acknowledged that in order for binding changes to be put in place, they would have to be agreed upon by the justices themselves.
In other words, until undisclosed gifts like the vacations and travel received by Thomas are deemed by the people receiving them to be violations of a code of conduct, they will continue. “At the end of the day, there are no consequences for [Thomas’s] actions,” Sherman, who has testified multiple times before Congress on the subject of judicial ethics, said in an interview. “These facts continue to highlight the need for the court to have a binding code of conduct, a process for discipline — separate and apart from impeachment — and a transparent and independent process for recusals.”
Numerous legal experts have joined the growing calls for the court to voluntarily impose some accountability. “At a time when public institutions are redoubling their efforts to improve the public’s trust, we maintain that a formal, written Code, offering a uniform set of principles that justices and the public alike would look to for guidance, would benefit the Court and the nation,” a group of legal scholars wrote to Roberts last year.
Van Hollen, who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the Supreme Court, told the Washington Post this week that he is considering using the power of the purse to extract a concession on this issue from the court. That could come in the form of legislation that would tie the court’s $200 million budget for fiscal year 2024 to the implementation of a code of conduct.
Meanwhile, amid rising political polarization in the U.S., and acrimony over the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the leak of that opinion, public trust in the Supreme Court hit a historic low last summer. The Thomas story is only the latest blow for the court and may finally provide Roberts with the impetus to push the other justices to work together on a code of conduct.
Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, told BBC News there was no indication Justice Thomas sought a formal opinion on the matter. “There’s no accountability for the court… each justice seems to decide for themselves who they’re going to go for advice and what rules apply,” the lawyer, who spoke with ProPublica for its report, added.
Mr Crow, a leading donor to Republican and conservative political causes in the US, told ProPublica that the trips with him and his wife Ginni Thomas were “no different from the hospitality that we have extended to many other dear friends”.
Several Democratic lawmakers are now calling for an investigation and for a stricter code of conduct for Supreme Court Justices. The process of impeaching a Supreme Court judge is the same as that used to impeach other officials, and begins with the House of Representatives Sciencedrafting articles of impeachment. While only a narrow majority is needed to impeach a federal judge in the House, a conviction in the Senate would require a two-thirds majority.
Justice Thomas is one of six conservative-leaning justices of the nine-member Supreme Court. The recent report is not the first time that Justice Thomas’ private trips have come under scrutiny.
“As long as 9 justices are exempt from any process for enforcing basic ethics, public faith in SCOTUS will continue to decline, and dark money and special interests will maintain their relentless grip on our democracy,” Whitehouse tweeted.
“Nothing like it has ever been seen before, but it was captured accidentally by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope,” NASA said.
American space agency NASA has warned that there is an “invisible monster on the loose”, in the form of a “runaway” black hole. According to a press release, the supermassive black hole is barrelling through the universe so quickly that if it were in our solar system, it could travel from Earth to the moon in just 14 minutes. It weighs as much as 12 million Suns and has left a never-before-seen trail of stars, measuring 200,000 light years, which is twice the diameter of the Milky Way.
“There’s an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic space so fast that if it were in our solar system, it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes,” NASA said in its press note.
“This supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 20 million Suns, has left behind a never-before-seen 200,000-light-year-long “contrail” of newborn stars, twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. It’s likely the result of a rare, bizarre game of galactic billiards among three massive black holes,” the space agency added.
Picture : NDTV
NASA explained that the black hole is pushing into gas in front of it to create the new star formation in a narrow corridor rather than eating up the stars ahead of it. It is assumed that the trail created a lot of new stars since it is almost half as bright as its host galaxy. “Nothing like it has ever been seen before, but it was captured accidentally by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope,” the space agency said.
The “invisible monster” is located at the end of the column of its parent galaxy, with a “remarkably bright knot” of ionised oxygen at the outermost tip. NASA scientists believe that either gas is being shocked and heated from the motion of the black hole or an accretion disk around the black hole is causing radiation.
“Gas in front of it gets shocked because of this supersonic, very high-velocity impact of the black hole moving through the gas. How it works exactly is not really known,” said Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University, as per the press note. “This is pure serendipity that we stumbled across it,” he added.
Mr Dokkum said that he was actually looking for globular star clusters in a nearby dwarf galaxy when he spotted the black hole. He described the trail of stars as “quite astonishing, very, very bright and very unusual”.
In order to figure out exactly what this bizarre image they were seeing was, Mr Dokkum and his team did a follow-up spectroscopy with the W. M. Keck Observatories in Hawaii, where they ultimately concluded they were seeing the aftermath of a black hole speeding through the galaxy.
According to NASA astronomers, the black hole was set free after two galaxies merged about 50 million years ago – which brought together two supermassive black holes at their centres. Then a third galaxy came with its one supermassive black hole, and three combined to form a “chaotic and unstable configuration”.
Researchers believe one of the black holes gained momentum from the other two and escaped out of its host galaxy, while the other two took off in the opposite direction.
Post a comment Now, scientists said that the next step is to confirm the explanation behind the black hole using the James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory for follow-up observations.
Northwestern University researchers have discovered a previously unknown mechanism that drives aging. In a new study, researchers used artificial intelligence to analyze data from a wide variety of tissues, collected from humans, mice, rats, and killifish. They discovered that the length of genes can explain most molecular-level changes that occur during aging.
All cells must balance the activity of long and short genes. The researchers found that longer genes are linked to longer lifespans, and shorter genes are linked to shorter lifespans. They also found that aging genes change their activity according to length. More specifically, aging is accompanied by a shift in activity toward short genes. This causes the gene activity in cells to become unbalanced.
Surprisingly, this finding was near universal. The researchers uncovered this pattern across several animals, including humans, and across many tissues (blood, muscle, bone, and organs, including liver, heart, intestines, brain, and lungs) analyzed in the study.
The new finding potentially could lead to interventions designed to slow the pace of — or even reverse — aging. The study was published December 9 in the journal Nature Aging.
“The changes in the activity of genes are very, very small, and these small changes involve thousands of genes,” said Northwestern’s Thomas Stoeger, who led the study. “We found this change was consistent across different tissues and in different animals. We found it almost everywhere. I find it very elegant that a single, relatively concise principle seems to account for nearly all of the changes in activity of genes that happen in animals as they age.”
“The imbalance of genes causes aging because cells and organisms work to remain balanced — what physicians denote as homeostasis,” said Northwestern Engineering’s Luís A.N. Amaral, a senior author of the study. “Imagine a waiter carrying a big tray. That tray needs to have everything balanced. If the tray is not balanced, then the waiter needs to put in extra effort to fight the imbalance. If the balance in the activity of short and long genes shifts in an organism, the same thing happens. It’s like aging is this subtle imbalance, away from equilibrium. Small changes in genes do not seem like a big deal, but these subtle changes are bearing down on you, requiring more effort.”
An expert in complex systems, Amaral is the Erastus Otis Haven Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering. Stoeger is a postdoctoral scholar in Amaral’s laboratory.
Looking across ages
To conduct the study, the researchers used various large datasets, including the Genotype-Tissue Expression Project, a National Institutes of Health-funded tissue bank that archives samples from human donors for research purposes.
The research team first analyzed tissue samples from mice — aged 4 months, 9 months, 12 months, 18 months, and 24 months. They noticed the median length of genes shifted between the ages of 4 months and 9 months, a finding that hinted at a process with an early onset. Then, the team analyzed samples from rats, aged 6 months to 24 months, and killifish, aged 5 weeks to 39 weeks.
It seems that, at a young age, our cells are able to counter perturbations that would lead to an imbalance in gene activity. Then, suddenly, our cells are no longer able to counter it. Thomas Stoeger Postdoctoral Scholar, Northwestern University
“There already seems to be something happening early in life, but it becomes more pronounced with age,” Stoeger said. “It seems that, at a young age, our cells are able to counter perturbations that would lead to an imbalance in gene activity. Then, suddenly, our cells are no longer able to counter it.”
After completing this research, the researchers turned their attention to humans. They looked at changes in human genes from ages 30 to 49, 50 to 69 and then 70 and older. Measurable changes in gene activity according to gene length already occurred by the time humans reached middle age.
“The result for humans is very strong because we have more samples for humans than for other animals,” Amaral said. “It was also interesting because all the mice we studied are genetically identical, the same gender and raised in the same laboratory conditions, but the humans are all different. They all died from different causes and at different ages. We analyzed samples from men and women separately and found the same pattern.”
‘Systems-level’ changes
In all animals, the researchers noticed subtle changes to thousands of different genes across samples. This means that not just a small subset of genes that contributes to aging. Aging, instead, is characterized by systems-level changes.
This view differs from prevailing biological approaches that study the effects of single genes. Since the onset of modern genetics in the early 20th century, many researchers expected to be able to attribute many complex biological phenomena to single genes. And while some diseases, such as hemophilia, do result from single gene mutations, the narrow approach to studying single genes has yet to lead to explanations for the myriad changes that occur in neurodegenerative diseases and aging.
“We have been primarily focusing on a small number of genes, thinking that a few genes would explain disease,” Amaral said. “So, maybe we were not focused on the right thing before. Now that we have this new understanding, it’s like having a new instrument. It’s like Galileo with a telescope, looking at space. Looking at gene activity through this new lens will enable us to see biological phenomena differently.”
Lengthy insights
After compiling the large datasets, many of which were used in other studies by researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and in studies outside Northwestern, Stoeger brainstormed an idea to examine genes, based on their length.
The length of a gene is based on the number of nucleotides within it. Each string of nucleotides translates to an amino acid, which then forms a protein. A very long gene, therefore, yields a large protein. And a short gene yields a small protein. According to Stoeger and Amaral, a cell needs to have a balanced number of small and large proteins to achieve homeostasis. Problems occur when that balance gets out of whack.
Although the researchers did find that long genes are associated with increased lifespans, short genes also play important roles in the body. For example, short genes are called upon to help fight off pathogens.
“Some short genes could have a short-term advantage on survival at the expense of ultimate lifespan,” Stoeger said. “Thus, outside of a research laboratory, these short genes might help survival under harsh conditions at the expense of shortening the animal’s ultimate lifespan.”
Suspected ties to long COVID-19
This finding also may help explain why bodies take longer to heal from illnesses as they age. Even with a simple injury like a paper cut, an older person’s skin takes a longer time to recover. Because of the imbalance, cells have fewer reserves to counteract the injury.
“Instead of just dealing with the cut, the body also has to deal with this activity imbalance,” Amaral hypothesized. “It could explain why, over time with aging, we don’t handle environmental challenges as well as when we were younger.”
And because thousands of genes change at the system-level, it doesn’t matter where the illness starts. This could potentially explain illnesses like long COVID-19. Although a patient might recover from the initial virus, the body experiences damage elsewhere.
“We know cases where infections — predominantly viral infections — lead to other problems later in life,” Amaral said. “Some viral infections can lead to cancer. Damage moves away from the infected site and affects other areas of our body, which then is less able to fight environmental challenges.”
Hope for medical interventions
The researchers believe their findings could open new venues for the development of therapeutics, designed to reverse or slow aging. Current therapeutics to treat illness, the researchers argue, are merely targeting the symptoms of aging rather than aging itself. Amaral and Stoeger compare it to using Tylenol to reduce a fever instead of treating the illness that caused the fever.
“Fevers can occur for many, many reasons,” Amaral said. “It could be caused by an infection, which requires antibiotics to cure, or caused by appendicitis, which requires surgery. Here, it’s the same thing. The issue is the gene activity imbalance. If you can help correct the imbalance, then you can address the downstream consequences.”
Other Northwestern co-senior authors include Richard Morimoto, a professor of molecular biosciences in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences; Alexander Misharin, an associate professor of medicine at Feinberg; and G.R. Scott Budinger, the Ernest S. Bazley Professor of Airway Diseases at Feinberg and chief of pulmonary and critical care at Northwestern Medicine.
The period of slower economic activity will be prolonged, with the next five years witnessing less than 3 per cent growth.
The IMF chief on Thursday said that the world economy is expected to grow at less than 3 per cent this year, with India and China expected to account for half of global growth in 2023.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Kristalina Georgieva warned that a sharp slowdown in the world economy last year following the raging pandemic and Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine would continue this year.
The period of slower economic activity will be prolonged, with the next five years witnessing less than 3 per cent growth, “our lowest medium-term growth forecast since 1990, and well below the average of 3.8 per cent from the past two decades,” she said.
“Some momentum comes from emerging economies — Asia especially is a bright spot. India and China are expected to account for half of global growth in 2023. But others face a steeper climb,” she explained.
“After a strong recovery in 2021 came the severe shock of Russia’s war in Ukraine and its wide-ranging consequences — global growth in 2022 dropped by almost half, from 6.1 to 3.4 per cent,” Georgieva said.
Georgieva said slower growth would be a “severe blow,” making it even harder for low-income nations to catch up.
“Poverty and hunger could further increase, a dangerous trend that was started by the COVID crisis,” she explained.
Her comments come ahead of next week’s spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, where policy-makers will convene to discuss the global economy’s most pressing issues.
The annual gathering will take place as central banks around the world continue to raise interest rates to tame galloping inflation rates.
About 90 per cent of advanced economies are projected to see a decline in their growth rates this year, she said.
For low-income countries, higher borrowing costs come at a time of weakening demand for their exports, she said.
Georgieva added that while the global banking system had “come a long way” since the 2008 financial crisis, “concerns remain about vulnerabilities that may be hidden, not just at banks but also non-banks. “Now is not the time for complacency.”
Indian-American Shaleen Sheth of Lynnfield, MA is among the six honorees chosen to be honored by the Massachusetts AAPI Commission at its inaugural award ceremony for AAPI Unsung Heroes during the 15th Annual Unity Gala on May 6, 2023.
The Massachusetts Asian American and Pacific Islanders Commission, known as AAPI, is the only permanent statewide body dedicated to advocating for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Unsung Hero Awards will be given to Connie Wong, Deputy Commissioner for Labor Relations, Boston Fire Department; Shaleen Sheth, Youth Activist; Master Nam and Sarah, Business people; Shaina Lu, Artist; Rev Dr. Ko Ko Lay, a pastor of Burmese Christian Church; and Maria Isabela Campos, Youth Activist.
“The AAPI Commission has created an AAPI Unsung Heroes Award, which will be presented annually to an individual or group who has worked tirelessly to support and uplift all communities but has not received the recognition they deserve,” said AAPI Commission Executive Director Yasmin Padamsee Forbes. “It is critical for us to recognize people who the community knows is the person who has assisted them in times of need, doing important and impactful work year after year.”
The Massachusetts AAPI Commission will be at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston. Tickets can be purchased through Eventbrite. The event will feature keynote speakers, to be announced at a later time. One of the highlights of the Unity Dinner is the granting of awards to community leaders and organizations.
Shaleen Sheth is a socially conscious young professional based in Boston who has been actively involved in community service since 12. She graduated with honors from Babson College, majoring in business and finance. She co-founded Women Who Win, a non-profit organization that amplifies women’s voices worldwide through story-telling, skill-sharing, mentorship, and networking. As a Co-CEO, she scaled the organization to over 20k members in 80 countries, with support from institutions such as Bank of America, Linkedin, and Akshaya Patra USA. She is an Advisory Council Member for Saheli Boston, supporting South Asian domestic violence survivors, and was appointed to the Young Professionals Leadership Council for Akshaya Patra in 2022. Shaleen received a citation from the Massachusetts State Government for her leadership in women’s empowerment. Her mission is to use media and technology to uplift the voices of women and minorities globally.
More than 500 people, many in their cultural attire, attended the April 1, 2023, Ugadi festival in New York at the Ganesh Temple auditorium in Flushing, hosted by the Telugu Literary and Cultural Association (TLCA), under the leadership of President of TLCA Nehru Kataru. Among the high-profile attendees was NYC Mayor Eric Adams, and his Deputy Commissioner Dilip Chauhan. The Sreeramanavami festival was also celebrated alongside Ugadi on the same day.
Picture : TheUNN
Others who attended the event included Vice President Kiran Parvatala, and the Secretary Sumanth Ramsetty. Also attending were the TLCA Board of Trustees Chairman Dr. Prasad Ankineedu, Secretary Nagendra Gupta, Treasurer Rao Voleti, Past Chairman’s Krishna Maddipatla, Venkatesh Mutyala, Dr. Purna Atluri, and many life trustees.
Ugadi is a Spring festival celebrating the start of the Telugu New Year. Each Telugu year is given a name and the year 2023-24 is named Shubhakruth.
The TLCA is one of the oldest Telugu associations in North America and has been promoting Telugu literature and culture in the New York Tristate region for the past 52 years, organizers said.
A strong contingent of 140 plus children and adults presented songs, dance, and drama items showcasing Telugu culture, mythology and history before a captivated the audience.
“It is the goal of TLCA to nurture and pass on the rich Telugu culture to the generations and every year Gurus and parents from this region strive to train the children for the programs,” the press release noted.
Picture : TheUNN
The mythological drama, Maya Joodam, a snippet from the epic Mahabharata, a dance-drama based on the theme of Ugadi, poetry recitals, classical dances and popular numbers from Telugu movies were the prime attractions. Guests enjoyed authentic festival food and delicacies bought from India, organizers said.
This was the first time in the history of the TLCA, that a Mayor was the Chief Guest of the day. “It was the most exciting experience for the community as this is the first ever visit by a Mayor of the City to the TLCA celebrations,” the press release noted.
Deputy Commissioner for Trade, Investment and Innovation Dilip Chauhan, introduced the Mayor and explained the initiatives of the Mayor for bettering the lives of every New Yorkers.
In his speech Mayor Adam congratulated TLCA’s President Kataru for the wonderful show put up by his team. Adams said it is always in his agenda to promote diversity and encourage the communities to come together and work for the overall progress of the region. He said the Telugu community is blessed with highly qualified professionals such as doctors, engineers, and software professionals, contributing to the economic development of the region. He assured full support from his Office for any requests from TLCA.
Deputy commissioner Chauhan said he has been associated with the Telugu community in New York City and Long Island for decades. He said the community is very humble, peaceful and lives in harmony.
The Special guest of the evening, actress, Laya, honored the Mayor and the Deputy Commissioner with traditional shawls and bouquets.
President Kataru thanked the Mayor for attending and delivering an inspiring speech, as well as his assurance of support. He thanked Chauhan for his efforts to bring the Mayor to the event. Mr. Kataru said, the community treats Mr. Dilip Chauhan as part of the family for his continued encouragement for decades.
President Kataru said the Executive Committee under the guidance of the Chairman Ankineed Prasad Napaneni and the Board of Trustees, worked hard to mark the beginning of the Telugu New Year which is auspicious for all the Telugus in the community. He praised the parents of the budding young generation for their devotion to Telugu culture and for nurturing it in the children. He noted that the poetry recital was a new feature introduced this year and promised many more during his tenure to encourage the youth. He expressed great appreciation for the donors without whose support these events would not have been possible.
Chairman Nannapaneni explained the efforts of TLCA for over 5 decades to preserve and promote Telugu culture and pass it on to the next generation. The organization provides a popular platform to showcase young talent. TLCA encourages artists, art forms, and literature by bringing eminent artists from all over the world, he noted. Secretary Ramisetty presented vote of thanks for the overwhelming support from the community.
The James Beard Foundation announced March 29, 2023, that Madhur Jaffrey, “legendary cookbook author, writer, teacher, and actress” is its choice as the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award honoree. Jaffrey will be recognized at the Restaurant and Chef Awards ceremony on Monday, June 5 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
The Lifetime Achievement Award is given to an individual whose lifetime body of work has had a positive and long-lasting impact on the way we eat, cook, and/or think about food in America, the JBF press release noted.
Her first cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, was published in 1973, and was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame in 2006.
Since then, Jaffrey has released more than 30 award-winning cookbooks, “cementing her status as the “Godmother of Indian Cooking,” JBG noted.
A Padma Bhushan recipient from the Indian government in 2022, Jaffrey is credited with bringing mainstream attention to Indian cuisine, both in the U.S. and the U.K.
In 2019, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the U.K. Guild of Food Writers. She becomes a nine-time James Beard Award winner with this latest Lifetime Achievement Award. “It’s a wonderful pinnacle to my career and I’m overjoyed,” Jaffrey is quoted saying in the press release about the JBF award.
The JBF announced a slew of award nominees in categories like Chef Award, Leadership Award winners, and Humanitarian of the Year and Lifetime Achievement honorees, in advance of the James Beard Awards® ceremonies in June. The nominees were announced March 29, during a live ceremony at the Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum in Nashville, TN.
“The James Beard Awards celebrate outstanding achievement and exceptional culinary talent, as well as all those doing incredible work on behalf of our communities and wider food system. This year’s nominees, winners, and honorees are inspiring exemplars of that,” said Clare Reichenbach, CEO of James Beard Foundation. “We congratulate all those recognized today and look forward to celebrating them at another exciting Awards Weekend in Chicago this June.”
The James Beard Awards, considered among the most prestigious in the country, “recognize exceptional talent in the culinary and food media industries, as well as a demonstrated commitment to racial and gender equity, community, sustainability, and a culture where all can thrive,” the Foundation said.
More than 500 people, many in their cultural attire, attended the April 1, 2023, Ugadi festival in New York at the Ganesh Temple auditorium in Flushing, hosted by the Telugu Literary and Cultural Association (TLCA), under the leadership of President of TLCA Nehru Kataru. Among the high-profile attendees was NYC Mayor Eric Adams, and his Deputy Commissioner Dilip Chauhan. The Sreeramanavami festival was also celebrated alongside Ugadi on the same day.
Others who attended the event included Vice President Kiran Parvatala, and the Secretary Sumanth Ramsetty. Also attending were the TLCA Board of Trustees Chairman Dr. Prasad Ankineedu, Secretary Nagendra Gupta, Treasurer Rao Voleti, Past Chairman’s Krishna Maddipatla, Venkatesh Mutyala, Dr. Purna Atluri, and many life trustees.
Ugadi is a Spring festival celebrating the start of the Telugu New Year. Each Telugu year is given a name and the year 2023-24 is named Shubhakruth.
The TLCA is one of the oldest Telugu associations in North America and has been promoting Telugu literature and culture in the New York Tristate region for the past 52 years, organizers said.
A strong contingent of 140 plus children and adults presented songs, dance, and drama items showcasing Telugu culture, mythology and history before a captivated the audience.
“It is the goal of TLCA to nurture and pass on the rich Telugu culture to the generations and every year Gurus and parents from this region strive to train the children for the programs,” the press release noted.
The mythological drama, Maya Joodam, a snippet from the epic Mahabharata, a dance-drama based on the theme of Ugadi, poetry recitals, classical dances and popular numbers from Telugu movies were the prime attractions. Guests enjoyed authentic festival food and delicacies bought from India, organizers said.
This was the first time in the history of the TLCA, that a Mayor was the Chief Guest of the day. “It was the most exciting experience for the community as this is the first ever visit by a Mayor of the City to the TLCA celebrations,” the press release noted.
Deputy Commissioner for Trade, Investment and Innovation Dilip Chauhan, introduced the Mayor and explained the initiatives of the Mayor for bettering the lives of every New Yorkers.
In his speech Mayor Adam congratulated TLCA’s President Kataru for the wonderful show put up by his team. Adams said it is always in his agenda to promote diversity and encourage the communities to come together and work for the overall progress of the region. He said the Telugu community is blessed with highly qualified professionals such as doctors, engineers, and software professionals, contributing to the economic development of the region. He assured full support from his Office for any requests from TLCA.
Deputy commissioner Chauhan said he has been associated with the Telugu community in New York City and Long Island for decades. He said the community is very humble, peaceful and lives in harmony.
The Special guest of the evening, actress, Laya, honored the Mayor and the Deputy Commissioner with traditional shawls and bouquets.
President Kataru thanked the Mayor for attending and delivering an inspiring speech, as well as his assurance of support. He thanked Chauhan for his efforts to bring the Mayor to the event. Mr. Kataru said, the community treats Mr. Dilip Chauhan as part of the family for his continued encouragement for decades.
President Kataru said the Executive Committee under the guidance of the Chairman Ankineed Prasad Napaneni and the Board of Trustees, worked hard to mark the beginning of the Telugu New Year which is auspicious for all the Telugus in the community. He praised the parents of the budding young generation for their devotion to Telugu culture and for nurturing it in the children. He noted that the poetry recital was a new feature introduced this year and promised many more during his tenure to encourage the youth. He expressed great appreciation for the donors without whose support these events would not have been possible.
Chairman Nannapaneni explained the efforts of TLCA for over 5 decades to preserve and promote Telugu culture and pass it on to the next generation. The organization provides a popular platform to showcase young talent. TLCA encourages artists, art forms, and literature by bringing eminent artists from all over the world, he noted. Secretary Ramisetty presented vote of thanks for the overwhelming support from the community.
US President Joe Biden announced that the United States had placed the nomination of Ajay Banga to be the next head of the World Bank, established in 1944. There will be no other official candidates for this job since—by convention—the US nominee is automatically selected for the post. This has been the case for the 13 previous presidents of the World Bank—the one exception was the acting president Kristalina Georgieva of Bulgaria, who held the post for two months in 2019. Georgieva is currently the managing director of the IMF.
In the official history of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), J. Keith Horsefield wrote that US authorities “considered that the Bank would have to be headed by a US citizen in order to win the confidence of the banking community, and that it would be impracticable to appoint US citizens to head both the Bank and the Fund.” By an undemocratic convention, therefore, the World Bank head was to be a US citizen and the head of the IMF was to be a European national . Therefore, Biden’s nomination of Banga guarantees his ascension to the post.
A month later, the New Development Bank’s Board of Governors—which includes representatives from Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa (the BRICS countries) as well as one person to represent Bangladesh, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates—elected Brazil’s former president Dilma Rousseff to head the NDB, popularly known as the BRICS Bank.
The BRICS Bank, which was first discussed in 2012, began to operate in 2016 when it issued its first green financial bonds. There have only been three managing directors of the BRICS Bank—the first from India (K.V. Kamath) and then the next two from Brazil (Marcos Prado Troyjo and now Rousseff to finish Troyjo’s term). The president of the BRICS Bank will be elected from its members, not from just one country.
Banga comes to the World Bank, whose office is in Washington, D.C., from the world of international corporations. He spent his entire career in these multinational corporations, from his early days in India at Nestlé to his later international career at Citigroup and Mastercard. Most recently, Banga was the head of the International Chamber of Commerce, an “executive” of multinational corporations that was founded in 1919 and is based in Paris, France.
As Banga says, during his time at Citigroup, he ran its microfinance division, and, during his time at Mastercard, he made various pledges regarding the environment. Nonetheless, he has no experience in the world of development finance and investment. He told the Financial Times that he would turn to the private sector for funds and ideas. His resume is not unlike that of most US appointees to head the World Bank.
The first president of the World Bank was Eugene Meyer, who built the chemical multinational Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation (later Honeywell) and who owned the Washington Post. He too had no direct experience working on eradicating poverty or building public infrastructure. It was through the World Bank that the United States pushed an agenda to privatize public institutions. Men such as Banga have been integral to the fulfillment of that agenda.
Dilma Rousseff, meanwhile, comes to the BRICS Bank with a different resume. Her political career began in the democratic fight against the 21-year military dictatorship (1964-1985) that was inflicted on Brazil by the United States and its allies. During Lula da Silva’s two terms as president (2003-2011), Dilma Rousseff was a cabinet minister and his chief of staff.
She took charge of the Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (Growth Acceleration Program) or PAC, which organized the anti-poverty work of the government. Because of her work in poverty eradication, Dilma became known popularly as the “mãe do PAC” (mother of PAC). A World Bank study from 2015 showed that Brazil had “succeeded in significantly reducing poverty in the last decade”; extreme poverty fell from 10 percent in 2001 to 4 percent in 2013. “[A]pproximately 25 million Brazilians escaped extreme or moderate poverty,” the report said.
This poverty reduction was not a result of privatization, but of two government schemes developed and established by Lula and Dilma: Bolsa Família (the family allowance scheme) and Brasil sem Misería (the Brazil Without Extreme Poverty plan, which helped families with employment and built infrastructure such as schools, running water, and sewer systems in low-income areas). Dilma Rousseff brings her experience in these programs, the benefits of which were reversed under her successors (Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro).
Banga, who comes from the international capital markets, will manage the World Bank’s net investment portfolio of $82.1 billion as of June 2022. There will be considerable attention to the work of the World Bank, whose power is leveraged by Washington’s authority and by its work with the International Monetary Fund’s debt-austerity lending practices.
In response to the debt-austerity practices of the IMF and the World Bank, the BRICS Health/Sciencecountries—when Dilma was president of Brazil (2011-2016)—set up institutions such as the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (as an alternative to the IMF with a $100 billion corpus) and the New Development Bank (as an alternative to the World Bank, with another $100 billion as its initial authorized capital).
These new institutions seek to provide development finance through a new development policy that does not enforce austerity on the poorer nations but is driven by the principle of poverty eradication. The BRICS Bank is a young institution compared to the World Bank, but it has considerable financial resources and will need to be innovative in providing assistance that does not lead to endemic debt. Whether the new BRICS Think Tank Network for Finance will be able to break with the IMF’s orthodoxy is yet to be seen.
The Finance Minister of India arrived in the US Capital this week embarking on an official visit from April 10 to 16, accompanied by officials of her ministry and the Reserve Bank of India. Nirmala Sitharaman will attend key meetings of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBG) starting Monday, the finance ministry said.
The US Chamber of Commerce’s US-India Business Council (USIBC) co-hosted India’s Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman for an exclusive member roundtable at US Chamber headquarters in Washington DC, Monday, April 11, 2023 in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
The round table focused on how the US and India could strengthen trade and investment ties amidst a dynamic macroeconomic environment, and India’s increasingly important role as a destination for global investment.
In addition to Finance Minister Sitharaman, the roundtable was attended by Ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu, Indian Ambassador to the United States, Ajay Seth, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Rajat Kumar Mishra, Additional Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, V Ananth Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India, USIBC Board Chair Edward Knight, members of the USIBC Global Board of Directors, and representatives from companies across key sectors.
In her remarks, Minister Sitharaman emphasized that policy consistency and pursuit of reforms despite the pandemic have been a hallmark of the government’s approach. The Minister highlighted the impact of digitization and economic formalization at length, stating that India meets the requirements of a fair transparent economy due to its achievements in transitioning to digital payments and integrating the informal sector. In the end, she invited the investor community to participate in and make the most of the opportunities that India has to offer, now and going forward.
The Indian Ambassador to the United States, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, also addressed the roundtable attendees and highlighted that as the President of G20, India is committed to multi-stakeholder engagement.
During her visit, Sitharaman will interact with investors, economists and think tanks; participate in bilateral engagements, including a meeting with US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, and discuss key issues such as strengthening of multilateral development banks, digital public infrastructure and crypto assets, the ministry said in a statement. Sitharaman and India’s central bank governor Shaktikanta Das will jointly chair the second G20 FMCBG meeting on April 12-13, 2023.
Key engagements of the minister include spring meetings of IMF-WB, the Second G20 FMCBG meeting under India’s presidency, other G20-related side events, World Bank Development Committee and IMF Committee plenaries, bilateral engagements with countries and international organisations, interaction with global business leaders and investors in roundtables and engagement with the Indian diaspora, it said.
The FMCBG meeting is expected to be attended by about 350 delegates from G20 countries, 13 invitee nations and various international and regional organizations. The meeting will take stock of the progress made on outcomes envisaged under India’s G20 Finance Track agenda, the ministry said.
On the sidelines of the spring annual meetings of the World Bank, Sitharaman will have bilateral engagements with counterparts from G20 countries and heads of other delegations, including international organizations, to discuss issues and areas of mutual interest and cooperation under India’s G20 presidency.
On April 11, the finance minister will meet US treasury secretary Janet Yellen to discuss issues of mutual interest. On April 14, she will attend a seminar to review the financial implications of crypto assets and discuss policies to leverage benefits and contain risks.
The U.S. dollar has dominated global trade and capital flows over many decades. However, many nations are looking for alternatives to the greenback to reduce their dependence on the United States.
This graphic catalogs the rise of the U.S. dollar as the dominant international reserve currency, and the recent efforts by various nations to de-dollarize and reduce their dependence on the U.S. financial system.
The global de-dollarization campaign is gaining momentum, as countries around the world seek alternatives to the hegemony of the US dollar.
The global de-dollarization campaign is gaining momentum, as countries around the world seek alternatives to the hegemony of the US dollar. China, Russia, Brazil, India, ASEAN nations, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are now using local currencies in trade.
The Dollar Dominance
The United States became, almost overnight, the leading financial power after World War I. The country entered the war only in 1917 and emerged far stronger than its European counterparts.
As a result, the dollar began to displace the pound sterling as the international reserve currency and the U.S. also became a significant recipient of wartime gold inflows.
The dollar then gained a greater role in 1944, when 44 countries signed the Bretton Woods Agreement, creating a collective international currency exchange regime pegged to the U.S. dollar which was, in turn, pegged to the price of gold.
Picture : Elements of visual capitalist
By the late 1960s, European and Japanese exports became more competitive with U.S. exports. There was a large supply of dollars around the world, making it difficult to back dollars with gold. President Nixon ceased the direct convertibility of U.S. dollars to gold in 1971. This ended both the gold standard and the limit on the amount of currency that could be printed.
Although it has remained the international reserve currency, the U.S. dollar has increasingly lost its purchasing power since then.
Russia and China’s Steps Towards De-Dollarization
Concerned about America’s dominance over the global financial system and the country’s ability to ‘weaponize’ it, other nations have been testing alternatives to reduce the dollar’s hegemony.
As the United States and other Western nations imposed economic sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow and the Chinese government have been teaming up to reduce reliance on the dollar and to establish cooperation between their financial systems.
Since the invasion in 2022, the ruble-yuan trade has increased eighty-fold. Russia and Iran are also working together to launch a cryptocurrency backed by gold, according to Russian news agency Vedmosti. In addition, central banks (especially Russia’s and China’s) have bought gold at the fastest pace since 1967 as countries move to diversify their reserves away from the dollar.
How Other Countries are Reducing Dollar Dependence
De-dollarization it’s a theme in other parts of the world as well. In recent months, Brazil and Argentina have discussed the creation of a common currency for the two largest economies in South America.
In a conference in Singapore in January, multiple former Southeast Asian officials spoke about de-dollarization efforts underway. The UAE and India are in talks to use Rupees to trade non-oil commodities in a shift away from the dollar, according to Reuters.
For the first time in 48 years, Saudi Arabia said that the oil-rich nation is open to trading in currencies besides the U.S. dollar. Despite these movements, few expect to see the end of the dollar’s global sovereign status anytime soon. Currently, central banks still hold about 60% of their foreign exchange reserves in dollars.
Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of U.S. adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” This accelerating trend is reshaping the U.S. religious landscape, leading many people to wonder what the future of religion in America might look like.
For years, church leaders and commentators have warned that Christianity is dying in America. They say the American church is poised to follow the path of churches in Western Europe: soaring Gothic cathedrals with empty pews, shuttered church buildings converted into skate parts and nightclubs, and a secularized society where one theologian said Christianity as a norm is “probably gone for good — or at least for the next 100 years.”
About 64% of Americans call themselves Christian today. That might sound like a lot, but 50 years ago that number was 90%, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center study. That same survey said the Christian majority in the US may disappear by 2070.
People who are religiously unaffiliated, sometimes called religious “nones,” accounted for 30% of the U.S. population. Adherents of all other religions – including Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists – totaled about 6%.
Picture : Wikipedia
Depending on whether religious switching continues at recent rates, speeds up or stops entirely, the projections show Christians of all ages shrinking from 64% to between a little more than half (54%) and just above one-third (35%) of all Americans by 2070. Over that same period, “nones” would rise from the current 30% to somewhere between 34% and 52% of the U.S. population.
As millions of Americans celebrated the holiest day in the Christian calendar on Sunday, a prediction about the future of Christianity in the US has come as a pleasant surprise. CNN asked some of the nation’s top religion scholars and historians recently about the future of Christianity in the US, they had a different message.
They said the American church is poised to find new life for one major reason: Waves of Christians are migrating to the US. And they said the biggest challenge to Christianity’s future in America is not declining numbers, but the church’s ability to adapt to this migration.
Joseph P. Slaughter, a historian and assistant professor of religion at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, says people have been predicting the extinction of Christianity in the US for over two centuries, and it hasn’t happened yet.
He pointed to Thomas Jefferson, one of the nation’s founding fathers, who predicted in the 1820s that Christianity would be replaced in the US by a more enlightened form of religion that rejected Jesus’ divinity and belief in miracles.
Instead, Jefferson’s prophecy was followed by a series of revivals, including the Second Great Awakening, which swept across America and reasserted Christianity as a dominant force in American life. “I’d never bet against American Christianity — particularly evangelicalism,” Slaughter says, “and its ability to adapt and remain a significant shaper of the American society.”
What’s happening in Europe is the church’s nightmare scenario
If one only looks at the numbers, Slaughter’s optimism seems misguided. Virtually every recent poll about Christianity in America has been brutal for its followers. The Covid-19 pandemic also hurt the church in America. Church attendance has rebounded recently but remains slightly below pre-pandemic levels. A 2021 Gallup poll revealed another grim number for Christians: church membership in the US has fallen below 50% for the first time.
In addition, a cascade of headlines in recent years have stained the church’s reputation, including sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention; the spread of White Christian nationalism; and the perception that the church oppresses marginalized groups such as LGBTQ people.
Church leaders in the US also have fretted about the rise of “nones.” These are people who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when asked their religious identity.
The ascent of nones will transform the country’s religious and political landscape, says Tina Wray, a professor of religious and theological studies at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island. About 30% of Americans now call themselves nones.
“The interest of the nones will soon outweigh those of the religious right in just a matter of years,” Wray says. “Nones are going to vote as a bloc and they’re going to be pretty powerful. White evangelicals will eventually be eclipsed by the unaffiliated.”
Wray says those who are optimistic about the future of the American church underestimate how quickly Christianity can lose its influence even in a place where it once thrived. She cites what’s happened in the Republic of Ireland, an overwhelmingly Catholic country.
The Catholic Church prohibits divorce and was once so powerful in Ireland that the country wouldn’t legally grant its citizens the legal right to a divorce until 1995, says Wray, author of “What the Bible Really Tells Us: The Essential Guide to Biblical Literacy.” But Wray adds that she recently traveled to Ireland and discovered many of its citizens have left the religion. Churches are being closed and turned into apartment buildings, she says.
“People who went to mass everyday stopped going,” she says. “There’s this cultural Catholic identity, but as far as practicing their faith, it’s just disappearing. So within a generation, that’s all it took. It’s just shocking.”
Why the American church’s future may be different than Europe’s
Most of the religious scholars CNN spoke to said the American church may find salvation in another demographic trend: the booming of Christianity in what is called the “Global South,” the regions encompassing Latin America, Africa and Asia.
The world’s largest megachurch, for example, is not in the US. It’s in South Korea. The Yoido Full Gospel Church has a weekly attendance of about 600,000 members.
Perry Hamalis spent time as a Fulbright Scholar in South Korea, where he personally witnessed the vitality of the Christian church in the Global South. He says the church is not perceived in South Korea as an instrument of oppression, but one of liberation. When South Korea was colonized by the Japanese in the early 20th century, the church aligned with Koreans to protest.
“Christianity was looked at not as a religion of empire and of the colonizers, but as the religion of the anti-colonial movement and of pro-democracy,” says Hamalis, a religion professor at North Central College in Illinois.
The US has more immigrants than any other country. People from Latin America and Asia now make up the overwhelming majority of immigrants to the US, and many are bringing their religious fervor with them.
This migration is known as the “Browning of America,” a phrase describing a demographic shift that is expected to make White people the minority in the US by 2045. Those who predict that the church in America will collapse often overlook how the migration of Global South Christians to America will revitalize the country’s religious landscape, scholars say. Christianity could rebound in America if White Christians embrace this one change, they say.
Tish Harrison Warren, a New York Times columnist, pointed out recently that Latino evangelicals are now the fastest-growing group of evangelicals in the US. “We cannot assume that America will become more secular so long as the future of America is less white,” Warren wrote.
The influx of Black and brown Christians from places like Latin America and Asia collides with another trend: a burgeoning White Christian nationalist movement that insists, incorrectly, that the US was founded as a White, Christian nation. It is hostile to non-White immigrants.
“Many congregations don’t realize how much of their Christian identity is wrapped up with a kind of (Christian) nationalist narrative,” Hamalis says. “There’s nothing wrong with loving one’s country, but from a Christian perspective that ought to always be secondary to the mission of building the body of Christ and witnessing to the Gospel in the world.”
How Christianity could re-establish its dominance
There are other factors hiding in plain sight that point to the continued vitality of Christianity, others say. For one, declining church membership doesn’t automatically translate into declining influence.
Consider some recent landmark events. White evangelicals played a critical role in getting former President Trump elected. Conservative Christian groups played a crucial role in the recent passage of state laws limiting LGBTQ rights. And the Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn Roe vs. Wade was a massive victory for many conservative Christians.
And atheism remains a taboo in American politics. American voters still prefer candidates – including presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden – who profess or evoke Christian beliefs. “Christianity still holds a lot of capital in this country,” says Lee M. Jefferson, an associate professor of religion at Centre College in Kentucky.
“There has always been a popular notion that a religious community’s strength or influence is connected to numbers and attendance,” Jefferson says. “Even if there is ample space in cathedrals, Christianity will still hold some strong relevance in different landscapes in the US.”
Even the rise of the “nones,” the growing number of Americans who say they don’t care about religion, is not as much of a threat to the church as initial reports suggest, scholars say.
A growing number of Americans may no longer identify as Christian, but many still care about spirituality, says Hans Gustafson, author of “Everyday Wisdom: Interreligious Studies for a Pluralistic World.”
“Just because more Americans are disaffiliating with institutionalized religion — most notably Christian traditions — this does not always mean that people are becoming less religious,” says Gustafson, director of the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.
“Many still practice spirituality: prayer, meditation… and sometimes even regularly attend religious houses of worship,” he says. Among Americans with no religious affiliation, some still pray daily and say religion is very important in their lives, Gustafson says.
He cites a surprising finding from a 2018 Pew Research Center study of religion in Western Europe. The study found that nones in the US are “much more likely” to pray and believe in God than their European counterparts, said Neha Sahgal, a vice president of research at Pew.
“In fact, by some of these standard measures of religious commitment, American ‘nones’ are as religious as — or even more religious than — Christians in several European countries, including France, Germany and the UK,” Sahgal wrote.
Why the Easter message offers a note of hope
Despite the optimism of many religious scholars, the future of Christianity in America still seems uncertain. Poll numbers about the decline of religiousness in the US cannot be ignored, along with something more intangible: the frailties of human nature.
What if the US enters another xenophobic period and limits migration from non-White Christians?
What if progressive Christians prove unwilling to align with non-White immigrants who tend to be more conservative on issues of sexuality and gender?
And what if some Christians still cling to the belief that America is supposed to be a White Christian nation, even if that assumption causes them to close their church doors to non-White immigrants who could be their salvation?
If that happens, an Easter morning symbol in American churches won’t just be an empty tomb, but empty pews.
But Hamalis, the religion professor who saw Christianity boom in South Korea, says Christians who fear that kind of future can take solace in the Easter message.
“From a Christian perspective, there’s nothing to fear because even death has been conquered,” Hamalis says. “When we are liberated from that fear, we can embrace the person who’s different from us, who speaks a different language or comes from a different culture. We can put ourselves out there in a way that we can’t if we’re just afraid.”
He and other scholars envision a vibrant future for Christianity in the US that’s shared by Warren, the New York Times columnist:
“The future of American Christianity is neither white evangelicalism nor white progressivism,” Warren wrote. “The future of American Christianity now appears to be a multiethnic community that is largely led by immigrants of the children of immigrants.”
If the American church can embrace this future and reverse its shrinking membership, it will have experienced its own resurrection. (Courtesy: CNN)
The Consulate General of India in New York in cooperation with GOPIO Manhattan organized the ‘Meet and Greet Students from India’ studying in the Northeast to connect them to the community and providing mentoring opportunities as well as to raise awareness of Consular services to students from the Consulate. Students from many universities across the Northeast participated in person and via Facebook Live at the event hosted by the Indian Consulate on march 31st, 2023.
The program started with a welcome by Dr. Varun Jeph, Deputy Consul General with his welcome to the 135+ students in attendance and many more online. He summarized the event introducing the speakers and the topics that will be discussed by them and informed the services offered by the Consulate to the Students. He invited the students Consul General of India at New York Mr. Randhir Kumar Jaiswal to begin the evening’s proceedings.
The host for the evening, Ambassador Randhir Kumar Jaiswal, commented, “Namaste to all Young friends. A very warm welcome to the Consulate, your Home and my office.”
He further highlighted there are two sets of students we deal with, one that are here and the others that come here from India. This Student Meet & Greet is an effort in the direction of you connecting with each other and being there as you grow in this new land of opportunities. We are the fifth largest economy and climbing to become the third largest economy. He added that there are 1 million students among the 34 million diaspora are going to play a very important role in that and be the real champions.”
Photo-01: Consul General Randhir Kumar Jaiswal and GOPIO Chairman Dr. Thomas Abraham addressing the students
Consulate official Ms. Satpadi Tagore invited GOPIO International Chairman Dr. Thomas Abraham for his remarks. Dr. Abraham serves as an advisor to GOPIO-Manhattan and started with “Namaskar and addressed the students by reflecting on his journey fifty years ago with an example that a simple phone call back home would cost around $3/minute. There was a concept of host families. With the advancement of technologies and ease of communication and growth in students, there is no more such need of host families. Starting in 2021 and following session in Oct 2022, and today, we are hosting these sessions to connect you with the community, professional achievers and the Consulate for help with issues or in case of emergency. He noted the number of students across Columbia, NYU, Pace, SUNY Bufallo, Touro College, UPenn, NJIT and other universities represented in the room.”
Photo 02: Deputy Consul General Dr. Varun Jeph, speaker Dr. Bernadine Waller, Bhavya Gupta and Siddharth Jain
GOPIO Manhattan Co Secretary and Chair for the event and emcee Ms. Bhavya Gupta then introduced and invited the panelists for the evening Mr. Akshat Tewary, an immigration attorney, Ms. Sanjyot Dunung, CEO & Founder of Atma Global, Moderator Prof Srikant Jagabathula from NYU, Mr. Anthony Irudhyanathan, President Zillion Technologies and Prof. Rajashekar Vangapaty.
Photo-03: Top, L to R: Mr. Akshat Tewary esq., Ms. Sanjyot Dunung, Prof. Srikant Jagabathula and Mr. Anthony Irudhyanathan, Prof. Rajashekar Vangapaty engaging in a Panel Discussion with students
Mr. Srikanth Jagabathula, Robert Stansky Research Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor of Tech, Ops, and Stats at the NYU Stern School of Business, moderated the panel starting with giving each speaker a min to talk about their background. He channeled the conversations across the topics of immigration to job search to internships, teaching assistantships etc. with the fellow speakers and engaged the audience. He shared his experiences with the students and said, “Wear different hats, multi-task, go out of your comfort zone, explore and discover.”
GOPIO-Manhattan Executive Vice President Professor Rajasekhar Vangapaty spoke about the importance of on-campus job and securing the teaching assistant role while at campus and its importance in job search. He added that “every skill-set you learn in your life will definitely benefit you somewhere in your lifetime. Never get discouraged, if you get hurdles.” He emphasized on the fact that “do not guess the answers. If you don’t know, ask. Whether you’re given or not that’s a different story.”
Ms. Sanjyot Dunung, CEO & Founder of Atma Global, shared her experiences with the students about her journey from India to England to Chicago as she experienced the culture shifts. She added that it doesn’t necessarily matter at what age you move to a new country. The concept of culture shock, learning new values, attitudes, understanding how people do things, can be startling at the very beginning. She bridged the two cultures with every summer trip to India to retain and touch that Indian cultural experience. She indulged the panel to assist students in formulating their choices of major and career path.
Mr. Anthony Irudhyanathan, President Zillion Technologies shared his journey as an Entrepreneur in the technology sector, started with $400. He reflected on his journey and cited his motivation to be here was based on the fact that the Students from India have the chance to be a Game Changer and that he invests in the ideas from Students, a support not available when he started his journey in 1998. This platform of Meet & Greet is a good opportunity for Students to excel in being a game changer as 60% of top 100 companies have Indians as CIO/CTOs today. He added “students should immerse within the system, learn and connect with the people.”
Mr. Akshat Tewary, an immigration attorney added “reflected on his journey to the USA in Jan 1986 highlighting the sense of expectation, optimism, growth etc. as the cultural differences between homeland and USA.”
Photo-04: Speakers and organizers at the ‘Students Meet & Greet’.
1st Row l. to r.: Speaker Akshat Tewary, GOPIO Manhattan EVP & Speaker Professor Rajasekhar Vangapaty, Speaker Srikanth Jagabathula, Speaker Sanjyot Dunung, Ambassador Randhir Kumar Jaiswal, Speaker Dr. Bernadine Waller and Dy. Consul General Dr. Varun Jeph.
2nd Row l. to r.: Raj Punjabi, GOPIO Manhattan Board Member Siddharth (Sid) Jain, GOPIO Manhattan Board Member Chitranjan Belwariar, GOPIO Chairman Dr. Thomas Abraham, GOPIO Manhattan VP Dr. Vimal Goyle, GOPIO Manhattan Board Member & Program Coordinator Bhavya Gupta, GOPIO Manhattan Treasurer Braj Aggarwal &GOPIO Manhattan Member Tara Shajan.
Dr. Bernadine Waller, Columbia University “reflected on the mental health issues ranging from anxiety to depression and all in between. She highlighted the various reasons the stresses that are faced by Students such as job search, internship search, competitiveness, loneliness etc. The optimal way to deal with it is “One Bite At A Time.” She further added that we encourage the students to think of the career, plan for the present, think about the future, but come back to the present.
Mr. Shivender Sofat, President GOPIO-Manhattan, who joined virtually told the importance of mentoring to the students, discussed chapter activities and motivated everyone to volunteer and become members at future events held by GOPIO Manhattan.
Mr. Siddharth Jain, GOPIO Manhattan Board Member concluded with a quote from Rumi: “It’s your road, and yours alone, others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”
Mr. Jain followed the quote with the vote of thanks to Host Ambassador Shri Randhir Kumar Jaiswal, Dy. Consul Shri Varun Jeph, Dr. Thomas Abraham, Distinguished Panelists, Ms. Satabdi Tagore and the Consulate staff. Other GOPIO-Manhattan officials present at the meeting included President Shivender Sofat (attended virtually), EVP Professor Rajasekhar Vangapaty, Treasurer Braj Aggarwal, VP Vimal Goyle, Board Member & Program Coordinator Bhavya Gupta, Board Member Chitranjan Belwariar, Members Raj Punjabi, & Tara Shajan.
“The students had an excellent time networking with students from different universities as well as with speakers and the Consulate and GOPIO officials and we plan to do a much bigger event next year,’ Dr. Abraham added.
Photo Students from different universities and colleges with Consulate and GOPIO officials and speakers
In accordance with its mission to serve the larger society and those in need, GOPIO-Manhattan Chapter has taken several initiatives in the recent past. A Community Feeding is organized by the Chapter providing vegan or avegetarian lunch for the homeless and needy at Tomkins Square Park in Manhattan on the last Monday of every month. The chapter appeals to the community to support the initiative by being a volunteer and/or a sponsor.
Xavier University School of Medicine has announced the opening of Xavier University School of Veterinary Medicine. Xavier University School of Veterinary Medicine will begin with the inaugural class in Fall 2023.
The Xavier University School of Veterinary Medicine program is a four-year program for students who will receive their Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree. The program is divided into two phases – for the first three years (nine semesters), students will be located in Aruba completing their preclinical semesters. During the student’s final year (three semesters) in the program, they will attend clinical training at one of our internationally approved training facilities and complete the NAVLE exam to be eligible to practice in the USA.
“We are excited to announce the opening of Xavier University School of Veterinary Medicine in September 2023,” said Ravishankar Bhooplapur, President of Xavier University School of Medicine. “The mission of Xavier University School of Veterinary Medicine is to prepare veterinary physicians to practice veterinary medicine of the highest standard, and the opening of our new veterinary school will provide students with a quality veterinary education at an affordable price.”
“The curriculum for Xavier’s DVM program is an integrative approach that enables students to understand the science, gain experience in practice, and receive clinical skills instruction beginning from their first semester,” added Dr. Arun Dubey, Chief Academic Officer. “We are thrilled to welcome our first set of veterinary students in the fall!”
Students will be able to live at Xavier’s new academic campus in Aruba. This all-inclusive housing option ensures that students have a safe and supportive environment during their medical school journey.
In addition, construction is in progress for a new $70-million academic campus in Aruba that is set to open in Fall 2024. This new academic area of campus will include a theater-style auditorium, state-of-the-art classrooms and labs, research facilities, seminar rooms, a new library, study areas for individuals, small groups, and large groups, student lounges, and a walk-in clinic. Inaugural class of September 2023 will receive 50% tuition scholarships.
Three major religious holidays coincide this week. As the Islamic holy month of Ramadan reaches its halfway point, Jews begin celebrating Passover at sundown tonight, and Sunday marks Easter for many Christians around the world.
A religious knowledge survey conducted in 2019 also found that most U.S. adults overall know that Easter commemorates the resurrection of Jesus (81%) and that Ramadan is an Islamic holy month (60%).
Picture : Christianity Today
On Friday, Jewish people celebrate Passover to mark the exodus of Israelites from enslavement in Egypt. On the same day, Christians observe Good Friday to commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus before celebrating Easter Sunday when he rose from the dead. Over the weekend, Muslims will continue observing Ramadan, a month of prayers and fasting to memorialize the transmission of the Koran.
The overlap of the three observances occurs about every 33 years, according to Lees McCrae College. Religious groups and others use the rare occasion to call for harmony between the traditions.
The coincidence is so uncommon because the three observances are based on different calendars and factors that determine when the holidays occur. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday following the full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox. Good Friday marks the crucifixion of Jesus, God’s messiah, under the Roman governor of Judea to atone for humanity’s sins.
Passover occurs in the middle of Nisan, a month in the Hebrew calendar, on the first full moon, putting it in proximity to Easter. The holiday begins at sundown and includes seder, a special meal meant to remind Jewish people of the hardship they endured in Egypt.
Ramadan is Islam’s holiest month using the lunar calendar. Because the calendar follows the cycles of the moon, unlike the Gregorian calendar commonly used in the West, Ramadan falls on different times each year.
During Ramadan, Muslims believe God revealed the sacred text of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad, the first verses of which were passed down on “The Night of Power” (Laylat al-Qadr in Arabic). Muslims abstain from food or drink from dawn to sunset for the entire month and are encouraged to contemplate their relationship with God.
On the sidelines of the March 22, 2023, United Nation’s World Water Day commemoration, Dr. Rajendra Singh, referred to popularly as the “Water Man” of India, was hosted by Save Indian Farmers, a non-profit in the U.S., and the Gandhian Society in collaboration with Parikh Worldwide Media in Edison, New Jersey.
Dr. Singh also visited the offices of Parikh Worldwide Media, where he was felicitated, and gave an interview to PWM’s 24/7 television channel ITV Gold.
As part of the occasion, Mayor of Edison, N.J., Sam Joshi, issued a proclamation declaring March 23 as Rajendra Singh Day, in recognition of the Indian environmental activist’s lasting contributions to society. The proclamation was read out at the reception.
Picture : TheUNN
Dr. Sudhir Parikh, chairman of PWM, who presented an award to Dr. Singh, spoke at the event praising the water conservation specialist for his commitment and hard work. Dr. Parikh also affirmed his own commitment to humanitarian and philanthropic work after he turned 60 years old. Currently, Dr. Parikh is 76 years old, and his goal is to empower the younger generation of Indians “to love Mother India,” as much as he did. Not only does PWM publish 4 newspapers, it also runs the 24/7 ITV Gold station which partners with Door Darshan India.
“That is all philanthropic work. It is my passion. And for the last 12 years I am running these at my own expense,” Dr. Parikh said. However, he emphasized, nothing compares to the philanthropic work Dr. Singh had been doing, and how he had met villagers and convinced them to bring about change. “And I saw the result. It was so impressive,” he said, and offered his support.
Dr. Singh, in his speech, talked about the world being in a water crisis, and how the World Water Day at the UN was spent discussing ways in which planet earth could “free from that.” The phenomenon of floods and droughts happening around the world, needed to be controlled. “If we don’t find ways to save ourselves from these then our planet earth and humanity, both will face grave danger,” Dr. Singh said. “We are here for this work.”
Bhadra Butala, founder of Gandhian Society, noted the “big function” being held in Edison to honor Dr. Singh. And he praised Dr. Parikh for presenting an award to Dr. Singh. The Gandhian Society does humanitarian work around the world, particularly to familiarize youth with Gandhian principles.
Tejoo Bambulkar, vice president of Save Indian Farmers which was started in Arkansas by a few friends, described how the board members went beyond just funding various organizations in India.
Dr. Hemant Joshi, founding member and secretary of Save Indian Farmers said that the organization has more than 80 volunteers, some 25 active program directors, and about 20 ongoing projects.
In an interview with ITV Gold, Dr. Rajendra Singh outlined the discussions at the UN, and how the water crisis had become worse over the years since WW Day was declared.
“Our planet is sick,” he said noting that when it rains, the water dissipated instead of being controlled, cutting through the land and rivers which flood towns and cities.
“We had begun Word Water Day so that the world would learn the importance of water. But it seems that where we were standing before … we have regressed. Where the world could have worked for our health and planet’s health, we have polluted our water … amrit became poison.”
He also contended that, “Ancient Indian knowledge about water has been lost. … We appear to have forgotten the relationship to water. Even the UN seems to have forgotten.”
Dr. Rajendra Singh, famous for his water conservation work, seen here being interviewed by ITV Gold host Nidhi Kathuria, at the Parikh Worldwide Media offices in Edison, N.J., during his recent visit to the U.S., on the sidelines of United Nations World Water Day which falls on March 22, 2023. Photo: videograb from ITV Gold video on YouTube
Dr. Singh gave an account of his own journey from working in the government to stepping out and working at the grassroots. “Go to the people who have lost everything.” He chose Alwar Jila to help people. There, when he was just 26 years old, he met an old man who inspired him to make the world his canvas.
Dr. Singh proceeded to educate himself about various environmental sciences and engineering. “And I never looked back, and have never felt despair,” he said, despite all odds including some 377 lawsuits which “were put against me whenever I worked to get water to the people.”. (Courtesy: ITV Gold)
Right now, many U.S. travelers have the same worry on their minds: Why are passports taking so long? If you’re hoping to renew a U.S. passport in time for an international trip this summer, or receive your first-ever document, you’ll likely have a bureaucratic headache ahead of you, as wait times for passports are once again on the rise.
The State Department is facing “unprecedented demand” for passports, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in a Congressional budget hearing on March 23. As such, routine processing will take 10 to 13 weeks, while expedited processing—available for an extra $60 fee—is taking seven to nine weeks. And those estimates don’t include the time it takes to mail your passport to and from the processing center.
Officials say that it’s normal for passport demand to see upticks during certain times of the year, like in the lead-up to the peak summer travel season. However, this year’s demand is record-shattering, and it’s currently 30 to 40 percent higher than 2022’s surge in applications. Last year, the department issued its highest-ever number of passports—a whopping 22 million—and Blinken said the record is on-track to be broken.
“We’ve had an unprecedented demand for renewed travel, which is a good thing,” Blinken said in the hearing. “Historically the demand’s been cyclical. The busy season is March to late summer. Basically it’s full time now. We’re getting 500,000 applications a week for passports.” The department is hiring more customer service agents to help address the new and growing backlog of applications, Blinken added.
So what should travelers do if they need a passport fast? For dire situations—like an international flight that departs within two weeks or emergency travel for a life-or-death reason—you can try to snag an in-person appointment at one of the 26 Regional Passport Agencies. If your situation fits within the stipulations, which also includes needing to obtain a foreign visa within four weeks, you can call for an appointment at your nearest agency. You’ll need to provide evidence that you have flights booked and proof of a qualified emergency, if applicable.
From one-week turnarounds to renewals in as little as one day. Of course, aside from using the expedited service from the government, there are other strategies to getting a passport fast. But they’ll cost you. Third-party expediter companies, like GenVisa or RushMyPassport, offer services like handling appointment requests at the passport agencies or passport renewal turnarounds as quick as one week. But these services can cost anywhere from $150 to $799 and above—on top of the government’s fees and postage costs.
If you have an international flight booked that departs within 48 hours, you can try to get a same-day appointment at one of the agencies for the fastest passport processing. But, as the appointments at the regional agencies need to be in person, they might not be a convenient option for those who don’t live nearby one of the locations. (Depending on your situation, it might be worth flying to one of the agencies with an open timeslot—a feat that is hardly unheard of these days.)
In the future, officials want to simplify the process by offering online renewal options on a large scale. “This is something I have great hope for,” Blinken said of online processing. The State Department ran a pilot project last year to test how online submission would work. “We have 500,000 renewal requests submitted through this pilot project,” Blinken said. “We’ve now halted it to make sure we can fine tune it and improve it before we roll it out in a bigger way. But here’s the bottom line: We expect that 65 percent of renewal customers for passports will be able to do so online once this program is fully up and running.”
Individual happiness is subjective, but some factors contribute to a happy society no matter where you are, according to the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. For the past 11 years, the nongovernmental organization has ranked more than 150 countries based on their citizens’ self-evaluations of their quality of life, including social support, income, health, freedom, generosity, and lack of corruption.
Picture : CNN
And while the big winners continue to be the Nordic countries of Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, the report also points out that despite multiple world crises, including the war in Ukraine, global life satisfaction is “just as high as in the pre-pandemic years.”
“The overall goal is a happier society,” professor Richard Layard, co-director of the Wellbeing Programme at the London School of Economics and editor of the report, said in a press release. “But we only get there if people make each other happy (and not just themselves). It’s an inspiring goal for us as individuals. And it includes the happiness of future generations — and our own mental health.”
Now, check out the top 10 countries that seem to have figured out the formula for a happy society.
Finland
This Nordic nation has been crowned the happiest in the world for a record sixth time. While its final score (7.804) is slightly lower than last year’s (7.821), Finland is still considerably ahead of other countries. And it’s not keeping its secret to happiness to itself. The country recently announced that it’s holding a “Masterclass of Happiness” to help people “find their ‘inner Finn’ and master the Finnish state of mind.” On the agenda? Professional coaches will help participants connect with nature among the peaceful scenery of Kuru Resort in the Lakeland region, known for its stunning landscapes and lakes.
Denmark
With a total score of 7.586, Denmark maintains its status as a runner-up this year, too. The country where hygge is a way of life is also proof that high taxes don’t necessarily mean an unhappy nation. While Danish people pay the highest personal income tax in Europe (almost 56 percent), its citizens benefit from a comprehensive social welfare system, including free education and health care that seems to leave them pretty content.
Iceland
Not only is the Land of Fire and Ice one of the happiest in the world, it’s also the safest. The country tops the World Economic Forum’s 2022 Global Gender Gap Report, having closed more than 90 percent of its gender gap. What else makes Icelandic people happy? A high income, a stable economy, a lack of corruption, generosity, free education, and a strong sense of community, to name a few. And we’re certain that having access to some of the most stunning natural landscapes in the world helps, too.
Israel
The most significant change in this year’s ranking is Israel, which jumped five spots to number four — its highest since the report’s launch in 2012. Experts explain this with the country’s fast recovery post-COVID (the economy expanded by 6.5 percent and GDP per capita increased 4.4 percent). Additionally, Israelis have strong social connections and high life expectancy, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Netherlands
The Netherlands comes in fifth with a score of 7.403, mirroring last year’s ranking. Aside from its endless tulip fields (which makes us happy), the country’s economy was recently praised for its resilience and robust recovery compared to the rest of the EU in the latest report by the International Monetary Fund. Plus, affordable higher education, an excellent job market, a strong sense of community, and high civic engagement all reinstate a sense of happiness in Dutch society.
Sweden
Sweden moved up one spot to sixth this year. Despite recording more deaths from COVID-19 than other Nordic nations, the country’s score was slightly higher than last year’s. Air and environmental pollution in Sweden are the second lowest after Finland, resulting in better life expectancy, according to data from OECD. A high employment rate and gender equality (more than 80 percent) also lead to better life satisfaction in Sweden.
Norway
It’s easy to see why Norwegians consider themselves a happy nation. With tuition-free education, a high income rate, low levels of corruption, and a robust social support network, Norway has been a fixture on the top 10 happiest countries ranking, and it even topped it in 2017. With an abundance of natural attractions such as fjords, mountains, lush forests, lakes, and regular northern lights sightings, people don’t have to travel far to find a quiet spot to unwind and recharge.
Switzerland
While Switzerland fell four spots since last year, the country is still home to some of the happiest (and healthiest) people in the world, thanks to low crime rates, a high GDP per capita, and beautiful mountain scenery that welcome year-round recreation. According to the World Happiness Report, Swiss people also relate positive life satisfaction with “prosociality,” like volunteering and charitable donations.
Luxembourg
Luxembourg made its debut among the top 10 happiest countries last year under number six, but it fell to number nine in 2023 with a score of 7.228. While it’s one of the smallest and least populous nations in Europe (it’s slightly smaller than Rhode Island), Luxembourg is actually one of the wealthiest countries in the world when it comes to GDP per capita. Safety, high public trust, and diversity all contribute to a greater sense of happiness in locals here (half of which have a foreign nationality).
New Zealand
Similar to last year, New Zealand occupies the tenth spot on the list of world’s happiest countries. After the nation opened post-COVID in April 2022, it has seen a steady stream of visitors helping it recover and, in some industries, even beat pre-pandemic levels.
Amusement and pleasant surprises — and the laughter they can trigger — add texture to the fabric of daily life. Those giggles and guffaws can seem like just silly throwaways. But laughter, in response to funny events, actually takes a lot of work, because it activates many areas of the brain: ones that control motor, emotional, cognitive and social processing.
People begin laughing in infancy, when it helps develop muscles and upper body strength. Laughter is not just breathing. It relies on complex combinations of facial muscles, often involving movement of the eyes, head and shoulders.
Laughter — doing it or observing it — activates multiple regions of the brain: the motor cortex, which controls muscles; the frontal lobe, which helps you understand context; and the limbic system, which modulates positive emotions. Turning all these circuits on strengthens neural connections and helps a healthy brain coordinate its activity.
Laughing with others helps to create social bonds and can increase intimacy.
By activating the neural pathways of emotions such as joy and mirth, laughter can improve your mood and make your physical and emotional response to stress less intense. For example, laughing may help control brain levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, similar to what antidepressants do. By minimizing your brain’s responses to threats, it limits the release of neurotransmitters and hormones such as cortisol that can wear down your cardiovascular, metabolic and immune systems over time. Laughter’s kind of like an antidote to stress, which weakens these systems and increases vulnerability to diseases.
Laughter’s cognitive power
A good sense of humor and the laughter that follows depend on an ample measure of social intelligence and working memory resources.
Laughter, like humor, typically sparks from recognizing the incongruities or absurdities of a situation. You need to mentally resolve the surprising behavior or event — otherwise you won’t laugh; you might just be confused instead. Inferring the intentions of others and taking their perspective can enhance the intensity of the laughter and amusement you feel.
To “get” a joke or humorous situation, you need to be able to see the lighter side of things. You must believe that other possibilities besides the literal exist — think about being amused by comic strips with talking animals, such as those found in “The Far Side.”
Laughter’s social power
Many cognitive and social skills work together to help you monitor when and why laughter occurs during conversations. You don’t even need to hear a laugh to be able to laugh. Deaf signers punctuate their signed sentences with laughter, much like emoticons in written text.
Laughter creates bonds and increases intimacy with others. Linguist Don Nilsen points out that chuckles and belly laughs seldom happen when alone, supporting their strong social role. Beginning early in life, infants’ laughter is an external sign of pleasure that helps strengthen bonds with caregivers.
Later, it’s an external sign of sharing an appreciation of the situation. For example, public speakers and comedians try to get a laugh to make audiences feel psychologically closer to them, to create intimacy.
By practicing a little laughter each day, you can enhance social skills that may not come naturally to you. When you laugh in response to humor, you share your feelings with others and learn from risks that your response will be accepted/shared/enjoyed by others and not be rejected/ignored/disliked.
In studies, psychologists have found that men with Type A personality characteristics, including competitiveness and time urgency, tend to laugh more, while women with those traits laugh less. Both sexes laugh more with others than when alone.
Laughter’s mental power
Positive psychology researchers study how people can live meaningful lives and thrive. Laughter produces positive emotions that lead to this kind of flourishing. These feelings — such as amusement, happiness, mirth and joy — build resiliency and increase creative thinking. They increase subjective well-being and life satisfaction. Researchers find that these positive emotions experienced with humor and laughter correlate with appreciating the meaning of life and help older adults hold a benign view of difficulties they’ve faced over a lifetime.
Laughter in response to amusement is a healthy coping mechanism. When you laugh, you take yourself or the situation less seriously and may feel empowered to problem-solve. For example, psychologists measured the frequency and intensity of 41 people’s laughter over two weeks, along with their ratings of physical and mental stress. They found that the more laughter experienced, the lower the reported stress. Whether the instances of laughter were strong, medium or weak in intensity didn’t matter.
Maybe you want to grab some of these benefits for yourself — can you force laughter to work for you?
A growing number of therapists advocate using humor and laughter to help clients build trust and improve work environments; a review of five different studies found that measures of well-being did increase after laughter interventions. Sometimes called homeplay instead of homework, these interventions take the form of daily humor activities — surrounding yourself with funny people, watching a comedy that makes you laugh or writing down three funny things that happened today.
You can practice laughing even when alone. Intentionally take a perspective that appreciates the funny side of events. Laughing yoga is a technique of using breathing muscles to achieve the positive physical responses of natural laughing with forced laughter (ha ha hee hee ho ho).
Researchers today certainly aren’t laughing off its value, but a good deal of the research on laughter’s influence on mental and physical health is based on self-report measures. More psychological experimentation around laughter or the contexts in which it occurs will likely support the importance of laughing throughout your day, and maybe even suggest more ways to intentionally harness its benefits. (Courtesy: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/01/health/laughter-mind-body-wellness-partner/index.html)
In an immigration-friendly move, a judge has ruled that spouses of highly-skilled H-1B visa holders in tech sector can now work in the US, thus upholding an Obama-era rule under which partners were issued H-4 visas.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Tuesday dismissed arguments by Save Jobs USA, who claimed that the Congress never granted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authority to allow foreign nationals, like H-4 visa-holders, to work during their stay in the US.
“That contention runs headlong into the text of the (Immigration and Nationality Act), decades of executive-branch practice, and both explicit and implicit congressional ratification of that practice,” Chutkan wrote in her ruling.
She further said that the DHS has authorised employment not just for students, but also for their spouses and dependents.
The lawsuit was also opposed by big tech firms like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft. H4 visas are issued to dependent spouses and children who accompany H-1B, H-2A, H-2B, and H-3 visa holders to the US.
The spouses of H-1B visa holders tend to be highly educated, many of them in STEM fields, and previously had careers of their own or worked to support their families.
In 2021, Google filed a legal brief with over 40 companies to protect the work authorisation program that allows the spouses of H-1B visa holders to work in the US.
As part of his anti-immigration policy, former President Donald Trump had proposed to end the issuing of work authorization (H-4 EAD) for certain spouses of high-skilled talent who came to the US on H-1B visas .
According to a National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) analysis, 90 per cent of the spouses of H-1B visa holders are female, two-thirds are from India and 6 per cent from China.
“The US can reap significant economic benefits, ease labor shortages, and attract more workers in the global competition for talent if it expanded current rules on work eligibility for the spouses of H-1B visa holders,” the 2022 study by NFAP said. (IANS)
Indian-origin software and robotics engineer, Amit Kshatriya has been appointed as first head of NASA’s new Moon to Mars Program Office at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. The new office aims to carry out NASA’s human exploration activities at the Moon and Mars for the benefit of humanity.
“The Moon to Mars Program Office will help prepare NASA to carry out our bold missions to the Moon and land the first humans on Mars,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, in a statement. “The golden age of exploration is happening right now, and this new office will help ensure that NASA successfully establishes a long-term lunar presence needed to prepare for humanity’s next giant leap to the Red Planet.”
As directed by the 2022 NASA Authorization Act, the Moon to Mars Programme Office focuses on hardware development, mission integration, and risk management functions for programmes critical to the agency’s exploration approach that uses Artemis missions at the Moon to open a new era of scientific discovery and prepare for human missions to Mars.
This includes the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, supporting ground systems, human landing systems, spacesuits, Gateway, and more related to deep space exploration.
The new office will also lead planning and analysis for long-lead developments to support human Mars missions. The office resides within the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD), and Kshatriya, appointed as deputy associate administrator, will report to its Associate Administrator Jim Free.
Kshatriya previously served as acting deputy associate administrator for Common Exploration Systems Development, providing leadership and integration across several of the programmes that now fall within the new office.
In the new role, Kshatriya is responsible for programme planning and implementation for human missions to the Moon and Mars. He will direct and lead the programmes to ensure Artemis and Mars planning, development, and operations are consistent with ESDMD requirements, and will serve as the single point of focus for risk management.
Kshatriya began his career in the space program in 2003, working as a software engineer, robotics engineer, and spacecraft operator primarily focused on the robotic assembly of the International Space Station.
From 2014 to 2017, he served as a space station flight director, where he led global teams in the operations and execution of the space station during all phases of flight. From 2017 to 2021, he became deputy, and then acting manager, of the ISS Vehicle Office, where he was responsible for sustaining engineering, logistics, and hardware programme management.
In 2021, he was assigned to NASA Headquarters in the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate as an assistant deputy associate administrator, where he was an integral part of the team that returned a spacecraft designed to carry humans to the Moon during the Artemis I mission.
Son of first-generation Indian immigrants to the US, Kshatriya holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and a Master of Arts in Mathematics from The University of Texas at Austin.
He has also been decorated with the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal for actions as the lead flight director for the 50th expedition to the space station, as well as the Silver Snoopy — an award that astronauts bestow for outstanding performance contributing to flight safety — for his actions as lead robotics officer for the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Dragon demonstration mission to the orbiting laboratory. (IANS)
India, which has the third-most billionaires, with 169, had a more mixed year. Indian billionaires as a group – worth $675 billion – are $75 billion poorer than in 2022, as per the Forbes World’s Billionaires List 2023.
As per the list, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is the richest India with a net worth of $63.4 billion. Ambani is the 9th richest in the world as per the list.
The Us still boasts the most billionaires, with 735 list members worth a collective $4.5 trillion. China (including Hong Kong and Macau) remains second, with 562 billionaires worth $2 trillion, followed by India, with 169 billionaires worth $675 billion.
Nearly half of all billionaires are poorer than they were a year ago, as per the Forbes World’s Billionaires List 2023.
Falling stocks, wounded unicorns, and rising interest rates translated into a down year for the world’s wealthiest people.
Globally, the list counted 2,640 ten-figure fortunes, down from 2,668 last year. Altogether, the planet’s billionaires are now worth $12.2 trillion, a drop of $500 billion from $12.7 trillion in March 2022.
Nearly half the list is poorer than a year ago, including Elon Musk, who falls from No. 1 to No. 2 after his pricey acquisition of Twitter helped sink Tesla shares.
Bernard Arnault, head of luxury goods giant LVMH, takes his place as the world’s richest person, marking the first time a citizen of France leads the ranking.
Despite a down year in the markets, rising inflation and war in Eastern Europe, more than 1,000 billionaires are actually richer than they were on Forbes’ 2022 list – some by tens of billions of dollars.
Luxury goods tycoon Arnault has had the best run. His net worth surged by $53 billion since last year, a bigger gain than anyone on the planet. Shares of his LVMH, which owns brands like Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Tiffany & Co, rose by 18 per cent on the back of strong demand. Now worth $211 billion, Arnault has taken the top spot on the World’s Billionaires ranking. It’s his first time at No 1 – and the first time a citizen of France has led the list.
Michael Bloomberg is ranked 7th on the list with a net worth of $ 84.5 billion. (IANS)
The US Supreme Court is set to consider in two pending cases whether the country’s colleges may continue to use race as a factor in student admissions.
The decision may change the future of affirmative action policy, introduced to redress historic discrimination, in higher education, reports Xinhua news agency.
A study released on March 28 by Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce warns that racial and ethnic diversity on university campuses could decline even if the institutions give more weight to factors, such as the socio-economic class of applicants.
“Without race-conscious admissions, the role selective colleges play in creating equal opportunity in our society is likely to diminish,” said Zack Mabel, co-author of the study.
Picture : Nebraska Examiner
According to the study titled “Race-Conscious Affirmative Action: What’s Next”, colleges would have to “fundamentally alter their admissions practices” to achieve diversity, particularly among Blacks, Hispanics and Indigenous students, if the Supreme Court bans affirmative action in college admissions.
According to the study, an alternative admissions process that includes socio-economic status would achieve a high level of racial and ethnic diversity if colleges eliminate preferences for legacy applicants, student athletes, those with ties to donors and other such factors that mostly benefit White, affluent applicants.
About 60 per cent of top US colleges consider race as a factor in admissions, according to 2015 estimates.
In addition, schools would have to expand their recruitment of high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds for a class-based alternative to produce a similar outcome to race-conscious admissions, the study found.
In 2022, the court heard two cases that had arguments challenging affirmative action admission policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that use race and ethnicity among other factors.
In the case at Harvard University, the group named Students for Fair Admissions accused the school of holding Asian-American students to a higher educational standard than it did African-American or Hispanic students.
According to experts, if the Supreme Court rules against the colleges, the landscape of college admissions would change drastically, and many schools fear losing what they have gained in diversity over the years. (IANS)
Indian-American physician and community activist, Dr. Sampat Shivangi of Mississippi, participated in an event at the Parliament of the United Kingdom held at the House of Lords in British Parliament on March 7-8, 2023, to honor the Indian diaspora. The event was attended by Indians from European countries, United States, and diaspora elsewhere, Dr. Shivangi said.
House of Lords member Swaraj Paul was instrumental in organizing the event along with Lord Karan Bilimoria, and Lord Rami Ranger a business tycoon. “It was such a wonderful experience and opportunity to meet these British Indian billionaires who have made their strides in UK,” Dr. Shivangi said in his note about the visit.
Dr. Shivangi was also invited to the home of Lord Paul, who is in his 90s and “still very active and much involved in Indian diplomacy and Indian diaspora,” Shivangi said, adding, “He mentioned to me that London Zoo will be named after his family in recognition of his services to Britain.” Lord Paul also scheduled a visit to the House of Lords March 8, for Dr. Shivangi.
A conservative lifelong member of the Republican Party, Dr. Shivangi is the founding member of the Republican Indian Council and the Republican Indian National Council. Dr. Shivangi is the National President of Indian American Forum for Political Education, one of the oldest Indian American Associations. Over the past three decades, he has lobbied for several Bills in the US Congress on behalf of India through his enormous contacts with US Senators and Congressmen.
A close friend to the Bush family, he was instrumental in lobbying for the first Diwali celebration in the White House and for President George W. Bush to make his trip to India. He had accompanied President Bill Clinton during his historic visit to India.
Dr. Shivangi is a champion of women’s health and mental health whose work has been recognized nationwide. Dr. Shivangi has worked enthusiastically in promoting India Civil Nuclear Treaty and recently the US India Defense Treaty that was passed in US Congress and signed by President Obama.
Dr. Shivangi is a member of the U.S. National Advisory Council for Substance Abuse and Mental Health SAMHSA, Center for National Mental Health Services, in Washington, D.C.
Indian Overseas Congress, USA, an advocacy organization for democracy and freedom in India, held a meeting in Long Island, N.Y., April 1, 2023, where it appointed new leadership and restructured the organization. It also held a protest against the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi from Lok Sabha following his conviction in a defamation case. The supporters held placards that said ‘save democracy, save India,’ ‘Modi-Adani Bhai Bhai,’ ‘Adani & 20,000 Crores Rs’, and ‘Rahul Gandhi Zindabad’ and shouted the slogans.
Picture : TheUNN
Delegates from ten states were present—over one-hundred-chapter delegates of IOCUSA attended, the organization said in a press release. The keynote address was delivered by Sam Pitroda, chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress, who challenged the conviction of Rahul Gandhi as an overreach, and expansion of control over various institutions in India. “We are in a situation where the 2024 election becomes very important for the country. It is the idea of India we are fighting.”
Pitroda also emphasized the importance of “recalibrating collaborative efforts to canvass, educate, and respond to the electorate in India on what they are looking for from their elected representatives,” the press release said.
Picture : TheUNN
Pitroda appointed five regional new working presidents to cover the five zones that he had delineated of the USA for this purpose: Working President, North-East Zone – Pradeep Samala; Working President, South-East Zone – Dr. Sajan Kurian; Working President, South-West Zone – Srivatsa Ramanathan; Working President, Mid-West Zone – Kulraj S. Grewal; Working President, West Coast Zone. –Devenderpal S. Bhullar.
Other Changes/Appointments: Vice President, Community Liaison – Rajendar Dichpally; Chairman, Disciplinary Committee -Gurmit Gill; Chairman, Membership Committee -Nikhil Thagadur; Chairman, Social Media Committee- Avinash Dandiya; General Secretary -Sandeep Vangala; General Secretary -Balinder Singh Kundu.
Picture : TheUNN
Several individuals spoke at the meeting criticizing the developing political scene in India and discussing the upcoming 2024 elections. Among them were Secretary General Mohinder Singh Gilzian, George Abraham, vice-chairman, Minhaj Khan, Gurmit Singh Gill, Pradeep Samala, John Joseph, Rajendar Dichpally, Balinder Singh Kundu, Dr. Dayan Naik, Sabu Sakaria, Pavan Darsi, Gurinderpal Singh, Gurpreet Singh, Amel Singh, Gulshan Singh Ghotra, Sharath Chandra, Gourishankar Ranganagoudra, Dr.Jayesh Patel, Devindarpal Bhullar, Kulraj Grewal, Srivatsa Ramanathan, Sharod Chandra, Johnson Myalil, Sukhy Dho, Verghese Pothanikadu, Zinda Singh and Pappy Badosh.
Krishna Sree Gandham and Sharath Chandra Vemuganti sang the Indian National Anthem, Secretary Secretary-General Harbachan Singh, Master of Ceremony, declared the event open. Pitroda bestowed “The Chairman’s” award upon Secretary General Harbachan Singh Esq., for his “untiring efforts and outstanding performances.”
Indian-origin CEO Rajesh Subramaniam was conferred with the prestigious 2023 Horatio Alger Award along with twelve other distinguished business leaders for embodying the ”power of the American Dream.” The award was given to exceptional business, civic and cultural leaders from across North America at the 76th Horatio Alger Award Induction Ceremonies in Washington, D.C. on April 1, 2023.
Each year, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc., a nonprofit educational organization, honors present outstanding leaders who have displayed extraordinary perseverance in overcoming challenges with the Award.
In his congratulatory message to Subramaniam, Indian Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu tweeted, “Happy to see the journey of a young man from Thiruvananthapuram to Tennessee, which also underlines the potential of India-U.S.partnership, felicitated at the iconic event.”
Picture : TheUNN
The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans annually confers the award to esteemed individuals who have succeeded despite facing adversities and have remained committed to education and charitable efforts in their communities, a press release by the organisation said.
Subramaniam, who grew up in Thiruvananthapuram, was selected in 2022 to serve as president and CEO of FedEx, the USD 94 billion transportation company. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai and after winning a scholarship immigrated to America to attend Syracuse University, where he earned a master’s degree in chemical engineering.
In 1991, he graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with an MBA and joined FedEx as an associate analyst. According to the press release, over the next 30 years, Subramaniam served in various executive-level positions and became known as a strategic leader who confidently saw the company through a period of tremendous growth.
“Mr Subramaniam embodies the power of the American Dream,” the executive director of the Horatio Alger Association, Terrence J. Giroux, said. “His commitment to education and building a better life for himself is admirable, and he will undoubtedly serve as an inspiration for our scholars,” he said.
Subramaniam serves on the board of directors of FedEx Corporation, the Procter & Gamble Company, the US Chamber of Commerce’s China Center Advisory Board, FIRST, the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, and the US-China Business Council. He is also a member of the US-India CEO Forum. For 76 years, the Horatio Alger Award has been conferred annually, and the association inducts the awardees as lifetime members. According to the press release, members support promising young people with the resources and confidence needed to overcome adversity in pursuing their dreams through higher education.
An IIT alumnus, the CEO earned a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Syracuse University and a master’s degree in business administration from The University of Texas at Austin.
“I strongly believe that through hard work and perseverance, one can overcome adversity to achieve success,” the press release quoted 55-year-old Subramaniam as saying. “It is a privilege to accept membership into the Horatio Alger Association, an organization whose mission reflects this ideal. I’m honored to join an incomparable list of Members and look forward to meeting the Scholars and supporting them through their college years and beyond.”
Indian wellness brand and leader in organic premium teas retailer VAHDAM® India has launched spices exclusively in the United States. To celebrate the launch, the company has appointed world-renowned Michelin star Chef, restaurateur, and host of MasterChef India, Vikas Khanna as a brand ambassador for VAHDAM® Spices.
Commenting on the product, Khanna said, “The farmers in India take pride in the spices they grow, which elevates VAHDAM® India’s spices and their taste above what’s currently available on the market. VAHDAM® India’s Spices can help anyone take their cooking up a notch and it will bring more flavor into all of our lives.”
According to the company, the single origin spices are sourced from Indian regions and states, packaged at state-of-the-art facility in India and shipped directly to consumers. The brand has expanded its partnership with farmers and cooperatives to bring high quality and authentic Indian spices to the consumers.
Aimed at creating fresher products for an increasingly health-conscious world, VAHDAM® India has expanded its partnership with Indian farmers and cooperatives to bring high quality and authentic Indian spices to consumers to help them achieve their wellness goals.
VAHDAM® India has also welcomed world-renowned, Michelin star Chef, restaurateur, and host of MasterChef India, Vikas Khanna as a brand ambassador to celebrate the launch of VAHDAM® Spices with a variety of new recipes.
With VAHDAM® Spices, the brand is introducing a collection of India’s finest spices, all sourced garden-fresh, packaged at VAHDAM® India’s BRC Certified facility state-of-the-art facility in India & shipped directly to consumers.
All of the spices are single-origin from states and regions known for high quality products. Each batch of spices is tested for purity in accredited labs in Europe to ensure VAHDAM® brings only the healing benefits of Indian spices.
According to a press release, VAHDAM® Spices have zero adulterants, pesticides, color, or toxins. Because VAHDAM® Spices are grown at the top farms, sealed fresh at the source, and brought directly to consumers’ households, they achieve a higher product potency and nutritional value.
“India is a magical ‘land of spices’ and provides the world with the largest variety of delicious spices. However, there is an absence of a home-grown brand, and the broken supply chain ensures that consumers don’t get a fresh product, while farmers do not get the right price for their produce. Additionally, spices are globally grown by spraying copious amounts of pesticides, Moneyinsecticides & toxins to increase farm yield, which causes a serious health risk to consumers,” said Bala Sarda, CEO & Founder of VAHDAM® India.
“We wanted to solve this problem and have spent the last two years building a supply chain of India’s finest organic spice farms with our partners. We made a conscious decision to bring sustainable, clean, and fresh spices to consumers around the world for all their cooking, wellness, and beauty needs.”
The average price for a new vehicle hit $49,500 at the end of last year, compared to $38,948 just three years earlier. Skyrocketing interest rates pushed the average monthly car payment on a five-year loan to $723 in March.
New vehicles priced under $25,000, a range that the average American might deem affordable, now account for less than 5 percent of all sales.
Customers who walk onto a dealer’s lot expecting such enticements as zero-APR financing and thousand-dollar rebates are in for a surprise: For the first time in recent memory, the automobile industry is a seller’s market.
“It is no longer a $25,000, $30,000 transaction. It is a $50,000, $60,000 transaction,” said Patrick Rosenberg, director of automotive finance intelligence at J.D. Power, the car-consumer company. “It is a greater financial commitment than it has ever been.”
The car-and-truck marketplace went haywire during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with much of the American economy. A global shortage in semiconductors, the chips that control everything from airbags to windshield wipers, seeded massive production delays. Toss in pandemic shutdowns and other supply-chain kinks, and the conveyor belt of new cars slowed to a crawl.
At that point, simple economics kicked in. Demand overwhelmed supply. The customer-friendly, let’s-make-a-deal milieu of the typical new-car dealership vanished as quickly as that new-car smell. It hasn’t returned.
Generations of automotive customers have come to expect deep discounts, four-figure rebates and zero-interest financing. In a new-car negotiation, the sticker price was a mere starting point. No longer.
“Most people don’t expect to pay sticker price. People are paying sticker price,” said Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights at Edmunds, the automotive information-services company. “Vehicles are coming off the truck, and they’re being sold immediately.”
The semiconductor crisis has eased, the supply chain has loosened, and vehicle production has resumed. But most of the cars and trucks rolling off the assembly lines are luxury items.
Between December 2017 and December 2022, the share of all new auto sales priced above $60,000 more than tripled, from 8 percent to 25 percent, according to research by Cox Automotive.
In the same five years, the share of sales under $25,000, a standard cutoff for economy vehicles, shrank from 13 percent to 4 percent.
“The manufacturers have been steering the market toward more expensive products,” said Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox. “All those bells and whistles, nav-screens, cruise control, all those fantastic and lifesaving technologies cost money.”
More than 90 vehicle models now fetch $60,000 or more, Cox reports. Meanwhile, in five years, the number of models priced under $25,000 has dwindled from 36 to 10.
U.S. automakers have walked away from economy-priced sedans because of thin profit margins and because consumers don’t seem to want them.
“Ford Focus, Ford Fusion, Chevy Malibu, Chevy Cavalier: There’s a long history of the Detroit three making passenger cars,” Chesbrough said. “But they decided, seven, eight years ago, that the margins just weren’t there for them.”
As a result, actual cars now make up only about one-fifth of the Detroit auto market, an industry dominated by high-priced pickups and SUVs. (The Hill)
Elon Musk has officially been dethroned from the top of Forbes’ annual “World’s Billionaire’s List.” The Tesla and Twitter chief is now the second-richest billionaire, worth an estimated $180 billion, which is $39 billion less than the previous year. The top spot has been awarded to Bernard Arnault, the chairman of French luxury goods giant LVMH. His net worth increased more than $50 billion in the past year to $211 billion.
However, Tuesday’s list tracks his wealth annually. Forbes explained that Musk’s wealth had fallen because his $44 billion Twitter purchase, funded by Tesla shares, scared investors and sent Tesla stock sinking sharply last year. Tesla gained much of those losses back this year but is still significantly lower than before Musk bought Twitter.
Picture : Bussiness Insider
Forbes said that “Musk has mostly tweeted himself out of the top spot on the ranks” because Tesla shares are down 50% since his Twitter takeover a year ago. SpaceX is a bright spot for the billionaire, the magazine notes, since its valuation has increased $13 billion to $140 billion over the past year.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos lost the most amount of money of any billionaire on the list ($57 billion), knocking him down from second position to third. The loss can be attributed to Amazon shares losing nearly 40% of their value last year.
As for Arnault, Forbes said the Frenchman had a “banner year” in 2022 because of record-high profits at the luxury conglomerate, which comprises Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Tiffany & Co. Shares of LVMH have climbed 25% over the past year and the patriarch has recently unveiled succession plans to his children.
Forbes said that the total number of billionaires on this year’s list fell to 2,640 (down from 2,668), marking the second-straight year of decline.
“It’s been another rare down year for the planet’s richest people,” said Chase Peterson-Withorn, Forbes senior editor of wealth, in a release. “Nearly half the list is poorer than they were 12 months ago, but a lucky few are billions — or even tens of billions — of dollars richer.”
With roots dating back to the 1800s, April is Sikh Heritage Month — a time to celebrate and honour the rich history and culture of Canada’s Sikh community.
“With 800,000 Sikhs calling Canada home, we have the largest Sikh diaspora, with roots of the first Sikh in Canada dating back to the 1800s,” said Punjab-origin Member of Parliament (MP) from Brampton West, Kamal Khera.
At 26, Khera was the youngest to have won in the elections in Canada in 2015. She represents Canada’s ruling Liberal party.
“As a Sikh, I am proud of the contributions and achievements of our community!” she tweeted.
In one of her visits to Punjab, she said: “My counterpart in India is always with heavy security, I move freely.”
Proud of vibrant Sikh community, Sonia Sidhu, MP from Brampton South, tweeted, “April 1 marks the beginning of Sikh Heritage Month in Canada and as Canadians, we are proud of our country’s strong and vibrant Sikh community.”
“This month, let’s continue to learn about Sikh Heritage in Canada.”
Mayor of Brampton, Patrick Brown, said this year “we celebrate 10 years of Sikh Heritage Month in Ontario”.
Among many of the events listed, he said he would also be hosting a special event to award Gurbax Singh Malhi the key to the Brampton city on April 18.
Picture : Daily Hire
As a mark of respect for Canada making it the second largest Sikh population in the world, the Mississauga Civic Centre clock tower was lighted with orange, part of the city’s Community Recognition Programme.
Learning the faith of the Sikhs, another MP Francesco Sorbara said, “During this month we recognise the contributions to our country by the more than 800,000 Canadians of Sikh heritage, learn about their faith and rich history.”
Randeep Sarai, Member of Parliament for Surrey Centre, said, “This month, I encourage you all to take this opportunity to learn more about the Sikh faith!”
India-origin Minister of National Defence, Anita Anand, said Sikh Heritage Month “is a time to recognise the many contributions of the Sikh community across Canada. Today, I joined members of the Oakville and Halton Sikh community at the flag raising at Oakville Town Hall”.
“This is an opportunity for Ontarians to come together to learn more about the Sikh faith and celebrate the many ways Sikh Ontarians help build a stronger and better Ontario,” said Ontario’s Minister of Citizenship and Multiculturalism, Michael Ford.
MP for Vancouver South, Harjit Sajjan, said, “Learn about how the Sikh values of equality and ‘seva’ (selfless service) are reflected in what we as Canadians strive toward.”
Another Punjab-origin Aman Singh, MLA for Richmond-Queensborough, added, “On behalf of our British Columbia New Democratic Party government, our caucus and colleagues at your opening gala for Sikh Heritage Month. I know there are many events planned throughout the month.”
According to Sikh Heritage British Columbia, its philosophy is providing a space where the Sikh community can connect with each other and with neighbouring communities to help each other prosper, learn and grow.
Its promise is, “Create a space where Sikhs and non-Sikhs can come together to create connections and relationships for prosperity.” (IANS)
While overindulgence could dig you an early grave, a daily alcoholic drink may neither be harmful nor offer any health benefits, according to a new study of 4.8 million people.
The benefits and drawbacks of alcohol have been much debated. While some studies claim that even a small portion can lead to death, others say it has health benefits.
Researchers from the universities of Victoria and Portsmouth in Canada and UK respectively, conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 107 studies published between 1980 and 2021.
The findings showed that low and moderate drinkers have similar mortality rates to those who abstain entirely. On the other hand, women who enjoy more than one standard drink per day are at least 20 per cent likely to die prematurely.
“In this updated systematic review and meta-analysis, daily low or moderate alcohol intake was not significantly associated with all-cause mortality risk,” the researchers wrote in the paper, published on the JAMA Open Network.
However, “increased risk was evident at higher consumption levels, starting at lower levels for women than men,” they added.
The study also found no significant protective associations of occasional or low-volume drinking (moderate drinking) with all-cause mortality.
But it showed an increased risk of all-cause mortality for drinkers who drank 25 g or more and a significantly increased risk when drinking 45 g or more per day.
When they looked at previous studies that suggest people who drink a little are less likely to die early or from heart disease than people who don’t drink at all, they found the evidence was skewed by systematic bias.
“For example, light and moderate drinkers are systematically healthier than current abstainers on a range of health indicators unlikely to be associated with alcohol use, (like) dental hygiene, exercise routines, diet, weight (and) income,” they wrote. (IANS)
Donald Trump became the first former American president to be indicted. He was accused by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney of orchestrating a hush-money scheme to help him win the presidency and then covering it up once he was in the White House.
“There is no crime and it should never have been brought” former US President Donald Trump raged in his first public address after being charged with dozens of offenses. Trump was pictured in court on Tuesday, April 4th in a historic first as the former President pleaded not guilty to 34 charges.
In the Manhattan Court, Trump looked defiant as he left Trump Tower and again a few minutes later, when he arrived at court. He raised a pumped fist and stared straight at the waiting cameras, then minutes later waved outside the court.
Picture : NBC
Wearing a grim expression, Trump was arrested and pleaded not guilty in New York City to 34 felony counts of falsifying his business records “to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,” according to a somewhat novel indictment disclosed after the former president’s history-making arraignment. He denied any wrongdoing.
Trump was only seen briefly outside the district attorney’s office, where he surrendered to authorities and was booked and fingerprinted behind closed doors. His mugshot was not taken, according to two law enforcement officials who could not publicly discuss details of the process and spoke on condition of anonymity.
In an unprecedented case, Trump faces charges including at least one felony offense related to hush money payments to women during his 2016 presidential campaign, to cover allegations he had an extramarital affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump pleaded not guilty to “34 counts of falsifying business records and conspiracy for his alleged role in hush money payments to two women toward the end of his 2016 presidential campaign.” Charges also include conspiracy and involve two women.
The indictment charges Trump with 34 separate counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, a felony. A separate document laying out the factual basis for Bragg’s allegations against Trump points to a complicated web of arrangements between Trump, his former lawyer Michael Cohen (who is identified as “Lawyer A”), and David Pecker, the CEO of American Media, the company that publishes the National Enquirer.
Bragg alleges that these three men worked together to identify two women who allegedly had sex with Trump, and to pay them to remain silent. The women are identified as “Woman 1” and “Woman 2” by Bragg, but the first woman appears to be former Playboy model Karen McDougal, and the second appears to be porn actress Stormy Daniels.
The actual felony counts arise out of allegedly false entries that Trump made in various business records in order to make the payment to Daniels appear to be ordinary legal expenses paid to Cohen.
Trump “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,” according to the charging documents. The 13-page “statement of facts” detailed in plain language how Trump allegedly committed crimes to help him get elected to the White House in 2016.
“From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects,” the statement of facts says. Prosecutors described a “catch and kill scheme” to suppress negative stories about Trump – “in furtherance of his candidacy for President.”
Pornstar Stormy Daniels poked fun at former President Donald Trump on the day he was arraigned in court. She released a graphic tweet which cannot be published in full. She added later in the tweet: “It’s definitely more fun being under my sexy man instead of under arrest.”
Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche said during the hearing that Trump is “absolutely frustrated, upset and believes that there is a great injustice happening” in the courtroom.
Legal analysts vary in their assessments of the strength of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s charges against Trump. Doubts allow some Republican officials to criticize Bragg’s case without defending the former president’s ties to a porn star or any of the other misadventures or falsehoods Trump has accumulated in private or political life.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who twice voted for Trump’s impeachment and says Trump is unfit for office, said in a statement that Bragg “stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda.” Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) accused Bragg of “attempting to interfere” with the democratic process with “politicized charges.”
The next in-person hearing is scheduled for December 4th, though Trump’s attorneys have vowed to do all they can to stop the case beforehand.
During his speech, he said: “I never thought that anything like this could happen in America. The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.” He said, “Our country is going to hell” and launched attacks on the judge in the case.
Trump was defiant in his speech, ranting about – among other things – his two impeachment trials during his presidency. He went on to call the New York indictment the latest in an “onslaught of fraudulent investigations. This fake case was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election and it should be dropped immediately,” Trump said.
In a social media post from his plane on his flight home from New York, former President Donald Trump said that Tuesday’s court hearing “was shocking to many in that they had no ‘surprises,’ and therefore, no case. Virtually every legal pundit has said that there is no case here. There was nothing done illegally!”
Finland officially became the 31st member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on Tuesday, April 4th, 2023 marking a major shift in the security landscape in northeastern Europe that adds some 1,300 kilometers (830 miles) to the NATO Alliance’s frontier with Russia.
The Nordic nation’s accession was sealed during a formal ceremony at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg were on hand as the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Pekka Haavisto, established Finland’s accession.
“Finland has today become a member of the defense alliance NATO. The era of military non-alignment in our history has come to an end. A new era begins,” the Finnish presidency said in a statement.
“Each country maximizes its own security. So does Finland. At the same time, NATO membership strengthens our international position and room for maneuver. As a partner, we have long actively participated in NATO activities. In the future, Finland will make a contribution to NATO’s collective deterrence and defense,” it added.
Reports say, Finland’s acceptance into the US-led security alliance presents a blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long sought to undermine NATO, and before invading Ukraine, demanded the bloc refrain from further expansion.
The invasion instead drove non-aligned Finland and Sweden to abandon their neutrality and seek protection within NATO, though Sweden’s attempt to join the bloc has been stalled by alliance members Turkey and Hungary.
On the eve of induction ceremony, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg heralded the raising of the Finnish flag for the first time at the alliance’s headquarters in Belgium, saying “it will be a good day for Finland’s security, for Nordic security, and for NATO as a whole.”
But Russia has warned that further NATO expansion will not bring more stability to Europe, and on Monday said it would scale up forces near Finland if the alliance sent any troops or equipment to the new member country.
“We will strengthen our military capabilities in the west and northwest if NATO members deploy forces and equipment on Finnish territory,” Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov reiterated that Finland’s accession will force Moscow to “take counter-measures to ensure our own security, both tactically and strategically.”
Prior to Tuesday, Russia shared about 1,215 kilometers (755 miles) of land border with five NATO members. Finland’s accession more than doubles NATO’s land border with Russia.
Stoltenberg said Putin had “failed” in his attempt to “slam NATO’s door shut. Today, we show the world that he failed, that aggression and intimidation do not work. Instead of less NATO, he has achieved the opposite – more NATO – and our door remains firmly open,” he added.
“Joining NATO is good for Finland. It is good for Nordic security and it’s good for NATO as a whole. Finland brings substantial and highly capable forces expertise on national resilience and years of experience working side by side with NATO allies.”
What it means for Finland and the alliance
Finland’s NATO membership guarantees the northern European nation access to the resources of the entire alliance in the event of attack.
It includes the protection offered by NATO’s Article 5 principle, which states that an attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all members. It’s been a cornerstone of the 30-member alliance since it was founded in 1949 as a counterweight to the Soviet Union.
NATO membership also better integrates Finnish forces in training and planning with NATO allies.
The country is no stranger to working with NATO, with its troops regularly participating in NATO exercises under a partner status.
The Finnish Defense Force also operate some of the same weapons systems as other NATO members, including US-made F/A-18 fighters, German-designed Leopard main battle tanks and K9 Howitzers used by Norway and Estonia among others.
Helsinki has also signed on the F-35 stealth fighter program, which will allow its air force to work smoothly with NATO members including the US, UK, Norway, Italy, Canada, Poland, Denmark and the Netherlands.
A November report from the Washington-based Wilson Center lists three key areas where Finland benefits NATO: reserve forces, technology access and artillery forces.
“Finland’s artillery forces are the largest and best-equipped in western Europe,” the report said.
“With some 1,500 artillery weapons, including 700 Howitzer guns, 700 heavy mortar, and 100 rocket launcher systems, the Finnish artillery has more artillery firepower than the combined militaries of Poland, Germany, Norway, and Sweden can currently muster,” it said.
The Wilson Center report also noted Finland’s strong cyber security record, pointing out the country is home to Nokia, “a major provider of 5G infrastructure,” and one of three major providers of 5G infrastructure in the world, along with Sweden’s Ericsson and China’s Huawei.
And it said Finland can muster 900,000 reserves who have been trained as conscripts in its armed forces. The wartime strength of Finnish forces is 280,000 troops, it says.
Sweden still waiting
Finland’s accession comes days after Turkey’s parliament voted to ratify the country’s membership, clearing the final hurdle for the country to join NATO and putting an end to months of delays.
Finnish and Swedish public support for joining NATO surged following the invasion of Ukraine. “Everything changed when Russia invaded Ukraine,” outgoing Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said last April. “People’s mindset in Finland, also in Sweden, changed and shifted very dramatically.”
NATO has an open-door policy, meaning that any country can be invited to join if it expresses an interest, as long as it is able and willing to uphold the principles of the alliance’s founding treaty. However, under the accession rules, any member state can veto a new country from joining.
An overwhelming majority of NATO members welcomed Finland and Sweden’s applications, but two countries – Turkey and Hungary – began to stall the process. Turkey and Hungary later softened their stance on Finland’s accession, opening the door to its membership in March, while continuing to block Sweden’s membership application.
There is hope for Sweden’s bid, however. Stoltenberg said Finland’s accession is “in itself something we should celebrate” but that it was also good for Sweden. “It makes Sweden more integrated into NATO and makes Sweden even more safer,” Stoltenberg said. “At the same time we celebrate and enjoy that Finland is now a full-fledged member, we should continue work to finalize the Swedish accession process.”
Finland’s fold into the alliance also reignited calls from Ukraine to join.
“Finland’s accession is a clear message that the time to revise old strategies and old perceptions has come and there is no better solution to ensuring Euro-Atlantic security as a whole than eventual membership of Ukraine in NATO,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said as he was welcomed to the NATO headquarters by Stoltenberg on Tuesday.
World leaders welcome Finland’s accession
A chorus of NATO members congratulated Finland as it joined the alliance on Tuesday. “Finland, welcome to NATO,” Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tweeted. “This is a historic day for you and for our alliance. It’s a step that makes every one of us safer. All NATO members now need to take the necessary steps to admit Sweden, so we stand together as one to defend freedom in Europe and across the world.” He also called on Turkey and Hungary to ratify Sweden’s bid for NATO membership.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also hailed Finland’s accession to NATO. “Finland is now a member of #NATO – this is good news and a victory for transatlantic security. With #Finland, our defense alliance has gained a strong friend,” he tweeted. Scholz also gave his backing to Sweden’s bid to join the military alliance.
Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, tweeted: “I warmly welcome the accession of #Finland to @NATO. This historic step will strengthen the Alliance, reinforce European & Transatlantic security and contribute to further fostering our #EU-NATO strategic partnership.”
The US Senate has confirmed Indian-American lawyer, diplomat and executive Richard Verma as the Deputy Secretary of State, Management and Resources, a position which is normally seen as the CEO of the powerful State Department in the US government. Verma, 54, was confirmed by a vote of 67-26 on March 3oth, 2023.
In his new role, Verma will be responsible for directing, coordinating, and supervising State Department operations such as foreign assistance and civilian response programs. Verma previously served as US Ambassador to India (2015-17) during the Obama Administration, becoming the first person of Indian descent to hold that position.
He is presently the Chief Legal Officer and Head of Global Public Policy at Mastercard. He also served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs, where he led the State Department’s efforts on Capitol Hill.
He served as the US ambassador to India from January 16, 2015, to January 20, 2017, and is currently the chief legal officer and the head of global public policy at Mastercard. A US Air Force veteran, Verma served on active duty as a Judge Advocate. His military decorations include the Meritorious Service Medal and Air Force Commendation Medal.
During the previous Obama administration, Verma served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs. Earlier in his career, he was National Security Advisor to United States Senator Harry Reid and was Democratic Whip, Minority Leader and then Majority Leader of the United States Senate.
Picture : MSN
Richard Verma has served as Vice Chairman of The Asia Group, Partner and Senior Counsellor at Steptoe and Johnson LLP, and Senior Counsellor at the Albright Stonebridge Group. Verma was appointed to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and is a former member of the Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism Commission. He serves as a trustee of The Ford Foundation and is on numerous other boards, including that of the National Endowment for Democracy and Lehigh University.
Verma is the recipient of the State Department’s Distinguished Service Award, the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship, and was ranked by India Abroad as one of the 50 most influential Indian Americans.
Verma, who was born in 1968 to an Indian immigrant, grew up in Pennsylvania. He attended a private college on a US Air Force scholarship. He earned a B.S at Lehigh University, a J.D. cum laude at American University, an LLM with distinction at Georgetown University Law Center, and a PhD at Georgetown University.
A new model has predicted that Earth’s population is likely to decrease in all scenarios across the next century and will peak nowhere near the 11 billion previously forecast.
Population growth could grind to a halt by 2050, before decreasing to as little as 6 billion humans on Earth in 2100, a new analysis of birth trends has revealed.
The study, commissioned by the nonprofit organization The Club of Rome, predicts that if current trends continue, the world’s population, which is currently 7.96 billion (opens in new tab), will peak at 8.6 billion in the middle of the century before declining by nearly 2 billion before the century’s end.
The forecast is both good and bad news for humanity: A plummeting human population will slightly alleviate Earth’s environmental problems, but it is far from being the most important factor in solving them.
And falling populations will make humanity older as a whole and lower the proportion of working-age people, placing an even greater burden on the young to finance health care and pensions. The researchers — members of the Earth4All collective (opens in new tab), which is made up of environmental scientists and economists — published their findings March 27 in a working paper (opens in new tab).
“We know rapid economic development in low-income countries has a huge impact on fertility rates,” Per Espen Stoknes (opens in new tab), director of the Centre for Sustainability at Norwegian Business School and the project lead of Earth4All, said in a statement (opens in new tab). “Fertility rates fall as girls get access to education and women are economically empowered and have access to better healthcare.”
The study is a follow-up to The Club of Rome’s 1972 Limits to Growth study, which warned the world of an imminent “population bomb.” The new result diverges from other recent population forecasts. For instance, in 2022, the United Nations estimated (opens in new tab) that the world population would reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and rise to 10.4 billion by 2100. U.N. estimates from a decade ago suggested the population would reach 11 billion (opens in new tab).
Other models forecast population growth based on factors that affect women’s social independence and bodily autonomy, such as access to education and contraception. Earth4All’s model is slightly more complex, integrating variables connected to the environment and the economy. These include energy abundance, inequality, food production, income levels and the impacts of future global warming.
The model predicted two possible outcomes for the future human population. The first, “business-as-usual” case — in which governments continue on their current trajectories of inaction, creating ecologically fragile communities vulnerable to regional collapses — would see populations rise to 9 billion people by 2050 and decline to 7.3 billion in 2100. The second, more optimistic scenario — in which governments invest in education, improved equality and green transitions — would result in 8.5 billion people on the planet by the century’s halfway point and 6 billion by 2100.
The team also investigated the connection between population sizes and the planet’s ability to sustain human populations. They found that, contrary to popular Malthusian narratives, population size is not the key factor driving climate change. Instead, they pinned the blame on high levels of consumption by the world’s richest individuals, which they say must be reduced.
“Humanity’s main problem is luxury carbon and biosphere consumption, not population,” Jorgen Randers (opens in new tab), one of the modelers at the Norwegian School of Business and a member of Earth4All, said in the statement. “The places where population is rising fastest have extremely small environmental footprints per person compared with the places that reached peak population many decades ago.”
A media outlet cannot be muzzled just because it criticizes the government, India’s Supreme Court said on April 5th, as it lifted curbs on a Malayalam news channel, ordered by the centre on “national security” grounds. “National security can’t be raised to deny people their rights… it was raised by the Home Ministry in a cavalier manner in this case,” the Supreme Court said.
The court said that the channel MediaOne’s criticism of the government’s policies and actions cannot be construed as anti-national or anti-establishment, and that an independent press is essential for a vibrant democracy.
Scrapping an order by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting that refused to renew the channel’s broadcast license for want of security clearance, the Supreme Court pulled up the Home Ministry for raising national security claims out of “thin air”.
“National security can’t be raised to deny people their rights… it was raised by the Home Ministry in a cavalier manner in this case,” the court led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud said, overruling the Kerala High Court which had upheld the centre’s decision.
The judges said the center had failed to show any material facts or evidence to justify its decision to impose the broadcast ban on MediaOne, which was one of the few channels that reported extensively on the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests in 2020 and the riots in Delhi that it spawned.
“There is nothing to show terrorist links. National security claims cannot be made on the basis of thin air. It is seen that none of the material is against national security or threatens public order,” the court said.
The court observed that the government cannot be allowed to have a stand that the press must support the government. It said criticism of the government cannot be a ground to revoke the license of a TV channel.
Coming down heavily on the center’s attempt to keep its rationale under wraps, and file them under “sealed cover”, the court said, “Sealed cover proceedings cannot be adopted to avoid the harm caused by public immunity proceedings. We are of the opinion that public immunity proceedings are a less restrictive means to safeguard the public interest.”
“There cannot be a blanket immunity to the government for disclosure of information to the other parties in a proceeding before the court… All investigation reports cannot be termed secret as these affect the rights and liberty of the citizens,” the Supreme Court said.
MediaOne, which had several run-ins with the BJP-led government at the centre, had gone off the air last year on January 31 after its name was removed from the list of permitted channels by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. On March 15 last year, the Supreme Court had put the Kerala High Court order, which had backed the center’s decision, on hold.
Dr. Nitya Abraham, an Associate Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Program Director for the Montefiore Urology residency program has been honored with the Young Urologist Award this week.
“I’m grateful to my mentors over the years, my chair at Montefiore Medical Center, and of course, my parents and supportive husband, for molding and equipping me to win this award. At a time when rates of physician burnout are increasing, it is wonderful that the American Urological Association and its leaders are recognizing the hard work of many young urologists across the country,” said Dr. Nitay Abraham, the daughter of Dr. Thomas Abraham, Chairman of GOPIO International.
A communique issued by the organizers of the award said, Dr. Nitya Abraham has been chosen from the New York Region for her accomplishments and contributions.
Dr. Nitya Abraham has mentored countless students, residents, fellows and junior faculty both at her institution and others in the New York region. She serves as the Chair of the Executive Curriculum Committee for Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Dr. Abraham has served the AUA as an Oral Board Review Course faculty member and QIPS/MEP member. She is a member of the Society for Urodynamics, Female Pelvic Medicine, and Urogenital Reconstruction (SUFU) Young Urologists Committee and social media committee.
Describing her as a prolific researcher with a clinical research focus on the impact of social determinants of health on pelvic floor health, the awards committee has noted that, Dr. Nitya Abraham has received funding from the US Department of Defense for urinary diagnostic markers of interstitial cystitis, and is also a co-author of the AUA White Paper on Rationale and Strategies for Reducing Urologic Post-Operative Opioid Prescribing.
A graduate of UConn, Dr. Nitya Abraham completed Medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center and the Urology residency at the same place. She did a fellowship at Cleveland Clinic, following which she joined the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. She lives with her husband Terrence and two daughters in Stamford, CT.
Along with Dr. Abraham, others who were chosen for the award included: Rena Malik, MD from Mid-Atlantic Section at the University of Maryland; Jesse D. Sammon, DO from New England Section at Maine Medical Partners Urology; Sarah Vij, MD from North Central Section at Cleveland Clinic; Alexander J. Ernest from MD, Society of Government Service Urologists at Brooke Army Medical Center; Kerri Thurmon, MD from South Central Section at the Denver Health and the University of Colorado School of Medicine; Zachary Klaassen, MD from Southeastern Section at the Medical College of Georgia; and, Yahir Santiago- Lastra, MD from the Western Section at the UC San Diego Health.
Established by the 2012-2013 AUA Young Urologists Committee (YUC) Chair, Dr. Michael C. Ost, the Young Urologist of the Year Award is presented annually to select early-career AUA members in recognition of their efforts and commitment to advancing the development of fellow young urologists. The following members were selected by their colleagues who serve on the Young Urologists Committee and endorsed by their respective Section/Society to receive this special honor for 2023.
The annual report is compiled by a bureau within the State Department and is mandated by the US Congress where the records of all countries are inspected.
The US State Department released a report on human rights practices in India highlighting the country’s challenges to freedom of expression, cases of arbitrary arrests and detentions, extrajudicial killings, confiscation and destruction of property without due process, discrimination against minority groups among others.
Picture : Tribune India
On freedom of expression, the report said, “The government generally respected freedom of expression, but there were instances in which the government or actors considered close to the government allegedly pressurised or harassed media outlets critical of the government, including through online trolling.”
The department in its report also flagged the use of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), claiming that civil society organizations have “expressed concern that the central government sometimes used UAPA to detain human rights activists and journalists”.
Erin M Barclay, acting assistant secretary of the bureau of democracy, human rights and labour, said that the US and India regularly consult “at the highest levels on democracy and human rights.”
“We have and we will continue to strongly urge India to uphold its human rights obligations and commitments. Not surprisingly, we also regularly meet with civil society both in the US and in India to hear their perspectives and learn from their experiences, and we encourage the Government of India to consult with them as well,” Barclay said at a State Department briefing in Washington DC on March 20.
It also flagged reports from civil society organizations alleging that both state and Union government intimidated media “through physical harassment and attacks, pressuring owners, targeting sponsors, encouraging frivolous lawsuits, and in some areas blocking communication services, such as mobile telephones and the internet, and constraining freedom of movement”.
The case of Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez whose “pretrial detention has been extended at least five times by the NIA Special Court in New Delhi” was highlighted along with the arrest of Umar Khalid “for making a speech during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019.” It also mentioned the denial of bail to the majority of the 16 activists “incarcerated on conspiracy charges related to the Elgaar Parishad Bhima Koregaon protests.”
Mentioning discrimination and violence, the report highlighted forced religious conversion for the purpose of marriage and instances of killings, both of Hindus and Muslims, during episodes of communal violence.
(APP): The erosion of the rights of human rights defenders and religious minorities, use of repressive laws including counter-terrorism and money laundering to silence dissent, prolonged detentions, and killings feature today’s India as exposed by Amnesty International in its latest report.
The report “The State of the World’s Human Rights 2022/23” said the Indian government “selectively and viciously cracked down on religious minorities, and explicit advocacy of hatred by political leaders and public officials towards them was commonplace and went unpunished.”
It said that during the said period, the punitive demolitions of Muslim family homes and businesses were carried out with impunity.
Picture : Fortune
“Peaceful protesters defending minority rights were presented and treated as a threat to public order. Repressive laws including counter-terrorism legislation were used rampantly to silence dissent. Authorities intimidated human rights defenders using digital technologies, including unlawful surveillance,” the report said.
Amnesty highlighted that Adivasis and marginalized communities including Dalits continued to face violence and entrenched discrimination.
It said that in a continuing pattern of harassment and intimidation, unlawful and politically motivated restrictions were placed on civil society organizations and human rights defenders including activists, journalists, students and academics.
On 14 July, the lower house of parliament banned a number of ordinary words from being spoken during parliamentary debates including, among others, “corrupt”, “sexual harassment”, “criminal”, “eyewash”, “incompetent” and “hypocrisy” to police the speeches of opposition members of parliament.”
In September last, mass raids were carried out against the NGO Popular Front of India (PFI) and its affiliates across India which was later declared an “unlawful association” under counterterrorism law, for its alleged involvement in the “funding of terrorism and terrorist activities”, despite no such charges and trials and against those arrested.
The Indian Supreme Court had upheld provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (2002) relating to the powers
of arrest, confiscation of property. These powers have been repeatedly abused to repress civil society and limit dissent.
Throughout the year, the authorities routinely used international travel bans to stifle independent voices including the human
rights activist and former head of Amnesty International India, Aakar Patel, journalist Rana Ayyub and at least two Kashmiri
journalists who were scheduled to speak abroad on India’s human rights situation.
The government cracked down on critics by resorting to arbitrary arrests, including without following due process, under
draconian and repressive laws.
On June 28, Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of the independent fact-checking website ALT News, was arrested by police in New Delhi, for denouncing discrimination against minorities and criticizing increased censorship.
Eleven human rights activists continued to be detained without trial in Maharashtra state under the UAPA. They were academics Shoma Sen and Hany Babu; tribal rights activist Mahesh Raut; poet Sudhir Dhawale; lawyer Surendra Gadling; civil rights activists Rona Wilson, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves; and three members of the cultural group Kabir Kala Manch – Ramesh Gaichor, Jyoti Jagtap and Sagar Gorkhe.
Journalist Siddique Kappan and three others remained detained under laws on sedition and the UAPA. The authorities imposed new restrictions on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. The High Court of Karnataka upheld a state order restricting all protests to a designated area in the state capital, Bengaluru. The Gujarat state police detained human rights activist Sandeep Pandey along with seven others who were due to participate in a march demanding a public apology to gang-rape survivor Bilkis Bano as the convicts been released from prison by the Gujarat government.
The Indian government used criminal laws disproportionately against religious minorities, particularly Muslims as the police routinely arrested Muslims for acts including offering prayers, conducting legitimate business transactions, and eating beef.
In the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Gujarat, public calls were made by some Hindu groups for the economic boycott of Muslim businesses.
Hate crimes including violence against Dalits and Adivasis were committed with impunity. More than 50,000 suspected crimes against members of Scheduled Castes and more than 9,000 crimes against Adivasi people were reported in 2021.
Several Kashmiri journalists were arrested, including Fahad Shah, Aasif Sultan and Sajad Gul. After being granted bail by local courts, they were re-arrested almost immediately under the UAPA. Journalists Aakash Hassan and Sanna Irshad Mattoo were prevented from travelling abroad by the immigration authorities without a court order, warrant or even a written explanation.
According to official data, Jammu and Kashmir accounted for the highest proportion of deaths involving the police in India between April 2020 and March 2022.
As per the report, the perpetrators continued to commit sexual and domestic violence with impunity. The government of the state of Karnataka imposed a ban on women and girls wearing headscarves (hijab) in public schools which also led to harassment of Muslim women and girls.
Laid-off H1-B visa holders breathed a sigh of relief when the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) confirmed that business or tourist visa holders can apply for new jobs and even appear for interviews. However, the visa status must be changed to an employment based visa before starting the job and must get their visa status changed.
“Many people have asked if they can look for a new job while in B-1 or B-2 status. The answer is, yes. Searching for employment and interviewing for a position are permissible B-1 or B-2 activities,” the US Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a series of tweets.
USCIS issued the confirmation on Twitter comes after many laid-off H1-B visa holders, majority of whom are Indians, feared they they will have to leave the country within 60 days of their termination from their previous job. The new information gives the terminated employees more time to stay in the country and look for new jobs.
B-1 and B-2 visas are the most common types of visa issued for a wide range of uses in the United States. The B-1 visa is issued mainly for short-term business trips, while the B-2 visa is issued mainly travelling for tourism purposes.
The USCIS explained that nonimmigrant workers are not aware of the rules and often assume that if they lose their job in the US then they have to leave the country within 60 days.
President Joe Biden, on March 21, 2023, presented the 2021 National Humanities Medal to Indian American actress and producer Vera Mindy Chokalingam, popularly known as Mindy Kaling, during a White House ceremony.
The National Medal of Arts and Humanities is the highest award the government confers upon individuals who have made significant contributions to arts and humanities.
“Mindy Kaling’s work across television, film, and books inspires and delights—capturing and uplifting the experiences of women and girls across the nation,” Kaling’s award citation issued by the White House read.
Picture : TheUNN
Presenting the award to Kaling, Biden said that she is the first woman of color to create, write and star in a primetime sitcom. “She is hardworking and an adoring mom, just like her own mom was. And, Mindy, we know your mom is always with you in your spirit. We know that” the President added.
Kaling, 43, is a daughter of Indian immigrants and was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1979. She was earlier nominated for the prestigious Emmy Award recognizing her work in the NBC sitcom The Office.
The 12 recipients of the 2021 National Humanities Award include; Richard Blanco, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Walter Isaacson, Walter Isaacson, Henrietta Mann, Ann Patchett, and Amy Tan.
Three children and three staff members were fatally shot at the Covenant School in Nashville, which one expert describes as part of an “astronomical increase” in violence on school campuses in recent years.
There is no universal definition of a school shooting, explains Jillian Peterson, an associate professor of criminology and the president of the Violence Project, a non-profit research center.
“In my research, we focus on school mass shootings, which is a really narrow definition where somebody comes, is heavily armed, fires indiscriminately, and kills four or more people,” she said.
The White House is blaming Republicans in Congress for the lack of action on guns, turning up the heat on the GOP to address rampant gun violence while appealing to voters fed up with America’s epidemic of mass shootings.
President Biden is focusing his anger over the elementary school shooting in Nashville this week squarely on Republicans, calling for lawmakers to show courage and warning that Congress will have to answer to families that have lost loved ones through gun violence.
“The Congress has to act. The majority of the American people think having assault weapons is bizarre, it’s a crazy idea. They’re against that,” Biden said on Tuesday. “I can’t do anything except plead with Congress to act reasonably.”
The federal government currently does not track the specifics of shootings that occur in schools. And while Peterson says they have been relatively rare over the past few years, there has been an increase in frequency in overall violence on school campuses that is undeniable, regardless of the methodology involved in data collection.
“I used to say mass shootings are rare, school shootings are rare,” Peterson said. “But it’s hard to keep saying that, you know, even though statistically they are, it’s getting harder to convince parents of that.”
By the Post’s measure, the total for 2022 was 46 — but that is only during school hours.
If the parameters are widened to incidents after school, over the weekend, when a gun is brandished, fired, or when a bullet hits school property, that number leaps to 303 in 2022, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, an independent research project.
The K-12 database definition also includes gang shootings, suicides, and accidents.
“This information is recorded to document the full scope of gun violence on school campuses,” its website reads.
Peterson says that the database, which works in partnership with the Violence Project, demonstrates how community violence is bleeding into schools.
“That includes things motivated by interpersonal conflicts, domestic violence, retaliation, all of those things, fights that escalate because people are armed,” she said.
In 2023, the K-12 database has recorded 89 gun-related incidents at a school so far, nearly one for every day this year.
It finds that, including the deaths in Nashville this week, there have been 74 people killed or injured this year alone, not including the shooters. That includes 18 people fatally shot, and 56 more who were injured.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 130 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2023. That definition includes four or more people shot or killed, not including the shooter.
Another category that Peterson says has seen a surge in frequency are threats of violence made, online or in person, which can be difficult for schools to track and manage.
Peterson, who is the parent of three elementary school-aged children says that community engagement can be vital in managing those threats, and preventing more tragedies.
“One thing we do know is that the most likely perpetrator of a school shooting is a child in that school. It is a classmate,” she said. “It’s somebody that is getting seen every day. And so they are likely to tell their classmates that they’re planning on it. They give out warning signs.”
Part of Peterson’s research includes studying the life histories and pathways to violence for the perpetrators. And in many cases, they follow the same steps, including telling others about their plans, a term called “leakage.”
Because of this, Peterson says giving students a clear pathway to sharing any suspicions of these warning signs is crucial.
“The best thing we can do is actually just have really good relationships with our kids, making sure that they feel comfortable reporting,” she said.
She also says schools need to take steps to have crisis intervention teams, suicide prevention teams, school based mental health, and anonymous reporting systems to give at-risk students resources, in addition to campaigning for improved gun safety among parents that are firearms owners.
“I think pushing for safe storage campaigns [is key] because the majority of school shooters are taking guns from home. So the more we can help parents who own firearms make sure those are secured, that’s helpful,” she added.
The White House is blaming Republicans in Congress for the lack of action on guns, turning up the heat on the GOP to address rampant gun violence while appealing to voters fed up with America’s epidemic of mass shootings.
President Biden is focusing his anger over the elementary school shooting in Nashville this week squarely on Republicans, calling for lawmakers to show courage and warning that Congress will have to answer to families that have lost loved ones through gun violence.
“The Congress has to act. The majority of the American people think having assault weapons is bizarre, it’s a crazy idea. They’re against that,” Biden said on Tuesday. “I can’t do anything except plead with Congress to act reasonably.”
The president’s broadsides came one day after the deadly shooting at a private Christian elementary school in an upscale Nashville neighborhood. The 28-year-old suspect was armed with three guns, two of which were assault-type weapons, according to local authorities. The shooter killed three children and three adults before being killed by police.
While calling for an assault weapons ban on Tuesday, Biden said people ask him why he keeps urging reforms that Republicans repeatedly reject.
“Because I want you to know who isn’t doing it, who isn’t helping. Put pressure on them,” he said, adding that there’s “a moral price to pay for inaction.”
Picture : Politico
Monday’s tragedy has revived the on-again, off-again debate over gun violence on Capitol Hill, where the parties have vastly different ideas about how to address the epidemic. Democrats have, for decades, pushed tougher gun laws designed to keep firearms out of the hands of violent people, and they’re joining the White House in accusing Republicans of sitting on their hands while kids are killed.
“Every time one of these tragedies happens it’s a reminder of just how pathetic this institution is at addressing this,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.).
Republicans have defended their position, arguing that tighter gun restrictions would do little more than erode liberties guaranteed under the Second Amendment. The more effective strategy, they say, would be to focus on efforts to treat mental illness and fortify schools.
“We’ve talked about things that we can do, and it just seems like on the other side, all they want to do is take guns away from law-abiding citizens,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was severely injured in a shooting in 2017, told reporters Tuesday.
In an effort to move new reform legislation, some House Democrats are eyeing a procedural move, known as a discharge petition, to compel floor votes even over the opposition of GOP leaders. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D), a Virginia moderate, floated that idea at a closed-door meeting in the Capitol Tuesday morning. The strategy has little chance of bearing fruit, but Democrats hope it will draw a clear distinction between the parties when it comes to gun violence prevention.
“We should not assume that the House — or the Senate, for that matter — are impervious to public opinion,” said Rep. Joe Neguse (Colo.), who heads the Democrats’ messaging arm.
The White House’s strategy to blame Republicans has been fueled by recent comments from GOP lawmakers, some of whom say gun violence is simply an unavoidable fact of life.
“My daddy fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me … ‘Buddy, if somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it,’” he added.
Nonetheless, the White House maintains that an assault weapons ban, among other reforms, would help to stop the uptick of mass shootings. Biden was in the Senate when the last assault weapons ban, which expired after 10 years, passed under former President Clinton in 1994.
“The reality is, we need Republicans in Congress to get on board with an assault weapons ban, to get on board with universal background checks, to get on board with requiring safe storage … These are policies that work — it’s not rocket science here,” White House principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said on Tuesday.
“I think the president will do everything in his power to continue to urge them to act,” she added. “All we can do is continue to fight.”
From the White House, Biden argues that he has done his part, between issuing executive orders on gun safety and signing the most comprehensive gun safety legislation in decades, which passed last year.
Just two weeks ago, Biden signed an executive order that aims to increase the number of background checks conducted before gun sales. The order builds on the bipartisan gun legislation that Biden signed into law in June.
“This president has been extremely forward-leaning and aggressive in trying to tackle this issue of gun safety,” Dalton said. “There’s a limit to his executive power, and there’s a need for Congress to do more in this moment.”
The debate comes ahead of the president officially announcing that he will run for reelection next year. Gun violence could play a factor in the next election, and the president is expected to tout his own gun safety agenda while highlighting the GOP’s inaction.
Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who was a lead GOP negotiator on last year’s bipartisan gun reforms, said Monday that he doesn’t think the Senate will take further steps before next year’s elections. And other Republicans are already pushing back against Biden’s finger-pointing in the wake of the Nashville shooting.
“It doesn’t get much lower than blaming Republicans in Congress for a transgender killer who targeted a Christian school. Shameful,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote on Twitter. The suspect in the Nashville shooting identified as transgender.
Meanwhile, Democrats argue it’s a good strategy for the White House to keep up the blame on Republicans lawmakers ahead of 2024 in the face of tragedies like Monday’s school shooting.
“If Republicans think that running on increasing access to guns is a winning argument, the White House should make them own every bit of the destruction and despair that they are creating,” said Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins. “Most Democrats aren’t anti-gun, they’re anti dangerous people getting their hands on guns. I expect the president to hammer that message home.”
Another Democratic strategist, Antjuan Seawright, said the White House framing the gun debate as an issue for Republicans to come around on is the right move because people are frustrated and looking to Washington for solutions every time they hear of another mass shooting.
“I think the president is doing the right thing by saying look, it’s not that he’s not willing, it’s not that the Democrats are not willing, it’s not even that some Republicans are not willing,” he said. “It’s the majority of the Republicans who are not willing, so it’s the Republican Party.”
Argentina captain Lionel Messi passed 100 international goals as he scored his seventh international hat-trick in a friendly win at home to Curacao.
The 35-year-old forward reached the landmark when he opened the scoring on 20 minutes in Santiago del Estero.
He added two more before the break to complete a quickfire treble.
Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernandez also scored, before Argentina paraded the World Cup trophy in front of more than 42,000 supporters.
It was Argentina’s second match on home soil since beating France in Qatar on penalties in December to win the World Cup.
Picture : Arab News
Messi scored his 800th career goal – and 99th for Argentina – in a 2-0 win over Panama in Buenos Aires last week as part of the team’s World Cup homecoming tour.
The Paris St-Germain striker reached three figures for his country when he took a pass from Villarreal’s on-loan Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Giovani lo Celso and fired a low shot into the bottom corner.
Three minutes later Nicolas Gonzalez outjumped goalkeeper Eloy Room to head home from four yards before the Fiorentina winger set up Messi for his second of the night.
Fernandez made it 4-0 with a shot from distance before Lo Celso released Messi to notch his third in just the 37th minute.
Angel di Maria and Gonzalo Montiel rounded off the scoring in the second half but the night belonged to Messi, who extended his record as Argentina’s all-time record scorer – Gabriel Batistuta is a distant second on 56.
He remains third on the men’s all-time international scoring list behind Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo (122) and Iran’s Ali Daei (109).
A new study of human intelligence posits a narrative that may surprise the general public: American IQs rose dramatically over the past century, and now they seem to be falling.
Cognitive abilities declined between 2006 and 2018 across three of four broad domains of intelligence, the study found. Researchers tracked falling scores in logic, vocabulary, visual and mathematical problem-solving and analogies, the latter category familiar to anyone who took the old SAT.
In the 12-year span, IQ scores dipped up to 2 points in the three areas of declining performance. Scores declined across age groups, education levels and genders, with the steepest drops among younger and less-educated test-takers.
IQ scores rose in just one area, spatial reasoning — a set of problems that measure the mind’s ability to analyze three-dimensional objects.
The study, authored by researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Oregon, appears in the May-June issue of the journal Intelligence.
Researchers across the globe have been tracking an apparent decline in human IQs, starting around the turn of the millennium. Theories abound as to why scores are dropping, but the smart money says our cognitive skills may have plateaued, teetering into an era of intellectual lethargy.
If you want to ascribe blame, look no further than this screen.
Cognitive researchers hypothesize that smartphones and smart speakers, autocomplete and artificial intelligence, Wi-Fi and runaway social media have conspired to supplant the higher functions of the human brain. In its quest for labor-saving tech, the world may be dumbing itself down.
“We’re all getting super lazy in our cognition because it’s getting super easy to do everything,” said Ruth Karpinski, a California psychologist who studies IQ. “We’re using Waze and Google Maps to get where we need to go. We’re losing our whole sense of compass.”
The new study joins a growing body of research on something called the Flynn effect. James Flynn, a New Zealand intelligence researcher, tracked a dramatic rise in IQ scores across the 20th century.
How dramatic? If you gave an early-1900s IQ test to a person of average intelligence in 2000, the test-taker would rate in the top 5 percent of the Teddy Roosevelt-era population in cognitive ability.
“IQs rose all over the world, over the course of the century, about 30 points,” said Robert Sternberg, a psychology professor at Cornell who studies intelligence. “To give you a sense of what 30 points means, the average is 100. Usually, gifted would start around 130. So, we’re talking about the difference between an average IQ and a gifted one.”
Until recently, IQ scores had been rising for nearly as long as we had IQ tests. The first tests emerged around 1905, tailored for struggling schoolchildren in France.
Intelligence testing in the United States “took off after World War I” as a selection tool in the military, said Stefan Dombrowski, a psychology professor at Rider University who studies IQ. “We needed some means to distinguish the cannon fodder from officer material.” Army IQ tests evolved into the SAT, which became the dominant college entrance exam, a rite of passage for the upwardly mobile.
Flynn’s research found that IQ scores rose by 3 to 5 points per decade, a finding that implied humans were getting gradually smarter. Cognitive researchers spent decades debating the reasons for the Great Smartening.
“Some people thought it was nutrition, some thought it was schooling, some thought it was better parenting,” Sternberg said. Over the course of the 20th century, Americans generally ate better, stayed in school longer and refined brutalist parenting techniques.
Flynn himself believed rising IQs reflected the growing complexity of human affairs. As farms gave way to factories, horses to cars, typewriters to computers, “it became more complicated to live in the world,” Sternberg said. “And so, IQs went up.”
To some researchers, the Flynn effect undermines the credibility of the IQ. Human intelligence is supposed to be largely innate, inherited, fixed. How, then, to explain the 30-point rise, an arc that seems to have transformed the average American into Wile E. Coyote?
“The level of gain makes it absurd to continue to believe that the tests are measuring some innate, supremely important, fixed quantity that is central to human existence,” Sternberg said.
The Flynn effect suggests that humans can, indeed, learn the skills measured on IQ tests.
“Children, I believe, have gotten better at taking tests,” said Donna Ford, distinguished professor of education and human ecology at the Ohio State University. “They’ve gotten wiser at taking tests because they’re so used to taking tests.”
Test-taking skills suffused American culture well before the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, perhaps the high-water mark of high-stakes testing in American schools.
Another perennial concern with intelligence testing is racial and socioeconomic bias. Some historians argue that the testing movement is rooted in sustaining white privilege.
“When these tests are made,” Ford said, “the items favor white, middle-class populations.”
She cites an old IQ test item that asked children to explain the saying, “One swallow does not make a summer.” Children from low-income urban homes often thought the question alluded to human digestion.
Whatever its flaws, the IQ test remains a fixture in American culture, used in various forms to document cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients, to flag children for special-education instruction and to spare mentally disabled inmates from execution.
“IQ is the most researched construct in all of psychology,” Dombrowski said. Innumerable studies have linked higher or lower IQ scores to better or worse life outcomes, from academic attainment to career success. Colleges and employers often select candidates with high scores on ersatz IQ tests, whereupon the benefits of a high IQ become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And now, with IQ scores appearing to fall, researchers are embracing the notion that the Flynn effect may have run its course.
“The line can’t go up forever,” said Elizabeth Dworak, lead author of the new study. “It’s called the ceiling effect. You eventually hit that threshold.” Dworak is a research assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
Previous research hinted that IQ scores may have plateaued around the turn of the millennium. One Finnish study found IQ scores had dipped by 2 points between 1997 and 2009. A French study found a 4-point drop from 1999 to 2009.
Perhaps human society has reached a cognitive peak. Computers and smartphones are more complex than ever, but human routines are oddly simpler. Generations ago, dishwashers and clothes dryers eased physical labors in daily life. Today, iPhones and the Amazon Echo eliminate mental labors.
“When you can just say, ‘Alexa, do this,’ or, ‘Siri, do that,’ as software becomes more and more sophisticated, there’s less that the human mind has to do,” Sternberg said.
The research design was far from perfect. The test-takers were somewhat better-educated than the overall U.S. population. The test wasn’t delivered in a controlled setting. Test subjects “might have been sitting on the bus,” Dworak said.
A 2018 write-up in the Washington Post sent a flood of readers to the test-taking website. “The sample started skewing older,” Dworak said.
If cognitive ability has indeed plateaued, then the next logical question is: When? Dworak would like to analyze scores by birth year.
One day, perhaps, researchers will identify a specific moment — the launch of Wi-Fi, or the rollout of the first smart speaker — when American intelligence turned south.
Dr. Ravi Kolli, President of the American Association of the Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), the largest ethnic medical organization in the United States was invited to be part of the 13th-anniversary celebrations of the Affordable Care Act on March 13th, 2023, at the White House in Washington, DC.
“It was such a privilege and an honor to be at the White House representing AAPI, to commemorate 13th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. It was a memorable day to cherish,” Dr. Kolli described his experience joining with several other healthcare leaders at the White House to commemorate the Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Barack Obama. Other AAPI team members attending the White House ceremony included, Drs. Rupak Parikh, Roshan Shah, Sameer Gupta and Jay Bhat
Surrounded by several healthcare professionals, industry leaders, and heads of federal agencies, President Joe Biden along with Vice President Kamala Harris, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi marked the 13th anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act in the same room where his predecessor, Obama signed into law the historic Act benefitting millions.
Picture : TheUNN
The landmark Affordable Care Act also known as Obamacare was signed into law in 2010. The act aimed to provide affordable health insurance coverage for all Americans. The ACA was also designed to protect consumers from insurance company tactics that might drive up patient costs or restrict care. Millions of Americans have benefitted by receiving insurance coverage through the ACA. Many of these people were unemployed or had low-paying jobs. Some couldn’t work because of a disability or family obligations. Others could not get decent health insurance because of a preexisting medical condition, such as a chronic disease.
“Many of you joined us that day after fighting for decades to make it happen, and I remember three words I used at the time, I thought it was –” Biden said, smiling to invited guests in the White House East Room. “I thought it was a big deal. And I stand by the fact, it was a big deal.”
The president touted the progress his administration has made to advance health care policy through legislation, the Affordable Care Act. “Folks, look, we’re making health care more affordable in many other ways as well.” Biden also highlighted recent moves by several pharmaceutical companies to cap the price of insulin. “Well, I value everyone having a decent shot. It is about fairness. It is about dignity. My budget continues to build on the progress we made in the Affordable Care Act.”
Calling it historic, Dr. Kolli praised the current administration for the efforts to insure millions, providing them with affordable health benefits. Quoting statistics, Dr. Kolli pointed out, “During 2023 open enrollment a record high 16.4 million people signed up, with 4.4 million more people enrolled for health insurance since 2021. A new HHS report shows more than 40 million people are currently enrolled in Marketplace or Medicaid expansion coverage related to provisions of the Affordable Care Act — the highest total on record.”
Dr. Kolli thanked the Biden administration for the Open Enrollment outreach that was tailored to reach audiences that experience lower access to health care through cultural marketing experts to connect more people to resources including Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, African Americans, Spanish and English-speaking Latinos, and in multiple languages.
HHS released a report from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) that shows more than 40 million people are currently enrolled in Marketplace or Medicaid expansion coverage related to provisions of the ACA — the highest total on record.
Referring to studies, Dr. Kolli said, ACA has helped a total of 40.2 million Americans gain coverage related based on 2022 and early 2023 enrollment data, the highest total on record. This represents 9.3 million more people enrolled than in 2021 (a 30% increase) and 27.6 million more people enrolled than in 2014 (a 219% increase, or more than triple). Survey results indicate that all 50 states and the District of Columbia have experienced substantial reductions in the uninsured rate since 2013, the last year before the implementation of the ACA.
Among the many benefits, Dr. Kolli pointed out that ACA covers many screenings and preventive services, which has been a theme advocated by AAPI: Focus on Preventive Care. “These usually have low copays or deductibles. The hope is that if you are proactive in your healthcare, you can avoid or delay major health problems later. This will benefit healthier consumers having to pay lower costs over time. For example, a diabetes screening and early treatment may help prevent costly and debilitating treatment later,” he pointed out.
Serving 1 in every 7 patients in the US, AAPI members care for millions of patients every day, while several of them have risen to hold high-flying jobs, shaping the policies and programs, and inventions that shape the landscape of healthcare in the US and around the world. For more details, please visit: www.appiusa,org
Mayor Eric L. Johnson announced last week he has appointed Arun Agarwal to serve as Chair of the Community Bond Task Force (CBTF) Committee as part of the 2024 Capital Bond Program development process.
Agarwal currently serves as the President of the Dallas Park and Recreation Board, the CEO of Dallas-based textile company Nextt, and the Vice Chair of the Texas Economic Development Board, in addition to his other civic and business endeavors.
The CBTF is a 15-member group that will assist the Dallas City Council and city staff in reviewing and selecting projects for possible inclusion in the 2024 Capital Bond Program. Agarwal and his colleagues on the task force will assess the city’s $13.5 billion needs inventory and recommend to the Dallas City Council a $1 billion package of priorities. The City Council will ultimately make the final decisions on ballot propositions and whether to call a bond election.
Picture : ET
Mayor Johnson said that he wants the city’s next bond program to focus primarily on improving the “Three P’s” — public safety, potholes, and parks. “We are working every day to make Dallas a safer, stronger, and more vibrant city — and we are making substantial, measurable progress,” Mayor Johnson said. “The upcoming bond program will provide us with a critical opportunity to build for our future by investing in public safety, in infrastructure, and in our most significant needs. Arun Agarwal has proven to be an effective and engaged leader in our city, and I am confident he will advocate for the right priorities for the people of Dallas.”
Bond programs, which must receive voter approval, are meant to pay for the city’s capital needs. That means the authorized funds cannot legally pay for salaries, benefits, and other ongoing programmatic costs.
Mayor Johnson said Agarwal’s appointment underscores his administration’s commitment to ensuring that parks are treated as a top priority in the bond program.
“While Dallas has many needs to address through our bond program, I believe parks, trails, playgrounds, and recreation centers are critical infrastructure in a modern city,” Mayor Johnson said. “When I was growing up in West Dallas and Oak Cliff, families like mine — folks who didn’t have access to private swimming pools, gym memberships, or country club memberships — depended on our city’s parks, trails, and recreation centers. Parks are a great equalizer for our communities, as well as an excellent driver of economic development. And I am confident that Arun Agarwal will be a strong advocate for our green spaces.”
Agarwal said he is “honored to be appointed as chair of this community-focused group that will help guide critical discussions about our city’s future.”
“I am particularly excited to help make major investments in parks, trails, and recreational facilities,” Agarwal said. “Mayor Johnson has been a true champion for our city’s parks and for the efforts to build a safer and more vibrant city. I look forward to working with Mayor Johnson, my colleagues on the task force, and the residents of Dallas as we prioritize our city’s most pressing needs.”
Even as the brouhaha over the incident of the tricolour being pulled down at the Indian High Commission building in London had barely died down, videos of a mob attacking the Indian consulate in the US city of San Francisco have surfaced.
As per reports, with loud music playing in the background, a large mob is seen in the video, attacking the Indian consulate, spray-painting a huge graffiti on its outer wall, saying “Free Amritpal”.
In fact, according to reports, several videos, apparently filmed by the miscreants themselves, showed men breaking glass doors and windows of the consulate building with butts of poles with Khalistani flags.
Employees of the consulate were later seen removing the flags in the videos, when suddenly a mob can seen breaking through a barricade from behind which they were shouting slogans. The employees can be seen running inside the building with the protestors trying to follow them.
Videos further showed that after doors of the consulate were slammed shut on their faces, the protestors starting hitting them with flags, while one of them smashed the windows of the building with a sword. (IANS)
(RNS) — In 2012, Erika Menendez shoved Sunando Sen, 46, onto the New York City subway tracks in front of an oncoming train. A new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York suggests the city can’t be understood without religion.
“I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up,” she is quoted as having told police shortly after the fatal crime. Sen was born in India and raised Hindu.
In popular culture, New York City is often portrayed as distinctly secular. But “City of Faith: Religion, Activism, and Urban Space,” a new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, suggests that the city — and the public spaces, scents, acts of solidarity and, yes, the hate crimes therein — can’t be understood without religion.
“I think religion is a subtext in the various spaces and conversations where we imagined it to be absent,” the exhibition’s curator, Azra Dawood, told Religion News Service in a recent interview at the museum. “And I’m really hoping that the exhibition surfaces some of the ways in which religion is actually a part of the city.”
Curator Azra Dawood with the “City of Faith: Religion, Activism, and Urban Space” exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. RNS photo by Kathryn Post
Picture : RNS
With a collection of original portraits, maps and interactive installations (featuring curated scents and soundtracks), Dawood challenges New York’s nonreligious reputation, arguing that the city’s perceived secularism is really covert Protestantism. Against this backdrop — in which Protestantism dominates (via land, money and politics) and Catholic and Jewish communities have made inroads — South Asian communities can become both indistinguishable and hypervisible.
As a Muslim and South Asian woman, Dawood is personally familiar with this dynamic, and as an architectural historian, she often considers how religion shows up in concrete and visible ways.
“(Religion) is not siloed off in explicitly religious institutions, such as churches, synagogues, temples, mosques,” Dawood observed. “You find it in the city’s shared public spaces, on streets and sidewalks and waterways, foodways.”
Dawood pointed to Johannes Eisele’s photo of a man praying next to a halal food cart in midtown Manhattan as an example of unexpected religion featured in the exhibit.
“The halal food carts began as a way of providing cheap halal food to Muslim communities working in different kinds of businesses,” she said. “Now it’s a gastronomic delight for all New Yorkers.”
Photographs displayed throughout the exhibit highlight how minority religious communities refuse to be boxed in by stereotypes. Photographed portraits by MIPSTERZ, a Muslim arts and culture collective, show Muslims grinning and striking poses in New York’s public landscape to reclaim the space. Portraits of New York-based Sikhs by Amit Amin and Naroop Jhooti celebrate people such as former NYC subway operator Sat Hari Singh. Singh, who saved 800 lives by reversing his train during 9/11, also successfully sued the Metropolitan Transportation Authority after it required employees to brand their religious headgear with MTA logos. These images provide a counterpoint to reductionist narratives.
While majority religions have the luxury of blending into a cultural landscape, the exhibit suggests Sikh, Hindu and Muslim groups don’t have that privilege. The flattening and racialized profiling of these communities is captured in the installation “CURB,” a sprawling book of poems encased in glass and placed in the center of one of the exhibit’s two rooms.
The poems — shown here as part of a limited-edition illustrated book that expands several feet when opened — explore violence against South Asian Americans in U.S. public spaces and are presented alongside two short films inspired by the poems.
Poet Divya Victor, who was also an adviser on the exhibition, describes her poems as emerging from “the long wake of the Patriot Act,” the era of the Muslim registry and the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies.
“I knew that poets and writers would need to begin paying special attention to surveillance, spectatorship, supremacist vigilance, and monetized public confession,” she told RNS. “I also knew that I needed to document the fear that my family members began to experience in public spaces with the rise of anti-immigrant and specifically anti-Asian acts.”
“City of Faith: Religion, Activism, and Urban Space” is now open at the Museum of the City of New York. RNS photo by Kathryn Post
Victor added that the poems, which are available in paperback, also reflect the resistance to “both white and Hindu supremacist forces” taking root in South Asian communities.
Though the exhibit largely focuses on moments of beauty and solidarity among South Asian communities, it doesn’t shy away from grappling with the fraught realities of anti-Blackness and the legacy of the caste system. South Asian artist Utsa Hazarika’s “Pilgrims/This Is Not That Dawn,” for instance, is a commissioned multimedia piece that explores the complex relationship between Black and South Asian communities in America.
Beneath a large, stylized image of a stamp from India depicting Martin Luther King Jr., museumgoers are invited to put on headphones and hear the soundtrack Hazarika designed. Listeners overhear Martin Luther King Jr. reflect on his encounter with the caste system during his 1959 trip to India and are reminded by comedian Hasan Minhaj of how the civil rights movement paved the way for the growth of South Asian communities in the U.S.
“The only reason so many of us are here is because of the Immigration Act of ’65. That law rode the wave of the Civil Rights Act of ’64,” Minhaj says in the soundtrack. A Love Supreme (2022)” is a scent installation commissioned from perfumer and author Tanaïs, on display at the Museum of the City of New York. The piece is made of hand-braided Nepali lokta paper dipped in fragrant oils and filled with powdered incense. It is inspired by speculation that John Coltrane’s album “A Love Supreme” refers to the phrase “Allah Supreme.” RNS photo by Kathryn Post
“The exchanges between American civil rights activists and the anti-colonial movement in South Asia mark a period of internationalism that has largely fallen away from mainstream consciousness,” Hazarika told RNS in an email. “In the United States specifically, the potential of these movements has been obscured by both a loss of this internationalist history, and the racial structure within which South Asians have often tended towards a proximity to whiteness, rather than embracing their anti-colonial histories to oppose racialized violence.”
Other installations — such as the bold-colored portraits of South Asian American feminist activists by artist and South Asian Women’s Creative Collective founder Jaishri Abichandani — also uplift examples of South Asian activism both within and beyond cultural and religious circles.
Though New York is filled with the art, architecture, collective action and history of South Asian communities, this is the first exhibit at the century-old Museum of the City of New York to focus on them, according to Dawood. She hopes this exhibit, which closes in October, will prompt people to recognize the vibrant religious expressions of South Asian groups and to observe the subtle ways religion operates in the world around them.
“It is often really difficult to talk about religion. … I hope the exhibition shows how multilayered the conversation about religion is, and how much it’s a part of our landscape.”
(RNS) — With no time even to wash her clothes as the Russians approached Mariupol a year ago, in southern Ukraine, Kalakeli Devi Dasi fled her native city with only a small suitcase filled with her dirty laundry. She also took with her a letter she was unable to deliver to her mother before Kalakeli and her friends joined a large convoy of cars heading southwest to the city of Berdyansk.
“It was very scary and we did not know what to expect,” said Kalakeli of the escape. “We saw much destruction. I saw burnt and torn bodies. It was a terrible and frightening sight. … We kept chanting the holy names of the Lord the whole way.”
Picture : RNS
Kalakeli is one of an estimated 15,000 Hare Krishnas who call Ukraine home, many of whom have continued their daily practice and serve their neighbors, even as several of their roughly 30 ISKCON temples have been damaged or destroyed and their communities scattered.
The Hare Krishna movement, whose formal name is the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON, has been active in Eastern Europe since 1971, when ISKCON’s founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, traveled to the Soviet Union in the company of Shyamsundar Das, a close friend of Beatle George Harrison.
Prabhupada arrived in New York in 1965 from Calcutta to spread in the West faith in the Hindu deity Lord Krishna. Related to the nearly 500-year-old Krishna consciousness movement in India, ISKCON is a monotheistic tradition within Hinduism whose main spiritual text is the Bhagavad Gita. Its adherents practice vegetarianism and meditation, Bhakti yoga and public chanting of Krishna’s names, and in the U.S. it is best known for its groups of saffron-clad devotees chanting mantras in public spaces or passing out literature on the street.
Having planted the seeds of ISKCON in the U.S., Prabhupada went to the Soviet Union in 1971 to teach the faith. From there, the theology spread underground by word of mouth, despite the Communist Party’s anti-religious agenda, eventually finding its way to Ukraine.
Other Hare Krishnas from abroad followed Prabhupada to continue to nurture the movement in the former Soviet Union. One of them, Niranjana Swami, a convert to ISKCON from Massachusetts, entered the U.S.S.R. under the guise of a tourist in the late 1980s but broke away from his tour at night to lecture in small, packed apartments, teaching as many as 100 people on an evening.
“I felt these people were so sincerely looking for God, because it had been suppressed in their lives for so long by the regime, that I felt the regime actually did much to expand God consciousness,” said Niranjana Swami. “Anything beyond the party line was, to them, seen as a potential message from the divine.”
He was in Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed. “I happened to be in Moscow when Yeltsin was standing on the tanks around the parliament building.”
Now 70 and a governing body commissioner for ISKCON, Niranjana Swami oversees communities in Moldova, Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine, traveling widely and visiting Ukraine when he can.
When the war broke out in Ukraine in 2022, local devotees turned to Niranjana Swami for support and guidance, and he began lecturing via Zoom. His collection of lectures about the war were recently compiled and published in a book titled, “Krishna Protects His Devotees.”
Niranjana Swami also helped mobilize the worldwide ISKCON community to raise thousands of dollars for those suffering from the effects of the war. Share Your Care, based in Kyiv, aims to help Hare Krishnas and their families relocate from conflict zones, supplement their loss of income and distribute food. Since the war began, an estimated 2 million plates of food have been distributed by ISKCON to Ukrainians in need.
The war has claimed the lives of at least five Hare Krishna devotees, and devastation in Kramatorsk and Bakhmut has cost the local communities its temples. In the face of this violence, deities have been relocated while larger temple rooms have been closed and their basements converted into bomb shelters.
Temple services and programs have resumed in cities in safer locales, while on the streets of Kyiv and other cities west of there, public chanting and book distribution have also resumed.
Much of this activity is overseen by Acyuta Priya, ISKCON’s zonal supervisor for Ukraine. Born to a staunchly Communist family when Ukraine was still a Soviet state, he joined the underground movement in 1980. “Of course I hated the Communist regime, because it wasn’t allowing me to dedicate my life to God,” he said.
The war has ended his normally itinerant existence; he is currently staying in a contact’s basement sauna in Chernivtsi, though he travels to various cities when possible. According to Acyuta Priya, 71 of the nearly 100 Hare Krishna community groups are still operating, serving Hare Krishnas and their neighbors. He said they continue to see new people joining the movement.
“People just come, they want to help and they have this volunteer spirit,” said Acyuta Priya. “I will tell you honestly, I am native Ukrainian, here from my birth, and I have never seen people be so united. It was unexpected for me.”
He attributes the Hare Krishnas’ resilience to their faith. “You have to understand that the Lord controls everything, and we need to see this war as an opportunity to raise up and to grow, and to grow mostly by giving and not just be in survival mode… There is a need to dedicate yourself to a higher cause, and it should be practical, not just theoretical,” said Acyuta Priya.
But some, like Kalakeli, have found homes outside the country. She moved frequently during the early weeks of the invasion, moving from Berdyansk to Zaporizhia, then to Dnipro, before finally leaving Ukraine and finding shelter with a community of fellow devotees in Denmark.
For nearly two months, Kalakeli was unable to contact or locate her mother, sister and nephews back in Mariupol.
“My life became just an existence. Only ‘kirtan’ (devotional singing) dulled my pain for a while,” said Kalakeli. “Totally desperate, I began to have thoughts of going back and looking for my family.”
In April of last year, she was finally able to connect with her family via phone. They had all managed to stay safe back in Mariupol, but their home was destroyed in the war. They recently joined Kalakeli in Copenhagen.
“The war taught us a lot,” said Kalakeli. “The main thing I have learned is that no one can take God away from me. In such difficult situations, there was nothing else we could do but trust in Krishna. Love for God will end all wars.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday pushed back against a GOP congressman who voiced skepticism about the threat of climate change, suggesting the issue was being used by the Biden administration to secure funding and was not a serious concern.
“Can you provide to me, or do you know any research on your own to justify this drastic climate change that we have to do today or the next four or five years this world’s going to come to an end?” Rep Jerry Carl (R-Ala.) asked Yellen at a hearing on the banking system.
When Yellen pointed to an “enormous amount of research” summarized by a United Nations group about the threat of climate change, Carl claimed that the global organization “makes a lot of money off the climate change scenario.”
“There is a strong scientific consensus and enormous body of research,” Yellen responded.
Picture : YouTube
Carl, who is a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, downplayed the significance of the changing climate by pointing to the environment in his home state of Alabama. Carl noted one could go 300 feet above sea level and find oyster shells in an embankment, then travel 40 feet below sea level and find a petrified forest under water.
Carl said he believes the literal definition of climate change, but questioned the idea that it is a grave threat to the planet. He argued that the issue of climate change was being used by the Biden administration so it could secure funding for its various priorities.
“The way it’s being used now is like a Trojan horse. Everything you want to use it for to get into the conversation is climate change related,” Carl said.
“We’re seeing enormous increases in concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” Yellen said. “Where in America are we seeing that?” Carl asked.
“It’s a global phenomenon; it’s not just in the United States,” Yellen replied, noting that an increase in the intensity of hurricanes is another cause of concern.
“Climate change, I believe, is an existential threat, and we will leave a world to our grandchildren and great grandchildren that will become uninhabitable if we don’t address climate change,” Yellen continued. “We have let decades pass in which we have understood that this was a problem and not taken meaningful action.”
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said he believed there is general skepticism among critics of the Biden administration that the billions of dollars being spent on the environment will meaningfully change the temperature of the planet.
Yellen has made fighting climate change a key part of her work as Treasury secretary, arguing that the U.S. economy will suffer if the planet continues to warm. The department previously created a climate hub, a division meant to drive investments toward projects to reduce carbon emissions and insulate the economy from extreme weather and other risks.
The Inflation Reduction Act, the administration’s signature piece of legislation passed last year, contains $27 billion in funding for green banks, credit unions, housing finance agencies and projects to cut pollution and energy costs.
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Commenting on the honor, the seasoned bureaucrat expressed his gratitude and remembered the tenets of Sikhism. “Delighted to receive Hero Award from Sikhs of America. Spoke about important tenets of Sikhism: seva, brotherhood, equality, inclusion & honesty. Highlighted the strengthening of US-India partnership and tech and infra transformation taking place in India and huge opportunities for the youth,” he tweeted after the event.
“We are excited to announce the opening of Xavier University School of Veterinary Medicine in September 2023,” said Ravishankar Bhooplapur, President of Xavier University School of Medicine. “The mission of Xavier University School of Veterinary Medicine is to prepare veterinary physicians to practice veterinary medicine of the highest standard, and the opening of our new veterinary school will provide students with a quality veterinary education at an affordable price.”
According to the company, the single origin spices are sourced from Indian regions and states, packaged at state-of-the-art facility in India and shipped directly to consumers. The brand has expanded its partnership with farmers and cooperatives to bring high quality and authentic Indian spices to the consumers.
