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External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said that a 77-year-old organisation like the United Nations (UN) needs a “refresh”, asserting that pushing for a major overhaul in the top global body is an important part of New Delhi’s foreign policy, reported news agency PTI.
‘We need change’
“The UN system was invented in 1945. Now, I tell people to show me something which is 77 years old and you feel doesn’t need a refresh. People refresh themselves, institutions need to be refreshed by other people. We need change. Large parts of the world do not believe anymore that the UN system speaks fairly for them,” said Jaishankar while addressing members of the Indian diaspora in Vienna on Sunday.
India’s push for reform
The UN officially came into existence in October 1945, after its Charter was ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the UK, the US and by a majority of other signatories.
India has been at the forefront of efforts at the UN to push for urgent long-pending reform of the Security Council, emphasising that it rightly deserves a place at the UN high table as a permanent member.
A question of influence
“The problem is those who are occupying positions of influence obviously don’t want to dilute their influence. So how we persuade people to go along with that change when their more short-term calculations make them stick to the old system is a real problem,” said Jaishankar, adding: “Having said that, it’s something which we will persevere and it’s a very important goal for us, and our foreign policy. It won’t happen tomorrow but it will happen one day, trust me.”
Gautam Adani, India’s richest and the world’s third richest person, has been crowned ‘Asia’s busiest dealmaker’ by Bloomberg.
Adani stands out for being the only person on the Bloomberg billionaires list to have gained wealth this year – he added $44.6 billion to his wealth while the other nine combined lost $259.3 billion.
Key among Adani’s deals this year were the $10.5 billion ACC and Ambuja Cements acquisition from Swiss construction giant Holcim, and Israel’s Haifa port purchase.
Gautam Adani’s rise to the top echelons of the world’s richest people has been meteoric. Adani is also the only person in the top ten in the Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index to have actually added to his wealth this year
His group companies – spanning ports and energy – have been firing on all cylinders and making both Adani as well as other investors richer – Adani added $44.6 billion to his wealth in 2022 till date. In contrast, the other nine billionaires on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index cumulatively lost $259.3 billion in the period.
Overall, the seven listed Adani Group companies have added ₹8.55 lakh crore in market capitalisation this year.
This stellar growth in his wealth saw him briefly rank as the second-richest person in the world, only behind Elon Musk.
Currently ranked third on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Adani’s wealth is estimated at $121 billion, down from a peak of $150 billion, scaled in September this year.
French business magnate and LVMH founder Bernard Arnault – with $165 billion and Elon Musk – with $138 billion are the only two people richer than Adani. Often pitted against India’s other richest man Mukesh Ambani, Adani has left Reliance Industries’ chief – whose wealth is estimated at $86.9 billion – far behind in the race of the richest.
‘Asia’s busiest dealmaker’
Success of the Ahmedabad-born Adani’s business empire has helped him top the list of the sixth edition of the ‘Bloomberg 50’ –a list of the most influential people in global business this year. His aggressive acquisitions during the year have also earned him the tag of ‘Asia’s busiest dealmaker,’ with the crown jewel being the acquisition of cement giants ACC and Ambuja Cements from Swiss construction major Holcim for $10.5 billion.
So far in 2022, Gautam Adani has struck deals across the ports, construction, media and energy businesses.
Adani started the year with the listing of Adani Wilmar, an FMCG company, on the bourses in February. This was just in time to leverage the benefits of the Russia-Ukraine war, which sent edible oil prices boiling and boosted the company’s revenue and stock price.
Later in July, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone announced it had won a tender to privatise Israel’s Haifa port in a deal valued at $1.18 billion. “In the long run, this is a tremendous port as we anticipate Israel becoming a connection both for Europe and the Middle East, and therefore we stand to benefit from the new possible trade lanes that will be created,” said Karan Adani, CEO, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, announcing the purchase.
The biggest deal of the year for the Adani Group, was the $10.5 billion acquisition of ACC and Ambuja Cements from Holcim in September. Together, these two companies propelled the Adani Group to become the second-largest cement maker in the country in terms of market capitalization, only behind UltraTech Cement.
$70-billion green energy ambitions and the ‘over-leveraged’ concerns
In September this year, Adani also announced an ambitious $70 billion new energy plan that would see the conglomerate setting up three giga factories – one each to manufacture solar modules, wind turbines and hydrogen electrolysers – by 2030.
However, the billionaire faced a bazooka from CreditSights, a Fitch Ratings company, which came out with a report stating that the Adani Group’s ambitious growth plans could spiral into a debt trap. This spooked investors, resulting in the Adani Group companies shedding ₹94,000 crore market capitalisation in a single day. (Business Insider)
After $18 Trillion Rout, Global Stocks Face More Hurdles in 2023
More tech tantrums. China’s Covid surge. And above all, no central banks riding to the rescue if things go wrong. Reeling from a record $18 trillion wipeout, global stocks must surmount all these hurdles and more if they are to escape a second straight year in the red.
With a drop of more than 20 per cent in 2022, the MSCI All-Country World Index is on track for its worst performance since the 2008 crisis, as jumbo interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve more than doubled 10-year Treasury yields – the rate underpinning global capital costs.
Bulls looking ahead at 2023 might take solace in the fact that two consecutive down years are rare for major equity markets – the S&P 500 index has fallen for two straight years on just four occasions since 1928. The scary thing though, is that when they do occur, drops in the second year tend to be deeper than in the first.
Optimists may point out that the rate-hiking peak is on the horizon, possibly in March, with money markets expecting the Fed to switch into rate-cutting mode by the end of 2023. A Bloomberg News survey found 71 per cent of top global investors expect equities to rise in 2023.
Vincent Mortier, chief investment officer at Amundi, Europe’s largest money manager, recommends defensive positioning for investors going into the New Year. He expects a bumpy ride in 2023 but reckons “a Fed pivot in the first part of the year could trigger interesting entry points”.
But after a year that blindsided the investment community’s best and brightest, many are bracing for further reversals. One risk is that inflation stays too high for policymakers’ comfort and rate cuts don’t materialise. A Bloomberg Economics model shows a 100 per cent probability of recession starting by August, yet it looks unlikely central banks will rush in with policy easing when faced with cracks in the economy, a strategy they deployed repeatedly in the past decade.
“Policymakers, at least in the US and Europe, now appear resigned to weaker economic growth in 2023,” Deutsche Bank Private Bank’s global chief investment officer Christian Nolting told clients in a note. Recessions might be short but “will not be painless”, he warned.
Big tech troubles
A big unknown is how tech mega-caps fare, following a 35 per cent slump for the Nasdaq 100 in 2022. Companies such as Meta Platforms Inc. and Tesla Inc. have shed some two-thirds of their value, while losses at Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix Inc. neared or exceeded 50 per cent.
Expensively-valued tech stocks do suffer more when interest rates rise. But other trends that supported tech’s advance in recent years may also go into reverse – economic recession risks hitting iPhone demand while a slump in online advertising could drag on Meta and Alphabet Inc.
In Bloomberg’s annual survey, only about half the respondents said they would buy the sector – selectively.
“Some of the tech names will come back as they have done a great job convincing customers to use them, like Amazon, but others will probably never reach that peak as people have moved on,” Kim Forrest, chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners, told Bloomberg Television.
Earnings recession
Previously resilient corporate profits are widely expected to crumble in 2023, as pressure builds on margins and consumer demand weakens.
“The final chapter to this bear market is all about the path of earnings estimates, which are far too high,” according to Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson, a Wall Street bear who predicts earnings of $180 per share in 2023 for the S&P 500, versus analysts’ expectations of $231.
The upcoming earnings recession may rival 2008, and markets are yet to price it in, he said.
China, a turning point
Beijing’s early-December decision to dismantle stringent Covid curbs seemed like a turning point for MSCI’s China Index, whose 24 per cent drop was a major contributor to global equity market losses in 2022.
Options boom
Technicals are increasingly driving day-to-day equity moves, with the S&P 500 witnessing below-average stock turnover in 2022, but explosive growth in very short-term options trading.
Professional traders and algorithmic-powered institutions have piled into such options, which were until recently dominated by small-time investors. That can make for bumpier markets, causing sudden volatility outbreaks such as the big intraday swing after October’s hot US inflation print.
Finally, with the S&P 500 failing to break out from its 2022 downtrend, short-term speculation remains skewed to the downside. But should the market turn, it will add fuel to the rebound.
President Joe Biden has nominated former US Ambassador to India, Richard Verma, to the post of Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources at the State Department.
The White House in a statement on Friday said that Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate 54-year-old Richard Verma to be Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources. If confirmed by the US Senate, Richard Verma would be the highest ranking Indian-American in the State Department.
Currently Chief Legal Officer and Head of Global Public Policy at Mastercard, Richard Verma, served as the US’ Ambassador to India from January 16, 2015 to January 20, 2017.
If confirmed by the Senate, Verma, who served as 25th US Ambassador to India in New Delhi from 2015-2017, and widely credited for deepening US-India bilateral engagement, will be the highest ranking Indian American diplomat in the State Department. Verma who’s currently the Chief Legal Officer and Global Public Policy Head at Mastercard, also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs from 2009-2011, in the Obama administration.
“Earlier in his career, he [Verma] was National Security Advisor to United States Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) while he was Democratic Whip, Minority Leader and then Majority Leader of the United States Senate,” a White House statement announcing his nomination said. “He has served as Vice Chairman of The Asia Group, Partner and Senior Counselor at Steptoe & Johnson LLP, and Senior Counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group. He is a veteran of the United States Air Force, where he served on active duty as a Judge Advocate. He earned a B.S. at Lehigh University, a J.D. cum laude at American University, an LL.M. with distinction at Georgetown University Law Center, and a Ph.D. at Georgetown University.”
During the Obama administration, Richard Verma also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs.
Earlier in his career, Richard Verma was National Security Advisor to United States Senator Harry Reid while he was a Democratic Whip, Minority Leader and then Majority Leader of the United States Senate.
He has served as Vice Chairman of The Asia Group, Partner and Senior Counsellor at Steptoe & Johnson LLP, and Senior Counsellor at the Albright Stonebridge Group. He is a veteran of the United States Air Force, where he served on active duty as a Judge Advocate.
The Indian diaspora here welcomed the nomination of Richard Verma to the top diplomatic position, saying Joe Biden has made an “inspired choice”.
“In nominating Verma to this very senior State Department role, President Biden and Secretary Antony Blinken have made an inspired choice,” leading diaspora organisation ‘Indiaspora’ said in a statement.
India to start digital university this New Year for higher education
This New Year, students across the country have a gift in the field of higher education – a digital university. The Ministry of Education is working closely with all stakeholders to start a digital university, and believes that from the year 2023, students will start reaping its benefits.
The special thing about this initiative is that this university will be connected to all other higher educational institutions and universities of the country as they will be affiliates of this digital university.
According to the Ministry, online medium will be recognised right from admission to all other related processes in this digital university. The admission of students in this digital university will also be through online mode.
The students of this digital university will be evaluated through online examinations, and the mode of teaching will also be online. Students will be able to study online through the portal ‘Swayam’ under the the Union Ministry of Education.
According to the University Grants Commission Chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar, the National Digital University is likely to be established on the ‘Hub and Spoke’ model. Under this initiative, all the students who have passed class 12 will be able to get access to higher education.
Kumar said that the number of admissions and seats for students in this digital university will not be limited. All the students will be able to get its benefit. Students from every part of the country will be able to enroll in the courses of their choice.
The Ministry has appealed for a strong industry-led education policy and working with a collective approach to boost the employability of the youth.
According to the Ministry, the facility of multiple entry and exit options along with Academic Bank of Credit (ABC) will also be available for the convenience of the students in the new digital university.
These options are being made available on the basis of the New Education Policy.
The Academic Bank of Credit (ABC) facilitates each student to open a unique personal academic bank account in digital form. In this, each account holder (student) is provided with a unique ID. The major functions of ABC are registration of higher educational institutions and opening of academic accounts of students, verification, credit verification, credit accumulation, credit transfer and promotion of ABC among stakeholders.
Academic Bank of Credit will keep records of academic data of students studying in various higher educational institutions. For this, colleges and universities will have to register themselves. After this, the account of the students will be opened in the academic bank.
After opening the account, a unique ID will be provided to all the students. Educational institutions will provide credit points in the academic account of the students on the basis of their courses. In this way, the data of students studying in colleges or other higher educational institutions will start being stored.
If a student leaves his/her studies midway due to some reason, then a certificate, diploma or degree will be awarded to him/her according to his/her credit (time period). The student will receive a certificate on passing the first year, diploma on passing the second year and a degree on completion of the course.
According to the official website of ABC, a total of 854 universities and other educational institutions are registered on their portal, and IDs of 48 lakh students have been made till now.
The Ministry of External Affairs gave this information to the Standing Committee of Parliament in response to its action in this matter. The Ministry informed that National Informatics Center (NIC) and National Informatics Center Services Inc. (NICSI) have submitted various project proposals to the Ministry which include Detailed Project Reports (DPRs), Commercial and Draft Agreements.
As per the report, the total estimated expenditure for launching the e-passport project by NIC is Rs 268.67 crore. This is mainly in terms of creation of information and technology infrastructure for issuing e-passports.
This was stated in the Action Taken Report by the Government on the Recommendations contained in the Twelfth Report of the Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs on ‘Demands for Grants of the Ministry of External Affairs for 2022-23’ in the Lok Sabha.
According to the Ministry of External Affairs, it will take six months from the date of approval of the proposal received by the Ministry from NICSI to prepare the e-passport related arrangements under the Detailed Project Report (DPR). It has been said that after the planning framework is prepared, the ministry will get third party audit done, after which the issuance of e-passports to the citizens will be started.
The ministry told the parliamentary committee that “an estimated expenditure of Rs 268.67 crore would be incurred on this over a period of seven years.” The Ministry will be able to manage the e-passport project in the allocated amount. Rs 130.58 crore in the first year, Rs 25.03 crore in the second year, Rs 25.03 crore in the third year, Rs 25.03 crore in the fourth year under the project, according to the report of the committee headed by Bharatiya Janata Party MP PP Choudhary tabled in Parliament on Thursday. Rs, Rs 25.03 crore in the fifth year, Rs 24.46 crore in the sixth year and Rs 13.51 crore in the seventh year.
The parliamentary committee said it welcomes the fact that the ministry will be able to manage the e-passport project every year from its allocated funds without any cuts, but it needs to ensure that the desired funds are released every year.
In comparison, Ambani, who topped the list last year, has seen a 2.5 per cent decline in his family’s net worth to $101.75 billion from $104.4 billion a year ago
The year 2022 saw many lose the ‘billionaire’ tag, though some of the richest Indian promoters have become even richer. According to the report, the number of promoters with a net worth of over $1 billion has declined to 120 this year from an all-time high of 142 at the end of 2021.
The billionaire promoters’ combined wealth is down 8.8 percent to around $685 billion ( ₹56.5 trillion) from $751.6 billion ( ₹56.62 trillion) a year ago, said the report, although it added that the fall in rupee terms is not significant owing to the currency depreciating against the US dollar.
Gautam Adani has been an outperformer in 2022, replacing Mukesh Ambani as India’s richest person. Adani’s net worth stands at $135.7 billion, up 69.6 percent from $80 billion last year, it said, citing Bloomberg data, that also highlights that he is also the richest person in Asia and third-richest in the world.
Meanwhile, Ambani has seen a 2.5 percent decline in his family’s net worth to $101.75 billion from $104.4 billion a year ago, added the report.
In fact, only three of the top 10 billionaires – Adani, Dilip Shanghvi of Sun Pharma, and Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel – saw an increase in the net worth this year, as per the report.
Mittal’s gains can be attributed to a rise of Bharti Airtel, which benefited from tariff hikes announced by mobile services operators, clarity over regulatory issues, and a stable business environment, mentioned the report.
While, gains for Shanghvi were driven by factors like an improved performance of Sun Pharma, which benefited from a better show in its specialty business in North America and growth in its India formulations business, added BS.
Radhakishan Damani of Avenue Supermarts (DMart), who is India’s third-richest promoter, saw a 21 percent decline in the net worth at $23.8 billion in 2022.
Other promoters in the top 10 list include Shiv Nadar of HCL Technologies, Azim Premji of Wipro and Uday Kotak of Kotak Mahindra Bank.
The Indian diaspora, one of the most “vibrant and dynamic”, is the largest in the world, with 18 million people from the country living outside their homeland in 2020, the UN has said.
The Indian diaspora account for roughly 4.9 million Americans who were either born in India or who have Indian heritage or origin, a recently published study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) said.
According to the study, titled “Spotlight on Indian Immigrants in the US,” the Indian diaspora ranked tenth behind the 5. 4 million-strong Chinese diaspora, which was placed ninth.
The United Arab Emirates, the US and Saudi Arabia host the largest numbers of migrants from India, it said.
“India has the largest transnational population in the world. It has the most migrants abroad — 18 million, which is a significant number and another feature which is very interesting about the Indian migrant population is that they’re really distributed all over the globe,” Population Affairs Officer in the Population Division at UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) Clare Menozzi told PTI in an interview on Friday.
Menozzi said while some transnational populations are really clustered in one country or region, the Indian diaspora is present in all continents and regions — from the Gulf to Northern America to Australia, UK. “It’s a very vibrant” and dynamic diaspora in the world, she said.
The report, ‘International Migration 2020 Highlights’, by the Population Division of UN DESA, released on Friday said in 2020, 18 million persons from India were living outside of their country of birth.
Other countries with a large diaspora included Mexico and Russia (11 million each), China (10 million) and Syria (8 million).
The report said India’s large diaspora is distributed across a number of major countries of destination, with the UAE (3.5 million), the US (2.7 million) and Saudi Arabia (2.5 million) hosting the largest numbers of migrants from India.
Other countries hosting large numbers of migrants from India included Australia, Canada, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar and the UK.
Between 2000 and 2020, the size of the migrant population abroad grew for nearly all countries and areas of the world. India experienced the largest gain during that period at nearly 10 million, followed in order of magnitude by Syria, Venezuela, China and the Philippines.
Migration from India is largely motivated by labour and family reasons, Director of Population Division at UN DESA John Wilmoth told reporters at the launch of the report here, adding that forced displacement is a much smaller category (about 10 per cent) in the total.
Menozzi said the Indian diaspora is comprised predominantly of persons who are working, but also students and people who moved for family reasons.
She said there is a very large presence of migrants who are born in India, in the Gulf countries where they are playing a central role in the economic prosperity of the countries, working in construction, hospitality and care services. The diverse Indian diaspora also includes highly-skilled scientists, engineers and doctors.
The US remained by far the largest country of destination of international migrants with 51 million migrants in 2020, equal to 18 per cent of the world’s total.
Germany hosted the second largest number of migrants worldwide at around 16 million, followed by Saudi Arabia (13 million), Russia (12 million) and the UK (9 million).
The report said preliminary estimates suggest that Covid-19 pandemic may have slowed the growth in the stock of international migrants by around two million by mid-2020, 27 per cent less than the growth expected since mid-2019.
The report said growth in the number of international migrants has been robust over the last two decades, reaching 281 million people living outside their country of origin in 2020, up from 173 million in 2000 and 221 million in 2010.
Currently, international migrants represent about 3.6 per cent of the world’s population.
Between 2000 and 2020, the number of migrants grew in 179 countries or areas. Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, UAE and the US gained the largest number of migrants during that period. By contrast, in 53 countries or areas, the number of international migrants declined between 2000 and 2020. Armenia, India, Pakistan, Ukraine and Tanzania were among the countries that experienced the most pronounced declines.
In many cases, the declines resulted from the old age of the migrant populations or the return of refugees and asylum seekers to their countries of origin.
In terms of regional migration corridors, between 2000 and 2020, some regional migration corridors grew very rapidly. The corridor Central and Southern Asia to Northern Africa and Western Asia grew the most, with 13 million migrants added between 2000 and 2020; more than tripling in size.
“The majority of that increase resulted from labour migration from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka to the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),” the report said.
It noted that while it is too soon to understand the full extent, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 may have slowed the growth of this regional migration corridor.
In many GCC countries, thousands of migrant workers in the construction, hospitality, retail and transportation sectors lost their jobs due to the pandemic and were required to return home.
The report said according to World Bank projections, the Covid-19 pandemic may reduce the volume of remittances sent to low-and middle-income countries from USD 548 billion in 2019 to USD 470 billion in 2021, a decline of 14 per cent.
Menozzi said India is the main country of recipient of remittances worldwide and in 2019 received USD 83 billion in remittances from its diaspora. The World Bank projects that in 2020, the amount will decline by around 9 per cent to about USD 76 billion.
The Indian diaspora account for roughly 4.9 million Americans who were either born in India or who have Indian heritage or origin, a recently published study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) said.
According to the study, titled “Spotlight on Indian Immigrants in the US,” the Indian diaspora ranked tenth behind the 5. 4 million-strong Chinese diaspora, which was placed ninth.
In an attempt to expand its network in the United States, India’s national carrier Air India, announced the launch of its first-ever nonstop service between Mumbai and San Francisco on December 15, 2022.
This comes after the airline announced the commencement of its Bengaluru to San Francisco flight three times a week from December 2, 2022.
Air India has launched another long-distance flight to the US, this time between Mumbai and San Francisco. The airline operates several US flights, mostly from New Delhi, but with more long-range planes on the way, new routes like this will feature on its network soon.
On December 15th, Air India launched its first nonstop service between Mumbai (BOM) and San Francisco (SFO). The flight lasted for almost 16 hours and was operated by the newly acquired Boeing 777-200LR (VT-AEF, named Vihaan), which formerly flew for Delta Air Lines.
Flight AI 179 left Mumbai at 14:30 and landed in San Francisco at 17:26 after flying for 15 hours and 48 minutes. It will operate three times a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays and take Air India’s India-US frequency to 40 nonstop flights per week.
The occasion was marked with a launch ceremony at Mumbai airport with a lamp-lighting and cake and ribbon cutting ceremony. Passengers on the flight were also treated to a specially curated goodie bag by Air India.
The airline’s CEO, Campbell Wilson, said, “As part of our five-year transformation plan, Vihaan.AI, we plan to significantly enhance connectivity between India’s major cities and prime global destinations. The non-stop flight between India’s financial capital and Silicon Valley is a step towards achieving enhanced customer experience. With the launch of this route, we will have a weekly availability of 40 non-stop flights that will bolster India’s connectivity with the USA.”
This January 1, 2023, the first ever Republican of Indian American descent entered the New York State Assembly in Albany. To date, Indian Americans elected to the New York legislature, whether it is the House or the Senate, have been Democrats.
Anil Beephan Jr. represents the 105th District and will become the first minority to represent Dutchess County in the State Legislature, and also, at 29 years old, the youngest Republican currently in the NY State Assembly.
Beephan, a member of the East Fishkill Town Council since 2018, captured 32,278 votes in the 2022 race, while Fieldstein, a Dover resident, garnered 21,136 votes.
“I am humbled by the outpouring of support across the 105th Assembly District. Thank you to every voter, volunteer, and neighbor who placed their trust in me and our message – each of you made tonight’s election a resounding victory,” Beephan said in declaring victory. In thanking the voters, Beephan took a moment to acknowledge Fieldstein. “A special thank you to my opponent for her civility and for keeping this race focused on the issues at hand.”
Beephan’s parents are of Indian origin and immigrated from Trinidad before he was born. He ran for the seat when it became open in October 2021, and was elected Nov. 8, 2022.
On Dec. 31, Beephan tweeted, “As the clock strikes midnight and I officially take office as your New York State Assemblyman, I thank you for the opportunity to serve as your representative. Wishing you and your family a Happy & Prosperous New Year! #AD105.”
“While serving in the Assembly, I will work tirelessly to provide accessible representation to my constituents in the 105th Assembly District and advocate for all New Yorkers alike,” Assemblyman Beephan is quoted saying in the press release.
“Public safety, wasteful spending, and onerous taxes are major problems affecting our residents, and they must be addressed immediately,” he added.
Beephan said he is also committed to fighting policies to make the County region and state more energy-independent.
“As we begin the 2023 Legislative Session, I look forward to working with my new colleagues on practical, effective solutions to these issues,” he emphasized.
Beephan will serve on several legislative committees for the 2023-2024 cycle. They include, Cities Committee; Consumer Affairs and Protection; Economic Development, Job Creation, Commerce and Industry; Governmental Operations; Local Governments; and Social Services.
Since 2018, Beephan has served the Town of East Fishkill as a Councilmember and board liaison to law enforcement.
“During his tenure, Anil helped countless residents with state and local issues while keeping his community informed with vital information,” the campaign website says. He launched the #HometownHotspots tour to showcase small businesses and non-profits and to create an open dialogue on becoming better government partners.
He currently works in the technology industry with previous experience as a volunteer firefighter and working for the New York State Senate.
“Anil believes in smarter spending and greater resources for schools, infrastructure projects, and emergency services. Additionally, he will support the needs of law enforcement and changes to the state’s bail reform measures to directly address safety issues in our communities,” his State Assembly website says.
Beephan is a long-time resident of East Fishkill and served as a volunteer firefighter. He is also a private pilot. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Arcadia University and a master’s in Management from Harvard’s Extension School.
The 105th Assembly District includes the towns of Amenia, Beekman, Dover, East Fishkill, Fishkill, LaGrange, Pawling, Union Vale, and Wappinger. Beephan represents 9 towns and 3 counties, and a population of a little over 137,000. According to Ballotpedia, 73.9 percent of the population is white.
The quest to find another world, similar to that of Earth with resources that could sustain human life has remained the foundation of the global exoplanet hunt. Astronomers from across the world have been looking to find unique worlds outside our Solar System, where humanity could transcend in the future.
2022 was a year of great success in that direction as astronomers from around the world managed to find over 200 planets outside our solar system and some of them are primed for deeper observations by the James Webb Space Telescope and others. When the year started, the exoplanet catalogue had fewer than 5,000 planets since the planetary survey beyond our Solar System began.
“We started the year with fewer than 5,000 confirmed exoplanets. We end with 5,235 known worlds. About 4% are rocky planets like Earth or Mars. What will the new year bring? More planets!” Nasa said in a tweet.
The exoplanet catalogues so far have a varied range of worlds when it comes to their composition and characteristics. These include small, rocky worlds like Earth, gas giants many times larger than Jupiter, and hot Jupiters in scorchingly close orbits around their stars.
Meanwhile, the list also includes “super-Earths,” which are possible rocky worlds bigger than our own, and “mini-Neptunes,” smaller versions of our system’s Neptune.
The latest planet to be discovered in 2022 is HD 109833 b, which is a Neptune-like exoplanet that orbits a G-type star. According to Nasa, Its mass is 8.69 Earths and it takes 9.2 days to complete one orbit of its star. It was discovered using the transit method as astronomers looked at the star and noticed a dip in its light every time the object came in front of it.
Astronomers also found two exoplanets orbiting a red dwarf star that is unique in their composition and was unlike any other discovered before. These two planets are filled with water and located in a planetary system 218 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. The planets, which are about one and a half times the size of the Earth, were discovered along with their host star by Nasa’s Kepler Space Telescope.
(PTI) Some civil rights groups have claimed that about 1,000 Christian tribals in Chhattisgarh were subjected to violence over their religion and some of them were forcibly converted to Hinduism.
The Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in partnership with All India Peoples Forum, All India Lawyers Association for Justice and United Christian Forum constituted a fact-finding committee which visited the state.
Irfan Engineer, director of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism who led the fact-finding committee, claimed that there is an “organised campaign to forcibly convert Christian Adivasis to Hindu religion”.
NFAAUM and Indian Caucus of The United Methodist Church in a statement described that Christian Persecution has been Legitimized by Religious Nationalists in India. “As we prepare to celebrate the joyous birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the promise of a New Year, the Indian National Caucus of The United Methodist Church stands in solidarity with more than 32 million Christians in India who live in anxious and uncertain times. We express our deep concern in the wake of increased developments aimed at persecuting Christians and other minority religious communities in India. These children of God frequently endure harassment and physical abuse when they gather for worship and their houses of worship have been vandalized and demolished with impunity.
“The 2016 Social Principles of The United Methodist Church are clear, “We condemn all overt and covert forms of religious intolerance, being especially sensitive to their expression in media stereotyping. We assert the right of all religions and their adherents to freedom from legal, economic, and social discrimination.”
“The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has consistently detailed reports of religious persecution in India along with its recommendations to the U.S. Department of State and Congress. The Federation of Indian American Christians in North America (FIACONA), as an ecumenical organization representing over 1 million American Christians from Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical traditions, has recorded over 400 churches that have been demolished, and 700 incidents of violence against Christians in India in 2022 alone.
“We are alarmed that a Frisco, TX based 501c(3) charity named the Global Hindu Heritage Foundation (GHHF) has increased its public fundraising in the U.S., with the explicitly stated goals to demolish churches and forcefully convert Christians to Hinduism. On December 6, 2022, the city of Frisco, TX held a special hearing where people of all religious backgrounds expressed their outrage that such radical nationalist organizations were permitted to operate on US soil.
“This religious extremist group is one of many radical Hindu nationalist organizations that have sprung up across the United States in recent years. These extremist groups actively sponsor and host US events by inviting Hindu nationalist leaders from India, providing them an ideological platform to legitimate violence against religious minorities, particularly Christians and Muslims. These organizations pose a threat of operation to many US-based social and relief organizations in the most impoverished communities in India.
“The Indian National Caucus of the United Methodist Church asks United Methodists across the denomination to advocate with Congress and the U.S. State Department to investigate and oppose all religious nationalist organizations especially those that legitimate acts of violence, and in particular growing extremist expressions of Hindu nationalism.
“We call on all people of faith to fervently pray for those who are persecuted for their belief and practice and to oppose the demolition of Christian churches and other religious houses of worship. In the name of the Prince of Peace who comes in a spirit of hope and freedom from all oppression, we denounce extremist religious nationalist movements that are contrary to a spirit of mutual respect and recognition and the alleviation of human suffering. We continue to affirm communal safety and security and security and advocate for human dignity and human rights for all.”
India has expressed concern over the number of international students from the country being “defrauded” in Canada by recruitment agents who get them to join private universities with dubious track records.
“That’s a major issue we have to take a look at,” said Sanjay Kumar Verma, India’s new High Commissioner to Ottawa, told reporters on Thursday.
Verma called upon the community to flag such institutions, so that prospective students can be warned in advance against joining them.
He said that due to “factually incorrect narratives doing the rounds in India”, “impressionable” students coming from India get “duped.”
The issue, especially recruiters working on behalf of such private colleges, has been flagged in recent months, with several Indian students facing problems in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
Verma called upon the community to “share correct information with our students before they are recruited” and so they “check the credentials of the colleges they are planning to join carefully”.
Ravi Jain, co-founder of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers’ Association said that recruiters promise an easy path to permanent residency to students, Hindustan Times reported last week.
“Promises are being made that these students will be able to graduate and become permanent residents quite easily but again if you look at the number of international students coming in and the programme that typically services them, which is the Canadian Experience Class, there simply is not the room to be able to accommodate all of them,” he said.
This was also the conclusion of an investigation conducted by CBC News in October, which noted that “lured by the promise of a post-secondary education and a chance to build a life here, thousands of foreign students are coming every year and arriving to find what they were promised and what their families paid for often isn’t what awaits them”.
Verma said Canada offered “real educational opportunities”, pointing to the nearly 240,000 Indian students currently in the country, but warned against the negative impact of recruitment agents.
“We don’t want this story in any way to get stigmatsed,” he said.
Addressing other consular matters, Verma said that while the e-visa programme for Canadian nationals had resumed this month, there was no timeline to renewing the ten-year multiple entry tourist visa scheme which was suspended after the Covid outbreak in the spring of 2020.
Verma said such long-term visas remain suspended not cancelled and discussions were on “on all possibilities” related to their potential restoration. Alluding to the reinstatement of e-visas, he said, “We’ll be very glad if our host Government will consider giving similar facilities to Indian travelers coming to Canada. That will not only facilitate their travel, it will also facilitate the people-to-people relationship growing closer and stronger.”
As for the issue of the enormous backlog in the issuance of Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cards, he pointed to the burgeoning number of applications, which grew to 49,000 just this November alone, as against 26,000 for the same month last year.
The director of the George Washington University School of Medicine argues that the brain of an older person is much more practical than is commonly believed. At this age, the interaction of the right and left hemispheres of the brain becomes harmonious, which expands our creative possibilities. That is why among people over 60 years of age you can find many personalities who have just started their creative activities.
Of course, the brain is no longer as fast as it was in youth. However, it gains in flexibility. Therefore, with age, we are more likely to make the right decisions and are less exposed to negative emotions. The peak of human intellectual activity occurs around the age of 70, when the brain begins to function at full strength.
Over time, the amount of myelin in the brain increases, a substance that facilitates the rapid passage of signals between neurons. Due to this, intellectual abilities increase by 300% compared to the average.
Also interesting is the fact that after 60 years, a person can use 2 hemispheres at the same time. This allows you to solve much more complex problems.
Professor Monchi Uri, from the University of Montreal, believes that the old man’s brain chooses the path that consumes less energy, eliminates the unnecessary and leaves only the right options to solve the problem. A study was conducted involving different age groups. Young people were very confused when passing the tests, while those over 60 years of age made the right decisions.
Now, let’s look at the characteristics of the brain between the ages of 60 and 80. They are really pink. *CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BRAIN OF AN ELDERLY PERSON.*
So do not be afraid of old age. Strive to develop intellectually. Learn new crafts, make music, learn to play musical instruments, paint pictures! Dance! Take an interest in life, meet and communicate with friends, plan for the future, travel as best you can. Do not forget to go to shops, cafes, shows. Don’t shut up alone, it’s destructive to anyone. Live with the thought: all good things are still ahead of me! (SOURCE: New England Journal of Medicine)
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to adjust certain immigration and naturalization benefit request fees. The new fees would allow USCIS to more fully recover its operating costs, reestablish and maintain timely case processing, and prevent the accumulation of future case backlogs. USCIS receives approximately 96 percent of its funding from filing fees, not from congressional appropriations.
The proposed fee rule is the result of a comprehensive fee review at USCIS. That review determined that the agency’s current fees, which have remained unchanged since 2016, fall far short of recovering the full cost of agency operations. USCIS generally publishes a fee rule biennially, and proposes these changes to account for the expansion of humanitarian programs, federally mandated pay raises, additional staffing requirements, and other essential investments.
In 2020, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a dramatic reduction in receipts of new applications, resulting in a temporary drop in revenue by 40 percent. The combination of depleted cash reserves, a temporary hiring freeze, and workforce attrition has reduced the agency’s capacity to timely adjudicate cases, particularly as incoming caseloads rebound to pre-pandemic levels. Increasing demand for low- or no-fee humanitarian programs has added to these fiscal challenges.
The proposed rule would increase some fees, including a modest increase in the fee for certain naturalization applications, while preserving existing fee waiver eligibility for low-income and vulnerable populations and adding new fee exemptions for certain humanitarian programs. If finalized, the proposed rule would decrease or minimally increase fees for more than one million low-income filers each year.
“In addition to improving customer service operations and managing the incoming workload, USCIS must continue to fulfill our growing humanitarian mission, upholding fairness, integrity, and respect for all we serve,” said USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou. “This proposed rule allows USCIS to more fully recover operating costs for the first time in six years and will support the Administration’s effort to rebuild the legal immigration system.”
New measures include a proposal to incorporate biometrics costs into the main benefit fee and remove the separate biometric services fee; establish separate fees for each nonimmigrant classification covered by Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Workers; change the premium processing timeframe from 15 calendar days to 15 business days; and institute lower fees for certain forms filed online. The proposed rule would not change fee waiver eligibility requirements. The projected revenues resulting from the proposed rule would allow USCIS to increase the number of adjudicators processing applications, implement technology improvements, and increase support provided to individuals seeking information and assistance from USCIS.
The 60-day public comment period starts following publication of the NPRM in the Federal Register. Fees will not change until the final rule goes into effect, after the public has had the opportunity to comment and USCIS finalizes the fee schedule in response to such comments. USCIS will host a public engagement session on the proposed fee rule on January 11, 2023.
Smelly sweet sweat is all over that man’s brows. He sitting over in the break room. Father. The doctor man. The man sitting on that plush red chair made for Americans. The life saver. The patient grandchild favourite. That is Father. He is the one all the other doctors in that room like to forget. They like to eat their buns, they like to stash an extra banana in their lab coat, they like to turn on the cricket match keeping it loud, keeping it at a blast. And in the meantime they are bantering.
‘When yuh a go Trinidad fuh holiday?’
‘I gun go next week. Yuh wan come wid me?’
‘Man, I dun tell ya I was deh last week. This is why I was asking. I need ya to send something over there.’
‘Something for your wife, or for that woman ya slamming?’
‘Hah-hah-hah-hah.’
‘Hey, hey . . . hey!’
The Father man ain’t listening. Father got his ten minutes to get his drink and that is that. He just finished looking at a patient with a bad case of the food poisoning, leaving his splattering all over the toilet for the janitors to clean.
He is feeling his own stirring in the stomach thinking about it. He could use something refreshing, but there’s no time to guzzle Cokes. He has to finish his break.
One of the senior men is talking to one of the other senior man. Five years back there was senior man and senior man and senior man and senior man. One by one they are retiring. Now this senior man and that senior man are the only ones that were there when Father was starting at the hospital.
When was the last time he gave a greeting? Father is about to say hello to them, but someone comes bustling in.
‘Get out!’ he shouts.
Which causes everyone to pause. ‘Hey, hey, what’s going on?’
‘Gas leak,’ the man says. Everyone is looking serious as serious can be. The man says, ‘Move,’ and everyone listens. They leave and go downstairs. Father is following the line but can’t help looking at patients’ rooms that he is passing. They are empty. Who’s that someone who is clearing them?
They go downstairs and all the patients, they are already there. There are the cast-wearing men and women and then there are the wheelchair-stuck-in men and women and there are the random standing men and women. Father joins the doctors and the nurses. It is like a mob is outside of the hospital. And it is nothing like how the street does look normally. Normally these streets are empty.
The administration is coming out and the doctors are asking them questions.
‘Marlon, Marlon, ya hear?’
“Marlon, Marlon, ya tell me, what is this madness?’
‘Marlon, my patient is goin’ to die if he out like this.’
Marlon is on the phone or pretending to be. There are seven doctors shouting at him and Marlon does not address a single one of them.
Father is in another group of doctors standing with their arms crossed around their chests.
Father overhears one of the patients say, ‘It is like this hospital is Hell.’
This is not a kind thing to say and it is not a kind thing to hear. But Father sees how most of the nurses are already on their phones and Father sees it with some of the doctors as well. It is like they are getting a free break and that is all they are thinking of.
Father has seen a gas leak like this happen before, and it is like how Father once heard a rumour of how a doctor gave his patient insulin and caused him to have a cardiac arrest.
That is the doctor right in front of Father, playing Candy Crush.
And what about that petition Dr White was making them sign?
They were asking for more hospital computers, and yet they’re still writing all the records out by hand.
Or there were these medicines that the doctors visiting from America gave to their patients, but the ones that they were prescribing were many years expired. There was the need for that new CAT scan machine, there was a whole lot of need for better surgical equipment.
Almost two years it had been, and not a single thing had come about from this document that a good hundred doctors signed.
There’s all this blathering, coming from some of the patients and some of the doctors.One of the doctors is defending Marlon.
‘Now, now, listen. This isn’t all the fault of that one man. He already done nuff ting for our hospital. And y’all talking about some petition like is some gospel but y’all nah ah go to dem patient on time.’
A doctor says in defense of himself: ’I go to every patient and ask how their day is. Not like them nurses who don’t stand for ten minutes without complaining for a chair.’
And now a nurse says in defence of herself: ’A chair? We ten nurses sitting a desk when dey only have six chairs… and five a we crowd around at table which can only hold three . We don’t sleep in de day, we listen to every man complain.
‘This is different from a doctor ya say?’
‘Ya thinking it ain’t different, but it is. Ya just need to take a look at the pay cheque and sit back.’
‘The pay cheque?’
‘Yes, the pay cheque.’ Another nurse with blonde braids chirps in: ‘Twelve years done since I working at dis hospital.’ She takes a break to show off her name tag. ‘Twelve years. And I know what I am getting paid.’
Another doctor starts at it again: ‘Ya listen to this…’
At this point the nurses and doctors are spitting words back to back, pointing fingers, forgetting who they were mad at in the first place.
Marlon puts his fingers to his mouth like he is fixing to whistle, but he keeps his two fingers at lips, because he knows what will happen if he calms them down really. In the meantime the Father man is quiet because being quiet is what he likes to be.
The Father man doesn’t like to be a conflict man. The Father man likes to keep to himself and let everything happen and then go back to the work he tells himself he is supposed to be doing.
Why does the Father man speak up out of nowhere?
‘Ya all stop and listen here. Ya can’t stop blaming this on this person or that. The gas leak is one thing out of many. We are using hospital bed from the eighties. We have patients who are dying from our own neglect. We all have to be working hard. If change has to come, change is what we have to be starting.’
The Father man feels like his legs are wobbling, the Father man feels like he is about to lose the breath in this chest. The Father man is becoming the warrior man, the Kofi kind of man.
The Father man might be changing but the Father man is thought by everyone as the passive man because that is how the Father man was thought of by the other men. The police cars are coming and the fire truck is coming and Marlon is leaving. He goes says something to the police. The firemen march into the building. The men and the women start talking about other things.
‘So, how ya missus doing?’
‘So, when ya go ta Port of Spain ya got ta change ya clothes so no one know who ya with.’
‘I’m getting hungry. Ya want a bake an saltfish?’
It is like no one even heard what Father said. It is like no one even felt like listening. That is normal for Father man. For decades in and decades out he has been that man no one listens to. Soon the fireman comes and says the gas leak has been fixed. Soon the doctors and nurses and patients are going back in. It is normal for them that things go wrong in Georgetown, and they are fine now that it is getting fixed.
But the Father man said what the Father man said and the Father man mean it.
Another minute done pass, and another minute done gone, and Father’s legs aren’t moving.
(Visakhapatnam, India: January 3, 2023) “I am immensely pleased to announce that Shri. YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, Honorable Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh is planned to be the Chief Guest and inaugurate the 16th annual Global Healthcare Summit (GHS) on January 6th, 2023 at the prestigious Hotel Novotel on the seashore in Visakhapatnam,” said Dr. Ravi Kolli, President of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI).
Smt. Vidadala Rajini Honorable Minister for Health, Family Welfare & Medical Education; Shri. Gudivada Amarnath, Honorable Minister for IT; and, Dr. B. Venkata Satyavathi, Member of Parliament, representing Anakapalle will be Guests of Honor at the Inaugural ceremony, which will be attended by leading medical professionals, thought leaders, heads of several health industry sectors, and policy makers.
The 16th Global Health Care Summit is jointly organized by AAPI and the local organizing committee at Visakhapatnam from January 6th to 8th, 2023. This Global Health Care Summit assumes importance especially in the context of the waning pandemic that has shaken the entire human race and has in a sense been instrumental in helping everyone realize that the predicament is common across all the continents.
One of the highlights of this association between the two diaspora is the annual Global Health Summit organized annually by AAPI, which provides a unique platform for the exchange of ideas and advances in several important areas in health care and medical education and research.
“We are sure that the Summit will offer a rewarding experience not only on intellectual but on aesthetic front as well, as the scenic beauty of Visakhapatnam and the many places around will be worth going during your trip. The organizing committee is immensely pleased to be at your service,” said Dr. Ravi Raju, Chair of GHS (India) 2023.
Describing some of the objectives of the GHS, Dr. Prasad Chalasani, Chair of GHS (USA) 2023 said. “We hope to create an intellectually charged platform for experts to share their experiences on some of the common professional issues that still remain a challenge in spite of all the advancement. The exchange of expertise and transfer of technology by the best brains is bound to offer positive and innovative solutions to some of the problems faced by humankind.”
The Summit will feature a CEO Forum, where a galaxy of CEOs from around the world from hospitals, teaching institutions and major healthcare sectors, including pharmaceutical, medical devices and technology, will join to explore potential opportunities for collaboration.
Shri. Biswa Bhusan Harichandan, Honorable Governor of Andhra Pradesh will be the keynote speaker at the CEO Forum 2023 with the theme, focusing on “True and Total Health is the well-being of the Mind, Body, and Spirit for holistic person-centered care.” Dr. Ravi Kolli, AAPI President will lead the discussions, while Prof. MD Nalapat will serve as the Co-chair along with Prof. Joseph M. Chalil, MD, Co-chair & AAPI Chief Strategy Officer. “We envision a great future for our country with the direct result of complex interactions at this forum with your assistance, guidance, and experience,” Dr. Chalil said.
A galaxy of speakers who will be part of the powerful CEO Forum include: Ambassador Pradeep K. Kapur; Dr. Sangita Reddy. a Global Healthcare Leader, Indian Entrepreneur, and Humanitarian; Sadasiva Rao Nannapaneni, Vice President – Corporate Affairs, Legal & Secretarial, Estate Management at NATCO; Dr. Anu Chirala, Co-Founder & President InstaMD; Dr. Jagadeesh Babu Rangisetty, CEO at Biophore India Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd Has more than 30 years of experience in the Pharmaceutical Profession; Ramprasad M, Chairman, SHAI; Prof. (Dr), Anuj Maheshwari, current Governor of the American College of Physicians India Chapter and the Vice President of Research Society for Study of Diabetes in India (RSSDI); Dr. Juby A Jacob-Nara, Vice President, Head of Global Medical- Respiratory Allergy & Gastroenterology (Sanofi-Genzyme); Dr. Upendra Srinivas, Managing Director at Quantum Specialty Diagnostics; Dr. Venkat Ramana Sudigali, Founder-Director Excell Multispecialty Hospital, Hyderabad, India, and the CEO of EHAconsortium.org; Dr. Srikanth Sola, Chief Executive Officer, Devic Earth; and, Ravi Chivukula, Co-Founder & CEO at HeARTHealth Technologies.
The much-anticipated Women’s Leadership Forum will feature extraordinarily successful Women Leaders representing a diversity of professions, involving public, private and government organizations.
Dr. Smt. Tamilisai Soundararajan Honorable Governor of Telangana & Honorable Lt. Governor of Puducherry will deliver the keynote address at the Women’s Forum, which is chaired by Dr. Udaya Shivangi and Dr. T. Radha, while Dr. Uma Jonnalagadda is the Advisor and Dr. B. Devi Madhavi serving as the Co-Chair. According to Dr. Shivangi, “The eminent speakers at the Women’s Form will deliberate on ways to: Advancing Women’s Health Through Awareness and Action.”
Shri. MVV Satyanarayana, Member of Parliament, representing Visakhapatnam will be the Guest of Honor at the Women’s Forum. Panelists at the Women’s Forum include: Dr. Suneela Garg, Dir. Professor & Head of Community Medicine at Maulana Azad Medical College; Dr. Anuradha Medoju, Senior Regional Director at Telangana & Andhra Pradesh Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India; Dr. S. Radha Rani, Former Professor and Superintendent, Hospital of Mental Health; and Meghna Chalasani, Team Lead, Advisory Committees, Program Lead, Science Office Strategies for New Drugs at Center for Drug Education and Research, US Food & Drug Administration.
Dr. V. Ranga, AAPI BOT Chair said, “The GHS 2023 offers a unique forum for them to come together, sharing their knowledge and expertise with their fellow physicians from around the world, and to learn from one another. It also provides a critical platform for networking of delegates who are all stalwarts in their own fields. The wide-ranging topics chosen by experts will certainly render the sessions both lively and rewarding.”
According to Dr. Anjana Samadder, President-Elect of AAPI, “There has been mutual cooperation and collaboration on the scientific, academic, research and other curricular fronts. One of the highlights of this association between the two diaspora is the annual Global Health Summit, which provides a unique platform for the exchange of ideas and advances in several important areas in health care and medical education and research.”
Discussions and deliberations will address the Stigma of Mental illness, Suicide prevention, Management of Chronic diseases and NCD and, other Global Health Issues including Climate Change and its impact on health.
The grand finale on Sunday. January 8th will be a Walkathon on the seashore aimed at challenging mental health stigma and promotion of healthy lifestyle changes and stress management. The Grand Walkathon will be led by none other than Surgeon Rear Admiral R. Ravi Command Medical Officer, Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam.
Among the many initiatives that emerge from GHS 2023, a notable action plan will be for AAPI to collaborare with the Government of Andhra Pradesh to initiate an ambitious program to address mental health and wellness of students in high school in Andhra Pradesh.
Articles
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An educationist in Bhutan, a doctor in Brunei and civil society activists in Ethiopia, Israel and Poland were among the 27 people chosen for the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award (PBSA).
Guyana President Mohamed Irfaan Ali and renowned Canadian scientist Dr Vaikuntam Iyer Lakshmanan are among 27 recipients of the 2023 Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award — the highest honor conferred on overseas Indians.
PBSA is conferred by the Hon’ble President of India as part of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention on Non-Resident Indians, Persons of Indian Origin or an organization/institution established and run by the Non-Resident Indians or Persons of Indian Origin in recognition of their outstanding achievements both in India and abroad.
The 17th edition of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) Convention is scheduled to be held from 8–10 January 2023 at Indore, Madhya Pradesh. The Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Awards will be conferred by the Hon’ble President of India at the PBD Convention in the valedictory session of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas celebrations.
Born to an Indo-Guyanese Muslim family, Ali took oath as Presiden in August 2020.
He will also be the chief guest at the 17th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention.
Polish businessman from Goa Amit Kailash Chandra Lath, 45, who helped in the evacuation of Indian students from Ukraine into Poland when war with Russia broke out, is also a recipient of the award.
Scientist and innovator Dr Vaikuntam Iyer Lakshmanan, who moved to Canada in 1974, channeled his passion for community service through supporting organizations like Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce and Canada-India Business Council.
He has sponsored clean drinking water systems and a mobile hospital in rural India, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Indo-Canadian Chamber of Commerce in 2019.
Among other recipients are FedEx Corporation CEO Rajesh Subramaniam, Australian economist Chennupati Jagadish, and Israel-based chef Reena Vinod Pushkarna.
A Jury-cum-Awards Committee, with Hon’ble Vice-President as the Chairman and Hon’ble External Affairs Minister as the Vice-Chair and other distinguished members from various walks of life considered the nominations for the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Awards, 2023 and unanimously selected the awardees. The awardees represent the excellence achieved by our diaspora in various fields.
Following is the list of Awardees recommended by Jury-cum-Awards Committee for conferment of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award 2023:
Sr. No. Name Country Field
1
Prof. Jagadish Chennupati
Australia
Science & Technology/ Education
2
Prof. Sanjeev Mehta
Bhutan
Education
3
Prof. Dilip Loundo
Brazil
Art & Culture/Education
4
Dr. Alexander Maliakel John
Brunei Darussalam
Medicine
5
Dr. Vaikuntam Iyer Lakshmanan
Canada
Community Welfare
6
Mr. Joginder Singh Nijjar
Croatia
Art & Culture/Education
7
Prof. Ramjee Prasad
Denmark
Information Technology
8
Dr. Kannan Ambalam
Ethiopia
Community Welfare
9
Dr. Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay
Germany
Community Welfare/Medicine
10
H.E. Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali
Guyana
Politics/Community Welfare
11
Ms. Reena Vinod Pushkarna
Israel
Business/Community Welfare
12
Dr. Maqsooda Sarfi Shiotani
Japan
Education
13
Dr. Rajagopal
Mexico
Education
14
Mr. Amit Kailash Chandra Lath
Poland
Business/Community Welfare
15
Mr. Parmanand Sukhumal Daswani
Republic of Congo
Community Welfare
16
Mr. Piyush Gupta
Singapore
Business
17
Mr. Mohanlal Hira
South Africa
Community Welfare
18
Mr. Sanjaykumar Shivabhai Patel
South Sudan
Business/Community Welfare
19
Mr. Sivakumar Nadesan
Sri Lanka
Community Welfare
20
Dr. Dewanchandrebhose Sharman
Suriname
Community Welfare
21
Dr. Archana Sharma
Switzerland
Science & Technology
22
Justice Frank Arthur Seepersad
Trinidad & Tobago
Community Welfare/Education
23
Mr. Siddharth Balachandran
UAE
Business/Community Welfare
24
Mr. Chandrakant Babubhai Patel
UK
Media
25
Dr. Darshan Singh Dhaliwal
USA
Business/Community Welfare
26
Mr. Rajesh Subramaniam
USA
Business
27
Mr. Ashok Kumar Tiwary
Uzbekistan
Business
New Delhi
January 02, 2023
For more details on: Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Awards-2023
https://mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/36078/Pravasi+Bharatiya+Samman+Awards2023
Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) bid to become the next House Speaker fell short on Tuesday over a string of three consecutive votes, marking a chaotic opening to a new Congress — and dampening the Republicans’ celebration as they took control of the House for the first time since 2018.
Failing to elect party leader Kevin McCarthy as the new speaker of the House, Republicans adjourned in disarray Tuesday night, ending a raucous first day of the new Congress but hoping to somehow regroup on Wednesday from his historic defeat.
The House of Representatives adjourned On January 3rd without a Speaker after three ballots for the gavel found no candidate with the majority.
Speaker nominee Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) lost 19 GOP votes on the first two ballots and 20 on the third ballot, leaving the conference in a stalemate on how to proceed.
All 434 members voted for a Speaker candidate, meaning 218 votes were needed to secure the post. With 222 House Republicans to 212 Democrats, McCarthy is well short of reaching that threshold.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a McCarthy ally, made the motion to adjourn, and it was adopted by voice vote. The House will return at noon on Wednesday.
It marks the first time in a century that the House has gone to multiple ballots for Speaker. In 1923, the Speaker election took nine ballots over three days.
The repeated failed votes for McCarthy were expected by much of the conference, particularly after rules change concessions and a heated House GOP meeting on Tuesday morning did not move any of McCarthy’s detractors or those on the fence.
Tensions rose as night fell on the new House majority, and all other business came to a halt. The House agreed to return at noon Wednesday. “Kevin McCarthy is not going to be a speaker,” declared Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., among the holdouts.
McCarthy had pledged a “battle on the floor” for as long as it took to overcome right-flank fellow Republicans who were refusing to give him their votes. But it was not at all clear how the embattled GOP leader could rebound after becoming the first House speaker nominee in 100 years to fail to win the gavel with his party in the majority.
The longtime GOP leader’s opponents coalesced around Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for the second and third vote, despite the incoming House Judiciary Committee chairman supporting McCarthy and giving a floor speech nominating him ahead of the second ballot.
McCarthy, who remained stoic on the floor during the long voting process even as it became obvious he would lose, remains adamant he will eventually win the gavel.
“Remember how they all said they have this secret candidate? Their secret candidate nominated me, so where do they go now?” McCarthy said, referring to Jordan. “This can’t be about that. You’re going to leverage somebody for your own personal gain. I’m staying until we win,” McCarthy added. “It will eventually change.”
McCarthy privately huddled with allies including Jordan and Reps. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) after the second ballot.
But the third vote saw an uptick in the number of McCarthy detractors, with Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) flipping to support Jordan after he voted for McCarthy on the first two ballots.
“My concern has been, like, look. It’s been two months, bro. You got to close the deal,” Donalds said, referring to the time between the midterm elections and the start of the Congress. “You got two months. And so at this point now is that if you can’t close it, we got to find who can.”
The continued McCarthy opposition has frustrated his supporters and allies who have pledged to not waver in their support. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) cast her votes for McCarthy as “Only Kevin.”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said that the McCarthy antagonists are putting the House GOP on a “path to suicide and getting [President] Biden reelected in ’24.” He said he has heard talk of Republican members negotiating with Dems to nominate a moderate Republican who would be more open to negotiation. Whether GOP members can come to any agreement is uncertain.
“We’re going to go have some more conversations tonight and see what’s next,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who voted for candidates other than McCarthy on all three ballots.
This year’s Republican deadlock was in stark contrast to the other side of the Capitol, where Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell will officially become the chamber’s longest-serving party leader in history. Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York will remain majority leader.
Despite being in the minority in the Senate, where Democrats hold a slim 51-49 majority, McConnell could prove to be a viable partner as Biden seeks bipartisan victories in the new era of divided government. The two men are expected to appear together later in the week in the GOP leader’s home state of Kentucky to celebrate federal infrastructure investment in a vital bridge that connects Kentucky and Ohio.
Pope Benedict XVI, the first pontiff to step down since the 15th century, died on Saturday, December 31st, 2022 in Vatican City at age 95.
For several days, he had experienced declining health due to his advanced age, the Vatican press office said, with Pope Francis publicly sharing news of Benedict’s worsening condition earlier this week. Pope Francis will preside over Benedict’s funeral on Thursday at St. Peter’s Square, the Vatican said.
Born April 16, 1927, in Germany’s Bavaria, Joseph Ratzinger was a theologian by training. Following the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, Ratzinger was elected his successor after serving for a quarter of a century as the Vatican’s top enforcer of orthodoxy. He was the first German pope since the 11th century.
Following the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, several international leaders expressed condolences to the Catholic Church.
Benedict broke centuries of tradition in which popes served until death, and the need to coexist with his predecessor has been a defining aspect of Francis’s tenure, coinciding with a period of growing polarization within the faith.
For traditionalists, Benedict became a symbol of opposition. Conservative figures in the church would seek audiences with him. Far-right politicians would quote him — or John Paul II — instead of Francis.
Intrigue about their relationship has been so intense that it even inspired a movie, “The Two Popes,” which imagined the two verbally sparring, and ultimately enjoying one another, in a period before Benedict’s abdication.
In a press release, the White House make known a statement from President Biden and his wife: “Jill and I join Catholics around the world, and so many others, in mourning the passing of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. I had the privilege of spending time with Pope Benedict at the Vatican in 2011 and will always remember his generosity and welcome as well as our meaningful conversation.
He will be remembered as a renowned theologian, with a lifetime of devotion to the Church, guided by his principles and faith. As he remarked during his 2008 visit to the White House, “the need for global solidarity is as urgent as ever, if all people are to live in a way worthy of their dignity.” May his focus on the ministry of charity continue to be an inspiration to us all.
The U.S. Department State said: “The United States mourns the passing of His Holiness Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus — a holy man, witness to faith, and once Shepherd of the Catholic faithful. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was a dedicated leader and was committed to interfaith dialogue. He was an advocate for vulnerable persons, including refugees, internally displaced persons, and migrants. He supported international legal measures to defend them. He was a renowned theologian within the Catholic Church for decades. We offer our deepest condolences to the Catholic faithful around the world, the Holy See, and all those whose lives were enriched by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s spiritual guidance.”
French President Emmanuelle Macron said: “Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has left us, having marked the Church with the seal of his theological erudition and working tirelessly for a more fraternal world.
Born Joseph Ratzinger in 1927, he grew up in a modest Bavarian family which taught him a love of the piano, letters, history, and the fierce rejection of any form of fascism. His parents also transmitted their deep piety to him, so much so that at the age of 7, little Joseph asked for a Missal and a priest’s chasuble as a Christmas present. But while his mind turned to the priesthood, that of his contemporaries allowed itself to be plagued by Nazism. Like all his generation, he had to submit to the Hitler Youth at fourteen, then at sixteen to military service. Ulcerated by the ambient fanaticism, the young man refused to integrate the Waffen-SS, deserted his regiment in favour of the debacle, but was recaptured, and spent six weeks in prison before the German capitulation freed him.”
German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier wrote his condolences to Pope Francis on the death of Pope Benedict XVI: “We in Germany were deeply saddened to learn of the death of Pope Benedict XVI. His faith, his intellect, his wisdom and his humility as a human being always profoundly impressed me.
“As a fellow countryman, this Pope bore a very special significance for us Germans also beyond the bounds of the universal Roman Catholic Church. For many people across the world, the election of a Pope from the home of the Reformation and of an intellectual who had made the dialogue between faith and reason his life’s work sent an important signal.
“The unity of Christendom, inter-faith dialogue and the coexistence of religion and society were matters particularly close to his heart. He sought dialogue with Jews and Muslims and with all Christian denominations throughout the world. High theological and philosophical concepts already combined with comprehensible language in the work of Professor Joseph Ratzinger. For this reason, many people, not only Roman Catholics, found clear orientation in his writings and addresses. He faced up to people’s searching and questioning.
The British Prime Minister said: “I am saddened by the news of the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. He was a great theologian whose visit to the United Kingdom in 2010 was a historic moment, both for Catholics as well as non-Catholics of our country. My thoughts today are with the Catholics of the United kingdom and of the whole world.
For his part, King Charles III, Successor of Queen Elizabeth II, wrote the following to Pope Francis: I received with profound sadness the news of the death of your Predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. I remember with fondness my meeting with His Holiness during my visit to the Vatican in 2009. His visit to the United Kingdom in 2010 was important in strengthening the relations between the Holy See and the United Kingdom.
I also recall his constant efforts to promote peace and goodwill to all people, and to strengthen the relationship between the global Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church. My wife and I send you our continued good wishes for your own pontificate.”
Archbishop of Canterbury, Prim
ate of the Anglican Communion. In a press release, he said: “Today I join with the Church throughout the world, and especially with the Holy Father, Pope Francis, and all in the Catholic Church, in mourning the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
In Pope Benedict’s long life and ministry of service to Christ in His Church he saw many profound changes in the Church and in the world. He lived through the Nazi regime in Germany and served briefly in the Second World War. As a younger theologian and priest he witnessed first-hand the discussions of the Second Vatican Council. As a professor and then as an Archbishop he lived in a divided Germany but saw, too, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of his homeland.”
Patriarch Kirill sent a message of condolences to Pope Francis. The gesture has been interpreted by the specialized press in the Vatican as a thawing in ecclesiastical relations given the war in Ukraine. “I received with sadness the news of the death of your Predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. The many years of life of His Holiness marked a whole period in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, which he led in a difficult historical period associated with numerous external and internal challenges.
Benedict XVI’s unquestionable authority as eminent theologian enabled him to contribute significantly to the development of inter-Christian cooperation, to the witness of Christ in face of a secularized world, and to the defense of traditional moral values.”
Church historian Massimo Faggioli said he believes that by approaching the world from a purely intellectual and theological perspective, Benedict’s papacy was ultimately a failure. “Because to be pope you are not the theologian-in-chief, you are the pastor-in-chief. That’s the magic of the papal office,” Faggioli said.
Yet the historian said the real legacy of Benedict’s papacy was how he ended it. “Benedict XVI’s decision to resign was a very radical interpretation of Vatican II,” Faggioli said. “Going beyond the letter of Vatican II, that was revolutionary.”
O’Connell of America magazine said that in Benedict’s final remarks to the cardinals before leaving the Vatican, he said his successor was among them. “He promised that he would give loyalty and obedience to his successor, and he respected that commitment in a total, absolute way,” the correspondent said. After Pope Francis was elected in March 2013, Benedict lived quietly in a residence on Vatican grounds.
Soccer fans worldwide are united in grief after the death of a sports legend who inspired generations. Pelé, the Brazilian soccer icon and the only man to win the World Cup three times, died Thursday at 82. In Brazil, where he played for soccer club Santos, mourners paid tribute to a global star who made the nation synonymous with soccer excellence. Pelé’s hypnotizing moves and creative style transfixed sports fans and revolutionized the game. “How to grieve the passing of a man who, through football, took the name of Brazil to the world?” Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said. Fellow Brazilian soccer star Neymar described Pelé’s moves as art, adding that while he’s gone, his magic will remain. Pelé died from organ failure caused by colon cancer.
Pelé’s skill and grace on the field was unparalleled, and his goal-scoring prowess earned him a place in history. Sources list his tallies at anywhere between 650 (league matches) and 1,281 (all senior matches, some against low-level competition). His greatest moment on the field was the 1958 World Cup, where he scored two goals in Brazil’s 5-2 win over the host country in the final. He also played a key role in Brazil’s 1970 World Cup victory, scoring in the final and setting up Carlos Alberto with a nonchalant pass for the last goal in a 4-1 victory over Italy.
Pelé’s fame extended well beyond the soccer pitch. He was an ambassador for UNESCO and the United Nations, and was a key figure for Black people’s pride in Brazil. In 1997, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his achievements.
Pelé’s legacy will live on forever in the annals of soccer history. He will be remembered as one of the sport’s most beloved and talented athletes, and his name will continue to be mentioned alongside the likes of Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi, and Cristiano Ronaldo in any conversation about soccer’s greatest players.
On Monday, thousands of mourners gathered in Santos, Brazil to pay their respects to the late soccer legend, Pelé. The funeral was attended by high school students, supreme court justices, and Brazil’s newly inaugurated president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. A Catholic Mass was held at the stadium in honor of Pelé, and a song titled “Eu sou Pelé” (“I am Pelé”) was played.
Geovana Sarmento, 17, and her father attended the funeral wearing a Brazil shirt with Pele’s name. “I am not a Santos fan, neither is my father,” Sarmento said, “But this guy invented Brazil’s national team. He made Santos stronger, he made it big, how could you not respect him? He is one of the greatest people ever, we needed to honor him.”
Pelé was perhaps the world’s most famous athlete in the 1960s and 70s and his legacy lives on today. FIFA President Gianni Infantino asked every country to name a stadium after Pelé, and said “I am here with a lot of emotion, sadness, but also with a smile because he gave us so many smiles.” Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes said that Pelé was a humble man despite his global fame.
Pelé led Brazil to three World Cup titles in 1958, 1962 and 1970, and remains one of the team’s all-time leading scorers with 77 goals. Neymar tied Pelé’s record during this year’s World Cup in Qatar. He had undergone treatment for colon cancer since 2021, and passed away due to multiple organ failure as a result of the cancer.
On Monday, Brazil said goodbye to one of its most beloved figures. Thousands of mourners gathered at the Vila Belmiro stadium in Santos to pay their respects to the late soccer legend, Pelé. High school students, supreme court justices, and Brazil’s newly inaugurated president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva attended the funeral, which included a Catholic Mass and a song titled “Eu sou Pelé” (“I am Pelé”).
Pelé was a beloved figure throughout Brazil and the world, credited with putting the country on the world stage for the first time. He led Brazil to three World Cup titles in 1958, 1962 and 1970, and remains one of the team’s all-time leading scorers with 77 goals. Neymar tied Pelé’s record during this year’s World Cup in Qatar. Pelé’s legacy will live on, and his casket will be taken through the streets of Santos before his burial on Tuesday.
(IPS) – The UN Charter mandates the Security Council to maintain international peace, but wars rage on and nations arm themselves with ever more lethal weapons. No wonder that the Council’s critics are so many and calls for its reform so urgent.
On December 11, 1992, with post-Cold War optimism, the UN General Assembly voted to gather comments from member states on Council reform. Eighty governments made submissions, many sharply critical.
In the thirty years since, there have been endless meetings and initiatives. Year after year, governments, scholars, NGOs, and citizen movements have advanced proposals for Council renovation. In all that time, little progress has been made.
The Council’s five Permanent Members (the P-5) are the heart of the problem. Armed with vetoes, never-ending Council membership, and many other special privileges, they perpetuate their power, protect their global interests and shield their incessant war making.
They shape international law to suit themselves. The United States, the global giant, has by far the most dominant role in the Council. But it is adverse to following the rules itself and rarely inclined towards peaceful conflict solutions. Many ask: should the foxes guard the global chicken coop?
Various powers outside the P-5 want to be elevated to the highest rank. Brazil, India, Japan and Germany have long announced that they want to join the Permanent club. They argue that they would bring fresh ideas to better “represent” world regions and promote world peace.
Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt want to belong to the exclusive club too, bringing (they say) an African voice. But (to use an African metaphor) would these new crocodiles protect the world’s little fish? It seems unlikely!
Other reformers insist on more seats (and longer terms) for the Elected Members of the Council, presently ten in number. Smaller members are very vulnerable to pressure, threats and bribes from the P-5. Further, these lesser countries manage to have only the slightest influence on the Council’s proceedings.
They are, said the exasperated Singapore ambassador, “like short-term commuters on a long-distance passenger train.” So, a simple increase in Elected Members would not be a sure bet.
Limiting the veto or abolishing it entirely would have a very positive result but, needless to say, the P-5 fiercely oppose it. Reformers have also pressed for fairer membership elections and more frequent open public meetings.
Yet (with the exception of cosmetic tweaks) the reform process constantly runs up against P-5 blocking power. Their veto can stop any reform proposal dead in its tracks. But we should not forget that the world is changing and that autocratic power in history never lasts forever!
All reform proposals reflect an idealistic notion that the Council can be changed to restrain the enormous power, appetite and influence of the strongest and richest nations. This idea is rooted in the dream of democratic institutions within nation states, that rich and poor can elect representatives and determine policy in what passes for the general interest.
Difficult as it is at the national level, how could it possibly work in the war-torn world of global politics? Might one day the P-5 Ancien Regime collapse in a great crisis, under desperate pressure from a global citizens’ movement? What would it take to set such a process in motion? It may seem impossible, but so was the French revolution. We can be skeptical, but if we want peace we must press for change. So, watch out, P-5 autocrats! Change is coming!
(IPS UN Bureau)
Demonetisation was a shockingly cruel policy enacted under false pretences, according to an alysts. It did not achieve any of its stated objectives: A cashless economy, a revenue bonanza for the government, cleaning the system of illicit money, or stopping terror finance. It inflicted needless suffering and made fools of citizens, who willingly acquiesced.
Modi Government’s decision six years ago to demonetise currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 passed the Supreme Court’s test in a majority 4-1 verdict. Four of the five-judge Constitution Bench held that the November 8, 2016, notification did not suffer from any flaws in the decision making process.”
A dissenting judge, Justice B V Nagrathna, however, said that the way the noteban was carried out violated the law and highlighted how the RBI didn’t apply an independent mind. She added that the government should have brought a law. In fact, high-level sources told The Indian Express that the Central Board of the RBI was “never in the loop” about the withdrawal of notes.
The Supreme Court on Monday declared the Centre’s demonetisation move of November 2016 legally valid. A Constitution bench held that it appears from the record that there was consultation between the RBI and the central government for a period of six months.
It was a 4-1 judgement from the SC on a batch of 58 petitions, most of which challenging the demonetisation, while some seeking a new window to deposit the demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes that could not be deposited back then.
Key issues
Judges split
The majority judgement, authored by Justice BR Gavai, said the decision-making process was not flawed merely because the procedure emanated from the government.
Justice SA Nazeer-headed bench said there has to be great restraint in matters of economic policy and the court cannot supplant the wisdom of the executive by a judicial review of its decision.
Dissenting view
Justice BV Nagarathna, bench’s junior-most judge, held that demonetisation had to be done through a legislation and not through a gazette notification, arguing that Parliament cannot be left aloof in a matter of such critical importance.
She said the RBI showed no independent application of mind and that the entire exercise was carried out in 24 hours after the Centre proposed the move. She held that such an opinion given by RBI cannot be construed as a “recommendation” under the RBI Act.
The demonetisation decision pushed the boundaries of constitutionalism to the edge. It can be argued that the legality of the policy need not be entirely judged by its success; it is not unconstitutional to take horrendous policy decisions. But this does not mean that there is no scope for fixing some administrative responsibility. The importance of Justice BV Nagarathna’s powerful dissent is not the conclusion. It is that it tries to affix administrative responsibility and does not let officials hide behind the smokescreen of statutory interpretations. The need for fixing this responsibility is even more if you happen to think that this is a sovereign decision. Her dissent asks the right question: What was the Board of the RBI doing in all this?
According to P NMehta of the Indian Express, “Justice Nagarathna is astutely pointing out that things like consultation or application of mind can’t be proforma exercises where the RBI Board simply ticks off a box by signing a resolution in a few minutes. Ironically, the shoddiness of the majority judgment’s reasoning enacts the very thing Justice Nagarathna is pointing out: The real threat of our democracy is professionals, who are otherwise independent, not doing their professional duty. The lesson from this episode is that independence is never in the letter of the law, it is in the character and conduct of form in the vast chain of accountability in a democracy, from judges to officials, from parliamentarians to citizens.”
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It’s always special to come back to India, and this trip is especially meaningful as it’s my first visit back since the pandemic. As we come out of it, there’s a sense of optimism about the country’s future and the role technology can play to improve lives.
Which brings me to why I’m here: first and foremost to meet with Googlers, as the team has grown significantly since I was last here. I’m also here to see progress being made from our $10 billion, 10-year India Digitization Fund (IDF), and share new ways we’re helping to advance India’s digital future at our Google for India event. That includes our efforts to build a single, unified AI model that will be capable of handling over 100 Indian languages across speech and text – part of our global effort to bring the world’s 1,000 most-spoken languages online, and to help people access knowledge and information in their preferred language. We’re also supporting a new, multidisciplinary center for responsible AI with IIT Madras. (Our VP of India Sanjay Gupta shares more details in his blog post below.)
This progress is part of how we’re working to seize the opportunity in AI globally, balancing the need to be bold with innovation and responsible in our approach. I’m excited to see the ways India will contribute to breakthroughs in AI that could benefit over a billion people in India, and more around the world.
More broadly, I’ve been amazed at the ways people are already using technology to make their communities better. One of the local tech founders I met today has broken new ground by offering a radiation-free and non-invasive breast cancer screening tool; another developed a chatbot that helps people manage stress. I was glad to hear their stories and to share thoughts on how technology can expand opportunity during a conversation at WomenWill.
Later today, I have the honor of meeting with His Excellency Prime Minister Modi to discuss how we are supporting small businesses and start-ups, investing in cybersecurity, providing education and skills training, applying AI in sectors like agriculture and healthcare, and other priorities. Prime Minister Modi’s Digital India vision has helped to accelerate the progress we’re seeing across India, and I’m excited for India to share its experience with the world as it takes over the G20 presidency in 2023.
The pace of technological change in India has been extraordinary, and there’s so much opportunity still ahead. Glad to be able to see it up close, and I’m already looking forward to my next visit.
(Sundar is the CEO of Google and Alphabet and serves on Alphabet’s Board of Directors. Under his leadership, Google has been focused on developing products and services, powered by the latest advances in AI, that offer help in moments big and small.)
Below is an edited version of a blog from Sanjay Gupta, Google’s Country Head and Vice President, India, summarizing the key announcements from Google for India.
India’s digital transformation is at a tipping point. Seven hundred million connected Indians, affordable smartphones and data, record highs in digital payments, the digitization of citizen services, and a vibrant start-up ecosystem have put the technology sector on track to become the single largest contributor to the national economy.
We feel privileged to have played a part in this extraordinary story. Our mission in India is to make the internet helpful and safer for a billion Indians. We’ve introduced India-first innovations, worked to lower barriers to access, and invested in strengthening the strategic pillars of India’s digital economy through our $10 billion India Digitization Fund.
Today, at our 8th Google for India, joined by Sundar Pichai, our CEO, and senior Google leaders and product experts, we stepped up our commitment to build a more inclusive, helpful, and safer internet for every Indian — and shared how we hope to supercharge India’s digital transformation by harnessing AI.
Partnerships are the cornerstone of our journey in India, and essential for such a scaled transition. Today, with partners from across the public and private sectors, we announced new efforts focused on taking Indians from foundational access to the point where technology becomes the enabler for growth, knowledge, health and progress.
Early stage startups are the engine that drives innovation, with many building products that address key information and service needs for people across India, especially for novice internet users. Strengthening our ongoing resolve to support India’s digital innovators, as part of our India Digitization Fund investments, we will be targeting support for early stage companies with a particular focus on women-led startups. (Courtesy: https://blog.google/inside-google/message-ceo/optimism-india-digital-future/)
A gallery of Lionel Messi celebrating Argentina’s World Cup win has become the most-liked Instagram post ever. The soccer super star – who led his team to their first World Cup triumph in 36 years – received more than 57 million likes for his collection of photos. Argentina defeated France on penalties in Sunday’s World Cup final in Qatar.
One day after leading Argentina in Qatar on December 19th, Messi posted a gallery of his celebration right after his team beat France in penalties. His first picture shows him smiling while holding the tournament trophy, and others show him celebrating with teammates and enjoying the post-match ceremony.
In the caption, he wrote, “CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD! We showed once more that when Argentinians work hard together and we’re united we’re capable of achieving anything we put our minds to,” he added. “The merit of this group, which was above individualism, is the strength that we all fought for the same dream that was also the one for all Argentinians…we did it!!!”
The post amassed 62 million likes in a little over a day, resonating with Messi’s fans and beyond. The famous egg Instagram post, from January 2019, reached 56 million likes and initially grabbed the most-liked record away from Kylie Jenner. When it first appeared it seemed to be some kind of protest vote against celebrity – people were urged to engage with the picture in the hope of toppling the then-record holder, Kylie Jenner.
There was a lot of speculation about who was behind the @world_record_egg Instagram account and how it managed to attract so many likes so quickly. Some said it was a marketing ploy from a large company that had bought followers – but British advertising executive Chris Godfrey has since claimed he created it, along with two others, and that their sole purpose was to get as many likes as possible.
But while the egg overtook Jenner’s record – totaling as many as 56 million likes at the time of writing – it has finally been surpassed by a rival with several world records in his own right: Lionel Messi.
After the World Cup final, Guinness World Records posted a series of records broken by the victor, noting Messi had surpassed Germany’s Lothar Matthäus for the record of most World Cup matches played, with 26 – as well as four other records:
11 – most World Cup Man of the Match awards
19 – most World Cup appearances as captain
5 – most appearances in World Cup tournaments by a male player
First person to assist (a goal) at five different World Cups
With the success of his latest gallery on Instagram, Messi has yet another record to add to his collection.
Authoritarian State Gives Into Protest Pressure By Dropping Its ‘Zero Covid’ Policy
An unusually outspoken wave of protests recently mobilised against the Chinese government’s stifling response to COVID-19, an exercise in social control that included strict lockdowns, causing severe hardship. The government tried to restrict the protests but then backed down and eased the rigid rules it had consistently applied since the start of the pandemic. Just after being confirmed as the all-powerful leader of the party-state, President Xi Jinping for the first time showed signs of weakness. Long deprived of agency, mobilised people have now had a taste of power. Will they keep testing the limits and trying to open up spaces?
Something unusual just happened in China: people protested against an unpopular government policy, and some even criticised the totalitarian regime. And a government famous for its intransigence was forced to back down.
Zero covid
China was the first country struck by COVID-19, and since the early days, the government’s approach has been rigid. Its ‘zero-covid’ policy of long lockdowns, forced isolation in quarantine camps and widespread mandatory testing helped keep a lid on the virus. Domestically and internationally, the government sold its approach as a triumph, comparing it to the high death toll in countries like the USA. But its approach also brought misery to communities forced into lengthy isolation and unable to access essentials.
The authoritarian regime fell back on its instincts of social control and used the emergency as an opportunity to test out further repressive measures, including new surveillance tools. The state was also criticised for using the policy as a cover for a slow and inadequate vaccination rollout, exacerbated by a refusal to accept foreign vaccines because it needed to present the vaccines developed in China as part of its success story, even though these likely have little effect on the most recent variants of the disease.
The long-term implementation of zero-covid brought significant economic impacts, threatening the source of China’s global power. In its response to the pandemic, as in other spheres – including its clampdown on the tech and entertainment industries – it seemed that when faced with a choice between economic prowess and social and political control, the government consistently chose the latter.
Centrally mandated policies were often overzealously implemented at the local level, as local officials stuck to the most extreme possible interpretation of the rules: years of experience of working within state structures had taught them this was the best way to signal their loyalty.
Deeper than the pandemic
The protests weren’t the first recent expression of dissent. Small-scale online and offline protests are less rare in China than might be expected given the Chinese regime’s mission of total control. Shanghai’s April lockdown, which saw people go hungry, sparked considerable anger, expressed on social media despite the extensive efforts of the government’s well-rehearsed censorship machinery to suppress it.
Even ahead of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) congress, the twice-a-decade peak meeting of the ruling party held in October, two protest banners were briefly hung in Beijing, and enjoyed a much longer social media afterlife. Restrictions in an Apple iPhone factory led to protests in November, suppressed with security force beatings.
But the anti-zero-covid protests were on a whole other level. The trigger was the breakout of a fire on 24 November in an apartment block in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang province. This is the region where the state is engaged in a long campaign of industrial-level human rights abuses against the mostly Muslim population, which perhaps not coincidentally has also been exposed to some of the longest and strictest lockdowns.
The story that spread after the fire, in which at least 10 people died, was that a strictly enforced lockdown, including locked doors and blocked emergency exits, had stopped people fleeing the building and first responders getting in. It still isn’t clear what happened, but the story spread quickly because it spoke to something people have long been feeling: that the state was prepared to sacrifice them for the sake of zero-covid. It wasn’t the first piece of evidence. In September, 27 people had been killed in a bus crash while being transported to a compulsory quarantine centre.
The Urumqi fire was a catalyst for the expression of a shared grievance over pandemic controls, and for suppressed anger about a lot more. Anger was intensified by a victim-blaming statement from an official that the residents should have understood fire safety procedures better.
Awareness that the rest of the world has largely moved on from Chinese-style restrictions may have played a part too. In February, China’s Winter Olympics took place under strict protocols. But more recently people have seen the World Cup kicking off in Qatar with thousands sitting in stadiums and little sign of mask use, despite efforts by China’s state broadcaster to censor crowd close-ups. The fact that even other repressive global south states have moved on made it impossible to pretend China was now anything other than an outlier.
Protests started in Xinjiang and quickly spread over several days to some of China’s biggest cities, including Beijing. Protests brought hundreds of people together, large numbers given the many restrictions. Many held up blank pieces of paper, something that offered an eloquent protest symbol, communicating the almost total denial of freedom of expression. Protesters chanted a line from China’s national anthem: ‘rise up, those who refuse to be slaves’.
The Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations and the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha came together to host centennial celebrations honoring the life and message of Pramukh Swami Maharaj, spiritual leader of BAPS for more than 50 years. The event was held at the UN headquarters in New York City on December 7, 2022.
Pramukh Swami Maharaj (1921-2016) was the fifth spiritual successor of Bhagwan Swaminarayan and embodied values of faith in God and service to humanity, a press release from BAPS said.
The event was themed, The World is One Family, the event at the United Nations aimed to honor his legacy. Those present included India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ruchira Kamboj, members of the Permanent Mission of India, ambassadors and representatives of many countries, and BAPS volunteers.
Dr. Kashyap Patel, a BAPS volunteer and cardiologist at the Northside Hospital Cardiovascular Institute in Atlanta, gave a welcome address, introducing Pramukh Swami Maharaj, his humanitarian efforts for social and spiritual upliftment, and his foundational belief that the world is one family.
Pramukh Swami Maharaj’s address at the United Nations Peace Millennium Summit on August 29, 2000, was brought to life through a video presentation. In this address, he appealed to spiritual leaders worldwide to have meaningful dialogues with each other to preserve the rich diversity, to not just tolerate but to respect all religions.
The United Nations Under-Secretary-General Miguel Angel Moratinos, who holds the post of High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, echoed Pramukh Swami Maharaj’s message, saying, “The time to come together as one is now.”
Kamboj delivered the keynote address. “In the truest sense, Swamiji’s life is a message to all humanity, it is a message of oneness, a message of goodness, a message of celebrating peace, harmony, and brotherhood,” she said.
During his lifetime, Pramukh Swami Maharaj responded to more than 20 natural disasters in India and abroad, inspiring volunteers to contribute their time and money to deliver relief to more than 6 million people worldwide.
Sejal Patel, a BAPS volunteer and associate director of professional development with McKinsey, shared a first-hand account of one such instance from the 2017 Hurricane Harvey disaster that struck Texas. “The signature mark of Pramukh Swami Maharaj’s relief efforts was this… his ability to share in the suffering and to channel that empathy into a sense of urgency to provide the swift action needed to save lives and then rebuild them over time…” Patel said.
Professor Sejal Saglani, a BAPS volunteer from U.K., who is Professor of Pediatric Respiratory Medicine at the Imperial College in London, spoke about efforts made during the Covid pandemic.
“Pramukh Swami Maharaj taught me in all aspects of my life that real success comes from serving and uplifting others,” said Ria Soni, a BAPS volunteer, first-year medical student at NYU, and co-founder of Project Stree, a menstrual education organization.
Rahul Gandhi started Bharat Jodo Yatra on September 7, 2022 with the plan of covering a distance 3500 km from Kanyakumari to Srinagar. According to the Congress party, the yatra is the biggest Mass contact programme where the concerns of people will be raised. Although the main purpose of the yatra is to revive and rejuvenate the Congress party, people belonging to different ideologies, walks of life, professions and members of civil society organizations have joined the yatra because they appreciate the idea of knitting India, an India that is being divided on the basis of religion and besieged by soaring unemployment, price rise and widening economic disparities. Presence of a large number of ordinary people is the specialty of the yatra, besides participation by many social activists and film celebrities.
By observing and analysing the yatra, the kind of people who participate in the walk and the issues raised during the walk, one can draw some spiritual insights.
Personal Transformation, a Prerequisite for Social Transformation: Mahatma Gandhi has said, “You be the change you want to see in others”. The Bharat Jodo Yatra has certain specific objectives, which Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party have clearly articulated. While the yatra entered Madhya Pradesh in the last week of November, Rahul Gandhi said that he feels some changes in himself during the yatra, especially more patience and the ability to listen to others. “Now I don’t get irritated even for eight hours, if someone pushes or pulls me. It doesn’t affect me, whereas earlier I used to get irritated even in two hours,” he said. “If you are walking in the yatra and experience pain, then you have to face it, you can’t just give up”, he added.
Relevance of Tapasya: During the yatra, Rahul Gandhi often repeated that for him, Bharat Jodo Yatra is a tapasya. In a conversation with Darshan Mondkar, a Pune-based entrepreneur, who joined the Bharat Jodo Yatra’s Maharashtra leg, Rahul Gandhi explained what he means by tapasya. “Tapasya comes from the word tup. When you do tapasya you generate heat; the energy which consumes you. It hurts you; it pains you. And, then, you achieve,” Rahul said. He further explained: “Yes. Sure. I do not want to achieve anything without putting in an effort, without doing tup. Unless it hurts me, it pains me, any achievement is not worth it. This Bharat Jodo Yatra is my tapasya.”
“It is like an expiation, a cleansing of the soul. It is no easy task to walk even a single day in the Bharat Jodo Yatra. The physical stamina has to match a personal, political and an emotional commitment,” commented one of those walked with Rahul Gandhi in Karnataka.
The crucial question is how many of our political and religious leaders are ready to do tapasya. How many of them are ready to leave their comfort zones and walk to see and experience the problems and difficulties of people? On the contrary, often, they make provocative statements sitting in their comfort zones and adopt controversial policies to divide people. They want to attain power and remain in power by polarizing people. Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra challenges these comfort-seeking, power-hungry and manipulative leaders.
Ability to Listen: The root cause of many conflicts is the failure on the part of individuals and groups to listen to others. Very often divorces take place in families, and many families are disintegrated due to the failure of the members to listen to each other. Many failures in governance happen because the rulers are not ready to listen to people. In the case of India, two mammoth protests — one against the three controversial farm laws and another against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) — took place because of the stubbornness of the ruling party to listen to people. Without listening to people, the ruling party imposed the two laws on the people of India. The tendency to impose laws without consulting people, who have to bear the consequence of the laws, is found among the religious leaders also. Often, they too behave like dictators.
Because Rahul Gandhi was ready to listen to people, many individuals and groups met him during the yatra and presented before him their problems and views. They include children, unemployed youth, women, students, farmers, weavers, intellectuals and social activists. A government, which is deeply committed to a majoritarian ideology that is exclusive, divisive and discriminative, is not willing to listen to people and their elected representatives.
Getting Rid of Fear: A constant theme running through Rahul Gandhi’s speeches during the yatra is the need for getting rid of fear. The root cause of hatred is fear. RSS and BJP have fear and that is why they spread hatred. He spoke why and how we need to overcome the fear within us so that we can become strong voices against the fascism of BJP/RSS. He showed the courage to speak against Adani and Ambani without mentioning their names, as they have cornered huge wealth of the nation due to the pro-corporate policies of the BJP government, neglecting the interests of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.
Yogendra Yadav, President of Swaraj India, in an interview with Karan Thapar said that the tide is turning. “The climate of loneliness and fear has cracked but not shattered.” A few months ago, people were afraid of speaking against the government because of the fear of ED and CBI pouncing upon them. Now, thousands of people are walking on the streets along with Rahul Gandhi and it is making a dent in the fear.
Suzanne Furtado, an entrepreneur and writer from Bengaluru, who took part at the Mysore phase of the march, shared her experience in the following words. “Today’s India, where people’s voices, freedoms, lives, are being silenced, snatched, snuffed out, is not where I grew up. What I love most about my country is our incomparable diversity, and my heart grieves at what is happening to our people, our homeland. To me, Rahul Gandhi’s simple call to all to join him on this mission of unity, to come together to conquer the violent politics of hate, feels like Satyagraha. The Satyagraha of today’s India.”
Courage, the courage to stand alone and speak truth to power, is a significant quality of a spiritual person. A combination of courage and compassion makes a person spiritual. Rahul Gandhi has been consistent in his strident criticism of the dangerous ideology of the RSS-BJP combine. Even when the yatra entered Maharashtra, he had the guts to criticize the ideology of V D Savarkar, one of the protagonists of Hindutva. At the same time, because of his compassion for the people of India, he has been constantly focusing on the issues of the people — unemployment, rising prices and growing economic inequality. How many of our political and religious leaders have the courage to criticize the misuse of power by the ruling dispensation? Many religious leaders, despite knowing the dangerous virus that is infecting the whole nation, keep mum because of fear. Cowards can never be spiritual. Mahatma Gandhi has said, “Non-violence and cowardice are contradictory terms. Non-violence is the greatest virtue, cowardice the greatest vice. Non-violence springs from love, cowardice from hate. Non-violence always suffers, cowardice would always inflict suffering.”
Unity, Love and Fraternity: One of the proclaimed goals of Bharat Jodo Yatra is to replace division and hatred with unity and love. While addressing people at Hingoli in Maharashtra, Rahul Gandhi said, “We will reach Srinagar and hoist tri-colour and spread a message that this country can neither be divided nor can hatred and violence be spread in this country.” As an example of defeating hatred with love, Rahul Gandhi gave flying kisses to people who had gathered at the BJP Jhalawar office’s rooftop to catch a glimpse of the march. Later Rahul Gandhi wrote on Facebook: “No malice, no anger, no resentment — none of this is in the hearts of Bharat yatris. What they have is a desire to unite India, compassion for the sufferings of Indians and love for all citizens.”
The unity that Rahul Gandhi wants to promote is not the ruthless uniformity imposed by the RSS-BJP combine; it is a unity rooted in brotherhood and diversity. Imposing uniformity is totally against the spirit of India. While addressing a gathering in Kerala, Rahul Gandhi admired the people of Kerala for fostering unity in diversity. “Kerala is the symbol of unity in diversity and model for the entire country. The people of the state do not allow hatred to spread among them and encourage mutual respect. This was the reason that the state has a good education system and most compassionate nurses.”
One of the basic differences between religiosity and spirituality is that religiosity divides people whereas spirituality unites people. Religiosity is based on rituals, dogmas, rules, pilgrimages and devotions. These aspects generally differ from religion to religion and often people fight because of the overemphasis on these aspects. On the other hand, spirituality is based on the practice of humanitarian values, ideals, morals and ethical principles. These are more or less common to all religions. Because of the overemphasis on rituals and dogmas, fundamentalism and fanaticism flourish in religions. Fundamentalists always insist on uniformity and they impose uniformity by force. The result is conflict, division and enmity both within the religions and between the religions.
Unity in diversity is the millennial heritage of India. Unity of India consists in accepting, appreciating and celebrating differences, especially with regard to religion, culture and language. The great leaders of India, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Babasaheb Ambedkar etc., believed and practiced it. That is why secularism/pluralism is included as one of the core principles in the preamble of the Indian Constitution. Ever since the BJP came to power at the Centre under the leadership of Narendra Modi, this principle is being ridiculed and blatantly violated. Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra can restore and reassert one of the basic foundations of the Indian nation.
India has a long history of foot-marches by spiritual gurus and political leaders. Saints like Adi Shankaracharya, Lord Buddha, Guru Nanak and Sree Chaitanya had embarked on foot-marches to communicate their spiritual messages and bring about transformation in individuals and in society. Mahatma Gandhi led the longest foot-march as part of the national freedom struggle, which gave the final push to the independence struggle. Bharat Jodo Yatra, being political and spiritual, can lead to an urgently needed socio-political transformation of India. (Indian Currents)
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A gallery of Lionel Messi celebrating Argentina’s World Cup win has become the most-liked Instagram post ever. The soccer super star – who led his team to their first World Cup triumph in 36 years – received more than 57 million likes for his collection of photos. Argentina defeated France on penalties in Sunday’s World Cup final in Qatar.
One day after leading Argentina in Qatar on December 19th, Messi posted a gallery of his celebration right after his team beat France in penalties. His first picture shows him smiling while holding the tournament trophy, and others show him celebrating with teammates and enjoying the post-match ceremony.
In the caption, he wrote, “CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD! We showed once more that when Argentinians work hard together and we’re united we’re capable of achieving anything we put our minds to,” he added. “The merit of this group, which was above individualism, is the strength that we all fought for the same dream that was also the one for all Argentinians…we did it!!!”
The post amassed 62 million likes in a little over a day, resonating with Messi’s fans and beyond. The famous egg Instagram post, from January 2019, reached 56 million likes and initially grabbed the most-liked record away from Kylie Jenner. When it first appeared it seemed to be some kind of protest vote against celebrity – people were urged to engage with the picture in the hope of toppling the then-record holder, Kylie Jenner.
There was a lot of speculation about who was behind the @world_record_egg Instagram account and how it managed to attract so many likes so quickly. Some said it was a marketing ploy from a large company that had bought followers – but British advertising executive Chris Godfrey has since claimed he created it, along with two others, and that their sole purpose was to get as many likes as possible.
But while the egg overtook Jenner’s record – totaling as many as 56 million likes at the time of writing – it has finally been surpassed by a rival with several world records in his own right: Lionel Messi.
After the World Cup final, Guinness World Records posted a series of records broken by the victor, noting Messi had surpassed Germany’s Lothar Matthäus for the record of most World Cup matches played, with 26 – as well as four other records:
11 – most World Cup Man of the Match awards
19 – most World Cup appearances as captain
5 – most appearances in World Cup tournaments by a male player
First person to assist (a goal) at five different World Cups
With the success of his latest gallery on Instagram, Messi has yet another record to add to his collection.
Qatar 2022 will go down as the most “compact” FIFA World Cup in history – but 2026 will be very different. While all matches this time around were played within an hour’s drive of each other, the next World Cup will be played across three nations – Canada, the United States and Mexico.
And it will be an expanded competition, with 16 additional teams taking part, meaning more matches. However, the tournament will still be played out within five weeks from mid-June 2026.
Questions will be asked about the amount of travel players and fans will have to make, with the tournament being held in 11 US cities, along with three venues in Mexico and two in Canada.
Sustainability will, therefore, be an important issue with the considerable number of flights needed to transport teams, fans, media and Fifa officials across three countries.
Why will there be more teams than ever before in 2026?
FIFA is expanding the next men’s World Cup finals from 32 to 48 teams.
It means more money will be generated through sponsorships, merchandising, ticket sales and broadcast revenues, with FIFA expecting to earn $11bn over the four-year cycle up to December 2026.
Bumper crowds are expected at the next World Cup as the popularity of football in North America continues to grow. FIFA is projecting as many as 5.5 million fans will attend the next tournament, beating the record 3.6m supporters who attended games in 1994, when there was an average attendance of 68,000 at each game.
The governing body claims that much of the increased profit will be redistributed to football development around the world, with projects including investment to expand the women’s game.
The expanded format will increase the number of competing teams from Africa and Asia.
In 2022, there were a total of 11 teams from across the two confederations at the finals – including Qatar, who qualified automatically as hosts, and Australia, who took part in the Asian qualifiers and then beat Peru in an intercontinental play-off.
In 2026, there will be a minimum of 17 teams from across the two confederations – and there could be as many as 19, depending on which two countries win through the six-team intercontinental play-offs for the finals.
A minimum of six Concacaf teams will qualify for the World Cup, including Canada, Mexico and the United States as hosts – and the federation will have two sides in the play-offs as well.
Where will the matches be played in 2026?
The 16 venues were announced in June, with all the grounds already built, and with the majority of big-capacity stadiums used by NFL teams in the United States.
Some of the stadiums will be upgraded before 2026 and some will require the laying of grass surfaces, as artificial turf is not permitted by FIFA.
As it stands, the format for 2026 will mean 80 matches across the tournament – although that could still change. The United States would host 60 matches, including every match from the quarter-finals onward, while neighboring Canada and Mexico would each host 10 matches.
Both the US and Mexico have hosted the World Cup before – but most of the venues in 2026 will be different. The US is using none of the stadiums from 1994, while Mexico has just one venue from 1970 and 1986 – the iconic Estadio Azteca in Mexico City.
The host venues for 2026 are:
United States
New York/New Jersey (MetLife Stadium)
Los Angeles (SoFi Stadium)
Dallas (AT&T Stadium)
San Francisco Bay Area (Levi’s Stadium)
Miami (Hard Rock Stadium)
Atlanta (Mercedes-Benz Stadium)
Seattle (Lumen Field)
Houston (NRG Stadium)
Philadelphia (Lincoln Financial Field)
Kansas City, Missouri (Arrowhead Stadium)
Boston/Foxborough (Gillette Stadium)
Canada
Toronto (BMO Field)
Vancouver (BC Place Stadium)
Mexico
Guadalajara (Estadio Akron)
Mexico City (Azteca Stadium)
Monterrey (BBVA Bancomer Stadium)
The geographical spread for the next World Cup has not yet been announced but it is likely that teams will play their group-stage games in regionalized zones.
There are three main venue clusters, which should help reduce the amount of travel needed at least for part of the tournament.
How will the 2026 finals be structured?
A final decision will be made by the FIFA Council in 2023.
The initial favored option was to have 16 groups of three teams. Each team would play two group games, rather than three, with the first two teams progressing to a new round of 32.
But the downside to that could be that the two teams playing in the last fixture could play out a specific result to send both teams through. That was alleged to have happened in 1982 when West Germany and Austria advanced at the expense of Algeria in the so-called ‘Disgrace of Gijon’.
Given the success of the four-team group format in 2022, the structure for 2026 will be revisited, according to FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
“I have to say after this World Cup, and the success of the groups of four, we have to revisit or rediscuss the format whether we go for 16 groups of three or 12 groups of four.” The indications are that it will end up being 12 groups of four, effectively split into two halves (like two Euros in one go).
Another possibility, though one that appears unlikely, is that group games may not be allowed to finish as a draw. If the teams were level after 90 minutes, the outcome could be decided with a penalty shootout, without the need for extra time.
Where will the FIFA World Cup 2026 final be played?
The MetLife Stadium in New Jersey could host the final That decision has not yet been made but it will be in the next year.
The front-runner to host the final is the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, which has a seated capacity of 82,500 and is home to the New York Giants and New York Jets NFL teams. The Azteca in Mexico has been put forward as a potential host for the opening match.
Both venues are contenders to host the 2026 final, but FIFA president Infantino said world football’s governing body will take their time with a decision. “There are still some discussions to go on and we’ll certainly choose the best cities for the openings and the finals,” said Infantino. “But every match will be like a final at this World Cup.”
And what about 2030?
That will be a special centenary event, 100 years after the first FIFA World Cup in Uruguay, which was contested by just 13 teams. Uruguay has claimed for some time that it should be awarded the tournament, possibly in a joint bid with Argentina.
Spain and Portugal hope to be put forward by UEFA, but England dropped its interest in favor of bidding for UEFA Euro 2028 along with Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Saudi Arabia could be another potential bidder, though that could mean another winter tournament because of the high summer temperatures in the Middle East. A decision on the hosts of the 2030 tournament will be made by the FIFA Council in 2024.
Church membership, church attendance and belief in God all declined during the pandemic years, survey data suggest, accelerating decadeslong trends away from organized worship.
At least one-fifth of Americans today embrace no religion at all. Researchers call them “nones.”
A similar share tell pollsters they do not believe in God, an all-time high.
The lone, striking countertrend is a steep rise in nondenominational Protestants, who attend churches outside the “mainline” denominations — the once-ubiquitous Baptists, Methodists and Lutherans.
Nondenominational Protestants — “nons” — became a majority in 2021, signaling a new era of churches and clergies untethered from religious tradition.
In-person church attendance plummeted by 45 percent in the pandemic, according to an ABC News analysis. Most churches have reopened, but not all congregants have returned.
“People are not getting together much, generally speaking. Not just in church, but in the village,” said Thomas Groome, a professor in theology and religious education at Boston College. “People are staying home. They’re on their cellphones. They’re on the Internet.”
The share of Americans who belong to churches dipped below half in 2020, a historic low, according to Gallup polling.
Church membership held steady at around 70 percent of the U.S. population from the 1940s through the 1990s. Membership plummeted in the new millennium.
The decline is largely driven by a surging population of “nones,” or Americans who claim no religion, at 21 percent, as of 2021, according to Gallup.
It’s tempting, if not entirely accurate, to conflate “nones” with nonbelievers. Yet, one Pew analysis found that a significant share of “nones” consider religion important in their lives.
“Somebody who has no religious affiliation, they may well value religion,” said David Campbell, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame. “And they may well believe in God.”
Belief in God was near-universal in previous generations. It’s a notion bound up in American identity, not to mention American currency.
In 1954, at the height of the Cold War, President Eisenhower signed a bill that added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. The next year, he signed a bill that inscribed “In God We Trust” on currency.
“To be a communist was to be an atheist, and to be an American was to be a Christian, and a person of faith,” said Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University.
If the Cold War pushed religion into politics, the Republican Revolution of 1994 pushed religion into partisan politics. Republican leaders of that era increasingly identified Christianity and churchgoing with patriotism and republicanism, seeding a generational retreat from the church by Democrats and the Left.
Today, agnostics are three times as likely to identify as Democrat than Republican, Pew research shows, while only 15 percent of atheists count themselves as Republicans.
“Christian nationalism is a very potent force right now,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for atheists, agonistics and nontheists. “We’re at a great polarization, and we’re seeing such extremists at that religious end. That might tip people out: ‘I’m coming out of the closet as a nonbeliever, I’ve had it.’”
The rise in “nons,” “nones” and nonbelievers all come at the expense of a vanishing “moderate middle” of American faith, Campbell said.
Mainline Protestantism “is collapsing,” Burge wrote in a recent article tracking the decline of Christian denominations and the rise of nondenominational churches.
Since the 1970s, the share of Americans who identified as Baptists, Methodists and other Protestant denominations has slipped from more than 30 percent to around 10 percent. In the same span, the share of nondenominational Protestants has exploded. The 2020 U.S. Religion Census found 6.5 million more nondenominational congregants and thousands more churches than in 2010.
“If ‘nondenominational’ were a denomination, it would be the largest Protestant one, claiming more than 13 percent of churchgoers in America,” Daniel Silliman wrote in Christianity Today.
Nondenominational churches often start as, “literally, a guy in his basement,” Burge said.
“They’re real-estate brokers, they’re insurance agents, they’re farmers. And they start a church. You got famous because of your tweets or your YouTubes.”
Some nondenominational churches are large enough to seed new denominations. Willow Creek, an evangelical “megachurch” based in the Chicago suburbs, has claimed as many as 25,000 worshippers at several locations.
Multigenerational communities formed around the Baptist and Methodist churches that dominated town squares for generations. By contrast, nondenominational churches often thrive on their otherness, attracting congregants who mistrust ancient American institutions.
“What those churches try to do is to be as easy as possible,” Burge said. “They don’t have membership rolls. They don’t fill out contact cards. They make it really easy to get in, but that also makes it really easy to get out. That’s how they’re designed, is to be much more transitory. A lot of these churches don’t have membership. It’s not a thing.”
Not all socioeconomic groups are leaving the pews at the same rate. College-educated Americans are now markedly more likely to belong to a church than those without a college education, according to Gallup polling.
The statistic belies the long-held suspicion that college professors were killing religion.
“People who aren’t college-educated tend to be less likely to participate in civic institutions, to participate in politics, to get married,” said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute.
Younger people are less religious than older generations. Gallup polls show 34 percent of Generation Z identify as “nones,” compared with 29 percent of Millennials and 25 percent of Generation X.
Some of this generational difference is, well, generational: Older people tend to be more religious, first as they settle down and have children, then as they approach a reunion with their creator, assuming they believe in one.
But the Gen-Z religious disconnect also stems from political divisions, some of which may not go away.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation sponsors an annual essay contest for young people. Recent essays have focused on the LGBTQ movement and abortion rights, Gaylor said, both issues with entrenched opposition among a wide swath of conservative religious organizations.
Faith-based groups see hope in recent evidence of a rebound in churchgoing. Research from Barna Group, a Christian polling firm, suggests that the share of Millennials making weekly church outings nearly doubled to 39 percent in 2022 from 21 percent in pre-pandemic 2019. The group found smaller bumps in church attendance among Gen-X families and boomers.
Groome, of Boston College, takes heart in new data suggesting the “nones” population is leveling off in recent years, after two decades of steady rise. “So, I don’t think it’s all over yet,” he said.
And while it may be socially acceptable these days to identify as a nonbeliever, some of the atheist stigma endures. On Wednesday, Winter Solstice, Gaylor’s foundation plans to run an ad in The New York Times, a red-cheeked Santa framed by the message, “Yes Virginia. . . There is no God.”
The Times wouldn’t run it, Gaylor said, unless her organization added two more lines of clarification: “That’s what tens of millions of nonreligious Americans believe.” (Thehill.com)
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is ending her long leadership tenure with a historic flourish, wrapping up two decades at the top of the party with a string of major victories — political, legislative and diplomatic — that are putting a remarkable cap on a landmark era.
Nancy Pelosi said that she will not seek a leadership position in the new Congress, ending a historic run as the first woman with the gavel and making way for a new generation to steer the party after Democrats lost control of the House to Republicans in the midterm elections.
The California Democrat, a pivotal figure in U.S. history and perhaps the most powerful speaker in modern times, said she would remain in Congress as the representative from San Francisco, a position she has held for 35 years, when the new Congress convenes in January.
President Joe Biden, who had encouraged Pelosi to stay on as Democratic leader, congratulated her on her historic tenure as speaker of the House. “History will note she is the most consequential Speaker of the House of Representatives in our history,” Biden said in a statement, noting her ability to win unity from her caucus and her “absolute dignity.”
Pelosi was twice elected to the speakership and has led Democrats through consequential moments, including passage of the Affordable Care Act with President Barack Obama and the impeachments of President Donald Trump.
First elected in 1987, Pelosi was among a dozen Democratic women in Congress. She was long ridiculed by Republicans as a San Francisco liberal while steadily rising as a skilled legislator and fundraising powerhouse. Her own Democratic colleagues have intermittently appreciated but also feared her powerful brand of leadership.
Pelosi first became speaker in 2007, saying she had cracked the “marble ceiling,” after Democrats swept to power in the 2006 midterm elections in a backlash to then-President George W. Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Ukrainian president has, since the Russian invasion began in February, emerged as the global symbol of democratic defiance in the face of the violent authoritarianism of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelensky’s visit, in particular, carried outsize significance.
“The 117th Congress has been one of the most consequential in recent history,” she wrote to fellow Democrats this week, taking a victory lap. She added that the lame-duck agenda has them leaving on “a strong note.”
During her remarks on the House floor, Pelosi recapped her career, from seeing the Capitol the first time as a young girl with her father — a former New Deal congressman and mayor — to serving as speaker alongside U.S. presidents. “I quite frankly, personally, have been ready to leave for a while,” she said. “Because there are things I want to do. I like to dance, I like to sing. There’s a life out there, right?”
After more than a year of interviewing over 1,000 witnesses and the collection of hundreds of thousands of documents, gathering evidence and holding public meetings, the U.S. House of Representatives panel probing the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol has concluded its final hearing on December 20, 2022 by referring former President Donald Trump for four criminal charges.
Marking the first time in history that the Congress has referred a former president for criminal prosecution, the select Democrats-led panel voted unanimously to refer Trump and others to the US Justice Department on charges of obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and conspiracy to defraud the US by assisting, aiding or comforting those involved in an insurrection.
It also referred four fellow members of Congress, all Republicans, to the House ethics committee for failing to comply with subpoenas. They are Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, a member of the Jan. 6 panel who previously served as the lead manager in Trump’s second impeachment trial — told the media that ignoring or burying those recommendations would set “a terrible precedent for the future.” And he wen on to state: “An insurrection is a rebellion against the authority of the United States. It is a grave federal offense, anchored in the Constitution itself.”
“It’s of special concern when there’s an attempt to overthrow our election and essentially subdue our constitutional order and have someone seize the presidency who didn’t win it,” he said. “And if members of Congress have knowledge of that and may have been involved in it but refuse to say anything about it, we’re setting a precedent for future attacks on democracy itself. And that’s really the burden of our committee, to make sure that we prevent coups, insurrections, electoral sabotage and political violence in the future.”
Trump gave a fiery speech to his supporters near the White House the morning of Jan. 6, and publicly chastised his vice president, Mike Pence, for not going along with his scheme to reject ballots cast in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. Trump then waited hours to make a public statement as thousands of his supporters raged through the Capitol, assaulting police and threatening to hang Pence.
Trump satisfies the elements for obstructing an official proceeding, Raskin said, adding, “that was the whole purpose of his scheme and he succeeded in interrupting it for four hours, the only time that’s ever happened in American history.”
According to him, the former president also engaged in a conspiracy to make false statements and defraud the U.S. (through the fake electors scheme specifically), and that he “acted to incite, assist and give aid and comfort to an insurrection.” And it’s based on those facts and laws that Trump should be held accountable, Raskin argued. “In a society where all of us are treated equally under the law, the fact that he’s a former president would make no more difference than the fact that he’s a former businessman or TV star,” he said.
On why Trump bears responsibility
More than 900 people have been prosecuted for crimes like assaulting federal officers, destroying federal property, seditious conspiracy, attempt to overthrow or put down the government. Why should the foot soldiers be going to jail and not the ringleaders and the masterminds of this scheme to defeat American democracy? Look, if Donald Trump had succeeded, he’d be bragging about it, how he was the one who came up with the whole plan, Raskin said.
An Arctic blast surged across a wide swath of the United States on Wednesday, gripping much of the nation with bitter cold and life-threatening wind chills ahead of a powerful winter storm expected to complicate holiday travel for millions of Americans.
About 200 million people in the Lower 48 states were under extreme weather alerts as a freezing air mass descended from the Northern Plains, sending temperatures into a nosedive, said Bob Oravec, a forecaster with the National Weather Service (NWS).
The latest bulletin from the National Weather Service (NWS) names the cause as a “strong arctic high pressure system,” which swept down from Canada, leaving a wake of life-threatening weather systems across 17 states.
The extreme weather coincided with the start of a holiday travel season shaping up as one of the busiest in decades. Nearly 113 million people could travel more than 50 miles (30 km) from their homes beginning Friday, according to the American Automobile Association, assuming winter conditions don’t scupper their plans. Holiday travelers should proceed with extreme caution, forecasters say.
The impending storm, fed by moisture from the Great Lakes, could dump up to a foot (0.3 m) of snow on the Upper Midwest between Wednesday and Friday, with blizzard conditions stretching from the Northern Plains states to the Great Lakes region.
By Thursday night, a so-called “bomb cyclone” will likely form as the strong Arctic front sweeps across the Great Lakes, driving temperatures to record-breaking lows on the Gulf Coast and the eastern United States by Friday, Oravec said.
Wind-chill and hard-freeze warnings extended through much of Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, with a hard-freeze watch posted for the Florida panhandle.
By Friday, temperatures could hit the season’s lowest in what is only the first week of winter. Even northern Florida cities like Jacksonville and Tallahassee could see a chill as low as 20 F on Christmas Eve.
“Low visibility will create even more dangerous travel conditions on top of snow covered roadways,” the NWS says. “Additionally, the strong winds could lead to potential power outages from the Midwest to the Northeast. It is imperative that travelers check the latest forecast before venturing out.”
More than 1,900 flights have been canceled so far across the US. “Life-threatening” wind chill: The Midwest will see more than a foot of snow and possible blizzard conditions, as the weather service warns of “life-threatening” wind chills for millions.
The cold will stick around for Christmas weekend, making this the coldest Christmas in roughly 40 years for portions of the Plains and Midwest.
Frostbite is a major risk for those trying to brave the cold, the NWS says. Subzero temperatures in some parts of the U.S. this week could lead to frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 10 minutes. Those venturing outside should dress in layers, cover their skin and change into dry clothing as soon as possible. But, experts say, the best prevention by far is simply to stay indoors.
The average life expectancy for Americans shortened by over seven months last year, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That decrease follows an already big decline of 1.8 years in 2020. As a result, the expected life span of someone born in the U.S. is now 76.4 years — the shortest it has been in nearly two decades.
The two reports, released by the CDC on Thursday, show deaths from COVID-19 and drug overdoses, most notably synthetic opioids like fentanyl, were the primary drivers of the drop in life expectancy. “It’s not a good year for the data, let’s put it that way,” says CDC statistician Kenneth Kochanek.
It’s rare to see such big changes in life span year to year, but the pandemic claimed nearly 417,000 lives last year — more than even the year before — making COVID-19 the third leading cause of death for the second consecutive year.
Kochanek and his colleagues had hoped the release of new vaccines might make for a healthier 2021, and didn’t anticipate deaths from COVID-19 would top the prior year. But they were wrong. In fact, COVID-19 accounted for about 60% of the decline in life expectancy.
Preliminary data from 2022 so far indicate deaths from COVID-19 are on the decline, but Kochanek says that doesn’t mean life expectancy will rebound quickly in years to come, because COVID-19 was, by no means, the only contributor to the higher death toll in 2021.
Heart disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S., along with other top killers like cancer, diabetes and kidney disease also proved more lethal in 2021.
Meanwhile, deaths from Alzheimer’s, flu and pneumonia declined, perhaps because the coronavirus hit the elderly population particularly hard.
The new numbers also speak to the acute mental health crisis that’s run parallel to the pandemic: Deaths from drug overdoses reached over 106,000 last year — another major factor reducing life expectancy, according to the second CDC analysis released on Thursday.
Deaths by suicide and from liver disease, or cirrhosis, caused by alcohol also increased — shortening the average American life span.
“The majority of those deaths are to younger people, and deaths to younger people affect the overall life expectancy more than deaths to the elderly,” Kochanek says.
Men and women saw a similar decline in life expectancy last year, but women are living, on average, until over 79 years old, which is about six years longer than men
The CDC also found that death rates for certain racial and ethnic groups actually decreased last year, specifically among Hispanic and Black men. Death rates increased for almost all other groups, although it was most pronounced among white men and women, as well as American Indian or Alaska Native women. (Courtesy: NPR)
Fox News Channel was the most-watched cable television network in the nation for the seventh consecutive year in 2022, according to Nielsen Media Research data, in a year competitors saw their viewership fall. In total day viewers during the year, Fox averaged 1.4 million compared to 733,000 who watched MSNBC and 568,000 who watched CNN, according to Nielsen Media Research figures.
In the advertiser-rich weekday prime-time slot, Fox came in first with an average of 2.3 million viewers in 2022, with MSNBC netting 1.2 million and CNN coming in third with an average of 730,000.
Each of the three top cable networks experienced a decline in prime-time viewership in 2022, but Fox made up a slight dip in prime time from 2021 with high ratings for “The Five,” which earned cable news’ largest audience in 2022 with an average of 3.4 million viewers and nearly half a million daily in the key 25-54 age demographic.
The three cable networks made a number of programming and personnel moves this year in hopes of growing their audience ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. Fox gave pundit Jesse Watters, who is also a co-host of “The Five,” his own prime-time show in January and has heavily promoted comedian and commentator Greg Gutfeld’s late-night show, which finished the year as the second highest rated late-night program in the country.
MSNBC has gone through significant changes in prime time, rehiring Alex Wagner to host a show four days a week during its 9 p.m. hour in place of longtime pundit Rachel Maddow and tapping anchor Stephanie Ruhle to host a news and analysis program during its 11 p.m. hour.
CNN has gone through the most change of any of the networks in 2022, with new President Chris Licht moving pundit Don Lemon out of prime time to host a revamped morning program. Licht has also used a rotating cast of fill-in hosts to occupy the 9 p.m. time slot vacated by Chris Cuomo after his firing late last year.
The most-watched cable show was Fox’s The Five, which had an audience of 3.4 million viewers and is the first non-primetime program to rank first in total viewers for the year.
Fox is just one part of billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s media empire that also includes the The Wall Street Journal and The Times of London. Australian-born Murdoch inherited a newspaper in Adelaide, Australia, at age 22 when his father, a former war correspondent, died. Murdoch acquired smaller outlets across Australia and New Zealand before expanding into the U.K. and the U.S. Murdoch founded Fox News in 1996. His publications are known for having a conservative tilt. Murdoch’s son, Lachlan Murdoch, is the CEO of Fox Corporation.
There soon may be new retirement rules in place that could make it easier for Americans to accumulate retirement savings — and make it less costly to withdraw them — if lawmakers pass a major spending package this week.
The retirement savings provisions – known as Secure 2.0 – were drawn from a House-passed bill and bills that were passed by two Senate committees.
“[SECURE 2.0] will help increase savings, ensure greater access to workplace retirement plans, and provide more workers with an opportunity to receive a secure stream of income in retirement,” said Thasunda Brown Duckett, president and CEO of TIAA, one of the largest US retirement service providers.
Here’s a look at seven of the provisions in the package, known on Capitol Hill as an omnibus, based on a breakdown from the Senate Finance Committee.
1. Require auto enrollment in 401(k) plans
Most employers starting new workplace retirement savings plans could be required to automatically enroll employees in the plan. (It is currently optional for employers to do so.) It would then be up to the employee to actively opt out if they don’t wish to participate.
The Secure 2.0 provision would require employers set a default contribution rate of at least 3% but not more than 10% for the employee plus an automatic contribution escalation of 1% per year up to a maximum contribution rate of at least 10% but not more than 15%.
The provision would go into effect after December 31, 2024.
2. Allow employer contributions for student loan payments
When you have to pay down student loan debt, it makes it harder to save for retirement. Secure 2.0 would let employers make a matching contribution to an employee’s retirement plan based on their qualified student loan payments. That way, it would ensure that the employee is building retirement savings no matter what.
The provision would take effect after December 31, 2023.
3. Increase the age for required minimum distributions
It used to be that when you turned 70-1/2 you had to start withdrawing a required minimum amount from your 401(k) or IRA every year. Then, the age moved up to 72. Under the Secure 2.0 package, it would move up to 73 starting in 2023 and then to 75 a decade later.
4. Help employees build and access emergency savings
Normally if you tap your 401(k) before age 59-1/2, you must not only pay taxes on that money, but also pay a 10% early-withdrawal penalty.
For employees who are dissuaded from saving money in a tax-deferred retirement plan because they are concerned it would be too complicated and costly to access it for emergencies, Secure 2.0 may assuage that fear: It would let employees make a penalty-free withdrawal of up to $1,000 a year for emergencies. While employees would still owe income tax on that withdrawal in the year it’s made, they could get that tax refunded if they repay the withdrawal within three years.
If they don’t repay the withdrawal, they would have to wait until the three-year repayment period ends before being allowed to make another emergency withdrawal. Enter your email to subscribe to the CNN Business Newsletter.
The provision would go into effect after December 31, 2023.
5. Raise catch-up contribution limits for older workers
Currently, if you’re 50 or older you may contribute an additional $6,500 to your 401(k) on top of the $20,500 annual federal limit in effect this year.
Under the retirement package, instead of $6,500, those aged 60, 61, 62 and 63 would be allowed to contribute $10,000, or 50% more than the regular catch-up amount in 2025, whichever is greater.
The provision would take effect after December 31, 2024.
To help pay for the cost of the retirement package, however, another provision which would go into effect a year earlier would require anyone with compensation over $145,000 to “Rothify” their catch-up contributions. So, instead of making before-tax contributions up to the catch-up limit, you could still contribute the same amount but you would be taxed on it in the same year. Your contribution would then grow tax free and may be withdrawn tax free in retirement. But the federal government would get the tax revenue from the original catch-up contribution up front.
6. Enhance and simplify the Saver’s Credit
An underutilized federal match exists for lower-income earners’ retirement contributions of up to $2,000 a year. The new package would enhance and simplify the so-called Saver’s Credit so more people could use it. Eligible filers (e.g., married couples making $71,000 or less) could get a matching contribution from the federal government worth up to 50% of their savings, but the match cannot exceed $1,000.
The provision would go into effect after Dec 31, 2026.
7. Make it easier for part-time workers to save
Part-time workers currently must be allowed to participate in a workplace retirement plan if they have three years of service and work at least 500 hours a year. The new package would reduce that service time to two years. The provision would go into effect after Dec. 31, 2024. (courtesy: CNN Business)
Elon Musk has said he’ll step down from his role as CEO of Twitter once he finds someone to replace him, an announcement that comes after a majority of users said he should resign in a poll held on the social media platform. “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams,” Musk wrote on Twitter.
Musk’s tweet day night marks the first time he’d responded to a Sunday unscientific poll in which he asked whether he should step down as CEO. The results reflected that a majority of respondents (57.5 percent) said he should leave the top role of the company.
With more than 17.5 million total votes cast, 57.5 percent of users responding to Musk’s poll said he should step down as Twitter’s head, just weeks after Musk acquired the company and took on the position.
Musk had vowed in posting the poll that he would abide by the results. Another 42.5 percent of users said Musk should not leave the role. Musk’s tenure as CEO has so far been fraught with controversy as the billionaire moved to slash Twitter staff, scale back on content moderation and change the platform’s user verification system.
Musk has yet to identify a future successor and, in fact, floated the possibility in November that he might have to file for bankruptcy in order to pay back the $13 billion in debt he borrowed from banks for the purchase. He has seen his personal fortune decline since he bought the site, losing his title as the world’s richest man.
In the less than two months since Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and took it private, he has fired its top leadership team, gutted its staff, driven away major advertisers and unbanned accounts, including that of former President Donald Trump. His actions have raised concerns about the future of the platform.
However, despite the controversy Musk has stoked in lifting most of its existing rules against misinformation with his commitment to “free speech,” lawmakers remain on the site. Many say there isn’t another social media platform with the equivalent reach to reporters and Washington insiders.
After four years of fractious talks, nearly 200 countries, including India, approved a historic Paris-style deal on Monday to protect and reverse dangerous loss to global biodiversity following an intense final session of negotiations at the UN COP15 summit in Canada. The summit started on December 7.
Amid loud applause from assembled delegates, the president of the COP15 biodiversity summit, Chinese Environment Minister Huang Runqiu, declared the Kunming-Montreal Agreement adopted. The Chinese-brokered deal is aimed at saving the lands, oceans and species from pollution, degradation and climate change, reported news agency PTI. Read more here.
Sharp drop in wildlife
Monitored wildlife populations – mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish – have seen a devastating 69% drop on average since 1970, according to the Living Planet Report 2022 of the World Wildlife Fund.
Key features of the deal
The deal commits to progressively increase the level of financial resources from all sources by 2030, mobilising at least $200 billion per year. This represents roughly a doubling from a 2020 baseline.
A major achievement is also the commitment to $20 billion in international finance flows by 2025 and $30 billion by 2030.
The 23 targets in the accord also include cutting environmentally “destructive” farming subsidies, reducing the risk from pesticides, and tackling invasive species.
Farming subsidy is tricky issue
Last week, India said a numerical global target for pesticide reduction in the agriculture sector is unnecessary and must be left for countries to decide. It also said the agriculture sector in India, like other developing countries, is the source of “life, livelihoods, and culture for hundreds of millions,” and support to it cannot be targeted for elimination.
The growing influence of physicians of Indian heritage is evident, as they are increasingly recognized and hold critical positions in healthcare, academic, research, and administrative positions across the nation. With their hard work, dedication, compassion, and skills, they have thus carved an enviable niche in the American medical community. Not satisfied with their own professional growth and the service they provide to their patients around the world, they are in the forefront, sharing their knowledge and expertise with others, especially those physicians and leaders in the medical field from India.
The 16th annual Global Healthcare Summit (GHS) 2023, organized by the Association of American Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) in Visakhapatnam in the state of Andhra Pradesh from January 6th to 8th, 2023 offers a unique forum for them to come together, sharing their knowledge and expertise with their fellow physicians from around the world, and to learn from one another.
According to Dr. Ravi Kolli, President of AAPI, “AAPI has been engaged in harnessing the power of Indian Diaspora to bring the most innovative, efficient, cost-effective healthcare solutions to India. The upcoming GHS 2023 with the theme of “True and Total Health is the Wellbeing of Mind, Body, and Spirit” with its focus on Mental Health, Infant and Maternal Mortality as well as various other medical specialty updates, Medical Jeopardy, and Research Poster presentations by medical students will be a great way to accomplish this mission of AAPI. In addition, advocacy to dismantle the stigma of mental illness and Suicide Prevention will be the highlight of the program.”
“This conference will focus on bringing the highest caliber of internationally acclaimed faculty and will develop a very robust agenda in collaboration with leading experts from India. The enhanced focus on conducting skills enhancement workshops, hands on experience with advanced techniques,” Dr. V. Ranga, Chair of AAPI BOT said.
CME sessions with academicians from the United States will offer unique opportunities for local medical staff and healthcare professionals to advance leanings and provide the best possible care for the people of India. Nearly 400 Physicians are expected to attend the AAPI GHS 2023.
Invited guests include Professors, Heads of Educational Institutes, Deans as well as chairs and members of the National Medical Council Board, in addition to the dignitaries, including Hon. Health Minister of India, Hon. Chief Minister and the Hon. Governor of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Sponsors will have opportunities for Exhibits, Product Theaters, NGO booths to promote their services, products, and values.
Dr. Prasad Chalasani, Chair of AAPI GHS-USA says, “The scientific program and workshops of GHS is developed by leading experts with contributions from the Scientific Advisory Board and the International Scientific Committee. The workshops will be led by world-famous physicians on topics relevant to the needs of the time.”
“AAPI has plans to collaborate with the Government of Andhra Pradesh to initiate a very ambitious program to address mental health and wellness of all the students in the high schools in AP,” Dr. Ravi Raju, Chair of GHS-India said.
Discussions and deliberations will address the Stigma of Mental illness, Suicide prevention, Management of Chronic diseases and NCD and, other Global Health Issues including Climate Change and its impact on health will be discussed.
Dr. Sampath Shivangi, AAPI Legislative Committee Chair said, “We are collaborating with senior leaders from leading healthcare organizations including pharmaceuticals, device and medical equipment manufacturers and major medical teaching institutions, hospitals, and the Ministries of Health, External/Overseas Affairs and regulatory bodies to attend and coordinate with AAPI with an ultimate goal to providing accessible and affordable high-quality healthcare to all people of India.”
Dr. Manoj Jain,Chair of CETI – Collaboration to Eliminate TB in India supported by CDC and USAIDwill lead comprehensive discussions on the TB Elimination Projects in India, with tangible goals achieved and the plan for the future.
Dr. Sreeni Gangasani, CME Chair, and Academic Chair Dr. Sharma Prabhakar said, some of the topics for the CMEs will include Psychiatry, Ophthalmology, Pediatrics, Gastroenterology, Neurology, and Oncology. “In our efforts to realize the core mission of AAPI, which is to share the best from leading experts from around the world, to collaborate on clinical challenges, the GHS in Visakhapatnam will have clinical tracks that are of vital to healthcare in India,” Dr. Gangasani added.
Dr. Lokesh Edara and Dr. Brahma Sharma, who are the co-chairs of International medical education will conduct a high-powered panel discussion by International Medical Education experts including CEOs of ECFMG, WFMC, and National Medical Council officials. Dr. B K Kishore, an academic expert will lead discussions on research methodology and scientific writings. Latest Advances, CME, ENLS, Discussions on Research Methodology and Scientific Writing by Academic Experts will be part of the summit.
According to Dr. Joseph Chalil, Chair of AAPI’s CEO Forum and Strategic Advisor, “The CEO forum will focus on Equity, Ethics and Physician Burnout Issues” while the Women’s Forum chair, Dr. Udaya Shivangi said, “Women’s Forum will focus on empowerment, gender bias and leadership.”
Walkathon on the beach will be held to challenge mental health stigma and promotion of healthy lifestyle changes and stress management of and several other initiatives also will be announced including effective treatment modalities on non-communicable medical diseases, reducing the infant and maternal mortality and HPV Vaccination.
The Summit will have a research competition for medical students and post graduate students from all over India. AAPI will confer Awards of excellence and lifetime achievements. “AAPI will work collaboratively with GAIMS – Global Association of Indian Medical Students and will be conducting the Research Competition for Medical, Students, Residents, Fellows, and Junior Doctors,” said Dr. Anjana Samadder, President-Elect of AAPI.
“With the changing trends and statistics in healthcare, both in India and US, we are refocusing our mission and vision, AAPI will continue to make a positive meaningful impact on the healthcare delivery system both in the US and in India,” said Dr. Satheesh Kathula, Vice President of AAPI.
“January is #CervicalCancer Awareness Month! In coordination with the local organizers of the GHS, AAPI will continue its efforts to create awareness and offer financial assistance to eradicate this preventable disease,” said Dr. Meher Medavaram, Secretary of AAPI. “AAPI’s this new initiative through education and awareness programs is aimed at helping save millions of lives in India,” she added.
Dr. Sumul Rawal, Treasurer of AAPI pointed out, “India needs to redouble and continue its efforts and dedicate resources to tackle the perennial health challenges. Many of these projects and programs need regular funding and management of resources. We are grateful to dozens of AAPI members who have committed to serving India with an ongoing commitment.”
This international healthcare summit is a progressive transformation from the first Indo-US Healthcare Summit launched by AAPI USA in 2007. With the objective of enabling people in India to access high-quality, affordable, and cost-effective world-class health services, the Summit to be held in collaboration with the Indian Medical Association (IMA), the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs & the Ministry of Health, will have participation from some of the world’s most well-known physicians and industry leaders.
The scientific program of GHS 2023 is developed by leading experts with the contributions of a stellar Scientific Advisory Board, Continuing Medical Education Committee and Academic Committee of AAPI and Indian counterparts. The Conference in collaboration with several professional associations from all over the world, 12 hours of credits from the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education.
“With the changing trends and statistics in healthcare, both in India and US, we are refocusing our mission and vision of GHS 2023, and AAPI would like to make a positive and meaningful impact on the healthcare in India,” Dr. Kolli says. “In our quest to fulfill the mission of AAPI, we are proud to share best practices and experiences from leading experts in the world and develop actionable plans and projects that enable access to affordable and quality healthcare for all people. To help accomplish this mission, please join us at the GHS 2023.” For more information on Global Health Summit, please visit: www.summit.aapiusa.org and www.GHS2023.com
A group of Silicon Valley tech workers from India marched in San Jose, California, on Dec. 17 to demand better means to secure a green card.
Traditionally, tech startups have used H1B visas to legally hire skilled foreign workers who may eventually qualify for a permanent green card in about a year or two.
However, the cap on skills-based green cards issued per country has resulted in many workers from India being unable to get one.
The green card backlog was further exacerbated by former President Donald Trump in 2020 after he decided to stop all visa applications amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
When President Joe Biden revoked the ban the following year, the H-1B visa to green card backlog had already hit an all-time high of 1.4 million people.
Based on an estimate from the Cato Institute, Indians with advanced degrees seeking permanent residence in the U.S. should expect a wait time of 151 years.
According to the dozens of workers who joined the march, they have been waiting for their green cards for decades.
“We all have applied for a green card and it has been approved. Only thing is, we need to wait 150 years to get a green card,” Akhilesh Malavalli told KPIX CBS SF Bay Area. “A hundred fifty years! I’ll be dead. I’ll be dead by the time we see a green card.”
The protesters held a demonstration in front of Representative Zoe Lofgren (D, CA-19), chair of the House subcommittee on immigration, to urge her to bring her proposed bill to the House floor for a vote in the coming week.
HR 3648, a bill that would remove national origin as a consideration for the green card, was introduced by Lofgren last year alongside Rep. John Curtis (R, UT-03).
“What we are fighting for is basic equality,” Malavalli said. “Treat us based on what skills we bring to this nation and not necessarily based on where we were born.”
Under current laws, H1B workers who lose their jobs for whatever reason are granted only two months to find a new job to stay in the U.S. before they become illegal immigrants.
Immediate family members of H1B visa holders can receive an H-4 visa, which is linked to the time limit of the H1B. Children of H1B workers lack the protection that a green card offers in case their parents lose their jobs or die. The law states that they must leave the country when they turn 21, regardless of whether they’ve lived in the U.S. since they were born. (Yahoo.com)
Other organizations like the G-20 may step up to take a more prominent role in international affairs than the United Nations if the global body fails to introduce reforms in the UN Security Council, Ruchira Kamboj, the Permanent Representative of India at the United Nations, said. Speaking on the issues — reformed multilateralism and counterterrorism during the December Presidency of India at the UNSC — Ms. Kamboj said that the reformation of the United Nations is the “most complex process” of the UN system.
“It involves several aspects. It involves the reform of the UN Charter. It requires all the P-5 (permanent members of the UNSC) to be on board. It requires that no P-5 should veto the matter and all of that and much more. Also, it touches a very raw nerve. There are many who aspire to be in a reformed council but there are many who would not like to see those in the council. Therefore, the process is indeed very complex,” Ms. Kamboj said, stressing that the complexities, however, do not mean that “change cannot happen”.
Speaking on the subjects of counterterrorism and reformed multilateralism during India’s UNSC Presidency in December, Kamboj noted that the reformation of the UN is the “most complicated process” within the UN system.
Kamboj said that there is a lot of “pessimism and cynicism” about the possibility of reform of the UN Security Council as the item of reform has remained on the agenda of the UNSC for nearly three decades without any substantive progress. Prof Harsh V. Pant who moderated the session raised the possibility of “minilaterals” playing a more active role in global affairs to which Ms. Kamboj said that it is a possibility if the reform of the UNSC refuses to make any progress.
“Today, you have almost two hundred member states. Their voices are not being heard anymore. Let’s say, the voice of the voiceless, the smaller states, the countries from Africa – who hears them? Everything is being scripted for them in many ways,” Ms. Kamboj said , warning that “may be the UN will be overtaken by other institutions for example that are more democratic such as the G-20”. The envoy, however, urged not to rush to any conclusion on such possibilities.
Ambassador Kamboj said that India has been “very vocal” during its stint as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council during which the harsher waves of the pandemic were experienced worldwide along with the crisis in Ukraine. “I think we did stand out in terms of assisting our partners and friends,” the envoy said , emphasising India’s role in providing vaccines to the least developed countries and that India has not hesitated in expressing an opinion on difficult issues during the past two years.
India’s 2021-2022 stint at the UNSC will draw to a close by the end of this month when India is also serving as the President of the UNSC. Kamboj said that the reform requires not just the P-5 but also smaller groupings within the UN structure to be engaged in the broader discussion on the reform.
Canada has processed an all-time high of 4.8 million visa applications in 2022, nearly twice the 2.5 million processed during the same period last year, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).
On a monthly basis, Canada is now processing more visitor visa applications reducing its pandemic backlog by nearly half-a-million applications in just four months.
In November alone, over 260,000 visitor visas were processed, in contrast to the 180,000 applications that were processed in 2019 at the same time.
“Our government has reduced its pandemic backlogs by nearly half a million, while also processing a record-breaking number of immigration applications this year. Our actions are ensuring that we can continue to welcome and support newcomers who come to Canada to work, study, visit, or settle here,” Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, said in a statement.
The 4.8 million applications include 670,000 study permits, 700,000 work permits, and hundreds of thousands of visitor visas, according to IRCC data.
The largest number of applications were processed under the temporary residence category with over 670,000 study permits cleared by November 30, compared to more than 500,000 during the same time period last year.
Most new study permits are now being processed within the 60-day service standard, the IRCC informed.
Close to 700,000 work permits were processed by November 30, compared to about 223,000 during the same period in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Canada welcomed a record-breaking 405,000 new permanent residents in 2021, and with this development, it remains on track to reach its target of more than 431,000 new permanent residents.
Also, permanent residents can now expect shorter wait times when renewing their permanent resident cards as IRCC has reduced its pandemic backlog of applications for card renewals by 99 per cent.
Canada welcomed approximately 251,000 new citizens from April to November, as a result of which more than 70 per cent of applications in the citizenship inventory are now within service standards.
To address acute labour shortage, Canada unveiled its ambitious immigration plan last month to welcome half-a-million immigrants each year by 2025.
As of December 2, Canada’s immigration backlog came down to just over 2.2 million.
IRCC says it wants to have a less than 50 per cent backlog across all lines of business by the end of March 2023.
To achieve this, the Canadian citizenship body began transition towards 100 per cent digital applications for most permanent resident programs on September 23.
It also hopes to make all citizenship applications digital by the end of this year, including those for minors under 18. (IANS)
The Pathaan row in India is seeing new heights of religious fanaticism as a seer in Ayodhya has now threatened that he would burn Bollywood’s Shah Rukh Khan alive if he ever met him. As per its definition, a seer is a person of supposed supernatural insight who sees visions of the future.
Mahant Paramhans Acharya of Tapasvi Chhavni, has said that he would even go to the extent of burning Shah Rukh Khan alive if he ever met him. Paramhans Acharya added that the saffron colour has been insulted in the ‘Besharam Rang’ song.
“People of our Sanatan Dharma are protesting continuously regarding this. Today we have burnt the poster of Shahrukh Khan. If I get to meet the film Jihadi Shah Rukh Khan, I will burn him alive,” the seer said.
Paramhans Acharya added that the saffron colour has been insulted in the Besharam Rang song. “People of our Sanatan Dharma are protesting continuously regarding this. Today we have burnt the poster of Shahrukh Khan. If I get to meet the film Jihadi Shah Rukh Khan, I will burn him alive,” the seer said.
Acharya did not stop at that. He went on to say that if ‘Pathaan’ film was released in theatres, he would set them on fire. He also appealed people to boycott ‘Pathaan’. Earlier, the priest of Hanuman Garhi, Mahant Raju Das, had also protested against the film. Politicians and right-wing supporters are protesting over saffron coloured outfits in the song ‘Besharam Rang’ in the film.
While the cast seems unfazed by the so-called controversy as the makers have announced a new song set for a December 22 release, fans and close peers of Khan and Deepika Padukone are rightfully worried.
Adding on, the Mumbai Police has received a written complaint, seeking registration of an FIR in connection with Padukone wearing a saffron bikini in the song Besharam Rang. A complaint has been filed on Saturday against the producer, director and lead actors of the film for deliberately using saffron color to hurt the religious sentiments of people and hurt the Hindu religion, an official of Sakinaka police station said.
Previously, Khan voiced his concerns about the emerging trend of negativity and trolling on social media at the inaugural ceremony of the 28th Kolkata International Film Festival, reported Times of India.
Without directly addressing the controversies related to Pathaan and Besharam Rang, Khan said, “I’m really proud of everyone standing in solidarity with me. The support proves that no matter what the world throws at us, we will always remain positive and alive.”
He then pointed out how the negativity on social platforms only leads to more destruction in real life. “Social media is often driven by a certain narrowness of view that limits human nature to its baser self. I read somewhere that negativity increases social media consumption, and thereby increases its commercial value as well. Such pursuits enclose the collective narrative, making it divisive and destructive.”
Moving on, the Zero actor also stated that cinema is bound to be affected by the increasing pessimism online. He said, “The collective narrative of our times is shaped by social media and contrary to the belief, the spread of social media will affect the cinema negatively.”
Khan went on to defend cinema by dubbing it as a vehicle “for people of different colours, castes and religions to better understand each other.” He also urged people to pay more respect to films. “Cinema is the best place to sustain a counter-narrative that speaks to the larger nature of humankind,” he added.
Despite receiving requests for the film to be boycotted, Khan commended KIFF for ushering in a new era of optimism in the country and congratulated the people of Kolkata. “Through endeavours like KIFF, we are able build new platforms to break existing prejudices. Let’s come together and build a better world for our future generation through the medium of cinema,” he concluded.
It’s always special to come back to India, and this trip is especially meaningful as it’s my first visit back since the pandemic. As we come out of it, there’s a sense of optimism about the country’s future and the role technology can play to improve lives.
Which brings me to why I’m here: first and foremost to meet with Googlers, as the team has grown significantly since I was last here. I’m also here to see progress being made from our $10 billion, 10-year India Digitization Fund (IDF), and share new ways we’re helping to advance India’s digital future at our Google for India event. That includes our efforts to build a single, unified AI model that will be capable of handling over 100 Indian languages across speech and text – part of our global effort to bring the world’s 1,000 most-spoken languages online, and to help people access knowledge and information in their preferred language. We’re also supporting a new, multidisciplinary center for responsible AI with IIT Madras. (Our VP of India Sanjay Gupta shares more details in his blog post below.)
This progress is part of how we’re working to seize the opportunity in AI globally, balancing the need to be bold with innovation and responsible in our approach. I’m excited to see the ways India will contribute to breakthroughs in AI that could benefit over a billion people in India, and more around the world.
More broadly, I’ve been amazed at the ways people are already using technology to make their communities better. One of the local tech founders I met today has broken new ground by offering a radiation-free and non-invasive breast cancer screening tool; another developed a chatbot that helps people manage stress. I was glad to hear their stories and to share thoughts on how technology can expand opportunity during a conversation at WomenWill.
Later today, I have the honor of meeting with His Excellency Prime Minister Modi to discuss how we are supporting small businesses and start-ups, investing in cybersecurity, providing education and skills training, applying AI in sectors like agriculture and healthcare, and other priorities. Prime Minister Modi’s Digital India vision has helped to accelerate the progress we’re seeing across India, and I’m excited for India to share its experience with the world as it takes over the G20 presidency in 2023.
The pace of technological change in India has been extraordinary, and there’s so much opportunity still ahead. Glad to be able to see it up close, and I’m already looking forward to my next visit.
(Sundar is the CEO of Google and Alphabet and serves on Alphabet’s Board of Directors. Under his leadership, Google has been focused on developing products and services, powered by the latest advances in AI, that offer help in moments big and small.)
Below is an edited version of a blog from Sanjay Gupta, Google’s Country Head and Vice President, India, summarizing the key announcements from Google for India.
India’s digital transformation is at a tipping point. Seven hundred million connected Indians, affordable smartphones and data, record highs in digital payments, the digitization of citizen services, and a vibrant start-up ecosystem have put the technology sector on track to become the single largest contributor to the national economy.
We feel privileged to have played a part in this extraordinary story. Our mission in India is to make the internet helpful and safer for a billion Indians. We’ve introduced India-first innovations, worked to lower barriers to access, and invested in strengthening the strategic pillars of India’s digital economy through our $10 billion India Digitization Fund.
Today, at our 8th Google for India, joined by Sundar Pichai, our CEO, and senior Google leaders and product experts, we stepped up our commitment to build a more inclusive, helpful, and safer internet for every Indian — and shared how we hope to supercharge India’s digital transformation by harnessing AI.
Partnerships are the cornerstone of our journey in India, and essential for such a scaled transition. Today, with partners from across the public and private sectors, we announced new efforts focused on taking Indians from foundational access to the point where technology becomes the enabler for growth, knowledge, health and progress.
Early stage startups are the engine that drives innovation, with many building products that address key information and service needs for people across India, especially for novice internet users. Strengthening our ongoing resolve to support India’s digital innovators, as part of our India Digitization Fund investments, we will be targeting support for early stage companies with a particular focus on women-led startups. (Courtesy: https://blog.google/inside-google/message-ceo/optimism-india-digital-future/)
Chief Minister M.K. Stalin has made an appeal to Tamils all over the world to renew their links with their villages and schools through the virtual pavilion introduced by the State government and contribute to the development of government schools.
“Even if you live in one corner of the world, your roots in Tamil Nadu and in your native place should be strengthened. It is an opportunity to pay back to the soil that nurtured you. Our children will emerge victorious and develop your organizations, villages, and corporate houses,” he said while launching the Namma School Foundation of the School Education Department in Chennai.
Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin has launched a ‘Namma School Foundation’ initiative to improve the infrastructure of state government-run schools. Notably, Stalin donated ₹5 lakh on his own for this purpose. “The funds will be judiciously used…in a transparent manner for the future of the children,” Stalin said, urging the Tamil diaspora worldwide to donate towards the cause.
Education is wealth that cannot be snatched by anyone, he said and asserted that the DMK government was creating such an asset for posterity. The Chief Minister appealed to philanthropists to contribute for the development of the schools.
“Every rupee given for the noble cause will be spent for the development of the schools, teachers, and students. The funds will be judiciously used and in a transparent manner for the future of the children,” the Chief Minister said and urged Tamils across the world to re-establish their links with their villages and schools through a virtual pavilion introduced by the State government and thereby contribute.
Venu Srinivasan, chairman emeritus of TVS company, is the chairperson of the foundation. Chess grandmaster Viswanathan Anand is its ambassador.
The Chief Minister facilitated actor Sivakumar, who along with his classmates, adopted a government school in Sulur.
Namma school portal and school virtual pavilion were also launched by the Chief Minister on the occasion.
Recalling the role played by the DMK leader K Anbazhagan on the occasion of his birth centenary today, Stalin said as Education Minister, Anbazhagan had made contribution to the field. “Today we named the Commissionerate of school education building at Nungambakkam here after Anbazhagan and launched the Namma School Foundation of the school education department coinciding with thes birth anniversary,” the Chief Minister said.
The foundation aims at bringing together communities and individuals who want to give back; corporates who wish to invest in and groom a new and aspiring generation to make government schools aspirational for all socio-economic classes thus delivering on the promise of equitable quality education.
The funds would be used to develop health and hygiene, nutrition, pedagogy, promote sports and culture, co-curricular activities and upskilling to equip the learners to face and triumph over the challenges of an increasingly modernised and transforming world.
The American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin Queens Long Island, AAPIQLI, celebrated its 26th Annual Convention at the Crest Hollow Country Club on Dec 17th, 2022, under the leadership of President Dr. Vinni Jayam, and Convention Chair, Dr. Jagat Rawal.
More than 550 people attended according to organizers. The Chief Guest was Dr. Patrick O’Shaughnessy, CEO of Catholic Health Services. Guests of Honor included Dr. Chuck Lucore, CEO of St. Francis Hospital and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a press release from AAPIQLI said. The attendees included physicians, entrepreneurs, community leaders, and industry leaders.
“The presence of illustrious community leaders like Dr. Sudhir Parikh, Dr. Rap Anumolu, Nassau County Republican Party head and numerous state legislators made the event more memorable,” Dr. Jayam told Desi Talk.
Speaking at the event about AAPIQLI activities and accomplishments through the year, Dr. Jayam elaborated on the ‘Three Pillars’ – Educational, Service and Charitable endeavors, that underlie the initiatives that the organization undertakes.
Under the Service category, the organization created a Service Committee to oversee activities to encourage members to engage with their local communities. A number of blood donation camps, flu shot camps, and medical seminars were among the activities. “One of the biggest upshots has been the creation of a Mental Health Hotline,” Dr. Jayam said. “And the other crown jewel is the Annual Continuing Medical symposium Education,” held in Nov 2022, with illustrious speakers, he noted. The AAPIQLI also held a student medical research day to recognize outstanding students from New York State. For the first time a Mentorship Committee was formed to help students coming from India, with finding jobs, skills to apply, and even including legal counsel.
The Chief Guest Dr. O’Shaughnessy and the Guests of Honor Dr. Lucore, and Blakeman, during their speeches, praised AAPIQLI for work done. “They were amazed at the breadth of achievements of the organization,” Dr. Jayam told Desi Talk.
One of the highlights of the event was honoring some of the most accomplished physicians in the Greater New York Tri-state area. The Honorees this year were: Richard Shlofmitz, Chairman of Cardiology at St. Francis Hospital and Service Line Director of Cardiology for the Catholic Health; Meena Bansal, Professor of Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine and Director of Transplant Hepatology Fellowship and Translational Research in the Division of Liver Diseases at Mount Sinai Health center; Rohan Ramakrishna, Chief of Neurosurgery at New York-Presbyterian/Brooklyn Methodist Hospital & Weill Cornell Medical College; and, Bhavani Srinivasan, the Lifetime Service Awardee.
The celebration included a dance performance by the AATMA Group with music by Dr. Biba Singh. Program was conducted by Dr. Sunil Mehra. The AAPIQLI leadership praised the efforts of the team including – Dr. Jagdish Gupta, chair of the Board of Trustees; Dr. Abhay Malhotra, immediate Past President; Dr. Devendra Shrivastava, co chair, Dr. Venu Pall, co-chair; Dr. Raj Bhayani, media chair and others.
Dr. Sudhir Parikh, chairman of Parikh Worldwide Media told ITV Gold which covered the event, described the event as “a great gathering of doctors” from the greater New York area. He praised the organization for doing “great work.”
The AAPIQLI is a non-profit organization formed in June 1995, under the leadership of Dr. Narendra Hadpawat. The Inaugural dinner was held at Leonard’s of Great Neck, NY attended by about 150 physicians. Today AAPIQLI is the largest chapter of the national American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin.
A statue of Mahatma Gandhiji, the founding father of India, was unveiled at the United Nations headquarters on the North lawn, among other statues and artifacts, on 14th Dec 2022, which is meticulously translated as a proud historic moment for Indians worldwide. The bust was a gift to the United Nations from India, which holds the Security Council’s presidency this month.
Mahatma Gandhi led a non-violent movement that helped end British rule in India in 1947, and his legacy inspired many social campaigns and civil resistance.
India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said, “Today, when the world grapples with violence, armed conflicts, and humanitarian emergencies, these Gandhian ideals must continue to guide our actions in ensuring peace and stability around the world.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Gandhi an uncompromising advocate for peaceful co-existence, non-discrimination, and pluralism. He said the bust would serve as a reminder of the values Gandhi upheld. The United Nations and the principle of Gandhi’s non-violence are wanted more than ever and are needed at this time of trials humanity faces. Let’s break the division among nations and bring peace with non- violence messages for a sustainable and politically stable world.
Gandhi, laid the proper foundation of the largest democracy in the world with the principles of non-violence. Let Gandhi’s message of non-violence be a cornerstone for nation-building and an example to all world leaders.
Gandhiji’s principle of non-violence is reflected in the United Nations Charter.
Mahatma Gandhi was honored not only at this time but from 2007 United Nations is observing his birthday on October 2nd as ‘The Day of Non-Violence’ around the world.
The International Day of Non-Violence
(October 2nd, the Birthday of Mahatma Karamchand Gandhi)
The International Day of Non-Violence is observed on October 2nd, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement and pioneer of the philosophy and strategy of non-violence.
According to General Assembly resolution A/RES/61/271 of June 15th, 2007, which established the commemoration, International Day is an occasion to “disseminate the message of non-violence, including through education and public awareness.” The resolution reaffirms “the universal relevance of the principle of non-violence” and the desire “to secure a culture of peace, tolerance, understanding, and non-violence.”
India co-hosted the event and South Africa on October 2nd, 2007, at the General Assembly Hall. INC leader Ms. Sonia Gandhi, former Indian President and Foreign Minister, late Shri Pranab Mukerji (at the time), Shri Rahul Gandhi, Rev. Jessie Jackson, and Congress leaders from Kerala were attended
Introducing the resolution in the General Assembly on behalf of 140 co-sponsors, India’s Minister of State for External Affairs, Mr. Anand Sharma, said that the broad and diverse sponsorship of the resolution was a reflection of the universal respect for Mahatma Gandhi and the enduring relevance of his philosophy. Quoting the late leader’s own words, he said: “Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man”.
The name Mahatma Gandhi transcends the bounds of race, religion, and nation-states and has emerged as the prophetic voice of the twenty-first century. The world remembers Gandhi not just for his passionate adherence to the practice of non-violence and supreme humanism but as the benchmark against which we test men and women in public life, political ideas and government policies, and the hopes and wishes of our shared planet.
The principle of non-violence — also known as non-violent resistance — rejects physical violence to achieve social or political change. Often described as “the politics of ordinary people,” this form of social struggle has been adopted by mass populations worldwide in campaigns for social justice.
Observance of ‘International Day of Non-Violence’ Oct. 2nd, 2013
A special event at the UN marked the International Day of Non-Violence, held annually on Oct. 2nd, the birthday of non-violence pioneer Mahatma Gandhi.
During the event, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (right) receives a gift from Asoke Kumar Mukerji, Permanent Representative of India to the UN. General Assembly President also attended. Singer Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and sons performed a musical concert at the event dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi’s life. This life-size portrait of Mahatma Gandhi was displayed at the General Assembly Building.
Observance of ‘International Day of Non-Violence’ Oct. 2nd, 2014
Sam Kahamba Kutesa, President of the sixty-ninth session of the General Assembly, greets Sushma Swaraj, Minister for External Affairs of India, at the special event on the occasion of the International Day of Non-Violence, organized by the Permanent Mission of India. The Day of Non-Violence is commemorated on 2 October, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement and pioneer of the non-violence philosophy, as an occasion to disseminate the message of non-violence. The Portrait of Gandhi was displayed at the UN GA Hall.
Global Indian Council Leaders’ views of Mahatma Gandhi, on the occasion of Gandhiji’s bust was unveiled at the United Nations’ headquarters on the North lawn on 14th Dec 2022.
“The great Mahatma who touched the hearts of the villagers of India and who became potential for our freedom, everlasting respect and honor to Gandhiji”, stated P C Mathew, President of Global Indian Council.
Mahatma Gandhi fought for the freedom of India and won. He inspired and lit the fire everywhere for fights against shackles of all kinds. Shackles of colonization, race, and gender as well. It is appropriate that Mahatma Gandhi’s statue is being put up in the UN as the epitome of Freedom, Peace & Tolerance: – Jija Harisingh, GIC Goodwill Ambassador.
Mahatma, as the father of a great nation, was trying to put himself last among all his fellow- creatures. This mindset is what we do not see among our current political leaders and even the so-called religious leaders. Let the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at the UN headquarters remind the Global leaders and Nations about his still relevant principles: remarked Prof. Joy Pallattumadom, VP GIC.
Gandhiji, who laid the true foundation of the largest democracy in the world with the principles of non-violence, an icon of the world and an iconic figure of Ahimsa, will decorate the United Nations to remind the world of the way to work towards peace: -Sudhir Nambiar, GIC, General Secretary.
Mahatma Gandhi was one of the most outstanding leaders of his time, and he proved that one man had the power to take on an empire using ethics and intelligence. Having the Mahatma Gandhi statue in the UN complex is a proud moment for every Indian: -Tara Shajan, GIC, Treasurer.
The concept of Gandhi’s non-violence became more necessary at this point in life. Every Indian must be so proud that our national father has some place in the United Nations. Being an Indian American, Gandhi is always in our hearts. Let Gandhi’s message of non-violence reach the world for peace. Let the war stop in people’s hearts: – Tom Kolath, GIC, Associate Treasurer.
Unveiling Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in the UN is an utmost honor not only for Indians but to mankind, recognizing his legacy and principles in this modern age speaks volumes. As GIC is embarking on it journey in integrating and connecting professionals of Indian origin across the globe, this recognition of Gandhi in UN is a catalyst for our mission: said Dr. Anil Paulose, President, GIC NY Chapter
In fact, Global Indian Council has recently produced a short film “The footprints” touching the life Gandhiji, which proudly won six Awards at the International Film Festival held at Mumbai last month.
Created & reported by:
Saji Charuvil Thomas
Media and Business Promoter, GIC New York Chapter
Founding Member & Brand Ambassador, GIC National
Former International Civil Servant at the United Nations, New York
The life story of the most famous person who has ever lived is, in fact, filled with a mysterious gaping hole. Bible speaks about the disappearance and finding of Jesus at The Jerusalem Temple at age 12, and reconnects us with him at age 30 when he began his ministry with the Baptism by John the Baptist. From the age of 13 to 29 there is no Biblical, Western, or Middle Eastern record of Jesus‘s whereabouts or activities in Palestine.
There is talk of the missing years of Jesus, unmentioned in the gospels, when he was between the ages of 12 and 30. Some say he was in India, picking up Buddhist ideas. These aren’t notions that have entirely died out. Known as “The Lost Years,” this gaping hole remained a mystery until one explorer’s remarkable discovery in 1887.
In the late 19th century a Russian doctor named Nicolas Notovitch traveled extensively throughout India, Tibet, and Afghanistan. He chronicled his experiences and discoveries in his 1894 book The Unknown Life of Christ. At one point during his voyage, Notovitch broke his leg in 1887 and recuperated at the Tibetan Buddhist Monastery of Hemis in the city of Leh, at the very top of India. It was here where monks showed Notovitch two large yellowed volumes of a document written in Tibetan, entitled The Life of Saint Issa.
During his time at the monastery, Notovitch translated the document which tells the true story of a child named Jesus (i.e. Issa = “son of God”) born in the first century to a poor family in Israel. Jesus was referred to as “the son of God” by the Vedic scholars who tutored him in the sacred Buddhist texts from the age of 13 to 29. Notovitch translated 200 of the 224 verses from the document.
During his time at the monastery in 1887, one lama explained to Notovitch the full scope and extreme level of enlightenment that Jesus had reached. “Issa [Jesus] is a great prophet, one of the first after the twenty-two Buddhas,” the lama tells Notovitch. “He is greater than any one of all the Dalai Lamas, for he constitutes part of the spirituality of our Lord. It is he who has enlightened you, who has brought back within the pale of religion the souls of the frivolous, and who has allowed each human being to distinguish between good and evil. His name and his acts are recorded in our sacred writings. And in reading of his wondrous existence, passed in the midst of an erring and wayward people, we weep at the horrible sin of the pagans who, after having tortured him, put him to death.”
The discovery of Jesus’s time in India lines up perfectly with The Lost Years of Jesus, as well as with the degree of significance of his birth in the Middle East. When a great Buddhist, or Holy Man (i.e. Lama), dies, wise men consult the stars and other omens and set off — often on extraordinarily long journeys — to find the infant who is the reincarnation of the Lama. When the child is old enough he is taken away from his parents and educated in the Buddhist faith. Experts speculate that this is the foundational origin of the story of the Three Wise Men, and it is now believed Jesus was taken to India at 13 and taught as a Buddhist. At the time, Buddhism was already a 500-year-old religion and Christianity, of course, had not even begun.
“Jesus is said to have visited our land and Kashmir to study Buddhism. He was inspired by the laws and wisdom of Buddha,” a senior lama of the Hemis monastery told the IANS news agency. The head of the Drukpa Buddhist sect, Gwalyang Drukpa, who heads the Hemis monastery, is reported to have confirmed this narrative.
The 224 verses have since been documented by others, including Russian philosopher and scientist, Nicholas Roerich, who in 1952 recorded accounts of Jesus’s time at the monastery. “Jesus passed his time in several ancient cities of India such as Benares or Varanasi. Everyone loved him because Issa dwelt in peace with the Vaishyas and Shudras whom he instructed and helped,” writes Roerich.
Jesus spent some time teaching in the ancient holy cities of Jagannath (Puri), Benares (in Uttar Pradesh), and Rajagriha (in Bihar), which provoked the Brahmins to excommunicate him which forced him to flee to the Himalayas where he spent another six years studying Buddhism.
German scholar, Holger Kersten, also writes of the early years of Jesus in India in the book Jesus Lived In India. “The lad arrives in a region of the Sindh (along the river Indus) in the company of merchants,” writes Kersten. “He settled among the Aryans with the intention of perfecting himself and learning from the laws of the great Buddha. He travelled extensively through the land of the five rivers (Punjab), stayed briefly with the Jains before proceeding to Jagannath.”
And in the BBC documentary, Jesus Was A Buddhist Monk, experts theorize that Jesus escaped his crucifixion, and in his mid-late 30s he returned to the land he loved so much. He not only escaped death, but he also visited with the Jewish settlers in Afghanistan who had escaped similar tyranny of the Jewish emperor Nebuchadnezzar. Locals confirm that Jesus spent the next several years in the Kashmir Valley where he lived happily until his death at 80-years-old. With sixteen years of his youth spent in the region, as well as approximately his last 45, that means Jesus spent a total of roughy 61 to 65 years of his life in India, Tibet, and the neighboring area. Locals believe he is buried at the RozaBal shrine at Srinagar in India-controlled Kashmir.
Sam Miller, a BBC writer, who travelled to Srinagar, reports of having identified this tomb, reported and believed by some to be that of Jesus. Jesus is reputed to be buried in this run-down Rozabul shrine in the Kashmir capital. “The shrine, on a street corner, is a modest stone building with a traditional Kashmiri multi-tiered sloping roof,” Miller writes. “A watchman led me in and encouraged me to inspect the smaller wooden chamber within, with its trellis-like, perforated screen. Through the gaps I could see a gravestone covered with a green cloth.”
Miller writes, according to an eclectic combination of New Age Christians, unorthodox Muslims and fans of the Da Vinci Code, the grave contains the mortal remains of a candidate for the most important visitor of all time to India. Officially, the tomb is the burial site of Youza Asaph, a medieval Muslim preacher – but a growing number of people believe that it is in fact the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. They believe that Jesus survived the crucifixion almost 2,000 Easters ago, and went to live out his days in Kashmir.
As per local beliefs, Jesus was among the religious leaders who attended a famous Buddhist meeting here in AD80. “The stories of Jesus in India are not just aimed at gullible tourists – they date back to the 19th Century,” Miller writes.
They were part of attempts to explain the striking similarities between Christianity and Buddhism, a matter of great concern to 19th Century scholars – and also a desire among some Christians to root the story of Jesus in Indian soil.
The US-based Christian sect, known as the Church Universal and Triumphant, is the best-known modern supporter of the belief that Jesus lived in Kashmir, though they don’t believe he died there.
Many years of research by theologian, Holger Kersten, in his book, “Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life Before and After the Crucifixion” presents irrefutable evidence that Jesus did indeed live in India, dying there in old age. Kersten’s book takes the reader to all the historical sites connected with Jesus in Israel, the Middle East, Afghanistan and India. Kersten concludes: In his youth Jesus followed the ancient Silk Road to India. While there he studied Buddhism, adopting its tenets and becoming a spiritual master. Jesus survived the crucifixion. After the resurrection Jesus returned to India to die in old age. Jesus was buried in Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir, where he continues to be revered as a saintly man. The tomb of Jesus still exists in Kashmir.
And in Islam, in which Jesus is the penultimate prophet, there is also a minority tradition adopted by the controversial Ahmadiyya sect, that Rozabal does contain the grave of Jesus.
Professional historians tend to laugh out loud when you mention the notion that Jesus might have lived in Kashmir – but his tomb is now firmly on the tourist trail – and a growing number of credulous visitors believe that he was buried in the Rozabal shrine. (Courtesy: BBC News)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a historic visit to Washington on on December 21st, leaving his country for the first time since Russia’s February invasion to address a joint session of Congress and make a direct appeal to Americans for more aid.
The visit, shrouded in secrecy until the last moment, was the first time Zelensky is known to have left his country since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion in February.
The Ukrainian president is meeting with his U.S. counterpart at the White House and addressed Congress in a special joint meeting on December 21st.
Zelenskyy’s visit was aimed at underscoring U.S. support as Russia’s war drags on. It’s his trip trip outside Ukraine since Russia launched its attack in February.
The Ukrainian leader and his allies in the Biden administration made the most of the moment, both creating and reveling in the spectacle.
Biden greeted Zelensky on the White House’s South Lawn, walked him along the edges of the Rose Garden to the Oval Office and held a press conference alongside him.
Later, before his speech to Congress, Zelensky was shown the splendor of the Capitol by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
The administration announced nearly $2 billion in new security aid to Ukraine, including a Patriot surface-to-air missile battery. Lawmakers voted on an omnibus spending bill that includes $44.9 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies.
In a joint press conference, Zelenskyy said the aid was “a key humanitarian issue, a survival issue” with Russia stepping up attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure as winter temperatures continue to drop.
His speech itself was punctuated by applause from members of both parties and reached its emotional crescendo as he presented a Ukrainian flag, apparently from the front lines in Donbas and signed by the troops, to the chamber.
He thanked Congress for the financial support his country has received over the 10 months of war that have ravaged the country.
“Your money is not charity. It’s an investment in the global security and democracy, that we handle in the most responsible way,” he said, seeming to address recent doubts from some GOP members that the U.S. should continue the flow of money to Ukraine.
He noted that while Russia possesses the power to stop its aggression, Congress, presumably with its pocket purse, has the power to speed up Ukraine’s victory. That would serve as a deterrent to other countries with thoughts of invasion, he added.
“It would be naïve to wait for steps toward peace from Russia, which enjoys being a terrorist state. Russians are still poisoned by the Kremlin,” he said. The road toward peace, he said, is dependent on bipartisan support from the U.S. “This battle cannot be frozen or postponed,” he said. “It cannot be ignored, hoping that the ocean or something else will provide a protection.”
“I hope my words of respect and gratitude resonate in each American heart,” Zelensky said. “Our two nations are allies in this battle, and next year will be a turning point. I know it — the point when Ukrainian courage and American resolve must guarantee the future of our common freedom.”
The Ukrainian military has shocked the world with its ability to repel Moscow’s invasion. Russia has been dealt major setbacks and the bulk of the fighting — now largely frozen in place — has been confined to the outer reaches of Ukraine. But a new wave of Russian attacks on the electrical grid have plunged much of Ukraine into darkness, leaving millions without heat and light.
The White House sees the war in Ukraine as a struggle that simply cannot be lost, for fear that such an outcome would embolden Putin and expose American weakness to rivals and adversaries such as China and Iran.
In the closing moments at the news conference, Biden sought to reassure Zelensky, telling him, “You don’t have to worry. We are staying with Ukraine as long as Ukraine is there.”
India Will Randomly Test International Visitors For COVID-19
In the wake of Covid-19 surge in China and elsewhere abroad, the Union government has laid out a number of steps to be taken by the state governments, Union territory (UT) administrations, and the general public.
The government has instructed states to ensure genome sequencing of all positive cases in the country. India has begun randomly testing international passengers arriving at its airports for COVID-19, the country’s health minister said, citing an increase in cases in neighboring China.
India’s Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has asked the public to wear masks and maintain social distancing, even though there are no official mandates for either. India had relaxed its mask-wearing rules earlier this year after coronavirus cases began dropping sharply. It has reported the most COVID-19 cases in the world since the pandemic began, but confirmed infections have fallen sharply in the past few months.
He has also asked state governments to step up efforts to curb any possible spread during the Christmas and New Year festivities. India witnessed two deadly waves of Covid in 2020 and 2021, but has seen low infection levels this year.
According to government data, the country reports roughly 1,200 Covid cases every week. Over 2.2 billion Covid vaccine doses have been administered so far.
On Tuesday, the federal government asked states to send Covid samples of all positive patients to labs runs by INSACOG, a forum under the health ministry which studies and monitors various strains of Covid in India.
The move came amid growing concerns over the spread of Covid in China following the recent easing of strict lockdown measures. Hospitals and medical facilities in China have come under increasing strain as those who’ve tested positive at home seek medical support.
In a letter to all states, federal health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said it was important to track new variants through genome sequencing due to the “sudden spurt of cases being witnessed in Japan, United States of America, Republic of Korea, Brazil and China”.
This would help authorities detect newer variants and take measures to contain them, he said.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya met senior officials to review the situation and step up surveillance. India was one of the worst affected countries during the first two waves of Covid. Millions were affected and more than 530,000 people died, according to official figures.
But experts believe the real number of Covid deaths was likely to be much higher as many cases people who died were not tested or reported into official figures. The government had also come under heavy criticism for its poor preparation during the second wave in the summer of 2021 as many people died due to lack of oxygen and critical medicines.
Mandaviya said the Indian government has no plans yet to halt flights from countries where new cases have been reported. The increase in cases in China has also prompted Indian health experts to issue advisories for the public to wear face masks and receive vaccine booster doses.
India’s top doctors’ body, the Indian Medical Association, also appealed to people to wear masks in all public places and get vaccine boosters. It urged people to avoid public gatherings such as weddings, political and social meetings, and international travel. “As of now, the situation is not alarming and therefore there is no need to panic. Prevention is better than cure,” it said in a statement.
When Covid-19 broke out in China in late 2019, its government played down its seriousness despite the rising hospital occupancy. This lack of transparency from the Chinese side kept the rest of the world ignorant of the impending pandemic. Three years later, China is again ‘not revealing’ the true scale of Covid-19 surge in the country. And a pandemic-hit world is concerned.
India, a country of nearly 1.4 billion people, has administered more than 2.2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses, but only 27% of the population has received a third booster dose.
(AP) — Long before the bobbleheads and the “Fauci ouchie,” Dr. Anthony Fauci was a straight-shooter about scary diseases — and “stick with the science” remains his mantra.
Fauci steps down from a five-decade career in public service at the end of the month, one shaped by the HIV pandemic early on and the COVID-19 pandemic at the end.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Fauci said he leaves excited by the prospect of advances such as next-generation coronavirus vaccines — but worried that misinformation and outright lies mark a “profoundly dangerous” time for public health and science.
“Untruths abound and we almost normalize untruths,” Fauci said. “I worry about my own field of health, but I also worry about the country.”
Fauci, who turns 82 on Christmas Eve, has been a physician-scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 54 years, and its director for 38 of them.
Because he candidly puts complex science into plain English, Fauci has advised seven presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, about a long list of outbreaks — HIV, Ebola, Zika, bird flu, pandemic flu, even the 2001 anthrax attacks.
“Stick with the science and never be afraid to tell somebody something that is the truth — but it’s an inconvenient truth in which there might be the possibility of the messenger getting shot,” Fauci said. “You don’t worry about that. You just keep telling the truth.”
He added, with characteristic understatement: “That’s served me really quite well with one exception that, you know, the truth generated a lot of hostility towards me in one administration.”
For all his prior influence on national and even global responses to infectious diseases, it wasn’t until COVID-19 paralyzed the world in early 2020 that Fauci became a household name — giving the latest updates at daily White House press conferences and in frequent media interviews.
But eventually, Fauci found himself having to contradict then-President Donald Trump’s attempts to downplay the severity of the viral threat and promote unproven treatments. Trump and his allies began attacking Fauci, who even received death threats that required a security detail for his protection.
As the world enters another year of COVID-19, Fauci still is a frequent target of the far right — but also remains a trusted voice for millions of Americans.
Under his watch, researchers at the National Institutes of Health laid the scientific groundwork for the speedy development of powerful coronavirus vaccines. An analysis released by the Commonwealth Fund last week found the shots saved 3.2 million lives in the U.S. alone and prevented 18.5 million hospitalizations.
With another winter uptick underway, Fauci’s disappointed that just 14% of people eligible for the updated COVID-19 boosters — shots that add protection against omicron strains — have gotten one.
“That doesn’t make any sense at all, when you have a vaccine that you know is life-saving,” he said. But he’s also looking forward to next-generation vaccines that do a better job of preventing infection, citing promising leads like nasal vaccines.
For all the political attacks, the public did struggle to understand why some of his and others’ health advice changed as the pandemic wore on — such as why masks first were deemed unnecessary and later mandated in certain places.
Fauci said one of the pandemic’s lessons is to better convey that it’s normal for messages to change as scientists make new discoveries. “That doesn’t mean you’re flip-flopping. That means you’re actually following the science,” he said.
Fauci has had a hand in life-saving scientific advances for decades. As a young researcher at the National Institutes of Health, he helped develop highly effective therapies for rare but once-fatal blood vessel diseases known as vasculitis syndromes.
Then came the AIDS crisis and days that Fauci, treating patients in NIH’s hospital, recalled as “very dark and very difficult. As a physician you’re trained to heal people. And we weren’t healing anybody. Everybody was dying in front of us.”
Fauci created an AIDS division that, together with drug companies and universities, led research into drugs that eventually transformed HIV into a manageable chronic disease. Later, under President George W. Bush, Fauci helped develop PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, to bring those HIV medications to poor countries. The program is credited with saving more than 20 million lives over the past 20 years.
But it took years to get even the first anti-AIDS medications — and in the late 1980s and early ’90s, furious activists protested what they saw as government indifference. Fauci brought the activists to the table, making it standard practice for patient advocates to have a voice in government decisions about drug research. Unfortunately, he said, that experience can’t help bridge today’s political divisions that are hurting public health.
The AIDS activists “were theatrical. They were iconoclastic. They were provocative. They were confrontational, all of the above. But the fundamental core message that they had was a correct message,” Fauci said. “That is enormously different from what is going on right now with COVID, where untruths abound, conspiracy theories abound, distortions of reality abound.”
Argentina’s World Cup-winning squad arrived home to a jubilant Buenos Aires in Arentina, with massive crowds lining the streets and cheering their champions’ return. Captain Lionel Messi stepped off the plane first, holding the gold trophy aloft, followed by his triumphant team onto a red carpet at the airport, greeted by reporters, officials and a live band.
As the team bus departed the airport, it was immediately swarmed by cheering supporters dressed in the national colors of blue and white. Videos show the bus inching forward slowly behind a police escort, surrounded by tens of thousands of people waving the Argentine flag and setting off firecrackers in the night.
The air was filled with cheers as the crowd sang and danced; the players, standing on the open top deck, waved to their adoring supporters.
Hundreds of thousands of fans are expected to line the streets of the capital later on Tuesday, which has been declared a national holiday, for the team’s victory parade following their thrilling penalty shootout victory over France in Qatar on Sunday, December 19th.
Crowds of supporters had camped out at the training site on Monday ahead of the team’s arrival, with photos showing fans spilling out of cars parked on its grounds. Some laid on blankets on the grass while others lounged on picnic chairs around coolers.
The team’s highly-anticipated return continues several days of nonstop celebration across the country and among fans overseas, following Argentina’s explosive win against France.
Superstars Messi and Kylian Mbappé faced off on the pitch, in what has widely been called the greatest World Cup final of all time.
Mbappé was defending France’s 2018 win at the tournament in Russia, while 35-year-old Messi was playing in his final World Cup match, looking to claim the trophy which had eluded him for so long.
Argentina took an early lead in the first half – but France roared back in the second half, reaching a 2-2 tie that forced the match into extra time.
Messi scored his second goal of the match to restore his team’s lead – but Mbappé scored a second penalty to grab his hat-trick and take the final to a penalty shootout, which ended with triumph for Argentina after France missed two shots.
Hundreds of thousands of people poured onto the streets of Buenos Aires after the World Cup triumph, flooding the central 9 de Julio Avenue. Social media videos showed jubilant fans climbing on top of street poles to wave the Argentine flag; others on the ground danced, sang and chanted in celebration.
The triumph in Doha was Argentina’s third World Cup win and its first since 1986, when the legendary Diego Maradona led the team to victory in Mexico. Sunday’s win also marked a change in fortunes for Argentina after three recent defeats in major finals – the 2014 World Cup, and the Copa America in 2015 and 2016.
“I cannot believe that we have suffered so much in a perfect game. Unbelievable, but this team responds to everything,” said Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni after the match Sunday, according to Reuters. “I am proud of the work they did,” he added, fighting back tears as he was embraced by his players. “I want to tell people to enjoy, it’s a historic moment for our country.”
Those losses prompted Messi at one point to announce his retirement from international football – though the almost-unanimous national outcry convinced him to reverse track, before wining the Copa América in 2021. Now, with the World Cup also under his belt, Messi has cemented his status as one of the all-time soccer greats alongside Maradona and Brazil’s Pelé. (Courtesy: Reuters)
