NRIs Corner

Indian-Americans can play a valuable role in the India-US relationship as they bring unique perspective on issues of common concerns like business and trade, climate change and energy, US Vice President Joe Biden has said.

Biden made the remarks in a meeting with a group of Indian-Americans at the White House yesterday during which he discussed his upcoming trip to India.

“The Vice President emphasised the Administration’s ongoing commitment to the Asia-Pacific region and the importance of our bilateral relationship with India,” a White House official said.

US President Barack Obama has nominated an Indian-American woman for the key post of Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia.

Subject to confirmation by the Senate, Nisha Desai Biswal, who is currently the Assistant Administrator for Asia at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), will replace incumbent Robert Blake.

Biswal’s nomination by Obama yesterday came along with announcements for seven other senior administration level positions.

A 51-year-old Indian expatriate who was found unconscious at Sharjah International Airport, 15 hours after his flight took off, on July 3 is now reportedly under coma at Dubai’s Rashid Hospital.

The Gulf News reports that Sambandan Siva was waiting to board his flight to Chennai when he fell unconscious, but was discovered only the next morning.

Siva, who works with the UAE-based Al Huraiz Group, had taken a month’s leave to go to Chennai as he was not keeping well.

Muslim Aid a UK based International NGO has responded to the Uttarakhand catastrophe swiftly and around Rs 27,00,000 was sanctioned to distribute food packs, medicines, utensils and blankets.

A team a doctors and volunteers surveyed the affected areas before aid was released. This project funded by Muslim Aid was facilitated by MESCO a Hyderabad based national NGO led by Dr Mohammed Fakhruddin.

A couple has been jailed for nine months for a racially motivated attack on a Sikh driver in Darwin, Sydney. The couple ripped off Jagroop Singh’s turban in the ‘unprovoked’ and ‘malicious’ attack. According to news.com.au, in sentencing the couple, Justice Stephen Southwood said that the turban is the crowning glory of the Sikhs.

The White House has acknowledged the contributions of the Sikh community to the US as it celebrates 100 years of their achievements and the immigrant success story in America.

The occasion was an event last week to mark the centenary of the arrival in July 1913 of Bhagat Singh Thind from his home in Amritsar, Punjab, in pursuit of higher education while dreaming of a better life for himself and his family.

Thind became the first turbaned Sikh to fight in the American armed forces and led a life-long campaign to gain citizenship for him and many others.

As they celebrated the July 4 Independence Day of their adopted home, various Indian ethnic groups, from Oriyas to Maharashtrians to Tamils and Telugus also celebrated their culture at regional conventions.

Adding a slice of their own culture to American style traditional parades, barbecues and fireworks, various Indian ethnic groups celebrated the July 4 weekend with seminars and panel discussions, cultural performances, regional delicacies and even matrimonial meets.

Here are snippets from various ethnic conventions:

Maharashtra:

Nearly 20 Arab states have pledged to improve the welfare of minorities in Karnataka with financial aid to young entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises and for empowering women.

“About 20 Arab nations in West Asia and Africa have committed to grant Rs.8 million this year to fund minority entrepreneurs, help young women become self-reliant and educate the youth,” Indo-Arab Chamber of Commerce executive director Asif Iqbal told IANS.

Among the states that have pledged help are Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Two meetings for seeking the Indian diaspora’s business engagement with India will be held in Indonesia this week.

The first of these Diaspora Engagement Meets is scheduled for Tuesday in Medan, and the second will be held in the capital Jakarta on July 18, the organisers Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre (OIFC) announced here Monday.

The OIFC, a public-private partnership between the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs and the Confederation of Indian Industry, was formed specifically to facilitate the economic engagement of the Indian diaspora with India.

P.T. Nithin, a 26-year-old Indian, has been found dead in a car near a warehouse on Mezyad Road in Al Ain, a city in Abu Dhabi.

Nithin was a research assistant working with a university office in Dubai. He was from Sulthan Bathery district in the Indian state of Kerala and was living in the downtown area of Al Ain.

The Gulf News reports that Nithin had reportedly went missing on Tuesday night when he left in a rented car along with an unknown person whom the victim himself described as a friend.

op chief executive officers of India and the United States have given their recommendations to their respective governments on ways to improve and boost bilateral trade between the two countries.

The recomemndations were made during the US-India CEO Forum meeting held at the State Department here.

Opening remarks were made by India”s Finance Minister P Chidambaram, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

Audio tech pioneer Amar G. Bose, who was the founder of the high-end audio equipment company, the Bose Corporation, died on Friday at his home in Wayland, Massachusetts. He was 83.

His death was confirmed by his son, Dr. Vanu G. Bose, the New York Times reported.

Amar, who was a professor of electrical engineering at MIT, where he had also previously earned his doctorate, focused relentlessly on acoustic engineering innovation and his speakers earned a reputation for bringing concert-hall-quality audio into the home.

The unresolved UK immigration cases backlog has reportedly grown to more than 500,000, Members of Parliament said.

The Home Affairs Committee said that it could take 37 years to clear so many cases.

BBC reports that the UK Border Agency has been a troubled organisation for many years, which is why the home secretary took the decision to split the agency in March this year.

The family of Savita Halappanavar, the Indian woman who died due to pregnancy complications in Ireland due to the country’s strict abortion laws, has welcomed a new initiative of the Irish Parliament to allow limited abortion rights for the first time.

Savita’s father A S Yalgi, who shared his views with media in Belgaum, Karnataka, said: “I really welcome the move. And, it was our demand that at least for life saving purposes, the life saving Abortion Bill is very essential. This was our demand. I really thank them who have passed the bill.”

Six Indian-American kid chefs have been honoured for their fabulous culinary skills by US First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House’s “Kids State Dinner” as part of her initiative to tackle obesity and promote healthy eating among American children.

UK’s General Medical Council (GMC) is investigating fears of racial bias against foreign-trained doctors including Indians affecting the outcome of the general practitioners’ (GPs) examination in the country.

The issue relates to a large number of Indian doctors, who fear an institutional bias may be behind them unfairly failing GP exams or receiving lower pass rates despite extensive training and knowledge.

The new order was announced during trading hours today, 10 July 2013.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was down 20.42 points or 0.11% at 19,419.06.

On BSE, 2.78 lakh shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 89,507 shares in the past one quarter.

The stock hit a high of Rs 61.35 and a low of Rs 57.70 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 81.70 on 9 July 2012. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 50 on 12 June 2013.

A former Indian-American official of the Obama Administration, Ro Khanna, has raised nearly USD 2 million for his campaign to enter the US Congress from Silicon Valley.

Fighting against senior Democratic leader, Mike Honda, who has been endorsed by top party leaders including President Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, the leader in the House of Representatives, Khanna has managed to get substantial amount from top Silicon Valley big wigs.

Khanna has collected USD 1,744,761 till June 30 according to figures released by his campaign.

Indian doctors have claimed that United Kingdom General Practitioners (GP) exams are continuously failing them in several attempts based on racial grounds.

The internationally-trained ethnic minority medical graduates taking Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) examinations have claimed that they are facing institutional bias and are unfairly failing GP exams despite extensive training and knowledge.

Many foreign doctors have ended up losing their jobs and lost thousands of pounds attempting to qualify as GPs.

A US federal court has sentenced Indian American Sameer Gupta, to 19 months of imprisonment for concealing more than USD 1.2 million income in various domestic and Indian banks.

The sentencing came yesterday after 33-year-old Sameer Gupta, a resident of Edison city in New Jersey pleaded guilty before US Magistrate Judge Patty Shwartz on February 26, 2013, for tax evasion by diverting funds from the wholesale merchandise business, J S Marketers Inc to undisclosed foreign accounts at HSBC in India, among other places.

An Indian-American beer distributor and shop owner in Pennsylvania will get USD 1000 for selling a lottery ticket worth USD 131.5 million.

30-year-old Gary Patel immigrated to the US from India as a teenager. The winner of the lottery ticket has not been identified yet.

Father of twin babies, Patel came to know about his jackpot – the commission that he would get for selling the mega lottery ticket, when an official of Pennsylvania Lottery visited his store to ensure that the ticket was sold from his store.

Welcoming the Indian government’s decision to revisit and review its Preferential Market Access (PMA) policy, a top US IT advocacy organisation has said it is hopeful it would lead to the country adopting global approaches to its procurement policies.

A top American academician has described the drop in number of Indian students joining US universities as brain circulation rather than as reverse brain drain.

“I call it as a brain circulation and in the past it was going in one direction. We see discoveries are coming in the field of medicine, agriculture, technology from places that we did not think of in the past.

The mother-in-law of Brit-Indian businessman Shrien Dewani, accused of plotting to kill his wife Ann during their honeymoon in South Africa, has said she feels sympathy for him as she begged him to reveal what really happened to her daughter.

Grieving Nilam Hindocha showed astonishing compassion for the prime suspect in her daughter Anni’s murder as he continues to fight extradition.

According to the Mirror, the 33-year-old will find out later this month if he is to be sent back to South Africa to face trial.

Three Indian nationals were among the 305 survivors of the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 from South Korea that crashed while landing at San Francisco airport, killing two Chinese girls and leaving 49 seriously injured.

But the rest of the 291 passengers and 16 crew members escaped either unscathed or with lesser injuries as the plane crashlanded at 11:27 a.m. Saturday after an 11-hour flight from Seoul, officials said.

The Flight 214 was making a seemingly routine approach to San Francisco International Airport on a calm, clear Saturday morning, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.