6 Red Flags In Relationship You Shouldn’t Ignore

November 10, 2021November 10, 2021 Ashley Laderer At InsiderLifestyle, Youth 0

We’re always told to steer clear of people who exhibit red flags in relationships, but exactly what red flags should we be looking out for?

When you’re dating someone new, the romance and excitement of the “honeymoon phase” can blind you, and you may not be aware of the warning signs. Red flags like constant put-downs can signal a kind of emotional abuse, which is relatively common.

In a 2011 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 47.1% of women and 46.5% of men said they had experienced some form of psychological aggression in a relationship.

It can help to know which red flags to look out for so that you can proceed with caution or cut things off if necessary.

1. Frequent lying

Constantly catching your partner being dishonest isn’t a good sign. “We are all guilty of telling white lies; however, if you notice that your partner is consistently deceiving or getting caught in lies, it is a red flag,” says Samara Quintero, a licensed marriage and family therapist at Choosing Therapy.

These can be small lies, like being dishonest about where they’re going — or big lies, like not telling you how much debt they have.

Being lied to over and over again can make it difficult to build a solid foundation in the relationship or destroy one that you’ve already built, which can lead to a shaky future, Quintero says.

2. Constant put-downs

A partner frequently criticizing you or putting you down, even if it’s in a subtle or passive-aggressive way, can affect your self-esteem.

“This is a form of emotional abuse that can lead to feelings of anxiety and insecurity in the partnership,” Quintero says.

She says some common examples might sound like:

“You’re lucky I’m still with you because you’ll never do better than me.”
“You sound so ridiculous when you try to be funny.”

A 2013 study suggested that emotional abuse could be just as harmful as physical abuse, both contributing to depression and low self-esteem — so this red flag should certainly be taken seriously.

“Addressing this behavior with your partner is imperative, and if they refuse to take responsibility or express a willingness to change, it might be time to reevaluate the relationship,” Quintero says.

3. An unwillingness to compromise

If your partner isn’t willing to compromise even when it comes to the little things, you should proceed with caution.

“If you’re in a relationship with someone who seems to make everything one-sided, you may end up over-compromising and wind up feeling resentful, hurt, misunderstood, and unsatisfied,” says Emily Simonian, a licensed marriage and family therapist and the head of learning at Thriveworks. In healthy relationships, it’s crucial that you consider each other’s needs and desires and that compromise isn’t a one-way street.

4. A tendency to run away from difficult discussions

A partner who lacks the emotional or behavioral skills needed to cope with problems and runs away from them instead can harm your relationship. Some examples are walking away from arguments without hearing you out, or ignoring you for days at a time when things get rough.

People who have trouble tolerating difficult emotions tend to lash out or flee when the going gets tough, Simonian says. Even healthy relationships will go through rough patches, so you want to be sure that your partner will communicate effectively with you instead of running away when things get hard.

5. Controlling behavior and excessive jealousy

If your partner is very jealous, this may lead to controlling behavior. For example, they might feel jealous when you have a social life outside of your relationship, Simonian says. A jealous partner may also suffocate you with excessive calls or texts and try to control what you do.

“Attempts to control usually start off subtly but eventually increase in intensity and can often leave you feeling as though nothing you do is ‘good enough,'” Simonian says. “If you notice yourself feeling smothered or consistently altering your behavior in order to appease their jealousy, it could be a sign of bigger issues to come.”

A 2010 meta-analysis found that as jealousy in a relationship increased, the relationship quality decreased, indicating that jealousy harms romantic relationships. Additionally, a 2014 study suggested that people in relationships where a partner acted too possessive in the early stages were more likely to have an unhealthy communication style later in the relationship.

6. A lack of healthy open communication

A partner who turns to passive-aggressiveness, blaming, or expressing emotions in an aggressive way is exhibiting ineffective communication, Quintero says.

Communication is a foundation of a relationship, so if you both can’t communicate openly and healthily, you’re going to run into problems.

“A healthy relationship provides a safe place for both partners to speak openly on their emotions without fear of judgment or criticism,” Quintero says.

A 2017 study suggested that communication early in a relationship might play a role in future relationship satisfaction and that satisfaction with communication in the beginning of a relationship might result in a more amicable partnership later on.

Why You Should Vaccinate Your Kids Against COVID-19?

November 3, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Science, Youth 0

In a step many parents have been awaiting, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this afternoon granted emergency-use authorization to Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.

After reviewing evidence provided by Pfizer and taking into account the overwhelmingly positive recommendation of the agency’s independent advisory panel, FDA officials said the shot’s benefits outweigh its potential risks for young kids. It has been shown to be more than 90% effective at preventing symptomatic disease among kids 5 to 11, with no serious side effects reported among a group of 3,000 children who participated in trials.

Like Pfizer-BioNTech’s adult vaccine, the pediatric version is meant to be given in two doses, spaced three weeks apart. Each dose, however, is smaller than that given to adults.

The shot must still be recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) before it is widely available to younger kids, but the FDA’s green light is a major step toward that outcome. The CDC’s advisory committee will meet to discuss the shot next week.

If the CDC does recommend the shot for some or all 5- to 11-year-olds, the next challenge will be convincing parents to get it for their children. In a recent poll, almost 30% of U.S. parents with kids in that age group said they would vaccinate them right away, but another 35% said they either definitely wouldn’t vaccinate or wouldn’t unless required. The remaining chunk said they wanted to “wait and see.”

Waiting to vaccinate all children would be a mistake. Based on the data we have, the right answer is clear: the CDC should recommend that all kids ages five to eleven should have be vaccinated as quickly as possible.

There is one thing all experts agree on: Vaccinating children should be based on rigorous evidence and we should set a particularly high bar for using vaccines in healthy children.

The Pfizer COVID vaccine has cleared that bar. Whether these vaccines work in kids is beyond dispute: they are extremely effective, reducing COVID infections by more than 90 percent. This number is based on data gathered during the Delta surge in the U.S., when vaccine breakthroughs among adults were becoming more common in the U.S. Such a high level of protection from the vaccine at a time when infection rates were extremely high is remarkable.

The next question is how the risks and benefits of the vaccine compare to the risks of getting COVID. Here, the calculation is also straightforward: the virus is a constant threat, to our children and all with whom they interact—including playmates, friends, and relatives. We have seen what COVID can do if we don’t control its spread. The worst of the Delta surge is behind us, but over 1000 Americans still die every day from the disease. Vaccines prevent infections and the spread of the virus, and save lives.

Like all vaccines, COVID vaccines can have the standard side-effects of a sore arm, fever or headaches, but these side-effects are mild and short-lived. There are also important concerns about one specific side effect that is crucial to recognize and fully understand: myocarditis—or an inflammation of the heart muscle.

There is a need to start preparing for a world in which SARS-CoV2 will be endemic, circulating for decades or longer, just like measles, whooping cough and the flu. This is why essentially every expert on child health has come out in support of vaccinations. The American Association of Pediatrics, has been vocally supportive, as has the American Association of Family Practitioners, who represent physicians who care for millions of children.

It is helpful to take a step back, and remember how vaccines have transformed our lives, and the life expectancy of our children. We give children dozens of vaccines, without which they would be vulnerable to potentially fatal diseases from measles to pneumococcal disease—diseases that continue to sicken unvaccinated children around the world. It is time for the CDC to continue its important work on protecting our children by adding another tool to the arsenal. We need COVID vaccinations for all children five to eleven years old so parents can get their children vaccinated and keep them safe. That’s what I’m going to do.

Where children are being vaccinated

Cuba became the first country in the world to vaccinate children as young as 2 last month, with the government saying that its homegrown vaccines are safe for younger kids. Cuba has yet to provide data on its vaccines to outside observers, but has said it will seek WHO approval.

Chile, China, El Salvador and the UAE have also approved vaccines for younger children. In Chile, children aged 6 and older can get the Sinovac shot, while in China, the Sinovac and CoronaVac vaccines are authorised for use in children as young as 3. In El Salvador, children as young as 6 will soon be able to get vaccinated, while in the UAE — where Sinopharm is approved for 3-year-olds — the government has made it clear that the vaccination program will be optional. Meanwhile, US children between 5 and 11 are now eligible for the vaccine starting this fall, after approval came from the USFDA.

Still weighing the option

The UK has been more cautious than many other European countries in regard to vaccinating younger populations, only recommending the shot for 12-15 year olds, following advice from its chief medical officers.

France, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Poland are among EU countries that have rolled out their vaccination campaigns for 12-15 year olds, with uptake varying across the bloc. Switzerland — which is not part of the EU — has been vaccinating the younger age group since June. Sweden will offer the vaccine to 12-15 year-olds later in the fall.

And India?

If approved by India’s drugs regulator, Covaxin would be the first shot to be available for kids aged between 2 and 12, while those in the 12-18 years age-group can choose between Covaxin and Zydus Cadila’s DNA-based vaccine. Two other companies, Serum Institute of India and homegrown drugmaker Biological E, have also been allowed to test their shots on children.

Kids Ages 5-11 Are Now Eligible For Covid Vaccine

October 30, 2021November 1, 2021 Staff ReporterMedicine, Youth 0

An FDA panel of independent advisers to the Food and Drug Administration is recommending that the agency issue an emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in children ages 5 to 11 years old. The panel voted unanimously to recommend emergency use authorization of Pfizer’s Covid-19 on Tuesday, October 26th.

The FDA panel accepted Pfizer’s data indicating the vaccine is safe and 90.7% effective in preventing COVID-19 infections in this age group. Members of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee agreed the benefits of vaccinating younger children appeared to outweigh the risks, but some members appeared troubled about voting to vaccinate a large population of younger children based on studies of a few thousand.

“It is reassuring to me that we are giving a lower dose,” said Dr. Paul Offit, who directs the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Pfizer has cut its vaccine to one-third of the adult dose for the children under 12 and said clinical trials showed this lower dose protected children well against symptomatic infection. The hope is it will cause fewer side-effects. Accordingly, a dose of Pfizer for young children will contain one-third the amount of active ingredient compared to the adult dose. Children would receive a second dose 21 days or more after their first shot.

Children 5-11 years of age have accounted for approximately 9% of reported COVID-19 cases in the U.S. overall, and currently account for approximately 40% of all pediatric COVID-19 cases, says Dr. Doran Fink, clinical deputy director of the division of vaccines and related products for the FDA. Currently, the case rate among children ages 5 to 11 is “near the highest” of any age group, he says.

The committee’s recommendation comes as more than 1.9 million cases have been reported among children ages 5-11, with approximately 8,300 children hospitalized to date, according to the CDC. About one-third of these hospitalized children required treatment in the ICU. The rate of hospitalization is three times higher among children of color than among white children.

Unvaccinated children with COVID-19 can develop a serious complication called multisystem inflammatory syndrome or MIS-C, as well as an inflammation of the heart muscle called myocarditis.

Myocarditis occurs naturally after infections with other viruses and it has also been seen as a rare side effect after vaccination with the two mRNA vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, especially in young men. Myocarditis was a focus of the scientific presentations and discussion on the possible risks of the vaccine if authorized for young children.

Overall, the incidence of serious adverse events reported in Pfizer’s studies was less than 2 in 1,000, Ball said, and all were found to be unrelated to the vaccine. Less serious side effects occurred more often, including swollen lymph nodes in a few children and symptoms like pain at the injection site, fatigue and headache, she said.

Capt. Amanda Cohn, a physician and medical officer with the CDC and also a voting member of the FDA committee, said that the number of children in the Pfizer studies is similar to the number that has been used to approve other childhood vaccines. “I don’t want to minimize the risk,” Cohn told the committee during a debate over the vote. “At this moment, based on the totality of the evidence, the benefits do outweigh the risk,” she said.

The agency typically goes along with the advice of its expert panels, though it isn’t bound to do so. It will issue a decision within the next several days. If the FDA authorizes the vaccine for these younger children, as seems likely, another panel of experts advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would make its own recommendations and offer guidelines next week on its use among this age group.

The vaccine provides a broad defense against COVID-19 and “effectively neutralized the delta variant” in young kids, said Dr. William Gruber, senior vice president of vaccine clinical research and development at Pfizer, speaking during the committee hearing.

Gruber said the dose size was chosen to “strike the right balance” between providing strong immunity and limiting side effects. He said that the observed adverse effects seen in the company’s studies “did not suggest any safety concerns.” An FDA review supported that conclusion.

The FDA will now take the committee’s vote under consideration and is likely to extend EUA to the vaccine for younger children in the coming days. Then vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet next week, November 2-3, to discuss the decision and decide whether to recommend that US kids get the vaccine. The final word will lie with CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, and vaccination could begin next week if she gives the go-ahead.

How To Nurture Creativity In Your Kids

October 29, 2021October 29, 2021 UconnLifestyle, Youth 0

Parents who want their kids to be more creative may be tempted to enroll them in arts classes or splurge on STEM-themed toys. Those things certainly can help, but as a professor of educational psychology who has written extensively about creativity, I can draw on more than 70 years of creativity research to make additional suggestions that are more likely to be effective – and won’t break your budget.

Be Cautious With Rewards

Some parents may be tempted to reward their children for being creative, which is traditionally defined as producing something that is both new and useful. However, rewards and praise may actually dissuade your child’s intrinsic interest in being creative. That’s because the activity may become associated with the reward and not the fun the child naturally has doing it.

Of course, I am not saying you should not place your child’s artwork on your fridge. But avoid being too general – “I love every bit of it!” – or too focused on their innate traits – “You are so creative!” Instead, praise specific aspects that you like in your child’s artwork – “I love the way you made such a cute tail on that dog!” or “The way you combined colors here is pretty!”

Some rewards can be helpful. For example, for a child who loves to draw, giving them materials that they might use in their artwork is an example of a reward that will help them stay creative.

It is also important to note that there are many activities – creative or otherwise – for which a child may not have a particular interest. There is no harm – and much potential benefit – in using rewards in these cases. If a child has an assignment for a creative school activity and hates doing it, there may not be any inherent passion to be dampened in the first place.

Encourage Curiosity and New Experiences

Research shows that people who are open to new experiences and ideas are more creative than those who are more closed off. Many parents have children who naturally seek new things, such as food, activities, games or playmates. In these cases, simply continue to offer opportunities and encouragement.

For those whose children may be more reticent, there are options. Although personality is theoretically stable, it is possible to change it in subtle ways. For example, a study – although it was on older adults – found that crossword or sudoku puzzles can help increase openness. Childhood and adolescence is a natural period for openness to grow. Encouraging curiosity and intellectual engagement is one way. Other ways might include encouraging sensible risk-taking – such as trying a new sport for a less athletic child or a new instrument for one less musically inclined – or interest in other cultures. Even very simple variations on an evening routine, whether trying a new craft or board game or helping cook dinner, can help normalize novelty.

Millennials Love Their Gin &Tonic

October 29, 2021October 29, 2021 Afzal KabaLifestyle, Youth 0

Gin and Tonic is one such cocktail that has had the privilege to stand out among others, such as whisky and soda, rum and cola, and vodka and sprite. It is the one spirit that has earned the slang ‘G&T’. For those of us who are unfamiliar it is gin with ice, tonic water, and a squeeze of lime on top.

Gin and tonic is an iconic drink that was created in India, way back in early 19th century when India was ruled by the Britishers, they mixed gin with quinine, water, and sugar to prevent malaria. This turned out to not only be a medicinal drink but an extremely good combination yielding to a flavour-some cocktail. Tonic water was born as a soda drink with quinine, and the result the classic Gin & Tonic.

British palates grew accustomed to the combination of bitter, sweet, and a tinge of citrus. Gin and tonic took its position in the global cocktail world when the British returned to the UK. Today, across UK there are multiple gin bars with a lengthy list of options to explore.

When people travel, they often try new cuisine and drinks from various cultures. In the United Kingdom, G&T has become the drink of choice, and visitors to the nation find it everywhere. As a result, its popularity among young millennials has grown because of its delicious blended clarity with a 5-7 per cent alcoholic strength.

Although it appears to be a simple drink, it is quite easy to go wrong. The following are crucial measures to remember while making a perfect G&T:

* Gin — Choosing a good quality gin is an excellent. Tanqueray London Dry is a magnificent choice for a well-balanced cocktail. Tanqueray 10 is ideal for those seeking a citrus-forward spirit. And for those who enjoy botanical flavors, Gordon’s London dry gin is an excellent choice. Always measure your spirit to ensure that you know how much you’re drinking and how much tonic to add.

* Glass — It’s critical to have a glass that’s clean, unchipped, and cold. However, you may drink your gin and tonic in a copa or red wine glass if you can locate one. The copa, or red wine glass, can hold ice and has a stem to keep the drink cold for longer. While taking a drink, the design allows the scent to be focused on the nose.

* Ice — Preferred choice should be a quality ice with a shape and size that delays the dilution process (often round or square), and that is dry enough not to melt quickly. This may be fixed with a block of clear ice, which is devoid of gas and contaminants, melts slowly, and does not react with the fizz in tonic. As a result, it stays bubbly for a long time.

* Tonic Water — Chilled tonic water dissolves CO2 and keeps it effervescent for a long time. To avoid disturbing the fizz, it should be poured carefully from the glass’s wall. Maintain a 1:3 or 1:4 ratio (1 part gin to 3 or 4 parts of Tonic). If the ratio is not followed, the drink will likely taste spirit-forward or diluted, and both are going to ruin the experience.

* Lime — It is the most popular garnish. It should be squeezed over the drink to provide citrus flavor and freshness. Lime should be juicy, fresh and should not have been sliced the day before.

Some of the other most popular gin cocktails would be Negroni, Gibson, Gimlet, Martini, Tom Collins, Singapore Sling & Bees’ Knees. Gin based cocktails hold great standard and class in a bar. The Martini right from its inception had been a signature cocktail for celebrities. Negroni had been extremely popular with elite get-togethers.

How Parents Can Help Teens Navigate Social Media

October 25, 2021October 25, 2021 Charlotte HsuLifestyle, Media, Youth 0

Newswise — BUFFALO, N.Y. — How can families help children and teens navigate the ever-changing landscape of social media — especially when many of today’s parents and caregivers did not grow up with these technologies as central to their daily lives?

Sourav Sengupta, MD, a University at Buffalo expert in child and adolescent mental health, says one way that trusted adults can support young people is by setting age- and developmentally-appropriate boundaries. It’s not a matter of “teetotaling,” he notes: It’s about slowly teaching young people how to use social media in healthy ways.

“I think we are generally behind as adults in keeping up with our children’s social technology use,” Sengupta says. “While some parents of younger children identify as ‘digital natives,’ many parents became more active social technology users beyond childhood or adolescence.

“Our children will need to grow up to find a reasonable way to incorporate, tolerate and utilize social technologies in their lives,” Sengupta adds. “We really cannot afford to be passive in that process. We need to be engaged, which includes offering firm boundaries.”

Sengupta is an assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, and program director for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship in the Jacobs School.

Q: What are some ways that social media impacts mental health?

Sengupta: “There is significant evidence for the negative social and emotional impacts of excessive social technology use. For example, there are concerns for increased social isolation, lower self-esteem, decreased participation in normative healthy activities, and decreased concentration.

“On the other hand, there is also evidence to support adolescents utilizing social technologies to explore their identities, connect with peers and family, and learn more about their world.”

Q: How do generational gaps create challenges for parents and caregivers?

Sengupta: “I think that many of us do not have meaningful lived experiences of what it means to be a modern child with so much access to such a broad range and depth of social, cultural and technological information, all the time.

“For parents and caregivers who find themselves a bit overwhelmed, we may need to catch up a bit. Check in with other parents, spend some time interacting with the apps your kids are using. If you’re looking for a little primer, check out Common Sense Media’s Social Media resource page for parents.”

Q: Instagram has been in the news a lot lately. What are some considerations for this platform?

Sengupta: “Instagram is a highly visual medium. It immediately grabs our attention at a very primal level. Combine that with the experience of getting (or not getting) ‘likes,’ responding to comments, and constantly comparing complex experiences through pictures with limited context, and you’ve got a recipe for a highly stimulating, variably rewarding, intermittently toxic social experience for young people.

“Instagram can really lend itself to the ‘curated life’ phenomena. If you see other users primarily posting about their most amazing positive experiences, it can give the impression that others’ lives are amazing while mine is ‘just okay.’ Teens can spend a significant amount of time agonizing over getting a post ‘just right.’ To me, parents’ supervision and potential concern over use may need to be proportional to the amount of time and energy an adolescent spends crafting the perfect image or comment.”

Q: What tips do you have for parents?

Sengupta: “Think purposeful and pro-social. If young people are using social media to learn something new, interact with peers about a special event coming up, or directly connect with a friend or family member, these can be healthy ways for them to feel connected and engaged in their social world.

“Limits are important. We know that spending hours a day on social media can put young people at increased risk for depression. One study showed that limiting use to 30 minutes or less per day was associated with decreased loneliness and depression. For teens, 30 minutes or less a day is a great goal but may feel far off for many teens and families. If you are pulling back, do it gradually and don’t be surprised by resistance. For younger children, strongly consider holding off on anything other than directly supervised use or video calls with trusted friends and families. And don’t forget, there should be a significant amount of screen-free time before bed.

“Slowly grant increasing freedom as young people demonstrate they are developmentally prepared to handle that autonomy. It’s like how you’d approach helping young people gradually develop a healthy relationship with alcohol or rich foods or romance. Different families will have different values and priorities that inform how much and how often their kids will use these technologies, but we need to be involved. We need to (re)engage.

“Familiarize yourself with the social technologies children and teens are using. You should be on their platforms as a friend or connection. There should be a clear understanding that you get to ‘vet’ what is being posted.

“Talk to young people about digital safety. They should understand that they shouldn’t give away personal/private information to strangers. For teens, we need to discuss healthy emotional expressions and contrast those with exploitative or risky expressions they may come to regret. If teens are being too excessive or risky in their social media use, parents may have to be creative and persistent in finding ways to appropriately limit use. And if this is feeling too difficult, it may be time to check in with a teen’s pediatrician or consult with a therapist.

“Lastly, work to be a good role model. Teens are going to find it difficult to listen to their parents about less screen time if adults in the household are constantly on their devices. Find ways to unplug and spend quality time together as a family. Not always easy, but always worth it.”

Sukriti And Prakriti Kakkar Light Up Iconic Times Square Billboard In New York

October 25, 2021 Staff ReporterEntertainment, Women, Youth 0

Singing sisters Sukriti Kakkar and Prakriti Kakkar have rendered absolute magic to many melodies turning them into dreamy affairs with their ethereal voices. And now, the twins have made it to the famed New York Times Square billboard. The appearance comes as a part of an initiative that supports equity for women in music on the global canvas.

The two took to Instagram to share the news with their fans. They captioned the post, “YA GIRLS MADE IT TO A BILLBOARD IN TimesSquare ???? This day will always be remembered. #SuPraInNY ?? Thank you @spotify and @spotifyindia for making this possible! Big love to our @vyrloriginals fam and @bandbaaja ????”

Sukriti and Prakriti’s rendezvous with international acclaim happened earlier this year when the sisters collaborated with global musical sensation Dua Lipa. Their track, the Hindi remix version of ‘Levitating’ with Dua Lipa turned out to be an absolute blockbuster and topped the charts for several months.

Continuing the streak of international fame, the singing twins featured on the most coveted billboard. They featured alongside names such as Vladivojna La Chia, Maria Jose Llergo making them the only Indians to be a part of this list which comes across as a huge honour not just to both of them but also for the country and the Indian music fraternity.

Talking to IANS, an extremely elated Sukriti said, “There are dreams that one always sets out with, especially at the start of our careers. The Times Square billboard was surely always a part of that dream for us and seeing it come to life, it is a surreal moment for us.”

She adds that the fact they got featured on the billboard for an important cause is what makes it all the more special. “Apart from pinching ourselves, and actually seeing the image of us on the billboard, the fact that it is for a cause that is to encourage equity for women in music globally, makes it even more special”, she added.

For Prakriti, it’s about making a difference through their voice both literally and metaphorically, as she says, “Representation of women in music, locally as well as globally has reached an all new platform of equity. Women deserve to be paid as much as men, given the same treatment as male singers and this association was just to empower that.”

“It has made it to the most viewed billboard in the world, Times Square and we are so proud to be a part of this. As Indian artistes, and also as young women, it is important for one to always believe in equity in order to see it becoming our reality,” Prakriti concluded.

Changes In Sex And Intimacy Among Single Indians In Covid Times

October 25, 2021 Staff ReporterLifestyle, Youth 0

The pandemic and lockdown restrictions have changed dating for single Indians and shaped the way single people in India are approaching sex and intimacy. In its Intimacy in a Pandemic Report, Bumble, the women-first dating app and social networking platform, shows how partner priorities are also seeing a seismic shift.

There’s an increased openness towards sexual exploration among the dating app’s users globally right now as per the recent global survey conducted within the app. India had the highest percentage of Bumble users (34 per cent) who respond that they are more open to exploration when it comes to sex compared to the US, UK, Australia and Canada.

The app’s recent nationwide survey showed 65 per cent of single Indians claim the pandemic has changed their approach to sex and intimacy. More than one in three (37 per cent) people surveyed claim they are being more open to sharing their boundaries and desires with someone they are dating right now. About one in three (33 per cent) people have ‘locked down’ and started living with someone they met on a dating app since the second wave hit India in March 2021.

The new research and insights about the state of sex and intimacy for daters in India show:

Confidence levels are at an all-time high

The past year has been a time of reflection for singles to think about what they are looking for in a relationship. This time ultimately gave people an opportunity to define their relationship priorities and the confidence to take control of their dating lives.

Nearly half of Indians surveyed on Bumble (47 per cent) are feeling more confident about what they want and need from a sexual partner, and we’re also seeing an increased openness to sexual experimentation.

Over half of the users (60 per cent) surveyed in India indicated that they were looking to be more sexually active following ease in lockdown restrictions.

Compatibility is a top priority

The app’s latest research shows that daters are prioritizing compatibility now more than ever as people start dating IRL with increased confidence in what they are truly looking for in a sexual partner. People are also expressing an increased openness to communicating their boundaries and desires when it comes to sexual health and preferences.

More than one in three (37 per cent) people surveyed claim they are being more open to sharing their boundaries and desires with someone they are dating right now.

Over a quarter of Bumble users surveyed in India (26 per cent) indicated that they are planning to express their sexuality differently now compared to a year ago.

Bumble’s latest data indicates that there’s been a shift in the way people are approaching sex and intimacy in India with over half (51 per cent) of those surveyed responding that they are doing something different when it comes to sex and intimacy this year.

“We’re seeing a trend of single people in India being more intentional when it comes to dating, with over half of daters surveyed indicating that they are focused on trying to find a partner that’s right for them. In fact, 13 per cent of our Bumble community in India responded that they’ve added more steps to screen potential partners. People are more intentional now when they interact with potential partners and focused on compatibility. We are excited to see how the Bumble community expresses their newfound confidence in their dating journeys as restrictions ease across the country,” shares Samarpita Samaddar, Communications Director, Bumble India.

Aryan Khan Commits To “Work For Poor, Shun Wrong Path”

October 20, 2021 Staff ReporterBollywood, Youth 0

Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan assured NCB officials during counseling that he would work for the welfare of the poor and never do anything that would besmirch his name in the future, an official said last week.

Aryan (23) is currently lodged in Arthur Road prison in Mumbai after he was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau following alleged drug seizure from a cruise ship off the Mumbai coast on October 2.

During counselling by officials including NCB’s zonal director Sameer Wankhede and social workers, Aryan said after his release, he will work for “social and financial uplift of the poor and downtrodden” and never do anything which could bring him publicity for the wrong reasons, said an agency official.

An NCB team busted an alleged drugs party on the Cordelia Cruise ship which was on its way to Goa at mid-sea on October 2. A total of 20 people, including two Nigerian nationals, have been arrested so far in the case related to the seizure of drugs following a raid at a party on the Cordelia cruise ship off the Mumbai coast on October 2.

After the arrest, Aryan along with seven other accused including two women arrested by the NCB underwent a counseling session. “Aryan was on the call for 10 minutes with his parents, and a jail official was present with him during the call,” said the official.

There are a total of 3,200 prisoners in the Arthur Road jail. As per the guidelines of the jail amid the pandemic, people are not allowed to visit the inmates. They can only speak to them over the phone. Inmates are allowed 10 minutes to talk to their family members. The jail has a total of 11 phones. The family members of prisoners who have a video call facility are given 10 minutes on video call otherwise a voice call is dialled.

During a hearing in the Court, Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) counsel ASG Anil Singh opposed Aryan’s bail and said, “Argument is, they are kids. One of the considerations for granting bail. I don’t agree with this. Sir, they are our future generation. The entire country will be depending on them. This is the land of Mahatma Gandhi, Gautam Buddha. We have to stop this drug abuse. We have been taking this matter very seriously. We are looking into the chain, into the transaction.”

The NCB, in the court, said all countries should take drug abuse very seriously as it is affecting society and the world. “Our department working day and night to find a solution to drug abuse. We are dealing with it in a very serious manner. My officers were attacked, beaten, in a different matter. They put their lives in danger and they have been working. This has been affecting the entire society, particularly to youngsters who are college students,” the NCB counsel said.

Young People Make Their Mark At Religions For Peace Conference

October 13, 2021October 13, 2021 Eric J. LymanReligion, Youth 0

(RNS) — The 2021 Religions for Peace conference, which closed on Thursday (Oct. 7), will be remembered as the first hybrid meeting, with most observers looking in via internet as 130 participated in person. It was also the most youth-oriented gathering in the 51-year-old interfaith organization’s history. Nearly a quarter of those who came to this year’s conference, held in Lindau, Germany, were aged 35 or younger, and the numbers were representative of the larger role young people are playing in the Regions for Peace’s programs, from political campaigns to climate negotiations.

“We are recognizing the importance of the role of young people,” the group’s secretary-general, Azza Karam, said in an interview with Religion News Service earlier this week. “It’s essential that they have a voice.” Founded in 1970 as a forum for fostering dialogue between members of different faiths, Religions for Peace normally draws more than 1,000 delegates from around the world. This year, coronavirus restrictions restricted the gathering to just 130 in-person participants at the event. Organizers said that more than 1,700 tuned in via video link.

But the reduced numbers of people on hand put into relief the fact that Religions for Peace is evolving into one that also promotes dialogue between generations. Activists in their 20s and early 30s were part of almost every one of the dozens of panels, dialogues and roundtables held virtually and in-person at the four-day conference, contributing their views on topics such as human trafficking, environmental protection, social media, the coronavirus and humanitarianism.

A series of intergenerational dialogues were planned and run by Gen Z and Gen Y participants. “In these unique times, the conference provided the opportunity to work together to address this unprecedented pandemic, the issue of youth engagement and the role of religious leaders in diplomacy,” said Imam Mohamed Magid, Religions for Peace co-president and chair of the Islamic Society of North America.

The conference’s final declaration also recorded that this year’s gathering “involved young people in discussions on global peace processes and put them on an equal footing with experienced religious leaders and diplomats.” The final declaration, signed by the more than 60 religious leaders from various faiths that make up the World Council, also called for “global respect for human rights and global justice in the distribution of vaccines.” The religious leaders also called on the world’s political leaders to work with them to confront the world’s most pressing challenges.

Some youth activists at the conference cautioned that their significance will depend on whether religious leaders follow up on the concepts discussed in Lindau. “This conference opened a space where the voices of young people were heard by the right people,” said Christian Lupemba, chair of the Inter-faith Youth Network in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Young people have shown that they are acting today to take over tomorrow. With love, respect and consideration, we say to our elders: ‘We are ready, give us some space at the table, we will be able to support you by working alongside you to contribute to the emergence of a new world civilization.’” Philbert Aganyo, a Kenya-based activist at the talks, told RNS youth activists helped put the problems Religions for Peace is addressing into perspective.

“The young people have the innovation and the energy to help find solutions and the time to see things through,” Aganyo said. “But the most important thing is that we are the ones who will eventually inhabit the world we are all talking about.”

Day Of The Girl Child: A Digital Generation Where Every Girl Counts

October 13, 2021October 13, 2021 Mirjana Spoljaric Egger At IPSEditorial/Opinion, Women, Youth 0

The theme of this year’s annual International Day of the Girl Child, on October 11, “Digital generation. Our generation.”, recognizes the digital transformation brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. But while the pandemic accelerated the transition to online learning, working and networking, it also accelerated women and girl’s risk of being left behind In 2020, more than 60 million women in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) had no access to the mobile internet and so, were more likely than men to miss out on learning and working opportunities.

Access, ownership and use of digital tools are not gender-neutral: For instance, parents may be stricter with girls than boys in the use of mobile phones and activities that require the use of the internet, while households with limited computing resources might redirect these to boys and men over girls and women, often tasked with domestic chores and unpaid work. Factors such as affordability and cost also affect women and girls disproportionally. Moreover, social norms, gender bias and a lack of support from the family and teachers often dissuade girls and women from choosing education programmes in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and from pursuing careers in these fields.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, one in three girls report being discouraged by their families from choosing STEM subjects more broadly at university, while in Ukraine 23 percent of women aged 15-24 report a lack of self-confidence as the main reason for not pursuing a career in technology. With fewer women pursuing STEM fields, the scarcity of women role models for the younger generation persists, reinforcing the problem.

Gender equality in STEM

We must all join forces to advance gender equality in STEM. Measures include removing gender stereotypes in education, raising awareness and promoting STEM subjects to girls and women, and offering career guidance to encourage girls to consider studying in fields dominated by men. Our regional advocacy platform, STEM4All, is engaging with multiple partners – from policymakers and academic institutions to women and girls themselves– in sharing knowledge, building coalitions and making connections to advance gender equality in STEM.

Earlier this year, the platform facilitated a ‘Girls in Tech: Central Asia’ event, which brought together leaders from the tech industry and ICT role models to share experiences and offer advice to more than 120 girls and women in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. One of our goals in the platform is to profile high-impact initiatives by our partners, government, and the private sector. For instance, the Engineer Girls of Turkey project is a wonderful model of how we can increase the employability of qualified women in engineering with scholarships, internships and mentoring, and coaching support.

In Azerbaijan, UNDP has partnered with USAID in piloting a nine-month mentorship programme to equip young women and girls with tools and advice to progress in STEM fields. The platform is powered by the Accelerator Labs, a UNDP learning network created to accelerate progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Future of work

While the demand for workers in STEM occupations is only expected to grow in the future, in Europe and Central Asia, the share of women researchers in engineering and technology crosses 40 percent only in a few countries. The number of women in computer science is also particularly low compared to men: women are only 18 percent of ICT specialists in the EU, while just 16 percent of founders in the ICT and tech fields in Southern Caucasus and Western CIS are women.

Cultural and social norms, a lack of childcare support, and inadequate parental leave policies are major barriers to women entering and progressing in careers of their choice. These obstacles are amplified manifold in STEM fields, whose men-dominated workplaces and entrenched gender stereotypes present formidable impediments for many talented women. Gender equality in STEM and in the future of work is a goal unto itself. We cannot deny half of humanity the opportunity to enter and succeed in this high-growth sector which powers the green and digital transition. But there are also compelling economic and social reasons for us to strive towards this goal.

In the EU, for example, closing the gender gap in STEM could lead to an additional 1.2 million jobs. More women graduating in STEM subjects and choosing careers in higher-wage sectors can gradually increase their average earnings, helping to close the gender wage gap. The world and the future of work need women’s skills and perspectives, talent and leadership, as much as those of men. This requires all our concerted actions to close the gender digital gap and leverage the power of technology to advance girls’ and women’s education, leadership and equal future.

Young Climate Activists Of Indian Origin Join Hands With UN Showcasing Achievements

October 7, 2021October 13, 2021 Staff ReporterEnvironment, Youth 0

The United Nations in India launched its climate campaign ‘We The Change’, which aims to showcase climate solutions pioneered by young Indians as a celebration of India’s climate leadership on Monday last week. Through the WeTheChangeNow call to action, 17 young climate champions invited fellow young Indians to join the movement by sharing their climate action stories on the campaign website, also launched on Monday.

“The campaign – inspired by the stories of India’s young climate leaders – encourages us to adopt a more solution-based, innovative approach to fight climate change. We know solutions are already within reach to solve the present climate crisis. We hope that through the WeTheChangeNow campaign, we will inspire bolder climate action from people, communities and the national and state governments,” said UN Resident Coordinator in India, Deirdre Boyd. The campaign celebrates and curates innovative, sustainable and equitable climate solutions and actions being pioneered by young people in India. The focus is on strengthening engagement with governments and civil society for a more collaborative approach to climate action, a release said.

“We need enabling spaces for co-learning and collaboration for effective climate action. It’s inspiring to be part of a journey that allows me to meet other young people who are championing climate action and advocacy while collaborating with various policymakers and other climate stakeholders,” young climate campaigner and member of the UN Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change, Archana Soreng said.

“India has shown great leadership in combating climate change through its strategic and timely climate policies. Currently, India is on track to meet its Paris Climate Agreement commitments and is likely to outperform its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in critical sectors, including renewable energy. Challenges remain, and the valuable contributions of young people in green action and recovery, can propel breakthrough innovations to protect India and the world, especially the most vulnerable, from the impact of climate change,” the release said.

“Over the course of the campaign, we will create spaces for young people, civil society, climate groups, media, and governments to collaborate through online dialogues, discussions, and face-to-face interactions,” it said. “The campaign’s 17 young climate leaders represent innovation and action across diverse sectors, including renewables, forest management, financing, climate entrepreneurship, sustainable agriculture, disaster risk reduction, ecosystem restoration, water conservation and waste management,” it added.

UN Secretary-General’s Advocate for Sustainable Development Goals, actor and producer, Dia Mirza, who has lent her support to the digital campaign, said: “We can still make a difference, restore our planet, and make peace with nature. These 17 young climate leaders, the faces of the ‘We The Change’ movement, are showing us the way ahead towards climate justice and climate action. Their stories have inspired me and I hope they inspire people everywhere to share their climate actions, big or small, using #WeTheChange now.” The Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE), a Delhi-based organization that uses the judicial system to advance environmental goals and empower vulnerable populations, has won the Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel”.

It shared the award with three activists: Marthe Wandou, a gender and peace activist who has worked to prevent sexual violence against girls in the Lake Chad area of Cameroon; Russian environmental campaigner Vladimir Slivyak; and indigenous rights campaigner Freda Huson of the Wet’suwet’en people in Canada.

Founded in 2005 by lawyers Ritwick Dutta and Rahul Choudhary, LIFE’s attorneys are among India’s leading public interest lawyers. It has represented tribals in Odisha against Vedanta over its Bauxite mines in the Niyamgiri Hills, local communities against the Jindal Steels and Power’s mine in Chhattisgarh, horticulturalists opposing Lafarge’s limestone mining in Himachal Pradesh, and mango farmers in Ratnagiri against JSW’s thermal power plant, among others. (A 2013 profile of Dutta here on ET)

LIFE has helped communities fight against some of India’s most significant environmental threats: the construction of ecologically destructive projects in violation of the law, preventing deforestation and making industrial polluters pay for the damage caused to the environment and public health, the Swedish Right Livelihood Foundation, which awards the prize, said.

Morality Demonstrated In Stories Can Alter Judgement For Early Adolescents

October 7, 2021October 7, 2021 University At BuffaloMedia, Science, Youth 0

Newswise — BUFFALO, N.Y. – An important lesson in the moral education of children could be as close as the book in their hands. Stories matter. And they can play a role in shifting the importance of particular moral values in young audiences, according to the results of a new study. “Media can distinctly influence separate moral values and get kids to place more or less importance on those values depending on what is uniquely emphasized in that content,” says Lindsay Hahn, PhD, an assistant professor of communication in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.

Hahn is first author of the new study, which adds critical nuance to a body of literature that explores how media content affects children. While many previous studies have focused on broad conceptualizations, like prosocial or antisocial effects that might be associated with specific content, Hahn’s study looks at how exposure to content featuring specific moral values (care, fairness, loyalty and authority) might influence the weight kids place on those values.

Do children reading about particular moral characteristics absorb those traits as a building block for their own morality? The findings, which appear in the Journal of Media Psychology, suggest so, and further support how this indirect approach to socializing children’s morality can supplement the direct teaching of moral principles kids might receive through formal instruction.

“Parents, caregivers and teachers are often wondering how media can be used for good,” says Hahn, an expert in media psychology and media effects. “How can it be used for good things? How can it discourage bad habits? How can it educate?”

Answering those questions begins with a better understanding about how to use media.

“When parents are considering what media they might want to select for their children, they can take into account what particular moral value is being emphasized by the main character, and how the main character is treated because of those actions,” she says.

For the study, Hahn and her colleagues took the main character from a young adult novel and edited the content to reflect in each version the study’s focus on one of four moral values. A fifth version was manipulated in a way that featured an amoral main character. Those narratives were shared with roughly 200 participants between the ages of 10 and 14. This is a favorable range for media research because it’s more difficult to introduce narrative comprehension in younger kids, while equally challenging to hold the attention of older adolescents, who become bored with rudimentary storylines, according to Hahn. The team then created a scale designed to measure the importance kids place on moral values to determine how participants might be influenced by specific narratives.

“Measuring these effects can be difficult,” says Hahn. “That’s why, in addition to testing our hypothesis, another purpose of this research was to develop a measure of moral values for kids. Nothing like that exists yet, that we know of.” That measure, notes Hahn, can facilitate future research on media effects in young audiences. Paper co-authors include Ron Tamborini, Michigan State University (MSU) professor of communication; Sujay Prabhu, an MSU affiliate; Clare Grall, Dartmouth College postdoctoral researcher; Eric Novotny, University of Georgia postdoctoral researcher; and Brian Klebig, Bethany Lutheran College associate professor of communication.

Pfizer Is Set To Ask For Approval For Covid-19 Vaccine For Kids

September 29, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Youth 0

Pfizer/BioNTech plans to ask for authorization of a Covid-19 vaccine for some children under 12 soon, bringing the US one step closer to offering protection to a population that has grown particularly vulnerable as the fall season gets underway. “It is a question of days, not weeks,” Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla told ABC News Sunday about when the company will submit data on children ages 5 to 11 to the FDA for consideration. Currently, Covid-19 vaccines are only approved for children 12 and older, which has stirred concern among health experts as cases in children increase, school years begin and the more transmissible Delta variant spreads.

Nearly 26% of all Covid-19 cases nationwide are reported in children, according to recent data published by the American Academy of Pediatrics. And an average of 266 children were hospitalized with Covid-19 every day last week, according to Sunday’s data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Once the data from Pfizer/BioNTech is in, it will have to go through two committees, one for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and one for the CDC, CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Johnathan Reiner said Sunday. If the data comes in this week, it would likely be in committee by the end of October, he added. And there is a lot of data for them to look at, he said. “This is a vaccine for children, so getting the dose right — in terms of efficacy and side effects — is crucial,” Reiner said.

But even when a vaccine becomes available, a difficult task lies ahead in getting children vaccinated. Less than half of US adolescents are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to a CNN analysis of CDC data. In response, officials need to do a better job educating the public about the importance of vaccination for the health of their children and their families as a whole, Reiner said. “If you want kids in school, the best way to keep them in school is to keep them from getting Covid,” he said.

Until vaccines are approved for younger children, the CDC has recommended mask wearing for students, teachers and visitors in schools from kindergarten through grade 12, along with improved ventilation, physical distancing and testing on a screening basis. “We know how to keep them safe,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told CBS Sunday. “When we don’t use the proper mitigation, they’re more likely to have outbreaks.” Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said he encourages parents to vaccinate their children when they can.

“This is a dangerous pathogen,” Gottlieb told CNN. “I wouldn’t be so cavalier about this virus, we know that this virus has long-term consequences in a lot of people who contract it, including children.” Current surge likely to die down by Thanksgiving, Gottlieb says Gottlieb predicted Sunday the current surge of coronavirus spread is likely to worsen across parts of the country and then die down by Thanksgiving. “I think you’ll see a wave of infection sweep across the Northeast as kids go back to school, the weather turns cold and people move indoors,” Gottlieb told CNN’s Pamela Brown.

The virus won’t be gone, Gottlieb said, but hopefully it will reach more manageable levels — which he estimates to be about 20,000 cases per day. According to the CDC, the current seven-day average for new cases in the US is more than 114,000 new cases a day. The decline in cases will likely come from most people attaining immunity to the virus, Gottlieb said. “Some people will get a vaccination; some will challenge their immunity by no choice but getting the infection,” Gottlieb explained. “People who choose to go unvaccinated, they’re going to be vulnerable to getting infected through this Delta wave.”

As the US moves into flu season, Gottlieb said the demand for tests will pick up as people and their doctors try to determine if their flu-like symptoms are due to Covid-19 or influenza. “That’s why it’s so important to get diagnostic tests into the hands of consumers and doctors’ offices as well, things like where people can test in the home will make a difference between telling between Covid and other respiratory infections, especially as the flu picks up,” Gottlieb said.

But even if Covid-19 cases do come down by Thanksgiving, health experts are bracing for a difficult winter ahead. It isn’t clear yet what this year’s flu season has in store, but it could add additional stress to an already pressed health care system. “Flu is still a killer, not as much as Covid-19, but between 12,000 and 50,000 Americans lose their lives every year from flu,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, vaccinologist and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

Last year’s flu numbers were low, which health expert say could mean that upcoming seasons may be worse, as there has been little accumulation of immunity. “We’re in for a whopper of a flu season at some point,” Gottlieb said Sunday. Recommending booster for frontline workers a ‘scientific close call,’ CDC director says On Friday, Walensky recommended a booster dose for adults at occupational risk of infection — in addition to those with underlying conditions and those over 65 — a decision she said was a “scientific close call.” “And because of that close call, and because of all of the evidence we reviewed at the FDA and the CDC, I thought it was appropriate for those people to be eligible for boosters,” Walensky told CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday.

“So who are those people? People who live and work in high-risk settings. That includes people in homeless shelters, people in group homes, people in prisons. But, also, importantly, are people who work with vulnerable communities, so our health care workers, our teachers, our grocery workers, our public transportation employees,” Walensky said. Although the CDC’s vaccine advisers voted against recommending booster doses for people at high risk of infection because of their work or living conditions, Walensky went with the FDA’s authorization including those people.

The recommendation is not currently intended for the wider population, but there’s little fear of causing dangerous side effects from adding that third dose, Walensky said. “We have an extraordinary amount of safety data,” she said.

Indian Students Are A Strong Bridge Between India And USA

September 24, 2021September 29, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Education, News, Youth 0

In a new initiative to connect the nearly 200,00 Indian students with the Indian American community and the Indian missions, GOPIO-Manhattan and the Indian Consulate in New York hosts Meet & Greet Event Welcome Event in New York.

“Indian Students continue to be a strong bridge between India and USA,” Ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu told students from India who had come together at Meet and Greet welcome event organized by the GOPIO-Manhattan (NYC) in cooperation with Consulate General of India in New York for the Students from India studying in the Northeast region in the United States. Organized with the objective of connecting the students to the community and providing mentoring opportunities as well as to raise awareness of Consular services to students from the Indian Consulate, the event held at the Indian Consulate in New York on Friday, September 17^th was attended by students from 21 universities, mostly from the Northeast participated in person or virtually.

The Indian Ambassador addressed the students via a video message. He told them: “Delighted to welcome the students virtually! The education and knowledge partnership are an area that holds great potential in our bilateral relations. During my visits across US, I’ve always made it a point to visit universities and visit faculty and students there.” He further added “We have an active student hub and a dedicated student wing at the Embassy. You can count on them for any assistance.” The chief guest/host for the evening Ambassador Randhir Kumar Jaiswal, commented, “Welcome to all the students from India with open heart as you pursue your future studies here in the North-East region and help in the growth of economy here in USA and back home in India.”

Ambassador Jaiswal further highlighted the goal to expand this program to include more students, from the pool of 200,000 students that come to the USA for further studies, to attend in person more interactive sessions and gain exposure to various services offered by the Consulate for the benefit of the students from registration at the Consular Portal, to cultural events to mental health support initiatives. The program started with a welcome by GOPIO International Chairman Dr. Thomas Abraham, who also serves as an advisor to GOPIO-Manhattan. Dr. Abraham encouraged the speakers to mentor, motivate and guide the students. Dr. Abraham said, “In the 1960s and ‘70s when a foreign student joined a university, he/she was given host family, now with connected world and social media, the host family concept went away and the 4.5 million Indian Americans could serve as the host family to the new students.”

GOPIO-Manhattan Executive Vice President Professor Rajasekhar Vangapaty moderated the first panel on mentoring students in the current market environment and added his learnings to the students using his unique perspective as a Registrar of Fashion Institute of Technology, the MIT of Fashion. There were four panelists in this session who are asked to comment on several questions. Abha Kumar, Business transformation leader/Board member Notify.io Advisory Board Shopelier, Former CIO- Corporate & International Vanguard, shared her experiences with the students and said, “The way we worked in the past will not be relevant post-COVID…we now will look for employees who have the ability to have a wide perspective and connect the dots.”

Kumar further added that students should master the technology component; the companies also look for certain emotional intelligence when they hire. Lastly, in corporate America, your work doesn’t speak for you, you need to speak for yourself. Prasan Kumar, Senior VP & Strategy Director at Publicis Group & Lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian New York College added “When you’re in a classroom, experiment as much as you can.” He elaborated, “bringing more than a text book education is significantly important, get your perspective as per your interest, helps you being a problem solver and think long-term for career choice reflecting from his personal experience of moving 4 careers in 2 decades from IT to advertising now.”

Neil Datta, Head of Due Diligence at Forbes Family Trust & Co-Founder Meritas provided insights in the current market context and said, “You’re either a fintech company or you don’t know it yet.” He further added, “The ability to be a problem solver is a crucial skill that helps you in whatever you choose to work in.” Joe Simon, CIO at Entain which is involved in Sports Betting, echoed the thoughts of the speakers and added, “Cultural sensitivity is crucial.” He further added that in order to succeed, one needs to be fairly convinced about what one is trying to do and that the two most underrated skills in corporate America are patience and persistence.”

The second panel on F1 to H1B via OPT was moderated by Aseem Trivedi, Manager of Data Analytics at Ernst and Young. He shared his unique path to Green Card as an experience for the students. He reminded the students “One should start thinking now what after H1B?” Akshat Singh, a recent economics graduate of Columbia University brought his experience with Students and shared the idea “Get started on OTP process asap and do not wait for 6-months or so.” Ankit Chaudhari, Associate Vice President at JP Morgan Chase commented about his personal journey from F1 to OPT to H1-B to Green Card and suggested students “ask your employer whether they will sponsor your visa or not, but you give your best services.”

Apeksha Tewari, Master of Laws from Penn State Law and Lawyer, shared her personal views to the students as part of the panel said, “Now that you are here, outside of your studies, you need to network with your professors, peers, everyone & communication is the key, ask for things.” Siddharth Jain, GOPIO Manhattan Board Member & Program Coordinator; conducted the questions & answers session and concluded with vote of thanks to Chief Guest/Host Ambassador Shri Randhir Kumar Jaiswal, Dy. Consul Shri Varun Jeph, Consul for Political, Education and Culture Shri Vipul Dev, Consul for Community Affairs Shri A. K. Vijayakrishnan and the consulate staff. Other GOPIO-Manhattan officials present at the meeting included Vice President Vimal Goyle, and Co-Secretaries Dr. Lisa George and Bhavya Gupta.

“The students had an excellent time networking with students from different universities as well as with speakers and the Consulate and GOPIO officials and we plan to do a much bigger event next year hopefully after the Covid restrictions are over,” Dr. Thomas Abraham added.

Pfizer Vaccine Has “Robust” Immune Response Among 5-11 Year Olds

September 23, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Science, Youth 0

While it’s true that younger kids generally don’t suffer serious illness from COVID-19, anything we can do to protect our kids—and help prevent them from spreading the virus to others—is a good thing. So far, about 5 million U.S. children have tested positive, per the American Academy of Pediatrics, while nearly 500 have died.

The US, where Covid-19 is now officially the deadliest epidemic since the Spanish Flu of 1918 with over 675,000 deaths, has also seen a rather high number of infections among children. For the week ended September 9, new infections among children totaled 243,000 and constitute 30% of all new infections in the country. Up until January this year, children made up just 15% of new Covid-19 infections in the US.

Some of that long-awaited good news arrived this morning: After several months of waiting, Pfizer has announced that the Covid-19 vaccine by Pfizer and BioNTech generates a “robust” immune response among 5-11 year olds, according to data released by the company on September 20th — moving a step closer to start of vaccination of sub-12 year olds by the end of next month.

Pfizer said today that the vaccine it makes alongside BioNTech is safe and effective in kids aged 5-11, and it will soon seek approval from U.S. regulators to start doling out shots for that age group. The pediatric version of the shot contains just one-third the dose of the adult version, but still generates a strong antibody response with only minor, if any, side effects, Pfizer Senior Vice President Dr. Bill Gruber told the Associated Press. “I think we really hit the sweet spot,” Gruber said. (Vaccine maker Moderna is also testing its shot in children, and data from studies on kids as young as six months could be available before year’s end.)

There are limitations to Pfizer’s data. For one thing, the company only studied about 2,300 kids. That’s enough to show vaccinated kids were producing similar antibody levels as inoculated teens and adults—which is seen as a decent proxy for performance—but there weren’t enough cases among the participants to judge performance directly. Furthermore, the data has yet to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.

Still, Pfizer plans to formally submit its 5-11 year-old vaccine for U.S. approval by the end of September. It will then take regulators at least a few weeks to make a decision. But if all goes well, kids aged 5-11 could be eligible for their first dose by Halloween—a treat, indeed.

The results, which were based on a clinical trial of over 2,200 children, involved administering 10 microgrammes of the vaccine — which is one third of the amount of dose administered to teens and adults — three weeks apart.

However, even as the company claims the side effects observed in children were similar to those observed in adults, such as fatigue, headache, muscle pain, chills, fever and nausea, it has not yet made public all details of side effects experienced by children in the trial, including whether or not they experienced myocarditis, a rare heart condition affecting some teens and adults.

The final nod from the US FDA is expected to take four to six weeks after it receives and reviews all the data submitted by Pfizer and BioNTech, whose vaccine is already approved for use in children above 12. Pfizer also expects to submit data for clinical trials among children between the ages of 6 months to 5 years by the end of next month.

Youth Winning Big At US Open Tournament 2021

September 15, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Sports, Youth 0

One year after the US Open Tournament was held behind closed doors due to the coronavirus pandemic, the US Open made its triumphant return to the sporting scene, bringing spectators at full capacity and creating countless iconic moments that will forever be embedded in the fabric of US Open lore. One of the most prestigious in the sports arena held in New York during the weekend of September 11^th, created history in every possible way.

The 2021 US Open women’s singles final represented the culmination of one of the most memorable fortnights of women’s tennis in recent memory, maybe in history. And when all was said and done, it was Emma Raducanu, from virtually out of nowhere, with a ranking of 150 and playing in just her second Grand Slam main draw, who brought it home.

Raducanu endeared herself to the New York faithful as she went on an improbable run for the ages. There was a fairy tale air to her stunning success. She was gracious, she was intelligent; thoughtful and keen to soak up and appreciate the moment with just the right mix of reverence and rebelliousness. In the end, Raducanu made legions of tennis fans stop and appreciate more than just her tennis. They reveled in the genuine joy that she exuded in her moment of triumph, as she lay on her back, hands covering her eyes as the Arthur Ashe Stadium cacophony washed over her in waves. And they were in awe of her composure and ability to beat back the pressure as she powered her way to an iconic NY moment that will be forever cherished.

Opposite her was the Nineteen-year-old Leylah Fernandez of Canada, who came in the spotlight at the U.S. Open in New York. She didn’t get the title, but boy did 19-year-old Leylah Fernandez win hearts and minds at this year’s US Open. The Canadian left her heart and soul on the court, and threw her iconic fist in the air with verve as she reeled off improbable victories over top-notch talents, one after the other to reach the final. Forged from grit, fire, determination, self-belief, Fernandez was a magnetic attraction for her rapidly growing fanbaseーas she caught fire, we got inspired. And the super southpaw saved her most special moment for last. Even heartbroken in defeat after losing in the final, Fernandez made a stirring tribute to the city of New York on 9/11 that will never be forgotten.

Fernandez, the daughter of an Ecuadorian father and Filipino-Canadian mother, told ESPN she credits her dad for inspiration. He’s been coaching her since she was 6 years old. “Today he told me to go out there, have fun, fight for every ball, fight for every point,” she said. “Today’s your first quarterfinals, don’t make it your last. Don’t make it your last match over here. Fight for your dream.”

A stunning coming of age that has been three years in the making occurred in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Sunday, September 12^th as Russia’s Daniil Medvedev capped off the tournament by winning his first Grand Slam title two years after he had won over New York with his grit and swagger during his run to the 2019 final, which ended in a five-set loss to Rafael Nadal.

It feels like we are just at the start of an enduring relationship between Medvedev and the US Open. New York loves a winner, and Medvedev is proving to be just thatーhas now won 18 of his last 20 matches at the Open. Sunday’s feel-good Medvedev moment was colored nicely by the warm reception the crowd gave to Novak Djokovic. Though the Serb fell at the last hurdle in his Grand Slam quest, he was warmly applauded for his efforts, and the three-time champion, moved to tears, told the crowd that he had never felt so good in New York.

Setting the tone for teenagers on week one was a player with a streamlined game and a lust for battle the likes of which we have not seen from a teenager at the US Open in many years. Carlos Alcaraz didn’t come to New York to dip his toes into the shallow water, he came for a deep dive. Total immersion, self-believe an uncompromised lust for battle. It showed in the third round when the Spaniard toppled No.3-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas in a hotly contested battle in Arthur Ashe Stadium. The kid whipped the crowd into a frenzy, and they backed him with fervor in the Round of 16 as he defeated Peter Gojowczyk to become the youngest men’s singles quarterfinalist in US Open history.

“Tonight even though I have not won the match my heart is filled with joy because you made me feel very special,” Djokovic said as the crowd erupted. “You guys touched my soulーI’ve never felt like this in New York.”

India Wins Record 19 Medals At Tokyo Paralympics 2020

September 8, 2021September 8, 2021 Staff ReporterSports, Youth 0

For India, like the Olympics last month, the Tokyo Paralympics ended with a gold medal that added glitter to its best-ever showing. With 19 medals overall, India finished 24th on the medals tally. However, there is more to the para-leap of a nation that had a grand total of just 12 medals before Tokyo: a harder push by the government, timely hand-holding by private players, mushrooming of exclusive arenas and incentives, and most significantly, a level playing field for para and able-bodied athletes.

The tally also included eight silver and six bronze medals but most importantly, it was a performance during which history was scripted almost everyday with the contingent living up to the ‘Spirit in Motion’ motto of the Games.

Avani Lakhera, Shooting (Gold and Bronze)

The 19-year-old Lekhara became the first Indian woman to win a Games gold (10m air rifle) and later added a bronze in 50m rifle 3 positions to ensure that her name would now be part of every India-centric Paralympic quiz. It was an inspiring show by the teenager who was paralysed waist down after being injured in a car accident in 2012. And to think of it, all her father had hoped to achieve by taking her to the shooting range was for Lekhara to get over the anger she had internalised after the accident which left her wheelchair-bound.

Sumit Antil, Javelin Thrower, Gold

Nearly half (8) of India’s haul this time came from the track-and-field arena with javelin thrower Sumit Antil shining the brightest with a gold en route which he shattered his own world record five times over. Antil was pursuing a career in wrestling, as his family wanted, before a bike accident led to the amputation of his left leg, changing the course of his life forever.

Manish Narwal, Shooting, Gold

Another shooting star rose on the horizon with Manish Narwal, all of 19, already a world champion and now a Paralympic champion as well. Narwal’s right hand is impaired and he originally wanted to be a footballer but fate had other plans for the Lionel Messi fan.

Pramod Bhagat, Badminton, Gold

Bhagat won the Men’s Singles SL3 event badminton gold medal match against Great Britain’s Daniel Bethell at the Tokyo Paralympics on Saturday. This is India’s first medal in badminton at the Paralympics Games. Bhagat was 8 points behind in the second game before making a comeback and wrapping up the match 21-14, 21-17. The 33-year-old Bhagat from Bhubaneswar also remains in contention for a bronze medal in mixed doubles SL3-SU5 class. Bhagat and his partner Palak Kohli will square off against Japanese pair of Daisuke Fujihara and Akiko Sugino in the bronze medal play off on Sunday.

Krishna Nagar, Badminton, Gold

Krishna Nagar won the second Para-Badminton gold for India on Sunday as he beat Hong Kong’s Chu Man Kai 21-17, 16-21, 21-17 in the men’s singles SH6 final. He becomes the first-ever SH6 gold medallist in the history of the Indian Paralympics. This is India’s nineteenth medal and the fifth gold in the event. It was a tight contest right from the start between Nagar and Man Kai Chu. In the first game, Kai Chu headed into the mid-game interval with a slender lead but Nagar came back well to win the first game 21-17. In the second game, the Hong Kong player built a lead and it seemed like Nagar’s game dropped a bit in the first half of the second game. Chu Man Kai continued with his momentum and came back strongly and eventually won the game 21-16.

Bhavinaben Patel, Table Tennis, Silver

Indian table tennis player Bhavinaben Patel signed off with a historic silver medal in her maiden Paralympic Games after going down 0-3 to world number one Chinese paddler Ying Zhou in the women’s singles class 4 final on August 29. The 34-year-old Patel’s impressive run at the Games ended with a 7-11 5-11 6-11 loss to Zhou, a two-time gold medalist, in the women’s singles summit clash which lasted 19 minutes.

Nishad Kumar, High Jump, Silver

India’s Nishad Kumar clinched a silver medal in the men’s high jump T47 event in the Tokyo Paralympics with an Asian record effort on Sunday. Kumar cleared 2.06m to win the silver and set an Asian record. American Dallas Wise was also awarded a silver as he and Kumar cleared the same height of 2.06m.Another American, Roderick Townsend won the gold with a world record jump of 2.15m.

Yogesh Kathuniya, Discus Thrower, Silver

The Indian Paralympic discus throw athlete, who represented India this year, won a silver medal in the men’s discus throw F56 event. He suffers from Guillain Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, and was confined to a wheelchair in 2006. However, he started to walk after his mother gave him physiotherapy. He started in para sports in 2017 while studying at Delhi’s Kirori Mal College.

Devendra Jhajharia, Javelin Thrower, Silver

Two-time gold-winning javelin throw veteran Devendra Jhajharia clinched a stupendous third Paralympic medal, a silver this time. The F46 classification is for athletes with arm deficiency, impaired muscle power or impaired passive range of movement in arms, with athletes competing in a standing position. The 40-year-old Jhajahria, already India’s greatest Paralympian after winning gold medals in the 2004 and 2016 Games, pulled off a new personal best throw of 64.35m for the silver. Jhajahria, who lost his left hand after accidentally touching an electric wire while climbing a tree at the age of eight, bettered his own earlier world record (63.97m) but gold winner Sri Lankan Dinesh Priyan Herath Mudiyanselage (67.79m), who set a new world record, was too good for the entire field.

Mariyappan Thangavelu, Long Jump, Silver

India’s Mariyappan Thangavelu won silver in the men’s high jump finalin Class T42. Mariyappan Thangavelu clinched silver after leaping the mark of 1.86m. This is his second medal at the Games, having already won a gold in Rio 2016. Mariyappan and USA’s Sam Grewe soon completed the 1.86m mark on their third attempt as Sharad had to be satisfied with a bronze after seeing three red flags.

Singhraj Adhana, Shooter, Silver and Bronze

Singhraj clinched the Silver medal in the P4 – Mixed 50m Pistol SH1 final on Saturday. He grabbed his second medal of the Tokyo Paralympics with 216.7 points. National Anthem was played when the Singhraj and Manish Narwal were being awarded the medals. Singhraj said he was delighted to see India’s national flag flying high during the national anthem. Earlier this week, Singhraj clinched a bronze medal in the P1 men’s 10m Air Pistol SH1 final.

Praveen Kumar, High Jump, Silver

Praveen Kumar clinched the silver medal in the men’s high jump T64 event of the Paralympics, taking the country’s haul to 11 in the ongoing Games. The 18-year-old Kumar, competing in his debut Paralympics, set a new Asian record with a 2.07m jump to finish behind Great Britain’s Jonathan Broom-Edwards, who notched up his season’s best of 2.10m for the gold.

Suhas Yathiraj, Badminton, Silver

India’s Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj ended his campaign with a historic silver after going down fighting against top seed Lucas Mazur of France in the men’s singles SL4 class final at the Tokyo Paralympics on Sunday. The 38-year-old Noida district magistrate, who has an impairment in one of his ankles, led 11-10 at the decider, but just couldn’t dial down the aggression, getting carried away in the big points. Lucas Mazur kept his calm and raced to win decider 21-15. The left-handed angles and end-game poise helped as the Frenchman claimed gold.

Sunder Singh Gurjar, Javelin Throw, Bronze

Sundar Singh Gurjar also chipped in with a bronze, finishing behind Jhajharia in the men’s javelin throw F46 final. The 25-year-old Gurjar, who lost his left hand in 2015 after a metal sheet fell on him at his friend’s house, was third with a best effort of 64.01m. The Jaipur-based Gurjar had won gold in the 2017 and 2019 World Para Athletics Championships. He had also won a silver in the 2018 Jakarta Para Asian Games. Earlier, discus thrower Kathuniya clinched a silver medal in the men’s F56 event.

Sharad Kumar, High jump, Bronze

Sharad Kumar won bronze in the men’s high jump final at the National Stadium in Tokyo in Class T42. Sharad Kumar grabbed bronze after scaling his season best mark of 1.83m. Muzaffarpur’s Sharad became Bihar’s first-ever Paralympic medallist after he won a bronze medal in the F42 category of men’s high jump in the Tokyo Para Games.

Harvinder Singh, Archery, Bronze

Harvinder Singh notched up India’s first ever archery medal in the Paralympics, holding his nerves to down Kim Min Su of Korea in a thrilling shoot-off for the men’s individual recurve bronze in the Paralympic Games. World No.23 Singh was the first athlete from India to win a gold medal at a major para competition in the 2018 Asian Games. An economics scholar from the Punjabi University, Patiala, Singh collected three shoot-off wins on the day starting with his triumphs in the opening rounds.

Manoj Sarkar, Badminton, Bronze

Manoj Sarkar won the bronze medal after beating Daisuke Fujihara 22-20, 21-13 in the men’s singles SL3 event at the Tokyo Paralympics on Saturday. The 31-year-old won in straight games, sealing a 22-20 21-13 win on Saturday. Sarkar crashed to an 8-21 10-21 defeat in the semifinals against Great Britain’s Daniel Bethell, but bounced back strongly to coast past Fujihara. Sarkar won the first game in 22 minutes and the second in 19 minutes.

Students From India Develop Plant-Based Air Purifier

September 8, 2021 Staff ReporterEnvironment, Science, Youth 0

In a development that may help in addressing the issue of indoor air purification amid the ongoing pandemic, an Indian startup has developed the world’s first ‘Plant based’ smart air-purifier “Ubreathe Life” that uses breathing plants for the filtration of contaminants. Young scientists at the Indian Institutes of Technology, Ropar and Kanpur and Faculty of Management Studies of Delhi University have developed the living-plant based air purifier “Ubreathe Life” that amplifies the air purification process in the indoor spaces. “These indoor spaces can either be hospitals, schools, offices and your homes,” says a scientist.

The IIT Ropar’s startup company, ‘Urban Air Laboratory’ claims the air purifier to be the world’s first, state-of-the-art ‘Smart Bio-Filter’ that can make breathing fresh. It has been incubated at IIT Ropar, which is a designated iHub – AWaDH (Agriculture and Water Technology Development Hub) by the Department of Science and Technology. A World Health Organization (WHO) report points out that indoor air spaces are five times more polluted than outdoor air spaces. That is a cause of concern, especially in the present Covid pandemic times. Research, recently published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), calls upon the governments to alter building designs by fixing air changes per hour (a measure of room ventilation with outdoor air). The ‘Ubreathe Life’ can be a solution to this concern.

Sanjay Maurya, CEO, Ubreathe claims, “The product has certain biophilic benefits, such as supporting cognitive function, physical health, and psychological well-being. Thus, it’s like having a bit of Amazon forest in your room. The consumer need not water the plant regularly as there is a built-in water reservoir with a capacity of 150ml which acts as a buffer for plant requirements,” he explained. He further said that the device supplies water to the roots whenever it gets too dry. Explaining the working of the device Maurya further said, “‘Ubreathe Life’ effectively improves indoor air quality by removing particulate, gaseous and biological contaminants while increasing the oxygen levels in the indoor space through specific plants, UV disinfection and a stack of Pre-filter, Charcoal filter and HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filter fitted in a specially designed wooden box. There is a centrifugal fan that creates a suction pressure inside the purifier, and releases purified air, formed at the roots, through the outlet in a 360degree direction. The specific plants tested for air-purification include Peace Lily, Snake Plant, Spider plant etc. and all have given good results in purifying indoor air.”

The product has already been tested. Scientists said that ‘Ubreathe Life’ can be a game-changer for maintaining clean air indoors. They argued that the new research had suggested that Covid-19 vaccination by itself may not guarantee safety at workplaces, schools and even closed fully air-conditioned homes unless air filtration, air purification and indoor ventilation becomes part of the building design. “The results of testing, conducted by National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories and the Laboratory of IIT Ropar maintains that the AQI (Air Quality Index) for a room size of 150sqft drops from 311 to 39 in 15 minutes after using ‘Ubreathe Life,” Director, IIT, Ropar, Professor Rajeev Ahuja said.

Dr Vinay and Dr Deepesh Agarwal from AIIMS, New Delhi said that the ‘Ubreathe Life’ infuses oxygen in the room making it conducive to patients with breathing issues, a department of science note said. Budding Indian scientists have developed a living plant-based air purifier named ‘Ubreathe Life’, which amplifies the air purification process in indoor spaces. These indoor spaces can be hospitals, schools, offices or even people’s homes. The state-of-the-art ‘Smart Bio-Filter’ can make breathing fresh, claimed Urban Air Laboratory, a startup incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Ropar. The budding scientists are from IIT Ropar, IIT Kanpur and the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University.

“The technology works through the air-purifying natural leafy plant. The room air interacts with leaves and goes to the soil-root zone where maximum pollutants are purified. The novel technology used in this product is ‘Urban Munnar Effect’ along with patent-pending ‘Breathing Roots’ to exponentially amplify the phyto-remediation process of the plants. Phyto-remediation is a process by which plants effectively remove pollutants from the air,” said a release from the Ministry of Science and Technology. ‘Ubreathe Life’ effectively improves indoor air quality by removing particulate, gaseous and biological contaminants. It also increases the indoor space’s oxygen levels through specific plants, UV disinfection, and a stack of pre-filter, charcoal filter and HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filter fitted in a specially designed wooden box.

A centrifugal fan creates a suction pressure inside the purifier and releases purified air, formed at the roots, through the outlet in a 360-degree direction. The specific plants tested for air purification include peace lily, snake plant, spider plant etc., and all have given good results in purifying indoor air quality, the release added.

Teens In US Are Optimistic About Future

September 1, 2021September 1, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Youth 0

Grigsby’s largely upbeat attitude about the future, combined with a world-weary realism that seems mature beyond her years, is echoed in the findings of a national Washington Post-Ipsos poll of teens ages 14 to 18. While still hopeful about what lies ahead, many teens do not view the current moment so favorably. Fifty-one percent say that now is a bad time to be growing up, compared with 31 percent who answered that way 16 years ago, in a poll of teens conducted by The Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University. Their parents are even more negative, with more than 6 in 10 saying it’s a bad time for teenagers to be growing up.

These young Americans, who are coming of age amid a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, political and social unrest, growing economic inequality and rising crime, are keenly aware of the country’s problems. Majorities view political divisions, racial discrimination, the cost of health care and gun violence as “major threats” to their generation, according to the new Post-Ipsos poll. Nearly half also rank climate change as a major threat. Some are already trying to make a difference. Heily DeJesus, who lives in Lebanon, Pa., said she dashed from her brother’s high school graduation to a Black Lives Matter protest, where they all took a knee for a selfie as her brother raised his fist in the air. “It felt great to know that we’re a part of making a change for the world,” she remembered. “Even if it’s a small town, we’re still making a change.” The survey of 1,349 teens was conducted online in May and June primarily through Ipsos’s randomly recruited panel of U.S. households. Overall results have a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points, and the relatively large sample allows comparison of White, Black, Hispanic and Asian teens.

These young people are part of what is likely the most diverse cohort in the nation’s history. New Census Bureau data shows that the country’s under-18 population is majority-minority for the first time, with White children making up 47.3 percent of that age group compared with 53.5 percent in 2010. Their childhoods have been marked by racial justice protests and a growing societal acceptance of LGBTQ people. Most also perceive significant discrimination against a wide range of groups in American society. Black and transgender people topped the list, with about 6 in 10 teens saying Black people are treated unfairly very or somewhat often and an almost equal share saying the same thing about transgender people. But even given such looming challenges, the optimism of teens runs through the poll findings, especially when it comes to what the future holds for their own lives.

Nine in 10 teens say they are very or fairly likely to achieve a good standard of living as an adult, while nearly half still believe their opportunities to succeed in life are better than their parents’ were. About 4 in 10 believe they are about the same, while fewer than 2 in 10 say their opportunities to succeed in life are worse. Vincent Bornhorst has a rosy view of his future. The 18-year-old, who just graduated from Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Md., is a freshman at Virginia Tech, majoring in computer science. Earning a college diploma is a top priority, he says, which puts him among the roughly 8 in 10 teens who describe this goal as important. He expects to have about the same opportunity to succeed as his mother, a physician, and his father, a stay-at-home dad. What he doesn’t anticipate: one day becoming rich or famous, especially since he thinks the latter would entail public speaking, which he hates. ‘Overall, even with the omnipresence of social media stars who make achieving celebrity and wealth look as easy as racking up TikTok likes, a significantly smaller percentage of teens today believe they will become rich.

About half think it’s very or fairly likely that they will be rich one day, compared with more than 6 in 10 in 2005. White teens like Bornhorst are among the least likely to expect to become wealthy – with 44 percent predicting they will likely become rich. That number rises slightly to 49 percent for Hispanic teens. By contrast, about three-quarters of Black teens and two-thirds of Asian teens believe they will be rich one day. (Presumably, the notion of the top 1 percent hasn’t quite sunk in yet.) Bornhorst is also among the more than 9 in 10 teens who say it is important to achieve career success and to have enough free time to do the things they want. Some might view the two goals as contradictory, but Bornhorst thinks one requires the other. “I view free time as important to being successful,” he said. “If you’re just working hard all the time 24/7, you’re fairly likely to tire out.” DeJesus experienced that tension firsthand. The high school senior held two jobs to make her car payments during the pandemic on top of hustling at school. “Working all the time was really rough on my mental health.”

In fact, she said, “the whole year was horrible.”

In all, 45 percent of teens say the worst pandemic in a century has had a negative impact on their mental health, while another 45 percent say it had no impact at all and 10 percent say it had a positive impact. Four in 10 teens also report that the spread of the coronavirus had a negative impact on their relationships with friends. About half of teens say pandemic hurt their academics; more say bonds with parents got better than worse Emily Guzman, a 17-year-old senior from New York City, said she fell out with a friend at the beginning of the pandemic, and the social distancing made it harder to reconcile. “One of my friends had to put us into a group chat, and we talked about it,” Guzman said. She said she and her friends communicated during their pandemic isolation via texting and FaceTime. “It was stressful,” she said. “We all went from seeing each other every day to a whole year without seeing them.” Owen Porter, a rising senior in Davis, W.Va., was among those who found a way to stay in touch through gaming — Call of Duty and Minecraft were two of his favorites — and watching movies together on Discord.

“We would stay up till like 2 in the morning watching ‘American Horror Story,’ ” Porter said.

A surprising silver lining: Nearly 4 in 10 teens say the pandemic has had a positive impact on their relationships with their parents, compared with about 1 in 10 who say it had a negative impact and roughly half who say it had no impact. For once, the whole family was at home instead of running off in different directions. There were long stretches of not much to do and more time to talk, some teens said. Steven Townley, a 10th-grader in Augusta, Ga., said his family bonded even more tightly during the pandemic. “I got to spend more time with them and I got to get closer with them,” he said. Even when all of them contracted covid-19 and isolated in their home “we made the best of it.” They all recovered, he said. School did not fare as well with the teens surveyed; about half said the pandemic had a negative impact on their academics. The technology was glitchy at times, remote learning invited slacking for some teens, while others thought teachers weren’t up to the task.

“It felt like we didn’t get enough material. It seemed to change how much they taught us,” said Abigail A., a high school student in North Dakota whose parents allowed her to speak on the condition of partial anonymity because they were concerned about her responses lingering on the Internet. DeJesus said she struggled but still managed to maintain her grades. Pandemic or not, DeJesus believes that if she keeps pushing, she will graduate from college and succeed in life. Her dream: to be a lawyer. “I feel like in the past a lot of people didn’t go to college, they stayed in their towns and said, ‘This is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life,’” said DeJesus, the Puerto Rican daughter of a mechanic who didn’t attend college and a stay-at-home mother who did. “A lot of people [my parents’ age] are struggling right now.” More than half of Hispanic teens like DeJesus, as well as similar majorities of Asian and Black teens, say it is “very important” to graduate from college, compared with about 4 in 10 White teens. The disparity is greater among lower-income households.

Teens who say graduating from college is very important are more likely to believe that the country’s best days are ahead of us, at 48 percent, compared with those who consider it less important, at 39 percent. Overall, a majority of teens — 56 percent — say they believe that the country’s best years are behind us, a shift from 2005, when roughly the same percentage said the country’s best years were still ahead of us. White teens are more apt to believe that the American glory days are gone.

Bornhorst believes life will only get better, largely due to technology and innovation, he said.“We are progressing quite a bit,” he said. “Technology will help us accomplish more things. People will have more spare time.” And yet Americans might be their own worst enemies — quite literally — when it comes to the country’s future, he said. “I feel like the U.S. has a lot of potential that we’re not using to the fullest,” he said. “We’re too divided politically and that is very much slowing down progress.” Bornhorst sees the country’s diversity as a competitive strength and, conversely, racial discrimination as a “major threat” to his generation, he said. His opinions are shared with a majority of his peers. About 6 in 10 teens say political divisions are a major threat to their generation. About the same share the view that racial discrimination as a major threat. The percentages differ widely between White teens and teens of other races and ethnicities. About 2 in 5 White teens say racial discrimination is a major threat, compared with more than 4 in 5 Black teens and more than two-thirds of Hispanic and Asian teens. Roughly 7 in 10 teens whose parents were not born in the United States perceive racial discrimination as a major threat.

Townley is struck by how quick some Americans are to judge — not only people of color but Whites, too, he said. “Some people do things they shouldn’t, and people see that and automatically think that everybody who looks like that person acts the same way. … It’s like judging a book by its cover,” said Townley, who is of Vietnamese descent and one of several children of color adopted by his White parents. Tha’keysha Murphy, an African American senior in Copperas Cove, Tex., believes that Whites are rarely treated unfairly, a view shared by 56 percent of all teens polled, including 43 percent of White teens and large majorities of minority teens. Murphy, 17, said she has noticed that’s particularly true at her school when punishment is meted out. She recalled a recent argument between a White student and an Asian student that turned into a physical fight. Although Murphy perceived that both students played an equal role, “the White person got off easier.”

About 1 in 5 teens say they have been treated unfairly over the past year due to their race and ethnicity. DeJesus had such an experience. She said she was speaking in Spanish with a family member on the phone while shopping at a local outlet mall when a White person screamed at her to “go back to my country,” she said. “It’s always the same thing,” DeJesus said. “They say our people should go back to our country, but I don’t think they know Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory.” DeJesus put her anti-racist views into action last year by joining the Black Lives Matter protest, among the 12 percent of teens who said they have attended a BLM rally. Sixty-one percent said they support the movement, according to the teen survey, about the same percentage of adults who said they did in a 2020 Washington Post-ABC News poll. Grigsby, the teen from rural Minnesota who describes her heritage as African American,

European, Jewish and Indigenous, said her consciousness was raised about racism long before Floyd’s murder. As a 10-year-old in her predominantly White elementary school, she said she was “bullied and called the n-word” and physically attacked by her classmates. Her family’s protests were ignored, Grigsby said, so they filed a discrimination complaint with the state Department of Human Rights in 2015, which ended with a settlement in 2018. “It definitely hardened my character and made me more resilient and aware,” said Grigsby, who in the wake of Floyd’s murder co-led a walkout at her school and formed an advocacy group that, among other goals, seeks to ensure the hiring of more teachers of color. Abigail, who is White, believes that the discrimination can work both ways. It seems that barely a few days go by, she said, before she reads news that a member of a minority group has accused a White person of racism. She blames the media for creating division by too often pointing out the racial backgrounds of alleged victims and perpetrators.

She used to think more like a Democrat, she said, but gradually has come to adopt the perspective of her father, who is conservative. Perhaps not surprising for a generation that is particularly close to their elders, teens frequently echo their parents’ political beliefs. Two-thirds of teens whose parents lean toward the Democratic Party also say they lean that way, while about 6 in 10 teens whose parents lean Republican say they also lean Republican. Just 3 percent of teens say they lean toward the rival political party of their parents. Teens’ political leanings also affected their responses. For example, 72 percent of teens who said they were closer to the Democratic Party perceived climate change as a major threat, while only 17 percent of Republican-leaning teens did. “God creates the climate,” said Townley, who like his Reformed Baptist parents considers himself conservative. Teens’ political beliefs heavily influence what they think of President Biden and former president Donald Trump. A large majority of Democratic-leaning teens say Biden is doing a good job and that Trump did a bad job, and a large majority of Republican-leaning teens say the opposite.

Trump “built the economy better and made sure we had our vaccine so that people could make the decision about whether to take it,” Abigail said. Meanwhile, Biden is handling immigration poorly, she said. “He stopped building the wall and now a lot of people are getting in.” But Abigail does not believe such differences of opinion need to lead to political divisions, which she considers a “major threat” to her generation, a view shared by roughly two-thirds of both Republican and Democratic-leaning teens. “I know that people say there is a big gap between the two,” she said, “but I feel like there could be more common ground.” Grigsby sees a third path, along with roughly half of teens who say they do not lean toward either major political party. “Democrats are a lot of talk and don’t do very much,” said Grigsby, who leans socialist like her mother. “The Republicans, they do things, but they do things that harm the culture and marginalized people.” To Grigsby, Biden is best defined by what he’s not: Trump.

A self-described news junkie, Grigsby quickly rattled off what she perceives as Trump’s transgressions, from his handling of the pandemic — “He lied about it and called it a hoax” — to his attitudes on race. “He said ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts.’ But if I understand correctly, he did not denounce what Kyle Rittenhouse did in Kenosha, Wisconsin.” And, finally: “He incited an insurrection and endangered his own vice president.” As she watched Trump’s supporters storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, Grigsby said, “I just remember thinking that this whole country is in shambles.” She worried that perhaps the racism of the past would become a fixture in the future. In the months since, the teen has come to think of the forces of white supremacy and the countervailing power of anti-racism as two magnets held in suspension, neither overtaking the other. Yet Grigsby remains mostly optimistic that teens like her — neither Democrats nor Republicans but fully committed to equality — might be the ones to finally break the logjam. (Courtesy: Washington Post)

Thunberg Warns, World Leaders Have No Excuse On Climate Change

August 27, 2021August 28, 2021 Staff ReporterEnvironment, Youth 0

Greta Thunberg said that the recently released UNICEF index indicated that children would be the worst affected. The world’s children cannot afford more empty promises at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), youth activists including Greta Thunberg said, after a UN report found virtually no child will escape the impact of global warming.

In the first index of its kind, published on Friday, UN children’s agency UNICEF found that almost all the world’s 2.2 billion children are exposed to at least one climate or environmental risk, from catastrophic floods to toxic air. Last week a UN climate panel of the world’s top atmospheric scientists warned that global warming is dangerously close to spiralling out of control, with deadly heat waves, hurricanes and other extreme events likely to keep getting worse.

Ms Thunberg, 18, said the UNICEF index confirmed children would be the worst affected, and when world leaders meet in Glasgow in November for COP26 they needed to act rather than just talk. “I don’t expect them to do that, but I would be more than happy if they could prove me wrong,” she told journalists ahead of the index’s publication on the third anniversary of Fridays For Future, a now-global youth movement that started with her solo protest outside her Swedish school.

Ms Thunberg was joined by young activists around the world including Mitzi Jonelle Tan, 23, from the Philippines, who spoke of doing homework by candlelight as typhoons raged outside or fearing drowning in her bed as floodwaters filled her room. After months of extreme weather and dire warnings from scientists, world leaders’ “empty promises and vague plans” were no longer enough, Ms Tan said. “There’s no excuse for this COP… to not be the one that changes things.”

Henrietta Fore, UNICEF executive director said young people globally were leading by example, pointing to a survey by the organisation that found nine in ten of them in 21 countries felt it was their responsibility to tackle climate change. They were more at risk than adults in the “increasingly unrecognisable” world they stood to inherit, she said, being less able to survive extreme weather events and more susceptible to toxic chemicals, temperature changes and disease. The UNICEF index showed around one billion children in 33 mostly African low-emission countries faced a “deadly combination” of extreme weather and existing issues like poverty, making them uniquely vulnerable.

Anju Bobby George Says, Shaili Can Break Her National Record

August 27, 2021August 28, 2021 Staff ReporterSports, Women, Youth 0

Shaili, 17, won the silver medal at the World U20 Championships in Nairobi with a jump of 6.59 metres (wind assisted), finishing behind European junior champion Maja Askag of Sweden by one centimeter last week. Her previous best was 6.48 metres, but a wind speed of 2.2 metres per second means her best jump on Sunday won’t be entered in the record books though she finished second. Anju Bobby George, the 2003 World Championship bronze medallist, is certain about Shaili Singh breaking her long-standing national record of 6.83 metres.

The 17-year-old from Jhansi, who trains in Bengaluru, has the potential to win an Olympic medal, Anju believes. “She can improve on the national record. Our main target for Shaili is to help her finish on the podium at the Olympic Games, which is the most valuable thing. If our trainee can win a medal, I will consider it as my own,” Anju says. Anju set the national record at the 2004 Athens Olympics where she finished fifth. Shali is mentored by Anju and coached by her husband Robert Bobby George, a high-performance coach with the Sports Authority of India (SAI).

Shaili came under Robert’s wings when she was 14, much earlier than Anju who was about 20 when Robert started coaching her. Getting formal coaching early meant Shaili didn’t pick up any technical flaws which are difficult to correct as one grows older. “I was able to achieve whatever I could because of Robert. I had a taped leg and only one kidney. So if you look at it, Shaili has great potential,” Anju adds. A young Shaili could have gone unnoticed at a junior championship nearly four years ago if not for Robert looking beyond the medallists.

Biden Administration Grants Automatic Student Loan Forgiveness To 325,000 Permanently Disabled Borrowers

August 27, 2021August 28, 2021 Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, The Washington PostEducation, Money, Youth 0

The Biden administration moved Thursday (Aug. 19, 2021) to grant 325,000 people who are severely disabled automatic federal student loan forgiveness to the tune of $5.8 billion, setting the stage for reforms to a process that is widely criticized as cumbersome and onerous. “The Department of Education is evolving practices to make sure that we’re keeping the borrowers first and that we’re providing relief without having them jump through hoops,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on a call with reporters Thursday. “I’ve heard from borrowers over the last six months that the processes are too difficult so we’re simplifying it.”

By law, anyone who is declared by a physician, the Social Security Administration or Department of Veterans Affairs to be totally and permanently disabled is eligible to have their federal student loans discharged. The benefit has never been widely publicized, so few have taken advantage. And when they do, many are met with tedious paperwork and requirements. There is a three-year monitoring period in which borrowers must submit annual documentation verifying their income does not exceed the poverty line. The requirement routinely trips up people who wind up having their loans reinstated. To ease the burden, the Biden administration in March waived the paperwork requirement during the coronavirus pandemic, retroactive to March 13, 2020, when President Donald Trump declared a national emergency.

On Thursday, Cardona said the Education Department will indefinitely extend the income waiver. The department will also pursue the elimination of the requirement altogether through the negotiated rulemaking process in October. The federal agency is proposing new rules to provide automatic disability discharges for anyone identified as eligible through data matching initiatives with Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration.

In 2016, the Education Department partnered with the two other agencies to identify eligible borrowers. While the department removed the application requirement in 2019 for veterans, it did not do the same for people identified through the SSA match. Only half of the people identified through the SSA match have received the discharge, according to the Education Department. A bipartisan coalition of congressional lawmakers, including Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, had urged Trump to automatically discharge the debt, much like his administration had done in 2019 for permanently disabled veterans. But the Trump administration failed to act, while hundreds of thousands of disabled borrowers defaulted on their loans.

A Freedom of Information Act request made by the D.C.-based nonprofit National Student Legal Defense Network found over 517,000 individuals as of May had not received relief. Asked about the discrepancy between the May figure and the 325,000 announced Thursday, Ben Miller, a senior adviser at the Education Department, said the older figure likely includes duplicates that may be showing up in multiple matches. He assured the latest figure accounts for all of the borrowers currently on the books.

“Obviously, we anticipate there will be new matches each quarter,” Miller said. “This is not just a one-time action.” Eligible borrowers will receive notice of their approved discharge in September and the department expects cancellation will occur by the end of the year. People who wish to opt-out of forgiveness will be given the opportunity. While borrowers will not be subject to federal income taxes on the canceled debt, they may encounter state taxes. Consumer groups had urged the Biden administration to automatically discharge the federal student loans of eligible borrowers, rather than require them to submit an application for debt forgiveness. Many were disappointed when the Education Department announced the income waiver in March without automating the process. Advocates praised the administration Thursday for stepping up.

“This is a life-altering announcement for hundreds of thousands of student loan borrowers with disabilities,” Dan Zibel, chief counsel at the National Student Legal Defense Network. “Today’s step is another indication that the Department is listening to the voices of student loan borrowers.”

Bill Introduced In Congress To End OPT Program For Students

August 19, 2021 Staff ReporterEducation, Immigration, Youth 0

Four Republican congressmen have introduced on July 22^nd the “Fairness for High-Skilled Americans Act,” which seeks to end the Optional Practical Training program that currently allows foreign students enrolled in STEM programs at U.S. universities to work either while completing their studies, or for 12 months after they have graduated.

Currently, about 80,000 students from India are enrolled in the OPT program, according to data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If the bill passes, they would be forced to return to the home country. The measure, HR 4644, was introduced by Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, both of Arizona; Mo Brooks of Alabama; and Matt Gaetz of Florida. It currently sits with the House Judiciary Committee.

While very similar in name, the bill has nothing to do with the “Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act,” which seeks to eliminate per-country caps for allocation of green cards.

The bill seeks to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act with a simple clause. “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no alien present in the United States as a non-immigrant may be provided employment authorization in the United States pursuant to the Optional Practical Training Program, or any such successor program, without an express Act of Congress authorizing such a program,” it states.

The measure has little chance of passing through a Democrat-controlled House and Senate. “What country creates a program, but not a law, that rewards its businesses to fire citizen workers and replace them with foreign labor to pay the foreign labor less? The United States,” said Gosar in a press statement after the bill was introduced. “The program is called OPT and it reflects a complete abandonment of our own workers. “

“At a time when American college graduates are struggling to find a job and many are saddled with student loans, our government should not be incentivizing foreign employees over Americans. This badly flawed government program should be eliminated,” he said.

The congressman noted that OPT is a guest worker program administered by ICE that was never authorized by Congress and was greatly expanded by the Obama Administration. “OPT circumvents the H-1B cap by allowing over 100,000 aliens admitted as foreign students to work for up to three years in the United States after graduation. These foreign workers are exempt from payroll taxes making them at least 10-15 percent cheaper than a comparable American worker,” said Gosar.

Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Techworkers, said the OPT program does not support American graduates. “Landing that first job out of college will only become more difficult for young Americans as our universities formalize the role they play in crowding out opportunities once reserved for American graduates. For this reason, OPT must be eliminated,” he said.

“Congressional rectification of the Optical Practical Training Program, created in an act of executive overreach, is a crucial first step in ensuring that young Americans who have spent years and fortunes pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics have priority for jobs in those fields here in the United States, stated John A. Zadrozny, director for the Center for Homeland Security and Immigration, America First Policy Institute.

“We owe it to current and future generations of Americans to stop treating them like second-class citizens and fight for a domestic economy that always puts them first,” he said.

In a May 13 letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Gaetz alleged that the OPT program posed security risks. He demanded more transparency of the Student and Visitor Exchange program system, which tracks international students.

The OPT program is also being challenged in a lawsuit brought on by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers against the Department of Homeland Security. On June 21, 150 colleges and universities jointly filed an amicus brief in support of the program.

The brief cited research by NAFSA: Association of International Educators, which reported that international students contributed $38.7 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2019-2020 academic year, supporting approximately 415,000 jobs. The brief also noted research by Business Roundtable which concluded that ending the OPT program would lead to 255,000 fewer jobs held by U.S.-born workers.

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan On Teen Vogue Cover

August 19, 2021 Staff ReporterEntertainment, Women, Youth 0

‘Never Have I Ever’ star Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is the second person of South Asian descent to grace the cover of the popular Teen Vogue magazine solo. Versha Sharma, who is the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue described Maitreyi as a rising star on her post on Instagram.

Sharma, who is the first South Asian American Editor-in-Chief of Teen Vogue, wrote alongside the cover: “My first cover for @teenvogue is here and I could not be happier that it’s @maitreyiramakrishnan, rising star and hilarious talent, looking extra fashionable, surrounded by books. It’s classic brown girl vibes + back to school all in one.”

“The features by@aaminasdfghjkl and photos by@heathersten are so fantastic. link in bio to see it all + my letter (partially to you, partially to my younger self) about why it means so much to me to choose a cover star like Maitreyi – a brown girl allowing so many of us to see ourselves portrayed in a way that is exactly how we grew up. (finally!) and that’s all possible thanks to@mindykaling, too!” Sharma added.

Maitreyi, now 19, started filming the show shortly after she graduated high school in Mississauga, Ontario, where she was born and raised after her parents arrived in Canada as refugees from Sri Lanka. Before the show, she was a typical Canadian high school senior, with a résumé populated by school musicals (she played Velma in Chicago) and hopes of pursuing acting in college. The spring before graduation, her best friend sent her Mindy Kaling’s tweet about an open casting call, and the friends, due for a hangout, decided it would be fun to meet and film tapes to submit. Never Have I Ever was the first major production Maitreyi auditioned for, but fast-forward to six tapes and two flights from Ontario to California, and she landed the lead.

“It’s a realization of the fact that we need more representation,” Maitreyi, who is Tamil-Canadian, adds. “We need more stories, we need more storytellers. We can’t just keep relying on Mindy Kaling to keep making all these shows. I want her to keep making more. But I need more people with her.”

A post from a New York-based media portal The Juggernaut, wrote on the photo-sharing website: “At 19 years old, @maitreyiramakrishnan has made history as only the second person of South Asian descent to grace the cover of @teenvogue solo.” With Maitreyi, Poorna Jagannathan and Richa Moorjani leading the cast, ‘Never Have I Ever’ is a coming-of-age story that examines Indian culture against an American backdrop. (IANS)

Neeraj Chopra Makes India Proud By Winning Gold For India In Tokyo Olympics

August 10, 2021 Staff ReporterSports, Youth 0

“It feels unbelievable. It is the first time India has won a gold in athletics, so I feel very good. We have just one gold here in other sports,” Neeraj Chopra said after winning the historic gold at the Olympics in Tokyo. Neeraj Chopra won the gold medal, flinging the javelin a staggering 87.58m to top the charts in Tokyo.

Neeraj Chopra didn’t even give it a second glance. The moment he released the javelin, he was so sure it would at least be his personal best that he turned to his coaches, and lifted his arms to celebrate. However, it wasn’t his personal best. The throw, which travelled 87.58 m, made him an Olympic champion.

The young Haryanvi boy has vaulted himself into history books as well as the consciousness of a medal-starved nation. It would go down, to date, as the most historic of medals in India’s Olympic history. Perhaps, the most historic in the nation’s sporting history. The gold, a historic first for the country in track and field, the second for an individual ever and the first since Abhinav Bindra’s in 2008, would also ensure India’s richest-ever tally (seven).

Much before he won the country’s first-ever track and field medal, they used to call Neeraj the village headman in Khandra, near Panipat in Haryana. What started as a joke turned out prophetic. The Asian and Commonwealth golds in 2018, was a turning point in Neeraj’s life in terms of fame and recognition. But the 23-year-old has always remained oblivious to the trappings of stardom. The prize money and sponsorship deals post-2018 helped him fulfil some long-standing desires but they still remain grounded.

Despite his superstar status, Khandra, a village close to Panipat in Haryana, still calls him sarpanch. In close to a decade, the Chopras have climbed up the social ladder with such speed that they are the new benchmark of this village. Along with Neeraj’s once modest home getting repaired, refurbished and growing in height, the new admissions at the javelin academy at the local school has increased. The Olympic medal is expected to see an army of young boys with dreams reaching out for the javelin.

Although Neeraj Chopra’s javelin gold made sure India will leave Tokyo with a record medal haul — with one gold, two silver and four bronzes — that’s just one more than last time. However, what is history-making is that never ever, since the Dhyan Chand era, has India dominated an Olympics discipline the way 23-year-old Neeraj Chopra did on Saturday. For India, Tokyo 2020’s biggest takeaway came on Saturday – the gold in a mainstream mass-sport.

11-Year Old Natasha Peri Is Among The Brightest Students In The World

August 10, 2021 Staff ReporterEducation, Profile, Youth 0

Two Indian origin girls – New Jersey-based Indian American Natasha Peri, 11; and Dubai-based Priyamvada Deshmukh, 12 – have been named to the world’s “brightest” students list based on results of above-grade-level testing of 19,000 students across 84 countries, according to Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, a part of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

It comes on the back of an exceptional performance shown by Natasha Peri, in the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and American College Testing (ACT). These are the tests that are used to determine if or not a student should be admitted to a college. Several colleges in the US use these tests as qualifying criteria to grant admission to students. She made the cut for Johns Hopkins CTY “High Honors Awards”.

Deshmukh, a student of GEMS Modern Academy, Dubai, has been honored for her exceptional performance on the SCAT assessment taken as part of the CTY Talent Search, a university statement said.

These tests were conducted as part of the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth Talent (CTY) Search. CTY uses above-grade-level testing to identify advanced students from around the world and provide a clear picture of their true academic abilities. The quantitative section of the Johns Hopkins CTY test measures the ability to see relationships between quantities expressed in mathematical terms, the verbal section measures understanding of the meaning of words and the relationships between them.

Peri took the Johns Hopkins Talent Search test in Spring 2021, when she was in Grade 5. What makes the feat incredible is the fact that her results in the verbal and quantitative sections levelled with the 90th percentile of advanced Grade 8 performance. “This motivates me to do more,” she said, adding that doodling and reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels may have worked for her.

Deshmukh took the Johns Hopkins Talent Search test in Spring 2020, when she was still in Grade 6. Her results in the verbal sections levelled with the advanced Grade 10 performance. She made the cut for Johns Hopkins CTY ‘High Honors Awards’. Due to the Covid-19 induced delay in global logistics support, she finally received her much awaited “High Honors” pin this week, which she lovingly kept in front of her grandparents’ photograph as tribute to her roots.

“We are thrilled to celebrate these students,” said Virginia Roach, CTY’s executive director. “In a year that was anything but ordinary, their love of learning shined through, and we are excited to help cultivate their growth as scholars and citizens throughout high school, college, and beyond,” Roach added.

Marcell Jacobs Is The Fastest Man Winning Men’s 100 Meter Title Elaine Thompson-Herah Is The Fastest Woman In The World

August 5, 2021August 10, 2021 Staff ReporterSports, Women, Youth 0

Elaine Thompson-Herah of Jamaica has been crowned officially the fastest woman in the world — again — after winning the 100 meters at the Tokyo Games in Olympic record time. She was the defending gold medalist in this event.

“I knew I had it in me, but obviously, I’ve had my ups and downs with injuries,” she said Saturday, referring to a persistent ailment in 2018 and 2019. “I’ve been keeping faith all this time. It is amazing.”

Marcell Jacobs of Italy is the surprise victor of the fastest track race at the Tokyo Olympics, the men’s 100 meter. Jacobs beat his personal best time and put his star solidly on the map in the blazing fast race. He was not well-known in the track world before today, making it to the semi-finals of this event in the 2019 World Athletics Championships. After his victory, he gleefully hugged his teammate, high jumper Gianmarco Tamberi.

The other medalists also broke their personal records. The U.S.’s Fred Kerley, a 26-year-old from San Antonio, Texas, took silver with a time of 9.84, four hundredths of a second behind Jacobs. Canada’s Andre de Grasse won bronze.

Legendary retired Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt has owned this event, winning gold in the 2008 Beijing Games, the 2012 London Games and the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. U.S. sprinter Ronnie Baker, 27, came back from a hamstring injury that kept him out of competition for much of 2019. He placed fifth in the final.

Fraser-Pryce, who won the event at the Olympics in Beijing and London, came into the event trying to become the first woman to win three gold medals at this distance. The 34-year-old clocked the fastest time in the heats to qualify for the final, with a time quicker than her gold medal races.

But Thompson-Herah took control of the final race right off the blocks and straight through the finish line. At the end, she screamed in joy and jumped up and down before collapsing on the track. “I couldn’t find the words. I screamed so loud because I was so happy,” she said.

It was a sweep for Jamaica, with Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce taking silver and Shericka Jackson taking bronze. About a minute after the race finished, the other Jamaican medalists came over and gave her a quick pat on the back.

Besides Thompson-Herah and Fraser-Pryce, just two other women have won two golds in this event — Wyomia Tyus, who competed for the U.S. in the 1960s, and Gail Devers, a U.S. athlete who won her golds in the 1990s. U.S. runner Teahna Daniels, 24, ran a personal best time to make it into the race. She placed seventh.

Indian American Students Inspire Love For STEM Studies

August 4, 2021August 5, 2021 Staff ReporterEducation, Youth 0

It seems that there could be no better time to introduce your students to Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) subjects, and luckily there are plenty of places across the country to help you do just that.

With the Department of Education releasing new findings which have shown that girls in England are less likely than boys to consider studying STEM subjects, and another study published by the Social Market Foundation and EDF stating that there will be 150,000 more jobs in the STEM field by 2023, now is the time to get your students involved in the world of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.

To help create love for STEM, a California-based Indian American student-run organization is inspiring young minds across the globe to the powerful impact of STEM-based studies. We Love STEM, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by Ishani Das, the organization’s president, and Anusha Singhai, its vice president, provides free STEM education — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — to middle schoolers internationally, and seeks to inspire and foster a love of STEM, particularly in under-resourced communities.

Das and Singhai, currently juniors in high school, first met in the winter of 2017, in seventh-grade science class, and immediately became best friends. “In middle school, I discovered a love for STEM through my first hands-on Arduino project, a wearable device created to aid people with visual impairment and offer real-time assistance,” Das told India-West. “It was very motivating to win several awards for this product in the 2019 Synopsys Science Championship,” she said, adding that through this project, she discovered she really enjoyed building hands-on tools and coding them to perform whatever she wanted.

Das said this is what inspired her to offer a learning opportunity to any student who may find this application of STEM skills fun, and that may even spark a life-long interest. “The summer after I graduated 8th grade, I held an Arduino workshop for a few 5th graders I knew. This later turned into teaching a year-round Arduino class for middle schoolers at the Cupertino Library in the 2019-20 school year with my friend, Anusha Singhai,” Das added. The two founders attended a Girls Who Code class together, where they used to meet every week in the very library that they began teaching We Love STEM classes in.

We Love STEM was born in the summer of 2019 with only three students in Das’ living room. The organization officially took off in fall 2019 when they taught their first course, Arduino, in the 2019-20 school year at their local library, the Cupertino Library.

“Since then, our organization has flourished beyond our wildest dreams and seeing our tangible impact on our community has been inspiring, leading us to continue branching out internationally,” Das said. “In the future, we hope to be able to continue spreading our mission and to help as many students as possible,” she added.

The program offers summer camps, year-round classes and guest speaker events. It also raises money through fundraisers to help social organizations.

As recently as May, We Love STEM raised over $700 for oxygen charities in India to fight the COVID-19 global pandemic. In the future, the duo hopes to reach more students who are under-resourced and may not be offered the same STEM learning opportunities at their local schools and afterschool programs, especially internationally.

In addition to Das and Singhai, We Love STEM has a volunteer team of Indian and Asian American young women from all over the U.S. Since its founding in 2019, the organization has grown from a simple summer Arduino workshop with three students in a living room into an international organization with more than 190 students, and seven chapters all over the world, the organization notes.

“All high school students passionate about STEM are welcome to join our team and contribute as a chapter director to teach whatever they feel most confident in,” Das said. “Adults can help us recruit middle school students or present as guest speakers. Needless to say, all middle schoolers are welcome to sign up for our program,” she said.

“I really love it. It’s a fun learning experience, which in distance learning can be hard to find sometimes. I think that you get to do something you really love, and I love coding and I’m having a great time with this,” Vivaan Garg, a recent We Love STEM student, said. More information about the organization can be found by visiting https://www.welovestem.org/.

How Will Delta And COVID-19 Change This Back-To-School Season?

August 4, 2021August 4, 2021 Tara Law At TIMEEducation, Youth 0

Getting the kids ready to go back to school each fall is stressful enough in a normal year, never mind in the midst of a pandemic. Between the more transmissible Delta coronavirus variant, rising cases across the country and new masking guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there’s a lot for parents to navigate as they plan for schools to reopen this August and September.

On the whole, experts seem to agree it’s time to get kids back into their classrooms. Remote learning set many children—especially students of color—back academically, cut them off from essential social services like free or reduced-cost meals, and took a major toll on their mental health. As many districts have reduced remote schooling programs, even the most reluctant parents may have little choice but to send their kids back to school, short of homeschooling.

The worry, of course, is that in-classroom learning could facilitate the ongoing spread of COVID-19. But on the positive side, a year of scientific progress means that schools may now be better equipped to prevent viral spread in their classrooms, hallways and locker rooms. Public health experts and school administrators now know that layered mitigation methods, including face masks, distancing and ventilation, can help reduce transmission. Additionally, kids over 12, as well as their teachers and parents, can get vaccinated—the best tool to prevent getting sick and to reduce the spread of the virus.

To help parents of school-age children navigate the upcoming back-to-school season, TIME spoke with pediatric infectious disease experts about how to keep kids—and those around them—safe this school year.

What risks does COVID-19 pose to my child?

It’s rare for COVID-19 to cause severe illness among school-age children, but it does happen. Those with underlying medical conditions, such as heart disease, immune disorders and diabetes are at higher risk, according to the CDC. Some 400 children have died after contracting COVID-19 in the U.S., according to CDC data. Of course, while any death is tragic, that figure represents only around 0.01% of children known to have tested positive for the disease. In other words, it’s unlikely that kids will suffer the worst impacts of the virus.

Indeed, while children can also develop “long COVID”—suffering from persistent COVID-19 symptoms long after getting infected—preliminary evidence suggests that the condition is far less common in children than adults. A study by Swiss researchers published in JAMA on July 15 found that only 4% percent of the kids surveyed who had tested positive for COVID-19 were still experiencing symptoms after 12 weeks.

That said, there’s still a lot we don’t know about COVID-19. Dr. Aaron Milstone, a professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, notes that some viral illnesses, like measles, can cause harm years after exposure in children, and we can’t know for sure that COVID-19 won’t have future consequences. “I do think it’s important to acknowledge that there are unknown risks, although small,” he says.

How has the Delta variant changed the risk of getting COVID-19 at school?

The Delta variant is more transmissible than the version of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) that circulated for much of the previous 16 months or so, which means that it could spread faster in schools, just like it does anywhere else. Though it doesn’t seem to cause more severe illness (in either children or adults), Dr. Sean O’Leary, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, says he’s concerned that kids could carry the virus back home to vulnerable family members, or in the other direction, putting teachers and staffers at risk. “I think it has the potential to be bad,” he says.

Delta’s emergence is a reminder that schools will need to stay flexible as the virus continues to circulate. Milstone points out that the dynamics of the pandemic are changing over time—vaccine-generated immunity may wane over time, people of mixed vaccination status are increasingly socializing with one another, and fewer people are taking precautions like masking or distancing (though the CDC’s new guidance may help change that). “We have to keep up with the virus,” Milstone says.

The best preventative method, of course, is mass vaccination. And most evidence suggests that Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine, the only shot authorized in the U.S. for kids aged 12-15, is effective against the Delta variant. Vaccines aside, schools can help protect students, teachers and staff by implementing “layered” prevention methods, including masks, distancing and ventilation, says Dr. William Raszka, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Vermont Medical Center. These efforts are especially important for protecting students younger than 12, who can’t yet be vaccinated.

Could my child carry COVID-19 to someone else, like family members or their teacher?

Children can pass COVID-19 to other people, although the risk of transmission tends to be higher with older children, says Dr. Liz Whittaker, a senior clinical lecturer in pediatric infectious diseases and immunology at Imperial College London. A study conducted in South Korea in winter 2020 involving 5,706 COVID-19 patients found that children below 9 years old were less likely to spread the virus to other groups compared to kids aged 10-19, who appeared to spread it as much as adults.

O’Leary says widespread community vaccination is the best way to limit these risks. “What we’ve seen throughout the pandemic, including now with this Delta variant, is that [the number of] cases in kids basically reflect what’s going on in the surrounding community,” he says. “The most important thing to help schools be successful this year is get everyone to get vaccinated, down to age 12.” And, if schools practice layered mitigation methods, it should keep teachers at low risk of infection, says O’Leary, especially if they’re vaccinated.

Parents can take steps to help prevent outbreaks at schools as well. Whittaker urges families to keep their kids home if they seem unwell, and consider having older children wear a mask even if they’re not going into school—and even if they’re vaccinated—in order to keep the people around them safe. And don’t forget the basics, she adds. “Like washing your hands before you eat, which we should do anyway,” she says.

Could schools trigger a COVID-19 outbreak in my community?

So far, schools haven’t been a major driver of COVID-19 outbreaks. Instead, they’re more likely to reflect the level of transmission that’s already happening in a given community.

For instance, in an April study published in Pediatrics, researchers who studied North Carolina schools with 90,000 in-person students and staff found only 32 school-based local infections over a nine week period, while 773 other people were infected elsewhere in the community. However, it’s important to note that the schools studied for that paper practiced mitigation strategies like universal masking, 6-foot distancing and symptom monitoring.

That said, Milstone notes schools “tend to be more conservative” and take more precautions to limit viral spread compared to other institutions. In fact, schools probably aren’t more dangerous than other activities many kids are already doing, he says. “I would say a kid who’s masked in school is less likely to bring [COVID-19] home from school than they are from bringing it home from their Sunday school group or … a birthday party with 10 other kids where they’re probably not masked.”

How can I get ready to send my child back to school during the pandemic?

If your child is too young for the shot, getting vaccinated yourself is one of the best ways to protect them from contracting COVID-19, as it reduces the risk you’ll spread the virus to other people. “If you’re sending a child to school, you absolutely want to make sure you’re vaccinated if the child’s too young to be vaccinated,” says O’Leary.

O’Leary also tells parents that they should take a close look at the mitigation measures their children’s school has in place, including whether face masks are required, and advocate for more precautions. And regardless of the school’s policy, it may be smart to talk to children about wearing face masks. Generally, O’Leary says, kids are “better than the adults at wearing masks!”

And most importantly, if your children are 12 or older and eligible, get them vaccinated—and don’t wait. People aren’t considered fully vaccinated until two weeks after their second Pfizer shot, which is usually scheduled three to four weeks after their first injection. That timetable means you’ll need to go ASAP to ensure your child is protected for their first day of school.

Milstone acknowledges his perspective is skewed as an infectious disease physician; with his career, he sees an unusual number of children very sick with COVID-19. All the same, he says that seeing children die from a disease that can be prevented by vaccination is very difficult.

“I’ve said this my whole career, right?” he says. “It’s really discouraging to watch people die of vaccine preventable diseases. And especially kids, who don’t get to make that choice for themselves.”

Indian Parliament Hails Olympic Medallist Mirabai Chanu

July 30, 2021 Staff ReporterSports, Youth 0

Both the Houses of Indian Parliament have congratulated Olympic silver medallistSaikhomMirabaiChanu. Parliament hailed the performance of the athlete. Indian weightlifter MirabaiChanu bagged a historic silver medal in the women’s 49kg weightlifting at the Tokyo.

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said: “I am extremely happy to inform you that MirabaiChanu won a silver medal in the Olympics. I congratulate her on behalf of the House and myself. I hope that other athletes will also perform well in their respective games and bring laurels for the country.” Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu lauded MirabaiChanu’s achievement of securing a silver medal in the weightlifting event in the ongoing Tokyo Olympics. Indian Weightlifter MirabaiChanu created history as she opened India’s medal tally.

“With her spectacular performance, Mirabai not only opened medal tally for the country in this Olympics but also ended a long wait of 21years. An epitome of hard work, grit, and determination, I’m sure that Chanu’s achievement will not only boost the morale of the Indian spokesperson taking part in the Olympic games but also inspire our budding sportsperson to emulate her achievement and improve upon their performances,” Naidu said.

MirabaiChanu scripted history as she won silver in the weightlifting event in the ongoing Tokyo Olympics on Saturday. Chanu won the silver medal in the Women’s 49kg category and finished the event with a total lift of 202 kg. The weightlifter started the competition by lifting 84kg in her first attempt during the snatch event. On the other hand, her competitor, Jourdan Delacruz of the USA lifted 83kg in her first attempt. However, MirabaiChanu in her second attempt stepped up her ante and lifted 87kg while Delacruz in her second attempt lifted 86kg.

On July 26, MirabaiChanu in a video posted on her official Twitter handle, said, “Yesterday, I won a medal at the Tokyo Olympics, and therefore, I wish to dedicate this to all the citizens of India and am also thankful to the entire nation for their prayers and good wishes. It is because of them that I could win a medal. I wish to thank them all. Jai Hind!”.

Two 13-Year-Old Skateboarders Are Stars Of Japan Olympics

July 30, 2021 Staff ReporterSports, Youth 0

Japan’s MomijiNishiya, 13, made history on Monday when she took home the first women’s street skateboarding Olympic gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Games. Standing next to her on the Olympic podium was Rayssa Leal from Brazil, also 13, who earned silver in the event. Japanese skater Funa Nakayama, 16, took bronze. Nishiya’s win comes one day after 22-year-old Japanese skater YutoHorigome won gold in the men’s event, and it cements Japan’s status as a skateboarding powerhouse. The women’s skateboarding final was a huge moment for these Games—as some of the Olympics’ youngest competitors offered up impressive tricks and brutal wipeouts on an international stage.

Half of the skaters in the finals lineup were under 18, and in Tokyo’s scorching heat, they were determined to land their best tricks. They managed to fill the mostly empty skatepark with joy as hip-hop thumped in the background. The skaters were generous with hugs and applause after impressive runs. MargielynDidal of the Philippines gave Japan’s Aori Nishimura fist pumps. Nakayama and Nishiya chatted with each other while waiting for their turns. Leal would sometimes skate near the spectator area, where the press and athletes were sitting to celebrate her high scores.

The few spectators at the Ariake Urban Sports Park witnessed some big surprises on Monday. World No. 1-ranked Pamela Rosa, 22, was seen as Brazil’s most likely medal hopeful, but she didn’t even make it to the final. Nishimura, 19, the No. 3-ranked female street skateboarder after claiming a world title in June at the Street Skateboarding World Championships, came in eighth after falling several times.

After winning gold, Nishiya was asked what she wanted to tell young skaters. “Skateboarding is fun and interesting, I hope everyone can give it a try,” she told TIME. And this young field is already offering powerful inspiration for a new generation of skaters. Outside of Ariake Urban Sports Park, 9-year-old Keito Ota and 8-year-old Ayane Nakamura were eagerly waiting to catch a glimpse of the newly minted Japanese medalists. The two friends had started skateboarding about a year ago and arrived at the park wearing Team Japan skateboarding shirts. Every time a bus left the venue, they would press themselves against the metal fences holding pieces of paper that said “Thank you for your hard work” and “Congratulations on your gold medal.”

Ota said he was already a fan of Horigome as well as Nishimura. But now he’s adding Nishiya and Nakayama to his list of favorite skateboarders. “I am their fan now,” Ota said as he slid around on his skateboard. In August, Ota will enter his first competition at a local skateboarding student cup. Nishiya, 13 years and 330 days, is Japan’s youngest ever gold medalist, and one of the youngest in Olympics history. That record, though, goes to American diver Marjorie Gestring, who took the gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Games at the age of 13 years and 267 days. Leal, age 13 years and 203 days, would have set a new record had she finished first.

Japan’s big wins in the first two skateboarding events should hopefully change the nation’s perception about skateboarders and further cultivate its skating culture. Many Japanese still view skateboarding negatively. A “skating-banned” sign hangs just outside the Olympic skating venue in Tokyo. Skateboarders across Japan are likely to have another big moment when the women’s park skateboarding event takes place Aug. 4. Japan’s Misugu Okamoto and Sakura Yosozumi, the world’s two top-ranked female park skaters, are strong contenders. KokonaHiraki, Japan’s youngest Olympian who landed solid attempts at a Dew Tour event in May, could rewrite history at 12 years old. As for Nishiya, who always gets rewards from her mother after competitions, told reporters she now just looks forward to getting yakiniku, Japanese-style grilled meat.

American Academy Of Pediatrics Recommends Masks In Schools For Everyone Over 2, Regardless Of Vaccinations

July 22, 2021 Naomi Thomas, CNNEducation, Health, Youth 0

The American Academy of Pediatrics released new Covid-19 guidance for schools on Monday that supports in-person learning and recommends universal masking in school of everyone over the age of 2, regardless of vaccination status — a stricter position than that taken this month by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The AAP believes that, at this point in the pandemic, given what we know about low rates of in-school transmission when proper prevention measures are used, together with the availability of effective vaccines for those age 12 years and up, that the benefits of in-person school outweigh the risks in all circumstances,” the guidance says. One of the main interventions put forward by the AAP is that all students over the age of 2 and all school staff should wear masks at school unless they have a medical or developmental condition that prohibits this.

Reasons for this recommendation include but are not limited to: a significant proportion of the student population is not yet eligible for vaccination; masking protects those who are not vaccinated against Covid-19 and reduces transmission; and potential difficulty in monitoring or enforcing mask policies for those who are not vaccinated. “There are many children and others who cannot be vaccinated,” Dr. Sara Bode, chair-elect of the AAP Council on School Health Executive Committee, said Monday in a statement. “This is why it’s important to use every tool in our toolkit to safeguard children from COVID-19. Universal masking is one of those tools, and has been proven effective in protecting people against other respiratory diseases, as well. It’s also the most effective strategy to create consistent messages and expectations among students without the added burden of needing to monitor everyone’s vaccination status.”

The AAP’s recommendation on universal masking is different from guidance by CDC, which also prioritized in-person learning but advised that fully vaccinated students, teachers and staff don’t need to wear masks at school. AAP’s more cautious mask guidance is understandable, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “When you have a degree of viral dynamics in the community and you have a substantial proportion of the population that is unvaccinated, you really want to go the extra step, the extra mile, to make sure that there is not a lot of transmission, even breakthrough infections among vaccinated individuals,” Fauci told CNN on Monday.The differing guidance could cause some confusion, Fauci acknowledged while noting the CDC’s guidance allows for local states, cities and other agencies to make their own judgments. “I think that the American Academy of Pediatrics (is) a thoughtful group. They analyze the situation, and if they feel that that’s the way to go, I think that is a reasonable thing to do,” he said.

DACA Is ‘Unlawful:’ Federal Judge’s Ruling Plays Havoc With Lives Of Millions Of Immigrants

July 22, 2021 Staff ReporterImmigration, Youth 0

A federal judge in Texas has largely halted an Obama administration initiative that grants work permits and reprieves from deportation to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children – calling the program “unlawful” even as he allowed the more than 600,000 young people already in it to keep their protected status. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sided with Texas and other states in his ruling that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, overstepped his executive authority when he created the program.

Hanen’s ruling called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an “illegally implemented program” and said “the public interest of the nation is always served by the cessation of a program that was created in violation of law.” He prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from approving new applications, issued a permanent injunction vacating the memo that created DACA in 2012 – when President Joe Biden was vice president – and remanded the issue to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for reconsideration.

The Biden administration had no immediate response to Friday’s ruling. But the long-awaited knockdown spurred a political outcry and intensified pressure on the White House and Congress to pass an immigration measure this year. Immigrants brought to this country as children, known as “dreamers,” are among the most sympathetic of the 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally. Still, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been unable to agree on whether to grant them legal status despite months of negotiations.Democrats are considering whether to use a budget reconciliation measure to take that action, a move that would require only a simple majority vote in the evenly divided Senate.

In statements Friday, July 16, 2021, both Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., vowed to press forward on legislation that would ensure dreamers have a pathway to citizenship. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin, D-Ill., who has sponsored legislation for the past 20 years to grant dreamers citizenship – without success – said Congress had “found excuses to put off this decision” for too many years.”Congress will now act quickly – with or without the party of Donald Trump – to allow these Americans to finally become citizens,” Durbin said Friday.

Congressional Democrats and advocates for immigrants called Friday for the government to appeal Hanen’s ruling, which Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., described as “cruel.” “To current #DACA recipients, you are safe here,” she said on Twitter. “To our young immigrants, we will not stop our work until every Dreamer is treated as they are: American.” But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called on Democrats to vote on a proposal he and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., floated earlier this month to Durbin, who has sponsored legislation for the past 20 years to grant dreamers citizenship – without success.

Cornyn and Tillis said they propose “targeted legislation” that would offer permanent legal status to “active participants” in DACA, and opined that anything broader is not “politically viable.” “Now will Senator Durbin schedule debate and vote on a bill that will provide DACA recipients some certainty?” Cornyn said in a tweet after the ruling. Google, which employs DACA recipients and is one of many companies that have defended their right to stay in the United States, condemned the ruling, saying “we are very disappointed by today’s decision.” To qualify for DACA, immigrants must have been under age 31 as of June 15, 2012, when the program was created, arrived in this country before turning 16, and resided in the United States since mid-2007. They also must have pursued studies or enlisted in the military, and passed a criminal-background check.

Those criteria left out thousands of immigrants whom the White House has said it hoped to legalize this year. Most DACA recipients are from Mexico, but they hail from all over the world, including South Korea, the Philippines, Uganda and New Zealand. They include software engineers, teachers, and doctors and nurses working the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. Republican officials from Texas and several other states had called for an “orderly wind down” of the program in their lawsuit, arguing that it was unlawful and burdened states with costs for health care, education and law enforcement. But Hanen said he recognized that legions of young immigrants and their communities need the program, and would not wrest it from them as the Biden administration attempts to correct its deficiencies.

“Hundreds of thousands of individual DACA recipients, along with their employers, states, and loved ones, have come to rely on the DACA program,” Hanen, an appointee of President George W. Bush, a Republican, wrote in the ruling. “Given those interests, it is not equitable for a government program that has engendered such a significant reliance to terminate suddenly. This consideration, along with the government’s assertion that it is ready and willing to try to remedy the legal defects of the DACA program indicates that equity will not be served by a complete and immediate cessation of DACA.”

Hanen directed the Department of Homeland Security to post a notice within three calendar days saying that “a United States District Court has found the DACA program to be illegal and that, though applicants may continue to submit applications, the Government is prohibited from granting such applications.” He said his order was a “reasonable” decision that took into consideration the competing interests of dreamers and states such as Texas that had argued that the program granted people work permits who could then get driver’s licenses and compete with Americans for jobs.

“Not a surprise, just a painful reminder that we need to stop relying on temporary immigration fixes,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who is the lead Senate sponsor of the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, Biden’s blueprint to create a path to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants. “Congress must seize the moment.” Advocates for immigrants said the ruling would once again upend the lives of people who have lived in the United States for much or most of their lives and consider it their home.

“If you can renew, you still have the lingering question of: Until when?” said José Muñoz, spokesman for United We Dream, the nation’s largest immigrant youth-led organization, and himself a DACA recipient. He estimated that tens of thousands of first-time applicants will be shut out of the program, endangering their plans to attend school or apply for driver’s licenses so they can legally drive. “It’s beyond time for Congress to act,” Muñoz said. “We need a path to citizenship.” The Trump administration attempted to terminate DACA starting in 2017, with a wind-down plan that would have ended the program by 2020. Federal courts blocked the effort. In June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration had not properly considered the impact of rescinding DACA in 2017, and ordered the administration to start again – without weighing in on the legality of the DACA program.

Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that is defending DACA in the Texas lawsuit, expressed hope for the program on Friday since the Supreme Court has never declared the program unlawful.But he said the immigrants deserve permanent residency and not the “ongoing cruel roller coaster that our nation has placed DACA recipients on.” Saenz said his organization will decide in the next few days whether to appeal.

Tamil Nadu College Student’s Electric Cycle Offers 50 Kms Ride In Just Rs 1.50

July 16, 2021July 16, 2021 Staff ReporterEnvironment, Science, Youth 0

When the fuel prices are at an all-time high, a Madurai college student, Dhanush Kumar has designed a unique solar-powered electric cycle.The college student from Madurai in Tamil Nadu who designed a solar-powered electric cycle. His story has now prompted people to share all sorts of appreciative comments. The bicycle is powered by a 24 volt and 26 ampere battery. The bicycle can run for up to 50 km continuously with the help of solar panels. A rider can travel more than a 20 kms after the electric charges reduce to the downline. Dhanush hailing from Madurai, an II-Tier city in Tamil Nadu, claimed that this design is his own and is apt for cities like Madurai as it can be driven in with a maximum speed of 40 Kms.

When asked about the working of the electric cycle, he said, “The cost of electricity used for this battery is very low compared to the price of petrol. It costs Rs 1.50 to travel up to 50 km. This bike can run at a speed of 30-40 km. This speed is enough to drive this bike inside an II-tier city like Madurai.” When the petrol and diesel prices are skyrocketing in the country, an electric designed cycle would be a respite for people finding it tough to commute.

ANI took to Twitter to share about the student named Dhanush Kumar. “Madurai college student, Dhanush Kumar designs solar-powered electric cycle. The bicycle can run for up to 50 km continuously with the help of solar panels. A rider can travel more than a 20 kms after the electric charges reduce to the downline,” they wrote. They also shared a few images of the student and his creation.

While replying to their own post, they shared a quote from the creator talking about the bicycle. “The cost of electricity used for this battery is very low compared to the price of petrol. It costs ₹1.50 to travel up to 50 km. This bike can run at a speed of 30-40 km. This speed is enough to drive this bike inside a city like Madurai, says Dhanush Kumar,” reads the tweet.

Samir Banerjee Wins Wimbledon Boys’ Singles Title

July 16, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Sports, Youth 0

Indian American Samir Banerjee from New Jersey has won the boys’ singles title, beating Viktor Lilov 7-5, 6-3 in an all-American final at the Wimbledon championships on July 11. Banerjee, who reached the final by beating France’s Sascha Gueymard Wayenburg in the semi-finals, is the first American junior champion at Wimbledon since Reilly Opelka in 2015, and 12th overall.

Banerjee, Lilov traded serves in the first set in the clash of two 17-year-olds before the Indian American won two consecutive games from 5-5 to take the set. In the second set, Banerjee broke his opponent’s serve in the sixth game and went on to win it 6-3, completing his triumph in one hour and 21 minutes, when Lilov made a backhand error. Banerjee is committed to playing for Columbia University in the fall and draws inspiration from several players who took the college tennis route to success before.

“Growing up, I think college was always in the picture, I was going to use tennis to get to college. Obviously trying to play at the highest level I could and then go to college and maybe after college try to go pro. I think I didn’t really expect this,” he told the Wimbledon official website after his semi-final victory.

“I’m really happy with my commitment to Columbia, the coaches there I’m really buying into their vision. I think it’s a really good stepping stone. Obviously, with Indian parents, they definitely want me to go to college and not just skip the whole…and just go right to pros. And I think it would be a good character-building kind of thing, because I’m not sure if I’m fully ready to just fully go pro yet, so as of right now, I’m still probably going to go to college,” he had said. The 17-year-old right-hander from New Jersey beat Wayenburg 7-6(3), 4-6, 6-2 in two minutes short of two hours in their semi-final encounter.

It was superb performance from Banerjee, who is 19th in the ITF junior rankings as of July 5, 2021, as he sent down seven aces as compared to three by Wayenburg, and earned 67% points on first serve compared to 57% by his French rival. Banerjee, who started playing tennis at the age of six, made 27 unforced errors as compared to 33 by Wayenburg, who struggled with his serve and sent down 11 double faults. Banerjee had just four double faults. And what was impressive was that Banerjee, who is from Basking Ridge in New Jersey, could produce such a performance on Court No. 1, one of the show courts at the All-England Club.

“It was crazy, that’s definitely the biggest crowd I’ve played in front of. And I think I had the crowd support for the most part, so that was an amazing experience, and then to win on top of that is something I’ll remember forever,” Banerjee told the official website. Legendary Indian tennis player Vijay Amritraj congratulated Banerjee. “Wonderful win for Indian American 17 yr old Samir Bannerjee in the boys singles at Wimbledon 2021. Wish him well for a great future,” the 67-year old who reached singles quarterfinals at Wimbledon and US Open tweeted.

Banerjee’s father Kunal was born in Assam, and his mother Usha was brought up in Andhra Pradesh before both migrated to the USA in the mid-1980s and got married there. The youngster, reportedly, will take a break from the tour to enroll for a degree in either economics or political science at the Columbia University in the coming months. While Banerjee’s victory is a testament to the system that US Tennis Association has put in place, India has been struggling to field a worthy contender at junior Grand Slams for some time now. Due to the lack of a robust domestic circuit and not having enough competitions at home to earn world ranking points, India has been struggling to create the next crop of youngsters.

Yuki Bhambri was the last Indian to win a junior singles title when he triumphed at the Australian Open in 2009 while Sumit Nagal won the Wimbledon boys’ doubles event in 2015 with Vietnam’s Ly Hoang Nam. Ramanathan Krishnan was the first Indian to win a junior major when he won the 1954 Junior Wimbledon championship. His son Ramesh Krishnan won the 1970 junior Wimbledon and junior French Open titles while Leander Paes won the 1990 junior Wimbledon and junior US Open. Paes was also a runner-up at the junior Australian Open.

Chaitra Thummala Is Runner Up In Scripps National Spelling Bee

July 16, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Education, Youth 0

Chaitra Thummala, 12, sixth grader from San Francisco, California’s Gale Ranch Middle School, and Zaila Avant-garde, 14, from New Orleans fought it out, though in a friendly fashion, high-fiving each other as they battled for the crown. But it was Zaila Avant-garde who won the top prize. Zaila won it by spelling ‘murraya’ correctly, a word that refers to a tropical Asiatic and Australian tree species. For the first time in the Scripps National Spelling Bee’s 96-year history, an African American has taken home the top prize.

In the round just before the last, Thummala incorrectly spelt the word neroli oil (an essential oil from flowers, mainly the sour orange, which is used in cologne and as a flavoring), leaving the field open for Avant-garde. In all. There were nine Indian-Americans were among the finalists at the Scripps National Spelling Bee July 8, 2021, which also saw a visit from First Lady Jill Biden. The winner receives numerous prizes including $50,000 in cash;the official championship trophy, a cash prize and reference library from Merriam-Webster; more reference works valued at $2,500; and a 3-year membership to the Britannica Online Premium.

According to her bio on the National Spelling Bee website,”Thummala Chaitra loves music and traveling. She recently got a baby brother who she loves playing with along with her little sister. She wants to go to Santorini, Greece. Her favorite books are Dancing at the Pity Party by Tyler Feder and The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson. She has won awards at her local Science Olympiad and Math Olympiad.”

A spelling bee is a contest in which participants must spell aloud words announced by a judge. The high-profile Scripps National Spelling Bee is closely followed by students and their parents across the US and the finals are broadcast on prime-time television. This year, the winner got a cash prize of $50,000. Of the 11 finalists of the Scripps spelling bee held in the ESPN Sports Complex in Florida’s Orlando, Florida, nine were Indian-Americans. In the final round, Avant-garde was pitted against Chaitra Thummula from California, who dropped out after being unable to spell “neroli oil” correctly. Avant-garde scored her victory after spelling the word “Murraya”, a genus of tropical Australian trees.

First lady Jill Biden, an educator herself, was there to witness the drama. The competition this year was fierce, with new rules to raise the bar. Each level had an additional “word meaning” round to test vocabulary. The threat of a “spell-off” loomed over the finalists. Past years ended in ties — a record eight spellers won in 2019 — but this year, a new rule said that spellers who remain at the end of the allotted time have 90 seconds to spell as many words as they can from a predetermined spell-off list of words. But there was no need for a tie-breaker, to the chagrin of some rapt spectators: Avant-garde handily out spelled the competition.

As it turns out, Avant-garde excels at much more than spelling. She holds three Guinness World Records for her skills in dribbling six basketballs simultaneously, the most basketball bounces and bounce juggles. The teenager is a champion basketball player and has said that she hopes to compete in the Women’s National Basketball Association when she grows up. Ahead of the spelling bee finals, ESPN shared a video of Avant-garde playing basketball. Since members of the Indian-American community have been winning the competition since 2008, Avant-garde’s win stood out. There has been only one Black winner of the competition so far, a student from Jamaica in 1998.

Avant-garde – whose father changed her last name from Heard as a mark of respect to jazz musician John Coltrane – said she hoped that more members of the African-American community will be inspired to participate in the competition. “Maybe they don’t have the money to pay $600 for a spelling program, they don’t have access to that,” she said told the Associated Press. After her victory, Avant-garde said that had taken up competitive spelling only two years ago. “Spelling is really a side thing I do,” she told the Associated Press. “It’s like a little hors d’ouevre. But basketball’s like the main dish.”

The finalists included –

Roy Seligman, 12, from Nassau, The Bahamas. Sponsored by The Ministry of Education.

Bhavana Madini, 13, from New York. Sponsored by NYC Regional Spelling Bee.

Sreethan Gajula, 14, from Charlotte, North Carolina. Sponsored by the Carolina Panthers.

Ashrita Gandhari, 14, from Leesburg, Virginia. Sponsored by Loudoun County Public Schools.

Avani Joshi, 13, from Loves Park, Illinois. Sponsored by Boone-Winnebago Regional Office of Education.

Zaila Avant-garde, 14, from New Orleans. Sponsored by New Orleans Chapter of The Links.

Vivinsha Veduru, 10, from Fort Worth, Texas. Sponsored by Texas Christian University.

Dhroov Bharatia, 12, from Dallas. Sponsored by Dallas Sports Commission.

Vihaan Sibal, 12, from Waco, Texas. Sponsored by Rapoport Holdings, LLC.

Akshainie Kamma, 13, from Austin, Texas. Sponsored by West Austin Chamber of Commerce.

Chaitra Thummala, 12, from San Francisco. Sponsored by Bay Area Regional Spelling Bee.

9 Of 11 US Spelling Bee Finalists Are Of Indian Origin

July 3, 2021July 9, 2021 Staff ReporterEducation, Sports, Youth 0

Nine Indian American kids proficiently advanced through all virtual rounds, while only two American kids made it to the US Spelling Bee annual contest. The 11 spellers will compete for the champion title during the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee Finals on July 8.

Nine of the 11 finalists for this year’s US Spelling Bee contest are Indian-Americans, reflecting the dominance young kids from the small ethnic community have had on this prestigious and high-pressure endurance test for more than a decade now. The 11 spellers, of which nine are Indian-Americans, will compete for the champion title during the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee Finals on July 8, a statement said on Monday. The Indian American children made it to the 2021 Finalists after advancing the tough three levels of competition hosted virtually: The Preliminaries on June 12, the Quarterfinals on June 15, and the Semifinals on June 27. The national finalists, aged 9 to 15, come from at least 50 US states and the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Department of Defense Schools in Europe, according to US broadcasters.

As many as 209 spellers competed on a national level, of those the 9 Indian American children qualified for semifinals held on June 27 Sunday from 7 to 11 pm on ESPN America for the championship trophy. During the in-person finals, the Bee will have the option of activating a spell-off if needed. The spell-off would be activated in the closing minutes of the competition if a champion has not yet been declared in a traditional, one-person, one-word round, it said. “We are honored to introduce our 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee Finalists. Round after round, this group of spellers proved their mettle, and we look forward to seeing them show off their knowledge and hard work as they square off against the dictionary on the national stage,” said Dr J Michael Durnil, executive director of the Bee.

“Congratulations to all of this year’s 209 national qualifiers – they’ve persevered over a year that has been challenging in many ways, and our team is proud to have witnessed their journey,” he said. The National Bee is a high-profile, high-pressure endurance test as much as a nerd spelling match and spellers spend months preparing for it. The final rounds of this year’s contest will be hosted in person at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida, and will be broadcast live in prime time on ESPN2.

The 11 finalists are Roy Seligman, 12, from Nassau, The Bahamas; BhavanaMadini, 13, from New York; SreethanGajula, 14, from Charlotte, North Carolina; Ashrita Gandhari, 14, from Leesburg, Virginia; Avani Joshi, 13, from Illinois; Zaila Avant-garde, 14, from New Orleans; VivinshaVeduru, 10, from Texas; DhroovBharatia, 12, from Dallas; Vihaan Sibal, 12, from Texas; AkshainieKamma, 13, from Texas and Chaitra Thummala, 12, from San Francisco. Over the past 20 years, Indian-Americans have been dominating the Spelling Bee contest even though they comprise only about 1 per cent of the US population.

In 2016, the Scripps National Spelling Bee was won by Indian American kids, NiharJanga, aged 11, from Texas, and JairamHathwar, aged 13, from New York. In 2017, the national spelling bee finals were bagged by AksharaPaimagam of Randolph Middle School of Indian origin. Meanwhile, the 2015 annual spelling bee contest was won by Gokul Venkatachalam and Vanya Shivashankar, both Indian American students, while Vanya’s older sister Kavya has won the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2009.

The other Indian kids to win the popular contest are AnsunSujoe and SriramHathwar in the year 2014, Arvind Mahankali in 2013, SnigdhaNandipati in 2012, Sukanya Roy in 2011 and AnamikaVeeramani in 2010. The Indian American Children have been qualifying for the US national spelling bee contest leaving their American friends behind with chances of more than 80 percent of them even winning, for the past several years. Interestingly, these Indian origin children comprise less than 1% of the total American school’s population. The Bee was cancelled in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. But there were eight co-champions in 2019, seven of whom were Indian-Americans, bringing the total number of Indian-American champions since 1999 to 26.

The show will also be broadcast LIVE prime time on ESPN2 at 8 pm ET. Those with no cable subscription can watch it on FuboTV, or Hulu streaming service, and Sling. One could also tune into the updates on the spellers’ official Instagram, or Twitter handle.

List of the 11 finalists for the US Spelling Bee contest 2021:

Roy Seligman, 12, from Nassau, The Bahamas
BhavanaMadini, 13, from New York
SreethanGajula, 14, from Charlotte, North Carolina
Ashrita Gandhari, 14, from Leesburg, Virginia
Avani Joshi, 13, from Illinois
Zaila Avant-garde, 14, from New Orleans
VivinshaVeduru, 10, from Texas
DhroovBharatia, 12, from Dallas
Vihaan Sibal, 12, from Texas
AkshainieKamma, 13, from Texas

Chaitra Thummala, 12, from San Francisco

Abhimanyu Mishra From New Jersey Is Youngest Ever Chess Grandmaster

July 3, 2021July 9, 2021 Staff ReporterSports, Youth 0

After months of uncertainty induced by the pandemic, together with a cash-crunch travelling around the world in these difficult times, Indian-origin American Abhimanyu Mishra has become the youngest-ever chess Grandmaster in the world. Mishra, who is from New Jersey, broke Sergey Karjakin’srecord of 12 years and seven months in Budapest, Hungary on Wednesday, June 30^th at the age of 12 years, four months and 25 days old. At the Vezerkepzo GM Mix tournament, Mishra defeated grandmaster Leon Mendonca in the thrilling ninth round to earn his third and final norm having earned his first two over the previous two months.

He had already topped the required 2500 Elo rating mark in June, paving the way for him to better the previous record — which had stood for 19 years — by approximately 66 days. To become a grandmaster in chess, a player must achieve three grandmaster norms — an award given for a high level of performance in a chess tournament — as well as achieving an 2500 Elo rating given out by the FédérationInternationale des Échecs (FIDE), the rankings that govern international chess competition. Three years ago, India’s R Praggnanandhaa had almost surpassed him, but missed the opportunity by a whisker. As did many assaults on the 19-year-old record until Abhimanyu’s moment.

But Abhimanyu, after becoming the world’s youngest International Master last year, chased his dream and achieved the feat at the Vezerkepzo GM Mix in Budapest, a tournament organised just to give him one final shot at the title, as several chess players stayed back due to travel restrictions. Abhimanyu has been in the Hungarian capital since April, in pursuit of the record. He had attained the first and second GM norms in April and May, but the third had seemed elusive with time catching up and fewer tournaments in the horizon. He had to wait till mid-July for another shot at the record, but for this tournament.

Those were angsty days for those around him. Like for GM MageshChandran, one of his coaches at the Kings and Queens Academy in New Jersey, where he polished his game as a quiet but eager child. “We don’t interact on a regular basis, but I keep a regular tab on him, follow each of his games and sometimes chip in with some advice whenever he is here. The sooner the better it would be for him and us. Once he comes back, we hope to catch up,” Chandran had told this paper last month.

Abhimanyu was just two-and-a-half-years old when his father Hemant, who works in data management, introduced him to chess. By five, he was beating his father and competing in local tournaments, where he started defeating players as old as his father. Another coach Arun Prasad remembers another incident. “He was just nine when he was pitted against a veteran 70-year-old opponent. He beat him in no time. I thought I was watching history in the making. I soon realisedhe’s not normal – in a great way. He remembers everything he sees. He remembers moves from games in 2014 and 2015. His mind absorbs everything.”

Abhimanyu’s fame began to spread and he started travelling when he was barely seven, the age at which he became the youngest national champion before becoming the youngest National Master in the US at the age of nine. However, without corporate sponsorships, his family had to dig deep into their pockets. “Whatever people spend on college tuition, we have already invested that in chess,” Hemant once told New Jersey Post. He has a gofund page, where they have raised close to USD 16,000 for their trip to Hungary.

But they are slowly reaping the fruits of their labour, as Abhimanyu is not just breaking records and accumulating ELO points at a rapid pace, but beating seasoned Grandmaster en route. At Charlotte Springs in the US in March, he defeated Vladimir Belous, rated 2521, in just 19 moves. Later, in the first tournament in Budapest, he outwitted top seed Vojtech Plat in convincing fashion, playing an all-out attacking game. “He can be aggressive as well as defensive, is quite fast and thinks on the feet,” says Magesh.

The family is understandably elated, and relieved. “Abhimanyu has worked hard all these years for this. He and his father have been in Budapest for the last three months as Abhimanyu wanted to compete in the chess circuit there to earn the remaining GM norms and becoming the youngest GM in the world is the result of his passion. It has been tough for the family as my husband and Abhimanyu are mostly travelling while I stay with my younger daughter, but this reward is bigger than anything,” Abhimanyu’s mother Swati Sharma said from New Jersey.

Though intense in front of the board, with large brooding eyes carefully working patterns, Abhimanyu is not an out-and-out chess buff. In fact, his sporing idol is swimmer Michael Phelps (his hero in chess is Garry Kasparov), wants to acquire a black belt in karate when he grows older, and plays a lot of video games (Brawl Stars is his favourite) with friends. But as of now, his eyes are firmly trained on the 64-square board.

Abhimanyu is in an elite group. Of the five previous youngest Grandmasters — from Tigran Petrosian (23) to Boris Spassky (18), then Bobby Fischer (15), JuditPolgar (15) and Karjakin—all but Karjakin went on to become world champions, which indicates that the 12-year-old’s journey has just begun, and the youngest GM record is just another milestone in his path. Inputs Nitin Sharma He posted a message of celebration on Twitter, saying: “Finally checkmated the biggest opponent (ongoing pandemic) which stopped me for 14 months. Thanks everybody for all your love and support. Looking forward for World cup.” Breaking records is something Mishra has become accustomed to. When he was just seven, he became the United States Chess Federation’s youngest Expert.

Web Resources To Prevent Youth Radicalization

July 3, 2021 American UniversityMedia, Technology, Youth 0

Newswise — New tools to help parents and educators protect vulnerable young people from online radicalization were released today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab (PERIL). The organizations released the new web resources in addition to updates to the 2020 guide, titled Building Resilience & Confronting Risk in the COVID-19 Era: A Parents & Caregivers Guide to Online Radicalization, and new tools specifically tailored for educators, counselors, coaches and mentors.

“Young people are being targeted online by extremists looking to exploit and radicalize them,” said Lydia Bates, Senior Research Analyst with the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. “This is why it was critical to us to not only provide resources for parents and caregivers but ensure they are as effective as possible.” In an impact study of 755 adults, the two organizations found that just seven minutes with the guide can dramatically improve a user’s knowledge of extremism and understanding of youth radicalization. Adults who spent more time reading the guide felt better equipped to take immediate action to prevent online radicalization.

Following last year’s release of the Building Resilience & Confronting Risk in the COVID-19 Era: A Parents & Caregivers Guide to Online Radicalization, SPLC and PERIL conducted the impact study and thirteen focus groups with educators, school counselors, social workers, coaches, mentors and youth group leaders. The findings from that research led to the development of SPLC and PERIL’s newly published resources. “Communities are looking for resources that not only help them recognize risks, but also build resilience to extremism,” said PERIL Director and Professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss. “Our goal is to inform and empower all adults with the tools to recognize signs of extremist radicalization and feel equipped to intervene with a young person in effective ways.”

The new resources include the updated Building Resilience & Confronting Risk: A Parents & Caregivers Guide to Online Radicalization as well as information about the key vulnerabilities that make youth more susceptible to radicalization; how to recognize the warning signs of radicalization; what drives online radicalization; how to get help and engage a radicalized child or young adult; and additional resources for help and support.

The new online resources can be viewed HERE and updated guide HERE.

Britney’s Explosive Testimony Changes Everything For Her Fans

July 3, 2021 Staff ReporterWomen, Youth 0

In an emotional, frustrated, 25-minute monologue last week, the 39-year-old singer called on the court in Los Angeles to end the “abusive” conservatorship, and said those responsible for enforcing it, including her father, Jamie Spears, “should be in jail”. The conservatorship was instituted in 2008 after Spears experienced a period of mental ill health. Lawyers for Jamie Spears have claimed he saved her life by placing her under the arrangement, which is typically used to protect the interests of mentally infirm people who are unable to advocate in their own best interest.

For leaders of the #FreeBritney movement, advocating for Britney Spears’ independence has just become more urgent than ever. As fans and supporters rallied outside the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in Los Angeles last week, Spears delivered an explosive 23-minute testimony against the conservatorship that’s controlled her life for 13 years. Speaking from a remote location, she publicly stated for the first time that the court-enforced arrangement is “abusive” and pled with Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny to terminate it immediately.

“It was like our worst fears being confirmed,” says Junior Olivas, a leader of the #FreeBritney movement. “We knew some dark stuff was going on behind the scenes, but to actually hear it from her own mouth and hear the pain in her voice was honestly heartbreaking. I was going through all the emotions. I was sad. I was angry. I was happy that she was actually speaking her truth. It was a whirlwind.” It has been a long and often arduous battle to convince the world that Spears is suffering under the conservatorship—a legal guardianship typically reserved for individuals with severe mental disabilities or elderly people who can no longer make their own decisions. Spears herself emphatically condemning the arrangement seemed to signal a turning point to proponents of #FreeBritney, who have advocated for her freedom through organizing protests, spreading awareness on social media and working with conservatorship reform groups.

Validation after years of dismissal

“Now, no one can deny us. No one can say that we’re conspiracy theorists or that we’re wrong,” says Megan Radford, co-manager of Free Britney LA’s social media accounts. “Team conservatorship or team con, as we call them, has no leg to stand on because Britney just blew everything up.” At the hearing, Spears compared her existence to that of a sex trafficking victim and excoriated her father, Jamie Spears, who, having served as conservator of both her person and estate, has been at the center of the conservatorship since it was put in place in 2008. “My dad and anyone involved in this conservatorship and my management, who played a key role in punishing me… should be in jail,” she said.

Spears also detailed how she’s been drugged, forced to work against her will, and prevented from choosing her own legal representation, marrying her longtime boyfriend, Sam Asghari, and removing an IUD that’s kept her from having another baby. “I’ve lied and told the whole world I’m OK and I’m happy,” she said. “I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized….I’m not happy. I can’t sleep. I’m so angry. It’s insane. And I’m depressed. I cry every day.”

The June 23 hearing came on the heels of a series of developments that had put Spears’ situation back in the spotlight, beginning with her January 2019 announcement that she was undertaking an “indefinite work hiatus.” Around four months later, a fan podcast called Britney’s Gram aired audio of a voicemail from an alleged former paralegal for an attorney who worked with Spears’ conservatorship claiming, among other things, that the singer’s March 2019 stay at a mental health facility was involuntary. This prompted an April 2019 public demonstration in Los Angeles where #FreeBritney activists demanded her release from the treatment facility.

Cricket Stars, Ashwin And Mithali Raj Recommended For Khel Ratna Award 2021

July 3, 2021 Staff ReporterSports, Youth 0

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has decided to recommend the names of spinner R Ashwin and women’s cricket team skipper Mithali Raj for this year’s Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, the country’s highest sporting honor. According to ANI, KL Rahul, JaspritBumrah and ShikharDhawan’s names will be forwarded for the Arjuna Award. The 34-year-old right arm off-breaker, Ashvinhas represented India in 79 Tests, 111 ODIs, and 46 T20Is so far since his debut in 2010.

Mithali became the only woman cricketer to have an international career spanning more than 22 years. The 38-year-old legend had made her debut on June 26, 1999. Only Sachin Tendulkar (22 years 91 days) has a longer career than Mithali Raj across men’s and women’s cricket. No other cricketer has been active in international cricket for as long as 22 years.

Besides, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) has recommended footballer Sunil Chhetri and the Odisha government nominated ace sprinter Dutee Chand for the Khel Ratna Award. Apart from Dutee, the Odisha government also sent five other recommendations to the sports ministry. Rohit Sharma was among five recipients who were awarded the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award for 2020. He was the fourth cricketer after Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, and ViratKohli to be honoured with the award last year.

CEO Satya Nadella Elected Chair Of Microsoft Board of Trustees

June 24, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Technology, Youth 0

Microsoft has elected Satya Nadella as Chairman of the tech giant, the first in two decades when Microsoft’s chairman will also be its CEO.Bill Gates was the only other Chairman and CEO of Microsoft who stepped down as CEO in 2000. In this role as Chairman, Nadella will lead the work to set the agenda for the board, leveraging his deep understanding of the business to elevate the right strategic opportunities and identify key risks and mitigation approaches for the board’s review, the company said in a statement late on Wednesday.

Gates stepped down as chairman in 2014 and the board then elected John Thompson as independent chairman. Gates left the Microsoft board entirely last year to pursue his philanthropic ambitions. Microsoft also unanimously elected John Thompson as lead independent director, a role he held previously from 2012 to 2014. As lead independent director, Thompson will retain significant authority including providing input on behalf of the independent directors on board agendas, calling meetings of the independent directors, setting agendas for executive sessions, and leading performance evaluations of the CEO, Microsoft said. In addition to these role changes, the board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.56 per share.

Accolades and congratulatory messages poured in for Satya Nadella, who was elected as Microsoft Chairman even as he held the CEO post at the tech giant, a feat achieved first time in two decades.

J.C. Pavan Reddy, a Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader said the elevation of Nadella is a very proud moment for all the Telugu people across the globe. “Satya Nadella on his new role as Microsoft chairman! A very proud moment for Telugu people across the globe,” said Reddy on Friday. Earlier, TDP supremo and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu echoed with a similar message. “Congratulations to Nadella on his new role as Microsoft chairman! A very proud moment for Telugu people across the globe.

Nadella met Naidu back in 2015 when he was the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Likewise, TDP national general secretary and the party’s second in command Nara Lokesh was elated to know about Nadella’s promotion. “Elated to hear that Nadella has been appointed as the chairman of Microsoft. He has made every Telugu proud with his stellar achievements,” said Lokesh. Congratulating the new MS chairman, Lokesh wished him all the best for his new role.

The new Microsoft chairman’s father, B.N. Yugandhar, was an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and belonged to Anantapur district in the Rayalaseema region of the southern state. Nadella was born in Hyderabad (present-day Telangana) and earned bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka. “I always knew I wanted to build things,” he once said. On February 4, 2014, he was announced as the new CEO of Microsoft, the third CEO in the company’s history following Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

Under Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft has become one of the most valuable companies in the world, riding on its growing Azure Cloud, Microsoft 365 and enterprise communication businesses (including Teams). Microsoft reported a strong growth of $41.7 billion in sales (up 19 per cent year-over-year) and $15.5 billion in net income for the quarter ended March 31, 2021.

The biggest growth engine was its Azure Cloud division that saw $15.1 billion in revenue, a 23 per cent year-over-year increase. “Over a year into the pandemic, digital adoption curves aren’t slowing down. They’re accelerating, and it’s just the beginning. We are building the cloud for the next decade, expanding our addressable market and innovating across every layer of the tech stack to help our customers be resilient and transform,” Nadella had said. Driven by online work and learning amid the ongoing pandemic, Microsoft Teams now have 145 million daily active users globally, almost double the numbers a year ago. (IANS)

4 Persons of Indian Origin Feature in Fortune’s 2021 World’s 50 Greatest Leaders List

June 18, 2021 Staff ReporterProfile, Youth 0

Adar Poonawalla, head of the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, is among the top 10 among the 50 Word’s Greatest Leaders, 2021 listed by Fortune magazine. Others named to the list featured Armman organization’s Indian founder and chairperson Dr. Aparna Hegde at No.15; Indian Americans Sunrise Movement executive director Varshini Prakash at No. 28, and Brown University School of Public Health Dean Ashish Jha at No. 50. Topping the 2021 list is New Zealand Prime Minister JacindaArdern, “who had already sealed her position as a great leader early in her premiership of New Zealand, by empathetically steering her country through the aftermath of a terror attack and the deadly eruption of a volcano. Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and Ardern targeted not just suppression of the virus, but its complete elimination.”

While introducing the Top 50 world leaders, Fortune wrote: “Many of them emerged almost instantly, seemingly out of nowhere, to meet unimagined crises. Like Fairley, they embody Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s conception of “a true leader”—someone who “has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others.” MacArthur also pointed out that such a person “does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of [their] actions and the integrity of their intent.”

On Poonawala, Fortune wrote: “Tasked with no less than bringing an end to the global pandemic, the SII has pledged to deliver up to 2 billion vaccine doses in the coming years to COVAX, a global initiative to provide vaccine to lower- and middle-income countries—and it has already provided more doses to that initiative than any other vaccine maker. The SII is producing two vaccines. The first, Covishield, is one of only a few vaccines approved by the World Health Organization and is based on the COVID vaccine AstraZeneca developed. SII’s other vaccine, called Covavax, is being produced in partnership with American firm Novavax, and may provide a 1.1 billion–dose boon to global vaccine stocks starting later this year once it clears clinical trials.”

Hegde, aurogynecologist, witnessed too many horrors delivering babies at a government hospital in Mumbai during her Residency. Worse, they were preventable: Time after time, she’d seen an infant or its mother, or both, die in childbirth, tragedies that could have been avoided with basic prenatal care or more timely dispatching of hospital resources, according to her profile. That’s what led her in 2008 to found Armman, an organization focused on bettering outcomes through the use of low-cost technology—like targeting pregnant women and new mothers with information through their cellphones, the bio said.

Today her nonprofit, which partners with the Indian government and dozens of NGOs in 17 states across the country, and represents one of the largest mobile health programs in the world and a lifeline for women in India: Armman has reached more than 24 million of them and trained more than 170,000 local health workers, it added. The model has proved powerful beyond prenatal care, too: When COVID struck, Armman’s network and virtual training platform made it a vital tool in educating women and health workers about the virus and vaccine.

Prakash was joined at her No. 28 ranking with Sunrise Movement training director Sara Blazevic. Co-founders Blazevic and Prakash helped officially launch the group of youth activists in 2017, and it is now one of the most effective coalitions fighting for climate action in the United States, according to the feature. Sunrise initially campaigned heavily for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, but Joe Biden actively courted it after emerging as the party’s frontrunner. Prakash was chosen by Biden to serve on the “unity task force” commissioned by both candidates to help assemble the party’s climate message. After the election, Sunrise leaders were also included in Biden’s transition, the profile said.

Rounding out the list was Jha. In the effort to contain an outbreak of COVID’s scope, there’s a delicate balance between messaging, compassion, and sober analysis, and Ashish Jha has become a downright Ariadne of this maze, the magazine said. A respected physician and public health scholar, Jha is a familiar face on cable news channels seeking insight on all matters COVID. Jha has a way, both in his public commentary and social media presence, of breaking down complicated public health issues in accessible language. His lack of a government affiliation has also helped him appear more trustworthy to skeptically inclined viewers, Fortune said. Jha’s unrelenting effort to share hard facts, easy-to-understand analysis, and a healthy sprinkling of empathy without judgment is a standard worth aspiring to, the report noted.

Lack Of Nutrients Cause Behavioral Changes?

June 18, 2021 Siddhi JainHealth, Lifestyle, Youth 0

It is a universal fact that a wholesome diet is mandatory for a healthy body. Lack of nutrition can lead to various diseases. The whole dietary pattern can be defined as the quantity, frequency, variety and combination of different foods and drinks that need to be consumed. Deficiency of any nutrients may cause physical, mental, and behavioural effects, says an expert. AseemSood, Managing Director, Proveda India, shares insights on the dietary pattern and its behavioral impact.

Iron Deficiency

If you find your child being tired and often irritated, then it is important to know the cause of it. These kids are also disruptive, have a short attention span and lack interest in their surroundings. Such behavioural changes are cause due to a lack of iron in the body. Iron deficiency can cause Anaemia. It is a condition in which you don’t have enough healthy red blood cells to carry adequate oxygen to your body’s tissues. Iron deficiency is commonly seen in preschool children and if they are not given iron-rich foods then they are easily prone to this deficiency.

Vitamin A deficiency

We often hear parents complaining about their kids being very aggressive and have rule-breaking behaviour. These kids show anxiety disorders in adolescence. Forgetfulness and low energy level show the deficiency of Vitamin A which is a very crucial group of nutrients. It is also required for a healthy reproductive system in men and women. Green and orange vegetables are a great source of Vitamin A nutrients. For newborn babies, breast milk is considered the best source of vitamin A.

Iodine Deficiency

In many cases, we have seen that children with mental disabilities, impaired intellectual development or impaired growth are victims of low iodine. Almost a third of the world’s population is shaken by Iodine deficiency. Thyroid hormones are a part of various physical growth like brain development, strong bones and regulating the metabolic rate in the body. The most widespread symptom of iodine deficiency is an enlarged thyroid gland. This may also cause an increase in heart rate, breathing problem, and weight gain.

Calcium Deficiency

If a person, irrespective of age groups, experiences weakness throughout, lack of energy and an overall feeling of sluggishness. Fatigue due to calcium deficiency can also lead to light headedness and dizziness which is also characterized by a lack of focus, forgetfulness, and confusion. Moreover, calcium works as a communicating particle. Without this, your heart, muscles, and nerves would not be able to function. Dairy products and dark green vegetables are a good source of calcium.

Magnesium Deficiency

A deficit of Magnesium can be seen through some symptoms like hyperactivity where the kid is fidgeting with hand or feet or is squirms in the seat. They become impulsive and don’t have control over their anger or movements. Their lack of attention, careless mistakes, loss of interest in a certain task where mental effort is required are all signs of low magnesium. The deficiency of magnesium can also lead to several conditions like type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and heart disease. In a long-term symptom, one may not notice insulin resistance and high blood pressure.

Improving diet intake is not easily achieved. Healthy eating patterns are all about regular consumption of a variety of foods from key food groups which includes cereal and cereal products, fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy products. Every so often, consuming foods contributing an equal quantity of nutrients to our health quotient is not possible and hence Immunity boosters are supplemented in our meal to fill in the required minerals. Considering the present scenario, Proveda India launched a segment of immunity boosters and drinks that are a unique combination of science and nature. (IANS)

CDC Reports, CovidIncreased Suicide Attempts In Teenage Girls By Over 50%

June 18, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Youth 0

Suicide attempts by teenage girls in the US rose by 51 per cent during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The report showed that between February 21 and March 20, 2021, the emergency department (ED) visits for suspected suicide attempts were 50.6 per cent higher among girls aged 12-17 years than during the same period in 2019. Among boys aged 12-17 years, the suspected suicide attempt ED visits increased 3.7 per cent.The difference in suspected suicide attempts by sex and the increase in suspected suicide attempts among young persons, especially adolescent females, is consistent with past research.

“However, the findings from this study suggest more severe distress among young females than has been identified in previous reports during the pandemic reinforcing the need for increased attention to, and prevention for, this population,” the CDC said.The ED visits for suspected suicide attempts begin to rise in May last year. The average weekly number of ED visits for suspected suicide attempts among adolescents 12-17 years was 22.3 per cent higher during the summer of 2020 and 39.1 per cent higher during the winter of 2021 than during the corresponding periods in 2019, the report said.

While the average weekly number rose among girls — 26.2 per cent higher in the summer and 50 per cent higher in the winter, among boys aged 12-17, the visits increased only 3.7 per cent in the winter compared to the same period in 2019.Importantly, although this report found increases in ED visits for suspected suicide attempts among adolescent females during 2020 and early 2021, this does not mean that suicide deaths have increased, the agency said.

“Suicide prevention requires a comprehensive approach that is adapted during times of infrastructure disruption, involves multisectoral partnerships and implements evidence-based strategies to address the range of factors influencing suicide risk,” the CDC said.A recent study published in The Lancet Psychiatry, also showed that Covid-19 has had a significant, detrimental impact on adolescent mental health, especially in girls. The study found that negative mental health outcomes were disproportionately reported by girls and older adolescents (13-18-year-olds), compared to same-age peers prior to the pandemic. (IANS.

Youth Demand Action on Nature, Following IUCN’s First-Ever Global Youth Summit

June 10, 2021June 18, 2021 Alison Kentish ,Inter Press AgencyEnvironment, Global, Youth 0

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, IPS features and opinion editorials focusing on Environment and Youth. Theunn reproduces the voices by youth at the UN Youth Summit on Environment

Following almost two weeks of talks on issues such as climate change, innovation, marine conservation and social justice, thousands of young people from across the globe concluded the first-ever International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN)One Nature One Future Global Youth Summit with a list of demands for action on nature.Under three umbrella themes of diversity, accessibility and intersectionality, they are calling on countries and corporations to invest the required resources to redress environmental racism and climate injustice, create green jobs, engage communities for biodiversity protection, safeguard the ocean, realise gender equality for climate change mitigation and empower underrepresented voices in environmental policymaking.

“Young people talk about these key demands that they have and most of the time, they are criticised for always saying ‘I want this,’ and are told ‘but you’re not even sure you know what you can do,’” Global South Focal Point for the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN) SwethaStotraBhashyam told IPS. “So we linked our demands to our own actions through our ‘Your Promise, Our Future’ campaign and are showing world leaders what we are doing for the world and then asking them what they are going to do for us and our future.”

Bhashyam is one of the young people dedicated to climate and conservation action. A zoologist who once studied rare species from the field in India, she told IPS that while she hoped to someday return to wildlife studies and research, her skills in advocacy and rallying young people are urgently needed. Through her work with GYBN, the youth constituency recognised under the Convention on Biological Diversity, she stated proudly that the network has truly become ‘grassroots,’ with 46 national chapters. She said the IUCN Global Youth Summit, which took place from Apr. 5 to 16,gave youth networks like hers an unprecedented platform to reach tens of thousands of the world’s youth.

“The Summit was able to create spaces for young people to voice their opinions. We in the biodiversity space have these spaces, but cannot reach the numbers that IUCN can. IUCN not only reached a larger subset of youth, but gave us an open space to talk about critical issues,” she said. “They even let us write a blog about it on their main IUCN page. It’s called IUCN Crossroads. They tried to ensure that the voice of young people was really mainstream in those two weeks.”

The United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, JayathmaWickramanayake, told IPS that the Summit achieved an important goal of bringing institutions and political conversations closer to young people. During her tenure, Wickramanayake has advocated for a common set of principles for youth engagement within the UN system, based on rights, safety and adequate financing. She said it is important for institutions to open their doors to meaningful engagement with young people.“I remember in 8th or 9th grade in one of our biology classes, we were taught about endangered animal species. We learned about this organisation called IUCN, which works on biodiversity. In my head, this was a big organisation that was out of my reach as a young person.

“But having the opportunity to attend the IUCN Summit, even virtually, engage with its officials and engage with other young people, really gave me and perhaps gave other young people a sense of belonging and a sense of taking us closer to institutions trying to achieve the same goals as we are as youth advocates.”The Youth Envoy said the Summit was timely for young people, allowing them to meet virtually following a particularly difficult year and during a pandemic that has cost them jobs, education opportunities and raised anxieties.

“Youth activists felt that the momentum we had created from years of campaigning, protesting and striking school would be diluted because of this uncertainty and postponement of big negotiations. In order to keep the momentum high and maintain the pressure on institutions and governments, summits like this one are extremely important,” Wickramanayake said.Global Youth Summit speakers during live sessions and intergenerational dialogues. Courtesy: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

Other outcomes of the Global Youth Summit included calls to:

advance food sovereignty for marginalised communities, which included recommendations to promote climate-smart farming techniques through direct access to funding for marginalised communities most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and extreme events,
motivate creative responses to the climate emergency, and
engineer sustainable futures through citizen science, which included recommendations to develop accessible education materials that promote the idea that everyone can participate in data collection and scientific knowledge creation.

The event was billed as not just a summit, but an experience. There were a number of sessions live streamed over the two weeks, including on youth engagement in conservation governance, a live story slam event, yoga as well as a session on how to start up and scale up a sustainable lifestyle business. There were also various networking sessions.Diana Garlytska of Lithuania represented Coalition WILD, as the co-chair of the youth-led organisation, which works to create lasting youth leadership for the planet.

She told IPS the Summit was a “very powerful and immersive experience”. “I am impressed at how knowledgeable the young people of different ages were. Many spoke about recycling projects and entrepreneurship activities from their own experiences. Others shared ideas on how to use different art forms for communicating climate emergencies. Somehow, the conversation I most vividly remember was on how to disclose environmental issues in theatrical performances. I’m taking that with me as food for thought,” Garlytska said.For Emmanuel Sindikubwabo of Rwanda’s reforestation and youth environmental education organisation We Do GREEN, the Summit provided excellent networking opportunities.

“I truly believe that youth around the world are better connected because of the Summit. It’s scary because so much is going wrong because of the pandemic, but exciting because there was this invitation to collaborate. There is a lot of youth action taking place already. We need to do better at showcasing and supporting it,” he told IPS.Sindikubwabo said he is ready to implement what he learned at the Summit. “The IUCN Global Youth Summit has provided my team and I at We Do GREEN new insight and perspective from the global youth community that will be useful to redefine our programming in Rwanda….as the world faces the triple-crises; climate, nature and poverty, we made a lot of new connections that will make a significant positive change in our communities and nation in the near future.”

The Global Youth Summit took place less than six months before the IUCN World Conservation Congress, scheduled forSep. 3 to 11. Its outcomes will be presented at the Congress.Reflecting on the just-concluded event, the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth is hoping to see more of these events. “I would like to see that this becomes the norm. This was IUCN’s first youth summit, which is great and I hope that it will not be the last, that it will just be a beginning of a longer conversation and more sustainable conversation with young people on IUCN… its work, its strategies, policies and negotiations,” Wickramanayake said.

(Picture & Caption By IPS: The United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, JayathmaWickramanayake, told IPS that the Summit achieved an important goal of bringing institutions and political conversations closer to young people. Clockwise from top left: JayathmaWickramanayake, SwethaStotraBhashyam, Emmanuel Sindikubwabo, DianaGarlytska. Courtesy: International Union for Conservation of Nature)

Students Vaccinated In India Need To Revaccinate To Enter U.S. Colleges

June 10, 2021 Staff ReporterEducation, Health, Youth 0

Since this March, over 400 U.S. colleges and universities have announced students should get Covid-19 vaccinations, ahead of the fall semester, but those who have been inoculated with India’s indigenous Covaxin or the Russian-made Sputnik V are being asked to revaccinate as these vaccines have not yet been approved by the World Health Organization. Rukmini Callimachi reports in the The New York Times that MilloniDoshi, a 25-year-old student from India, who is due to start her master’s degree this fall at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, has been administered two doses of Covaxin. Now, Columbia has told her that she will need to be revaccinated with a different vaccine once she arrives on campus.

“I am just concerned about taking two different vaccines. They said the application process would be the toughest part of the cycle, but it’s really been all of this that has been uncertain and anxiety-inducing,” Doshi wrote via a messaging app.Campuses are proposing different measures, out of which the more complicated scenario is if students received a vaccine that has not been approved by the WHO, like Sputnik or Covaxin. Many colleges are proposing that those students will need to be revaccinated, which presents both medical and logistical conundrums.

This is primarily because no data exists on whether combing vaccines from different companies is safe. “Since Covid-19 vaccines are not interchangeable, the safety and effectiveness of receiving two different Covid-19 vaccines have not been studied,” said Kristen Nordlund, spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Nordlund also advised that people vaccinated outside the U.S. with a vaccine not authorized by WHO should wait for a minimum of 28 days before taking the first dose of one of the Food and Drug Administration-sanctioned vaccines.

American students have access to the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, three of the eight doses authorized by the global health body. This disparity could hinder colleges that have made it a major priority to retain international students, who brought in close to $39 billion in tuition dollars in the year before the pandemic, according to an analysis.”Universities want to enroll international students because they add diversity to the campus community — and they bring money. It’s why this has been a subject of intense discussion,” said Terry W Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education.

According to The New York Times, the situation is particularly challenging for students from India, which sends around 200,000 international students to American colleges every year. It is becoming increasingly hard to secure an appointment for a vaccine that will be accepted by American campuses.”Every day, we get 10 to 15 messages and inquiries, saying ‘What does this mean? How does this impact me?'” said Sudhanshu Kaushik, who runs the North American Association of Indian Students, which is working to help fellow students.

Indiana University’s vice president for international affairs, Hannah Buxbaum, said that the administrators of the institution are working overtime to answer the roughly 200 phone calls and 300 emails that are pouring in every day from the university’s roughly 6,000 students overseas.”Ringing off the hook doesn’t begin to describe. There is no question that there is anxiety and concern among our international students,” she said.

Many universities are only accepting the students who have been vaccinated with a WHO-approved COVID-19 vaccine. At Columbia, where one-third of the student body is from overseas, international students will be asked to present either their WHO booklet or a letter from a physician confirming they have received the requisite doses of one of the vaccines vetted by the world body, said Donna Lynne, the chief operating officer of the university’s medical center.Callimachi wrote in The New York Times that those who will not succeed in securing a vaccine before the start of the fall semester are facing a potentially problematic process.

Many universities were vague on how they plan to deal with the logistical complexity of spacing out these unrelated vaccines, beyond saying that they planned to accommodate students undergoing this process, reports The New York Times.At least six regional governments in India have announced emergency clinics in the past week to vaccine students going to U.S. universities, in the wake of mounting pressure from confused and anxious students, wrote Callimachi.However, Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech June 3 said that biopharmaceutical company Ocugen Inc. will have exclusive co-development, manufacturing, and commercialization rights of its COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin in Canada, in addition to its existing U.S. rights.

FAFSA Verification: An Undue Burden For Students And Public Colleges

June 10, 2021June 10, 2021 Alberto Guzman-Alvarez and Lindsay C. PageEducation, Youth 0

As colleges start planning their return to in-person learning in the fall, the college admissions season is well underway. College-intending students are currently navigating access to the financial aid critical to affording college. This year, nearly 20 million new and returning students will apply for federal financial aid through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The FAFSA is notoriously time consuming. Yet, for many who complete the FAFSA, the process of accessing financial aid is far from over. Particularly for students from under-resourced and minoritized groups, their FAFSA has a good chance of being flagged for further scrutiny, jeopardizing the aid they qualify for.

Each year, the U.S. Education Department (ED) flags millions of students to undergo an audit of their FAFSA through a process termed verification. Verification requires students to further attest to—and, in some cases, prove—that the information reported on their FAFSA is accurate. ED’s stated goal of verification is to make sure that the nearly $41 billion in federal financial aid is going to students who are rightly entitled to it.Verification can take many forms. From relatively quick tasks, such as verifying family size, to more time-consuming actions, such as proving a parent’s unemployment status with a notarized letter. If students fail to complete verification, they may fail to receive federal aid and, in some cases, also become ineligible for institutional or state aid.

ED selects around 25% of all FAFSA filers for verification. This rate strikes us as surprisingly high, especially in contrast to the less than 2% of federal tax returns selected for audit annually. The verification rate is nearly three times higher (60%) for the 34% of under-resourced students who qualify for federal need-based Pell Grants. Even more concerning is when the nearly 25% of Pell-eligible FAFSA fillers flagged for verification fail to complete the process and therefore lose out on thousands in federal aid. By definition, students eligible for Pell Grants must “display exceptional financial need.” Still, verification requires these students to go to great lengths to prove repeatedly that they are poor.

What about the administrative burden to the colleges and universities these students attend? In a newly published paper, we consider the magnitude of these institutional costs. Although the federal government selects students for verification, the process is otherwise decentralized, with college financial aid offices bearing responsibility for administering the process.

We estimate that responsibility for this step in the financial aid process alone costs U.S. colleges nearly $500 million annually. This is roughly equal to an additional 130,000 Pell Grants for under-resourced students. Compared to the backdrop of $41 billion in financial aid, $500 million may seem like a reasonable expenditure. However, this cost is not borne equally by all institutions. We estimate that community colleges—which serve a disproportionate share of Pell recipients—spend almost a quarter of their financial-aid-office operating budget on verification procedures alone, compared to only 1% at private universities. To put this one-quarter figure into perspective, it is equivalent to three full-time staff members devoted to verification instead of other services, such as financial aid counseling. Such counseling might support students to seek emergency aid when faced with economic setbacks that could otherwise hinder their postsecondary progress, a frequent occurrence at public colleges.

ED has recently announced a decrease in the verification rate for next year’s FAFSA filers to 18%. Alongside it, ED has also announced simplifications to the FAFSA, including a reduction in the number of items it includes. These are moves in the right direction; however, if procedures for verification selection remain unchanged, the process will still place demands disproportionately on under-resourced students and the institutions they attend. These are the same students and institutions hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The resulting economic hardship faced by these students and their families undoubtedly will create increased pressure on financial aid offices.

Of course, ED’s role is to be a responsible steward of the tax dollars devoted to federal financial aid. However, evidence suggests that current audit procedures do little to change financial aid eligibility for those who complete verification. Further, any audit system should attend to inequitable distribution of burden to institutions.

To offer some final perspective, why should the federal government require burdensome verification procedures for low-income college students at nearly 20 times the rate at which federal tax returns are selected for audit? If the federal government instead focused on recuperating unpaid federal income taxes just among the top 1% of earners, federal revenue would increase by an estimated $175 billion—more than four times the total federal grant aid allocation every year. That would be an effort well spent.

‘Born Digital’ Indian Workers Want 4-Day Week Amid Pandemic

June 3, 2021 Staff ReporterEconomy, Technology, Youth 0

More than three in four young Indian workers believe that employers should offer the opportunity to work a four-day week to promote employee well-being post-pandemic, a new report said on Wednesday.Made up of millennials (born 1981 to 1996) and Generation Z (born after 1997) workers, the ‘Born Digital’ are the first generation to grow up in an entirely digital world, and now account for most of the global workforce.

According to the report by desktop virtualisation leader Citrix, ‘Born Digital’ employees in India (76 per cent) prefer to retain a remote or hybrid work model post-pandemic.Nearly 86 per cent of ‘Born Digital’ employees in India believe that the pandemic has shown that their organisation needs to invest more in digital technology, compared to 16 per cent of business leaders.

“These young employees are different from previous generations in that they have only ever known a tech-driven world of work,” said Donna Kimmel, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, Citrix.“To shore up their future business success, companies must understand their values, career aspirations and working styles and invest in their development,” Kimmel said in a statement.

A striking 90 per cent of ‘Born Digital’ in India expect employers to have a better understanding of family commitments, compared to the global average of 74 per cent.Also, 92 per cent of ‘Born Digital’ workers in India say they would prioritise employee well-being as they advance in their career.

“Younger workers in India are most focused on career stability and security (94 per cent), opportunities for additional qualifications, training, or re-skilling (93 per cent), and access to quality workplace technology (92 per cent),” the Citrix findings showed.Leaders in the country, on the other hand, think young workers prioritise a competitive remuneration package and job satisfaction over all other work factors.

“Successfully attracting and retaining the Born Digital will require organisations to invest in the work model and tools to create the flexible, efficient and engaged work environment that this next generation of leaders craves and thrives in,” said Tim Minahan, Executive Vice President of Business Strategy, Citrix. (IANS)

Saina, SrikathDo Not Qualify For Olympics in Japan

June 3, 2021 Staff ReporterSports, Youth 0

Olympic medallistSainaNehwal and Kidambi Srikanth’s hopes of making it to this year’s Tokyo Olympic Games ended on Friday as badminton’s global governing body said that no more qualifying tournaments would be played due to the Covid-19 pandemic.“The Badminton World Federation (BWF) can confirm no further tournaments will be played inside the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games qualifying window. As such, while the qualification period officially closes 15 June 2021 as per the Revised Tokyo 2020 Qualification System, the current Race To Tokyo rankings list will not change,” the world body said.

Four Indians — PV Sindhu, Sai Praneeth, SatwiksairajRankireddy, and Chirag Shetty — have qualified for the July-August Olympics in Tokyo. Olympic silver medallist Sindhu and 2019 World Championships bronze medallistPraneeth will represent India in women’s and men’s singles while Rankireddy and Shetty have qualified for the men’s doubles event.While Srikanth and Saina were the closest to qualifying among the Indians, Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy too had an outside of chance of making it to the Olympics in women’s doubles.

Players had to be ranked inside the top 16 of the singles rankings in the Race to Tokyo standings and the top eight of the doubles rankings to achieve qualification. Saina is ranked 22nd while Srikanth is 20th. Ashwini and Sikki are ranked 26th. Sindhu, who won gold at the 2019 World Championships, is ranked seventh while Praneeth is 13th.Both Saina, India’s first Olympic medallist in badminton, and Srikanth, who became world No.1 in 2017, are ageing and might find it difficult to appear in the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Three years from now, the competition too could become tougher.

Saina is 31 while Srikanth is 28. Srikanth may still pose a challenge for a spot in the 2024 Olympics, by which time he would be 31. On the other hand, Tokyo might have been the last chance for Saina to challenge for a second Olympics medal as she would be 35 by 2024.Their chances of making it to the Olympics were significantly depleted by postponement of a number of tournaments that served as qualifiers, most notably the Indian Open, the Malaysian Open, and the Singapore Open, in March and April.

The three tournaments were the last in the qualification calendar and were all deferred amid a deadly second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India. “The Olympic qualification process is in effect closed as there are no additional opportunities for players to earn points,” said BWF secretary general Thomas Lund.“However, we still need to receive confirmations from National Olympic Committees and Member Associations, followed by any possible reallocations, and this will take a number of weeks to complete,” he said.Invitations will be sent shortly, with final participation lists and seedings to be published at the conclusion of this process, the BWF said. (IANS)

Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine Is Said To Be Safe And Effective For Teens

May 27, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Youth 0

Moderna has stated in a statement issued on May 25^th that its vaccine is safe and efficacious among 12- to 18-year olds.The company reported results from its combined Phase 2 and 3 study involving more than 3,700 teens who were randomly assigned to receive either two doses of its COVID-19 vaccine or two doses of placebo. The study was designed to compare results among the teens to those among adults, which led to the company’s current emergency use authorization for its vaccine. Researchers are looking to see if the results among teens are at least as good, and not worse, than those among adults.

And that’s what the company reported. There were no cases of COVID-19 reported 14 days after the teenage study participants received two doses of the shot, compared to four cases among those receiving a placebo, meaning the vaccine was 100% efficacious in protecting against disease. The company said that the vaccine was also 93% efficacious in protecting against even one symptom of COVID-19 disease after one dose.

Moderna is the second company to report COVID-19 vaccine results among teens; in March, Pfizer-BioNTechreported similar safety and efficacy of 100% in its study and received authorization from the FDA for its two-dose shot among teens in May. Both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are built on mRNA technology, which involves using genetic material from the COVID-19 virus to train the immune system to fight it.

Moderna plans to submit the latest data from the teens to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to expand the current authorization for its vaccine to children as young as 12 years old.

Pfizer Hopeful, FDA Will Soon Authorize COVID-19 Vaccine For 12-15 Age Group

May 12, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Youth 0

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children 12 to 15 years old, a decision that could come by some time early next week. The vaccine is currently authorized only for people age 16 and older.

A ruling should come “shortly,” Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla told investors in a conference call Tuesday morning. The company announced in late March that it would ask the FDA to expand its emergency use authorization to allow younger people to receive the vaccine, citing clinical trials that showed the vaccine elicits “100% efficacy and robust antibody responses” in adolescents from 12 to 15 years old.
News of the pending authorization comes as children now represent a rising proportion of new coronavirus cases in the U.S., where more than 100 million adults have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Pfizer is conducting pediatric studies to determine the safety and benefits of administering its vaccine to young children. The company plans to submit two new emergency use authorization requests in September, with one request covering children from 2 to 5 years old and a second applying to ages 5 to 11. A separate batch of results and a possible request, for children who are from 6 months to 2 years old, are expected in the fourth quarter. “We also expect to have Phase 2 safety data from our ongoing study in pregnant women by late July/early August,” Bourla said, according to his prepared remarks.

Looking further into the future, Bourla said he anticipates “durable demand” for the COVID-19 vaccine, similar to that for flu vaccines. And he said that later this month, Pfizer will ask the FDA to give full approval — not just emergency authorization — for administering its vaccine to people ages 16 and up. The company is also studying how a third booster shot could help protect people who have already undergone the two-dose regimen.

Pfizer and BioNTech, its partner in developing the vaccine, expect to be able to produce at least 3 billion doses in 2022, the Pfizer chief said.
The COVID-19 vaccine has already brought billions of dollars to Pfizer; Bourla said that in the first quarter of 2021 alone, the vaccine added $3.5 billion in global revenue. For the year overall, he said, Pfizer expects to bring in around $26 billion based on the vaccine. The company and BioNTech have shipped some 430 million doses to 91 countries and territories, Bourla said.

Indian-American Triplets Raise Over $280,000 For Covid Help In India

May 12, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Youth 0

Three Indian-American siblings raised more than USD280,000 to send essential oxygen supplies for COVID-19 patients in India. Gia, Karina and Armaan Gupta, who are the founders of a non-profit organization, Little Mentors, have raised $280,000 to help India will essential oxygen supplies. The 15-year-old triplets said they reached out to their school friends and families for funds so that they could arrange life-saving equipment like oxygen concentrators and ventilators for needy patients in the country.

Founders of a non-profit organization, Little Mentors, said they reached out to their school friends and families for funds so that they could arrange life-saving equipment like oxygen concentrators and ventilators for needy patients and hospitals in and around Delhi.

“Our only request is to return it (the equipment) when it’s not further needed as the next patient can use it, said 15-year-old triplets Gia, Karina and Armaan Gupta. “This is important as supply of this equipment is very scarce and the affected population is enormous,” they said. The triplets said they also plan to keep a database of the needy population so that supply could be properly directed.

We need everybody’s help in this as such an enormous task can only be accomplished by teamwork. We are very fortunate to work with an excellent team of physicians, both in the US and India. We are further working on getting vaccine supplies, they said.

Previously, the triplets worked to reach out to senators and congressmen, requesting to lift the critical supply embargo.

“Although we hope and pray that this second wave of the coronavirus will go away soon, we are getting ready for the worst and asking people to be careful and help each other in this major crisis,” they said. Besides, the group plans to open distribution centres in major cities.

Indian Students To Benefit As Canada Offers Residency To 90,000

May 12, 2021May 12, 2021 Staff ReporterEconomy, Immigration, Youth 0

Indian students will be the major beneficiaries of Canada’s new one-time immigration program which opened for applications last week. Under the program, over 90,000 international students and temporary essential workers, already in Canada, will be given permanent residence (PR).

Under it, 40,000 international students, 30,000 temporary workers in selected essential occupations and 20,000 temporary workers in health care will get permanent residence. To be eligible, international students must have completed a post-secondary programme in Canada in the last four years.

Foreign workers must have at least one year of Canadian work experience in a health care profession or another pre-approved essential occupation. Indian students will benefit proportionately more than others as they – numbering 220,000 last year – make up more than a third of all foreign students currently in Canada. Before the pandemic closed international travel, Canada had planned to admit 341,000 immigrants in 2020.

The new PR program aims at making up for the shortfall in immigration numbers in 2020 by prioritizing those already in Canada. Moreover, a record 401,000 new immigrants will be admitted in 2021.

Highlighting the significance of Wednesday’s programme, Immigration minister Marco Mendicino said, “The pandemic has shone a bright light on the contributions of newcomers in essential jobs, as we have recognized the caregivers, cooks and cashiers as our everyday heroes. With this new pathway, we are recognizing their key role in our economic recovery, allowing them to set down roots in Canada and help us build back better. Our message to them is simple: your status may be temporary, but your contributions are lasting-and we want you to stay.” (IANS)

Youth Demand Action on Nature, Following IUCN’s First-Ever Global Youth Summit

May 5, 2021May 5, 2021 Alison Kentish ,Inter Press AgencyEducation, Environment, Women, Youth 0

Under three umbrella themes of diversity, accessibility and intersectionality, they are calling on countries and corporations to invest the required resources to redress environmental racism and climate injustice, create green jobs, engage communities for biodiversity protection, safeguard the ocean, realise gender equality for climate change mitigation and empower underrepresented voices in environmental policymaking.

“Young people talk about these key demands that they have and most of the time, they are criticised for always saying ‘I want this,’ and are told ‘but you’re not even sure you know what you can do,’” Global South Focal Point for the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN) Swetha Stotra Bhashyam told IPS. “So we linked our demands to our own actions through our ‘Your Promise, Our Future’ campaign and are showing world leaders what we are doing for the world and then asking them what they are going to do for us and our future.”

Bhashyam is one of the young people dedicated to climate and conservation action. A zoologist who once studied rare species from the field in India, she told IPS that while she hoped to someday return to wildlife studies and research, her skills in advocacy and rallying young people are urgently needed. Through her work with GYBN, the youth constituency recognised under the Convention on Biological Diversity, she stated proudly that the network has truly become ‘grassroots,’ with 46 national chapters. She said the IUCN Global Youth Summit, which took place from Apr. 5 to 16, gave youth networks like hers an unprecedented platform to reach tens of thousands of the world’s youth.

“I remember in 8th or 9th grade in one of our biology classes, we were taught about endangered animal species. We learned about this organisation called IUCN, which works on biodiversity. In my head, this was a big organisation that was out of my reach as a young person.

The Youth Envoy said the Summit was timely for young people, allowing them to meet virtually following a particularly difficult year and during a pandemic that has cost them jobs, education opportunities and raised anxieties.

Global Youth Summit speakers during live sessions and intergenerational dialogues. Courtesy: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

Other outcomes of the Global Youth Summit included calls to:

advance food sovereignty for marginalised communities, which included recommendations to promote climate-smart farming techniques through direct access to funding for marginalised communities most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and extreme events,
motivate creative responses to the climate emergency, and
engineer sustainable futures through citizen science, which included recommendations to develop accessible education materials that promote the idea that everyone can participate in data collection and scientific knowledge creation.

Diana Garlytska of Lithuania represented Coalition WILD, as the co-chair of the youth-led organisation, which works to create lasting youth leadership for the planet.

She told IPS the Summit was a “very powerful and immersive experience”.

“I am impressed at how knowledgeable the young people of different ages were. Many spoke about recycling projects and entrepreneurship activities from their own experiences. Others shared ideas on how to use different art forms for communicating climate emergencies. Somehow, the conversation I most vividly remember was on how to disclose environmental issues in theatrical performances. I’m taking that with me as food for thought,” Garlytska said.

For Emmanuel Sindikubwabo of Rwanda’s reforestation and youth environmental education organisation We Do GREEN, the Summit provided excellent networking opportunities.

Sindikubwabo said he is ready to implement what he learned at the Summit.

“The IUCN Global Youth Summit has provided my team and I at We Do GREEN new insight and perspective from the global youth community that will be useful to redefine our programming in Rwanda….as the world faces the triple-crises; climate, nature and poverty, we made a lot of new connections that will make a significant positive change in our communities and nation in the near future.”

The Global Youth Summit took place less than six months before the IUCN World Conservation Congress, scheduled forSep. 3 to 11. Its outcomes will be presented at the Congress.

Reflecting on the just-concluded event, the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth is hoping to see more of these events.

“I would like to see that this becomes the norm. This was IUCN’s first youth summit, which is great and I hope that it will not be the last, that it will just be a beginning of a longer conversation and more sustainable conversation with young people on IUCN… its work, its strategies, policies and negotiations,” Wickramanayake said.

Bal Ashram Students In Jaipur, India Learning AI Virtually From US During Pandemic

April 28, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Youth 0

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s Bal Ashram students, 4-6 grades, in Jaipur India are learning Scratch Coding and Games virtually, with donated classes by TechnogenesisGlobal, Inc., an edu-tech non-profit based in Princeton-New Jersey, during the pandemic.

The classes are led by Bal Ashram’s Kinsu Kumar, who recently was awarded the Billion Acts of Peace Award by Peace Jam.

Billion Acts of Peace, initiative of the PeaceJam Foundation, a global movement led by fourteen Nobel Peace Prize Winners and youth around the world with the ambitious goal of creating One Billion Acts of Peace by 2021, and in doing so, inspiring everyday people to change the world – one Act of Peace at a time.

The one month pilot program was taught by American teachers skilled in technology. The future classes will explore robotics, 3D printing, other topics, and aligned with ILO 2025 goals and UN’s SDG 2030.

Bal Ashram formed in 1998, is the rehabilitation and training center of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) catering for the special needs of victims of child labour. It provides rescued children with the compassion, education and vocational training they so desperately need.

“I am grateful to TechnogenesisGlobal for generous donation of their time and expertise and for not giving up on my persistent request about these wonderful angels ” said Kumu Gupta, who has been working with Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi on child labor issues for some time.

2021 being marked as International Year of Elimination of Child Labor by ILO (International Labor Organization) , a U.N. body, Kumu sent in a proposal to U.N. Stamps to issue a stamp commomerating the occassion and is working with her Congressman to pass legislation for US companies to buy child labor free goods in US and globally. Kumu also sent in a proposal to Mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, now US Labor Secretary for commorating 2021 as Elimination of Child Labor year once he took office.

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Indian Nurses Association of New York Announces Essay Contest

April 20, 2021April 20, 2021 Paul PanakalWomen, Youth 0

Indian Nurses Association of New York (INA-NY), the professional organization of nurses of Indian origin in the State of New York is inviting essays to the annual competition. The theme of the essay is “Nurses A Voice to Lead: A Vision for Future Healthcare”. All nurses of Indian origin/heritage living in New York State are eligible to participate in the competition.

The two-page essay should be double spaced, without any identifiable author’s personal information. A separate cover page with author’s name, credentials, telephone number(s) and email address is to be submitted with the essay.

The winners of 1st and 2nd place will be announced at the Nurses Day celebration of INA-NY on May 8th. Nominations are also invited for Annual Student Scholarship for undergraduate and Associate degree nursing students of Indian origin. The student must be a member of INA-NY. Application form for Graduate Nursing Student Scholarship can be obtained from inany.org.

Nominations for ‘INA-NY Nurse Excellence Award 2021’ are also accepted from INA-NY members. The selected candidate will exemplify the very best attributes of Nursing profession, excelled in giving high quality patient care and demonstrated a commitment to professional nursing practice.

The leadership of INA-NY intents to utilize the Nurses Day celebrations for promoting nursing, nurses, education, health and wellness. The submission is to be sent to Grace Alexander, Chair of the Awards & Scholarship committee at [email protected].

Study On Social Media Use in 2021

April 16, 2021April 16, 2021 Brooke Auxier and Monica AndersonMedia, Youth 0

Despite a string of controversies and the public’s relatively negative sentiments about aspects of social media, roughly seven-in-ten Americans say they ever use any kind of social media site – a share that has remained relatively stable over the past five years, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults.

Beyond the general question of overall social media use, the survey also covers use of individual sites and apps. YouTube and Facebook continue to dominate the online landscape, with 81% and 69%, respectively, reporting ever using these sites. And YouTube and Reddit were the only two platforms measured that saw statistically significant growth since 2019, when the Center last polled on this topic via a phone survey.

When it comes to the other platforms in the survey, 40% of adults say they ever use Instagram and about three-in-ten report using Pinterest or LinkedIn. One-quarter say they use Snapchat, and similar shares report being users of Twitter or WhatsApp. TikTok – an app for sharing short videos – is used by 21% of Americans, while 13% say they use the neighborhood-focused platform Nextdoor.

Even as other platforms do not nearly match the overall reach of YouTube or Facebook, there are certain sites or apps, most notably Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, that have an especially strong following among young adults. In fact, a majority of 18- to 29-year-olds say they use Instagram (71%) or Snapchat (65%), while roughly half say the same for TikTok.

These findings come from a nationally representative survey of 1,502 U.S. adults conducted via telephone Jan. 25-Feb.8, 2021. With the exception of YouTube and Reddit, most platforms show little growth since 2019.

YouTube is the most commonly used online platform asked about in this survey, and there’s evidence that its reach is growing. Fully 81% of Americans say they ever use the video-sharing site, up from 73% in 2019. Reddit was the only other platform polled about that experienced statistically significant growth during this time period – increasing from 11% in 2019 to 18% today.

Facebook’s growth has leveled off over the last five years, but it remains one of the most widely used social media sites among adults in the United States: 69% of adults today say they ever use the site, equaling the share who said this two years prior.

Similarly, the respective shares of Americans who report using Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter and WhatsApp are statistically unchanged since 2019. This represents a broader trend that extends beyond the past two years in which the rapid adoption of most of these sites and apps seen in the last decade has slowed. (This was the first year the Center asked about TikTok via a phone poll and the first time it has surveyed about Nextdoor.)

Adults under 30 stand out for their use of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. When asked about their social media use more broadly – rather than their use of specific platforms – 72% of Americans say they ever use social media sites.

In a pattern consistent with past Center studies on social media use, there are some stark age differences. Some 84% of adults ages 18 to 29 say they ever use any social media sites, which is similar to the share of those ages 30 to 49 who say this (81%). By comparison, a somewhat smaller share of those ages 50 to 64 (73%) say they use social media sites, while fewer than half of those 65 and older (45%) report doing this.

These age differences generally extend to use of specific platforms, with younger Americans being more likely than their older counterparts to use these sites – though the gaps between younger and older Americans vary across platforms.

Majorities of 18- to 29-year-olds say they use Instagram or Snapchat and about half say they use TikTok, with those on the younger end of this cohort – ages 18 to 24 – being especially likely to report using Instagram (76%), Snapchat (75%) or TikTok (55%).1 These shares stand in stark contrast to those in older age groups. For instance, while 65% of adults ages 18 to 29 say they use Snapchat, just 2% of those 65 and older report using the app – a difference of 63 percentage points.

Additionally, a vast majority of adults under the age of 65 say they use YouTube. Fully 95% of those 18 to 29 say they use the platform, along with 91% of those 30 to 49 and 83% of adults 50 to 64. However, this share drops substantially – to 49% – among those 65 and older.

By comparison, age gaps between the youngest and oldest Americans are narrower for Facebook. Fully 70% of those ages 18 to 29 say they use the platform, and those shares are statistically the same for those ages 30 to 49 (77%) or ages 50 to 64 (73%). Half of those 65 and older say they use the site – making Facebook and YouTube the two most used platforms among this older population.

Other sites and apps stand out for their demographic differences: Instagram: About half of Hispanic (52%) and Black Americans (49%) say they use the platform, compared with smaller shares of White Americans (35%) who say the same.2

WhatsApp: Hispanic Americans (46%) are far more likely to say they use WhatsApp than Black (23%) or White Americans (16%). Hispanics also stood out for their WhatsApp use in the Center’s previous surveys on this topic.

LinkedIn: Those with higher levels of education are again more likely than those with lower levels of educational attainment to report being LinkedIn users. Roughly half of adults who have a bachelor’s or advanced degree (51%) say they use LinkedIn, compared with smaller shares of those with some college experience (28%) and those with a high school diploma or less (10%).

Pinterest: Women continue to be far more likely than men to say they use Pinterest when compared with male counterparts, by a difference of 30 points (46% vs. 16%).

Nextdoor: There are large differences in use of this platform by community type. Adults living in urban (17%) or suburban (14%) areas are more likely to say they use Nextdoor. Just 2% of rural Americans report using the site.

A majority of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram users say they visit these platforms on a daily basis. While there has been much written about Americans’ changing relationship with Facebook, its users remain quite active on the platform. Seven-in-ten Facebook users say they use the site daily, including 49% who say they use the site several times a day. (These figures are statistically unchanged from those reported in the Center’s 2019 survey about social media use.)

Smaller shares – though still a majority – of Snapchat or Instagram users report visiting these respective platforms daily (59% for both). And being active on these sites is especially common for younger users. For instance, 71% of Snapchat users ages 18 to 29 say they use the app daily, including six-in-ten who say they do this multiple times a day. The pattern is similar for Instagram: 73% of 18- to 29-year-old Instagram users say they visit the site every day, with roughly half (53%) reporting they do so several times per day.

YouTube is used daily by 54% if its users, with 36% saying they visit the site several times a day. By comparison, Twitter is used less frequently, with fewer than half of its users (46%) saying they visit the site daily.

Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Shows ‘100% Efficacy’ In Adolescents

April 7, 2021 Staff ReporterHealth, Science, Youth 0

The COVID vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech appears to work in children as young as 12 years old. That news comes from results from a study the company conducted in volunteers aged 12 to 15, reports here suggest

The vaccine was 100% effective in protecting against symptomatic disease in a study of more than 2,200 children, the companies said. Researchers also didn’t find any safety concerns. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was safe and effective in adolescents as young as 12, the drug companies announced in a joint news release last week.

New clinical trials showed that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine elicits “100% efficacy and robust antibody responses” in adolescents from 12 to 15 years old, the drug company announced last week. The trial included 2,260 participants; the results are even better than earlier responses from participants ages 16 to 25.

Pfizer and its vaccine partner BioNTech said they will submit the results “as soon as possible” to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency, asking regulators to expand their authorizations for the vaccine’s use in young people.

Pfizer will submit the data “in the coming weeks,” Pfizer CEO and Chairman Albert Bourla said in a news release about the trial. Calling the results encouraging, he added that the company is acting “with the hope of starting to vaccinate this age group before the start of the next school year.”

The Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE safely protects children between the ages of 12 and 15, the companies said, results likely to lead to inoculations within that age group before this summer.

Data from a trial of the vaccine in nearly 2,300 people between the ages of 12 and 15 will be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks, with the hope that vaccinations could begin before the next school year.

“Across the globe, we are longing for a normal life. This is especially true for our children. The initial results we have seen in the adolescent studies suggest that children are particularly well protected by vaccination,” said Ugur Sahin, chief executive of BioNTech, the German company that developed the vaccine in partnership with U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

The findings, though expected, were much anticipated by parents, health authorities and school officials. They have been waiting for signs on when vaccines that adults have been getting could also be made available to children.

Like other authorized vaccines, the Pfizer-BioNTech shot hasn’t yet been cleared for use in adolescents under 16 years of age. Health experts say children will need to be vaccinated for a population to move past pandemic restrictions, like masking and physical distancing.

The vaccine was 100% effective at preventing symptomatic illness within the trial, with 18 cases of covid-19 in the group that received a placebo and none in the group that received the vaccine, the companies said. The vaccine triggered immune responses that were even more robust than those seen in young adults.

The data is the beginning of what many families, eager for normalcy to return, have been waiting to see. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is currently authorized by the FDA for emergency use for people 16 and older. If regulators extend the authorization to younger age groups, Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla said that vaccinations could begin before the school year.

Last week, Pfizer-BioNTech also started a trial in younger children, ages 6 months to 11 years. That trial will step down in age, establishing a safe dose first in children 5 to 11, then in 2- to 5-year-olds and then in children from 6 months to 2 years.

U.S. biotech firm Moderna is also conducting similar trials to test its coronavirus vaccine in teenagers and young children. Its vaccine is authorized by the FDA for emergency use for people over age 18.

Moderna, whose COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for people 18 and older in the U.S., is also testing its vaccine in adolescents; it announced a trial of around 3,000 participants from 12 to 18 years old in December. Moderna also said earlier this month it had administered the first doses of its vaccine to young children in a separate study that involves kids from 6 months to less than 12 years old.

Johnson & Johnson, whose vaccine got U.S. authorization one month ago, has also been moving to include children in clinical trials. The company will test the vaccine in only a small number of adolescents initially, with plans to expand the study if it is shown to be safe, according to a spokesperson at Janssen, the Johnson & Johnson subsidiary that developed the vaccine.

GOPIO Organizes 1st Ever “India’s Outreach to the Diaspora – Youth Perspective”

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Ajay GhoshCommunity, Culture, Youth 0

As the youth-led initiatives and their success stories around the world have shown, collective action from young people is already changing things for the better. Young people are the HOPE for the future as they are creative and fill of energy. Identifying youth leaders and supporting them in their efforts to be the leaders who could be a critical link between the government of India and the immigrant youth who are spread around the world.

With the objective of providing a youth forum that will provide a platform for the Disapor youth to help amplifying youth actions that will help create change in approach and programs by the Government of India, GOPIO International organized a virtual session on “India’s Outreach to Diaspora-Youth Perspective” on Sunday, March 7th, 2021. Attended by youth and senior leaders of the Diaspora from around the world, the event provided the participants a rare view into the youth and their perspectives on how the Diaspora youth power can be utilized creatively for the benefit of India and the world.

In his introductory remarks, after clarifying the role and the growth of GOPIO International, Dr. Thomas Abraham, Chairman of the GOPIO International pointed out that, “India has the largest Diaspora in the world and it is still growing. Currently, the Indian Diaspora has a strength of over 32 million people.” Referring to the numerous initiatives that the Government of India (GOI) has taken with the objective of reaching out to the Diaspora, Dr. Thomas Abraham pointed out to the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas held in India since 2013, which showcases to the fact that “India has great interest to reach out and cultivate its Diaspora youth. It has several programs for the Diaspora youth and exploring more avenues to outreach.”

In this context, Dr. Abraham said, GOPIO International is organizing a virtual Zoom session for Indian Diaspora Youth who are High School/College/University students as well as young professionals up to the age 25 on “India’s Outreach to the Diaspora – Youth Perspective,” with participants from different countries. “Today’s event is one such event to encourage the youth of Indian origin to aspire to be youth leaders and to help network youth from around the world with the Youth in every GOPIO Chapter around the world.

Ambassador Anup Mudgal, chief guest and main speaker today at the event, had served as India’s former Ambassador to Mauritius and Chair, Diaspora Research and Resource Centre, ARSP, New Delhi. In his inspiring address, Ambassador Mudgal pointed out that Antar-Rashtriya Sahayog Parishad has been in existence for over three years, under the Ministry of External Affairs. The objectives of the ARSP, according to Mudgal is “to take the intiativs with Diaspora to the next level: 1. Outreach to Diaspora; 2. Engage the youth of Indian origin; 3. Help the Diaspora in research and publication; 4. Expanding of Diaspora organizations around the world and in India.

According to Ambassador Mudgal, “Youth Diaspora is a main pillar of ARSP.” Emphasizing that the ideas and actions must be derived from the Diaspora, he pointed out that several of them have been accepted by the Govt.” Stating that the Indian Diaspora is one of the most successful in every domain, Ambassador Mudgal said, “You have done very well. You also enjoy tremendous good will among the host nations. Diaspora plays an important tool of power as each of you is the Ambassador of India.”

Suggesting that the “Engagement with the youth will be a regular phenomenon from now on,” he urged that the youth need to carry forward the flag to the upcoming generations. He asked the youth to reflect and find answers: “What makes the Indian Dispora stand out? What are the characteristics that make us successful? What are the changes we need to make to shine more? While your Indianness will always be with you, you need to understand how does that help shape your personality?”

The plan as per Ambassador Mudgal is that the Government of India will organize annual International conferences with representatives from 15 nations, during which the delegates will explore on the kind of relationship, engagement they expect from the Government of India. “This dialogue will continue for centuries to come,” he assured the participants.

The lively session attended by talented youth from the US and Europe was moderated by Beena Ramachandran of GOPIO CT. She said, two youth from the participants today will be chosen by a panel of Judges: Dr. Thomas Abraham, Anita Bhatt, Navin Pathak, Naumi Kaur. These 2 youth will attend the international youth conference to be held in April this year, she said.

Ananya Kotian, a Junior in high school aspiring to pursue an education in psychology, and is passionate about dance and singing, in her presentation pointed to how the media helps us to stay connected with India. Stating that how staying in touch with documentary makers, who creatively showcase the issues facing the people of India, Ananaya Kotian advocated for virtual cultural experiences. Founder of the blog Cultural Kaleidoscope, which delves into Asian culture from a young American Indian’s perspective, while pointing to the fact that many Diaspora leaders have been appointed to bigger roles in Biden administration, a tutor and STEM mentor for the Boys&Girls club, Kotian said, “We are successful because of the values we have inherited from our country of origin, India.”

Anjo George, a junior who is well-rounded in academic fields, music, swimming, and technology, and has been passionate about helping other students to improve their academics, highlighted the history of hosting Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, celebrating Diaspora’s contributions to India and help stay connected with India. While referring to the Know India Program by the Government of India, George said, “It helps us learn and promote Indian culture, while enabling us share our views and bond closely with India, and help reflect a positive image about India.” George suggested: 1. Cultural exchange at school levels; 2. Establish youth ambassadors with delegates from each country to discuss issues and propose solutions, modeling Model Congress/Model Youth; 3. Organize regular competitions on social issues faced by India; 4. Exploring and increasing study abroad programs and internships, this helping build leadership, culture and help make a global community of Indians.

Viswaa Sofat, a freshman at U.C. Berkeley studying Computer Science and Political Science, shared with the audience his experiences as someone who was both born and partially raised in India, and how he tries to remain strong and fundamental to his identity as a person of Indian origin. He hopes to use this opportunity to learn from other like-minded individuals and further involve Indian youth abroad. Vishwas Sofat said, he had immigrated to US at the age of 2. Later on, he returned to India, lived in India, modeling Israel how they attract youth to come to Israel. “Growing up in India helped me understand and appreciate the values, traditions, art and culture,” he said and added, “ India is at a critical junctures today with youth stepping up and joining protest movements in India.” He suggested for the Diaspora youth to be able to connect with Universities in India and get diverse perspectives through structured programs organized for them. Easy access to obtain visa.

Nithya Shenoy, a freshman at Rice University in Houston, Texas, plans to double major in political science and neuroscience. Is a part of Rice’s student-run paper, Thresher, and enjoys writing political pieces, reading, playing the violin, and Model UN. She shared about Israel’s Diaspora Outreach, “which helps develop collective identities, creates a sense of oneness,” she said. Referring to the African Nations Diaspora initoavesatives, she suggested to the need for grass root level outreach. Her recommendations included: 1. Scholarships through competitions with tourism component and education, which will help youth to become more connected. 2. Organize pent house programs, connecting with youth in other nations, and thus help understand how they perceive India. 3. Exposure through NGOs gives the youth an opening to understand and appreciate India better.

Vedant Gannu is a senior studying Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Data Engineer Co-op at Ellington Management Group. A youth member of GOPIO CT for years, he served on the GOPIO Youth Committee, helped organize events such as Indian Independence day celebration and the annual Youth Networking event in Stamford. As a proud Indian and ambitious student, he is interested in helping the Diaspora Youth as they are integral members of the Indian community that will serve as role models for future generations. In his address, Gannu said, Education is the key to job opportunities. His suggestions included: 1. Mentorship and exchange programs will provide a combination of global with local perspectives; 2. Infrastructure planning for better structural models; 3. Indian Government agencies need to offer internships and hire the youth who can share global perspectives to local problems/issues; 4. Scholarships in less popular areas of study.

Alicia Kaur, a graduate of Rutgers University with a degree in Legal Studies, said, her dream is to one day become a lawyer and fight for racial justice and a more inclusive society. Coming from one of the most diverse universities in the United States and being a minority herself, she believes her personal experiences are what drive her towards this goal. A winner of the Women in Leadership Award from Ernst and Young, pointed out how, the Indian Diaspora has become the “most successful community in the US, as shining examples with many influential organizations has the highest per capita income, most educated, and holding influential positions around the nation, especially with dozens of Indian Americans appointed to top positions in Biden administration. Her suggestions included, the need for a new NRI policy; partnership with tech/research sectors; student exchange programs; and, collaboration in healthcare.

Abhi Parikh, currently living in Paris, and originally from Ahmedabad, India, said, she is involved in 2 start-ups, one is in the education sector and another in the food sector, and is immensely passionate about her work. Apart from that, she has started a few Indian communities on Facebook, just to gather Indian people on a common platform, she said. While suggesting that the youth have huge potential., she urged the government to tap this force through encouraging steps. She shared with the participants about how developing social media platforms help youth establish startups by youth. Focusing on entrepreneurial migration, she said, they help give access to information; access to network and sharing; access to business through exchange programs.

Akshat Gupta, a young professional in the field of Medical Technology, based in Munich, Germany, had moved out of India more than a decade ago in the pursuit of newer academic and career opportunities, and has had the good fortune of having worked and lived in multiple cultures. Stating that his leisurely activities include astronomy, sky-diving, and going off the grid once in a while, Gupta praised the ever changing dynamic of Indian diaspora, and suggested that the outreach programs by the Government of India needs to adapt and change according to the need and times. Connecting with various sub culures and diversification of missing links and helping them connect with the expats. Stressing that the Indian Missions around the world need to play a more active role in the life of Diaspora, Gupta said, he appreciates the new initiatives and would look forward to how the Government is able to listen to the perspectives of the youth and how these suggestions are being heard and acted upon.

In his concluding remarks, Dr. Abraham promised that “After the session, all ideas will be pooled to make recommendations which two of the youth from the session will speak at a Webinar organized by Antar-Rashtriya Sahayog Parishad (ARSP) from Delhi in April, 2021.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meet New Billionaires: Apoorva Mehta And Nikhil Kamath

March 17, 2021March 21, 2021 Rana AyyubBusiness, Youth 0

While 2020 was a grim year for countless businesses across the world, strangely, it was also a time when India added new billionaires to its list. In fact, India now stands third in the number of Indian-origin billionaires after China and the US.

The COVID-induced lockdown came as a blessing in disguise for a handful of entrepreneurs who sure made the best out of the situation.

One of the youngest of this is the 34-year-old Apoorva Mehta, founder of the grocery delivery app, Instacart. And along with him is Nikhil Kamath of Zerodha, also 34, in the feat with a net worth of $1.7 billion each.

Mehta’s Instacart saw exponential growth during the lockdown in 2020 and made him a billionaire. The San Francisco-headquartered grocery delivery app helps users to buy groceries and medicines from local pharmacies and retailers. Instacart also provides “personal shoppers” who pick up a user’s order from the store and deliver it to their doorstep.

Born in India, Mehta grew up in Canada. He studied engineering at the University of Waterloo. According to Forbes, Mehta worked with companies such as Blackberry, Qualcomm and Amazon before founding Instacart in 2012. In 2010, he left Amazon to begin his entrepreneurial journey and moved to San Francisco, US.

According to LA Times, between 2010 and 2012, Mehta had come up with 20 start-up ideas, which failed. Then he thought of doing something to solve his daily problems like grocery shopping.

Forbes quoted Mehta speaking at a Y Combinator talk in 2014, “The reason to start a company should never be to start a company. The reason to start a company should be to solve a problem that you truly, truly care about.”

In fact, Mehta went ahead only after first testing the utility of the app on himself. The Forbes report mentions that Mehta was Instacart’s first customer and personal shopper, adding that he used to order his own groceries through his app, pick them and deliver it to himself.

The app’s increased popularity amid the lockdown and latest funding round, when the company raised $225 million, helped catapult Instacart’s valuation to $13.7 billion from $7.9 billion, as estimated by Forbes. This increased the value of Mehta’s 10 percent stake in the company to $1.2 billion, making him the newest member of the billionaires’ club.

Instacart has now expanded from San Francisco to more than 5,500 cities across the US and Canada. Instacart has also hired 3 lakh, new shoppers, since March 2020 and plans to hire 2.5 lakh more for one-hour or same-day deliveries.

There are now 3,228 billionaires globally, up from 414 in 2020. Their total wealth rose $3.5 trillion or 32 percent to $14.7 trillion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UN Peacebuilding Commission Must Priorities Protecting Youth Activists Facing Retaliation

March 10, 2021March 10, 2021 Samira SadequeCommunity, Youth 0

The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission must prioritise the protection of youth activists who face retaliation from state and non-state actors, said UN Youth Envoy Jayathma Wickramanayake.

Wickramanayake was speaking at the Peacebuilding Commission high-level virtual meeting on Youth, Peace and Security, where she outlined numerous ways the commission can assist youth activists around the world — especially with their grassroots efforts.

“I hope you will consider including young people in your delegation to building commissions, consult young people in your own countries to input to your work and, most importantly, ensure the protection of young people who you decide to engage with as we have seen many incidents of retaliation against young activists by state and non-state actors for simply deciding to speak up and working with the UN,” Wickramanayake, from Sri Lanka, told the commisison.

Other speakers at the event included Mohamed Edrees, chair of the Peacebuilding Commission, Allwell O. Akhigbe of Building Blocks for Peace Foundation in Nigeria and Oscar Fernández-Taranco, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support.

Wickramanayake comments come when youth activists are facing attacks and harassment online and offline. Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg has faced massive backlash for supporting the Indian farmers’ protests, while Indian youth activist Disha Ravi was arrested because of her activism in support of the protests.

Wickramanayake further highlighted the importance of acknowledging and promoting local grassroots organisations working in the field of youth peacebuilding.

“Young people around the world are building national coalitions, conducting baseline studies and monitoring efforts in support of youth-led peacebuilding,” she said.

She added that these organisations require “adequate, predictable and sustained” financing to thrive but this was yet to be explored.

“I would like to challenge this commission today to consider what the peacebuilding commission can do to encourage this critical support and resources at the local level where they are actually making a big difference,” she said.

Wickramanayake recommended that the commission should not only support a “substantial increase in the financial resources” for peace and security, but it should also make sure that the resources go directly to youth working on “homegrown building strategies”.

Mia Franczesca D. Estipona, from the Generation Peace Youth Network in the Philippines, also shared the importance of involving youth who are directly affected by issues such as conflict.

“In creating facilities for youth projects and capacity building for support, we must make an effort to directly engage with youths in areas affected by conflict, understand their work and how it contributes back to the community,” Estipona said. “This is highly important especially for community-based youths who have programmes and projects but cannot be sustained due to lack of access to funding and support.”

Both Estipona and Wickramanayake emphasised the importance of representation and being inclusive of marginalised youths or those whose stories are often left behind.

Wickramanayake highlighted the work of a colleague who promotes the voices of youth with disabilities and had reportedly briefed the Security Council on the situation in the Central African Republic by broadcasting the issue of youth, peace and security in sign language.

“[Their] organisation removes barriers limiting the participation of young people with disabilities in peacebuilding, actively mobilising the deaf community to act on Resolution 2250,” she said, referring to the UN Security Council Youth, Peace & Security thematic resolution that deals with the topic of youth from an international peace and security perspective.

Meanwhile, Estipona pointed out: “Many youth organisations have established strong programmes that truly represent and attend to youth who are in areas affected by conflict – their voices are most left behind.”

“We should pursue representation that truly represents and focuses on the collective efforts of youth as a community — and as a sector of society, not just as a different individual,” she said.

Other speakers at the event agreed with both Wickramanayake and Estipona included:

Ambassador Rabab Fatima, the Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN, said that it’s crucial to address the “distinct needs” of the youth as the world recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.

She highlighted the importance of access to education, sufficient funding, and including youth participation in peacebuilding as part of the “broader national policy framework”.

Estipona said the engagement of the youth must be sustained in various stages of the process of peacebuilding: consultation, crafting, implementation and monitoring.

“Continuity of these efforts is still a challenge because they are constantly shifting priorities of stakeholders and leadership,” she said.

In offering recommendations on how to strengthen youth participation and involvement, Wickramanayake said there must be a periodic review of the efforts to increase engagement with young people.

“Accountability is key,” she said, “[we] want to hear your strategic plan. Also think beyond security and think about the intersection of peace, sustainable development, and human rights.”

She also urged leaders to “walk the talk” – and prioritise the development of dedicated local, national and regional road maps and action plans.

International Women’s Day, 2021: To Change the World, Women Must Choose to Challenge

March 10, 2021March 10, 2021 Patricia ScotlandWomen, Youth 0

Among the greatest gifts with which I have been blessed were parents who instilled in me a deep-rooted sense of identity, and the unequivocal belief that there was no difference between what a boy and a girl could achieve.

This assurance sustained me while growing up, as the tenth child out of twelve wonderful siblings, and through the numerous times when it was suggested by others that I would never succeed, simply because I was black, poor and female.

Patricia Scotland

When I set out on my career in law, a mere 3% of the profession were women, and less than 0.01% were black women. Given my background, few expected that I would one day become the first woman in 700 years to serve as Her Majesty’s Attorney-General for England and Wales.

We have come a long way since then, and today – thanks in a large part to sustained advocacy efforts over the years – there is encouraging progress in terms of gender equality in the Commonwealth.

Almost half the lawyers in the UK are women now. In the Commonwealth, a girl is just as likely to attend primary school as a boy, while on average, 56% of women participate in the labour force, and they make up the larger part of the informal sector.

To date, 13 member countries have achieved 30% or more female members of parliament, while ten have 30% or more ministers who are women. The Commonwealth Secretariat continues to work diligently alongside member countries through programmes that encourage women’s participation in politics to build on success already achieved.

However, there remains much progress to be made on several key indicators. Currently, only one in five Commonwealth parliamentarians is a woman, and only three Commonwealth countries have achieved gender parity in parliament. Women are still vastly under-represented in leadership positions in the science, academic and private sectors.

Furthermore, in an era where digital technology is becoming increasingly the norm, women in poorer countries face a ‘double digital divide’, being 14% less likely than men to own a mobile phone. In practical terms, this means that there are 200 million fewer women who can readily access this technology to find information or manage money online.

Other underlying systemic inequalities continue to be remarkably persistent, including the distressing prevalence of violence against women and girls, which remains high throughout the Commonwealth and across the world, despite the advances there have been in women’s economic status, leadership and agency.

Covid-19

A year into the global pandemic, it is clear that besides economic and social shocks, the consequences of COVID-19 are also exacerbating existing gender inequities.

In addition to rising cases of domestic violence, reports show that women have been losing their jobs at a greater rate than men, despite making up a smaller proportion of the formal labour force. Meanwhile, the burden of unpaid care work is being borne disproportionately by women.

Research indicates that women are overly represented in sectors and industries expected to decline because of COVID-19, such as education, accommodation and food services, wholesale and retail trade, arts and recreation, and public administration. Similarly, women-owned micro, small and medium enterprises which rely on tourism have also been affected, because of greatly reduced travel and visitor arrivals in most Commonwealth countries.

Notably, throughout this crisis, I have been impressed by the leadership demonstrated by female heads of government in the Commonwealth. Prime Ministers Mia Mottley of Barbados, Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh and Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand have all been rightly lauded for their able handling of the crisis, marked by coordinated action as well as compassion.

However, this also draws our attention to how few women hold these positions of leadership, underlining the need for politics and government to reflect more fairly and inclusively the societies they represent and serve.

International Women’s Day

This International Women’s Day, the Commonwealth Secretariat is highlighting ways in which it engages to challenge the gender inequalities that continue to hold back the economic, social and leadership potential of half of the world’s population.

The Commonwealth Secretariat has launched a social media campaign #SheLeadsTheWay, which aims to recognise women leaders across the Commonwealth, during COVID-19 and beyond.

On 5 March, we celebrated women’s contributions to ocean science in a virtual event featuring women from across the Commonwealth who are challenging gender norms through their work in ocean industries.

On 8 March, another virtual panel will put a spotlight on women’s leadership in responding to COVID-19 and charting an equitable recovery.

There remains much more to do to achieve gender equality in the Commonwealth, and in order to deliver Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Agenda. As the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on inequality emerges, laws and policies to support women’s empowerment are needed more than ever before, and it is vital that we should not be diverted from this priority by other competing demands during these times of crisis.

(The author is the sixth Commonwealth Secretary-General and the first woman to hold the post.)

When Will The Vaccine Be Available To Children In US?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s Memoir Is On New York Times Bestsellers List

March 3, 2021 Staff ReporterBollywood, Youth 0

Actor, producer, activist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Priyanka Chopra Jonas has always been an overachiever and she added another feather to her cap, that of author, when she recently released her memoir titled Unfinished.

Unfinished, a memoir by multi-award-winning actor and producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas is the newest to join the New York Times (NYT) bestseller list in the hardcover nonfiction category. Jonas is one of the many South Asian (Indian and Indian-American) authors on the bestseller lists.

The Dil Dhadakne Do actor took to her Instagram to share a video clip that featured the cover of her memoir along with some pictures marking major milestones and pivotal moments from the We Can Be Heroes actor’s life. The White Tiger actor captioned the video with words of gratitude for her fans, writing, “Soooo this happened…in less than a week… The New York Times Best Sellers list!! Thank you so much to everyone who has supported #Unfinished. Endlessly grateful.”

The memoir talks about the Bajirao Mastani actor’s life and career till date, featuring fun anecdotes and painful incidents that shaped the actor into who she is today through the book that has been described as a series of ‘personal essays, stories, and observations’. The “thoughtful and revealing” memoir takes readers on a journey through Priyanka’s childhood in India, the teenage years she spent in the United States living with her extended family in the Midwest, Queens and also the suburbs of Boston, where she faced racism.

The book then moves on to her India return, from where her journey surprisingly won her the titles of Miss India and Miss World, leading up to her Bollywood launch. Priyanka had spoken about her upbringing in a statement, “I am a product of traditional India and its ancient wisdom, and modern India and its urban bustle. My upbringing was always an amalgamation of the two Indians, and, just as much, of East and West.”

Unfinished, which was released on Feb. 9, offers insights into Jonas’s childhood in India; her formative teenage years in the United States; and her return to India, where she won the national and international beauty competitions that launched her global acting career.

Whether reflecting on her nomadic early years or the challenges she has faced as she has doggedly pursued her calling, Priyanka shares her challenges and triumphs with warmth and honesty, reads the book bio.

From her dual-continent twenty-year-long career as an actor and producer to her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, from losing her beloved father to cancer to marrying Nick Jonas, the memoir contains it all.

Indian-American US Vice President Kamala Harris’s memoir, The Truths We Told has been on the NYT bestseller list in the paperback nonfiction category for 19 weeks now. Ambitious Girl by Meena Harris, lawyer and Kamala Harris’s niece, which is about the celebration of female ambition, has been on the NYT bestseller in the children’s picture books category for four weeks now.

In ‘Girlhood,’ Teens Across The Globe Write About Their Everyday Lives

March 3, 2021March 3, 2021 Isabella Gomez SarmientoWomen, Youth 0

Masuma Ahuja can vividly recall what she wore on her first day of school in the United States: black jeans and a gray and orange T-shirt. It was the early 2000s and her family had just moved from India to Pittsburgh. She remembers a boy at her middle school asking her, on that very first day, about what she was wearing.

“He was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize that you wore [Western] clothes in India,” she says. “He thought India was very much a place where there were snake charmers and elephants on the street.”

The India that her classmate had pictured was pulled from storybooks and fantasy — but the reality was that Ahuja grew up in more affluent neighborhoods of Mumbai and Bangalore. Those misconceptions about the lives of those in different places — especially women and girls — stuck with her as she went on to become a journalist at The Washington Post and CNN.

And it raised a question — what is life really like for girls around the world?

She sets out to answer it in her new book, Girlhood: Teenagers Around The World In Their Own Voices. Published in February, it captures snapshots of everyday life from 30 girls around the globe in the form of diary entries.

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There’s Claudie, a 13-year-old surfer from Pango Village in Vanuatu who dreams of becoming a lawyer; Halima, a 17-year-old from Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, who listens to Celine Dion and helps her father peel potatoes for his job before school; Sattigul, a 16-year-old who comes from a family of nomadic herders in western Mongolia, loves her pet eagle and wants to one day be an English translator.

Diza Saxena, 16, lived in Mumbai when she wrote her entries in 2019 — but moved to Dubai in 2020. Her contributions to the book discussed her wish to be “cute, cool and popular” at her school in Mumbai. Saxena says girls at her new school aspire to the same qualities. “The kids that don’t fit into that standard are always alone,” she says. “But when I spent time with them, we had so much fun.”

NPR talkrf to Ahuja about the inspiration and process behind capturing the girls’ ordinary lives: their hopes, dreams, anxieties and frustrations. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you choose to focus on girls’ “ordinary” lives?

I was in South Asia bouncing around [reporting] and I realized very quickly that the ways in which [Western media] told stories of girls generally fell into some set buckets: sexualization, victimization, gender-based violence, which are really important stories to tell.

On the other side of it, we had a lot of stories about exceptional girls fighting back, girls like Malala [Yousafzai], Greta [Thunberg], Emma Gonzalez, [who rose to the spotlight after surviving the Parkland shooting and standing up against gun violence]. But the vast in-between is where most ordinary girls’ lives exist. And there just wasn’t any representation of that. So that’s part of the reason I wanted to do this.

Why did you decide to use diary entries as a format?

Diary entries felt like a very natural way to get girls to tell their own stories and have ownership about how their lives and stories are represented.

Can you share an example of a girl’s ordinary life that you highlight in the book? What makes that girl’s story so special?

Chen Xi from Singapore writes about staying up late finishing her homework, her school and her teachers, her love of poetry and books, and her hopes to study English literature in college. Her story is unique to her — shaped by her circumstances, her community, her culture and her interests — but it’s also deeply relatable, whether you’ve lived in Singapore or taken the classes she did in school.

Naya Sarah, 18, lives in Berlin. Her family moved there from Damascus, Syria when she was age 13 to escape the civil war. Her diary entries, written in 2019, chronicle her rigorous schedule in the International Baccalaureate program at her school. Her final exams for graduation ended up being cancelled because of the pandemic. And she’s worried about how the pandemic may limit her opportunities.

What is universally true about girls from reporting your book?

Despite the differences in circumstances, cultures and identities between the girls in this book, often the day-to-day texture of their lives looked similar:the types of conversations they had with friends and family; the things they worried about; their big hopes and dreams for the future. And while girls’ circumstances vary, girls everywhere are growing up in a world that is not equitable.

How did you connect with the girls and decide who would be in the book?

Some of the girls I [found] through NGOs [nonprofit organizations]. I didn’t want to ever approach a girl, like direct message her on Instagram and say, “Hey, do you want to do this?” I wanted to go through someone they trusted or knew. My only real requirement in looking for girls was I wanted to include people who felt comfortable sharing their lives and wanted to share their lives.

What kind of instructions or guidance did you provide for the diary entries?

Everyone got the same instructions in their own language, which were like, “Here are some things you can write about. Also, you are welcome to ignore all of my instructions and write about something entirely different,” which often happens. And then I would ask more questions about things I wanted to know more about.

But it really varied girl to girl. The girl in Baghdad — Ruqaya — she would text me in the evening and tell me what was going on with her, so her diary entries were sent to me in real time. But on the other hand, Shanai from New Jersey pulled out her journal and was like, “Hey, I’m going to l take photos of three entries I’m thinking of exploring. What sounds good to you?” We talked through what she wanted to include, what she felt comfortable with, and she just sent me photos of her journal.

Raksa Hong, 20, is the first person in her family to go to college. She attends the University of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. Her entries in Girlhood from 2019 look back on a happy childhood that she can’t help but miss amid the stress of school. Reflecting on her entries now, she says she hopes it gives people a glimpse of the sacrifices she’s made to get to where she is today.

Were there any stories that particularly stood out to you or resonated with you in a special way?

The cheesy answer is that I feel like I relate to all the girls in some way, and that was really surprising. I have moved many times in my life — I’m an immigrant many times over — and I am living on a different continent from my family at the moment.

I think back a lot to the girls who wrote about homesickness and moving away from their families right now. I remember when we were going through final edits, the two girls whose entries really resonated with me at that time were Ruoxiao from China, who is in the U.K. studying, and Varvara from Russia, who wrote about her wish to leave home in Saransk for Moscow.

They both talked about the very specific longing to go to a new place and live a bigger life and thinking that big, exciting things are happening elsewhere. There’s so much for me to do and I just can’t wait for it.

What do you hope readers take away from Girlhood?

I hope that every reader will find themselves reflected in unexpected corners of their stories. And I hope that every girl who picks up the book recognizes that her voice is important and belongs in the pages of a book.

Karthik Murugan, A Ninth-Grader Develops Chess Guidebook To Teach Beginners

February 18, 2021 Staff ReporterSports, Youth 0

Chess enthusiast Karthik Murugan, a ninth-grade student at Downingtown East High School in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, recently released a book entitled, ‘Legal Attack: Chess – An Intellectual Board War.’ The book is designed to aid novices in learning and mastering puzzles needed to win games and boost chess ratings, according to a press release.

The book contains 30 powerful chess tactics, each with 10 puzzles for readers to practice and solve. Organized from simple to complex, the puzzles allow readers to gradually move through the most important aspects of the game, review common tactics, mates and traps, and advance their technique.

Moving from the simple to more complex, the puzzles hope to allow readers to gradually move through the most important aspects of the game, review common tactics, mates and traps, and advance their technique. Murugan, who began playing chess in 2014, was inspired to write ‘Legal Attack’ after struggling to find a chess guide that was both tailored toward beginners and expansive in scope.

“I have read hundreds of chess books,” Murugan is quoted saying in the press release. “Not many books are out there that are crisp enough to inspire a beginner or a moderate player and advise them of the powerful techniques needed to win the games. Chess is all about attacking and defending. It’s a war, and you need to win.”

According to his bio, Murugan’s peak United States Chess Federation (USCF) rating is approximately 1,700, and he has played 800 games in 170 USCF-rated tournaments.

He is also a two-time Greater Mid-Atlantic Elementary Champion and a two-time Pennsylvania State Scholastic Bughouse Champion. He also won the 2017 US Open National Elementary Chess Championship.

Karthik Murugan is a ninth-grade student at Downingtown East High School in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. He has been playing chess since 2014 and now teaches kids and promotes chess in the local area. His peak United States Chess Federation (USCF) rating is approximately 1700, and he has played 800 games in 170 USCF-rated tournaments. He surpassed 1000 in his first 20 tournaments. Notably, Karthik is a two-time Greater Mid-Atlantic Elementary Champion and a two-time Pennsylvania State Scholastic Bughouse Champion. He also won the 2017 US Open National Elementary Chess Championship. To learn more about Murugan, please visit karthikmurugan.com.

Simon & Schuster, a company with nearly ninety years of publishing experience, has teamed up with Author Solutions, LLC, the worldwide leader in self-publishing, to create Archway Publishing. With unique resources to support books of all kind, Archway Publishing offers a specialized approach to help every author reach his or her desired audience. For more information, visit www.archwaypublishing.com or call 888-242-5904.

India’s Missing Children: A Heartbreaking Truth

February 3, 2021February 19, 2021 Staff ReporterCommunity, Youth 0

There could be nothing more heartbreaking to parents than losing a child, especially if the case remains unsolved for years and years. That is the situation with India’s missing children. According to missing children statistics, one child goes missing in India every eight minutes. And it’s disconcerting to see how they barely make the headlines.

The truth is that the case of missing children in a country of more than a billion people can be easily overlooked. After all, there are far more pressing issues that the government and authorities need to focus on. To parents who lost a child, however, the pain never goes away and continues to haunt them even in their waking hours.

On May 11, 2018, Shehzadi Malik lost her nine-year-old son, Kabir. The last sighting of the child was at 2:25 pm as he made his way home from school. It was recorded by CCTV footage, which his mother kept on going back to in order to search for clues.

Kabir is just one of the many missing children who make up the staggering statistics. The where, why, and how could be hard to find out. But there are some truths that point to the fate of most of these children and the reasons they are missing.

Forced Child Labor

The Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), a non-profit organisation campaigning for children’s rights, published a research report titled “The Missing Children of India” in 2018. It outlines forced labour as one of the most prominent causes of why children go missing. The child-trafficking for forced labour has long been a headache to the government.

It’s not easy to curb, but efforts have been made to eliminate the worst forms of child labour. One step that the government has done was to put the records of shelter homes in digital format, making it easy to find and retrieve information as needed. They also shut down hundreds of illegal shelter homes in several states, including Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh.

The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act was also enacted. This means perpetrators of the worst forms of child labour will face new, stringent penalties.

Organ Trafficking

In a report published in 2005, the National Human Rights Commission points to a connection between organ trafficking and missing children. While there is the Transportation of Human Organs (Amendment) Act, organ transplantation in India is in high demand, which leads to a flood of illegal organ trafficking. Children are vulnerable and easy targets, so it’s not surprising to find that many cases of missing children point to the illegal organ and transplant trade.

The national secretary of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan movement has said that many times, while trying to locate missing children, they have found dead bodies of children with missing vital organs. It’s a lucrative, organized business. Selling vital organs like kidneys to high-paying patients fosters an illegal trade market that is difficult to curtail.

Most of the time, investigations only conclude that the bodies just lay around in a stream, gored by animals.

Sex Trafficking

Child trafficking for sex is a global issue, and India has emerged as one hub of this illicit trade. Most of the victims are teenagers who were tricked into sexual slavery. It’s hard to establish a figure, but the high volume of trafficking numbers is in thousands every year. Girls are often sold in brothels, falling into a trap of prostitution with no hope of escape in sight. Others are found in the red-light districts of big cities.

This problem is closely interlinked with poverty and illiteracy. Girls who became victims of sexual slavery usually long to flee their homes and the desperate grind of their day-to-day lives. They have not had an opportunity to go to school. Often, they are married off while they are as young as 13. Perhaps, shockingly, the most harrowing cases are those of girls who were knowingly sold into slavery by their own parents or relatives.

In West Bengal, recent efforts were made to find and rescue missing girls who were sold to brothels, thanks to the pressure of anti-trafficking activists.

Bringing the sad and heartbreaking truth about missing children into light can help open the eyes of parents and authorities, spurning them into action in the process. Missing children cases are often complex, but knowing the root causes can hopefully guide those who have the power to diminish and curb this very pressing issue.

(Picture: Their World)

Alarming Rate Of Nation’s Opioid Deaths

January 18, 2021 Manu ShahLifestyle, Youth 0

On 5th July 2020, Ikonkar Manmohan Singh Sandhu, a young 23 year old boy, died from an opioid overdose in Michigan just months before he was to be married. He is by no means an isolated case in the Indian American community.

A small group of doctors are sounding the alarm on the nation’s opioid crisis. Dr. Arun Gupta is one of those who is urging health authorities to wake up to this catastrophe, which is ripping through communities with scant regard for race, gender, educational level or financial standing.

To be fair, before COVID-19 ravaged the country, the growing opioid addiction was giving the nation’s health officials sleepless nights. The pandemic put this issue on the back burner and while more Americans are dying from the virus, it can be just as deadly if left unchecked.

Opioid overdoses have killed more than 70,000 young people annually between the ages of

18-54 for the past five years. In 2011, the CDC reported that overdose deaths superseded auto accident deaths for the first time in 32 states This is now virtually true for all 50 states. The organization also reported that more than 700,000 young Americans have died between 1999- 2017 from poly drug overdose. That number is expected to be as high as one million by the end of 2020. The report further states that, “preventable disease & retroactive analysis show that most of these deaths were unintentional.” Isolation, stress and the depression, that came in the wake of the pandemic is shooting cases through the roof. “Parents are burying their children and children are burying their parents,” says Dr. Gupta.

Dr. Gupta is quick to rid you of the rosy view that Indo American families have been unaffected by this affliction. It is a growing trend in the community, he says, largely due to parents’ unrealistic expectations for their children or the ABCD generation that faces conflicting cultures. What worsens it, is that many are either in denial or wary of seeking professional help for fear of being stigmatized or shunned. These are lives that could have easily been saved, he laments, much like the case of a distant relative who died because the family hesitated to reach out for help or were unaware of the problem.

A physician for 34 years, of which 14 are as a doctor of addiction management, Dr. Gupta has seen enough to be worried. He has been charting the surge in cases throughout the nation for the past decade and is seeing it played out at his doorstep – the rural region of Monroe, Michigan where he runs his private practice.

For 11 years, Dr Gupta was the local prison doctor where he saw the interplay of drugs and death up close and the ineffectiveness of the administration’s efforts to curb it. This pushed him to change tracks from being a general physician to addiction management. Rural communities, he observes, are more prone to opioid addiction than urban areas where the population is better educated and have higher paying jobs. The problem is compounded when there is family instability, lack of education, poverty, physical, mental and sexual abuse in childhood, mental illness or addiction both in the family and the patient.

So why are addictive opioids prescribed in the first place and how do they hook us? About 25 years ago, pharma company Purdue, manufacturers of the painkiller Oxycodone, pushed the government to sanction prescribing painkillers for non-cancer related pain. The American Pain Society also classified pain as the fifth vital sign after blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and weight. Statistically, 40% of the country’s population is in chronic pain and many require pain medication to carry out their daily activities or even go in to work.

Addiction starts innocuously enough with a prescription for a painkiller to treat post-surgery or chronic pain as in instances of back pain. Consuming these painkillers diminishes the pain but also brings on a euphoric feeling as it raises dopamine – the brain’s pleasure hormone. Celebrities like Michael Jackson were known to use them before a performance, a term referred to as, “spotlight euphoria.” Additionally, it changes the perception of reality for those dealing with psychological issues such as an inferiority complex or anxiety, these people now start “liking themselves and feeling good.” This altered reality quickly spirals into an emotional and social need followed by dependence and cravings for the painkiller.

The signs of addiction are evident in drastic mood changes, lethargy or impaired decision-making, among others. Discontinuing the painkillers could lead to a host of withdrawal symptoms such as chills, tremors, body aches, bone pain, vomiting, diarrhea or irregular respiration. However, Dr. Gupta clarifies that not everyone gets addicted to painkillers and the risk of addiction is only about 10%.

Soon, Oxycodone grew so popular that it began to have, “street value.” When prescriptions ran out, users turned to the streets where it could be obtained illegally. Hustlers began faking health issues to procure and sell these painkillers giving rise to the term “pill-mill.” The cost of one milligram of Oxycontin is one dollar so someone using 1000mg was spending $1000 a day. While insurance took care of legitimate prescriptions, those who were addicted were shelling out their own money. This, of course, was done in connivance with “some doctors who played the game.” Dr. Gupta estimates that about 1000 doctors have been apprehended so far for violating this practice and have “tarnished the image of doctors.”

There is an obvious connection between mental disorders and addictive disorders and its consequences can sometimes be life threatening. Doctors, however, are required by law to treat pain with painkillers even if there is a sense/awareness that this medication could become addictive to the patient. On the other hand, if doctors practice caution in prescribing pain medication, they risk a bad review on their practice, something every doctor understandably wants to avoid.

In 1999, the Center for Disease Control went on record for the first time and shared its report of 4000 young Americans who died from drugs. The government scrutinized the problem and rolled out the Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000. For the first time, this law allowed practicing doctors to learn and treat addiction with an FDA approved drug. The law also stipulated that any practicing doctor could complete an addiction program and receive a X DEA license which would allow them to treat 30 patients per month for a year. If the doctor’s records are found in order, they could treat 100 patients per month. Past President Barack Obama signed a law that would allow some doctors with specific credentials to treat 275 patients a month. This number was controlled to prevent its misuse but sometimes the best-intentioned laws have unintended consequences.

This one did.

Only 4300 doctors in the US can treat 275 patients a month and Dr. Gupta is one of them. It’s a drop in the ocean for the estimated 20-40 million people who need help overcoming their addiction. There are more than 100,000 healthcare providers in the country that include doctors, nurses and physician assistants who have the necessary X- DEA credentials to treat opioid use disorders. But less than 20,000 are actively involved in dealing with the growing opioid epidemic in the country. This lack of access to a healthcare provider aggravates the problem leading to more deaths than recoveries. Meanwhile, the pandemic has not made things easier. There is excessive stress and limited counselling due to the shutdowns and prescriptions cannot be given on the phone without the necessary drug testing. This explains the rise in overdose deaths and addiction cases in the past nine months.

Apart from flawed policy, the American Society of Addiction states that every doctor who graduates from medical school is required to study addiction management. There are 179 medical schools and approximately 9000 residency programs in the country and not one of them teaches this course. Moreover, addiction management is not considered on par with other areas of medical specialization and neither do insurance companies view addiction like other chronic diseases such as blood pressure or diabetes.

In 2002, a drug Buprenorphine was approved for addiction treatment and ten years later another drug Zubsolv made it to treatment plans. These drugs block the opioid receptors in the brain and reduce a person’s craving for the painkiller. Another ingredient in the drug, naloxone, reverses the effects of opioids. Together, they prevent withdrawal symptoms and deter the abuser from snorting or injecting it. Dr. Gupta pairs medication with counselling, and non-addictive medication in cases of insomnia or anxiety. Recovery takes anywhere from six weeks to six months depending on the severity of the addiction, but the struggle to remain clean continues for the rest of their lives.

With death rates from opioid misuse surging, more than 500 laws were enacted in the last 10 years against doctors, pill mills and pharmaceutical companies to curb the problem but this has only exacerbated the issue. Addicts are now forced to go to the streets instead of visiting a doctor for treatment. Dr. Gupta notes that national autopsy results over the last 5 years consistently show that fentanyl, heroin and cocaine are the first three drugs in more than 55% of the people with drug overdose deaths as opposed to prescription medication.

Over the past few years, Dr. Gupta has presented more than 150 talks to schools, doctors, healthcare systems and social organizations like Rotary clubs and the Kiwanis Club to highlight the gravity of the problem and his message that addiction can be cured. He is talking to elected officials to leverage their influence and galvanize the government to rethink the limit of patients and allow greater access to people who want to overcome their addiction.

Addiction, he warns, has become synonymous with a death sentence in this country.

(Picture Courtesy: Times Herald)

College Campuses Are COVID-19 Super-spreaders

January 18, 2021January 18, 2021 Taylor & FrancisEducation, Youth 0

Newswise — College campuses are at risk of becoming COVID-19 superspreaders for their entire county, according to a new vast study which shows the striking danger of the first two weeks of school in particular.

Looking at 30 campuses across the nation with the highest amount of reported cases, experts saw that over half of the institutions had spikes – at their peak – which were well above 1,000 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people per week within the first two weeks of class.

In some colleges, one in five students had been infected with the virus by the end of the fall term. Four institutions had over 5,000 cases.

In 17 of the campuses monitored, a new computer model developed by scientists at Stanford University shows outbreaks translated directly into peaks of infection within their home counties.

Out today, the team’s research – published in the peer-reviewed journal Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering – crucially shows, however, that tight outbreak management, for example the immediate transition from in person to all online learning, can reduce the peaks within about two weeks.

Lead author Hannah Lu, from Stanford’s Energy Resources Engineering program, says the incidence levels of 1,000 cases per 100,000 people per week – when compared to the first and second waves of the pandemic with peak incidences of 70 to 150 – means colleges are at real risk of developing an extreme incidence of COVID-19.

“Policy makers often use an incidence of 50 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people per week as a threshold for high risk counties, states, or countries. All 30 institutions in our study exceeded this value, three even by two orders of that magnitude,” she states.

“The number of students who had become infected just throughout the fall is more than twice of the national average since the beginning of the outbreak of 5.3%, with 17.3 million reported cases at a population of 328.2 million.

“At the University of Notre Dame, for instance, all 12,607 students were tested before the beginning of class and only nine had tested positive. Less than two weeks into the term, the seven-day incidence was 3083, with a reproduction number R0 of 3.29.

“However,” she adds, “with around 90 reported deaths nationwide, mainly college employees and not students, the campus-related death rate of 0.02% remains well below the average death rate of COVID-19.”

Members of the research team used advanced modelling, which assesses the real-time epidemiology of the COVID-19 outbreak using an SEIR (susceptible, exposed, infectious, and recovered) model to map how the disease spread across the campuses.

They drew COVID-19 case reports from 30 publicly available college dashboards across the United States throughout the fall of 2020. These institutions were either teaching in person, online or a hybrid of both. They selected colleges for which case numbers are reported on a daily basis and the total cumulative case number exceeded 100. During this time window, the nationwide number of new cases had dropped below 50,000 per day.

A limitation of this study is that the true on-campus student population was often unreported and had to be approximated by the total fall quarter enrollment. “This likely underestimates of the real maximum incidence and the fraction of on-campus students that have been affected by the virus,” the authors state.

Senior author, Ellen Kuhl, adds: “Strikingly, these local campus outbreaks rapidly spread across the entire county and triggered a peak in new infections in neighbouring communities in more than half of the cases.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that these initial college outbreaks are unrelated to the national outbreak dynamics. Instead, they are independent local events driven by campus reopening and inviting students back to campus.

“Our results confirm the widespread fear in early fall that colleges could become the new hot spots of COVID-19 transmission. But, at the same time, college administrators should be applauded for their rapid responses to successfully manage local outbreaks.”

All reported campuses pursued regular surveillance testing, weekly or even twice per week, combined with aggressive test-trace-isolate strategies.

“The majority of colleges and universities were able to rapidly manage their outbreaks and suppress campus-wide infections, while the neighbouring communities were less successful in controlling the spread of the virus. As a result, for most institutions, the outbreak dynamics remained manageable throughout the entire fall of 2020 with narrow spikes of less than 300 cases per day,” Lu states.

The team believes that this methodology, in combination with continuing online learning, is the best way to prevent college sites from becoming the major hub of the disease.

“Our study suggests that tight test-trace-isolate strategies, flexible transition to online instruction, and-most importantly-compliance with local regulations will be critical to ensure a safe campus reopening after the winter break,” she added.

Professor Kuhl concludes: “We anticipate that the most important aspect upon campus reopening within the coming weeks will be the human factor. Unfortunately, the fall term has shown that the best of all strategies can become meaningless if people do not follow the recommendations.”

(Picture Curtesy: ABC News)

Applications To Medical School Up Big. Is It The “Fauci Effect”?

December 31, 2020January 8, 2021 Staff ReporterEducation, Health, Youth 0

“Now more than ever we need your talent, your energy, your resolve and your character.” Those were the words Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said last spring to new medical school graduates as part of the AMA’s “Tribute to the Medical School Class of 2020.”
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Get answers to all your biggest questions about getting into medical school, the application process, the MCAT and more.
It appears another flock of potential physicians may have been listening, however. With medical school applications up nearly 20% from last year, some are attributing that bounce to the “Fauci effect,” in essence crediting the nation’s most famous and most visible physician with inspiring a new generation.
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the number of students applying to enter medical school in 2021 is up 18% from this time last year. The bump is unprecedented, and the reasons behind it are not entirely clear.
“This large of an increase is unprecedented,” said Geoffrey Young, PhD, the AAMC’s senior director of student affairs and programs. ”We can’t say for sure why so many more students have applied this year. Some students may have had more time for applications and preparing for the MCAT exam after their college courses went online. Some may have been motivated by seeing heroic doctors on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
At Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU), one of 37 member schools of the AMA Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium, the number of applications received to date—a 14% year-to -date increase—has surpassed the number received in the entire 2020 cycle, with two months before the application submission deadline.
“The fact that we as a society are dealing with this pandemic and people are seeing the challenges that our health care workforce are dealing with, and the pain and suffering of those who deal with COVID, it certainly could have fanned the flames for applicants who were thinking about a career in medicine,” said John D. Schriner, PhD, an associate dean for admissions and student affairs at OU. “They want to make a difference similar to what Dr. Fauci is saying.”
Other factors to which the spike could be attributed include an unfriendly economic climate for new graduates and more time to prepare applications.
“It is certainly encouraging to see an increase in applicants to medical school, and there are likely multiple drivers involved,” said Kimberly Lomis, MD, the AMA’s vice president for undergraduate medical education innovations. “The pandemic disrupted many students’ intended plans and has caused all to reconsider their educational and career options. Medicine needs people inclined to step up in times of crisis, and current medical students across the country demonstrated that ethos this year.”
At the November 2020 AMA Special Meeting, Dr. Fauci gave an exclusive interview to AMA Executive Vice President and CEO James L. Madara, MD. Read more about Dr. Fauci’s 2021 forecast on COVID-19 vaccines, treatments.
In interviews, Dr. Fauci has downplayed his impact on the application increase. Schriner isn’t so sure, however.
“There are a lot of great physicians who inspire students to go toward medicine and make a difference,” Schriner said. “Dr. Fauci is such an inspiring figure, a trusted figure. I think there may be something to it.”
While the factors contributing to the increase in applications are likely manyfold, the pandemic has caused an increase, Schriner says, in applicant altruism. And it has done so at a needed time— according to data published this year by the AAMC, the United States could see an estimated shortage of between 54,100 and 139,000 physicians, including shortfalls in both primary and specialty care, by 2033.
“Folks are just seeing such suffering and such sacrifice on the part of the patients and their families, and also the sacrifice and suffering made by the health care delivery team,” Schriner said. “There’s an altruistic spirit that is reflected in the increase in applications.”
Medicine can be a career that is both challenging and highly rewarding but figuring out a medical school’s prerequisites and navigating the application process can be a challenge into itself. The AMA premed glossary guide has the answers to frequently asked questions about medical school, the application process, the MCAT and more.

Suyash Mehta Is NBA’s First Full-Time Indian-Origin Referee

December 30, 2020January 8, 2021 Staff ReporterSports, Youth 0

In an official announcement made by the The National Basketball Association (NBA) League of the US, Suyash Mehta was one of three referees, promoted to full-time NBA staff officials,
“We are pleased to welcome Simone [Jelks], Suyash and Andy [Nagy] to our full-time staff,” said Monty McCutchen, NBA Senior Vice President, Head of Referee Development and Training. “They have demonstrated through the growth and the quality of their performance, they warrant working NBA games on a regular basis.”
In the past, Mehta has officiated G League and Summer League games. Last season, he was named to the NBA’s officiating staff for the first time. He had refereed in 13 games and was one of six to be named under the title of ‘non-staff officials’.
Mehta, whose parents are from India, also has coaching experience at various collegiate levels including the Atlantic 10, Big South, Colonial Athletic Association, Conference USA, NCAA Division III and junior college officiating experience.
Mehta officiated five seasons in the NBA G League. During the 2019 20 NBA season, he refereed 13 regular-season NBA games as a “non-staff official”.
Mehta — whose parents are from India and moved to the US in the 1980s — also has coaching experience at various collegiate levels including the Atlantic 10, Big South, Colonial Athletic Association, Conference USA, NCAA Division III and junior college officiating experience.
Suyash Mehta also had coaching experience at collegiate level which includes various teams like Atlantic 10, Big South, Colonial Athletic Association, Conference USA, NCAA Division III and junior colleges. Therefore, Mehta has always been positive about making it big in the sport, either by being a coach or as a match referee.
“They have demonstrated through the growth and the quality of their performance, they warrant working NBA games on a regular basis,” McCutchen added. Jelks joins Lauren Holtkamp-Sterling, Ashley Moyer-Gleich, Natalie Sago and Jenna Schroeder as full-time female officials for the 2020-21 season.