NRIs Corner

British-Indian millionaire Shrien Dewani today argued that he be cleared of the murder charge slapped against him for allegedly planning his Indo-Swedish wife’s murder during their honeymoon in South Africa in 2010.

Shrien’s lawyers claimed the prosecution has presented “no credible evidence” to connect the 34-year-old businessman with the murder of his wife Anni Dewani, 28.

The businessman’s defence team claimed a key prosecution witness is unreliable.

The toll from last week’s deadly bus accident in Nepal on Monday rose to 47 including one Indian as rescue operations entered in its fourth day.

The bus carrying more than 50 people had skidded off a narrow stretch in Jajarkot district’s mountainous region and plunged into Bheri river in western Nepal on Thursday. On day one, officials had confirmed that five people were killed and around 45 remained missing.

The bus, which had completely submerged into the water soon after it fell around 80 metres off the road, was partially fished out today.

Noted social entrepreneur and founder of educational institutes Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) and Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), Achyuta Samanta is among 15 people selected from across the world for the prestigious Gusi Peace Prize for 2014.

The award, announced by Philippines-based Gusi Peace Prize International, will be presented in Manila on November 26, a KIIT press release said.

Samanta was selected for the award for his efforts and achievements in “poverty alleviation through education and humanitarianism,” it said.

An Indian-origin student, who died after being hit by a train, had been trying to climb a wall in Birmingham to re-enter a nightclub, an inquest heard.

The Birmingham Coroners’ Court heard that Jeevan Singh Dhanda, 18, fell from a wall 30 feet below on to tracks at New Street Station, the Mirror reported Thursday.

The teenager from Walsall in West Midlands lay injured on the rail line for three hours before he was hit by a train leaving the station.

He was rushed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital where he died Aug 13, 2013, six days after the tragic accident, the report said.

A Dubai court has upheld the three year sentence of a 33-year-old Indian shopkeeper for strangulating his wife on suspicion of extra martial affair.

The Dubai Appeal Court yesterday upheld the judgement of the Indian identified as S S to three-year imprisonment after it rejected prosecutors appeal to stiffen the punishment, the Gulf News reported.

The man had a heated argument with his wife over her alleged extra marital affair with another man. He killed her at their residence in Bur Dubai and surrendered to the police in August last year.

An Indian man in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been sentenced to three years in jail for strangling his wife to death under the influence of liquor after suspecting that she had an extramarital affair, media reported.

The 33-year-old storekeeper, S.S., had a heated argument with his wife over her alleged extramarital affair with another man, the Gulf News reported Wednesday.

The man killed her at their residence in Bur Dubai and turned himself in to the police in August 2013.

Amid reports that India has revised the minimum wage requirements for its workers in the United Arab Emirates, Indian mission in the country has said no such revision was made.

“We had last revised the minimum wages for various categories of Indian workers employed in the UAE on March 15, 2011,“ Indian Ambassador to the UAE T P Seetharam was quoted as telling a local media.

A news report had earlier said India was seeking a revision in the wages of millions of Indians immigrants working in Gulf nations.

The enrollment of first-time graduate students from India in the US universities has registered a 27 per cent growth this year even as China witnessed a decline in comparison to the last year, a latest report has said.

“The first-time enrollment of students from India increased 27 per cent, marking the second year in a row of double-digit growth in first-time enrollments of students from that country,” the Council of Graduate Students has said in its report.

According to the report, in 2013 the increase was a whopping 40 per cent.

An Indian man in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been sentenced to one year in jail for molesting a seven-year-old British girl on the pretext of giving her tissues, media reported.

The 25-year-old man, who is a cook, tricked the British girl to go with him to the toilet of a restaurant on the pretext of giving her tissues, locked her up and molested her, the Khaleej Times reported Tuesday.

The incident took place March 7. The Court of First Instance ordered the cook to be deported after serving his jail term, the report said.

Kottarapattu Chattu Kuttan, the legendary hotel doorman, who served world leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Richard Nixon at the famous Galle Face Hotel here, has died. The Indian-origin doorman of the country’s iconic hotel, known as Kuttan, passed away peacefully at the age of 94 yesterday after a brief illness.

An Indian-origin writer is among the finalists for one of the most prestigious US literary award for his non-fiction book set in war-torn Afghanistan.

Anand Gopal is among the finalists in the non-fiction category for the 2014 National Book Award for his book ‘No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes.

Gopal, who has served as an Afghanistan correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor, chronicles the lives of three Afghans caught in America’s decade-long war on terror.

Kerala government today said it was striving hard to provide jobs to the nurses who returned home from the trouble-prone countries of Iraq and Libya.

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy assured a gathering of nurses who had returned to the state from these countries that the state government had been able to give jobs to the earlier batch of nurses who returned from Iraq with the cooperation of different hospitals.

We have requested more hospitals to come forward with jobs for the maximum number of nurses, he said.

Biman Prasad, the Indian-origin leader of the opposition National Federation Party (NFP) in Fiji has denied any rift within the Opposition Caucus over its decision to attend a special parliament session for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Wednesday.

Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) has decided to boycott the sitting.

“We respect their decision. We are two different parties although we make up the opposition. We will go in,” Prasad said.

“The Fijian government has a lot to learn from India’s democracy,” Fiji Live quoted Prasadas saying.

A new survey has revealed that 52 percent of men believe that they’d be financially healthier without a better half.

According to the survey by TotallyMoney.com, more than half of men believe they spend more money in a relationship than they would as a singleton and life as a couple is more expensive than going it alone, the Daily Star reported.

It was also found that 61 percent of wo men in a relationship think they’d be financially better off as they are, while 68 percent of single people agreed that they’d be wealthier remaining alone. (ANI)

A 30-year-old Indian woman working here as a nanny was sentenced to life in prison for killing her British employer’s 11-months-old baby girl after being denied a leave.

The nanny, identified only with her initials R T, strangled the infant with her scarf in the absence of her employers. She was convicted of premeditated murder by the Court of First Instance, Gulf News reported today.

She earlier denied the charge in court and claimed she had just put the baby in bed on January 18.

The trial of two boys accused in the killing of an Indian-origin dairy owner in New Zealand has now been delayed by seven months.

One of the boys, aged 13, has been accused of killing Arun Kumar, 57, June 10 at the Railside Dairy in Henderson in west Auckland, which the victim owned, New Zealand Herald reported Tuesday.

The boy has jointly been charged with a 12-year-old boy with the murder of Kumar while he was working with his wife at the dairy.

The family of Kumar will now have to wait until June next year for the case to be heard — news which has devastated them.

Don’t link Muslim Kiwis to Isis terror Barbaric terrorists do not lead, speak for or represent the law-abiding Islamic community in New Zealand I found out about Islamic State what seems a short time ago when a reporter rang me to ask if I supported Isis. “What is an Isis?” I said.

I now know they are violent individuals who cause terror wherever they go and who stand for everything I abhor. And yet there may be people who assume these people thousands of miles from my home in Hamilton – people who seem to delight in death and suffering – somehow represent me and my family.

A 74-year-old Indian-origin Sikh, known as the “peach king of California”, has been honoured by the state’s governor who praised the commnuity’s contributions to the nation.

Didar Bains, godfather to the region’s more than 50,000 Sikhs, was yesterday honoured by governor Jerry Brown, who went to the Sikh Temple of Sacramento to honour his longtime political supporter.

Brown praised Bains and thousands of other immigrants from India who he said have enriched the nation with their culture and work ethics.

An Indian-origin student was among the five teenagers killed in a “horrific” collision between two cars in South Yorkshire in the UK, police said on Monday.

The 18-year-old Arpad Kore was travelling with his four friends in a Toyota Corolla when their vehicle collided with another car under foggy conditions, police said.

The others who died of their injuries were identified as Bartosz Bortniczak, Blake Cairns, Jordanna Goodwin, and Megan Storey. They were all aged between 16 and 18 years old from the Doncaster area.

An Indian security guard working in a money exchange firm was shot three times in his right leg by two masked robbers in Manama, media reported.

He was admitted to a hospital, Gulf Daily news reported Sunday.

The area where the attack took place Saturday has been cordoned off as forensic experts have collected evidence from the crime scene.

Police confirmed that the shooting took place during an attempted robbery and said an investigation has been launched to catch the attackers.

The case has been referred to the public prosecution, said the CID director general.

–IANS

City-based stock broker and financial service provider has announced its partnership with TradeNext, UK based multi-asset broking firm to offer dedicated service to NRIs in the European city.

“MC Securities Ltd will be first of its kind standalone Indian stock broking firm to enter into such an alliance to service the NRI and Asian community in Europe. Initially, we are opening a desk at London and later we would expand our footprint to other European cities in association with TradeNext,” MC Securities Ltd founder & CEO, Saumya Basu said.

London is the best place in the world to live in, leading NRI industrialist Gopichand P Hinduja has said that after travelling around the globe, he found “home” in the British capital.

A 59-year old Indian physician has pleaded guilty for his role in a USD 19 million healthcare fraud scheme in which he submitted fraudulent claims for home visits and directed false referrals for home health care by his employee physicians.

Rajesh Doshi of Michigan yesterday pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and one count of health care fraud and would be sentenced in March next year, Assistant Attorney General Leslie R Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said.

A seriously injured Indian-origin cab driver in New Zealand is recovering from emergency surgery following a vicious, unprovoked attack in the North Island city of Hamilton, a media report said Friday.

The 45-year-old victim said that he had no idea why a stranger knocked his teeth out as he sat in his cab Tuesday, the .

“The attack on me was shocking,” he said.

“I needed medical and dental treatment and it’s shaken not just me, but my wife and three children as well.”

He was punched repeatedly in the face and mouth by a man who then demanded cash.

If the mere thought of making PowerPoint presentations leaves you bored, then turn to these free, user-friendly online tutorials, courtesy a 10-year-old Indian-origin girl and probably the world’s youngest teacher of online software tutorials.

Teaming up with her father and entrepreneur Rajesh Kalra, Arkshya has brought the otherwise dull PowerPoint software to life with mind-blowing, three-dimensional (3D) tricks.