NEW YORK – The U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office has reported that there has been a 12.9 percent drop in the number of Indians travelling to the United States from January to June with a significant drop of 18.3 percent during the months of April, May and June.

According to a PTI report, experts are attributing the dip to important policy changes, especially with the ones in India.

“We’ve seen some softness in visitation (from India to US) in 2017, in first part of the year. We expect that to be just a short-term phenomenon,” Brand USA’s president and CEO Chris Thompson told PTI in an interview.

Thompson said that the significant policy changes made by India in the last one year might have impacted the numbers.

“There are so many things that influence the intent or ability for people to travel. The introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was also something that affects people’s ability or intent to travel,” Thompson added, thought he couldn’t pinpoint the actual reason behind the decrease.

Thompson also told the PTI that the impact of the general anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. has been “negligible” in India.

“Brand USA carried out sentiment research in its top 11 markets, which includes India. President Donald Trump is being seen as friendly by our Indian friends and visitors. The only issue that we’ve had probably may have contributed to some of the softness is there was more demand for visas than we had the ability to process,” he said.

In 2016, there were 1.17 million travelers from India who visited the U.S. and contributed $13.6 million toward the economy, which was a 14 per cent increase over the previous year and according to the latest projections by the Department of Commerce, the U.S. expects an additional 814,000 visitors from India by 2021 as compared to 2016.

“That will be a 72 percent increase over 2016 number,” Thompson added saying that he is “very optimistic and very bullish” that Indians will continue to visit the United States in the coming years and more direct flights between the two countries would help in this increase as will the increasing cooperation between the two countries on travel and tourism.

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NEW YORK – Indians Manish Patel and his wife, Nikita Shukla, both 26, pleaded guilty in September to one count of wire fraud and were sentenced by U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller, last week.

Patel was sentenced to 38 months in prison and ordered to pay $1.1 million in restitution and Shukla was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and ordered to pay $149,531 in restitution.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Patel and Shukla drove from Florida to Minnesota and used more than 140 fake IDs with Patel’s photo, picking up MoneyGram orders for conspirators from foreign call centers.

They were caught in May at a Walmart in Greenfield, Wisconsin, where agents arrested the couple who had appeared on their radar a couple of months earlier, after a victim in Minnesota called police about a payment made at that Walmart.

According to federal court records:

In March, someone pretending to be from the IRS called a Minnesota woman and said she owed $4,900 and could make a $2,000 down payment via MoneyGram to Jaxson Jones at the Walmart in Greenfield, Wisconsin.

But after sending the money, the woman had second thoughts and called police who then found video footage of Jaxson Jones collecting the $2,000 on March 6, he was later determined to be Patel,

The security at the store also checked more video footage and saw Patel picking up other payments, from $950 to nearly $1,150 under different names.

Investigators then went through the MoneyGram records and found that there were people using those three names and they had made 40 MoneyGram transactions worth about $40,000, in four states including at a Walmart in Franklin, Wisconsin.

The video footage there showed that the person was Patel.

Investigators then learned that the Saturn Vue that Patel got into after each transaction, was registered to Shukla and that it had been at a Glendale motel in March, where Patel was also seen on video footage, but was using a different ID.

Then in May, security at the Greendale Walmart, called agents to say Patel was in line to cash a MoneyGram.

When he was done, he went out and got into his car where Shukla was in the passenger seat.

Agents followed him to the Walmart in Greenfield and while returning to his car after completing another transaction, Patel was arrested.

Investigators found $2,999 and two fake North Carolina IDs on him with 147 driver’s licenses in the car, all with Patel’s picture on them, $8,590 in the glove box and $13,082 in Shukla’s purse.

Patel then admitted that he and his wife had been driving around picking up MoneyGrams for about four months, depositing the money in accounts as instructed and keeping 4 percent as payment.

In a memo to the court, Patel’s attorney Joshua Uller, argued for a shorter sentence of about seven months for Patel as he said that “Patel had no criminal record and was merely a runner following directions about where to go, which ID to use and where to send the money ‘and each transaction has a story behind it. Each story involves a trail of some level of harm: anger, financial hardship, depression, damaged credit, health problems, lost trust, sleeplessness and debt,’” Uller wrote.

However, Uller wrote that “Patel had no appreciation of the nature of the scam, its victims or the harm they suffered and now that he does, Patel ‘feels overwhelming sadness, guilt, remorse and disappointment.’”

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The victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Gujarat elections is more an affirmation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s development policies and leadership, than anything else, according to some Gujarati-Americans, many of whom are not shy of describing themselves as diehard fans of the former Chief Minister of Gujarat. They attribute BJP’s slim 7-seat majority (It requires 92 seats for a majority in the Gujarat state assembly) and are convinced the BJP would have lost to a seemingly resurgent Congress Party under the dynastic leadership of Rahul Gandhi, were it not for the frenetic campaigning by Modi in the state he led for more than a decade.

Gujaratis abroad are also excited by the prospect that Modi may appoint an outsider of the likes of Smriti Irani, the current Minister for Textiles and Information & Broadcasting, as Chief Minister despite state leader Vijay Rupani winning his West Rajkot constituency. That is something akin to what happened in early 2000s when the party decided to send a dynamic pracharak from outside the state to lead Gujarat.

Meanwhile, representatives of the U.S. investment community are encouraged by the victory, according to some who are part of the corporate world interested in India and have worked alongside U.S. business to effect policy changes in that country and their own.

“The Gujarat victory broadcasts to investors that the Modi Agenda is working and that the Prime Minister is headed for re-election in 2019,” contends Ron Somers, former head of the U.S.-India Business Council and founder of the Washington, D.C.-based consultancy group, India First.

The Gujarati-American community was “worried” however, by the polls days before the elections, which showed dwindling support for BJP, says Srujal Parikh, the incoming president of the Federation of Indian Associations of the New York tristate area, one of the largest and oldest organization of Indian-Americans in this country. He frankly admits he is a “diehard fan” of the BJP.

“This election is the biggest lesson they (BJP) have learnt – that they must have a proper leader rather than what they have now,” Parikh said. “This is a stepping stone for the party to learn and do grassroots campaigning for 2019,” he warns. According to him, “Every Gujarati living in the U.S., is happy about the result because they have seen Modi transform the state, and are very proud of his vision and how hard he works,” Parikh said. Yet, he conceded, the common man in Gujarat is feeling some dissatisfaction on a day-to-day basis. “I want to tell them that they have sent the right message of what they want,” he said pointing to the tough race and slim majority of BJP. In addition to that, putting a woman as head of the state, he said, was another visionary step. “That is a very proud day for us,” said Parikh, whose declared objective as president of FIA, is to enable more women to be equal and lead initiatives.

Another staunch BJP supporter Shekhar Tiwari, a businessman from Greater Washington, D.C., sees the future through a more nuanced lens. The win indicates that the opposition is getting consolidated, he says. “So there will be a problem in 2019.” According to Tiwari, “It is worrisome that the opposition are willing to come together without any principles.” India, he contends, needs a stable and powerful leadership for 20 years straight to perform at growth rates of 5 to 7 percent annually, if it is to get anywhere near the Chinese economic phenom.

Padma Shri recipient Dr. Sudhir Parikh, publisher of Desi Talk, (no relation of Srujal Parikh) was unequivocal in giving credit for the Gujarat victory to Modi’s efforts.”The victory shows that Prime Minister Modi is still a tall leader in Indian politics. This win was his. Without his campaigning this would not have happened,” Parikh said. At the end of the day, “People appreciated the development in Gujarat and the negative campaigning did not work,” he added, noting that “Most NRIs from Gujarat are celebrating and excited because 90 percent of them here are BJP supporters. For them, it means the economic development of Gujarat will continue.”

Communications Professor Ramesh Rao of Columbus State University, author of the 2015 book, “The Election that Shaped Gujarat & the Rise of Narendra Modi to National Stardom,” mirrored the views of Parikh. “The Gujarati community (in the U.S.) is by and large happy and celebrating,” Rao said. “And since a majority of Indians here are in technology and business, they will be happy (with the victory in Gujarat).”

As a business insider who has advised those interested in investing in India, Somers sees an optimistic future domestically and in the bilateral relationship with the U.S. “For an investor with a line of sight looking to the future, re-election of Prime Minister Modi provides precisely the kind of predictability that an investor requires to inspire confidence and convince MNC (multinational corporation) Boards of Directors to doubledown on investing in a growing, prospering India,” Somers asserted. Gujarat’s and Himachal Pradesh’s poll victories inspire investor confidence, he says. “That’s good news for India, and great for U.S.-India commercial relations,” he added.

“The reinforcing signal sent by Gujarat voters in the recent State election serves as an endorsement of Prime Minister Modi’s policies and provides investors with confidence and predictability that India’s pro-business reform wave will continue,” Somers said via email.

Rao told Desi Talk the BJP won, “Despite a combined opposition, and manipulation of the electorate on the basis of caste, and despite the Congress Party’s ‘skunk works’, plus add to that, the incumbency factor.” he also accused Western media, particularly in the U.S. and U.K., for a “coordinated campaign”against the BJP, contending “they clearly have a vested interest in bringing back the Congress which they see as a ‘secular, liberal, progressive’ party, as against the BJP which they choose to describe as “Hindu nationalist.”

“The Bharatiya Janata Party, is not Hindu ‘nationalist’,” he countered, emphasizing the words. The gains Congress made will be seen as the work of a “new, exciting leader” in Rahul Gandhi. “They will claim the gains as his (Rahul Gandhi) doing, when obviously, it is the work of Ahmed Patel, the general secretary of the Congress Party,” Rao said.

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The Association of South Asian Real Estate Professionals (ASARP) held its second annual gathering Dec. 15, at The Meadows Club, Rolling Meadows, IL., to discuss the latest tax reforms proposed by Congress and their ramifications for the general public and the real estate industry.

The non-profit ASARP’s mission is to provide a forum for interaction among South Asian real estate professionals and the communities that they represent, with some entertainment and education thrown in for good measure.

Among the chief guests were India’s Consul General in Chicago, Erica Harold, candidate for State Attorney General in Illinois, Tim Schneider, chairman of the State Republican Party, Dr Sapan Shah, Republican candidate for the U.S. Congress from the 10th District.

Other attendees included Nimesh Jani, member of Schaumburg Township Board, Nancy Suvarnamani, past president of Chicago Association of Realtors and FIABCI International, and several other wellknown real-estate professionals, according to a press release from Asian Media USA.

Pradeep B. Shukla, president of ASARP, noted that the last time the tax system was revised was in 1986, and reform was needed, and that the Trump administration had therefore introduced the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.”

“Principal goals are simplicity and tax reduction while keeping mind the principle of neutrality,” Shukla is quoted saying in the press release. Shukla went on to discuss what a final bill might mean for the real estate industry. “While there is overall tax deduction, what concerns our community as realtors, is dilution of Home Ownership Deductions. The stand taken by the National Association of Realtors is that homeowners must be treated fairly, must reverse decline in first-time home buyers as the home ownership level is 50 years low in 2016,” he said.

Other panelists included attorney Paul Chawla, realtor Brian Bernandoni, with moderator Al Haroon Hussain, an attorney. A question and answer session followed.

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The Vaishnav Samaj of Midwest (VSM) and Vallabh Youth Organization – Education (VYOE), a global nonprofit, sponsored their first Toys for Tots event at Shreejidwar Haveli, in Addison, Illinois. Among the chief guests was Illinois Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti, who greeted everyone with a ‘Namaste” and thanked organizers for educating her about the Vaishnav faith.

The event was well-attended and the community organizations collected 150 toys for the donation.

Apart from Sanguinetti, other special guests included Tim Schneider, chair of the Illinois State GOP, John Dabrowski, Bloomingdale Township assessor, Nimish Jani, Schaumburg Township trustee, State Senate candidate Seth Lewis, and Dr. Bhavna Sharma-Lewis, District 76 superintendent, according to a press release from Asian Media USA.

Dr. Umang Patel of the Vaishnav Samaj, a cardiologist by profession, welcomed all the energetic students attending VYOE Sunday school, volunteers, board of trustees and invited dignitaries. The VYOE has more than 120 students in Sunday school even though it has been in operation for just two years, he noted.

Jani thanked those present for making it to the event on a cold Sunday and introduced the honorary guests, noting that Sanguinetti had also arrived in the U.S. as “poor child of Cuban refugee parents,” and climbed the ladder of success with her “determination, hard work, charming personality.” Shneider began his address with the greeting “Jayshrikrishna” and spoke to the students about attaining ‘Nirvana” in one’s life by giving rather than receiving gifts, as they were doing that day at the event.

Dabrowski praised the accomplishments of the sponsoring organizers and wished them success.

Shreejidwar Haveli, where the event was held, is a non-profit religious organization established to meet the religious and cultural needs of the Hindu community since 2005 and is one of the cornerstone Havelis of the Midwest region, according to the press release.

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More than 150 guests attended the Dec. 9, launch of the Women’s Empowerment Campaign at the Meadows Club in Rolling Meadows IL. India’s Consul General Neeta Bhushan, as well as business and community leaders attended.

“It was a great idea of the founders to start a womens empowerment group. It was much needed in Chicago and will go a long way,” Consul General Bhushan is quoted saying in a press release. The group which was founded through a collaboration between the Indian Consul General and Rita Singh, Shital Daftari and Dr. Anuja Gupta, presented the vision for the “WE POWER” campaign. The Ameya Dance Academy performed on the theme of women’s empowerment. “Chicago needed a strong womens group to represent the high level of success our community has seen in business, community service, arts & culture. The Womens Empowerment Group has filled a huge gap & has great potential in Chicago & also nationally” added Bhushan.

The Womens Empowerment Campaign was designed to create the largest networking and empowerment platform for Indian women in Chicagoland, the press release said. “We wanted to form a group that showed the power of Indian women in Chicago and do something that made a positive impact in our community” said the founders. The group plans to celebrate Women’s Day annually as a gala event

Singh, Daftari and Gupta are businesswomen “We had reached a point in our lives where we felt blessed by the community support we had and wanted to do something to give back to the community” Dr. Anuja Gupta, a physician and real estate developer of Verandah Retirement Community, is quoted saying. Daftari, an e-commerce business owner of Saris and Things, said, “We wanted to showcase how powerful Indian women were. I also wanted to inspire women to take the first step to living a life of their dreams and reaching their highest potential.”. Singh, who is an IT business owner and also has experience in show business said, “I had a very gratifying experience mentoring other people who wanted to start their own business and wanted to do it on a larger scale thru this platform. I wanted to make a meaningful difference in the Indian community”.

Several other women are part of the leadership team Uma Katiki, the 2017 vice-president & 2018 president of the Chicago Andhra Association, Vidya Joshi Vice-President of Maharashtra Mandal Chicago and secretary of BMM, Aparna Ayyalaraju and Rajani Akurati, on the board of directors of the Telugu Tristate Association, as well as Chandini Duvuuri founder of an NGO for battered women, Promila Kumar founder of Sanjeevani, Rosey Bhasin founder of Connections By Rosey, Namitha Pai founder of Happy Feet, Sushma Bhanot founder of Share A Smile Chicago, and Arshia Wajid founder of American Muslim Health Professionals.

The new organization also has several community partners. Some of the goals it outlined in its press release are, among others, raising awareness of existing resources and services in the community; showcasing and highlighting Indian women of excellence in various fields; providing a platform to network, and contemporary issues facing these women. The group can be found at ChicagoWE.com.

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The International Ramayana Institute of North America (IRINA), in cooperation with the leading Indian, Indonesian and Thai Dance Drama Academies held the Ramayana Dance Drama at the Rosary High School auditorium in Aurora, Illinois Dec. 2.

Some 350 people from various communities came to the show. Leaders from the different communities such as Indian, Thai, and Indonesian, jointly organized the event, according to Asian Media USA.

The chief guests included Neeta Bhushan, consul general of India and in Chicago; Rosmalawati Chalid, consul general of Indonesia in Chicago. All office bearers, past presidents, trustees and other guests were also participated in the opening ceremony which included lighting the traditional lamp to kickstart the event.

The IRINA was founded in Chicago in 2000 when several volunteers came together to promote the exchange of the literary, artistic, cultural, educational and scientific aspects of Ramayana epic among different countries worldwide. The organization has held three international Ramayana conferences where Ramayana scholars from more than nine countries participated and presented research work and findings on Ramayana. In his speech, Subhash Pandey, past president and trustee of IRINA described the organization as a model for the “Unity in diversity”. Both consuls general appreciated the efforts of IRINA for putting together 12th Ramayana dance drama and congratulated office bearers and volunteers of IRINA.

Several dance directors from the Indian, Indonesian and Thai communities took part in the dance drama with more than 100 performers from Chicago and outside Chicago. Classical musical performance by artists from the Academy of Thai Classical music at Wat Dhammaram; a puspanjali dance; a Balinese. welcoming dance from Indonesia by dancers from the Indonesian Performing Arts of Chicago; Dancers from Indian Dance School choreographed and directed by Gauri Jog, were part of the program. The Srujan dance presented “Ghoomar” dance-a traditional folk dance of Rajasthan, was choreographed by Swati Shah.

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Indian American Sonya Jain, the CEO of eGlobalTech, a government IT contractor, died on Sunday, Dec. 17, at the age of 54 after a long battle with cancer.

According to a Biz Journals report, Jain grew up in India when Indira Gandhi was prime minister and decided that she wanted a career as an engineer and entrepreneur.

She studied at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, where she was one of eight women among 200 and emigrated to the U.S. where she landed her first job in engineering in Michigan to build out the company’s software system.

Jain later moved to Greater Washington and began working as a project manager for Booz Allen Hamilton in 1992.

She then launched Arlington-based eGlobalTech in 2004 and grew it to a company that employs more than 300 people and booked revenue of $80 million in 2016.

“Sonya was a truly remarkable person. She was constantly energetic, always wanting to be in touch with customers. She loved life to the fullest,” Branko Primetica, one of eGlobal’s first employees, told Biz Journals.

Today he is the company’s chief strategy officer and on Monday he remembered Jain as a “great boss and mentor, someone who loved to dance and paint and wanted to build a company devoted to clients and customer service but also one infused with a fun culture. “

Jain is survived by her husband, Sanjiv Jain, an eGlobalTech senior vice president, and two daughters.

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Indian Americans Vishnubhai Chaudhari, 50, and Leelabahen Chaudhari, 44, of Kimball, Nebraska, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of alien harboring for financial gain.

According to documents filed in court, the couple admitted to conspiring to harbor the victim, an Indian national who lacked immigration status, at a Super 8 Motel in Kimball, Nebraska, between October 2011 and February 2013.

During that time, the couple required that the victim work long hours, for all seven days of the week at the motel and perform manual labor including cleaning rooms, shoveling snow and doing the laundry.

Though they promised the victim that they would pay him, they never did and rather claimed that the victim owed them money.

The couple also restricted the actions of the victim as they isolated him and verbally abused him.

Vishnubhai also threatened to find the victim if he ever left the motel and Leelabahen regularly assaulted the victim, including on one occasion where she slapped him on the face several times because he had failed to clean a bathtub to her standards.

The victim eventually escaped with the help of a motel guest and local law enforcement.

The couple’s sentencing is scheduled for March 19, 2018 and may face a possible sentence of up to 18 months in prison and is expected to be removed from the United States thereafter.

They were also told to pay the victim $40,000 in restitution.

“Motivated by their greed, the defendants violated the immigration laws and exploited a vulnerable individual who lacked immigration status. The Department of Justice will use its resources to proactively prosecute persons who, like the defendants, unlawfully victimize others for their own monetary profit,” said Acting Assisting Attorney General Gore of the Civil Rights Division.

“This case is a reminder that forced labor occurs in the United States, not just overseas, and federal law targets those who profit from human trafficking and related crimes. This case is a testament that such conduct will be vigorously investigated and prosecuted in the District of Nebraska,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Robert C. Stuart of the District of Nebraska.

“Human trafficking is the modern world’s version of enslaving another person for profit. That is what these individuals have done to this victim. I’m proud of the work accomplished by HSI’s special agents, our partners at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nebraska, and the Department of Justice, who made these guilty pleas possible,” said Special Agent in Charge Alex Khu of HSI St. Paul.

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Anuj Chopra and his wife Leslie Chopra, both 42, have been ordered to stand trial on allegations they tried to entice their daughter’s teen friends for sex.

According to an Associated Press report, Anuj Chopra is charged with human trafficking after a witness testimony alleged he offered to pay two 16-year-old boys $1,000 in December 2016 if he could film them having sex with each other. Leslie Chopra is accused of sending sexual messages and a selfie in lingerie to one of the boys over Snapchat and is charged with distributing sexually explicit materials to minors and using a computer to commit a crime.

The Ottawa County, Michigan, Sheriff’s Office liaison at Hudsonville High School, Deputy Mike Petroelje, said that the teen who was sent the snaps had used his mother’s phone to take pictures of photos Leslie sent before they were deleted, AP reported.

Assistant Ottawa County Prosecutor Jennifer Kuiper-Weise added that the snaps included sex acts which she allegedly wanted to perform with the boy.

However, the Chopra’s Defense Attorney Damian Nunzio argued that the charges should be dismissed as the prosecutors did not show that the snaps would be harmful to a minor. Nunzio demanded the police gather more evidence.

Nunzio argued that Anuj Chopra’s proposition was not meant to be taken seriously and that “it was just banter, it was just joking, it is not human trafficking under the statute. This is not a 20-year felony.” However, Petroelje countered that none of the boys he interviewed felt that the proposition was a joke.

Petroelje also noted that he did not discover the allegations until recently, after the Chopras were suspects in the circulation of nude photographs of a girl at the high school nine months ago. He began to interview the teen whom Leslie Chopra sent snaps to after the mother of the girl whose nude photos were distributed, alerted the deputy to potentially concerning behavior between the Chopras and the boy.

Nunzio said parents were already suspicious of the couple because of the photo investigation.

“This was nothing more than mob mentality at Hudsonville High School,” Nunzio is quoted saying in the AP report, which also noted that the Chopras have not been charged in the female student’s photos and are scheduled to appear in court July 3, 2018.

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One of the best-known legal minds in the U.S, and former acting solicitor general of the country during the Obama administration, just broke the litigation record set by late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

The American Lawyer, a leading American magazine noted Neal Katyal, currently with the private law firm Hogan Lovells, had recently broken Marshall’s record for most arguments before the Supreme Court by a minority lawyer; his 8-1 high court victory for Bristol-Myers Squibb in a highly-watched products liability case; and his recent representation of the state of Hawaii against President Donald Trump’s travel ban, catapulted him to first place.

American Lawyer also ranked Hogan Lovells a Finalist for Litigation Department of the Year, a press release from the law firm said Dec. 19.

Katyal, 47, called the honor of breaking Marshall’s record “bittersweet”, Law.com reported. He has argued 35 cases before the Supreme Court, most of them in the last 8 years. “In the 2016-17 Term alone, Neal argued seven cases in six separate arguments at the Supreme Court, far more than any other advocate in the nation (the next highest number, four arguments, was reached by two attorneys),” Law.com noted.

Katyal hit national headlines during the George W. Bush administration, winning the landmark decision Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which challenged the policy of military trials at Guantanamo Bay. The Supreme Court sided with him by a 5-3 vote, finding that President Bush’s tribunals violated the constitutional separation of powers, domestic military law, and international law.

In 2011, he received the highest award given to a civilian by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Edmund Randolph Award. The Chief Justice of the United States has twice appointed him to the Advisory Committee on Federal Appellate Rules.

According to his profile on the Hogan Lovells website, while at the Justice Department, Katyal represented the federal government in all appellate matters before the Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeals nationwide. He argued major Supreme Court cases, such as his successful defense of the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, his victorious defense of former Attorney General John Ashcroft for alleged abuses in the war on terror, and his unanimous victory against eight states that sued the nation’s leading power plants for contributing to global warming. He served as Counsel of Record hundreds of times in the Supreme Court. He was the only head of the Solicitor General’s office to argue a case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, on the question of whether aspects of the human genome were patentable.

Katyal has also served as a law professor for nearly two decades at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was one of the youngest professors to have received tenure and a chaired professorship in the university’s history.

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CHICAGO, IL

The Loyola Stritch School of Medicine has named Mashkoor Choudhry the school’s Senior Scientist of the Year.

Choudhry serves as a professor in the surgery department. Assistant professor Fancis Alonzo was named Junior Scientist of the Year. The awards are based on scholarly productivity, service to the institution and community, professional society activities, research funding, mentoring and peer-review activities for scientific journals and external sponsors of research funding, the university said in a news release.

The Indian American professor is director of the Alcohol Research Program at Loyola, and has studied the role of alcohol in post-burn complications for more than 20 years. Many burns and trauma victims have alcohol in their bloodstream, making this research vital in improving treatment.

In his lab, Choudhry and his team are studying the hypothesis that being exposed to alcohol increases the suppression of the immune system of the intestines and breaks down their natural barriers, resulting in harmful gut bacteria going outside of the intestines and causing sepsis and multi-organ failure.

He received his Ph.D. in India and completed his post-doctoral training at Louisiana State University before coming to Loyola in 1992.

IANS

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Indian American Vishal Patel, 30, of Glen Allen, Virginia has been arrested in Kansas as prosecutors claim that he posed as a physician and treated patients southeastern Virginia.

According to an indictment, Patel has never been licensed to practice medicine in Virginia and prosecutors say that he stole the identity of a licensed physician and obtained documents that fraudulently said he was a doctor.

The indictment also says that Patel used the fake documents to get a job at a health center in Newport News, Virginia where he saw patients, conducted and ordered tests and exams on them and prescribed them medication.

Court documents list no lawyer for Patel yet.

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The Embassy of India in Washington D.C. organized the celebration of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on Dec. 19.

The event was attended by around 120 guests, including Congressman Brad Schneider, Ambassador Reuven Azar, Deputy Head of Mission of the Embassy of Israel, representatives from the State Department, AJC, AIPAC, B’nai B’rith International, Jewish Federation of North America, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Jewish National Fund, Maryland-Israel Development Center, Fairfax Economic Development Authority, Mr. Cary Summers, President of Museum of the Bible, media, Congressional staff and members of the Indian-American Jewish Community.

This was the 15^th year that the Indian Embassy has celebrated Hanukkah, according to a press release from the Embassy.

Following the lighting of the Menorah, Ambassador Navtej Sarna emphasized the rich and historic Jewish tradition in India and the continued deepening of bilateral ties as reflected in the recent high-level exchanges of visits between India and the U.S. as well as India and Israel.

Also addressing the gathering were Congressman Schneider, Ambassador Azar, Jason Isaacson, associate executive director of American Jewish Committee, and Cary Summers, president of Museum of the Bible.

They spoke of the historic linkages that bring the people of India, the U.S. and Israel together and reflected on the recent successful visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to both the U.S. and Israel, “which have added more positive momentum to our relations in the year marking the 25th anniversary of diplomatic relations between India and Israel,” the press release said.

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NEW DELHI: ThinkData Works Inc., a big-data processing firm, just hired a software engineer from Brazil through Canada’s new fast-track visa program for high-skilled workers.

“The process was bang on,” Bryan Smith, chief executive officer of the Toronto-based company, said. It took less than the government’s target of 10 business days to process the recruit’s application. Previously it could take several months. “If the government says two weeks and it actually is, that will create a whole new process around it.”

As President Trump moves to crack down on the immigration of high-tech workers to the US, PM Trudeau’s new Global Skills Strategy is taking off. The Brazilian joins 2,000 other workers who entered Canada under the program from its start on June 12 to September 30, according to government data.

“It’s more successful than we predicted,” Canada’s immigration minister Ahmed Hussen said. “This program came from the business community. They identified a challenge and said you need to fix it.” Those who are fast-tracked can apply to stay as long as three years and also for permanent residency. Computer programmers, systems analysts, and software engineers, are the top three categories of workers to benefit so far. The bulk come from India — the same country that makes up the majority of US H-1B visas issued — followed by China and France. Word is spreading throughout Canada. Biotech company Cyclica Inc is preparing to use the system for the first time to recruit an American.

As a candidate, Trump railed against the H-1B program. There are several regulatory and legislative efforts underway in the US to reduce abuse in the program and the number of applications being challenged has jumped. Applications to the annual lottery for visas dropped this year for the first time in five years, reflecting concerns about a more restrictive approach, though applications still exceed the 85,000 visas available through the lottery. To those who have watched Canada lose talent to the US over the years, the tables may be turning.

Canada’s fast-track visa program is just one part of Trudeau’s drive to boost innovation. The government is also pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into venture capital and support for artificial intelligence, joining private money investing in the country’s tech hubs in Waterloo and Toronto, Ontario, Vancouver and Montreal.

Two thousand people may be a small sliver when compared with the 320,000 newcomers Canada welcomed last year. “It sounds like a drop in the bucket,” says Daniel Mandelbaum of immigration firm Mamann Sandaluk & Kingwell LLP. “The idea is this is two thousand of the best and brightest.”

The H-1B program attracts foreign specialized workers to come to the United States for employment, many of them from India and China.

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House Republicans passed the most extensive rewrite of the U.S. tax code in more than 30 years — hours after the Senate passed the legislation — handing President Donald Trump his first major legislative victory.

The chamber’s 224-201 party line vote on Wednesday — a redo thanks to a procedural hiccup — sent a bill to the president that provides a deep, permanent tax cut for corporations and shorter-term relief for individuals. Not a single Democrat in either chamber voted for the measure.

The legislation, which has scored poorly in public opinion polls, promises to become one of the biggest issues in the 2018 elections that will determine whether the GOP retains its majorities in Congress.

“I think minds are going to change and I think people are going to change their view on this,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” before the vote Wednesday. “The average taxpayer in every income group is getting a tax cut.”

The vote was a triumph for Ryan, a self-described policy wonk who put aside his vision for a more comprehensive, cutting-edge — and controversial — approach to overhauling corporate taxes earlier this year. In the end, Ryan oversaw compromises that trimmed some personal deductions and settled for temporary individual tax relief to help cover the cost of the deep corporate tax cut.

“I promised the American people a big, beautiful tax cut for Christmas. With final passage of this legislation, that is exactly what they are getting,” Trump said in a statement. “By cutting taxes and reforming the broken system, we are now pouring rocket fuel into the engine of our economy.”

The House took its second vote on the bill in two days after Senate Democrats forced their GOP counterparts to make three relatively minor changes to the bill — including dropping a provision that had named it the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” Under congressional rules, the House and Senate must approve the same bills.

Other changes were related to provisions allowing parents to use 529 educational savings accounts to cover expenses of home-schooling their children and subjecting certain private universities’ endowments to a new excise tax.

“The only thing better than voting on tax cuts once is voting on tax cuts twice,” House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican, said Tuesday.

The Senate passed the legislation on a party line vote just before 12:45 a.m. on Wednesday. Trump marked the occasion on Twitter, calling the legislation “the biggest in history Tax Cut and Reform Bill” — though experts have said that’s not the case.

The White House held a “bill passage event” with House and Senate members at 3 p.m. But the gathering won’t be a signing event, which will happen at a “later date,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in an emailed statement.

“For the first time in more than three decades, we cleared a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s tax code and delivered on our promise of creating and advancing pro-growth policies,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who chairs the tax-writing Finance Committee.

The bill slashes the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, enhancing the U.S. position against other industrialized economies, which have an average corporate rate of 22.5 percent. It offers an array of temporary tax breaks for other types of businesses and for individuals — including rate cuts that will tend to favor the highest earners. Most middle-class workers will also get short-term relief, but independent analyses show the amounts aren’t large.

The average tax cut for the bottom 80 percent of earners would be about $675 in 2018, according to an analysis by the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center. The top 1 percent of earners would get an average cut of about $50,000 that year, and the top 0.1 percent would get an average of $190,000, according to the group’s analysis.

Some middle-class families could see hikes because of changes to the so-called SALT deduction, which provides a tax break on state and local property taxes as well as income taxes or sales taxes. The provision to cap those deductions at $10,000 proved to be one of the most contentious for House Republicans from high-tax states. GOP lawmakers in New York, New Jersey and California have objected to limiting the deduction, saying it might hurt them politically.

In Tuesday and Wednesday’s House vote, only 12 Republicans — all but one of them from those three states — voted against the measure.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell predicted that the changes would gain favor with voters who have so far been cool to the legislation in polls.

“If we can’t sell this to the American people, we ought to go into another line of work,” he said during a news conference after the Senate vote.

The changes would reduce federal revenue by almost $1.5 trillion over the coming decade — before accounting for any economic growth that might result, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, which analyzes tax legislation. Earlier versions were forecast to increase deficits by roughly $1 trillion even after any growth effects.

Asked whether the tax plan will add to the deficit, Ryan said, “We need to keep focused on the spending side of the ledger as well.” He said in the coming year, Congress will be focused on giving states more flexibility with Medicaid and on “getting people from welfare to work.”

In one of the tax measure’s most controversial provisions, GOP senators attached language that repeals a major piece of the health-care legislation: the individual mandate that requires people to have insurance coverage.

“It’s not a total replacement, but it takes the heart out of Obamacare,” McConnell said in an interview Tuesday before the Senate vote.

GOP leaders say the Obamacare mandate’s penalty — $695 for individuals — falls disproportionately on lower- and middle-income people. Repealing it is estimated to generate roughly $300 billion over 10 years, helping to keep the tax bill from creating even larger potential deficits. But at the same time, about 13 million people are expected to drop their insurance coverage over that decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate.

Some health economists say the change would lead to higher health-coverage premiums, perhaps canceling out the effect of the individual tax cuts for many. Some GOP lawmakers, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, are seeking legislation to help stabilize the situation, but the fate of those efforts remains unclear.

McConnell said Tuesday he would offer such provisions in a spending bill “later in the week.”

Collins, a moderate, also won concessions that expanded a deduction for medical expenses for two years and preserved a partial individual deduction for state and local taxes.

Overall, the bill has failed to win broad popularity in public opinion polls. Despite Trump’s repeated attempts to sell it as a boon for the middle class, half the public thinks they’ll pay higher taxes under the bill, according to a Monmouth University poll that was released Monday.

Democrats say they’re eager to make the tax bill a major issue in next year’s congressional elections.

“The bill provides crumbs and tax hikes for middle-class families in this country and a Christmas gift to major corporations and billionaire investors,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Tuesday. “Republicans will rue the day they passed this bill and the American people will never let them forget it.”

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Using light-emitting nanoparticles, Rutgers University-New Brunswick scientists have invented a highly effective method to detect tiny tumors and track their spread, potentially leading to earlier cancer detection and more precise treatment.

The technology could improve patient cure rates and survival times.

“We’ve always had this dream that we can track the progression of cancer in real time, and that’s what we’ve done here,” said Prabhas V. Moghe, a corresponding author of the study and distinguished professor of biomedical engineering and chemical and biochemical engineering at Rutgers-New Brunswick. “We’ve tracked the disease in its very incipient stages.”

The study, published online Dec.11 in Nature Biomedical Engineering, shows that the new method is better than magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and other cancer surveillance technologies. The research team included Rutgers’ flagship research institution (Rutgers University-New Brunswick) and its academic health center (Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, or RBHS).

“The Achilles’ heel of surgical management for cancer is the presence of micro metastases. This is also a problem for proper staging or treatment planning. The nanoprobes described in this paper will go a long way to solving these problems,” said Steven K. Libutti, director of Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. He is senior vice president of oncology services for RWJBarnabas Health and vice chancellor for cancer programs for Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences.

The ability to spot early tumors that are starting to spread remains a major challenge in cancer diagnosis and treatment, as most imaging methods fail to detect small cancerous lesions. But the Rutgers study shows that tiny tumors in mice can be detected with the injection of nanoprobes, which are microscopic optical devices, that emit short-wave infrared light as they travel through the bloodstream – even tracking tiny tumors in multiple organs.

The nanoprobes were significantly faster than MRIs at detecting the minute spread of tiny lesions and tumors in the adrenal glands and bones in mice. That would likely translate to detection months earlier in people, potentially resulting in saved lives, said Vidya Ganapathy, a corresponding author and assistant research professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

“Cancer cells can lodge in different niches in the body, and the probe follows the spreading cells wherever they go,” she said. “You can treat the tumors intelligently because now you know the address of the cancer.”

The technology could be used to detect and track the 100-plus types of cancer, and could be available within five years, Moghe said. Real-time surveillance of lesions in multiple organs should lead to more accurate pre- and post-therapy monitoring of cancer.

“You can potentially determine the stage of the cancer and then figure out what’s the right approach for a particular patient,” he said.

In the future, nanoprobes could be used in any surgeries to mark tissues that surgeons want to remove, the researchers said. The probes could also be used to track the effectiveness of immunotherapy, which includes stimulating the immune system to fight cancer cells.

The study includes 16 authors at the School of Engineering (departments of Biomedical Engineering, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering) at Rutgers–New Brunswick, the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, the Department of Computer Science, and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

The study’s lead authors are Harini Kantamneni in the Rutgers Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering and Margot Zevon in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. The third corresponding author is Mark C. Pierce, an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. The collaboration with Mei-Chee Tan at SUTD was integral to this team effort. Other Rutgers–New Brunswick or RBHS co-authors are Michael J. Donzanti, Shravani R. Barkund, Lucas H. McCabe, Whitney Banach-Petrosky, Laura M. Higgins, Shridar Ganesan, Richard E. Riman and Charles M. Roth.

RUTGERS TODAY

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That was the message Nikki Haley emailed to scores of members of the United Nations who are weighing whether to vote Thursday in favor of a General Assembly resolution urging the United States to rescind its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“As you consider your vote, I want you to know that the President and U.S. take this vote personally,” Haley wrote in an email that was obtained by Foreign Policy. “The President will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us. We will take note of each and every vote on this issue.”

Haley said the U.S. is not asking other countries to follow its lead, and move their embassies to Jerusalem, “though we think it would be appropriate.”

The U.S. ambassador’s remarks follow President Trump’s Dec. 6 announcement that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, reversing nearly seven decades of U.S. foreign policy and shattering the U.N. consensus that the status of Jerusalem would be settled as part of a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Trump’s decision drew expressions of condemnation from capitals around the world. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the president’s decision disqualified Washington as a Middle East mediator, saying “a crazy person wouldn’t accept” the United States as a peace broker after Trump’s announcement.

The tough rhetoric hinted that the United States was weighing retaliating against those who defy America’s wishes. But several diplomats said any such threat would likely be empty as the vast majority of U.N. members, including close allies like Britain and France, are likely to vote yes.

The letter went out a day after the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution, introduced by Egypt, that also urged the United States to reverse course, saying the decision by any government, including the United States, to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would “have no legal effect,” is “null and void and must be rescinded.” The resolutions, which gained the support of all 14 other U.N. Security Council members, left the Americans isolated.

The United States portrayed its decision as a purely sovereign matter that merely codified decades of congressional support for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

“At the UN we’re always asked to do more & give more,” Haley tweeted Tuesday. “So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don’t expect those we’ve helped to target us. On Thurs there’ll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names.”

In her letter to U.N. states, Haley noted that 22 years ago the U.S. Congress first declared “Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of Israel, and that the U.S. Embassy should be located in Jerusalem. President Trump affirmed that declaration by officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

The president’s decision, she noted, does “not prejudge final status negotiations in any way, including the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem.”

She also noted that the president still supports “the status quo at Jerusalem’s holy sites.”

U.N. diplomats saw Trump’s action as an affront to the United Nations and the rule of law, a blunt repudiation of 10 previous U.N. Security Council resolutions on Jerusalem adopted since 1967, including a 1980 resolution calling on states that had already established diplomatic missions in Jerusalem to withdraw them.

Haley’s letter dominated diplomatic chatter at U.N. receptions at the residences of the Finnish and Japanese ambassadors.

“This is just political theater,” said one ambassador.

“Cowboy diplomacy,” said another diplomat who considers himself a friend of Haley’s. “What, is she saying I’m not your friend anymore?”

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By the end of the day, Republicans are pretty sure they will have passed an historic tax overhaul that could save their imperiled majorities in Congress.

And Democrats are pretty sure that Republicans just signed their political death certificate. To wit: There are 10 Senate Democrats running for re-election in states President Donald Trump won last year. Not a single one voted for the tax bill. In fact, a number of them vociferously opposed it.

“Instead of providing a tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits the middle class, this bill cuts taxes for the wealthiest Americans while raising taxes on a majority of families making less than $75,000 in the coming years,” Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

Donnelly is one of the most endangered Senate Democrats up for re-election next November, given that Trump won his state in the 2016 election by 19 points. And yet he has decided it’s good politics to oppose a tax overhaul that Trump will champion.

Other Democratic senators in deep-red Trump states also telegraphed to constituents that they don’t like this bill.

“Shortsighted and rushed,” Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., said. He’s attempting to win re-election in a state Trump won by more than 40 percentage points.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who is currently one of the most endangered senators of either party in next year’s elections, said, “This tax plan doesn’t live up the commitment I got from President Trump, when he told me he wouldn’t support tax reform that benefited the very rich at the expense of the little guy.”

As McCaskill’s statement indicates, these Democratic senators clearly see the political value of appearing to work with Trump. They accepted the president’s invitation this fall to dine and talk about taxes, and many of them would have loved to sign a bipartisan bill that could let them claim they are working with the president.

But Democrats have calculated that a mix of public perception and the popularity of populism has made this bill toxic to voters. They are convinced that cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations while giving the middle class a temporary tax cut strikes the wrong tone. And polls suggest Democrats are right. Polls consistently show that only about a third the country supports the bill, while two-thirds think it will mainly benefit the wealthy.

The Manchins and McCaskills and Donnellys of the world are also likely very aware of this stat: 43 percent of Americans say they are less likely to vote for a lawmaker who supported the plan, a recent Quinnipiac Poll found. A separate Quinnipiac Poll released Tuesday found that more than half of Americans say they want Democrats to control Congress, and that half of Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling the economy.

In other words, Republicans are going to have to do some major convincing – and hope their unproven theory of trickle-down economics works – if they want to campaign successfully on this tax bill.

Democrats running in Trump country aren’t taking that bet. In fact, it was an easy choice for them to oppose the bill, their operatives say. “When you have an unpopular president selling an unpopular bill, it doesn’t create political pressure to fall in line and support it,” said Democratic operative Jesse Ferguson.

Democrats’ Senate campaign committee, which suddenly has a path to take back control of the chamber next year, has already released ads in six states attacking Republicans who supported the tax plan.

Republicans have argued that Americans just have the wrong idea about this bill, warped by Democrats and negative media coverage. “Results are going to make this popular,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., declared Tuesday.

People won’t file their taxes under this new code until after the November 2018 midterm election. But as employers start to adjust how much in taxes they take out of people’s paychecks, it’s possible Americans could see a slight increase in their take-home pay in a few months.

Senate Republican operatives think they can go on the offensive against Democrats who opposed this bill. America Rising, an outside group that specializes in getting dirt on Democrats, said they’re going to frame Senate Democrats’ opposition as a partisan move designed to hobble Trump. “Senate Democrats like Claire McCaskill chose internal Democratic politics over boosting the economy of their states and allowing middle-class families to keep more of their hard-earned paychecks,” said Scott Sloofman, press secretary for America Rising.

So, who’s right? The closest comparison we have to whether Republicans are putting themselves in political danger with this bill is the Affordable Care Act.

When Democrats unilaterally reformed the health-care system in 2010, it was unpopular, and they suffered massive defeats in the next election. Democrats lost 63 seats in the House and have yet to regain the majority.

But ACA was 10 to 20 percentage points more popular then than this tax bill is today.

Only time will tell if Republicans are signing their political death certificate with this bill. But it’s notable that Democrats in Trump country certainly think so.

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BRAD MELTZER was becoming deeply concerned about the tone of our national discourse. It was a toxic form of crosstalk that he believed needed visual antidote.

“The election was Bruce Wayne’s bat smashing through my window,” says Meltzer, the political-thriller novelist and TV host, referencing Batman’s alter ego when describing his “aha” moment. The Eisner Award-winning Meltzer has written for Batman with such high-selling comics as “Identity Crisis.”

“I saw the way we were talking to each other, tearing each other apart,” he continues. “We need to be better than what angers us.”

His creative response is a graphic novel, written by him and illustrated by about two-dozen top artists, titled “I Am Gandhi: A Graphic Biography of a Hero,” due out next May from Dial Books.

All royalties from the book will go to Seeds of Peace, a nonprofit group that seeks to cultivate future global leaders.

Meltzer had been working on his children’s book “I Am Gandhi,” which was published in October, to help students learn about the Indian human-rights icon.

“I gave the script of [it] to my 15-year-old son. … I just wanted him to hear the message,” Meltzer tells The Washington Post’s Comic Riffs via email. “As he was reading, I was reading over his shoulder. And then it hit me: I needed Gandhi’s lessons as much as he did.”

Right then, he knew he needed to make it a graphic novel, so he reached out to such artist friends as Gene Ha, Rags Morales and Bryan Hitch, with whom he’d worked on DC comic books. He also found support from such industry figures as Dan DiDio, Brian Michael Bendis, Marc Andreyko and Tom Brevoort.

The artists donating their talents at no cost include such cartoon luminaries as Amanda Conner, Siddharth Kotian and David Marquez, as well as “March’s” Nate Powell.

The top artistic slate also includes Art Adams, John Cassaday, Carlos D’Anda, Michael Gaydos, Stephanie Hans, Phil Jimenez, David LaFuente, David Mack, Alex Maleev, Francis Manapul, Steve McNiven, Saumin Patel, Stephane Roux, Marco Rudy, Kamome Shirahama, Bill Sienkiewicz and Abhishek Singh.

“We get to put Gandhi’s message into the world,” Meltzer says. “As I told my son that first night: ‘No one wins in a fight.’ Right now, the world needs to hear that. We need more love in the world and less hate.

“My favorite superheroes taught me that growing up.”

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