NEW YORK

Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center’s Emergency Department (ED) Telehealth Express Care Service has won the 2017 Emergency Care Innovation of the Year Award for its use of telemedicine to evaluate ED patients and dramatically decrease time spent in the ED, while maintaining a high degree of patient safety and satisfaction.

“This honor represents our commitment to delivering the finest emergency care and providing high-quality efficient care to our patients through continued innovation,” said Dr. Rahul Sharma, emergency physician-in-chief at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, and chief of the Division of Emergency Medicine and an associate professor of clinical medicine and of clinical healthcare policy and research at Weill Cornell Medicine, who accepted the award with his colleagues.

Urgent Matters, Philips Blue Jay Consulting, and Schumacher Clinical Partners presented the award at the national American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) Scientific Assembly on Oct. 28 in Washington, D.C. Urgent Matters is a national initiative managed by the Center for Healthcare Innovation and Policy Research at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, dedicated to strategies to improve patient flow and reduce ED crowding. Philips Blue Jay Consulting is an ED consulting service, and Schumacher Clinical Partners, a healthcare management services company.

The ED Telehealth Express Care Service at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, part of New York-Presbyterian’s digital suite of services, NYP On Demand, allows patients already in the ED with non-life threatening conditions to visit virtually with a clinician and significantly reduce their wait time.

After initial triage and an in-person medical screening exam, patients can elect to video-conference from a private room with board-certified emergency medicine physicians from Weill Cornell Medicine. ED Express Care has helped reduce ED wait times for such patients from two or three hours to approximately 35-40 minutes.

“We are so pleased to be recognized with this award as we continue to focus on expanding digital health care for our patients, and on improving patient experience and satisfaction,” said Daniel Barchi, senior vice president and chief information officer at New York-Presbyterian, in a statement.

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NEW YORK

Barely had investigation begun into the racist flier distributed on Wednesday in Edison, New Jersey against an Indian American woman, Falguni Patel, and a Chinese American man, Jingwei ‘Jerry’ Shi, standing for the School Board, when fresh controversy erupted two days later, on Friday, over a disturbing flier targeting Ravi Bhalla, an Indian American Councilman from Hoboken, who is vying to be the mayor.

The fliers were placed on car windshields with the message “Don’t let TERRORISM take over our town!” above a picture of Bhalla, wearing a turban, reported NJ.com.

The fliers appear to have been a modified version of a mailer from the Michael DeFusco mayoral campaign that was sent out previously claiming Bhalla had an alleged conflict of interest, which appears on the ad in smaller print.

DeFusco condemned the fliers in a statement, saying his campaign had nothing to do with the modified flier and has contacted local and county police to investigate.

Hoboken Police Chief Kenneth Ferrante said his department is investigating the distribution as a potential bias crime, including bias intimidation or harassment.

“Looking at the law, it could touch on that,” Ferrante said. “It’s awful conduct whoever was the person behind it, and illegal conduct,” Ferrante said. “I was made aware of it last night at approximately 10 p.m. and our detectives immediately began an investigation.”

The fliers were concentrated in mid-town section of the Mile-Square City, in the area of Hudson Street, near the waterfront, according to Ferrante, who said he did not know how many had been circulated, reported NJ.com.

The city of 54,000 people has six candidates vying to replace Mayor Dawn Zimmer, who did not seek re-election. The city’s elections are non-partisan.

“I called Councilman Bhalla tonight to assure him that although we disagree on many issues, we can stand united against this kind of racism infecting our city,” said DeFusco, a Democrat who would be Hoboken’s first openly gay mayor if he wins.

Bhalla, who would be the city’s first Sikh mayor if elected, responded to the flier on social media Saturday, saying that “we won’t let hate win.”

“I want people to know Hob is a welcoming community where my wife & I are proud to raise our children,” he said in a series of tweets. “No matter your race, ethnicity you are welcome here in our City. As Mayor, I will work hard to keep it that way. At time w/ President seeking to divide us, it is critical we come together as a community and stand up for American values.”

Bhalla had become New Jersey’s first Sikh elected official when he won a seat on the Hoboken City Council in 2009.

In an interview to New York Daily News, Bhalla said “there’s been an undercurrent of racism I’ve seen in this campaign. That sort of whispering campaign has come to the surface now, where people have the audacity to send a flyer like that.”

He added: “My wife was in tears. The hardest part as a father was answering my daughter’s questions, asking ‘Why are people attacking you because you wear a turban?’ That’s a hard question to answer to a little girl, 10 years old.”

On November 6, Hoboken police released video footage showing two “persons of interest” in the Hoboken case.

Hoboken Police Chief Kenneth Ferrante said his department was investigating the incident as a potential bias crime, including bias intimidation or harassment. It also violates a city ordinance prohibiting the placement of campaign or other types of fliers on vehicles or public property, reported NJ.com.

A press release from the police department said a representative of the DeFusco campaign first reported seeing the men with the fliers at about 8:40 p.m. on Friday.

“Members of his campaign observed an unknown individual disseminating altered Defusco campaign literature,” police said. “The campaign literature now had an added portion that read ‘Don’t let TERRORISM take over our Town’ over a picture of Ravi Bhalla, another Hoboken Mayoral candidate. When Defusco campaign members realized the alarming and inappropriate change to their official campaign literature they immediately called police and began to gather up the fliers from the vehicles they were placed on.”

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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma, on Nov. 7, addressed the National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD), at a conference in Arlington, Virginia, where she discussed her vision for the future of Medicaid. She also unveiled new CMS policies that the CMS hopes will encourage states to propose innovative Medicaid reforms, reduce federal regulatory burdens, increase efficiency, and promote transparency and accountability.

During her first major speech on the subject, Verma said that when the federal government established Medicaid, it was intended to be a partnership with state governments to care for society’s most vulnerable citizens. With the growth of the program over the last several years came increased federal and state spending, which led to increased federal oversight and regulation, said Verma, according to a news release from CMS.

“Our vision for the future of Medicaid is to reset the federal-state relationship and restore the partnership, while at the same time modernizing the program to deliver better outcomes for the people we serve,” said Administrator Verma. “We need to ensure that we are building a Medicaid program that is sound and solvent to help all beneficiaries reach their highest potential.”

Verma said she was committed to “turn the page in the Medicaid program” by giving states more freedom to design innovative programs, and pledged to remove impediments that get in the way of states achieving this goal. She announced several new policies and initiatives that she contended would break down the barriers that prevent state innovation and improvement of Medicaid beneficiary health outcomes. They include updated CMS Medicaid website to give states a clearer indication of how their reform strategies might align with a core objective of the Medicaid program of serving the nation’s vulnerable and low-income individuals and families.

Verma emphasized the agency’s commitment to considering proposals that would give states more flexibility to engage with their working-age, able-bodied citizens on Medicaid through demonstrations that will help them rise out of poverty.

“Every American deserves the dignity and respect of high expectations and as public officials we should deliver programs that instill hope and say to each beneficiary that we believe in their potential,” said Administrator Verma. “CMS believes that meaningful work is essential to beneficiaries’ economic self-sufficiency, self-esteem, well-being, and health of Americans.”

Another notable step Verma noted, was the CMS efforts to develop Scorecards that will provide greater transparency and accountability of the Medicaid program by tracking and publishing state and federal Medicaid outcomes, which is still in its early stages. Scorecards she said, were a “historic opportunity” to demonstrate to taxpayers how the $558 billion spent on Medicaid is producing positive results and improved health outcomes.

In what was a rebuttal of the Democratic view of Medicare, Verma noted that federal and state officials have a higher purpose than “just handing out Medicaid cards and being a financier of healthcare.”

“We will not just accept the hollow victory of numbers covered [in the program], but will dig deeper and demand more of ourselves and of you,” said Verma. “For those unable to care for themselves, we will create sustainable programs that will always be there to provide the care you need, to provide choices and allow you to live as independently as possible,” she said. “For those that just need a hand up, we will provide you the opportunity to take charge of your health care and assist and empower you to rise out of poverty and government dependence to create a better life for yourselves and your family,” she said.

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Ravinder Bhalla, a council member, made history as the first Indian-American to become Mayor fighting on a platform of infrastructural development and multiculturalism for the city in the shadow of the Big Apple.

Throughout his campaign Bhalla who began his race with the support of the incumbent Mayor Dawn Zimmer, touted his ethnicity and commanded a social media presence that would be the envy of his rivals.

Another significant win for Indian-americans in New Jersey is that of Phil Murphy as the Governor of the state. Murphy diligently courted the Indian American community which boasts the largest concentration in terms of numbers, in New Jersey over any other state in the country.

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From the New Jersey State Senate to the City of Hoboken, Indian Americans made huge gains not just for the community but for the Democratic Party that had pinned hopes on them in some tough districts.

Vin Gopal, the charismatic rising star and former Monmouth County Democratic Party chair, beat his Republican incumbent of 11 years, Jennifer Beck, in the most hotly contested and most expensive District 11 race. He becomes the first Indian-American to be in the N.J. State Senate.

“Mara Chokra Ne Jitadvo Che,” were the words Madhuben, a voter in District 11, Monmouth County said about Gopal’s win. The octogenarian, who went to the polls holding her cane, to vote Gopal in, was voting for the first time in her 35 years in this country. “One of my proudest moments of my life. Inspired by the commitment of our community to perform their civic duty!” said Ritesh Shah when he posted Madhuben’s photo on Facebook.

In winning, Gopal turned a long time red seat into blue. And despite the district having few Indian-Americans, members of the community rallied till the last day to bring their own to the polling booth. Gopal won by a several thousand votes (53 percent to Beck’s 47 percent) according to unofficial results.

“My dream came true. We brought each and every Indian American to the polls,” Ritesh Shah,co-founder of the South Asian Registration Initiative, told News India Times.

New Jersey Assemblyman Raj Mukherji told News India Times, “Nobody on earth works harder for their community than Vin Gopal. His historic election to the Senate – the first South Asian in state history – will double our presence in the State Legislature, but what’s remarkable is the margin and how he knocked off a popular incumbent in a Republican district.” Mukherji went on to praise Gopal for his zealousness and for being a tireless advocate and ‘honest to a fault. “We are going to do great things together. It’s a proud day to be brown. Big difference from a year ago when I woke up hoping it was all a bad dream,” Mukherji added taking a dig at President Trump’s victory last year.

In Hoboken, the town across the Hudson crowded with professionals who work in New York, Councilman Ravinder Bhalla won to become the new Mayor of the multicultural city. He becomes the first Indian-American and first Sikh to hold that office.

The only Indian-American member of the New Jersey State Assembly, Raj Mukherji, won back his seat.

“This year marks the 30th anniversary of the reprehensible Dotbuster attacks that struck fear into the hearts of innocent, hard working Indian Americans in my hometown of Jersey City,” Mukherji told News India Times via text. “I am privileged that 30 years later, despite the injection of racism to political campaigns all over the country, that legislative district – which is home to Ellis Island – will again be represented by the only Indian American in the State Assembly.”

New Jersey has the largest concentration of Indian-Americans in the country, and it has been a long held angst that they are not occupying the number of offices they should be compared to their population.

Hence, for Indian-Americans, the Nov. 7 elections in New Jersey where they contested up and down the ballot, it was a test watched keenly by the community nationwide as an example of whether they can make a breakthrough as a formidable force future politicians have to deal with.

Some of the other winners included Shanti Narra being re-elected to the North Brunswick City Council; and Sadaf Jaffer, won her race for the Montgomery City Council; early results showed Sangeeta Doshi may have won her race for the Cherry Hill Township Council, according to cherryhillssun.com.

Before election day, some Indian-Americans were concerned whether members of the community would actually get out to vote, an Achilles heel of what is considered the most educated and highest income-earning group in the country, often touted as the ‘model minority’. But they delivered, according to Shah, who crunched the numbers and said 80 to 90 percent of Indian American voters in District 11 cast their vote, a historic high.

According to rough estimates by Shah, there are some 370,000 Indian-Americans living in New Jersey. This is the highest of any state, up from the nearly 300,000 (292,000) in the 2010 Census. He spoke to News India Times about how Indian Americans came to the polls all around the state especially after offensive racially tinged flyers were circulated that called for deporting an Indian American and a Chinese American from the country, as well as against Ravinder Bhalla.

Before voting day, Gopal who is not given to hyperbole, told this correspondent, there was a ’50-50′ split in District 11, and the possibility of switching the seat from red to blue was real. He was proved right.

His win in a largely white district is not without precedent. Historically, Indian-American candidates have done well in districts around the country where the population is majority white – the earliest of them all, Kumar Barve in Maryland who continues to represent Montgomery County in the House of Delegates since 1990; Satveer Chaudhary who first won his seat to the Minnesota House of Representatives (2001-2003) and then to the state Senate (2003-2011); Swati Dandekar in the Iowa House of Representatives from 2003-2009 and the state Senate from 2009-2011; The same goes for state races like former Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley, and former Governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal. Not least of all, the significant victories at the national level in 2016, that catapulted one Indian-American, Kamala Harris, to the U.S. Senate, and four to the U.S. House – Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Illinois; Pramila Jayapal, D-Washington; Ro Khanna, D-California; and Ami Bera, D-California.

Another significant win for Indian-Americans is that of Democrat Phil Murphy for Governor of the state, ousting Republican contender Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno. Amit  Jani, director of Asian American outreach for Murphy, told News India Times, there was a lot of excitement in the Indian-American community to bring about a change of guard at the state level, and Murphy’s focus on the economy, the tech sector, and job creation appealed to this community. Murphy courted this community throughout his campaign attending numerous events and fundraisers of Indian-Americans. “There are a lot of folks in their 20s and 30s who are drawn to politics this campaign season, So are older Indian-Americans, ” Jani said, not least because of candidates fielded up and down the ballot.

Before election day, Assemblyman Mukherji told News India Times he banked on Gopal’s victory, “But Vin’s victory will merely double the number of Indian-Americans in the State legislature,” which is a far cry from the right number according to his math. “There are about 350,000 Indian-Americans in New Jersey out of a population of 8.9 million. So that’s 4 percent of the state. If you round that up with the number of legislators – 40 Senators and 80 Assembly members – We should have at least 5 Indian-American legislators in New Jersey,” Mukherji said.

“So while we may be flexing our muscle, we have a long way to go from the minimum appropriate representation,” Mukherji added.

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When a triumphant Donald Trump finally took the stage a year ago to claim victory over Hillary Clinton, cheering from the crowd was Jesse Blanco – dressed in a blazer, bow tie and a “Make America Great Again” hat – ready for the president-elect to let loose like he had during so many rallies during the campaign.

But a very different politician showed up than the one who shocked the globe with his politically incorrect and unapologetic campaign.

Trump lavished praise on Hillary Clinton, laid out a centrist agenda focused on infrastructure projects and growing the economy and told fellow world leaders that he would “seek common ground, not hostility, partnership, not conflict.” Above all, he called for unity as he pledged to represent all Americans.

“Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division,” Trump said at about 3 a.m. on Nov. 9 in downtown Manhattan. “I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans, and this is so important to me.”

Blanco was surprised by Trump’s tone but liked what he heard.

“It didn’t seem like a stump speech, like the rallies he had been at. He was very composed,” said Blanco, a campaign intern who was then a University of Pennsylvania freshman and attended the party with his younger brother. “The crowd kind of wanted a more prideful speech, but he was very focused.”

The victory speech was a glimpse of a presidency that might have been.

Instead, one year later, Trump finds himself the most unpopular president in modern times amid criticism he has sought to divide more than unite.

He has resumed his attacks on Clinton, barred most of those who criticized him during the campaign from working in his administration and seen rapid turnover in his White House. When he has felt under attack, he has aggressively punched back, going after members of his own party, media outlets, the intelligence community, the widow of a soldier killed in Niger, the cast of a Broadway show and minorities playing professional football who have knelt during the national anthem to protest racial inequality and police abuse.

He has yet to introduce the sweeping infrastructure plan he promised or implement an economic plan, although he is hopeful that Congress will pass some tax cuts before the end of the year. He has repeatedly tried to implement bans on foreigners from several majority Muslim countries, tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act that many of his supporters depend on for health insurance and commissioned prototypes for a massive wall along parts of the southern border despite a lack of funding.

Blanco wasn’t the only one thinking Trump’s victory speech was a sign he would be different as president than he was as a candidate.

“I remember thinking maybe, just maybe, all of the people who have been saying that he will change were right,” said Trump skeptic Andrew Weinstein who attended a gathering of “never Trumpers” at Lincoln Restaurant in Washington on election night. “Maybe, just maybe he’s going to heed their wise counsel.”

Weinstein – a former Republican staffer on Capitol Hill and now the head of a public relations firm – said Trump should have followed his victory speech by announcing that he was closing his Twitter account, reaching out to Republicans who had opposed him on the campaign trail and working across party lines to launch an ambitious infrastructure plan.

“He could have done all of those things out of the gate,” he said. “If he could have taken some simple steps like that . . . he could have changed the course of his presidency.”

Instead, Weinstein said, Trump has validated many of the concerns that he and others raised during the campaign about the former real estate developer’s fitness for office. He compared the president and his party to the fable of the scorpion and the turtle who are crossing a river together when the scorpion stings the turtle, causing them both to drown.

“That’s his nature,” Weinstein said of Trump, “he can’t help but sting.”

More than 700 miles west of Manhattan in the small Indiana city of Hammond, Carol Kitchens woke up at 4 a.m. the day after the election to prepare for work in a middle school cafeteria and learned Trump won and quickly searched for his speech online.

“I applauded that he held out an olive branch,” said Kitchens, an independent who voted for Barack Obama twice and then for Trump. “The American people really want that.”

Kitchens – like many people who voted for the president – is disappointed in the Trump presidency so far, but blames Congress for the lack of progress. She said she voted for Trump because she wanted to see a major change in Washington.

“But the Republicans and the Democrats are playing the same games that they always play,” Kitchens said. “I’m really disappointed.”

She cheered the passage of the Affordable Care Act in the memory of her daughter, who was diagnosed with cancer in high school, was kicked off her parents’ health insurance plan when she turned 18 and then couldn’t easily get insurance because she had a preexisting condition. She was surprised when Trump and Republicans followed through on their promise to repeal the health care law without composing a comparable replacement.

“If they really truly thought anything about their constituents, about the people who put them in office, they would fine-tune it, not get rid of it,” she said.

Kitchens said Trump appears to be learning more about the presidency and politics in Washington each day – and that she wishes his opponents and the media would stop nitpicking him. She’s hopeful that Trump can once again hold out that olive branch like he did in his victory speech.

“I am very hopeful for the United States. I am very hopeful for Donald Trump’s presidency,” Kitchens said. “I’m not expecting miracles, but I am expecting changes. Congress needs to get their act together and do something.”

After Trump’s victory party in Manhattan ended, Blanco caught a 6 a.m. train back to Philadelphia so that he could make it to his early morning classes. He was exhausted but energized by the unexpected victory he witnessed.

“It was a historical night,” he said. “It was amazing to be there.”

When he arrived back on campus, he could immediately feel the change in tone. Many morning classes were empty, as students who were disappointed by the election results could not bring themselves to attend. He knew there wasn’t much support for Trump on campus but he was stunned to see campus grind to a halt.

“It was the strangest thing. I had never seen campus so quiet or muted,” said Blanco, now a sophomore who is studying political science. “I wondered: Is it always like this after an election? That atmosphere really lingered for a week, two weeks. Campus was as if a funeral had happened.”

Since the election, Blanco said that it seems like the country has become even more divided, that politics have become even more tribal. Instead of having heated debates, he said that he increasingly finds people not even willing to have a discussion about their differences. As a young Republican, he views his party as having an identity crisis.

While he celebrated the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, new anti-lobbying rules for Trump administration staffers and the healthy economy, he’s frustrated that Republicans can’t come together to pass legislation and that the president often gets “too carried away” on Twitter.

But he’s still hopeful that the president is constantly learning more about the job and can steer his tenure toward the vision he laid out on election night.

“He really has to hold true to his words,” Blanco said, “and work on behalf of all Americans.”

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WASHINGTON – Two days after a mass shooting at a Texas church, Democratic lawmakers failed Tuesday to force a vote on legislation establishing a select committee on preventing gun violence.

The proposal is among more than 30 pieces of legislation introduced by Democrats this year to combat gun violence and bolster federal funding to research and assist people with mental illness and the effects of gun violence. Of those bills, just four have Republican sponsors, according to a document compiled by Democratic aides and shared with The Washington Post.

The measure that Democrats failed to advance Tuesday was introduced by Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., who leads a Democratic working group on gun violence established after the 2012 mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school. The bill would establish a 12-member committee divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats to study the causes of mass shootings, look at ways to revamp the gun background-check system, research how mentally ill people obtain firearms and explore ways to keep domestic abusers from buying firearms.

“You know how many special committees they’ve created to chase Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama around that don’t have any bearing on saving lives of the people we represent?” Thompson said in an interview Monday, referring to Republicans. “A select committee can determine how we can take steps to enhance gun-violence prevention, but they won’t even do that.”

Thompson’s bill is sponsored by 158 other Democrats and no Republicans.

During scheduled votes on other bills, Democrats used procedural motions to try to introduce the bill on the floor and get a vote. It failed overwhelmingly.

But the development is likely to spark fresh Democratic attacks on Republicans for blocking such legislation – amid polling that shows a majority of Americans want Congress to take some action on gun violence. While most Americans do not support restricting gun ownership for law-abiding citizens, polls show most support expanding the national background-check system and banning firearms sales to stalkers or violent criminals.

The push to pass new legislation follows bolder steps taken by Democrats last year. Shortly before the July Fourth recess, a band of Democratic lawmakers camped out on the House floor demanding up-or-down votes on gun-control legislation, an ultimately futile move that earned a strong rebuke from House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

Thompson said Monday that he doesn’t expect colleagues to take similar steps in the wake of the most recent shootings. But he dismissed as “intellectually dishonest” claims by President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers that the best response to the shooting would be to focus on issues surrounding mental health.

“This is the same president that is trying to get rid of the mental-health funding,” Thompson said.

Trump’s proposed budget would slash funding for mental-health treatment and research programs funded through the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, among others.

If Republicans are serious about addressing mental-health issues, Thompson said, they should restore an Obama-era regulation that would have blocked mentally ill individuals receiving Social Security benefits from being able to purchase firearms. Instead, Republicans voted to repeal that policy this year.

Concerns about how gun-control laws are enforced came to light Monday as the Air Force acknowledged that it failed to follow policies for alerting federal law enforcement about Devin Kelley’s violent past, enabling the former service member, who killed at least 26 churchgoers Sunday in Sutherland Springs, Texas, to obtain firearms before the shooting rampage.

Kelley should have been barred from purchasing firearms and body armor, because of his domestic-violence conviction in 2014 while serving at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Kelley was sentenced to a year in prison and kicked out of the military with a bad-conduct discharge after two counts of domestic abuse against his wife and a child, according to Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek.

Ryan said Tuesday that the Air Force’s oversight will earn congressional scrutiny.

“This man should not have had a gun. . . . How did this slip through the cracks? . . . How did he slip through the system and get a gun?” Ryan said in his first public comments on the shooting.

Ryan added his “deep sorrow” for the victims, saying, “There should be no more safe place from the evils of the world than a house of worship.”

Also Monday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, announced that his panel would soon hold a hearing on “bump stocks,” a device used to make some semiautomatic weapons fire like automatic weapons. The device was found on some firearms used in the mass shooting last month in Las Vegas that was the deadliest in modern U.S. history.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is reviewing whether it can reverse an Obama-era ruling that legalized bump stocks or whether Congress would have to enact legislation. ATF officials are set to brief members of the House Judiciary Committee on their review this week.

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An Indian-American running for Washington state Senate from the 45th District, won her seat Nov. 7.

Manka Dhingra, former senior deputy prosecuting attorney with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, won in the special election for the District 45 seat, to become the first Indian-American to win a seat in the state legislature, and also the first of Sikh ancestry to do so.

For the Democratic Party, which heavily backed Dhingra’s race, this is a major win for the as it flips the state Senate majority in their favor putting all three states on the West Coast in the hands of the Dems.

In an interview in May with this correspondent, Dhingra said she decided to run for office after the presidential election when she personally witnessed the fear felt by minorities in her district.

Dhingra who fought on a platform of increasing funding to education, mental health, violence prevention, and protecting the rights of women, declared her run in February when the seat came vacant upon the death of Republican Andy Hill from lung cancer.

“We did it!!! Thank you to each and every one of you!” Dhingra announced on Facebook.

According to Seattlepi.com, Dhingra took a 10-point lead early on in the vote count, over her over Republican opponent Jinyoung Englund.

As Indian-Americans, including Sikhs, celebrated the victory of Hoboken’s Ravinder Bhalla’s as Mayor, a former senior Obama administration official, Gautam Raghavan  tweeted — “And a Sikh woman named @ElectManka just won her special election and flipped the WA state legislature for Dems. Yes e can,” echoing President Obama’s  slogan for change.Dhingra’s election website electmanka.com, highlights work with the State Department of Social and Human Services, the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, legislators, and the Governor’s office to ensure individuals get the needed treatment.

She is considered a mental health and crisis intervention expert, and  has during her career, provided training to law enforcement personnel and recently started a collaborative effort with King County law enforcement agencies to coordinate response and help avoid tragedy; She also worked directly with Harborview Hospital, mental health professionals and the courts to improve criminal justice outcomes for mentally ill individuals—seeking to close the revolving door of jail, homelessness, and crime.

Though Dhingra declared her run back in February, it has taken on added importance in light of several incidents of hate crime targeting members of the Sikh faith over the last couple of months.

Dhingra’s biography says she recognized early how often domestic violence in the South Asian community goes unreported.  She co-founded Chaya (now API Chaya) to counter “systemic” violence through education, prevention, and organizing.  She also served on the Seattle Police Department Muslim, Arab, and Sikh Advisory Council to address hate crime issues in the region in the wake of 9/11, the website says.

Dhingra is a board member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness- Eastside, and received the organization’s highest award earlier this year, according to her website.

She holds a JD from the University of Washington School of Law and Bachelor of Arts degrees in History and Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.  She became a prosecutor with King County January 2000.

She is married to Harjit Singh, a “Distinguished Engineer” at SpaceX, and has two children.

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It’s official. We’re going to 280. Now every Twitter user – from first-day users to President Donald Trump – will have twice the room to share their thoughts.

Twitter on Tuesday confirmed that it is doubling its iconic character count for good, after a month or so of tests trying out longer tweets.

While many Twitter users reacted with horror to the tests, Twitter said in a blog post that the higher limit made people more likely to tweet, left fewer than 1 percent of users hungry for more room and increased “engagement” – its umbrella term for likes, replies and retweets.

(For those having trouble visualizing the difference, the second paragraph of this article has 140 characters; the third has 280.)

Twitter originally hit on the 140-character limit as a nod to the character limits placed on early text messages, when it was founded in 2007. SMS messages had a 160-character limit, and Twitter wanted users to be able to post messages via phone, with enough room for a username. It became a hallmark of the service – an encouragement to craft short, sweet messages and contribute to the free-flow of conversation that became Twitter’s main identifying feature.

Following an age of blogging, when lengthy rants or emo contemplation lit up the likes of LiveJournal or Xanga, the move to bite-sized thoughts felt different. But as Twitter expanded its ambitions to become more of an online town square, it became an important place to discuss complex ideas.

The company said in September that it was testing a new upper limit because languages such as English couldn’t pack as much information into 140-characters as other languages, such as Chinese, Japanese or Korean, which use can use characters that denote whole words. (These languages will retain the 140-character limit, Twitter said.)

Many people had pointed out that 280 characters, despite what chief executive Jack Dorsey said in his own longer tweet announcing the change, just doesn’t lend itself to the same focus. It’s somehow too long to be brief, and still too brief to be meaningful. A heavily retweeted image following the announcement showed Dorsey’s long tweet announcing the change edited down to fit in 139 characters.

Before the tests – which were limited to a few users, but easy to participate in thanks to third-party tools – roughly 9 percent of tweets ran right up against the 140-character limit. During the 280-character tests, that number fell significantly, according to a graph of English-only tweets provided by Twitter.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that even a company built on language limitations has relaxed them, said Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. “The tendency to start small and expand has been a relentless pattern with all of these apps and platforms,” she said, citing expanding ambitions at Facebook and others. Snapchat, she noted, was much faster to move away from its defining feature – ephemeral messaging.

The tests also didn’t seem to bear out the dystopian predictions that Twitter would be flooded with longer messages and lose the economy of language that’s become its hallmark. In most cases, it doesn’t seem like most people are actually increasing the length of their tweets; we have apparently been trained well. Only five percent of users went above 140 characters during the test, and only 2 percent ever went north of 190 characters.

Users had also worried that longer tweets would exacerbate Twitter’s ongoing problem with harassment – more characters might mean more scope for abuse. On that front, we don’t have answers yet. Twitter did not provide information on whether it had seen an increase in harassment on its site, due to the higher character limit.

But, Twitter said, while obnoxiously long messages weren’t flooding users’ timelines, the more verbose tweets did let people fire off messages faster and, the company believes, with less agonizing over each message. The tests showed that the feared negatives for Twitter didn’t come true, and the increased limits lets conversation flow faster — which means Twitter gets more use and can make more money.

So, it seems 280 characters is good for business. And, in the end, that’s really what matters to Twitter.

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NEW DELHI – Delhi’s government on Wednesday ordered schools shut for the rest of the week as air pollution worsened and criticism mounted over the failure of authorities to tackle the public health crisis.

Thick smog swathed Delhi, where pollution readings in some places peaked at 500, the most severe level on the government’s air quality index that measures poisonous particles.

“The air quality in Delhi is deteriorating. We cannot compromise with the health of children at this stage,” said Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, ordering the closure until Sunday.

The Delhi administration, which described the city as a “gas chamber”, had previously ordered schools for young children to close only for Wednesday.

India’s health ministry also advised people with breathing problems and children to remain indoors.

“People should avoid morning walk or any other strenuous outdoor activity that increases breathing rate,” the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

Anti-pollution measures adopted by the Delhi state government in recent years include limiting car use and taxing trucks that pass through the city, but few have succeeded.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government also urged Delhi and the surrounding northern states to immediately tackle dangerous levels of pollution in the capital, even if that meant deploying helicopters to spray jets of water.

“Every possible step required to tackle the situation has been already identified, and the need of the hour is to put them into action,” Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan wrote on social network Twitter, using the hashtag “#DelhiSmog”.

Vardhan also urged the surrounding states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to ban burning on farms, which is seen as a major contributor to the dirty air, along with high vehicle emissions and dust from construction sites.

EMERGENCY MEASURES

The Delhi government said it had sought meetings with state ministers to discuss the burning, provoking protest from many who saw the measure as being too little and too late.

“Nobody seems to get the gravity of the problem,” said Dr. Naresh Trehan, the chairman and managing director of the Medanta Heart Institute.

Last November, the city’s worst pollution in nearly 20 years forced about a million children to miss school, while thousands of workers reported sick and people queued to buy face masks.

Residents are worried this year as well. The Indian Medical Association has urged organisers to call off Delhi’s biggest race set for Nov. 19, to protect runners and volunteers.

If pollution increases, emergency measures, such as the suspension of construction activity, will kick in, the Delhi government has said.

Long-term measures, such as improving public transport and banning the use of dirty industry fuel, are required, said Anumita Roychowdhury of New Delhi’s Centre for Science and Environment.

“Without the systemic changes, the scope and impact of the emergency measures will be limited,” she added.

The thick blanket of smog caused a major vehicle pile-up on a busy highway on the outskirts of Delhi, Indian media reported.

High pollution levels were driving a major surge for air purifiers in capital New Delhi and its suburbs, Amazon.com Inc’s India unit said.

Air purifier sales have surged 150 percent, along with a 260 percent increase in demand for face masks this year, Amazon said, adding that air purifier sales have risen 600 percent in the last month.

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NEW DELHI – The first anniversary of demonetization on Wednesday was marked by street protests by the Congress and like-minded opposition parties against the decision which Prime Minister Narendra Modi called “a historic and multi-dimensional success” while Rahul Gandhi said it has ruined the lives of millions of hardworking Indians.

The Congress, Trinamool Congress, Nationalist Congress Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Left parties and Aam Aadmi Party held protests in different parts of the country observing it as “Black Day”, which was countered by the BJP by marking it as “Anti-Black Money Day.”

Union Ministers held press conferences in different parts of the country to talk about the “success” of the decision.

The opposition protest came a day ahead of polling for the Himachal Pradesh assembly and about a month ahead of the Gujarat assembly polls.

With opposition parties seeking to join hands against the Modi government on a range of issues, including the Goods and Services Tax, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamta Banerjee called for a Common Minimum Programme (CMP) on issues of public interest so that parties with diverse political and ideological views could come together.

She also claimed that around 75,000 Indian industrialists have left the country and turned NRIs post-demonetization because of harassment and recession, leading to a Rs 7 lakh crore loss to the exchequer.

Modi, in a series of tweets which also included slides and videos, bowed to the people of the country for supporting his government’s measures to eradicate black money.

He termed demonetization a “decisive blow” to terrorism and Maoism.”

“125 crore Indians fought a decisive battle and won,” he said.

Modi said that post-demonetization the stone-pelting incidents in the Kashmir Valley had come down by 75 per cent.

The data posted by Modi said that a minuscule percentage of India’s population deposited 33 per cent of the total cash.

It also said that cash deposits of Rs 3.68 lakh crore in 23.22 lakh accounts is under the scanner.

Calling it a “massive cleansing of the Indian financial system”, the slide said “a maze of shell companies dealing in black money and hawala transactions” were uncovered, and called it a “surgical strike” on shell companies, with 2.24 lakh shell companies being struck off.

It said 58,000 bank accounts of 35,000 companies were caught transacting Rs 17,000 crore after demonetization.

The slide also said that it was a “big push” towards formalization of the economy and there had been an increase of 26.6 per cent in new taxpayers besides a significant increase in digital transactions.

The Congress attack on demonetization and GST rollout was led by party Vice President Rahul Gandhi, who targeted Modi in an article in the Financial Times.

Party leader P. Chidambaram asked some probing questions through tweets while the party held a press conference at the AICC headquarters where it sought an apology from Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over the “mistake” of demonetization.

Gandhi called Modi a “democratically elected autocrat and said demonetization has wiped out 2 per cent of India’s gross domestic product, destroyed the informal labor sector and has wiped out many small and medium businesses.

“It has ruined the lives of millions of hardworking Indians,” he said and noted that over 1.5 million people lost their jobs in the first four months of 2017.

“Modi has damaged India by converting anger created by joblessness and lack of economic opportunity into communal hatred. He has chosen to hide behind a shallow, hate-filled political narrative. Anger might have brought Modi to power but it will never create jobs or fix India’s institutions,” Gandhi said.

Chidambaram said Jaitley had termed demonetization as ‘ethical’ and then asked: “Was it ethical to heap misery on millions of people, especially 15 crore daily wage earners? Was it ethical to destroy 15 lakh regular jobs during January-April 2017?”

As part of efforts to counter the protests by the opposition, Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani addressed a press conference in Lucknow, Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari in Mumbai, Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar in Bengaluru and Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Chennai.

Sitharaman alleged that all those observing a Black Day were in favour of black money while Irani targeted the Gandhi family, terming it “synonymous with graft” and said demonetisation was a tragedy for the family.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that demonetization was an effort to see that people do not evade taxes and the burden is not only on the honest citizen.

In Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party held a protest march against demonetization outside Thyagaraj Stadium while hundreds of Congress workers formed a human chain at Connaught Place.

In Maharashtra, all major opposition parties, social organisations, farmer groups, mediapersons, NGOs, civil society activists and individuals organised massive protests across Mumbai and other parts of the state.

The various forms of protests included processions, funerals, memorial prayers, and ‘shraadh’ of the spiked Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, mass tonsuring of heads, human chains, besides a flood of messages, songs, cartoons and jokes on social media that castigated demonetization.

Even the ruling ally Shiv Sena organised processions in which thousands of people participated.

In Bihar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress held protests as part of ‘Black Day’ observance with RJD chief Lalu Prasad addressing people in Hajipur. Congress leaders also held a protest in Bengaluru.

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Thanksgiving is still two weeks away, but Black Friday has already begun – at least for some retailers.

Best Buy on Wednesday began offering “Black Friday” discounts on hundreds of items, including big-screen TVs, Apple Watches and tablets. Walmart followed a day later, with $6 pajamas and $998 Samsung TVs. Amazon.com, meanwhile, started its “Countdown to Black Friday” on Nov. 1, offering dozens of new deals each day. (Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)

In an ever-frenzied race to win over shoppers – and their money – retailers are trying to fast- forward to what has historically been the year’s largest shopping day. Over the past decade, big-box chains have slowly moved up doorbuster discounts – from Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), to the Thanksgiving holiday itself, and now even earlier, as they try to lock in sales during the crucial fourth quarter, which can account for up to 40 percent of a retailer’s annual revenue.

“No matter how you look at it, Black Friday has already begun,” said Sarah Engel, chief marketing officer at retail analytics firm DynamicAction. “As soon as the calendar turned to Nov. 1, our inboxes were full of promotions and discounts.”

In-store doorbusters are shifting earlier, too. J.C. Penney plans to open its stores at 2 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, while Toys R Us, Best Buy and Kohl’s will follow three hours later. Walmart and Target are planning to open at 6 p.m.

Walmart this year is doing away with its “rolling” in-store discounts, aimed at getting customers to come into its stores multiple times on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Instead, the retailer will make all of its Black Friday deals available online beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day. Those same discounts, executives said, will be available at the company’s stores beginning at 6 p.m. that day.

“No rolling deals” this year, Steve Bratspies, chief merchandising officer for Walmart U.S., said in a media call Wednesday. “It’s kind of one event.”

As the country’s biggest retailers shift their focus to earlier in November, others are following out of fear of being left behind. After all, Engel said, a customer isn’t likely to need more than one big-screen TV or tablet. If they pick up big-ticket items in early November, they probably won’t be looking to shell out again on Black Friday, regardless of how deep the discounts are.

The earlier discounts, Engel said, could also create challenges down the line for retailers. (More than 40 percent of Americans have already started their holiday shopping by Nov. 1, according to the National Retail Federation.)

“If everything is already 40 percent off, it’s going to take a lot more to get shoppers excited about Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday,” the traditional start of holiday shopping online, she said. “How do you convince them to keep buying?”

The earlier-than-usual Internet sales also serve another purpose: helping retailers test-drive their websites ahead of the frenzied rush on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Now, this year’s Black Friday is expected to be the busiest online shopping day in history, according to recent data by Salesforce.

“If your system goes down for even five minutes on Black Friday, it’s millions of lost dollars,” said Roland Gossage, chief executive of GroupBy, an e-commerce platform used by retailers such as CVS, Urban Outfitters and the Container Store. “Pre-sales allow retailers to test their systems before the after-Thanksgiving barrage.”

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BEIJING – President Donald Trump lavished praise on Chinese leader Xi Jinping here Thursday, touting “great chemistry” between them while refusing to criticize his counterpart for the trade imbalance that Trump railed against during his campaign.

Speaking at a joint appearance with Xi in front of business leaders, Trump said the U.S. trade relationship with China is “a very one-sided and unfair one.” But, he quickly added: “I don’t blame China. Who can blame a country that is able to take advantage of another country for the benefit of its citizens? I give China great credit.”

During the presidential campaign, Trump accused China of “raping” the U.S. economy and threatened to label the country a “currency manipulator” – even though economic analysts have said Beijing has not artificially inflated the renminbi for years. In his remarks here, Trump reiterated that the United States must “change its policies,” but he offered no details about actions his administration will pursue.

“We’ve gotten so far behind on trade with China and frankly many other countries,” Trump said ahead of a bilateral meeting with Xi, before adding he has “great respect” for Xi for “representing China.”

Trump blamed past U.S. administrations “for having allowed it to get so far out of kilter. We’ll make it fair, and it’ll be tremendous for both of us. My feeling toward you is incredibly warm. We have great chemistry. I think we’ll do tremendous things, China and the U.S.”

Their high-stakes, two-day summit is being closely watched for signs of how the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies will be able to cooperate on issues from North Korea to trade to cybersecurity amid mounting challenges in the Asia-Pacific. Trump is hoping to win concessions from Xi, but the Chinese leader is in a strong position after having consolidated power at a Communist Party congress last month.

The two countries announced memorandums of understanding to increase trade by $253 billion, which the leaders said was a sign of greater cooperation.

In contrast to Trump’s effusive praise, Xi appeared reserved and spoke in carefully scripted language about “win-win” cooperation and a “new starting point” for the bilateral relationship – language Beijing has employed in a bid to get the United States to agree to allow China to operate in its “sphere of influence” in Asia without meddling. Xi did not talk in personal terms about Trump.

The United States and China had clashed on issues from cybersecurity to trade in the final years of the Obama administration, though they had struck a landmark climate deal during Barack Obama’s 2014 visit to Beijing that served as a prelude to the Paris climate accord.

Trump has announced intentions to withdraw the United States from that agreement, but Xi has pledged to make China a leader on reducing carbon emissions.

Xi vowed to work together in the “spirit of mutual respect and mutual benefit.”

During a joint statement with Xi in front of reporters, Trump reiterated his harsh criticism of North Korea and said he and Xi discussed their shared goal of pursuing the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula. “We call on all responsible nations to join together to stop arming and financing and even trading with the murderous North Korean regime,” Trump said.

But the two leaders did not take questions from reporters, a win for Xi, who oversees an authoritarian system that has sought to sharply limit free speech and press freedoms.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, briefing reporters after the meetings, said the U.S. delegation was “quite pleased” because there was “no disagreement” on North Korea. Trump pressed Xi to fully implement the economic sanctions on Pyongyang authorized by the United Nations Security Council, Tillerson said, and Xi outlined additional steps his government is taking to crack down on banks doing business with the North.

“There was no space between both of our objectives,” Tillerson said. But he cautioned that Xi also emphasized that “it will take time” for the new sanctions to create stress on the North.

On trade, Tillerson called the deals struck at the summit relatively “small in the grand scheme of things,” given a trade deficit of more than $300 billion a year.

“In terms of really getting at some of the fundamental imbalance that exists, we have a lot more work to do,” Tillerson said. Asked about Trump’s change in tone on trade from the campaign, Tillerson said the remarks were intended as “a little bit tongue in cheek.” But he added that the imbalance has stretched for decades and was fanned by the “benign neglect” from past U.S. administrations.

“His characterization is that you cannot not blame a large developing country for doing what they have to do,” Tillerson said.

Chinese state media appeared pleased with the summit. The Global Times, a newspaper known for its nationalist rhetoric, declared that Trump “respects our head of state and has repeatedly praised President Xi Jinping in public.”

Tao Wenzhao, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Science’s Institute for American Studies, said in an interview that Trump’s decision not to blame China “shows that he understands the complex reasons behind the trade imbalance. The trade imbalance cannot be corrected overnight.”

On Trump’s first full day in China – the third stop on a five-country, 12-day trip through Asia – Xi greeted him with a lavish reception at the Great Hall of the People, a display that included three horn players in red uniforms, a military band and ceremonial cannon fire.

Trump, who has suggested he would like to stage a military parade in Washington over the July 4 weekend, seemed impressed. He called the parade “magnificent.”

“I already had people calling from all parts of the world,” he added. “They were watching. Nothing you can see is so beautiful.”

The Chinese have described Trump’s trip to the country as a “state visit plus” and so far have lavished him with special treatment. He arrived Wednesday afternoon for a sunset tour of the Forbidden City, the ornate Chinese imperial palace stretching from the Ming to Qing dynasties, before taking in a performance of the Peking Opera.

Trump effusively thanked Xi for hosting him and first lady Melania Trump at a dinner after his arrival a night earlier, saying their meal was scheduled to last less than half an hour because Trump was tired after a long day of traveling from Seoul. Instead, Trump said, it went on for more than two hours.

“I enjoyed every minute of it,” Trump said. At another point, Trump told Xi: “You are a very special man.”

Trump arrived in China while being dogged with political problems back home and facing the lowest approval numbers of his presidency. And despite the pageantry surrounding the visit and an eagerness of the Chinese to reset their relationship with the United States, Xi – now arguably his nation’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong – appeared emboldened to demand concessions from the United States.

Asked if Trump had been too deferential to Xi on the Chinese leader’s home turf, Tillerson replied: “I didn’t detect that at all.”

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NEW DELHI – The Indian capital declared a pollution emergency on Thursday as toxic smog hung over the city for a third day and air quality worsened by the hour.

Illegal crop burning in the farm states surrounding New Delhi, vehicle exhaust emissions in a city with limited public transport and swirling construction dust have caused the crisis, which arises every year.

The problem has been compounded this year by still conditions, the weather office said.

A U.S. embassy measure of tiny particulate matter PM 2.5 showed a reading of 608 at 10 a.m. when the safe limit is 50.

An hour before it was 591.

PM 2.5 is particulate matter about 30 times finer than a human hair. The particles can be inhaled deep into the lungs, causing heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer and respiratory diseases.

Residents complained of headaches, coughs and smarting eyes.

“Waking up with a headache, breathlessness & throat irritation every day,” Bhavani Giddu wrote on Twitter.

Many people stayed home and restaurants in some of the city’s most crowded parts were deserted.

“I’d like to assure people that the central government shall do everything possible to bring about improvement in air quality in Delhi and the Nation Capital Region,” central environment minister Harsh Vardhan said as authorities faced criticism for failing to take steps to fight a problem that erupts every year.

The haze covered India Gate, a war memorial in the centre of the city where Britain’s Prince Charles and his wife Camilla paid their respects on Thursday.

The city will curb car use next week, the state government said, the latest attempt to clean the air.

New Delhi will follow an “odd-even” scheme for five days starting Monday in which cars will be allowed on the roads based on whether their number plates are odd or even.

“It is an emergency situation,” said Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot.

In other measures, commercial trucks have been banned from the city unless they are carrying essential commodities, all construction has been stopped and car parking charges raised four times to force residents to use public transport. Schools have been shut for the week.

But experts said these measures were unlikely to bring immediate relief.

“There is such a cloud over us that you probably need artificial rain or some such to clear this,” said Dr. Vivek Nangia, a pulmonologist at Delhi’s Fortis hospital.

Video images shot by ANI, a Reuters affiliate, showed farmers illegally burning crop stubble in Rohtak, about 65 km from Delhi.

Farmers in Haryana, where Rohtak is located, and Punjab, the two big agrarian states surrounding Delhi, burn millions of tonnes of crop waste around October every year before sowing the winter crop of wheat.

State authorities say it is hard to enforce the ban unless farmers, a powerful political constituency, are given funds to buy machinery to clear their land.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said in a Twitter post: “Situation is serious but Punjab helpless as problem is widespread & state has no money to compensate farmers for stubble management.”

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NEW YORK – Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation (EVF) raised $2 million at a gala in New York, held at Cipriani Wall Street, on November 4.

The impeccably organized evening’s architect was Mohan Wanchoo, chairman and founder of EC Infosystems. He was supported by Chirag Patel, co-CEO and chairman of Amneal Pharmaceuticals, Soner Kanlier, CEO, Jasmine Universe, and Rajesh Gooty, founder and CEO of M Corp.

EVF had been raising funds over the years in the US through series of concerts at grass-root level, until now. The gala was an effort to reach out to the corporate world, high net-worth individuals and bring mainstream America into its fold.

Since its inception 29 years ago, EVF had been setting new records in fund-raising. Last year, the NGO with chapters in 10 countries raised $7.2 million in the US.

At the gala, Wanchoo briefed the gathering about EVF’s multi-dimensional approach to uplift rural and tribal areas of India through emphasis on literacy, healthcare, integrated village development and empowerment of people in villages.

Ekal currently has 58,000 schools spread all over India supporting 1.56 million children – more than half of which were girls. Wanchoo informed that the project cost, including administration and monitoring, was only $1-a-day or $365 per year, per school.

Patel thanked all the teachers working at grass-root level in India and imparting life-sustaining education to the children facing various hurdles.

Ranjani Saigal, the Executive Director of EVF, touched on the whole range of Ekal mission in remote areas of India through couple of brief videos that also depicted use of digital technology, organic farming, and skill-training centers which are empowering rural life.

Vinod Jhunjhunwala, the President of EVF-USA, paid tribute to Ekal leadership in the US as well Ekal-India team, which had flown in for the occasion.

Under Ekal-USA leadership, Ashok Danda, Subhash Gupta, Ranjani Saigal and Ramesh Shah were acknowledged for their service, while for Ekal-India, Subhash Chandra, Bajrang Bagra, Laxmi Goel, and Naresh Jain were recognized.

Mitzi Perdue, the heiress to Sheraton Hotel chain and Perdue Poultry Farms, was one of the keynote speakers of the evening, along with Subhash Chandra, Chairman of ZEE TV and Chairman of EVF-Global.

At an auction conducted at the gala, three generous donors – Chirag Patel, Ajay and Ranjini Poddar and Sant Singh Chatwal each donated $250,000 each.

Chandra praised Wanchoo and Patel for holding the gala and challenged economically-blessed group of people to shoulder responsibility of those in need. Lauding the generosity of big donors, he elaborated that numerous small donors were equally important as they had larger stake in nation-building with their sheer number.

EVF plans to host similar galas in other cities in the US, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston.

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CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. – A military jury will determine the fate of a former Marine Corps drill instructor accused of singling out Muslim recruits and subjecting them to verbal and physical abuse.

Attorneys for the prosecution and defense delivered their final arguments Nov. 8, in the case against Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Felix, a Marine since 2002 who is married with children. He could face an unspecified prison sentence over allegations stemming from the apparent suicide of Raheel Siddiqui, a 20-year-old Muslim man from Michigan whose death last year raised troubling questions about the conduct of those who run the Marines’ storied training complex in Parris Island, South Carolina.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has investigated 20 Marine drill instructors, officers and staff members amid allegations of hazing, assault and discriminating against Muslim recruits dating to 2015. Thirteen Marines already have faced some form of discipline, said Capt. Joshua Pena, a Marine Corps spokesman.

Now, only two await their fate: Felix and his former coworker, Sgt. Michael Eldridge, who accepted a plea deal to testify against Felix in exchange for a brief jail sentence.

Felix, a former air traffic controller and Iraq War veteran, is charged with maltreatment and obstruction of justice. He has pleaded not guilty.

The jury will begin deliberating Thursday morning.

Felix was “drunk on power, and sometimes Fireball whiskey,” Lt. Col. John Norman, a prosecutor, told the jury Wednesday. “He wasn’t making Marines – he was breaking Marines.”

The first two Muslim recruits allegedly victimized by Felix were Ameer Bourmeche and Rekan Hawez, prosecutors said. Both testified during his court martial that Felix and Eldridge put them into an industrial clothes dryer. A third Muslim recruit who prosecutors say faced abuse by Felix was Siddiqui, who prosecutors say was slapped repeatedly by Felix before he jumped 40 feet to his death in March 2016.

Numerous witnesses told the court they heard Felix call the Muslim recruits “terrorist” and “ISIS,” which is another name for the Islamic State. A recruit from Siddiqui’s platoon, Lance Cpl. Shane McDevitt, told the court that Felix called Siddiqui a terrorist at least 10 times.

Felix “picked out three Muslim recruits for special abuse because of their Muslim faith,” Norman said in closing. “He put human beings in dryers. Human beings. Fellow Marines.”

Felix’s attorney, Navy Lt. Cdr. Daniel Bridges, said his client did not know the three recruits were Muslim, and that when he slapped Siddiqui, he was trying to give the struggling recruit medical care. Siddiqui complained of respiratory trouble in the moments before his death.

Siddiqui’s family has filed a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit against the Marine Corps and the U.S. government, disputing the Marine Corps’ and a South Carolina medical examiner’s ruling of suicide. Rather, they’ve alleged that Siddiqui was driven to his death by his drill instructors.

Felix’s defense team presented only two witnesses during the trial: a mechanical engineer specializing in clothes dryers and a forensic pathologist. Dozens of witnesses, including other drill instructors who worked with Felix and at least 20 former recruits who trained under him, offered testimony for the prosecution.

A central issue is determining the point at which a drill instructor’s conduct crosses the line from being discipline to abuse. The Marines articulate that boundary in a regulations manual that allows drill instructors to make certain forms of physical contact with recruits but outlaws others, such as punching, kicking and slapping.

“Drill instructors must provide leadership by example, foregoing fear and intimidation,” the manual states.

Bridges argued that the order often is violated by drill instructors, who are trying to impart toughness and military values any way they can. He cited one recruit who said Felix had knocked his rifle into him while standing at attention, bloodying his ear.

“Let’s be honest, that’s a drill correction,” Bridges said. “If you scare and surprise, maybe they won’t be lazy next time.”

The military prosecutor countered, saying Felix “had that down to a science.”

“He was very good at scaring them,” Norman said.

Another key component of the trial was the testimony of Felix’s fellow drill instructor, Eldridge, who accepted an immunity deal that compelled him to testify against his former colleague. Eldridge, who was a party to some of the alleged abuse, will plead no contest and spend 60 days in a military jail, Bridges said.

Bridges argued that Eldridge was responsible for putting on recruit in the clothes dryer and turning it on, but said he “jumped on that government gravy train” to save himself at Felix’s expense.

“Sergeant Eldridge took the government for a ride, no doubt about that,” Bridges told the member panel, a jury of Marines of equal or superior rank to Felix.

In his rebuttal, Norman explained why the prosecution relied on Eldridge’s testimony.

“It takes criminals to catch criminals,” he said. “The reason Sergeant Eldridge knew so much about what [Felix] did was because he was standing right there with him.”

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NEW YORK – No doubt, the November 7 election results are a huge repudiation of President Donald Trump, his tumultuous one year in office, and ire against the inability of Republicans to get core objectives accomplished on Capitol Hill, despite a healthy economy and booming stock market.

Overwhelming wins for Democrats from coast to coast, and even in the deep South, including for many liberal Indian Americans and other ethnic minorities, indicate the country’s patience to see “Make America Great Again’ come to fruition has run out. Voters now see most Republicans as a floundering, puzzled lot who have deeply divided the nation – unable to reconcile with the notion of bipartisanship.

The excitement of Election Day was muted, too. Luckily for Trump, he was in Asia, meeting with leaders like China’s Xi Jinping and Japan’s Shino Abe, who both won overwhelming elections this year, have no worries of slipping on that front in the near future.

For American voters, the voting exercise may have also seemed a bit of a futile effort too, to roll back what is already in place on a gigantic, national scale: the Trump presidency, which continues to roll steadily along in a juggernaut cutting through a wide swath, via executive actions issued from the White House, despite logjam on Capitol Hill.

On Election Day, trepidation was also high as to the outcome of tax reforms, the lynchpin of the Trump presidency apart from his clarion call on the campaign trail to clamp down on illegal immigration and build a wall on the Mexico border.

It’s making progress as the House and Senate prepare to roll back their sleeves and indulge in some arm wrestling tactics to reconcile it, get it on Trump’s desk to be signed into law by year’s end, and likely send stock markets zooming to dizzy heights.

However, voters either grinned or grimaced, thinking of tax reform consequences – if at all that sees daylight – as they entered voting booths this week, chastened or fortified, as the case was, by the recent aborted effort to replace Obamacare.

One of the big takeaways from the November 7 elections were numerous critical wins for women candidates across the country, including Indian American Manka Dhingra for a crucial state Senate seat, from the 45^th District, in Washington State, which now gives Democrats control of both chambers there, apart from the Governor’s office, and completes their dominance on all West Coast states.

With Dhingra’s win, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and the Democrats can now enact some bills waiting in the wings for long, including opportunity for minorities to participate in local elections, to provide free coverage for services such as birth control and women’s reproductive health, and ban on bump-stocks that modify rifles for rapid fire, noted the Seattle Times. All these are hot button issues, and run contrary to Republican agenda.

There were a slew of other victories by Indian American women in Washington state: Satwinder Kaur won her Kent City Council race; incumbent Maya Vengadasalam retained her Kent School Board seat, running unopposed, and Tanika Padhye prevailed in Redmond’s No. 4 City Council seat.

The New York Times quoted Chris Vance, a former chairman of the Washington State Republican Party, place the blame squarely on Trump, saying: “Among college-educated suburbanites, he is a pariah.”

The Times also noted that even in the deep South, Georgia Democrats captured two State House seats where they previously had not even fielded candidates while snatching a State Senate seat in Buckhead, an upscale area of Atlanta.

In New Jersey, the little-known Falguni Patel, who shot to national fame overnight after a racist postcard targeted her and a Chinese-American candidate, Jerry Shi, and called for them to be ‘deported’ rather than given a chance to serve on the Board of Education, in Edison Township, won comfortably. Shi went through too.

Seema Singh Perez created history in Knoxville, Tennessee. In winning a seat in the Knoxville Council District 3, she became the first Indian American to achieve a Council seat in the state. In Charlotte, North Carolina, Democrat Dimple Ajmera comfortably retained her seat.

The pattern of women candidates, despite their ethnicity, prevailing over established incumbents, resonated widely.

Time reported Democrat Danica Roem beat Republican Del. Bob Marshall for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, becoming the first openly transgender person elected to a state legislature. Marshall had once referred to himself as the state’s “chief homophobe.”

Reports said two Latinas, Elizabeth Guzmán and Hala Ayala made history in Virginia; they are the first Hispanic women elected to the state’s House of Delegates. They not only beat long-term incumbents, but flipped their districts from Republican to Democrat.

In New Jersey, a political novice, Ashley Bennett, defeated seasoned politician John Carman in the election for Atlantic City Freeholder. The latter had shared a sexist meme about the Women’s March in Washington which asked if the march be “over in time for them to cook dinner.”

Time noted that Vi Lyles became the first black woman to be elected mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina; Jenny Durkan was elected the first lesbian mayor of Seattle (and the first woman in nearly 90 years); Michelle Kaufusi became the first woman mayor of Provo, Utah; and Kathy Tran became the first Asian-American woman in the Virginia House of Delegates.

The Iranian American debutant Liliana Bakhtiari was locked in a fierce contest for a seat in the Atlanta City Council, with longtime incumbent Natalyn Archibong. A report in Decaturish.com said Archibong, who is vying for a fifth term, prevailed in the contest by a mere 252 votes, out of a total of 9,754 votes cast. However, there were no comments as yet from either of the two candidates on the result. It’s likely there could be a recount, if the Decaturish report were to be accurate.

If she were to ultimately prevail, Bakhtiari, an anthropology student, would create history as being the first openly queer woman to win a seat in council elections in Georgia.

It was not just Indian American women who made the community proud. Several male candidates too broke through a ceiling to create history, with Ravi Bhalla – like Falguni Patel the victim of a racist flier that deemed him as a ‘terrorist’ on the eve of the elections – becoming the first Sikh-origin Mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey.

Bhalla beat his fellow Councilman Michael DeFusco, who was running as an openly gay man, and had the latter won, would have created history too.

In yet another closely watched contest in New Jersey, Vin Gopal, the former Monmouth County Democratic chairman, defeated veteran state Sen. Jennifer Beck, in the 11th legislative district. Democrats were delighted with the result as after capturing both the Assembly seats in the earlier predominantly Republican district two years ago, they now have completed the shutout.

(This post has been updated, with corrections and new material, on Nov. 10, 2017)

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World War I finally came to a blood-soaked end on November 11, 1918. As we mark the 99th anniversary of the Armistice, there is increasing recognition of the roles played by Indians in that war.

Books by Shrabani Basu, Gordon Corrigan, Vedica Kant, and others have contributed as, counter-intuitively, did the film “Dunkirk” (though set in another war), for omitting Indians.

Around 1.5 million Indians served in World War I, mostly in the Army. There was also a tiny Indian presence in the air. Four almost-forgotten Indians flew as combat pilots: Lieutenant Hardit Singh Malik, Lieutenant SC Welinkar, Second Lieutenant E.S.C. Sen and Lieutenant I.L. Roy, DFC.

Malik and Roy make a neat pair for Indian aviation enthusiasts; like the fictional aviators Biggles and Wilks, one flew the Sopwith Camel and the other flew the SE5a.
Malik, the first Indian military pilot, was at Oxford when war began. His tutor interceded with Lieutenant-General Sir David Henderson, GOC of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), to secure a commission for him.

Malik was selected as a scout (as fighter pilots were then called), and posted to an RFC squadron flying Sopwith Camels, the most iconic British aircraft of the war. He went into action in September 1917, initially from the famous St Omer airfield and then from Droglandt in Belgium. His Flight Commander was the Canadian Captain William “Billy” Barker, who ended the War with a VC, two DSOs and three MCs — the most highly-decorated serviceman in the Commonwealth.

Barker’s biography, “Barker, VC”, and Malik’s autobiography, “A Little Work, A Little Play”, both vividly describe one particular dogfight. Malik shot down one enemy aircraft, but at least four others attacked him. Hit in the leg, he crashed and passed out. He was pulled from the wreckage and carried to hospital. He recovered but retained two bullets in his leg all his life.

He continued flying, and returned to France for more operational service. He was the only one of these four to beat normal aircrew survival odds — wartime aircrew rarely survived more than a few weeks’ operations.

Malik went on to distinction in independent India, serving as India’s first High Commissioner to Canada and later as Ambassador to France, highly-respected by British, Canadian and European comrades-in-arms.

While Malik was at Oxford, Shrikrishna Chundra Welinkar, from the Gwalior royal family’s household, was at Cambridge. He enlisted in February 1917, and was immediately assigned to an RFC Cadet battalion, probably because of Brigadier General (later Air Vice Marshal, and later still UK Director of Civil Aviation) Sir William Sefton Brancker, an early advocate of training Indian aircrews.

Welinkar probably overlapped with Sen during training. He was injured in a crash in August 1917 but recovered, completing training by early 1918. In April he was posted to the No. 1 RAF Squadron in France, flying Sopwith Dolphins, a new design but notorious for poor crash survivability.

On June 27, 1918, Welinkar took off at 9.45 a.m. He was seen engaging an enemy aircraft in combat, but never returned and was declared missing. It emerged later that he survived his downing but died in a German field hospital three days later. The Germans appear to have made efforts to save him but to no avail.

Lt. Welinkar was the first of those four pioneers killed in action. He is memorialised at the Hangard Cemetery in France, near the Somme battlefield.

While Malik and Welinkar were at university, Errol Suva Chandra Sen was at a prominent British public school and joined the RFC through the OTC, the British equivalent of the NCC. Commissioned in August 1917, he was posted to an RFC squadron, also flying Sopwith Camels. In September 1917, he moved to Poperinghe in Belgium at almost the same time that Malik was at Droglandt in the same area.

At 7 a.m. on September 14, 1917, Sen took off on patrol. At 7.45 a.m.he was attacked by several enemy aircraft. His aircraft was hit and seen trailing fuel. He was eventually forced down the first Indian aviator lost in action. He survived, was captured, and made a prisoner of war (PoW). He was repatriated after the war and left the RAF soon after. He is believed to have worked for a British merchant house in India and Burma after the war.

Indra Lal Roy, fresh out of school like Sen, was commissioned a month earlier. He is credited with 10 combat victories. Clearly an incredibly gifted combat pilot, he achieved those victories over just two weeks, in July 1918. Three of them came in four hours, on one day.

Roy was born in Calcutta but finished school in the UK. Shortly after turning 18, he joined the RFC, and was commissioned in July 1917. After training, he was posted to 56 Squadron RFC, the first to fly the Royal Aircraft Factory SE5a, another iconic British type. In December 1917 he crashed, was knocked unconscious, taken for dead and actually laid out in a morgue. When he regained consciousness, he banged on the morgue door, shouting for help in schoolboy French. The morgue attendant was so frightened by this apparent resurrection from the dead that he did not unlock the door immediately.

After returning to duty Roy was posted to No. 40 Squadron RAF. His Flight Commander was the Irish Captain George McElroy, MC and bar. They clearly combined well in the air. Over the next two weeks, Roy flew into the record books with 10 victories, two shared with McElroy.

Roy’s first victory came on July 6, 1918. This was followed by that brilliant spell of three victories in four hours, including a formidable Fokker DVII, on July 8. He also achieved two on July 13, two on July 15 (both DVIIs) and one each on July 18 and 19.
Three days later Roy took off on patrol with two other SE5as. They were attacked by four Fokker DVIIs. Two attackers were shot down but Roy went down in flames over Carvin. He was not yet 20.

Roy was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He is buried at the Estevelles Communal Cemetery, 100 km from where his compatriot Lt SC Welinkar lies. Both graves are marked and well looked-after.

The war ended on November 11, three weeks before Roy would have turned 20.

Fourteen years after the war, Roy’s nephew Subroto Mukerjee was one of the first Indians at the RAF College, Cranwell. Mukerjee later became the first Indian Chief of the post-Independence Indian Air Force, thereby establishing a link between those four forgotten Indians over Flanders and the thousands who have worn IAF uniform since.

Sadly, very little is known about these young men, beyond the bare facts, in British records. They were from well-off families, attending prestigious schools or universities in the UK. They were probably highly westernized and spoke impeccable English. But they are no less Indian for that. In every unit they served in, they would have been known as “the Indian”.

A century after these four heroes put themselves forward for service in the Flying Corps, perhaps our film industry can consider a “Dunkirk”-like production on them — before we, like Hollywood, forget.

(The author is a lifelong student of Indian aviation, maritime and military history and the author of several articles on the Indian Air Force. The views expressed are personal. The article is in special arrangement with South Asia Monitor/www.southasiamonitor.org)

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NEW DELHI – Weeks after India unveiled a $32 billion bailout of state-run banks, top finance ministry officials and bankers will meet this weekend to discuss lending reforms designed to prevent another bad loans crisis.

Bankers and policymakers fear India could be throwing good money after bad with the capital injection announced last month, unless it tightens lending rules and institutes governance reforms to insulate banks from political pressure.

“After bailing out the banks with taxpayer money, the government wants to ensure that such a problem doesn’t happen again,” said a senior finance ministry official with direct knowledge of the matter, who declined to share details.

Arun Jaitley, India’s finance minister, has vowed the recapitalization will be accompanied by not only bank reform, but also mergers of weak banks with stronger rivals.

But the government has not commented on the issue of tackling political interference in lending, which bankers say is still one of the biggest problems.

India’s near $147 billion pile of soured loans is replete with examples of powerful and politically connected businesses who are accused of undermining rules to secure credit and then defaulting on loans.

In one of the most high-profile cases, Vijay Mallya, owner of the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines and former member of parliament, and several former officials of IDBI Bank, have been charged with suspected conspiracy and fraud in relation to a loan of 9 billion rupees ($138 million).

Mallya, who is the head of the Force India Formula One team, has dismissed the charges and fled to Britain.

“There’s a risk of a rise in stressed assets unless bank corporate governance improves,” said N. Bhanumurthy, an economist at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, a think-tank funded by the finance ministry.

“CORRUPTION AND KICKBACKS”

A dozen of the country’s largest defaulters, with nearly a quarter of the total bad loans, have already been pushed into insolvency at the command of India’s central bank, but none of these cases are likely to be resolved in the next six months.

A new bankruptcy law allows for an additional three months to reach a resolution, but insolvency professionals say it could take even longer in some cases as the process is untested and could face legal hurdles if the companies do not agree with the proposal.

Steelmaker Bhushan Steel which defaulted on a loan of nearly $7 billion, was given repeated extensions by a consortium of banks, even after its vice chairman was arrested on alleged corruption charges in 2014 before the bankruptcy law came in.

“Corruption and kick-backs are a big issue at public sector banks,” said a Mumbai-based banker at a global lender, adding that the government needed to overhaul credit rules, including those for consortium lending.

Typically consortium lending in India is led by a large bank with as many as 30 others participating, but smaller banks, who are less able to absorb losses, have been faulted for tagging along and not having done their own due diligence in such cases.

India must also tackle due diligence undertaken by banks to avoid repeat defaulters getting access to new loans, said the banker, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Earlier this week, the government approved amendments to the bankruptcy law, barring “willful” defaulters – defined by the central bank as debtors who are able but unwilling to pay – from bidding for companies.

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Bankers say despite the high-profile blow-ups, pressure from politicians continues to influence lending decisions.

P. Mohan, manager of a local branch of State Bank of India, the country’s top lender, said lending committees that include government-appointed nominees should be made accountable for all the sanctioned loans.

“That will also curb politicians from putting undue influence on bankers,” said Mohan.

A spokesman for the finance ministry declined to comment.

Corporate defaults make up the bulk of banks’ total bad loans, and adding to that is growing stress in loans worth 4 trillion rupees given to more than 70 million small enterprises over the last three years under Modi’s flagship program to create jobs.

“We are scared about these risky loans, 50 percent of which may become stressed assets soon,” said D. Franco, a manager at State Bank of India’s branch in Chennai and general secretary of the All India Bank Officers’ Confederation.

Guidelines by India’s central bank also mandate 40 percent of all loans must be to priority sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing and small businesses – many of which are turning sour.

“Public sector banks keep renewing these facilities whereas in normal business banking they would have been written off long ago,” said the banker with the global bank. “That’s the elephant in the room.”

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NEW DELHI – As Ivanka Trump’s visit to India nears, the South Indian city of Hyderabad is getting ready to dazzle its foreign guests – by locking its homeless and destitute people out of sight in prison rehabilitation centers.

Nearly 400 beggars were picked up from city streets and to trucked away to one such center at the Chanchalguda jail, the Indian Express reported.

As the city scrubs up to impress its foreign guests, police plan to clear away 6,000 beggars and have banned begging entirely in the city until the first week of January.

The beggars are “employing children and handicapped persons to seek alms at the main junctions of roads,” said the ban order. “Such acts are causing annoyance and awkwardness.”

“Some beggars argued that we were taking their freedom to live anywhere they want but we told them it was for their own good because they are going to the rehab center where they will be taken care of,” an unnamed official told the Express.

The beggar clearance comes weeks ahead of the three-day Global Entrepreneurship Summit which starts Nov. 28, where the first daughter will lead the American delegation to co-host the summit.

Authorities told ABC News that they want Trump and foreign delegates to see India’s good side, and not the “Slumdog Millionaire” stereotype commonly associated with the country.

The event’s theme, is “Women First” and its tagline, “Prosperity for All.”

In the past few decades, Hyderabad has rapidly re-branded itself as India’s Silicon Valley, as an outsourcing hub for global firms and the Indian headquarters of international tech companies, including Apple, Google and Microsoft. But despite rapid growth, wealth is unevenly distributed and a huge homeless population lives off the scraps of the city’s techie middle class.

In recent years, the city’s fortunes have begun to turn for the worse. Automation threatens jobs and new visa restrictions in multiple countries, including changes to H1-B in America have dampened the hopes and ambitions of many young technology students.

To bring back some of its sparkle, India’s government is keen to portray the country as a pioneering technology hub and attract foreign investment.

George Rakesh Babu, founder of the homeless charity Good Samaritans in Hyderabad, said, “The preparations are happening in every corner of our city. But the prison capacity in Hyderabad is not enough to look after all these people.” He pointed out that the central jail’s maximum capacity was only 1,000.

Vanishing acts like this are not unprecedented when foreign dignitaries come to India, and happened in Hyderabad in 2000 when President Bill Clinton visited the city.

To judge from some of the reaction on the police department’s Twitter account, the move was welcomed by many.

“We want to see beggar free Hyderabad for ever. Hyd witnessed such things in the past when Presidents of America visited. Nevertheless we appreciate your efforts and best of luck.

– Ravikiran Reddy (@Rkrchama) November 8, 2017″

Others lamented that the roundup was temporary.

” . . . After the international conference has completed, situation remains same,” tweeted one man.

“Super job,” tweeted another. “But see that they r not allowed again on road.”

“We hope it should be implemented successfully but after the international conference has completed situation remains same. . .

– #Uppalapati (@l_chowdary) November 9, 2017”

The Global Entrepreneurship Summit was announced in June, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Trump in Washington.

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