NRIs Corner

A trade union in Bahrain has condemned the death of an Indian man in a fire at a workshop in the Sitrah region of the Gulf nation.

Following the death of Jijo Varghese Cherian Oct 21 in a fire that broke out at the Al Namal Contracting and Trading Company in Nuwaidrat, where he was working, the General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions (GFBTU) Wednesday expressed concern at the working conditions of the workshops across the country, the Gulf Daily News reported.

Labour ministry officials during their visit to the site reportedly found lapses in the company’s safety norms.

Detectives in the British city of Bradford have launched a search for an Indian-origin woman, who went missing Wednesday.

Seemberjeet Kaur, 34, from Wibsey, who reportedly suffers from depression, went missing after taking a taxi to Shipley at about 10 a.m. Wednesday, the Telegraph & Argus reported.

It is not known whether she was carrying her medication for depression at the time.

She is about 5ft 4in tall, slim, with straight, black, shoulder length hair. At the time she was last seen, Kaur was wearing a brown or beige coat, blue jeans and metallic brown ankle boots.

Three persons have been arrested for murdering an Indian-origin man, working as a gas station attendant, in a failed robbery bid in the US state of New Jersey.

The accused have been identified as Isaiah Williams, 24, Cordero Hodge, 22, and Jamell Pierce, 22, from New Jersey.

All of them have been charged by the Gloucester county prosecutor’s office for murdering Surinder Singh, the South Jersey Times reported yesterday.

Singh, 40, a gas station attendant at Garden State Fuel in Woodbury, was shot in the upper chest and near his right armpit on August 25.

The Delhi-based American Embassy intends to reach out to the small towns in India to create awareness about the student visas and to dispel the misunderstandings relating to studying in the United States.

The US Embassy is also concerned about the mushrooming agents and touts in various parts of the country, particularly Punjab, and want to spread awareness about the visa process and formalities, said Paul Swider, the American Officer who works in the Embassy’s Visa section.

Three Indian American men have pleaded guilty to owning and managing motels where they ran illegal businesses, including selling drugs and prostitution.

Jaspal Singh, 37, Kulwinder Saroya, 42, and Lakhvir Pawar, 41, Tuesday admitted they profited from drug-dealing they allowed in the premises of their motels Seattle, The Seattle Times reported.

According to the report, Singh and Saroya admitted they would direct their staff to collect a $10 entry fee for people who came to their motels – Travelers Choice Motel and Great Bear Motor Inn – seeking drugs or sexual services.

Two Pakistani men in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were sentenced to three years in prison Wednesday for locking up and assaulting an Indian security guard before stealing electrical cables worth 264,500 dirhams (around $72,000).

The Dubai Criminal Court in July convicted the two Pakistani nationals, identified by their names’ initials – AA, 37, and AM, 27 – for assault, locking up a man against his will and robbery, The National reported.

Three men have been arrested and charged with the murder of an Indian-origin gas station attendant in the US in a failed robbery bid.

Isaiah Williams, 24, Cordero Hodge, 22, and Jamell Pierce, 22, from New Jersey have been charged by the Gloucester county prosecutor’s office for murdering Surinder Singh, the South Jersey Times reported Tuesday.

The victim, a gas station attendant at Garden State Fuel in Woodbury, was killed in fatal shooting Aug 25 by the three men.

Singh, 40, was shot in the upper chest and near his right armpit.

(ANI): The granting of leave to appeal to South African honeymoon murder accused Shrien Dewani is not a final order against his extradition, the Justice Department has said.

Spokesperson Mthunzi Mhaga said that the matter will still be argued on whether he is extraditable before three judges of the high court.

He added that there is, therefore, no decision against the prosecution on facts, but on legal issue, the Mirror reports.

A panel of three high court judges, headed by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, ruled that there were outstanding legal issues the court had to decide.

The Delhi High Court Monday issued notice to a US-based NRI, who claimed to be a neurologist-cum-criminal lawyer, asking him to explain why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against him for his outrageous and contemptuous conduct in court.

A division bench of Justice Kailash Gambhir and Justice Indermeet Kaur sought response from Adarsh Kant Kapoor by Nov 28 for undermining court’s “majesty and dignity”.

The court also asked Kapoor to be present in the court on the next date of hearing.

Dr. ArshadBasheerMadani, who completed the Scholar’s course in Hadith and Fiqh from Medina University, founded “AskIslampedia” said that the contemporary Dawa work’s obligations are entirely different from the traditional ways of Dawa. By the time Muslim scholars write on reply to the anti-Islamic propaganda thousands of books and articles reach to millions thru the internet. He shed light on the last 100 years history and elaborated how the conspiracy of labeling the Muslims as terrorists.

Coinciding with Indian Prime Minister Manhoman Singh’s three-day Russia visit, over a hundred followers from different Hindu organisations here staged a protest against the demolition of a site where devotees of ISKCON used to offer prayers in Moscow.

Led by the members of International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), devotees gathered outside the Russian Consulate here demanding a plot of land be allotted to construct a new temple in the Russian capital.

Indian-origin people celebrated Diwali in New Zealand’s largest city Auckland days ahead of its actual date giving New Zealanders a taste of Indian culture.

Thousands of Aucklanders Saturday celebrated the two-day Indian festival of lights, dancing, singing and feasting.

People ranging from school children to adults joined the festival, the Fairfax Media NZ reported.

Among the crowd was 2012 New Zealand’s Got Talent finalist Dane Moeke.

“We’ve been going around to different things. I am trying to listen to the music and the drums,” Moeke said.

A Sikh college student in California was kicked off a bus for wearing his faith. 20-year-old Harsimram Singh said an Amtrak bus driver alerted the police after spotting him with the kirpan, a curved ceremonial knife that baptized Sikhs are required to carry at all times.

An Indian was among two expatriates who drowned off the Oman coast while enjoying Eid holidays.

Valsakumar, 50, an Indian, and Herathu, 50, a Sri Lankan, both employed at a defence camp in Thumrait, a small town in southern Oman, were part of a 15-member group on a holiday trip to Taqa beach in Salalah, the capital of Oman’s Dhofar province.

Six persons got caught in the powerful waves and two drowned while the other four were rescued, the Times of Oman said.

“The retreating waves were very powerful. This might be the reason for the accident,” one of the victims’ friends said.

An Indian man who was separated from his family 25 years back has reportedly located them using his memory and Google Earth.

Saroo Brierley, now 31, as a child hopped on to a wrong train from his hometown in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, in a bid to meet his elder brother who was expected to take some other train for his journey.

However, when he was taken 100 miles away by the wrong train, he was eventually handed over to authorities, and with lack of information, he was put up for adoption and given to a family in Tasmania, Australia.

After losing out on the Man Booker Prize, Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri has made it to the finals of the 2013 US National Book Award in fiction for her new novel, “The Lowland”.

Pulitzer Prize winning Lahiri’s tale of two brothers set in Kolkata of the 1960s figures in the finals with four other works in the fiction category.

These are: “The Flamethrowers” by Rachel Kushner (Scribner); “The Good Lord Bird” by James McBride (Riverhead); “Bleeding Edge” by Thomas Pynchon (Penguin) and “Tenth of December” by George Saunders (Random House).

A teenaged girl who was captured on camera severely assaulting an elderly Sikh man in August this year has pleaded guilty in a British court.

Coral Millerchip, 19, pleaded guilty at the Warwick Crown Court to assaulting the 80-year-old Sikh pensioner, causing him actual bodily harm, the Coventry Observer reported Thursday.

The incident captured on a mobile phone showed the pony-tailed girl, accompanied by three young males, kicking and knocking down the 80-year-old Sikh on Trinity Street in Coventry city centre around 8.30 p.m. Aug 10.

The US Senate has confirmed noted Indian American Bharatanatyam exponent Ranee Ramaswamy as a member of the prestigious National Council on the Arts for a five-year term.

The National Council on the Arts advises the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who also chairs the Council, on agency policies and programmes.

It reviews and makes recommendations to the chairman on applications for grants, funding guidelines and leadership initiatives.

A 14-year-old Indian boy was named the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013 for his image of newly-hatched crocodiles basking in the sun on their mother’s head.

Udayan Rao Pawar’s photograph was selected out of 43,000 images from 96 countries submitted for the competition held by Natural History Museum of London and BBC Woldwide, the Daily Mail reported.

Pawar said he took the photograph at dawn on the banks of the Chambal river in Madhya Pradesh.

He said crocodiles are increasingly under threat from illegal sand mining and fishing in the Chambal river.

Amid tough ongoing negotiations to reopen the government and avoid a US debt default, President Barack Obama found time to meet Miss America Nina Davuluri, the first Indian-American to win the coveted crown.

“Had the pleasure of having a conversation with President @BarackObama in the Oval Office today! @NinaDavuluri #Celebration13,” Davuluri tweeted shortly after meeting the president at the White House Wednesday morning.

An Indian-origin scientist researching in the field of cancer will be receiving a $17 million fund from the US medical science funding body, said an official statement Tuesday.

Suresh Mathivanan, who works at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, is the only institution outside America to take part in research of and receive funds from the US National Institute of Health (NIH).

(IANS) A 24-year-old Indian-American man has been charged in the killing of a 23-year-old Georgetown University law student who was his high school friend, according to media reports.

Rahul Gupta, 24, is being held on $2 million bond after a night of drinking and birthday celebrating ended in a bloody stabbing of Mark Edward Waugh Sunday morning inside a high-rise apartment in Silver Spring, a Washington suburb in Maryland, the Washington Post reported.

(IANS) British visa authorities Monday warned visa fraudsters of strong action, including a 10-year ban on visiting the country, after a man was arrested for furnishing false records to secure a visa at the British mission here.

Two Indian men, who allegedly blackmailed, abducted and raped an Australian woman, will remain in custody till Oct 22, an Australian court has ruled.

The woman Sep 25 accepted a friend-request through a mobile application from a man, who purported to be 24 years old, Detective Senior Constable Peter Maguire told the ACT Magistrates Court Saturday.

The police suspect that they planned to abduct the woman after she agreed to meet the man at Kippax Fair shopping centre Sep 26, reports the Canberra Times.

Indian actor Kumar Pallana, who played the memorable role of a janitor in Tom Hanks starrer ‘The Terminal’ and worked in many Wes Anderson movies, has died. He was 94.

Pallana was a scene stealer as an Indian janitor who enjoyed watching people slip on his freshly cleaned floors in the Steven Spielberg directed movie.

The actor, who was born on December 23, 1918, died on October 10, according to the Facebook post by his son Deepak.

He was born in India to a car salesman but immigrated to the US in 1946.