NRIs Corner

London, May 03 (ANI): Actress Preeya Kalidas, who played Amira Masood in the TV drama ‘EastEnders’, is all set to star in a Bollywood style production of the opera Carmen.

Georges Bizet’s work is being adapted for BBC3 and will be televised live from Bradford’s City Park on 9 June, BBC reported.

Kalidas, who also played the lead in Andrew Lloyd Webber”s West End hit Bombay Dreams, will be leading the cast as Karmen and will be accompanied by Indian film actor Abhay Deol.

In order to build the confidence of NRI’s and to give some solace to their impending Social, Economical and Psychological issues, Minister for Overseas Affairs Mr. Vayalar Ravi announced to deploy more officials and support staff at the Indian diplomatic missions in Saudi Arabia to help irregular workers and relaunch a pension program for Nitaqat returnees. Ravi made the announcement on 1st May while wrapping up his four-day visit to Saudi Arabia.

India topped the list of countries to which remittances have been sent by expatriate workers in Qatar in the period 2006-2012, according to a new report.

The annual report of the Qatar Chamber, the representative body of the private sector in that Gulf nation, said that of the $60 billion remitted by foreign workers in the period, 54 percent went to Asian nations with India leading the pack and the Philippines following, The Peninsula newspaper reported Thursday.

Arab nations accounted for 28 percent while the US and Egypt trailed the list.

The Irish cabinet has reached an agreement on a controversial bill on abortion, which for the first time will allow limited legal termination, as part of legislative changes promised after Indian dentist Savita Halappanavar died following a miscarriage last year.

The historic new bill, which will have to be passed in both houses of the Irish Parliament, will allow for limited legal termination where there is a threat to the mother’s life.

An Indian in the American state of Indianapolis has been sentenced to three years in jail for selling drugs and is facing deportation to India after serving his sentence.

Phulbir Singh used four aliases. He was given the prison term by Delaware Circuit Court Judge 5 Thomas Cannon jr, who also said that nobody knew who the accused was given that he used different names and had no clear identity since arriving in the US, the Muncie Free Press reproted.

Singh was blamed for selling drugs that killed people and for not having a legal status in the country.

A US federal advisory body has reiterated its concerns about Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s admissibility to the US due to his alleged “complicity in the 2002 riots” in the state.

Modi, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Tuesday noted, was the only individual in whose case a provision of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) was invoked in March 2005 to bar his entry. IRFA bars the entry of such individuals “responsible for or directly carried out…particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”

One for the taste buds! An Indian-origin woman in the UK has been shortlisted out of 600,000 applicants for the post of Western Australia taste master, described as one of the “best jobs in the world”.

Asha Patel, who grew up in Rushey Mead, Leicester, has been shortlisted along with 24 other people for the job that involves “eating your way round the state, foraging out the finest produce and uncovering the best bars and restaurants”.

The Australian state’s tourism website has described it as “one of the best jobs in the world”.

Sydney, Apr. 29 (ANI): The parents of a murdered 24-year-old Indian girl have said their daughter was their ”sweet little fairy”, and a happy ”blessing” who was flourishing in Australia despite being separated from them in India. Tosha Thakkar was living in Sydney and studying accounting when she was killed by her roommate, Daniel Stani-Reginald, an Australian of Sri Lankan heritage, in their Croydon flat in March 2011, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

A South African court has ordered that an Indian origin policeman, who was overlooked for a promotion because of his race, be paid 333,000 rands (approx.$37,000) in back pay, reports said Monday.

Captain M. Munsamy had applied for three posts of superintendent in 2000, but he was denied all three on one ground or the other, The Mercury newspaper reported.

The India-born nurse found hanged in London, days after a prank radio call by two Australian DJs to a UK hospital treating a pregnant Kate Middleton, has directly blamed them for her death in a suicide note.

Jacintha Saldanha, 46, who was on the hospital switchboard where Kate was being treated for morning sickness last December and forwarded the hoax call to the Duchess of Cambridge’s ward, has asked her bosses in the hand-written note to make the presenters pay her mortgage, according to a report in ‘The Sunday Times’.

Mumbai, April 28 (IANS) The clock is ticking away for an Indian-origin professor at Stanford who is suffering from leukaemia and is desperately waiting for a bone marrow donor match.

Nalini Ambady, hailing from Kerala, practically has only around 7-8 weeks by which to find a matching donor, according to a close family friend Dilip D’Souza in Mumbai.

Indian-American students have grabbed top spots at this year’s prestigious California State Science Fair, including winning the award for ‘Project of the Year.’

Eesha Khare, a 12th grade student of Lynbrook High School in San Jose, California, won the top award for ‘Project of the Year’ in the senior grade at the fair held earlier this year, India-West reported today.

Khare also won a USD 5,000 for her project, ‘Design and Synthesis of Hydrogenated TiO2-Polyaniline Nanorods for
Flexible High-Performance Supercapacitors’.

Jeddah, April 27 (IANS) Sheikh Abu Baker Ahmed, general secretary of the All India Sunni Jamiathul Ulama, has met top Saudi officials to highlight concerns over the fate of Indian workers because of that country’s new labour policy.

The Nitaqat law that is being implemented makes it mandatory for all Saudi companies to reserve at least 10 percent of jobs for Saudi nationals.

A 29-year-old Indian origin man was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne assailants while he was driving his car in Malaysia’s capital city, Kuala Lumpur.

R. Kaarikalan, a barber, was driving to his shop in the Puchong area of the city Friday when he was attacked, The New Straits Times reported.

According to the report, when Kaarikalan was at the Taman Billion roundabout, the two gunmen drew alongside him and fired at least eight to 10 times at him. While Kaaraikalan slumped down in his seat after being hit twice, his mother, who was with him, sustained minor injuries.

Sunil Tripathi’s family has sought “privacy” for itself and “for our love for Sunny” after forensic dental examination confirmed that a body found in Providence River was that of the missing Indian origin student.

“On April 23, our beloved Sunil was discovered in the waters off India Point Park in Providence,” his family wrote in a statement after the Rhode Island Department of Health confirmed the identity of the 22-year-old’s body Thursday.

Dubai, April 25 (IANS) Students of schools in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who appeared this year for the class 10 examinations conducted by the Kerala State Education Board, have come out with flying colours, posting a 98.8 percent pass rate.

The results were announced Wednesday.

In all, 424 students appeared for the examinations, of whom 419 passed out, seven of them scoring A+ in all subjects, the Gulf News reported.

Sydney, April 25 (IANS) An Indian origin man in Fiji was Thursday found guilty of killing his wife and two daughters.

A court in Suva, Fiji’s capital, found Bimlesh Dayal, 43, guilty of the murder of his wife Ranjini Rekha Singh and their two minor daughters, Amisha and Anisha, on the intervening night between Oct 28-29, 2011, media reported.

Dayal had claimed that his wife had an affair with their landlord’s son.

He also claimed that he had seen his wife standing by the bed with a chopper in hand with blood dripping all over.

Wellington, April 25 (IANS) A 20-year-old Indian fell and drowned in a waterfall in New Zealand Thursday afternoon.

The 20-year-old man, whom local media reports referred to as an Indian national, was crossing the front of the 30-metre high waterfall in the Hunua Ranges near Auckland, when he slipped and fell into deep water.

He was with two children at the time.

“He was unable to be retrieved for a short time and was unconscious when pulled from the water,” local police was quoted as saying in a statement.

A 40-year-old Indian woman was kept prisoner for six months by the Obhrai family on their 2-million-pound estate in Middlesex.

She was passed between two other families where she was forced to work for 2 pounds an hour and raped several times by butcher Enkarta Balapovi, according to the Independent .

Her passport was taken away and she was forced to work 17-hour shifts seven days a week, fed only on out-of-date food and the chewed leftovers of their three children.

Reddit, a popular social news and entertainment website, has apologised for posts on the site that had led to speculation that a missing Indian origin student could be one of the Boston bombing suspects.

“The crowdsourced, more criminal investigation was very volatile and fraught with problems, and, obviously, wrong,” Reddit general manager Erik Martin told CNN. “That was something we all wished hadn’t happened.”

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa., April 21, 2013/NRINewswire/– Aam Admi Party National Executives Dr. Yogendra Yadav and Prof. Anand Kumar said AAP will change the rules of the game in coming Delhi assembly elections.

In a talk organized by Philadelphia Aam Aadmi Party, Dr. Anand Kumar said that India is going through the revolution of rising frustrations and it is the duty of the citizens to avert this situation.

Prof. Anand Kumar said, ‘when good people are left, politics were left to bad people that why politics has become a dirty word today.

New York, Apr 23 (ANI): Indian-origin Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has said that the rampant public corruption infecting New York is due to a lack of government transparency.

Bharara said, “fundamental reform” is needed to end the “show-me-the-money-culture” that’s prompted the feds’ crackdown on crooked state pols.

Former Olympian and Arjuna awardee, Mohammed Habib, an Indian football legend of the 70s, was felicitated by top businessmen at the Al-Fouzan & Al-Muhaidib Diwaniya at Sari Street here Saturday according to a news published in Saudi Gazette.

Habib, a former Indian captain and recently an AIFF technical committee member and observer of Indian football, has done yeoman service for the game and was praised and appreciated at the well-attended function by Saudis.

The US needs a comprehensive reform system functional both for dealing with legal and illegal immigration in the country, the White House has said.

It refused to side with lawmakers who are seeking to put the ongoing reform on hold in the wake of the Boston marathon bombings.

“We need an effective comprehensive immigration system that is functional both for dealing with legal immigration, as well as dealing with the 11 million illegal immigrants who are in this country,” the White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters at his news conference yesterday.

Dear Imams and Presidents,

As Salamu Alaikum

We request you to hold prayer services during the Friday prayers for the victims and their families of the Boston terrorist bombings and the shoot out today. This trend started by Muslim Peace Coalition USA has achieved nationwide acceptance.

Furthermore express the appreciation that you feel for the law enforcement agencies who have worked tirelessly to catch the perpetrators since the bombings.