As India’s Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. is squeezed by the Trump administration to reduce the use of overseas workers for US jobs, the information technology outsourcing giant is also fighting claims in court that its hiring practices are anti-American.

TCSBSE 0.41 %, Asia’s largest software maker, and Infosys Ltd, a rival Indian outsourcing firm, are both embroiled in civil rights lawsuits accusing them of discriminating against whiteIT workers that predate Donald Trump’s election last year.

Even as the outsourcers are responding to the president’s protectionist agenda by hiring more Americans in the US, Mumbai-based TCS cites its reliance on foreign guest-worker visas as a defense against the bias claims.

The men suing TCS allege discriminatory hiring practices must be why as much as 79 per cent of its US workforce is South Asian when that group makes up only 12.5 per cent of the relevant labor market in the US

But the company contends it’s misleading to include employees hired in India to work temporarily and “legally” in the US, many with H1-B visas for specially skilled employees. It also says more than 40 per cent of its job applicants are South Asians and that not everyone is keen on working for an India-based company or willing to relocate to take a job.

A hearing is set for Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California, on whether to dismiss the case entirely or expand it to include potentially of thousands of American workers who either weren’t hired or were fired by TCS because of their race over the last six years.

If the case proceeds as a class action, it may encourage white Americans to pursue similar suits against other companies with heavily foreign workforces, said Andra Greene, a lawyer with Irell & Manella LLP in Newport Beach, California, who isn’t involved in the TCS suit.

‘Masters’ at Statistics

Greene also said it’s a “close” call which side’s numerical analysis will prevail in court. “People are masters at using statistics to argue their point,” she said.

After campaigning on a pledge to punish American companies for moving jobs overseas, Trump put pressure on the offshore IT servicing firms in April when he signed an executive order aimed at overhauling the work-visa programs they use to bring workers to the US The next month, Infosys, which employs about 200,000 people around the world, said it planned to hire 10,000 Americans over the next two years.

The lawsuit against TCS was filed in 2015 by a white IT worker who claimed he was subject to “substantial anti-American sentiment” within the company and was ultimately terminated within 20 months despite having almost 20 years of experience in the field. He was later replaced as the lead plaintiff by two other men.

One, Brian Buchanan, said he worked at Southern California Edison for 28 years when the company outsourced the bulk of its IT work to TCS. He was among 400 people terminated, but said he was asked to stay on for a few months to train the Indian TCS employees that were replacing him. Buchanan claims that at a job fair organized for the employees losing their jobs, the South Asian TCS regional manager was dismissive of interest in a position.

TCS says Buchanan’s experience doesn’t prove he was a victim of bias. He has “no idea” whether the application process was discriminatory because he didn’t attend any of the town hall meetings he was invited to during the Edison transition to learn about open positions with TCS and how to apply for them — and he didn’t apply for a specific job, the company said in a court filing.

“Buchanan’s mere conjecture that he would have received more attention at the job fair if he were not an ‘old bald white man’ is not supported by any facts in the record,” lawyers for TCS wrote.

While the company has a stronger defense if the men suing can’t point to any specific evidence that they were mistreated because they aren’t South Asian, that won’t necessarily carry the day, Greene said.

“Usually they don’t tell you I’m not hiring you because you’re white,” she said.

‘Corporate Directive’

As for the broader claim that TCS engages in institutional discrimination against Americans, the plaintiffs claim the “highly skewed” workforce results from “a corporate directive to favor visa-ready South Asian Indian national candidates to fill US positions and the use of third-party recruiters that forward to Tata a substantial percentage of South Asian Indian national candidates.”

The company contends there’s a “non-discriminatory” explanation that includes its use of workers with guest visas.

“These individuals are existing employees, were hired in India, and are thus hired from a completely different labor market,” the company said in a filing. “They cannot be used to create a statistical disparity between TCS’ workforce and the United States labor market.”

The company is “is confident that its evidence, data, and expert analysis” will persuade the judge not to let the case to advance as a class action and expects the claims will be thrown out, said Benjamin Trounson, a spokesman for TCS in North America.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers declined to comment ahead of Tuesday’s hearing.

The four workers who sued Infosys over similar allegations four years ago in Milwaukee are represented by the same law firm that filed the TCS suit. The Infosys case is also awaiting a judge’s decision on dueling requests for dismissal and class-action status.

The TCS case is Heldt v. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., 15-cv-01696, US District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland).

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LAS VEGAS – Investigators struggled Tuesday with a chilling but baffling array of clues in the wake of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history – including a hotel room arsenal fit for a commando team – yet were still left trying to explain the chain of events that caused a 64-year-old retiree to turn a concert ground here into a killing field.

“I can’t get into the mind of a psychopath,” said Joseph Lombardo, the sheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, on Monday.

At the same time, the probes stretched from a ranch-style home near the Arizona border to the 32nd-floor hotel suite used by Stephen Paddock as a place to scan the crowds at a country music festival and then open fire – leaving at least 59 people dead and hundreds more injured in the rain of bullets or trampled in the panicked rush for cover late Sunday. He then killed himself as SWAT officers closed in.

And once again, a stunned nation was left to grapple with a city riven by tragedy and a resurgent debate over gun control and gun violence. The White House and many Republicans said it was a time to mourn rather than launch into political battles, while some Democrats renewed calls for gun safety legislation.

Lombardo warned that the number of dead in Las Vegas could rise, as an additional 527 were thought to have been injured. Hospitals across the region continued to treat patients from the scene, many of them seriously injured. Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center said that as of Tuesday morning, it had 68 patients from the rampage, 33 of them in critical condition.

While the nation learned more about the lives cut brutally short as well as the heroic actions of people on the ground, few answers were available as to what, if anything, may have motivated the rampage.

Authorities described a level of preparation that suggested the attack was planned in advance. Police said Paddock arrived on Thursday, three days before the shooting, at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip. He took more than 10 suitcases into his suite, officials said.

Paddock aroused no suspicion from hotel staff even as he brought in 23 guns, some of them with scopes. One of the weapons he apparently used in the attack was an AK-47 type rifle, with a stand used to steady it for firing, people familiar with the case said.

Authorities said a sweep of law enforcement databases showed Paddock had no known run-ins with police. Paddock was the son of a bank robber who was once on the FBI’s most-wanted list, but investigators have turned up no clear links to any criminal enterprises or international terrorist groups – despite repeated claims by the Islamic State that Paddock carried out the carnage in its name.

Among the questions investigators still have: How a former accountant with a penchant for high-stakes gambling obtained a weapon that sounded to those on the ground like it could fire as an automatic, and how he was able to bring it and many other weapons into a Vegas hotel suite undetected.

Investigators believe at least one of the guns functioned as if it were fully automatic, and they are now trying to determine if he modified it or other weapons to be capable of spitting out a high volume of fire just by holding down the trigger, people familiar with the case said.

Investigators also found at least 19 additional firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and the chemical tannerite, an explosive, at Paddock’s home in Mesquite, Nevada. They also found ammonium nitrate, a chemical that can be used in bombmaking, in Paddock’s vehicle, Lombardo said.

Gun purchase records indicate Paddock legally bought more than two dozen firearms over a period of years, according to a person close to the investigation. Guns & Guitars, a store in Mesquite, Nevada, said in a statement that Paddock purchased some of his weapons there, but employees followed all procedures required by law, and Paddock “never gave any indication or reason to believe he was unstable or unfit at any time.” Lombardo said Paddock also seemed to have purchased guns in Arizona.

Police and hotel security scoured several floors of the hotel looking for the shooter and came upon Paddock’s suite, Lombardo said. At some point, Paddock fired through the door and hit a security guard in the leg, he said, adding that the guard is expected to survive.

SWAT officers ultimately stormed the room and some fired shots, though Paddock is believed to have killed himself, Lombardo said.

More than 22,000 people had been at the Route 91 Harvest festival, a three-day country music concert with grounds across the street from the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, when the shooting began about 10 p.m. Sunday, according to police. As country star Jason Aldean played what was expected to be one of the last sets of the night, Paddock opened fire – his bullets flying from a window on the casino’s golden facade, which Paddock had smashed with some type of hammer.

“People were getting shot at while we were running, and people were on the ground bleeding, crying and screaming. We just had to keep going,” said Dinora Merino, 28, a dealer at the Ellis Island casino who was at the concert with a friend. “There are tents out there and there’s no place to hide. It’s just an open field.”

The dead included a behavioral therapist who was soon to be married, a nursing assistant from Southern California, a commercial fisherman and an off-duty Las Vegas city police officer. Two other officers who were on duty were injured, police said; one was in stable condition after surgery, and the other sustained minor injuries. Another off-duty officer with the Bakersfield Police Department in Southern California also sustained non-life-threatening injuries, according to a statement from the department.

Syed Saquib, a surgeon on duty Sunday night at University Medical Center, said the hospital treated 104 patients, most of whom had gunshot wounds.

“Those that could be saved, were saved,” Saquib said. “There were a few that came in with devastating, non-survivable injuries.”

John Soqui drove seven hours from Arizona to see his 29-year-old niece, who had been shot in the head. Jovanna Martinez-Calzadillas, from suburban Phoenix, had been attending the concert with her husband, a military police officer, Soqui said. Her husband, who was not injured, carried Martinez-Calzadillas away from the concert after she had been shot, relatives said.

“There is just so much hate in this world, and she is my little niece, and I just want to get the guy who shot her,” said Soqui, 51.

Soqui then remembered that Paddock had apparently taken his own life before police stormed into his hotel room. “I want to die, kill myself, just so I can get him,” Soqui added. “So many people have been affected by this, and it’s just killing me that there are people like that out there.”

President Trump ordered flags flown at half-staff and said he would visit Las Vegas on Wednesday.

Leaving the White House to visit hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico on Tuesday morning, Trump repeated his praise for police in Las Vegas and their response, saying of law enforcement that “what happened in Las Vegas is in many ways a miracle.” He also said that “we’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes by.”

Eric Paddock, Stephen Paddock’s brother, said he was stunned to learn that his brother could be responsible for such violence.

Stephen Paddock had no history of mental illness nor did he have problems with drugs or alcohol, Eric Paddock said, noting that his brother was a high-stakes gambler, sometimes wagering hundreds of dollars on a single hand of video poker.

When he spoke to the FBI, Eric Paddock said he showed agents three years of text messages from his brother, including one that mentioned winning $250,000 at a casino. A federal law enforcement official said investigators had reviewed reports suggesting Paddock engaged in high-dollar gambling, and they are trying to determine whether he faced financial strains.

Eric Paddock said his brother was “wealthy,” in part because he had no children to support. Stephen Paddock had worked in the past as an accountant, and he had real estate investments in the Orlando area, Eric Paddock said.

Lockheed Martin, the defense giant, said that Paddock had worked for the company for three years in the 1980s.

Police said they believe Paddock was a “lone wolf” attacker, though they were still interested in speaking more with a woman named Marilou Danley who lived with him in Mesquite, Nevada, a little more than an hour outside of Las Vegas on the Arizona border. Danley, Paddock’s 62-year-old girlfriend, was found outside the country – as of Monday afternoon, in Tokyo – and was not involved in the shooting.

“We still consider her a person of interest,” Lombardo said Monday. He said investigators also are exploring a report that Paddock attended a different music festival in September.

Not long after the shooting, the Islamic State claimed responsibility, though law enforcement authorities were quick to reject that assertion. “We have determined, to this point, no connection with an international terrorist group,” Aaron Rouse, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Las Vegas, said at a news briefing.

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President Donald Trump will engage in one of the sad rituals of the modern presidency on Wednesday in Las Vegas: consoling survivors of a gunman’s rampage and confronting recurring questions of whether restrictions on firearms can prevent another tragedy.

While the president said Tuesday he was looking forward to “paying our respects and condolences,” he and most other Republicans in Washington gave no sign of being ready to address the subject of gun control.

“We’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes on,” Trump said as he departed the White House to view hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters that “it’s premature to be discussing legislative solutions.”

Trump is heading to Las Vegas in the aftermath of the massacre in which 59 people were killed and more than 500 people were injured by a man who used an arsenal of rifles in a rapid-fire attack on a country music festival along the city’s entertainment strip.

The gunman, identified by police as Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old retiree, apparently killed himself as a SWAT team converged on his perch inside a 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. The size and lethality of Paddock’s arsenal — 42 rifles and handguns, including some reportedly modified to fire like a fully automatic weapon — has reignited the debate over whether the U.S. needs to restrict gun ownership.

A majority of Americans favor some restrictions on gun sales, including expanded background checks, banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines and creating a federal database to track purchases, according to a survey conducted last spring by the Pew Research Center.

But Republicans in Congress have moved to relax gun laws in recent years rather than tighten them. After House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was critically injured in a shooting at a congressional baseball practice in June, Republicans said it didn’t show new gun laws were needed. Some suggested lawmakers should arm themselves instead.

One small impact of Sunday night’s massacre: A bill that would ease the purchase of silencers was temporarily shelved in the House after the Las Vegas shooting. Critics say the devices, which muffle the sound of gunshots, could make mass shootings even deadlier.

But there was at least a small crack in the otherwise solid Republican wall of opposition to gun control. John Thune, the party’s third ranking member in the Senate, suggested that Congress might consider legislation to restrict devices, available at gun shops and some sporting goods stores, that allow a semi-automatic rifle to mimic the rapid-fire of an automatic weapon.

The New York Times and other news organizations reported that at least one of the weapons Paddock used was equipped with such a device, known as a bump stock.

Thune, of South Dakota, said that “to turn semiautomatic weapons into virtually automatic weapons, you know, that’s something I think we’ll take a look at.”

He said lawmakers first need to know more details about the weapons used in Las Vegas and how the gunman obtained them.

The shooting prompted Caleb Keeter, one of the musicians who played at the music festival earlier on the day of the shooting, to change his mind on gun control.

“I’ve been a proponent of the 2nd amendment my entire life. Until the events of last night. I cannot express how wrong I was,” Keeter, a guitarist in the Josh Abbott Band, wrote in a post on Twitter. “We need gun control RIGHT. NOW.”

Democrats in Congress and gun control advocates said symbolic statements and actions are insufficient to solve the problem. They are using the shooting to make a renewed push for legislation requiring broader background checks for gun buyers and other restrictions on firearms.

“How did this monster acquire the arsenal he used to rain down death on a crowd of innocents?” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday. “We’ll have to reckon with the fact that this man was able to assemble an arsenal of military-grade weapons.”

The National Rifle Association, the nation’s biggest lobby for gun owners and manufacturers, has opposed tougher background checks, limits on semi-automatic weapons and other firearm restrictions. Former President Barack Obama advocated such measures after 20 children and six adults were gunned down inside an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. But the legislation failed.

The NRA spent more than $50 million to boost Trump and other Republicans during the 2016 election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Trump, who was endorsed by the NRA, has pledged to be a stalwart supporter of gun owners during his presidency.

“The eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end,” Trump said in an April address to the NRA’s annual convention in Atlanta. “You have a true friend and champion in the White House.”

Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, told Axios that any move by Trump to soften his campaign stance on gun rights “will be the end of everything.” The voters who backed him feel more strongly about the issue than any other, Bannon said via text, according to Axios.

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Marilou Danley, the longtime girlfriend of the Las Vegas gunman, returned to the United States on Tuesday night and was met at the Los Angeles airport by FBI agents. Authorities are hoping she can shed light on what drove Stephen Paddock to open fire from his casino hotel room Sunday night. He killed at least 58 people and injured more than 500 on the Las Vegas Strip before killing himself.

Danley was in the Philippines at the time of the attack. Immigration officials in the Philippines told news outlets there that Danley left the country Tuesday evening on a Philippine Airlines flight to Los Angeles.

As investigators continue to search for a motive, new details have emerged about Paddock and his relationship to Danley.

Paddock met Marilou Danley several years ago while she was working as a high-limit hostess for Club Paradise at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, Nevada, said his brother Eric Paddock.

“They were adorable – big man, tiny woman. He loved her. He doted on her,” Eric said.

The two often gambled side by side, he said. Authorities say that prior to the shooting Paddock transferred a large amount of money – close to $100,000 – to someone in the Philippines, possibly his girlfriend. Eric Paddock said he now believes his brother may have been trying to arrange for Danley to be abroad before carrying out his massacre.

Employees at a Starbucks in Mesquite, Nevada, however, described the couple’s relationship differently. A supervisor at the coffee shop told the Los Angeles Times that Paddock often berated Danley in public. The Starbucks is the only one in town and is inside the Virgin River Casino.

“It happened a lot,” Esperanza Mendoza, supervisor of the Starbucks, told the Times. He would verbally abuse her when Danley asked to use his casino card to buy food or other things inside the casino, Mendoza said.

“He would glare down at her and say – with a mean attitude – ‘You don’t need my casino card for this. I’m paying for your drink, just like I’m paying for you.’ Then she would softly say, ‘Okay’ and step back behind him. He was so rude to her in front of us.”

The Girlfriend

Danley is from the Philippines but has Australian citizenship, Australian authorities have said.

The Courier Mail, a newspaper in Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, Australia, posted pictures of a trip to Australia Paddock apparently took with Danley in 2013 to meet her family there.

Danley arrived in the Philippines a week before the attack, Filipino news outlets said, quoting immigration officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The officers told local news outlets that she arrived in Manila from Hong Kong on Sept. 25 via Cebu Pacific flight 5J 115.

Paddock was a frequent gambler at the casino where Danley once worked. She was a high-limit hostess for Club Paradise, a rewards program in the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, Nevada, according to her LinkedIn profile. In a statement, Atlantis officials said she has not worked for the casino for several years.

Paddock was such a regular at the Atlantis that his entire family once took over the top floor at the casino’s expense, his brother said.

According to court records, Danley may have been living with Paddock as early as August 2013, while she was still married to another man, named Geary Danley.

Geary and Marilou Danley were married in Las Vegas in 1990. According to court records, they jointly filed for divorce on Feb. 25, 2015, and the divorce was finalized the next day. During her divorce, Marilou Danley listed a downtown Reno apartment as her address. Property records show the apartment was owned by Paddock.

Paddock invested and sold several properties in recent years as a way of making money, according to relatives and property records. Neighbors at two other properties owned by Paddock in Reno and Mesquite said Danley lived with Paddock there as well and often disappeared with him for long stretches – sometimes for months at a time – during his visits to casinos.

At one point, Danley worked for an airline based out of California’s Bay Area, said one longtime neighbor in Reno, where Danley and Paddock lived together in a retirement community. She later worked for Avon, the cosmetic sales company, and tried to sell their products to other residents, Elizabeth Tyee said. Danley traveled all the time, and when she was at the home she shared with Paddock in a retirement community in Reno, it was never for very long. Tyee said Danley would show up every three or four months and stay for no more than 10 days.

She is considered a critical witness in trying to decipher Paddock’s motive.

While investigators have described her as a “person of interest,” they have not suggested that she is considered an accomplice or involved in any way. Still, given how little has emerged in Paddock’s past that could foreshadow the attack, the “best lead is through this girlfriend,” said Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev.

Danley has a daughter and grandchildren, Tyee said. Tyee and many other neighbors described Danley as extremely sweet and friendly. She hugged her when they saw each other. Paddock, however, was more standoffish and unfriendly.

This summer, Tyee saw Danley and Paddock moving a mattress and saw inside their garage, which was completely empty. Tyee asked Danley whether they were moving, and Danley said they had bought a new house but were not moving out of Reno.

Another neighbor, Susan Page, who moved next door to the couple this summer, said she had not seen them since August. Paddock had recently bought a new silver minivan, she said, and Danley drove an SUV. On the third week of August, Paddock left the house. Soon after, Danley packed up her car as well, as if she was moving, Page said.

The Gunman

More details have also emerged on Paddock, the gunman.

From 1976 to 1985, Paddock worked U.S. government jobs: as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, an agent for the IRS and an auditor for U.S. government’s Defense Contract Audit Agency, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

Neighbors in several states where he owned homes in retirement communities described him as surly, unfriendly and standoffish.

Relatives say the roots of Paddock’s loner lifestyle may have been planted July 28, 1960. On that day, when Paddock was 7, a neighbor from across the street took him swimming. The neighbor at the time told a local newspaper that she knew authorities were coming for his father, a bank robber, and she wanted to spare the boy the trauma of seeing his father hauled away by authorities.

From that point on, Paddock’s family was never the same.

His mother struggled to raise him and his brothers on her own. His father escaped from prison – twice – and had little more contact with them, relatives say. As they grew older, Stephen, the eldest, and the youngest brother, Eric, kept in touch, but Stephen Paddock drifted almost completely out of touch with his two other brothers, Bruce and Patrick.

Eric said that Stephen stopped talking to his brother Bruce because Bruce used to beat him up when they were kids and that Stephen stopped talking to Patrick because they’re very different people.

Even with Eric he never talked much. They created a lucrative real estate investment business together, but Stephen would only text Eric now and then.

“We didn’t talk much. We talked when there was something to talk about,” Eric Paddock said. “Steve had no help. Steve did not take help. He was a stand-alone guy.”

Choking up as he talked, Eric said: “Steve was like a dad surrogate. He took me camping. I liked my brother. He was a good guy.”

High school

Stephen Paddock went to John H. Francis Polytechnic High School, in the Los Angeles suburbs, his brother said.

Judy Smith Nelson, a retired federal worker living in Las Vegas, was stunned when she first saw that she and the alleged shooter were the same age – 64. Then a friend texted her a picture from an old high school yearbook.

“I couldn’t believe it. I recognized the face. We had been classmates,” Nelson said Tuesday.

As investigators continued searching for a motive, anyone who had come into contact with Paddock over more than four decades began to wrestle with what they knew of the man and whether there had ever been clues of what would come.

Former California state senator Richard Alarcon, who had gotten his start as student body president of John H. Francis Polytechnic High School in 1971, posted a note to friends on Facebook on Tuesday saying he remembered playing basketball with Paddock at a neighborhood court.

Another classmate remembered Paddock showing up at a 20-year reunion and repeatedly angling to talk to her.

Nelson, in Las Vegas, fished through an old box of keepsakes and found a 10-year reunion program that contained a one-line description that each classmate had written. Paddock’s read: “Single, accountant, has traveled to Hollywood, lives in Sepulveda [Calif.]”

“We’re all just reeling, and here I have kind of a personal connection, being that we walked the same grounds, we were from the same area,” Nelson said.

After high school, Paddock attended Cal State Northridge. He was married and divorced twice. Both ex-wives – one in the L.A. area, the other in the Dallas suburbs – declined to talk to reporters.

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NEW DELHI – In recent years, the Taj Mahal, India’s iconic monument to eternal love, has taken a beating. Its attendance figures are down. Air pollution is slowly turning its ethereal white marble yellow.

And now, to make matters worse, some in India feel that a staunch Hindu nationalist government recently elected in the Taj’s home state of Uttar Pradesh is starving the world heritage site of funds and support because it was built by Muslim invaders.

The state’s new chief minister, the saffron-robed Hindu priest Yogi Adityanath, set the tone early on when he lamented at a rally that tiny models of the Taj Mahal are often given to visiting foreign dignitaries, saying the monument “does not reflect Indian culture.”

The Taj, the country’s biggest tourism draw, was not allotted any cultural heritage funds in the state budget for the coming year. And in a blow that provoked yelps of protest from India’s opposition party, the monument was omitted from the state’s official tourism brochure last week.

Indian National Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi likened a tourism brochure without the Taj Mahal to a Hamlet-less Hamlet.

“If it is a booklet on tourism and it excludes Taj Mahal, at one level it is a joke and at another level it is tragic. It is like saying we will have ‘Hamlet’ without the Prince of Denmark,” Singhvi told reporters Monday. He called the omission “a clear religious bias which is completely misplaced.”

Adityanath’s government countered criticism by saying that the state, supported by funds from the World Bank, had slated $22 million to the monument for new gates, beautification and a multilevel parking structure.

“The Taj Mahal is the seventh wonder of the world. It has always been a priority not only for Uttar Pradesh but for the entire country of India,” said Awanish Awasthi, Adityanath’s principal secretary. “It will always be central to all our tourism policy but there were some other new projects we wanted to feature.”

The soaring white marble mausoleum, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was built in the 17th century by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his late wife, Mumtaz Mahal, and is considered one of the finest examples of Indo-Islamic architecture. India’s famed poet Rabindranath Tagore called it “one tear-drop . . . on the cheek of time.”

The Taj Mahal has long been one of India’s prime tourist draws for foreign visitors, but its tourist numbers have dropped steadily since 2012, despite the opening of a modern highway that can shoot tour buses there from the nation’s capital, New Delhi, in under three hours.

According to the Ministry of Tourism, 480,000 tourists visited the mausoleum in 2015, a 35 percent drop from the 743,000 foreign tourists who visited there in 2012. Even with domestic tourists, the figure dropped by almost 113,400 from 2012 to 2015, officials say.

Tourism officials have given varying reasons for the decline, including the economy, lack of infrastructure, and security concerns in the fallout of a well-publicized gang rape in New Delhi.

Golden State Warriors player Kevin Durant sparked controversy when he described the poor conditions around the Taj Mahal in blunt terms after a visit there this summer while on an official National Basketball Association tour.

“As I was driving up to the Taj Mahal, like I said, I thought that this would be holy ground, super protected, very very clean. And as I’m driving up, it’s like, (expletive), this used to remind me of some neighborhoods I would ride through as a kid,” he told the Athletic website. “Mud in the middle of the street, houses were not finished, but there were people living in them. No doors. No windows. The cows in the street, stray dogs and then, boom, Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the world. It’s like holy (expletive), this was built 500 years ago and everyone comes here. It’s just an eye-opener.”

Durant later apologized for his remarks on Twitter.

Tourism officials in the Uttar Pradesh city of Agra, where the Taj is located, said that the hint that the monument may be neglected by the current administration in favor of Hindu religious sites was unfortunate, given its needs.

“The current state government is not supporting Agra as a tourist destination because of its Mughal monuments. Money for tourism development has not been announced. Their focus is on religious tourism,” said Rajiv Saxena, secretary of the Tourism Guild of Agra.

The Adityanath government has focused on promoting places such as the ancient city of Varanasi, a site for Hindu pilgrims, and Gorakhpur, where he is the chief priest of a large temple, critics have said. The previous state government had launched plans for a Mughal museum and an orientation center at the site, but it is unclear whether those will be fully funded going forward, Saxena said.

“Government programs have to be backed by the annual budget. If there is no allocation in the budget, it will die a fast death,” he said.

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Despite growing evidence that the Westernization of the world’s diets has had ruinous affects on public health, India has one message for the Cokes, Pepsis, Hersheys and Cargills of the world: It is open for business.

In November, the country will host a three-day, government-sponsored symposium aimed at getting the makers of Hot Pockets, Twizzlers and Lays potato chips to sell more of their goods into the Indian market. Ahead of that conference, which is the first of its kind, Indian officials have toured the United States and the European Union, pitching food-company chief executives on their country’s burgeoning middle class.

India’s middle is also growing, however: Obesity and diabetes rates are both soaring in the country of 1.3 billion. That has raised major questions about the government’s billion-dollar campaign to get more foreign, processed foods into the Indian diet.

Some Indian public health groups have begun to bemoan the amount of soda advertising that has flooded billboards and kiosks. Others have observed that traditional Indian cooking, using fresh fruits and vegetables, has been crowded out by “store-bought alternatives.”

“Traditional lifestyles are changing. The culture is changing,” acknowledged India’s Minister of Food Processing Industries, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, during a recent interview in the Washington.

“I don’t think that processed food is unhealthy food,” she added. “You just have to be conscious about what you’re eating.”

For many in India, processed food represents a huge economic opportunity. The government is in the midst of a three-year-old campaign to bring foreign investment to India.

While the country boasts one of the world’s largest consumer markets, and is one of the largest producers of milk, fruits, vegetables, seafood and grains, it has not historically had the infrastructure to process those raw materials into higher-value food products, either for sale at home or internationally.

As a result, as much as 16 percent of India’s agricultural output is wasted, according to government estimates. The current administration sees food-processing as a means to save some of that food for the country’s poorest, Badal said – as well as a source of jobs and revenue, particularly as its middle-class expands.

But some observers are skeptical that Indians really need more of the sorts of foods Badal’s initiative is offering. While 15 percent of Indians remain undernourished, the country is also in a period of radical, fast-paced dietary change, said Barry Popkin, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill who studies nutrition in developing countries.

Consumption of oils, fats, sugars and animal products have surged, according to India’s National Council of Applied Economic Research, and sales of packaged and processed foods have more than doubled since 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

At the same time, rates of diet-related diseases have soared: Nearly 10 million Indian men, and 20 million Indian women, are currently overweight, according to a 2014 study in The Lancet.

While that’s still a relatively small portion of the total population – roughly 16 percent of men, and 20 percent of women – it is growing. Cardiovascular diseases recently surpassed communicable diseases to become the country’s leading cause of death.

More importantly, Indians seem to be particularly susceptible to diabetes even when they’re not overweight. According to the World Health Organization, a staggering 70 million Indians suffer the disease, or 8.7 percent of the population. That incidence is almost comparable to the diabetes rate in the United States, where 30.3 million people are affected, but because of India’s larger population it represents a greater public health burden.

“If you had asked me 15 years ago, I would have said India needs all the help it can get getting food into the country,” Popkin said. “But we are dealing with a very new nutritional reality now. . . . There’s a double burden of over- and undernourishment.”

India is not the only country to face this new reality, of course. Popkin’s research focuses on the Westernization of the global diet, and all the diseases that come with it – a phenomenon known, in academic circles, as the “nutrition transition.”

Thanks to the nutrition transition, studies have found, deaths from diabetes and heart are up in Mexico. Excess weight has increased in almost every sub-Saharan African country. China now has more obese adults than any other country in the world.

While a wide and diverse set of factors lie behind those shifts, processed food is a factor, Popkin said.

“We’re not talking about whole-grain cereals,” he said. “For the most part, these are highly processed, refined carbs with high salt, sugar and fat content.”

If India’s administration is concerned about these issues, however, Badal didn’t let on. In an interview with The Washington Post, she emphasized that processed foods could also be healthy – and that obesity only affects what she called “a very small, elite percentage” of Indians.

During her trip to the United States, she met with Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Hersheys and Mars, whose portfolios consist largely of candies and sodas.

“Obesity is not an issue that is number one on our priorities,” Badal explained. “Number one is to ensure an ample amount of healthy, safe, nutritious food for everybody.”

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NEW DELHI – Grammy nominated Indian-American songwriter Raja Kumari, also a rapper, wishes to push the South Asian profile forward through her music and says that incidents like the mass shooting at a Las Vegas country music concert can’t force her to live in fear.

The death toll from the mass shooting at the concert on Sunday has touched 59, and 527 others were left injured.

Just a few months ago, singer Ariana Grande’s concert in Manchester was interrupted by a suicide bomber.

It seems like attending concerts has become unsafe. Is Kumari scared as an artiste to perform?

“Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes you don’t understand it. It’s so horrible what’s been happening, but I can’t live my life in fear. I have to try to influence people through my music. Choose the light. I am sad and shocked about it (the shooting), but I refuse to make that change in me for what I came on earth to do,” Kumari told IANS on the phone from Mumbai.

Her aim is to help push the South Asian profile forward worldwide.

“I want to make the entire global community look at India as the source of hip-hop,” said the California-based rapper with roots in Andhra Pradesh.

Kumari, best known for her collaboration with global artistes like Gwen Stefani, Iggy Azalea and Fall Out Boy, has always been vocal about her love for India.

“I am also a classical Indian dancer. I have learnt Kuchipudi, Bharatanatyam and Odissi. I have done charity performances in India. So, I have always had a deep connection with the history of India.

“I wanted a grander stage for my classical dance and music. Everybody can enjoy music. I thought of using that medium to celebrate our culture,” she added.

Now, she is looking forward to the Wednesday release of her song “City slums”.

“When I was watching ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, I felt annoyed as the only generous person they showed was a white man giving $100. This song is coming from the gullies (lanes), the song is more about the spirit of the people there and celebrating what’s great about them,” she said about the track which is in collaboration with Indian rapper Divine.

“If you watch the video, I don’t think there is anything negative. It is out of respect and love for where I come from. And Divine is the gully gang boy. It is truly an international collaboration. I am here to celebrate all of us… the 1.4 billion people,” she added.

After her 2014 song “Centuries” for rock band Fall Out Boy became a platinum, the songwriter proved that the American music industry could invest in her work. Would she like to pen a song on the current American politics?

“Gosh! I believe that music speaks to people. He (US President Donald Trump) has said so many crazy things. Last year, he said something about the children of immigrants to be monitored.

“The America that I grew up in is the Land of Milk and Honey. My parents lived the American dream. I am the American dream. I mostly respond to his behavior with meditation and concentration on love and light,” she added.

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After successfully launching Edison (New Jersey) office covering the East Coast couple of months ago, Traversal Visa has now expanded the operations in Chicago area from Oct 2nd 2017. This office will cover the Mid-West. This is the third location of the company in the United States offering services related to Indian Visa, OCI card, Indian Passport renewals and various other miscellaneous consular related services to the Indian diaspora.

Traversal visa (www.traversalvisa.com) was established with the aim of providing reliable, consistent and predictable level of service to the community; and has been able to deliver hassle free and flawless service to Indian diaspora wishing to visit India for leisure, family reunion or business.

Company President & CEO Mr. Joe Johal said, “We aim to provide a consistent experience to people who are looking to get the most accurate information regarding the India Visa/Consular services. We are very pleased to be present here in Chicago area, and look forward to helping the local Indian community in the mid-west”

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Harmeet Dhillon, a California Republican Party leader and attorney by profession, says she will appeal a court decision dismissing the case she brought against University of California, Berkeley, when it succeeded in canceling speeches by conservative speakers Ann Coulter and David Horowitz.

After riots shut down an event headlined by controversial British alt-right commentator and author, Milo Yiannopoulos, at University of California, Berkeley in February, the Young America’s Foundation (YAF) and the Berkeley College Republicans (BCRs) invited Ann Coulter and David Horowitz to speak on campus.

However, that was cancelled after administrators imposed numerous regulations fearing violence on campus if Coulter came. That prompted Dhillon to file a lawsuit in April on behalf of YAF and BCRs, accusing the university of using “unconstitutionally vague” policies to prevent Coulter and Horowitz from speaking, and of infringing on student free speech based on ideological differences.

Now, the Dhillon Law Group is vowing to update its complaint after a judge dismissed its lawsuit Sept. 29.

According to the online news outlet, Campus Reform, United States District Court Judge Maxine Chesney ruled in favor of the defendants’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit, but allowed YAF and BCRs 30 days to amend the complaint and re-file.

Dhillon explained to Campus Reform that the school had “created a new policy” and that “the judge wants us to respond,” adding that the updated complaint will “address how the new policy continues to violate the Constitution and the rights of students at UC-Berkeley.”

Dhillon maintains that UC-Berkeley had used a vaguely-defined policy to discriminate against conservative speakers, noting that “In the old policy they called it the high-profile speakers’ policy,” whereas “in the new one they call it the major events policy.”

In a Sept. 30 statement, she Dhillon alleged that the new policy gives “bureaucrats and officials” illegal “content and viewpoint-based discretion,” and alleged that outside of court proceedings, university officials “muse out loud” about the very actions their lawyers deny, and that arguments for “qualified immunity” are legally unfounded.

“I’m disappointed to see that 30 years later, particularly at a public instruction like UC-Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, university administrators deny students equal access to public resources on the basis of their viewpoints,” Dhillon told Campus Reform.

“We will not rest until student voices are equally free to speak and be heard on the UC Berkeley campus, regardless of their political viewpoint, or the content of their speech,” she asserted.

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At an Oct. 3 hearing to confirm the next ambassador to India, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee grilled President Trump’s nominee Kenneth Ian Juster on a wide range of concerns even as the senior lawmakers recognized the growing cooperation regionally and internationally.

Even as Senator praised the expanding security, defense and strategic cooperation they criticized the trade imbalance, and dwelt at length on problem areas ranging from human rights, bonded labor, sex trafficking and religious liberties to child abduction and infant and maternal mortality.

Juster, a long-time India hand, is expected to be confirmed by the end of the week, finally putting in place an emissary for the largest democracy almost 9 months into the Trump administration.

In his testimony, Juster said he looked forward to advancing “our strategic partnership with India – a relationship that is critical to promoting U.S. national security and economic interests.” He also spoke of the contributions of the nearly 4 million Indian-Americans, and stressed that as a democracy, India’s government and its civil society community was already “grappling” with issues like bonded labor and human rights as well as sex trafficking. He said he would find the right “interlocutors” to address American concerns in every area of concern.

Senator Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, raised concerns over the “18 million” people in India who he said were bonded labor, sex trafficking, and restrictions on non-governmental organizations.

On questions regarding regional and international relations, Juster stressed India’s “constructive” role in Afghanistan, and noted that India was enforcing economic sanctions against Iran and North Korea and that he would need to familiarize himself with what steps New Delhi was taking on new sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Russia.

Senator Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, supported Juster’s nomination, and noted that “As the two largest democracies in the world, the United States and India share a strategic interest in promoting and maintaining stability in the region.”

Corker referred to last week’s visit of Defense Secretary Mattis to New Delhi, which he said signified the importance of the growing security cooperation between the two democracies.

“As these talks highlighted, the United States and India continue to work closely together to promote stability and economic development in Afghanistan, confront terrorist threats and preserve freedom of navigation in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea,” Corker said, but noted that the 2005 civil nuclear agreement left much to be desired in terms of implementation.

“While there has been steady progress in relations between Washington and Delhi, the aspirational nature of the civil-nuclear deal has left both countries struggling to meet unrealistic expectations,” Corker said. He also said he remained “frustrated by the slow pace of Indian reforms in the economic sphere,” and that American companies continue to face barriers like high tariffs and strict localization policies. He criticized an “unpredictable” foreign investment climate, asserting, “Clearly, the economic playing field is not even.”

Corker also contended that “the space for civil society in India continues to shrink as Hindu nationalism rises and international NGOs face undue scrutiny,” and expressed concern over human traficking and bonded labor. “I urge you to pursue an open and candid dialogue with our Indian counterparts about the roadblocks in our relationship,” Corker told Juster, adding, “The time is long overdue for breaking the cycle of expectation and disappointment…”

Juster, 62, recalled his interest in India was sparked since he was 11, when his father, an architect and photographer, brought back vivid photographs of India from his 1966 visit. During his career, Juster has been involved with India through both the government and private sector,

“The remarkable evolution of U.S.-India relations truly has been a bipartisan undertaking, and has benefited from strong leadership and support in the Congress,” Juster said, beginning with President Bill Clinton’s March 2000 visit to India, and President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s commitment in November 2001 to transform the bilateral relationship.

As Under Secretary of Commerce during the first term of the Bush Administration, Juster worked closely with officials in Washington, D.C. and New Delhi on this effort, forming the High Technology Cooperation Group; developing an initiative known as the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership which provided a roadmap for expanded cooperation with India, through a series of reciprocal steps, in civil nuclear activities, civil space programs, and high-technology trade, laying the foundation for the historic civil nuclear agreement. Juster was also in the U.S.-India Business Council, Asia Foundation, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Advanced Study of India, as well as the Aspen Institute’s U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue and other forums.

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SAN FRANCISCO – Betting big on the best combination of artificial intelligence (AI), software and hardware, Google on Wednesday launched Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones, smaller smart speaker “Home Mini”, a larger version called “Home Max”, high-performance convertible Chromebook called PixelBook and “Google Clips” action camera.

The devices are available for pre-order in the US, Britain, Germany and in India, among other countries. Pixel 2 starts at $649 and Pixel 2 XL is available for $849.

Pixel 2 comes with a 5-inch and larger Pixel 2 XL with a 6-inch Full-HD OLED displays with Portrait Modes on both rear and selfie cameras.

Marked 98 on DXOmark ratings, the rear camera comes with OIS and EIS technology to remove jerks and shaky footage. The camera can also click “Live Photos” by recording up to three seconds of footage.

It also has AR Stickers and Pixel users would get free unlimited storage on Google Cloud in the original quality. The devices have IP67 water and dust resistance.

Both phones might come with “squeeze” interaction, USB-C charger and stereo speakers. The company claims it has the fastest fingerprint scanner in a smartphone.

The devices come with stereo earphones called “Pixel Buds” for $159 available in November.

Google Home Mini is priced at $49 in the US, Britain, France and Australia, among others and users can now pre-order them. Taking potshots at Apple iPhone, Google said that Home can search your Android device and ring it even if it is on silent mode.

“For iPhone users, we’ll just give them a call,” the company said.

Reimagining the sound, it also launched Google Home Max, with 2-inch tweeters and 4.5-inch woofers for amazing audio with SmartSound powered by Google Assistant that automatically tunes sound.

It supports Chromecast, aux and Bluetooth 5.0. It is available in December for $399.

The PixelBook is 10mm thin and weighs a kilo and has 12.3-inch Quad HD LCD display, 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM and i5 and i7 processors.

The device has multiple layers of security, automatic updates and it is the first laptop with Assistant built-in.

With USB-C charger, 15 minutes charge gives two hours of backup. It connects automatically to Pixel phones in absence of wi-fi.

The Pixelbook Pen, priced at $99 can help users get information of whatever they have on the screen. Just circle it to get info from it. Write and draw with Pixelbook Pen that has 10ms of latency and 2,000+ levels of pressure sensitivity.

Available in three configurations, Pixelbook is priced at $999 and people can pre-order them now.

Google also launched an action cam called Google Clips. All the devices launched on Wednesday deliver an Internet of Things (IoT) experience.

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After Congress failed five months ago to repeal an Obama administration measure meant to mitigate the emissions of a potent greenhouse gas, the Interior Department on Wednesday took a step toward suspending the rule.

This week, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke will issue a proposal to erase a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rule that requires oil and gas companies operating on federal and tribal lands to capture methane that would otherwise be vented or burned off. BLM had already stayed the rule in June. With its submission to the Federal Register this week, the Interior Department is kicking off the formal rulemaking process needed to permanently rewrite or undo the rule.

Methane, the main component of natural gas underground, is a powerful accelerant of climate change. Through rules issued by the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, President Barack Obama sought to slow methane emissions from natural-gas wells as part of a multipronged effort to meet the U.S. emissions-reduction targets under the Paris climate accord.

But President Donald Trump has announced he will pull the United States out of the Paris agreement, while at the same time rolling back many of the regulatory actions the previous administration took to address climate change.

Environmentalists who support the BLM rule, which addresses new and existing gas wells on public and tribal lands, say fiscal conservatives should take issue scraping the rule as well. That’s because states, tribes and the federal government get royalty payments from oil and gas firms drilling on publicly owned lands. The more methane that is captured, the more money flows into government coffers.

“That just underscores how far outside the mainstream this administration is,” said Matt Watson, associate vice president of the climate and energy program at the Environmental Defense Fund.

In May, the GOP-controlled Senate narrowly blocked a resolution to repeal the BLM methane rule under a little-used law called the Congressional Review Act. The law allows Congress to nullify regulations recently issued by the executive branch with only 50 votes in the Senate, but that effort failed on a 51-to-49 vote. Republican Sens. John McCain, Ariz., Susan Collins, Maine, and Lindsey Graham, S.C., voted against a repeal.

If a regulation is nullified under the CRA, that agency is not allowed to reissue a similar rule – meaning that a future president could not easily undo what Trump undid.

Opponents of the rule knew the Interior Department could act on its own to repeal it – at least until a new president decides otherwise. “I call on Interior Secretary Zinke to withdraw the rule immediately,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said soon after the Senate vote to repeal it failed.

Industry representatives, including the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Western Energy Alliance, and their allies in Congress regarded the Obama administration’s rule as duplicative of similar state regulations. In comments submitted to the Interior Department last month, the groups wrote that they were “grateful that BLM now realizes that the one-size-fits-all solution the agency issued in 2015 was not an appropriate mechanism to address unsubstantiated public concern about hydraulic fracturing.”

Still, not all natural gas extractors in the United States take issue with compliance measures. Last week, XTO Energy, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, said it would phase out “high-bleed” valves over the next three years as part of a program to reduce methane emissions. “Basically what the administration is doing is taking its marching orders from the worst of the oil and gas industry,” Watson said.

The Interior Department did not reply to a request for comment.

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MUMBAI – Tackling bad debts will be the priority for State Bank of India, its newly appointed chairman Rajnish Kumar said on Thursday, but India’s largest bank will not shy away from opportunities to grow, including in infrastructure lending.

India’s state-run banks have been battered by soured loans, a $140 billion problem which has choked off new credit and dampened economic growth. SBI, which accounts for more than a fifth of India’s banking assets, saw stressed assets rise after it absorbed five subsidiary banks earlier this year.

Analysts and investors alike have pointed to bad debt as Kumar’s number one headache as he takes the top job at SBI – replacing Arundhati Bhattacharya, who became one of India’s highest profile executives during her four years at the helm.

A veteran banker regarded by investors and colleagues as an astute operator, Kumar, 59, also put sour loans at the top of his agenda – but said SBI had tackled the debt issues that came as a result of absorbing the smaller lenders. Asset quality would “look much much better” in future, he said.

SBI, which had soured loans of $35 billion, or 12 percent of its loan book at end-June, is due to report quarterly earnings in the coming weeks.

“We are already in discussions on how we revive credit growth, how we resolve the (non-performing assets). That discussion, we will try to bring it to a conclusion very quickly. And you will see some changes,” he told reporters at SBI’s Mumbai headquarters.

The bank is also, however, considering how to juggle the debt conundrum with the need to grow – including infrastructure where Kumar described lending opportunities as ‘unlimited’.

As a whole, Asia has a huge infrastructure funding gap, and India has a chronic need to overhaul everything from creaking railways to roads and overcrowded ports.

Kumar said the bank would consider having separate senior executives dealing with stressed assets and loan growth, to avoid having too many top managers focused only on bad debts.

GROWTH ON HORIZON?

SBI, which has more than 400 million customers, was propelled into the list of the world’s largest banks as a result of its latest deal, part of a government effort to slowly clean up the cluttered state-owned banking sector.

But it is not about growth at all costs, Kumar said, and he dismissed concerns the bank could be forced into some lending as the economy slows.

Infrastructure lending, for example, has been highly problematic for Indian banks – biggest chunk of bad loans are from the infrastructure and metals sector – and he said the bank would tread carefully.

“There is definitely a change in the underwriting standards… We will be much more cautious,” he said.

“Sometimes people equate it with risk aversion – but let me tell you it is not risk aversion. We are still looking for opportunities in financing good infrastructure projects.”

Last month, Fitch Ratings estimated Indian banks need $65 billion to meet all of global Basel III banking rules by March 2019 – well above the $11 billion budgeted by the government.

But Kumar said the bank was “well poised” and did not expect SBI to need more capital from the government before March 2019.

“At this juncture, a quick resolution of the (non-performing assets) should be his priority,” said Aalok Shah, analyst at Centrum Broking.

“The unfortunate thing for (state-run) banks has been frequent change of senior management team. It’s comforting that he was a part of the senior management team and a part of all the discussions, so he’s not new to the system.”

Kumar, whose predecessor was paid a salary of roughly $44,500 last year, takes over on Oct. 7.

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HYDERABAD – President Donald Trump’s daughter and White House advisor Ivanka Trump will be in Hyderabad for two days to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) next month, a top U.S. official said on Thursday.

Ivanka will speak at the inaugural session along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the evening of November 28 and will also remain at the event for part of the next day.

However, it is yet to be decided if she will also visit some other Indian city.

Jennifer Arangio, Senior Director for International Organizations and Alliances at the US National Security Council, told reporters here that Ivanka will arrive in Hyderabad on November 28 to attend the GES but it is yet to be decided if she will fly back straight to the US from here.

Asked about Ivanka’s other engagements in Hyderabad, Arangio said the visit would only be focussed on the summit.

The official said Ivanka would be an active participant at the GES. “Women’s economic empowerment and entrepreneurship are two signature issues she knows quite well. As you know she was instrumental in the We-Fi initiative launched by the World Bank,” she said referring to the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) launched in July.

To be held at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC) here, the GES will bring together 1,200 entrepreneurs, investors and ecosystem supporters for two-and-half days of training and mentoring sessions, networking and investment matchmaking.

The summit with the theme ‘Women first, prosperity for all’ will be attended by 400 entrepreneurs from the US, 400 from India and 400 from rest of the world, Arangio said.

She said while traditionally GES was an education and networking summit, the real objective is to bring dynamic entrepreneurs, investors and ecosystem drivers together so that they get inspired, matchup with potential investment opportunities and after going back home drive their ideas to the next level

“GES is an opportunity to showcase the United State’s world-renowned entrepreneurial acumen, underscore women’s economic empowerment, and foster economic growth and prosperity for our partners. When America’s partners are growing and prospering our world is more secure,” the US official said.

Senior Advisor at NITI Aayog, C. Muralikrishna Kumar said the event would focus on four sectors – healthcare and life sciences, digital economy and financial technology, energy and infrastructure, media and entertainment.

He said the entrepreneurs, investors and industry experts would use the global platform to sign agreements and make announcements.

He said an app would be launched 15 days before the summit so that the registered delegates could identify the partners for networking.

US Consul General in Hyderabad, Katherine Hadda, noted that Hyderabad has 130 American companies. She said they would be able to introduce more American entrepreneurs and investors to this region.

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LAS VEGAS – The Las Vegas gunman who killed 58 people and himself in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history stockpiled weapons and ammunition over decades, and meticulously planned the attack, authorities believe.

But what led Stephen Paddock, 64, to unleash the carnage remains largely a mystery.

“What we know is that Stephen Paddock is a man who spent decades acquiring weapons and ammo and living a secret life, much of which will never be fully understood,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters on Wednesday night.

Lombardo said he found it hard to believe that the arsenal of weapons, ammunition and explosives recovered by police in their investigation could have been assembled by Paddock completely on his own.

“You have to make an assumption that he had some help at some point,” Lombardo said.

Some 489 people were also injured when Paddock strafed an outdoor concert with gunfire on Sunday night from his 32nd-floor suite of the Mandalay Bay hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. He then took his own life.

Police recovered nearly 50 firearms from three locations they searched, nearly half of them from the hotel suite. Officials said 12 of the rifles there were fitted with bump stocks, allowing the guns to be fired almost as though they were automatic weapons.

Like other recent mass shootings, the incident stirred the debate in Washington over regulating firearm ownership, which is protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Republicans, who currently control the White House and both chambers of Congress, have fought off Democratic calls for stricter background checks or federal limits on magazine size following past mass shootings.

But congressional Republicans said they would be willing to investigate the bump stocks that allow legal semi-automatic rifles to behave similarly to fully automatic weapons, which are largely illegal in the United States.

Investigators were examining the possibility Paddock’s purchase of more than 30 guns in October 2016 may have been precipitated by some event in his life, Lombardo said.

The FBI said on Wednesday there remained no evidence indicating that the shooting spree was an act of terrorism.

Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, was questioned by the FBI on Wednesday and said in a statement she had been unaware of Paddock’s plans.

“He never said anything to me or took any action that I was aware of that I understood in any way to be a warning that something horrible like this was going to happen,” Danley, 62, said in the statement released by her lawyer, Matt Lombard.

Danley, who returned late Tuesday from a family visit to the Philippines, is regarded by investigators as a “person of interest.” Lombard said his client was cooperating fully with authorities.

A Federal Bureau of Investigation official in Las Vegas, meanwhile, said no one has been taken into custody.

An Australian citizen of Filipino heritage, Danley said she flew back to the United States voluntarily “because I know that the FBI and Las Vegas Police Department wanted to talk to me, and I wanted to talk to them.”

Danley shared Paddock’s home at a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada, northeast of Las Vegas, before traveling to the Philippines in mid-September.

Investigators questioned her about Paddock’s weapons purchases, a $100,000 wire transfer to a Philippine bank that appeared to be intended for her, and whether she saw any changes in his behavior before she left the United States.

Danley said Paddock had bought her an airline ticket to visit her family and wired her money to purchase property there, leading her to worry he might be planning to break up with her.

Paddock’s brother Eric told reporters the $100,000 transfer was evidence that “Steve took care of the people he loved,” and that he probably wanted to protect Danley by sending her overseas before the attack.

Discerning Paddock’s motive has proven especially baffling as he had no criminal record, no known history of mental illness and no outward signs of social disaffection, political discontent or extremist ideology, police said.

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The Indiana Supreme Court has upheld a state law on sending sexually explicit photographs through social media and other mediums in the case of Indian American high school teacher Sameer Thakar.

Thakar was arrested in February after he sent an inappropriate picture of him to a 16-year-old girl in Oregon through Skype.

At the time, Thakar was a first year teacher at North Central High in Indianapolis and was fired by Washington Township Schools after the incident.

However, Thakar’s attorneys argued that the law governing explicit photographs was unconstitutional, because the age of sexual consent in Indiana is 16.

The argument was deemed “confusing” for the state as it was legal to allow someone to engage in sexual activity with a 16-year-old while it is illegal to send sexual images to someone the same age.

A trial judge agreed with Thakar and tossed out the charge and although the ruling was upheld by the state Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court reversed it.

According to the Supreme Court, the law “clearly protects minors under the age of 18 from the dissemination of matter harmful to them. Whether this inconsistent statutory treatment of minors aged 16 and 17 is advisable with respect to sexually-related activity is a matter for the legislature,” wrote Justice Mark Massa.

According to a New York post report, Thakar allegedly sent the photo to the girl after they discussed her age and she told him she wished she were 18, he later confessed to police that he had a problem with chatting online.

Thakar’s case will return to trial court for a new hearing.

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Indian American Nirav Patel, who was declared immune from criminal prosecution in Florida under its “Stand Your Ground” law in 2008, is now facing issues with it after a recent decision to amend it.

According to a Courthouse News report, Patel was arrested back in 2008 after he got into a fight with another Indian American, Ketan Kumar at a bar in Tampa, Florida.

Patel was charged with felony battery when he tried to defend himself by striking Kumar with a glass, after Kumar attacked him, blinding Kumar in the left eye.

When Patel claimed it self-defense under the “Stand Your Ground” law, which allows a person to use force against an attacker before trying to retreat, allowing him to receive immunity, Kumar responded with a civil suit accusing Patel of battery and negligence to which Patel petitioned in Florida’s Second District Court of Appeals, arguing that his immunity from criminal prosecution extended to civil lawsuits as well.

The appellate court agreed but the decision was in conflict with an earlier appellate ruling from the state’s Third District Court of Appeals regarding a recent decision that the state Supreme Court said the law “is silent as to the procedure to be used for determining immunity,” however, the statute does have separate language dealing with attorney fees for civil and criminal cases, which the justices interpreted as the law requiring separate immunity hearings.

The state also decided to amend the Stand Your Ground law after unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by neighborhood watch leader George Zimmerman, who was then acquitted by the law and a 2012 study by the Tampa Bay Times found the law had been invoked more than 200 times since its inception, allowing 70 percent of those accused to walk free including gang members and drug dealers, causing two Miami circuit judges to declare it unconstitutional

“The legislature … did not suggest procedural mechanisms for invoking and determining Stand Your Ground immunity,” Justice C. Alan Lawson wrote. “Necessarily, those procedures are being developed by the judiciary.”

In a phone interview with Courthouse News, Patel’s attorney Stephen Romine shared his disagreements with the ruling.

“Either you’re immune or you’re not,” Romine said, disputing the justices’ mention of civil attorney fees as a rationale for needing separate hearings, because criminal statutes don’t have language allowing defendants to sue the state for wrongful prosecution.

Romine also pointed to other case law that prevents a person from relitigating issues already dealt with by a criminal court, “there are so many statements of law by the courts that run counter to the reasons in this opinion,” he said.

“You can call it a bit of legislative rambunctiousness. We see that Stand Your Ground has been so elastic that the Florida Supreme Court is willing to check what it’s doing to other cases,” said Tampa attorney Michael Maddux, who is representing Kumar and intends to pursue the civil lawsuit adding that “[Patel] can’t deny our client the opportunity to pursue civil justice.”

“They couldn’t have picked a worse factual case to decide this on,” Romine said, defending Patel’s actions against Kumar. “It’s unfortunate for my client to have to go through the time and cost associated with litigating this again.”

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The library at the Bishembarnath and Sheela Mattoo Center for India Studies at Stony Brook University was dedicated in the name of Drs. Yashpal and Urmilesh Arya, who also donated $250,000 to the Center’s endowment campaign, which has been matched by the Simons Match Fund.

The donation will allow for the expansion of the library’s services and initiatives, including special collections and online courses, to make the library’s resources more widely available.

The dedication ceremony drew a large gathering of Stony Brook faculty, staff, students and administrators, and members of the Indian American community.

The couple described the library’s dedication as “one of the happiest days of our lives.”

“I am proud to stand here today to continue this family tradition of perpetuating further education with the help of Stony Brook University through its forward thinking, visionary policy making, and the Mattoo Center for India Studies for its strong resolve and relentless pursuit that led to the creation of this library,” said Dr. Yashpal, whose family has a history of philanthropy in both India and the United States.

He also thanked the Stony Brook administration for their “enlightened support” for the Center as well as Professors S.N. and Kamal K. Sridhar, whom he described as the Center’s grandparents, “you make your living by earning. You make your life by giving.”

Dr. Nirmal K. Mattoo, Chair of the Center’s executive committee, praised the Aryas for their involvement “in philanthropy on a large scale,” noting their long-time “commitment to the Center’s vision.”

Dean Sacha Kopp dedicated the library and thanked the attendees for their “participation in the decades-long effort to create the Center for India Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.”

“A public university has the responsibility not only to serve the public through education but to give back to the public in the form of knowledge and sharing and fostering community and culture,” Dean Kopp explained adding that a library is a “gathering of community” and the “lifeblood” of a campus. “As I reflect on ‘community,’ I see it here today.”

According to Professor S.N. Sridhar, founding Director of the Mattoo Center, the library features a collection of more than 13,000 works, including major reference works, such as the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata and the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, and special collections on Indian languages donated by noted research scholars.

The library’s resources are used by Stony Brook students, faculty, and visiting scholars and researchers from around the world.

The Mattoo Center is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a Gala on October 29th at Leonard’s in Great Neck.

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NEW YORK – In the fall of 2017, as I packed up all my summer garments in preparation for a new winter, I found a ball of wool tucked in the back of my closet, with the needle positioned exactly where I had left it nearly half a decade ago.

Today, as I picked up that wool to finish that scarf that I had abandoned, I remembered that part of myself that I thought I had lost over time.

Four years ago, I had turned to the time-tested art my mother had taught me in my teen years: crocheting. I had just graduated college with the rose-colored desire to take a year to dip into the job market before plunging into the day to day grind of graduate school.

I had initially started out with a pile of wool and a crochet needle with lackluster enthusiasm; however, it wasn’t long before that hobby became a habit.

A serious compulsion.

I would return home from a long day of teaching and lesson-planning to the comfort of weaving thread in an endless bind.

I would spread out my newly-acquired treasures in the attic, seat myself perfectly between the window, which streamed a faint glow of moonlight, and a candle, lit among a collection of paintings of flowers and angels. I would spread myself on the daybed and lose myself for hours in the rhythm of crocheting.

Complementing those crocheting sessions were countless trips to the local crafts store, which would always leave me with an armful of wool—some in purple metallic, some in sequenced gold, some multicolored, and others in dusty rose.

I had so many thoughts—more than I could ever grasp—that I felt that if I could just stitch them into this half-made scarf hanging from my hands, then I would be able to make some sense of them—maybe I would be able to understand my life a bit better.

I had this fantasy that I would be able to read my thoughts through each loop I knotted. The wool became my alphabet, and the seamed loops, my speech. It was that philosophy that turned that little scarf into a blanket, eleven feet tall and six feet wide.

As I would crochet, I would remember a story I had read of a little girl who recalled her childhood days of watching her grandmother knit for her and her sisters.

She spoke of how, every once in a while, a silver strand of her grandmother’s hair would fall into her lap, and her grandmother would move right along, weaving those fallen pieces right into her latest work.

Years later, when the little girl—now grown woman—shared her grandmother’s sweaters with her children, she remembered her grandmother’s hair tangled in the sleeves caught in her daughter’s arms.

Somehow, that story had stayed with me. That urge to knot down something fleeting and intangible into the sheaths of thick wool worn in the deep of winter. That shadowy part of us that simply cannot face loss. That desire to hold tight to that which is not ours to keep.

However, four years ago, I gave up on a scarf I had excitedly started out. I went to stitch another loop and never touched it again.

In the last few years, I had wandered from dance clubs to coffee shops to sophisticated museums, and manicured nature centers to find that part that I had left dry in the cold. Somehow the rigor of routine had left me all the more vacant and unfulfilled.

I wanted to once again touch that nerve inside that I had numbed. I wanted to feel the joy, and the accompanying pain, that were woven tight within those nerves.

For, I found that even when I wrote, the words weren’t mine, but of those artificially concocted by my intellect. I wanted to feel myself in the raw again. Unpolished, rough, and slightly broken.

But it was here all along. In my closet in an old plastic bag. My needle and thread. All a reminder of the sides of myself that I had hidden from the world.

I had been wrong earlier—it wasn’t the loops that caught the fragments of my life, but the motion of crocheting itself. The movement from needle to thread—rhythmic memory—held the thoughts that I strove to parse out years ago.

As I looked at my collection, the scarves I made years ago didn’t speak to me, as I had expected them to.

I could not “read” the loops, as I had initially desired. But, with the yarn in my hand and the needle pressed between my fingers, I could instantly remember those thoughts I had long hushed away.

There’s some beauty in that. I had placed an inordinate amount of value in the objects I had gathered from the past:  it’s a delight to know that the present action of crocheting—of actively working with my hands and creating something new—could seamlessly bridge darkened motions of the past with the clear-view movement of the present.

So I wove rows upon rows of flowers in violets and blues. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could pour the boundless grief and joy of life into the patterns with each stroke—that that pest of futile agitation would find some reprieve in the dense garlands below.

And in three weeks from that moment, I saw my unfinished work of years back bounce into the bright boughs of a lilac wood, blooming in the very groove where my apathy was once buried.

(Lavanya Mookerjee, has received the Tim Marks scholarship for the Arts, the Academic Excellence award and the 2013 Franis J. Ryan award for “Best Undergraduate Research Paper” at Eastern American Studies Association Conference. She was also a digital humanities panelist for 2017 Modern Language Association Conference and an invited researcher at Georgia Tech’s Humanities Data Visualization workshop.  She is currently working while pursuing a second post-graduate degree.)

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The world’s favourite jeweller is having a banner year with back to back showroom launches, a brand-new brand ambassador in Kajol Devgan and several awards, including an 8th consecutive Superbrand win under its belt. Never one to disappoint, Joyalukkas is giving back to its loyal supporters with a grand gold coin giveaway in time for the Festival of Lights.

Golden Diwali at Joyalukkas is offering Free gold coins on a minimum purchase of jewellery. Customers can also take advantage of guaranteed gold rate protection upon 10% advance payment on the jewellery of their dreams till 17th October 2017, as well as enjoy low making charges.

“For Joyalukkas Group, Diwali 2017 is truly a time of thanks giving,” says Mr. Joy Alukkas, Chairman & MD, Joyalukkas Group. “We’re not only celebrating 30 years of being the world’s favourite jeweller and an ever-growing presence across the globe, it’s also our first major campaign featuring Kajol Devgan. Golden Diwali is our way of thanking the millions of patrons who have made each achievement, each new showroom possible.”

Making the promotion even more special is a limited edition festive collection featuring a glittering selection of antique gold and temple jewellery, playful floral inspired Rangeen pieces, as well as traditional mangalsutra sets and contemporary designs in diamond, gold and precious stones.

The Joyalukkas Golden Diwali promotion is available across the brand’s over 130 showrooms in the UK, USA, GCC, India and Asia till the 21st of October 2017.

About Joyalukkas Group:

Joyalukkas Group is a multi-billion dollar global conglomerate, with varied business interests. The group operates its various business operations across UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Singapore, Malaysia, London, USA and India. The group businesses include jewellery, money exchange, fashion & textiles, luxury air charters, malls and realty. Joyalukkas employs over 8,000 professionals across the world, and is one of the most awarded and recognised jewellery retail chains in the world.

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