More than 150 people gathered Nov. 14, in Chicago to fete upcoming test cricketer Mohammad Assaduddin, and his father, veteran cricketer and ex-captain of the Indian Cricket Team Mohammad Azharuddin, at Khan Barbecue on West Devon Street.
Azeem Adil, president of United Cricket Club, in Chicago, held a welcome reception for upcoming test cricketer Mohammad Assaduddin, son of veteran cricketer and ex-captain of the Indian Cricket Team Mohammad Azharuddin, at Khan Barbecue on West Devon Street in Chicago, Nov. 14.
More than 150 guests attended the event, according to a press release, among others, Ali Masqati, managing director of Masqati Dairy, Hyderabad; Esa Misri, Mr. India for Bodybuilding; Ali Misri, a businessman from Hyderabad; Iftikhar Shareef of Chicago, president and CEO of National Bankcard Corporation; Mir Abid Ali; Mohammad Rafi; Syed Mahmood Mukram; and Masood Chik.
Several speakers dwelt on the successful career of Azharuddin and how he had encouraged his son toward a successful career in the much-loved sport.
Assaduddin expressed how excited he was to be at the event and appreciated the encouragement and pledged to try his best to live up to his father’s achievements.
Esa Misri, his brothers, and trainees showed off their bodybuilding skills and muscles at the event, garnering a huge rounds of applause every time they changed poses.
Sandeep Singh, 21, was shot in the stomach and killed in what police consider a robbery that took place at his house in Jackson, Mississippi on Nov. 27.
According to Jackson Police, the suspects are part of a series of robberies which are occurring in the northwest part of Jackson, suspecting them to be connected.
The suspects are described in a Jackson Police Department press release dated Nov. 28, posted on Twitter, as “2-4 black males armed with handguns” and “The suspect responsible for shooting him (Singh) is described as a black male, last seen wearing a grey hooded shirt, armed with a .9mm pistol,” the police press release said.
“These individuals are concealing their identities by wearing masks, somebody out there knows what’s going on and we’re saying that we need those individuals who know to step forward and help us identify those individuals before any other businesses get robbed,” Jackson Police Chief Lee Vance told MS News Now, and they are also described as wearing bandanas and sweatshirts with hoods, in the press release.
According to police, Singh and two other men were standing outside their house when a man in a mask and a hoodie walked up to them and took their money and cell phones and shot at them while running away.
One bullet hit Singh and he was taken to the University of Mississippi Medical Center, where he died on Monday, Nov. 27. Police say Singh’s death is the city’s 58th homicide this year.
Singh was from Jalandhar, Punjab and came to the U.S. four years ago on a tourist visa. He had just landed his first job.
Singh’s father told PTC News that he and his friends were closing up the store he worked in at 8 p.m. and when his car would not start. The owner told them to stay back.
Singh and his friends left the store at 11 p.m. and returned to their apartment and they were confronted and robbed by three masked men.
When the robbers left, Singh went to go park the car but one of the robbers thought he was going to pull out a weapon, he fired, shooting Singh in the stomach.
His body is expected to arrive in India by Saturday while police continue investigating.
Seema Singh Perez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and domestic violence activist, is the first Indian-American to win a seat on the Knoxville, Tennessee City Council in the Nov. 7 election. She ran as a Independent and defeated her opponent, James Corcoran, by over 2,000 votes.
“This is a win for the City Council Movement and this is people coming together and saying we want to be represented. We used so little money and many hours, this is about people caring about their government,” she told Knox News.
“My campaign was successful due to the volunteering energy of residents of Knoxville that have been involved with social justice work of all kinds shifting their focus to electoral politics,” Singh Perez told the Real News Network.
Knoxville is nearly 80% white and has been cited as one of the most affordable cities to live in the U.S., although the poverty rate is 31.2 percent, over twice the national average, according to the Real News Network report.
Singh Perez’s parents were both social workers, which inspired her to make it her career. She has worked with women’s reproductive health, HIV/AIDs patients, the homeless, and is currently running a jail alternative program for domestic violence offenders. She was inspired to run for political office by Bernie Sanders’ emphasis on social justice issues, however is concerned over the rise of Trump and the racist far-right.
In December, she will be formally sworn in as one of nine members on Knoxville’s City Council.
“The policies that most places, including Knoxville, have followed I think have been very well intentioned, but there’s certain things that need to be questioned in order to serve those that are continuously left behind,” Singh Perez is quoted saying, adding that she “feels my role on the City Council is to look at these policies and decisions and bring different viewpoints to them, from different perspectives.”
According to her website, as Councilwoman Singh Perez said she will focus on the economic development of Knoxville, update the city zoning codes while making the city neighborhoods more walk-able and bike-able with easy access to public transportation and bridge the property tax gap by bringing revenue from other sources.
Singh Perez was born in India and became a naturalized US citizen at age 13 and has been living in Knoxville for more than 40 years, she is the program coordinator for a Domestic Violence Offender’s Intervention program and owns a business with her husband Eddie and has a daughter in middle school, says a Knox Commerce report.
Out of 396, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has recognized 19 Indian Americans Fellows for their contributions to the field of science and technology.
Indian Americans were recognized in the following categories: agriculture, food and renewable resources; atmospheric and hydrospheric sciences; biological sciences; chemistry; engineering; geology and geography; computing and communication; medical sciences; physics and statistics.
The Indian Americans who were recognized were: Autar K. Mattoo from USDA-Agricultural Research Service, Binayak P. Mohanty from Texas A&M University, Sudhansu K. Dey from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Cincinnati, Subba Reddy Palli from the University of Kentucky, K. Sandeep Prabhu from Pennsylvania State University, Usha Varanasi from the University of Washington, Keshab K. Parhi from the University of Minnesota, Sudarsan Rachuri from the U.S. Department of Energy, Budhendra L. Bhaduri from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, H.V. Jagadish from the University of Michigan, Subbarao Kambhampati and Sethuraman Panchanathan from Arizona State University, Prashant Shenoy from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Satya Dandekar from the University of California, Davis, Anil K. Rustgi from the University of Pennsylvania, Jayant P. Shenai from the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University, Umesh Garg from the University of Notre Dame, Chandralekha Singh from the University of Pittsburgh and Bhramar Mukherjee from the University of Michigan.
They will be recognized during the Fellows Forum at the 2018 AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas on Feb. 17, 2018.
Ballu Kanubhai Patel, an agent in Gujarat has been arrested along with 20 other people for forging 53 Indian passports as Sahar police investigate a related human trafficking racket.
According to a Hindustan Times report, Patel will be charged with anywhere between Rs. 50 to 60 lakh for each fake passport.
Police say that Patel was responsible for sending 53 people to the U.S. and Canada between 2015 and 2017.
The Hindustan Times reported that Patel and his accomplices forged passports and ensured the travelers a safe passage from Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, however on May 8, Komal Dabgar was deported from Canada when immigration officials in Vancouver found that she had a forged passport.
Mustakali Kapde, one of the accused arrested earlier, told Hindustan Times that he had taken 10 different women abroad by using his wife’s passport and simply changing their photographs.
Police also busted the human trafficking racket, that Patel was responsible for, in May by arresting 19 members of the gang.
The Hindustan times has also identified three other immigration officials, known to be Rajesh Godse, Pravin Avsarmane and Sanjay Thorat, who were also part of the racket.
The Technology Company Trint has claimed that United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley is the best communicator in American politics today.
According to a postandcourier.com report, Trint’s robots had found that Haley is a better orator than Hillary Clinton, a stronger speaker than former President Barack Obama and is better than President Donald Trump at getting the message across to the public.
Trint is a web application that uses artificial intelligence robots that specialize in voice transcription and said in a release that they wanted to find out which politicians could be better understood by these robots, and put 14 influential politicians to the test, along with a fictitious one, who was portrayed by actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus from the TV show “Veep,” to find out who did best.
Trint then took the audio recordings of their speeches and ran them through its transcription A.I. and used a standard known as Word Error Rate, which measures the accuracy of an A.I.-transcribed text against a 100 percent accurate transcription, to determine the winner.
Sure enough, Haley’s score was almost perfect, with a 99.48 percent accuracy rate and was closely followed by Clinton and U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Obama ended up coming in at eighth place while Trump came in 11th and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi came in last.
Trint told postandcourier.com that the reason for Haley’s victory was that “she speaks clearly, intelligibly, and is easy to understand. In comparison, politicians who scored lower tended to ‘swallow the last word of each sentence’ and have heavy accents.”
Though Trump tends to swallow his words, Trint’s CEO Jeff Kofman said that he did well with automated speech recognition only because he speaks very slowly.
Kamala Harris visits Ted Cruz in his office upon the World Series victory of the Huston Astros (Courtesy: Twitter)
Indian American Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) met with Sen. Ten Cruz (R-Texas) to discuss baseball World Series bets as she had promised him that she would feed him some of California’s finest food if the Houston Astros beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series this year.
In October, Harris tweeted “Hey @TedCruz – when the @Dodgers bring that trophy home to the Golden State, lunch is on you, right? #WorldSeries2017” and Cruz replied “Looking forward to enjoying some of CA’s finest food courtesy of @SenKamalaHarris once the @Astros beat the @Dodgers in the #WorldSeries!”
ABC News states that the Astros did beat the Dodgers in seven games on Nov. 1, winning their first World Series title.
So Harris tweeted a 12-second video of herself, in which she wore an Astros shirt and World Series hat and was seen knocking on Cruz’s office door on Capitol Hill.
The video shows her taking a deep breath as she knocks on his door and when no one comes to the door, she says, “Well, maybe he’s not here,” laughing, but does actually make it into the office with a couple of bottles of California wine and See’s Chocolate, which are made in California.
“‘Here I am, congratulations,’ Harris, laughing, said to Cruz, as she pulled items out of a gift bag. ‘I brought you gifts from California. I brought you California wine. A red and a white. And then I brought you some See’s Candies, California-made, some of the best candy in the world. And congratulations, senator, because you won the bet,’” and embraced each other, laughing.
Cruz then tweeted the photos from Harris’ visit and wrote “This season the @astros did, without a doubt, #EarnHistory. Thanks to @SenKamalaHarris for the friendly wager, for the laughs, and the California treats.”
An employee works inside the office of U.S. online cab-hailing company Uber, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, April 24, 2015. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee/Files
An Uber Technologies security manager who was paid $4.5 million over his termination was derided by one of the company’s top internal lawyers as a thief and “extortionist” who made “fantastical” allegations of unethical conduct inside the company.
Angela Padilla, vice president and deputy general counsel of litigation and employment, was responding Wednesday to claims by the ex-manager that the ride-hailing company used encrypted messaging to hide its tracks while spying on rivals, evading authorities and fighting off lawsuits.
But even as Padilla disputed Tuesday’s revelations that are part of a criminal probe, Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi confirmed the truth of some of what’s alleged by the ex-manager. Khosrowshahi tweeted that in September he directed his teams not to use apps such Wickr and Telegram for “Uber-related business” after learning that the company was using encrypted and ephemeral communications.
Richard Jacobs, who worked on the corporate surveillance team, said the agreement he reached with Uber when he left the company required him to serve as a paid consultant to Uber and to cooperate with government probes, and bars him from publicly disparaging the company.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup Alsup told Padilla Wednesday that to “ordinary mortals” $4.5 million is “a lot of money” and that paying that much to someone making dishonest claims “doesn’t add up.” He also criticized the way Uber handled the explosive claims by Jacobs and never disclosed them to Waymo while the Alphabet unit was preparing to take Uber to trial over allegations that it stole trade secrets.
“People don’t pay that kind of money for B.S.,” Alsup said. “On the surface it looks like you covered this up, refused to turn it over to the lawyers for reasons that to me are inexplicable, that it would somehow taint the investigation.”
Padilla, under questioning from Waymo’s lawyers, said that Uber turned over a May 5, 2017, letter from Jacobs to in-house compliance officers and then to outside lawyers at WilmerHale, which was hired to investigate what she called his sometimes “fantastical” allegations. Padilla said said then-Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick, general counsel Salle Yoo and a committee of the board saw the letter.
“I felt I had discharged my duty by escalating it,” Padilla said. Inside lawyers prohibited her from sharing the letter until the allegations were reviewed. Eventually the company shared the letter with the Justice Department.
Padilla said the company sent Jacobs’s letter to federal prosecutors in June because “we had an ex-employee that was very unhappy with the company.”
“We wanted them to know that so they could investigate,” she said.
There was “no effort to cover this up,” Padilla said. Responding to Alsup’s criticism that she should have sent it to lawyers handling Jacobs’s claims and the Waymo litigation, Padilla admitted that the judge was right. “In retrospect, yes, it should have,” Padilla said. “And I will take full responsibility for that.”
Uber felt Jacobs’s demands were “extortionate,” Padilla said. “The bulk of his letter is meritless.”
She testified that shortly before Jacobs resigned, Uber caught him stealing trade secrets. Jacobs said “he needed those documents to prove that he’s a whistle blower,” she said.
Jacobs became the main focus of a hearing Tuesday that was meant to cover final preparations for a trial over allegations that Uber stole self-driving technology from Waymo.
The trial, which was set to begin Wednesday with jury selection, was indefinitely postponed over the judge’s concern that relevant information that Jacobs shared with prosecutors may have been withheld from Waymo.
The case is Waymo LLC v. Uber Technologies Inc., 17-cv-00939, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
A North Korean flag flies on a mast at the Permanent Mission of North Korea in Geneva October 2, 2014. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/Files
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley on Wednesday urged all countries to sever economic and diplomatic ties with North Korea, and warned Pyongyang that the regime will be “utterly destroyed” if a standoff over missile tests leads to war.
Speaking at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss North Korea’s latest missile launch, Haley said Pyongyang had brought the world closer to war with its latest test of a ballistic missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland, its most advanced yet.
“We have never sought war with North Korea, and still today we do not seek it,” she said. “If war does come, it will be because of continued acts of aggression like we witnessed yesterday. And if war comes, make no mistake – the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed.”
The Security Council meeting requested by the United States, Japan and South Korea came on a day when most countries rushed to condemn Tuesday’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile but struggled to agree on an appropriate response.
Leaders in Washington and Pyongyang delivered statements intended to jab at the other. In North Korea, a government statement said leader Kim Jong Un “declared with pride” that the country has achieved its goal of becoming a “rocket power.”
President Donald Trump responded with both a stern warning that “additional major sanctions” were coming in response and, later in the day, another dose of derision. At a campaign-style rally in St. Charles, Missouri, Trump turned a scripted line about tax cuts being rocket fuel for the economy to an impromptu dig at Kim. “Little rocket man,” he called Kim, and after pausing, Trump doubled down by saying, “He is a sick puppy.”
Much of the day’s effort went to enlisting the help of other countries to take tougher actions with North Korea.
Trump spoke by telephone with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose country is an economic lifeline for North Korea. As he has before, Trump urged the Chinese leader to apply more pressure on Pyongyang. And in a tweet after the call, Trump said more punitive sanctions were around the corner.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters that a “long list” of potential U.S. sanctions was being considered, including targeting financial institutions that do business with the country.
But at the Security Council, the talk was of existing sanctions and the need for more countries to enforce them.
Haley said it is possible to “further isolate, diminish, and, God willing, reverse the dangerous course of the North Korean regime,” and called on all nations to “cut off all ties with North Korea.”
“In addition to fully implementing all U.N. sanctions, all countries should sever diplomatic relations with North Korea and limit military, scientific, technical, or commercial cooperation,” she said. “They must also cut off trade with the regime by stopping all imports and exports, and expel all North Korean workers.”
She also singled out China, saying it was time for Beijing to cut off the oil supply to North Korea.
But while the ambassadors of both China and Russia, which have veto power as permanent members of the Security Council, condemned the missile launch, they urged less bellicosity.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said North Korea should stop its missile and nuclear tests, and the United States should cancel military drills scheduled for next month so as not to inflame tensions.
“We strongly call on all concerned parties to stop this spiral of tension,” Nebenzia said. “It is essential to take a step back and weigh the consequences of each move.”
Haley’s focus on activities outside the Security Council underscored how few new diplomatic options are left to tap. An already formidable set of sanctions has been adopted and proven ineffective.
The Security Council has passed eight major sanctions resolutions on North Korea since 2006 trying to pressure North Korea to negotiate and eventually abandon its nuclear arsenal. The Trump administration has mounted a “maximum pressure” campaign to lobby other countries to do more – cut off or scale back diplomatic relations with Pyongyang, stop using North Korean laborers whose salaries go directly to their government and enforce existing U.N. sanctions on the country.
The pressure campaign has had some success. More than 20 countries have expelled North Korean diplomats or downgraded relations. China has curbed its exports of North Korean coal, a chief source of hard currency.
But there have been setbacks. As a U.N. panel noted in September, Pyongyang has expanded into new moneymaking ventures in Africa and the Middle East.
And even some European allies whose own capitals are within striking range consider the threat to themselves secondary, amid other security and foreign policy challenges bearing down on them.
China has been supportive but only to a degree. It has backed sanctions, but it remains North Korea’s main trading partner and has been unwilling to take any drastic measures that might undermine the stability of the regime in Pyongyang or change its strategic calculations.
There are signs that China may be tiring of the American approach.
In an editorial in its Chinese-language edition issued Wednesday, the nationalist Global Times newspaper said this week’s test was a sign that past U.S. policy toward North Korea had failed and that the approach tried under Trump had also been unsuccessful.
The United States, it said, “despised Pyongyang” and as a result had ignored North Korea’s security concerns and missed an opportunity to negotiate an end to the nuclear program – instead increasing pressure, raising tensions and narrowing the space for diplomacy since Trump took office.
China’s deputy U.N. ambassador told the Security Council that Beijing will implement sanctions but urged more restraint.
Wu Haitao lamented that diplomacy had accomplished so little during the window of opportunity over the past two months in which North Korea launched no missiles. “Regrettably,” Wu said, “this window failed to lead to a resumption of dialogue and negotiations.”
A supporter of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) holds a placard during a rally to support implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in Mumbai, June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/Files
NEW DELHI – India’s economic growth rebounded in the three months ending in September, halting a five-quarter slide as businesses started to overcome teething troubles after the bumpy launch of a national sales tax.
Data released on Thursday showing faster growth could help Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been facing criticism over the hasty July launch of a goods and services tax (GST).
The tax was aimed at transforming India’s 29 states into a single customs union but it has hit millions of small businesses due to complex rules and technical glitches.
Gross domestic product grew 6.3 percent in July-September, its fastest pace in three quarters, compared with 7.5 percent a year earlier, the data showed.
Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast annual growth of 6.4 percent in the quarter. The economy has also broadly moved past the disruptions encountered after a shock ban on high-value banknotes in November 2016, economists said.
“Perhaps the impact of two very significant structural reforms – demonetization and the GST is now behind us,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters after the release of data.
“Hopefully, in the coming quarters we can look for an upward trajectory.”
Economic growth picked up from 5.7 percent in April-June, but lagged China’s 6.8 percent and the Philippines’ 6.9 percent for the three months through September.
Many private-sector economists expect faster growth in the current quarter and January-March as consumers and businesses step up spending and the global recovery gains traction.
Thursday’s data showed that the manufacturing sector grew 7 percent in the September quarter compared with 1.2 percent the previous quarter, as companies build up stocks ahead of the festival season.
Earnings for major Indian companies rose at their best pace in six quarters during July-September, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon data, showcasing how profits are finally looking up after a prolonged spell of sluggish growth.
RATINGS UPGRADE
On Nov. 17, Moody’s upgraded India’s sovereign credit rating for the first time in nearly 14 years, saying continued progress on economic and institutional reforms would boost its growth potential.
The agency expects the economy to grow 6.7 percent in the fiscal year ending March 31, and 7.5 percent the following year.
Modi’s administration hopes the ratings upgrade can attract more foreign investors, who pumped $15 billion into Indian equities in July-September, up 44 percent from the previous quarter.
The main NSE share index is up 25 percent in 2017.
Analysts said the Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank of India, which left the repo rate unchanged at 6 percent last month, could hold rates when it meets for a policy review next week.
“We expect RBI to remain on pause in December and February, given upside risks to inflation as well as the fiscal deficit,” said Sumedh Deorukhlar, economist, BBVA in Hong Kong.
Rising oil prices and a gradually tightening global rates environment pose new risks, he said.
SLOWDOWN IN SPENDING
The world’s seventh largest economy, which grew at more than 9 percent a year from 2005 through 2008, is still far from firing on all cylinders. Domestic demand and private investment remain weak.
Analysts said the growth pick-up could have been sharper if not for a slowdown in government and consumer spending.
Government spending slowed in the quarter, growing just 1.3 percent year-on-year compared with near 17.2 percent year-on-year growth in the June quarter.
Annual growth in consumer spending, which powers more than half of the $2.3 trillion economy, slowed to 1.5 percent in the September quarter from 6.7 percent in the previous quarter.
After front-loading state spending in the fiscal year’s first half, Finance Minister Jaitley has limited room to spend amid slowing revenue growth.
India reported a fiscal deficit of $81.36 billion for April-October, or 96 percent of the budgeted target for the fiscal year.
Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump gives two thumbs up as he arrives to speak during the final session at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. July 21, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
LONDON – U.S. President Donald Trump sparked outrage in Britain on Thursday with a sharp rebuke of Prime Minister Theresa May on Twitter after she criticized him for retweeting British far-right anti-Islam videos.
As British politicians lined up to condemn Trump for sharing videos originally posted by a leader of a British far-right fringe group, Trump, in an unprecedented attack on one of America’s closest allies, replied with an unrepentant message.
“Theresa @theresamay, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine,” he tweeted.
His truculent response caused anger in Britain, where there have been several major Islamist militant attacks this year, with one minister describing Trump’s tweets as “alarming and despairing”. London’s Muslim mayor called for the withdrawal of an offer to him to make a state visit to Britain.
May, on a visit to Jordan, repeated her view, expressed earlier by her spokesman, that the U.S. leader was wrong for sharing anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of Britain First. But she did not directly respond to Trump’s rebuke.
“I’m very clear that retweeting from Britain First was the wrong thing to do,” May told reporters in Jordan. She said the group was a “hateful organisation” that sought to spread division and mistrust.
“The fact that we work together does not mean that we’re afraid to say when we think the United States has got it wrong, and be very clear with them,” May said. She added that Britain had a long-term, enduring relationship with the United States.
The British ambassador to the United States, Kim Darroch, said he had raised concerns with White House officials. “British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far right, which seek to divide communities & erode decency, tolerance & respect,” he wrote on Twitter.
Fransen, who was convicted this month of abusing a Muslim woman and whose group wants to ban Islam, is facing further criminal charges of racially aggravated harassment.
TRUMP AND MAY ONCE HAND-IN-HAND
Islamist militants have carried out several major attacks in Britain this year that have killed a total of 36 people, including a bombing in Manchester and two attacks on bridges in London in which victims were rammed with vehicles and stabbed.
Trump initially addressed his rebuke to a Twitter handle that was not May’s, though he later retweeted to the British leader’s correct account.
Always a pillar of Britain’s foreign policy, the so-called “special relationship” with Washington has taken on added importance as Britain prepares to leave the European Union in 2019 and seeks new major trade deals.
Since Trump became president, May has gone out of her way to cultivate a good relationship with him.
She was the first foreign leader to visit him after his inauguration in January, and they were filmed emerging from the White House holding hands. She later said Trump took her hand in a gentlemanly gesture as they walked down a ramp.
But she angered his many critics in Britain then by extending an invitation to make a state visit to Britain with all the pomp and pageantry it brings including a formal banquet with Queen Elizabeth.
London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, said May should withdraw the offer of a state visit. “After this latest incident, it is increasingly clear that any official visit at all from President Trump to Britain would not be welcomed,” Khan, who has clashed on Twitter with Trump, said.
British lawmakers held an urgent session to discuss Trump’s tweets, with parliamentarians from across the political divide united in condemnation.
“By sharing it (the videos), he is either a racist, incompetent or unthinking, or all three,” opposition Labour lawmaker Stephen Doughty said. Britain’s Middle East minister Alistair Burt tweeted: “The White House tweets are both alarming and despairing tonight. This is so not where the world needs to go.”
Despite repeated calls from opposition lawmakers to cancel the state visit, Home Secretary (interior minister) Amber Rudd said the invitation still stood although a timing had not been agreed.
“RACIST”
Outside parliament, there was more harsh criticism from the likes of Brendan Cox, the husband of lawmaker Jo Cox who was murdered in 2016 by a far-right extremist and Justin Welby, the spiritual head of the Anglican Church.
The U.S. ambassador to London Woody Johnson wrote on Twitter he had relayed concerns to Washington. “The U.S. & UK have a long history of speaking frankly with each other, as all close friends do,” he said.
The videos shared by Trump purported to show a group of people who were Muslims beating a teenage boy to death, battering a boy on crutches and destroying a Christian statue.
Reuters was unable to verify the videos. The Dutch embassy in Washington issued a Twitter comment on one of them, which Fransen had described as showing a “Muslim migrant” beating up a boy.
“@realDonald Trump Facts do matter. The perpetrator of the violent act in this video was born and raised in the Netherlands,” the embassy said. “He received and completed his sentence under Dutch law.”
“DELIGHTED”
Britain First, a little-known party on the periphery of UK politics, welcomed Trump’s retweeting of the videos to his 44 million followers, regarding it as an endorsement of their message.
“I’m delighted,” said Fransen, whose own Twitter following increase by 50 percent in the wake of the furore to 78,000. She told Reuters Trump’s retweets showed the president shared her aim of raising awareness of “issues such as Islam”.
The White House defended the retweets by the Republican president, who during the 2016 U.S. election campaign called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, saying that he was raising security issues.
It repeatedly refused to be drawn into the content of the videos or whether Trump was aware of the source of the tweets.
“It’s about ensuring that individuals who come into the United States don’t pose a public safety or terrorism threat,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters aboard Air Force One.
MUMBAI – Reliance Infrastructure’s Mumbai Metro One notched a new record by ferrying 10.02 million commuters this month, an company official said here on Thursday.
“We operated 10,606 services (trips) this month carrying a total 1,02,57,057 with 99.9 percent punctuality in performance,” said an official spokesperson.
Near flawless services, best-in-class commuter experience and a slew of passenger-friendly marketing initiatives helped the company achieve the feat this calendar month, the spokesperson said.
Incidentally, for the same month last year, the commuter ridership was 84,92,650 and in 2015 it was 70,67,775, marking a continuous increase couple with increased train availability.
For November 2016, the total trips on regular weekdays were 370 which have now increased to 378 services.
Operational excellence was benchmarked also in Peak Hour Peak Direction Traffic which was approximately 25,000 commuters.
The trips were increased after the strategic realignment of trains in both platforms of Ghatkopar Metro Station and the value added services provided by the company covering various parameters.
Operational since June 2014, the 11.4 km long Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar corridor with 12 stations is the eighth densest metro line in the world and has helped reduce the commuting time between Versova to Ghatkopar from 90 to 21 minutes.
NEW DELHI – Although a wide range of regional cuisine exists in India, two top chefs believe they don’t find a place in the metros because restaurants prefer to stay in the “comfort zone” when crafting their menus.
“We want to stay in a comfort zone. In restaurants also, most of the menus are played along with the dishes which are commonly accepted. More or less you will find Punjabi dishes given certain twists and turns in menu and presentation but the flavor remains same,” said Michelin star Chef Vikas Khanna, who runs his famous ‘Junoon’ restaurant in New York, at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit here on Thursday that was moderated by Chef Ritu Dalmia.
Chef Gaggan Anand, who has made a name for himself in the culinary world with his ‘Gaggan’ restaurant in Bangkok, said:” We are super domesticated and we do not know how to sell our regional food better like the US does.”
While talking about Indian dishes coming into prominence across the globe, the chefs believed that most efforts in this direction have been unrecognized.
“India has been a leading exporter of spices and ingredients. We’ve given everything that has made every other cuisine tastier and yet we are deprived,” added Chef Anand.
Asked about the government’s initiative in promoting Indian cuisine abroad, both chefs differed. While Chef Khanna praised the steps taken, Chef Anand expresses his disappointment with the government.
“Government, irrespective of political parties, has been supportive when it comes to promoting Indian delicacies. If you see the advertisements of Incredible India you will find images of food. Even in the Presidential dinners, now-a-days chefs are invited to prepare special dishes which was not happening earlier,” noted Chef Khanna.
Chef Anand pointed out that “government is not working hard enough to make the ingredients easily accessible abroad, they are not marketed well. It is easier to get US products in India but difficult to get Indian spices in other countries.”
FILE PHOTO – The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics center in Lauwin-Planque, northern France, February 20, 2017. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo
LAS VEGAS – Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday announced its adoption of Kubernetes, a popular open-source technology, in a sign of increased competition in the cloud computing business, which Amazon Web Services has long dominated.
Kubernetes has emerged as a standard among companies as they build more applications on public clouds, the big computer data centers that are displacing traditional customer-owned computer systems.
Earlier this year companies including Microsoft Corp, Oracle Corp and IBM Corp announced their support for Kubernetes, which was originally developed by a team at Google.
AWS Chief Executive Andy Jassy made the Kubernetes announcement at Re:Invent, AWS’s annual conference in Las Vegas which this year attracted more than 40,000 attendees. Amazon also announced a marketing deal with the U.S. National Football League and a flurry of other AWS features, including machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms.
One of Kubernetes’ key advantages is its ability to run an application on any public cloud, including Microsoft’s Azure and Alphabet Inc’s Google Cloud Platform, making it easier to migrate from one cloud vendor to another.
Amazon had previously offered a service of its own that was similar to Kubernetes, but the Google technology has established itself as the standard for such so-called “container” technologies and AWS ultimately had little choice but to support it, analysts said.
“This is an example of AWS looking outside of their own world in response to customer need,” said Joe Beda, one of the creators of Kubernetes and the chief technology officer of Heptio, a Seattle startup that builds software around Kubernetes technology.
MICROSOFT, GOOGLE GAIN GROUND
AWS pioneered the cloud computing business in 2006 with a service touted as a quick and easy way for smaller business to get affordable, high-powered computing services. It soon began to catch on among larger companies and continue to grow very rapidly, hitting $4.6 billion in revenue on 42 percent year-over-year growth in the most recent quarter.
But the market has begun to change. Although AWS’s share of the worldwide cloud infrastructure market has increased from 43.8 percent in the first half of 2015 to 45.4 percent in the first half of this year, two of its key rivals have also gained share, according to IDC, the market research firm.
Google Cloud Platform’s slice has grown from 1.7 percent in 2015 to 3.1 percent earlier this year, and more notably, Microsoft Azure’s share has increased from 5.6 percent to 10.3 percent in that time span.
“Amazon is still the clear market leader, but the cloud infrastructure market is massive and there’s room for many players,” said Amit Agarwal, chief product officer of Datadog, a New York startup that lets companies monitor their operations on public clouds.
Under the new deal with the National Football League, AWS will be one of the league’s “official technology providers,” allowing AWS to market its connection to the league and advertise during football broadcasts that it is powering the games’ “Next Gen Stats.”
The price of the deal was not disclosed.
“We’re working with some of the NFL broadcasters to investigate what are the great use cases for how to embed (this partnership) for the fan experience,” Ariel Kelman, AWS vice president of worldwide marketing, told Reuters.
The idea is to market AWS to decision-makers without IT backgrounds, such as the chief executive and chief financial officers, Kelman said.
“Before they didn’t have to do that because they were the only guys in town,” Brett Moss, a senior vice president at Ensono, a Chicago IT services provider, said of the marketing effort. “Not anymore.”
Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Illinois, at a recent fundraiser in New York. (Photo: Arul Louis, IANS)
New York – Although there is an ideological chasm between U.S. President Donald Trump and the Democratic Party, India-US relation “transcends partisanship” and the party supports his initiatives to strengthen it further, according to Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi.
“The more he can do that the better because it will help each of our economies and will enhance our security and also bring our two peoples together even closer between the world’s oldest and largest democracies,” the Democratic Party member of the House of Representatives said in interview with IANS.
Trump has said that a “critical part of the South Asia strategy for America is to further develop its strategic partnership with India.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expanded on it saying last month the administration wanted to “deepen ties with India” to make it one of the anchors of a democratic world order.
“It is good that the President is continuing the strengthening of the US-India relationship,” Krishnamoorthi said. “I am glad that the relationship is now something that both parties support.”
But he said that it should not be a transactional relationship but be built on a foundation that endures.
“What I am always concerned about is any kind of relation, any kind of interaction that is transactional in nature,” he said. “We need to make it about relationship growing.”
For this, “it is very, very important that for instance that we enhance our economic relationship, that we continue to promote Indian investment in the US,” he said, “just as the Indians will promote American investment in India”.
Krishnamoorthi made a pitch for investments in his Illinois constituency located in suburbs around Chicago, saying he hopes Indian businesses would come there.
The Indian auto manufacturer, Mahindra Group, has set up a factory and technical center with a $230 million investment in neighboring Michigan state across the lake from Illinois.
On the security front, Washington and New Delhi “have to be close partners in fighting terrorism, but also in making sure that we can bring some democratic norms and, kind of making sure everyone observes the rules of the road in our global relationships, the way we conduct our global business”, Krishnamoorthi said.
Krishnamoorthi, who was born in Delhi and came to the U.S. as a baby with his parents, is a mechanical engineer and a lawyer by training. He headed companies that develop technologies for defense and renewable energy sectors before his election last year.
There are three other Indian-Americans, Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna and Ami Bera — all Democrats — in the House of Representatives and a Senator of Indian descent.
“I affectionately call them the ‘Samosa Caucus’,” Krishnamoorthi said. “We try to help each other out on our bills of interest.”
“We have taken a stand against hate crimes directed against Indian-Americans whether they are Sikhs, Hindus or Muslims or Jains. We work together on those issues,” he said.
The other Representatives supported a bill he has introduced to set up a commission to study the rise in hate crimes and recommend ways to combat them, Krishnamoorthi said.
While there had been just one Indian-American Congressman, Bera, in the elections last year their numbers shot up to five in a sign of the community’s increased political involvement.
“That trend will continue to proceed apace,” Krishnamoorthi said. “I think that what is really important is that at the grassroots level Indian-Americans really engage in the political process. That means voting and volunteering and assisting candidates who support their agenda that is friendly to their values.”
On the Ground in India: Perspectives from American India Foundation’s Clinton Fellows*
Last week, a coworker and I spent several days in Digoli, a remote village in Uttarakhand that is home to the Bora community, a small caste native to the Kumaon region. Nestled deep in the foothills of the Himalayas and accessible only via a two-hour trek, Digoli seems to have sprouted organically from the steep mountainside, with narrow, winding stone paths connecting each house and terraced rice fields stretching into the distance. Renowned for their skills as spinners and weavers, the Bora people have long been known in the area for their prodigious skills in the cultivation and weaving of hemp.
I had traveled to this remote corner of the world to conduct interviews for an exhibit my organization, Avani, is preparing for the Google Arts and Culture Institute. The exhibit was intended to be centered on traditional hemp weaving, with a focus on the ways in which the legal boundaries around the crop’s cultivation have hampered local traditions. Going in, I thought I knew what the story would be: a small, marginalized community had taken pride in their traditional craft, and felt angry and disempowered when the government robbed them of their ability to practice it. I imagined impassioned interviews with villagers, in which they would describe the deep emotional and cultural value of hemp cultivation and mourn the loss of their traditional heritage and skills. The exhibit, as I envisioned it, would be a fiery polemic against blanket policy prescriptions, and a celebration of the beauty of traditional crafts.
Of course, India always seems to have a way of upending my expectations. For the most part, the community members I met in Digoli weren’t mourning the loss of their craft or yearning for a return to their traditional roots. True, some of the village elders expressed anger towards the government for its restrictive hemp laws, telling me that the ban on hemp cultivation in the mid-1980s was misguided. But most, particularly in the younger generations, met the entire subject with a shrug. “Hemp is old,” Govinda, one Bora community member, told me matter-of-factly, “People don’t want to do it anymore. It takes too much time.” Indeed, cultivating and weaving hemp is an extremely labor-intensive process. Many elderly women in the village who had woven hemp as young girls were missing their front teeth, as they spent so many hours pulling the fibers with their teeth to prepare them for weaving. Most of the pride village elders derived from their hemp cultivation seemed to center less on its cultural value, and more on the sheer difficulty of producing it.
Given this, it seems entirely understandable that members of the younger generation would be reluctant to revive the craft. Even though hemp cultivation was legalized by the Uttarakhand government in 2015, few in the community believed that the traditions would be revived. Yet as I continued to hear the stories of the Bora community, I began wondering, “Is that such a bad thing?” Yes, hemp cultivation had largely disappeared in Digoli. But elders also told me that the girls today were getting married at 22 or 23, rather than at 14 or 15. Women who had previously been unable to leave home without being accompanied by a male relative were now working independently and attending school. What I imagined seeing in Digoli was a community mourning the loss of its heritage and traditions. What I got instead was a community that was rapidly changing, modernizing, and altogether disinclined to look back.
In the West, we have a tendency to fetishize and romanticize the “traditional” crafts of developing communities. As I continue to work with Avani, this feels increasingly problematic. After all, I don’t particularly mourn the loss of traditional handicrafts in the U.S., and I would never wish to take up handicrafts as a profession (although to be fair, I am hopeless with crafts). So why should we impose these values upon developing communities, at the expense of encouraging them to pursue careers in other, less labor-intensive fields?
This is not to say that traditional cultures aren’t valuable. Working with Avani’s weavers, I am awestruck by the beauty and skill of this traditional craft. Yet after my time in Digoli, I am convinced that we must strike a careful balance between celebrating traditional cultures, while also respecting the desires of some community members to move on. There is beauty in preservation, to be sure. But there is equal beauty, sometimes, in letting go.
— About the Author
Camille graduated in 2015 from Vanderbilt with a double major in Public Policy and History. After graduation, Camille spent time working with a children’s education nonprofit in Nepal, where she taught English and assisted in their funding and reconstruction efforts in the wake of the April 2015 earthquake. She then began a role at Deloitte Consulting in Washington, D.C., where she worked on research-based program evaluation and capacity building projects in the International Development and Public Health sectors with clients such as USAID and the Defense Health Agency. Although her family currently resides in Portland, Oregon, Camille spent the majority of her childhood in Singapore, where she gained her love for travel.
AIF’s William J. Clinton Fellowship for Service in India builds the next generation of leaders committed to lasting change for underprivileged communities across India, while strengthening the civil sector.
The holiday season is a prized time; it’s that festive season that seems to be here before you know it, and you wonder how you will find the time to do everything you need to do to celebrate properly with family and friends. The holidays are also when we share favorite, treasured foods with our loved ones.
Whether you are making a favorite recipe for a party, holiday dinners, or mailing goodies to a lucky friend or family member, follow these food safety tips to make the most of your time when preparing your special holiday treats.
Make space
This is a good time to clean your refrigerator so that you have room for holiday foods. You’ll also want to clean and clear off your kitchen counter so that you have room to work. Cooking can be a messy business and you don’t want to splash or spill juices from raw meat or poultry, or mixtures that contain raw eggs on clean dishes, kitchen towels, your children’s homework or decorations.
Make a plan
Many holiday dishes and treats contain perishable foods such as meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products. If you are preparing a complicated food that takes some time to make (e.g., egg rolls, lumpia, pasteles, alcapurrias and ravioli), make sure that the perishable foods stay hot or cold until needed. It may be helpful to divide up the different stages of the recipe. For example, if you are making lumpia, you can prepare the filling one day, and keep it in the refrigerator until you roll and package the lumpia.
If you are making a large batch of a favorite food (such as jams or jellies, pickled vegetables, sofrito) make sure you have all the ingredients and equipment you need before you get started so the food doesn’t sit at an unsafe temperature and allow bacteria to multiply.
Pack it Up and Hand it Out for Gift Giving
Once your goodies are prepared it’s time to pack them up for gift giving. Label with the name of the product, how it should be stored, and a ‘best by’ date if needed. (e.g., “Grandma’s Ravioli. Keep Frozen. Use by April 2018”). Not sure how long your item will last in the pantry, refrigerator or freezer? Download our FoodKeeper app to find out.
Store your goodies in a safe place (a cool, dry place for baked goods, the refrigerator or freezer for perishable foods), until time to deliver or serve. If you are presenting perishable foods be sure to tell the lucky recipient that the item must be kept in the refrigerator or freezer. Avoid leaving perishable gifts on a doorstep or handing them out at a workplace if there is no refrigeration.
Serve it Up
If you are preparing your family favorite for a dinner or party you can make it up to 4 days in advance. If you are making a large quantity of food, store it in several small or shallow containers, which will cool down faster than a large container. When it is time to serve, rather than having a large amount of food sit out on the serving table, put out one portion and keep a batch warm in the oven or cold in the refrigerator until you need it.
Taking it on the Road
If you are delivering your special treat or traveling to an event, remember to keep it out of the “Danger Zone,” the temperature range between 40 and 140°F. Pack perishables in a cooler on ice to keep them safe while you travel. If you are mailing perishables, see Mail Order Food Safety for tips on mailing food.
Consumers with questions about food safety can call the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline at 1-888-MPHotline (1-888-674-6854) or chat live with a food safety specialist in English or Spanish at AskKaren.gov, available from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday.
Four men of Indian origin, were arrested over the last week, suspected of conducting the widespread scam of impersonating Internal Revenue Service agents to bilk innocent taxpayers, many of them Indian-Americans.
United States Attorney Gregory J. Haanstad for the Eastern District of Wisconsin announced that pursuant to criminal complaints and arrest warrants issued by a United States Magistrate Judge in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, the following men were arrested by local and federal law enforcement – Moin Gohil, 22, of Dunwoody, Georgia, was arrested by local law enforcement authorities on November 24; Pratik Patel, 26, of Hoffman Estates, Illinois, Parvez Jiwani, 39, of Tucker, Georgia, and Nakul Chetiwal, 27, of Dunwoody, Georgia, were arrested on Nov. 28. by federal law enforcement authorities.
All of these arrests were based on charges of violations of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1343, 1349, 2 (Wire Fraud, Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud, and Aiding and Abetting). Each of these charges carries a maximum of 20 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
According to the criminal complaint, Gohil, Chetiwal, and Jiwani were “runners” who used fraudulent identification cards to pick up fraud proceeds for a scheme likely originating from India, authorities said.
Patel aided and abetted at least one of the runners. In this scheme, which is sometimes referred to as an “IRS impersonation scheme,” members of the scheme (likely in India) call victims and make misrepresentations (typically, that the victim owes taxes) and cause the victims to wire money through a wire service, such as MoneyGram.
Other members of the conspiracy (known as “runners”), such as Gohil, Chetiwal, and Jiwani, then use fraudulent identification cards to pick up the fraud proceeds.
According to the complaint, Gohil, Chetiwal, and Jiwani picked up $666,537 sent from 784 victims during the period from January 25, 2016, through August 8, this year. The false identities used by Gohil, Chetiwal, and Jiwani are linked to an additional 6,530 fraudulent transactions totaling $2,836,745.
A criminal complaint is only a charge and not evidence of guilt. The defendants are presumed innocent and are entitled to a fair trial at which the government must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Mayor-elect of Yuba City, California Preet Didbal. (Photo: LinkedIn
The city that thousands of Indian-American Sikhs have called home for more than a 100 years, finally has a woman mayor belonging to that community.
Preet Didbal, longtime Planning Commissioner and lifetime Yuba City resident, and City Councilmember since 2014, was elected mayor Nov. 30, possibly making her the first Indian-American Sikh woman in the U.S., to lead a city. She was appointed by the Council and is scheduled to be sworn-in Dec. 5, according to kcra.com.
“I’m speechless. It’s so humbling,” Didbal told kcra.com. “Seeing someone that looks like you, that comes from the same faith as you, to be elected in a public office in this country is inspiring and exciting. And it’s definitely moving,” Sikh Coalition’s Jaydeep Singh is quoted saying in the kcra report.
While there have been male Sikh mayors in the past, including the most recent, Ravi Bhalla of Hoboken, New Jersey, and before that, former Mayor of Laurel Hollow in New York, Harvinder Singh Anand, Didbal is likely the first Sikh woman to occupy that office, according to kcra.com. “Congratultions to Mayor Preet Didbal!” the Sikh Coalition tweeted.
Didbal, a single mother, has lived in Yuba City, raising her daughter who attends River Valley High School there. According to her bio on the Council website, Didbal’s “focus is built around children being raised in a community that invests in the success of young people and will look to develop more youth and family activities.” She is also committed to creating an economic environment that will provide good-paying jobs for returning college graduates, the site says.
Didbal was appointed to the Sutter County Planning Commission by Supervisor Larry Munger in 2004, where she served two years. In 2006, she was appointed to the Yuba City Planning Commission, serving for 8 years, the last two as chairperson
Mayor-elect Didbal holds an Associate Degree in nutrition, a Bachelor’s Degree in physical education with a physical therapy concentration, from California State University, Sacramento, and a Masters in public administration with a concentration in Health Services Administration from the University of San Francisco.
Since 2015, she has worked as a process improvement advisor at the State Compensation Insurance Fund, according to her LinkedIn profile.
From 2011 to 2015, she was an internal audits and appeals manager at California Correctional Health Care Services in the California Department of Corrections.
Indian American Chef Akhtar Nawab (Photo By: Liz Clayman)
Indian American chef Akhtar Nawab has a passion for making Mexican food and wants other Indian Americans as well as Indians in India to take up the Mexican flavor too.
Graduating from the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, Nawab has been cooking up meals for 25 years now with the desire to cook since he was a kid when he used to watch his mother make Indian meals.
“I was always a creative person. I have been a musician and a photographer. Even in college, I never did so well in my academic courses,” Nawab told News India Times in an interview, adding that he “knew how important cooking was in the Indian heritage,” which is what intrigued him to become a chef in the first place.
Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Nawab moved to New York City after attending culinary school in California and eventually started an Italian restaurant in 2008 called Elettaria, adding an Indian twist to the cuisine, which he had to close down the year after due to the economic recession.
“I ended up taking a break after that so I could try to find my identity. I wanted to do something intriguing and soulful to try to find my comfort level,” Nawab said, who had worked at various resturants before opening up his own.
According to his biography on dartagnan.com, Nawab was an Executive Chef at La Esquina, a Mexican restaurant in New York City as well as The E.U., a gastropub in the East Village.
He was the restaurant’s Chef de Cuisine at Craftbar and a sous chef at Craft, both restaurants which he had opened at the recommendation of Tom Colicchio, who he had worked under for four years at Gramercy Tavern.
His restaurant Craft received a three-star rating in 2001 from the New York Times and was named the “Best New Restaurant” in 2002 by the James Beard Foundation.
While still in California after the completion of his culinary studies, Nawab worked at Bizou under Chef Loretta Keller and Jardinière and La Folie, all French restaurants.
Nawab now has a new Mexican restaurant called ALTA CALIDAD in Brooklyn, which “opened seven months ago.”
While working at all of these restaurants, Nawab received much recognition in the culinary industry including the 2007 StarChefs.com NYC Rising Star Chef award.
He was also named as one of the top 10 emerging chef talents in the U.S. by Marion Batali in Coco as well as 10 of the World’s Greatest Chefs and 100 Emerging Culinary Stars by Phaidon in 2009.
He also appeared on Food Network’s famous show, “Iron Chef America” in 2009.
Being an Indian American inspired by Indian food, having worked with European cuisine and owning a Mexican restaurant, News India Times asked Nawab if he would ever consider fusing the cuisines, creating a fusion, to which he simply said “fusion is forced together” instead he likes using the term “Indian influenced,” hoping that Indians and Indian Americans will embrace the Mexican cuisine with that Indian twist.
