NRIs Corner

A 27-year old Indian, who worked on a Caribbean cruise ship, died after falling off the ship and was identified after his body washed up on a beach in the US state of Florida.

Cliford Minej of Thane, Mumbai was a worker on Holland America Line cruise ship. His body, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, drifted ashore near Clearwater Beach in Florida and was spotted by someone walking on the beach, according to a report in Tampa Bay Times.

The ship, named Ryndam, came to port in Tampa last Sunday and police believe Minej fell off the ship that morning.

A security officer at John F Kennedy International Airport here has been convicted of stealing thousands of dollars from two Indian-origin passengers before they boarded a plane to India and faces up to 14 years in prison.

Alexandra Schmid, 34, who worked as a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer assigned to the city’s busiest international airport, has been convicted of grand larceny and other charges for stealing USD 10,000 cash from the two passengers travelling in December 2011 and January 2012.

Two Bahrainis, including a police officer, have been jailed for 21 years by a court for robbing two Indians and threatening some people with a knife.

The duo, a 41-year-old policeman and a 20-year-old unemployed man, were convicted of theft and assault by the
High Criminal court yesterday. The unemployed youth was also found guilty of impersonating a policeman, the Gulf Daily News
reported today.

Prosecutors said both men, along with an unknown Bahraini, raided an apartment building in the capital Manama

An Indian American has been charged with causing brain damage and other life-threatening injuries to his four-month-old son, leaving him struggling for life in hospital.

Jagsheer Singh, 28, from Queens county faces first-degree assault and child endangerment charges for allegedly inflicting the life-threatening injuries on little Nevin Janduher, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.

Kerala will set up an NRI commission to help resolve problems faced by the diaspora, a minister said Thursday.

Following numerous complaints from the Kerala diaspora, regarded as the backbone of the state economy on account of their remittances, the Oommen Chandy government is to set up a NRI Commission before which the diaspora can approach with all issues they face in Kerala, Minister for Home Ramesh Chennithala told IANS.

The minister that he has already spoken about this to State Diaspora Minister K.C.Joseph and in the coming week they will sit down with officials to work this out.

A 28-year-old Indian man has been charged with assaulting his four-month-old son and causing life-threatening injuries, including multiple severe skull fractures and brain damage to him and faces 25 years in jail.

Jagsheer Singh of Queens was charged with first-degree assault and endangering the welfare of a child. His bail has been set at USD 200,000.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said that according to the charges, the baby’s mother Reena Malhotra left her son with her husband Singh on the night of December 19 before going to work.

Sikhs in Scotland’s Aberdeen city have teamed up with local oil and gas workers to provide food to the region’s less fortunate.

The “small but passionate” Sikh community of the northeast region set up a Christmas food bank at the Seaton Community Education Centre in Aberdeen to help some of the city’s most deprived people, the Aberdeen Press and Journal reported citing organiser Mandeep Singh Khalsa.

The 28-year-old consultant said the food bank brought the Sikh community one step closer to setting up a “langar” – a common kitchen and canteen for all – in the region.

Nepalese migrants building the infrastructure to host the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar have died at a rate of one every two days in 2014 – despite the Gulf country’s promises to improve the working conditions for workers, a media report said today.

The figure excludes deaths of Indian, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi workers, raising fears that if fatalities among all migrants were taken into account the toll would almost certainly be more than one a day, the Guardian newspaper said.

Zahid Ali Khan, editor in chief of The Siasat Urdu Daily in Hyderabad, was felicitated by community members and Saudi businessmen at Dewaniah Jeddah recently in recognition of his 50 years of service to Urdu journalism, national integration and communal harmony

Introducing Zahid Ali Khan, Mir Gazanfar Ali Zaki, general secretary of Indian Youth Welfare Association, said that Khan, in his seven decades of enormous opportunity has achieved many contributions.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged an Indian-American couple with insider trading on confidential information obtained from a corporate client.

California-based attorney Shivbir Grewal and his wife, Preetinder Grewal, sold all of their Spectrum Pharmaceuticals shares last year after getting a non-public information from company officials who sought advice of Shivbir’s law firm before announcing a significant decline in expected revenue, a litigation release by the commission said Monday.

Bahrain is keen to seek India’s help in media, public communications and cinema industry, to boost development of Bahraini professionals in these sectors.

Bahrain’s cabinet yesterday approved the signing of an agreement between the information ministries of the two countries to boost joint cooperation in order to avail from Indian expertise in public communications and media sector and the cinema industry.

A subsidiary of India’s leading document management systems company SoftAge will help the government of Saudi Arabia in becoming paperless in the next two years, a software technology expert has said.

“The concept of paperless administration is almost 80 per cent achieved in Saudi Arabia. I think it will take two more years to have cent per cent e-governance,” Sanad Al Maqbali, partner, SoftAge Enjazat, a Saudi-subsidiary of SoftAge, told PTI here.

Maqbali’s firm has partnered with the Saudi Arabia government in implementation of several e-governance projects.

A local drama group Children’s Theatre, which has staged over 50 shows of two Marathi plays enacted by child artists across Maharashtra, will present the English versions of the plays in Dubai in March next year.

The modalities of staging the shows for the first time in Dubai were being worked out, Children’s Theatre group’s Raju Tutallwar and Manas Kumthekar told reporters here yesterday.

An Indian-American attorney and his wife have been charged in the US with insider trading after they used confidential information obtained from a corporate client about a pharmaceutical company and avoided thousands of dollars in losses.

California-based Shivbir Grewal and Preetinder Grewal agreed to pay USD 90,000 to settle the federal regulator US Securities and Exchange Commission’s charges, and Shivbir also agreed to be suspended from practicing as an attorney before the SEC on behalf of any publicly traded company or other entity regulated by the agency.

India’s Consulate General here announced today that it will commence three new passport, visa and consular outsourcing service centres from January 1, 2015, to provide better services to about a million Indians living in this Saudi city and its adjoining areas.

Under the new arrangement, the new outsourcing agency, VFS Global, would open three centers in Jeddah, Abha and Tabuk, a statement from the Conuslate said.

The three centers will be well-equipped to deal with all kinds of passport, visa and consular attestation services.

Viswakanth Ankireddy, an Indian IT worker who was held hostage during the Sydney cafe siege on December 15, said on Thursday that he is getting better by the day with his wife’s support.

Ankireddy and his colleague Pushpendu Ghosh were among the people inside the Lindt Chocolat Cafe when gunman Man Haron Monis stormed the building and took them hostage Monday, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

“As for me, I am fine and getting better every day,” he said in a statement.

An Indian origin 110-year-old man will be celebrating his 111th Christmas in 2014.

Nazer Singh, who was born in Punjab and had not heard of Christmas until he moved to England in 1965, said that since he came to England he takes pride in receiving gifts and giving presents, but he is running out of items to ask for, the Daily Express reported.

The ex-labourer, who lives with the 61-year-old son Chain in Sunderland, is planning to spend the day with family, won’t be seeing all his nine children, 34 grandchildren and 63 great-grandchildren.

Three Indians on death row in Saudi Arabia for the murder of their compatriot have been saved from being executed after an Indian businessman paid nearly USD 133,200 in blood money on their behalf.

The three convicts, Fasal Iritti, 35, Mustafa Kunnath, 33, and M Shakeer, 36, all natives of Kerala, were released from Al-Hair prison in Riyadh where they had been awaiting execution for the murder of Ashraf, a native of Mangalore in Karnataka, the Arab News reported.

Leading industrialist Rahul Bajaj has become the largest donor for the Mahatma Gandhi statue to be unveiled at Parliament Square in London in early 2015.

The Bajaj Auto chairman donated 200,000 pounds to the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust, set up by NRI economist Lord Meghnad Desai to raise funds for the sculpture.

“This is a wonderful gift for the Trust just before the New Year,” said Lord Desai, accepting the donation on behalf of the trust.

An Indian-American hotelier has been sued by the US Department of Labour for not paying rightful wages running into USD 200,000 to 192 employees.

According to the law suit filed by Department of Labour and US Attorney Office for the District of North Dakota, Bharat Patel, who owns 13 hotels in North Dakota and Montana, violated the Fair Labour Standards Act by incorrectly classifying some workers as exempt salaried employees.

A first batch of 12 Keralite nurses evacuated by the Centre from trouble-torn Libya arrived here in the wee hours of today.

The nurses, stranded in Libya, were brought back via Tunisia and arrived at the international airport in nearby Nedumbassery around 2.30 am, official sources said.

Non-Resident Keralite Affairs department officials, who received the nurses at airport, handed over a cash assistance of Rs 2,000 to each of them.

Narrating their ordeal, V R Jisha, one of the nurses, later told reporters that they did not get sufficient food or water in the strife-torn Libya.

Richard Rahul Verma will be sworn-in as US Ambassador to India tomorrow, becoming the first Indian-American to hold the post.

Verma, 46, was confirmed by the US Senate by a voice vote last week.

Secretary of State John Kerry would host the swearing in ceremony of Verma.

Verma is expected to head for New Delhi and present his credentials to President Pranab Mukherjee, ahead of the visit of US President Barack Obama to India to be the chief guest at the Republic Day parade on January 26.

The US Embassy in New Delhi is currently headed by charge d’affaires Kathleen Stephens.

Amitabh Mattoo, one of India’s leading thinkers, has been honoured in Australia for his significant contribution towards deepening and strengthening bilateral ties.

Mattoo, 52, the inaugural director of Australia India Institute, was honoured yesterday by Victoria’s Governor Alex Chernov during a function attended by India’s High Commissioner in Australia Biren Nanda, Consul General in Melbourne Manika Jain and former Australian High Commissioner Peter Varghese.

A 26-year-old Indian here has been sentenced to nine months in prison for molesting a woman, according to a media report.

Sathaiya Ilayaraja was smelled of alcohol when he committed the crime in a lift of an apartment building on November 7, The Straits Times reported.

The court yesterday heard that the 39-year-old beautician was shocked and got out of the lift on landing at fourth floor. But Ilayaraja followed and molested her a second time. The woman fended him off with an umbrella when he attempted again after which he fled.

An India-born man residing in Britain has been sent to a mental hospital with a no-time limit restriction order under the Mental Health Act for killing his wife in 2009, media reported.

Harjinder Pal, 34, was arrested following the killing of Kulvir Kaur, 21, at their home in London but was deemed unfit to be tried. He was detained under the Mental Health Act, the Ealing Times reported Wednesday.