NRIs Corner

Indian-origin British MP Priti Patel has been honoured here with the prestigious Asian Trader Editor’s Award for her tireless campaigning to support small shops and convenience stores.

Priti, the British Prime Minister’s recently appointed Indian Diaspora Champion, won the award at a ceremony held at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel here last night.

Priti has supported the grocery sector by campaigning for tougher punishments for offenders who commit retail crime, reforms to business rates and cuts to red tape.

Three Indians are among the six authors who have been shortlisted for the USD 50,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2014.

The shortlisted works include “The Book of Destruction” by Anand and “Goat Days” by Benyamin both fiction translated from Malayalam by Chetana Sachidanandan and Joseph Koyippalli respectively. The third is “Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer” by Cyrus Mistry.

The winning titles were announced at a ceremony held at the London School of Economics in London.

As Nisha Desai Biswal became Washington’s first point person for South Asia, she vowed to “do everything possible to bridge from the Asia we see today to the Asia that we know is possible tomorrow”.

“My parents and my in-laws lived the classic immigrant experience as they left India in search of opportunity,” recalled Biswal as she was formally sworn into her new position Thursday as the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs.

US President Barack Obama has appointed an Indian-American Gargee Ghosh to a key administration post.

Ghosh, currently the Director of Policy Analysis and Financing at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been appointed as member of the President’s Global Development Council.

“I am pleased to announce that these experienced and committed individuals have agreed to join this Administration, and I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead,” Obama said yesterday as he announced several key administration posts along with Ghosh.

An Indian techie has filed a lawsuit against Bosch, a German multinational engineering and electronics company, alleging that the firm compelled Indian employees in the US to pay their tax refunds back to it.

In a lawsuit filed through national plaintiffs’ law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP (“Lieff Cabraser”), Indian national Suraj Kamath today charged that Bosch unjustly enriched itself by requiring all of its non-US citizens employees to pay to Bosch federal and state tax refunds the employees had received while working in the US.

US President Barack Obama has nominated a prominent 36-year-old Indian-origin doctor who heads a group that promotes his signature healthcare law to be the next Surgeon General.

Vivek Hallegere Murthy’s name has now been sent in Obama’s formal notification to the US Senate, and if confirmed, the doctor will be the youngest and the first-ever Indian-American in American history to assume the coveted medical post.

Obama had announced his intention to nominate Boston-based Murthy last week itself.

Former Indian ambassador to the US, Nirupama Rao, has accepted a one-year appointment as the Meera and Vikram Gandhi Fellow with the Brown-India Initiative at the Watson Institute for International Studies.

Rao, who retired earlier this month after a 40-year diplomatic career, begins her appointment in January 2014, Providence, Rhode Island based Brown University announced Monday. While at Brown Rao will be writing a book focusing on how the advent of new media technologies are changing the way countries respond to policy-related situations.

The owner of an 800-million-pound hotel in Britain is being sued by his father for not following the Sikh tradition of sharing family property.

Eighty-six-year-old Bal Mohinder Singh’s son Jasminder, 62, head of the Radisson Blu Edwardian hotels, will face the charge of abandoning his father from his property Nov 19 in a court in London, the Daily Mail reported.

Bal Mohinder claims he and his son together turned a small family business into a high-class hotel chain worth 800 million pounds.

A 52-year-old Non-Resident Indian (NRI) woman was arrested for stealing three shawls from a south Delhi showroom, police said Monday.

“The owner of the woollen clothes’ showroom in Greater Kailash lodged a complaint with police Nov 14 that three fine quality shawls were stolen,” a police officer said.

Police said footage from the closed-circuit television cameras installed inside the showroom was collected and a woman was discovered shop-lifting Nov 12 and 13.

The woman was later identified as Neelu Talwar and arrested Sunday from her brother’s house near the shop.

Kumar Uttam, son of a grocery shop owner, has become the only Indian among seven finalists to win a two-week study tour to Australia and a chance at a one-year all-paid stay for education there.

Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop met Uttam, an undergraduate student at IIT Delhi, who explained his keen interest in undertaking the study on developing environment friendly materials, the project which won him the “Win your Future Unlimited” contest run by Austrade (Australian Trade Commission).

(Syed Mujeeb New Zealand Correspondent, Siasat Daily) Office of Ethnic Affairs within the Ministry of Internal Affairs of New Zealand is calling for wide participation of people from diverse background to join World Muslim Forum conference.

(Syed Mujeeb New Zealand Correspondent, Siasat Daily) Office of Ethnic Affairs within the Ministry of Internal Affairs of New Zealand is calling for wide participation of people from diverse background to join World Muslim Forum conference. This is the first of its kind conference promoted by New Zealand Government in order to enhance its Building Bridges Programme started in 2005.

An Indian origin designer has found a way to use the power of the sun and a pair of Ray-Bans to charge a mobile phone in evening.

Sayalee Kaluskar has developed a pair of shades that have a small solar panel on each arm which can be used charge an iPhone, Cnet reported.

The Ray-Ban Shama Shades are part of a student project at Miami Ad School–San Francisco.

The shades have a small solar panel on each arm, and that’s apparently enough to charge an iPhone 5 when the sun goes down. (ANI)

Australian prosecutors have dropped all charges of medical negligence, including the deaths of two patients, against Indian-origin surgeon Jayant Patel and he is likely to be able to return to his home in the US next week.

Counsel for the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions(DPP), Peter Davis, told the Brisbane District Court Friday that the prosecution would not pursue Patel, 63, on charges of killing Gerry Kemps, 77, and James Phillips, 46, and causing bodily harm to Ian Rodney Vowles in the Bundaberg Base Hospital in Queensland, the Courier Mail reported.

A 70-year-old Canada-based NRI was found dead under mysterious circumstances last evening in his Shivaji Enclave flat in west Delhi, police said on Saturday.

The deceased has been identified as Harjeet Singh whose body was spotted by his neighbour at around 8 pm who then informed police.

“Hands and legs of the deceased were tied with a rope. However, there were no external injuries on his body. It seems that he was strangled or smothered. It doesn’t look like that he was killed for robbery as there were no signs of ransacking in the house,” said a police official.

An Indian-origin doctor, accused of manslaughter of several patients in Australia, is likely to walk free after prosecutors today dropped all criminal medical negligence charges against him, ending his long-running legal woes.

Jayant Patel, 63, did not react when he was formally discharged from the indictments in the Supreme and District courts in Brisbane.

During the hearing, Prosecutor Peter Davis said the crown would not be pursuing criminal medical negligence charges against Patel, an Indian-born US citizen, after deciding it was not in the interests of justice.

President Barack Obama plans to nominate Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy, the Indian-American head of a doctors group that promotes his signature healthcare law to be the next US surgeon general.

Murthy is a hospitalist at the Brigham and is co-founder and president of Doctors for America, a Washington, DC-based group of 16,000 physicians and medical students that advocates for access to affordable, high quality health care.

A protest demonstration was held in front of the UAE embassy here in support of an Indian man allegedly wrongly imprisoned and sentenced to death for rape in Abu Dhabi.

The demonstrators also presented a petition in support of E K Gangadharan yesterday addressed to UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, and the UAE Ambassadors to India and the UK.

The campaign to save Gangadharan is gathering momentum, particularly across India.

An Indo-Canadian woman has alleged that she faced racism at a bar in Vancouver.

Jas Dhillon alleged that she and her friends – all Indo-Canadian women – arrived at The Charles Bar in the Gastown neighbourhood of Vancouver Oct 19 evening to celebrate her 26th birthday but were greeted with nothing but rude service, the south Asian news portal Vancouver Desi reported Sunday.

The bar manager allegedly shouted at them, “Surrey’s that way!”, which, according
to Dhillon, was a reference to the city in British Columbia that is home to a large population of Indian descent.

Canada has remembered the sacrifices of Sikhs who served in the armed forces at a solemn function attended by Indo-Canadian MP Parm Gill on behalf of the country’s Minister of Veterans Affairs Julian Fantino.

The programme ‘In Remembrance: The Sikhs’, was hosted by the Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada in Brampton in Ontario province Sunday.

“Our government values and honours the contributions, accomplishments and sacrifices of all veterans, including Sikh Canadians who served with bravery and distinction in times of war, conflict and peace,” said minister Fantino.

The 25-year-old Indian man, Tarun Asthana, who died a few days after he was fatally punched in Auckland, was remembered as being a ‘guardian angel and protector’ who lived life to the full.

Asthana died last Monday morning, two days after suffering critical head injuries in an incident in downtown Auckland.

According to stuff.co.nz, naval rating Grenville David McFarland, aged 27, has been charged with assault and is set to reappear in the Auckland District Court on Friday.

The contribution of the 700,000 strong Indian commmunity in Kuwait was extolled by the prime ministers of both the countries at their banquet speeches Friday night at the Hyderabad House here.

Speaking first, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, while talking about Kuwait’s linkages “from time immemorial”, with commerce, culture and religion of India, said: “The seven hundred thousand Indians in your country are a living bridge between Kuwait and India. They are building their lives, supporting families at home and contributing to Kuwait’s pluralism and progress.”

A man from India with 12 finger plans to move to Britain after he failed to get a job typing despite applying for 50 jobs.

Vijay Singh, who can rattle out more than 100 words a minute, said that everyone wants pretty women in their office, rather than a guy who has 12 fingers, Metro.co.uk reported.

The 48-year-old from Agra suffers from Polydactyly and he has yet to secure employment. (ANI)

An Indian-origin doctor has been selected for prestigious “Outstanding American by Choice” award for his valuable contribution to US heatlh sector.

Eminent transplant surgeon and philanthropist, Rahul Jindal, will be honoured by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on November 13.

The initiative recognises naturalised citizens who have made significant contributions to both their community and their adopted country.

As part of a growing trend of political empowerment for the three million-strong Indian American community, five Indian-American candidates scored victories in Tuesday’s US polls, with three of them becoming legislators in two states and two winning elections to local bodies.

The most significant gains for the Indian American community came in New Jersey where Kolkata-born Raj Mukherji scored a victory in the 33rd district to join fellow Democrat Upendra Chivukula, who retained his 17th district seat, in the state assembly.