NEW YORK – Indian American actress Mindy Kaling, 38, gave birth to a baby girl on Friday, Dec. 15, at 10:50 a.m. in Los Angeles.

According to a People’s Magazine report, Kaling named the girl Katherine Swati Kaling. Katherine being Kaling’s middle name and Swati being Kaling’s late mother’s name who died of pancreatic cancer in 2012.

The news of Kaling’s pregnancy broke out in July when Oprah Winfrey announced it by accident; the “Mindy Project” actress later confirmed her pregnancy in August on the “Today” show.

Kaling is still not revealing the father’s identity.

According to a CBS report, in October, Kaling posted a picture of her baby bump on Instagram and also told Ellen DeGeneres that she became “obsessed” with sitting.

“I’ve had a pretty great time of it so far, but I think I took a lot for granted before this, now that I’m in my current situation. Like, sitting. I’m obsessed with sitting and even when I was standing back there I was looking at this chair and I was like, ‘Awww, can’t wait to sit in that chair!'” Kaling told DeGeneres.

Kaling also told the co-host of the “Today” show, Willie Geist, that “she’s excited to have a child so she’ll be able to ‘openly criticize other parenting.’”

“I know I’m going to be the dorky mom. So, if I could be kind of fun, too, I think that would be nice,” she said adding that she hopes to take cues from her late mother on how to be a good mom including being supportive and open-minded.

CBS has reported that Kaling will be starring in “Ocean’s 8” along with Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett as well as “A Wrinkle in Time” with Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon.

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NEW YORK – The federal government has seized $1 million from Columbia Liquors, a liquor store in Illinois, owned by Indian Americans Shreyas Patel and Dipteben Patel, who according to an NWTimes report, are alleged to have sold alcohol to other liquor stores in the state so they could avoid having to pay higher state alcohol taxes.

According to the NWTimes report, the owners of Columbia Liquors apparently “devised a scheme to defraud or obtain money by false or fraudulent pretenses” thus prosecutors allege that they bought liquor from three Indiana distributors and in turn sold it for cash to liquor stores across the south suburbs in Illinois, where liquor taxes are much higher.

“Specifically, the Patels, through their Indiana liquor store, purchased large quantities of liquor and sold them to seventeen Illinois liquor stores, at least five of which they own, for subsequent retail sale thereby depriving the State of Illinois of excise and sales taxes to which it was entitled,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Orest Szewciw charged in the federal complaint.

“By selling liquor purchased without payment of excise taxes in Illinois, the Illinois liquor-store owners, including the Patels, increased their profits. In furtherance of the scheme to defraud or obtain money by false pretenses, the Patels caused the use of interstate wire communications,” the complaint added.

According to court documents, the Patels operated a “front door register” for legitimate retail sales as well as a separate “back door register” for sales to Illinois liquor stores.

The “front door register” brought in an average of $1,570.12 a day, when authorities caught them in June and the “back door register” brought in $42,347.76 per day.

The Patels’ attorney Glenn Seiden argued in court that the Patels’ ran a legal business and that some of money that was seized was from lottery sales.

“Plaintiff is (stopped) from obtaining a forfeiture judgment because it obtained the seizure warrant through incorrect, misleading, or incomplete allegations. Plaintiff cannot obtain a forfeiture judgment because it has not acted in good faith,” Seiden said.

According to the NWTimes report, liquor excise tax rates are significantly lower in Indiana than in Chicago.

“The $2.68 per gallon Indiana tax rate on hard liquor is $8.37 per gallon less than the tax in Cook County, and $11.05 per gallon less than in Chicago. If a liquor-store owner in Cook County and Chicago avoids paying the excise taxes imposed by the state, county and city, the cost of his products would be less than that of his competitors in the same area. With reduced purchase costs, a liquor-store owner would keep more profit. If the liquor-store owner did not pay the cost of excise tax, the liquor-store owner could offer a much lower retail price of products to increase sales volume, and effectively undercut the price charged by other liquor stores in the area,” the U.S. attorney’s office wrote in its forfeiture complaint.

The Wine and Spirits Distributors of Illinois Trade Association added that the cross-state bootlegging costs Illinois nearly $30 million in lost tax revenue every year.

“The continued brazen disregard for Illinois law by these modern-day bootleggers is putting the health and safety of Illinois consumers at risk and costing our state millions in much-needed tax revenue. Any out-of-state retailer may set up shop in Illinois as long as they follow existing state laws and compete fairly. The issue is that retailers who avoid paying their fair share of taxes expose Illinois residents to alcohol shipments that can’t be tracked or recalled in the wake of a safety incident,” WSMI Executive Director Karin Lijana said.

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An Indian-American woman from Saratoga, California, and another man, have been convicted on numerous charges of healthcare fraud.

Vilasini Ganesh, head of Campbell Medical Group, was convicted of 10 health care fraud and false statements relating to health care matters, Dec. 14, according to a press release from the Office of the U.S. Attorney for Northern California. Gregory Belcher was convicted of one count of making false statements relating to health care matters

A federal jury convicted the two after an eight-week jury trial before the Honorable Lucy H. Koh, U.S. District Court Judge.

The jury found Ganesh, 47, of Saratoga, guilty of five counts of health care fraud and five counts of making false statements relating to claims fraudulently submitted to health care benefit programs.  Belcher, 56, also of Saratoga, was found guilty of one count of making a false statement relating to a health care benefit program.  The defendants were acquitted of conspiracy and money laundering counts, and Belcher was also acquitted of four other health care fraud counts and one other count of making a false statement relating to a health care benefit program.

Evidence at trial showed that Ganesh submitted false and fraudulent claims to several health care benefit programs, the press release said. The claims were for days when the patient had not been seen by the provider, or when patients had been seen by another physician provider who was no longer affiliated with her practice.

Ganesh is currently out of custody, on a $350,000 bond. Belcher is also out of custody on a bond of  250,000.

The sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 4 next year.  The maximum statutory penalty varies from 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine plus restitution to five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine plus restitution.

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NEW YORK – Much before the end of the almost four-hour long two-act epic Théâtre du Soleil’s magnificent and riveting play ‘A Room in India’, before a Charlie Chaplin-like character delivers a mock, ironic monologue from ‘Great Dictator’, one begins to understand why it’s vital and important to understand the women of the Mahabharata, to get an epiphany of the world at large; not to speak of getting an insight into the intricacies of India itself.

‘A Room in India’, directed by the grand dame of exploratory French theater Ariane Mnouchkine and her company Théâtre du Soleil – which ran its course at the Park Avenue Armory, in Manhattan, last week, is set in Pondicherry.

It’s literally a fantasy concoction of the artistic travails of Mnouchkine and her 100-member strong multinational troupe from over two dozen nationalities, based in La Cartoucherie, in the suburbs of Paris, after they traveled to India, to research and do a rendition based on the ancient epic Mahabharata.

Their initial plans were stalled after terrorist attacks in November, 2015, when 130 people were killed in a series of coordinated terror attacks in Paris. What emerged thereafter when they visited India next year, was ‘A Room in India’.

In the play, events unfold as dreams, nightmares and visions of a rather dim-witted middle-aged woman Cornélia (played with stunning aplomb by the veteran actress Hélène Cinque), who has been given charge of a French theater company in Pondicherry overnight after the head of the company quits for philosophical reasons, and is later jailed for public intoxication, nudity and desecrating a statue of Gandhi in town.

Cornélia’s agony to stage the perfect play, in her debut venture – as her worries mount because of external pressures, is the tumultuous play-within-a-play perfected by the visionary Mnouchkine, along with the collaboration of the French feminist writer and philosopher Hélène Cixous.

The single room set at the humungous Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the Armory – touted as the most exclusive place in New York City for big-sets theater to come to pulsating life – becomes a veritable crucible for global events to unfold at a frenetic pace which at first seems confounding, but then settles into a fluent, pendulum-like rhythm, as precise as a cuckoo that peeks out and croons at the strike of every hour.

At the heart of the play, connecting all the strewn dots and patterns between the sleep bouts of Cornélia – as inexplicable in the beginning though, as the hum of indecipherable sounds that emanates periodically from the windows on the set, to truncated voice message on a laptop – is the predicament of women, which resonates even louder in the current throb of a new feminist movement, over the issue of sexual harassment and sexual innuendoes.

In between vignettes that depict Islamic terrorism, suicide bombers, civil wars, climate change, love – or remnants of what’s left of love after the ravages of living life controlled by patriarchy; dictatorships – or what some faux modern democracies now resemble; power of social media and the Internet, what permeates through like a halo-enhanced meteor, is beauty and bravado of women, and bestiality towards women, in India, shown through two famous stories from the Mahabharata.

The two stories – a microcosm of the struggles of women in India over the centuries despite their access to education and liberal movement – are the humiliation, and redemption of Draupadi after Lord Krishna intervenes and helps her salvage her modesty from the cruel Kauravas as the hapless Pandavas stand by after losing their wife in a game of dice; and Karna’s interaction with his inconsolable, entreating wife, Vrushali, before he valiantly embarks for battlefield, and his eventual death. In the Mahabharata, Vrushali committed ‘sati’ on her husband’s pyre. Draupadi, arguably the most powerful woman in the Mahabharata, is known more for her humiliation, than her honor.

The two stories from the Mahabharata, enacted through Terukkuttu – a traditional form of theater practiced in South India through music and emotive dance and featuring the venerable fifth generation artist Kalaimamani Purisai Kannappa Sambandan Thambiran – form the most dynamic, and lyrical scenes of ‘A Room in India’.

The Terukkuttu  narratives threads the context of the play together, which at the beginning, with its mix of Hindu-Muslim tensions, ‘visitations’ from playwrights like Shakespeare and Chekhov, and even a cow and monkeys, along with dash of humor featuring despicable ISIS terrorists, had to rely upon apophenia.

Women’s inequality, discrimination and confusing place in society comes into sharp focus through those two stories. Those themes pervades through the course of the entire play, from the hapless predicament of a rudderless Cornélia, to her multi-layered personality of a landlady and schoolteacher in Pondicherry, Mrs. Murti, who is as vulnerable to love as any other woman and falls for the overtures of a Frenchman after she was denied from being with the man she loved in her youth by her tradition-minded family.

Like Draupadi, Mrs. Murti is almost raped by a Hindu nationalist in town, and Cornélia, like Vrushali, is found most times beseeching and lamenting her fate, which hinges on the acts of a stubborn man.

In ‘A Room in India’, no woman’s place in society is totally secure; they face ignominy, at short notice. Given a chance, a woman would kill each and every man in sight – a scene that comes to life during a wonderfully humorous film shoot in a desert, when a veiled Muslim woman does just that, when handed a gun.

Strong, recurring humor is a constant hallmark of the play, and despite the gravity of the subject matter dealt with, Mnouchkine devotedly sticks to it, evincing strong guffaws from the audience.

‘A Room in India’ is also a fascinating look into the world of multicultural actors, who pride themselves in not only researching a subject, but learning its language too, to nail the act. It’s performed in French, English, and Tamil, along with some Arabic, Japanese, Russian; with English supertitles.

Viewers who understand Tamil are likely to wince at its enunciation by some of the international actors, but that’s only a minor aberration to the superlative, committed acting that accompanies it. The relentless immediacy of the play throughout its span of three hours and 35 minutes (apart from a 20-minute break between the acts), is a wonderful testament to the high quality caliber of the actors themselves, all of whom give virtuoso performances.

It’s safe to say that ‘A Room in India’ is the most powerful and beautiful play to come out of India, and to be staged in New York.

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A still indicating the scale of an indoor set from the 1938 movie “Vachan”; another of legendary actress Helen rehearsing the cabaret number “Yeh itni badi mehfil aur ik dil, kisko doon”; and, among many others, Meena Kumari leaning on a pino in a dramatic scene from the film “Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai”. All these photographs from the black and white era are being exhibited for the first time to trace the roots of Indian cinema’s boom.

Titled “A Cinematic Exhibition: Josef Wirsching and Bombay Talkies”, the display at the ongoing Serendipity Arts Festival here tells a story of a world across worlds, a story of cultural convergence that brought together Berlin and Calcutta, Munich and Bombay.

It draws from the photographic archives of Josef Wirsching, a German cinematographer, who made India his workplace and home. Wirsching’s archive comprises behind-the-scenes photographs of cast and crew, production and publicity stills that give us unprecedented access to the aesthetic decisions and creative communities that were vital to filmmaking in colonial India.

“Cinema happened like a boom,” says Wirsching’s grandson, named after his grandfather, from whose personal archives he has spent the last decade reproducing the photographs.

“But not many people realise or know that there was an entire movement behind it. It took many years to bring cinema into the consciousness of not only the viewers but also those who later became filmmakers,” added Josef, who is now based in Goa.

Elaborating on the rise of cinema in the country, he said Indian artists at the turn of the 20th century actively sought to “forge an aesthetic language that could be simultaneously nationalist as well as modern”. Frustrated with European academic canons and colonialist stereotypes, they turned to local artistic genealogies and avant-grade movements outside the British empire.

Germany, with its long history of Indological enquiry, became an ally in this endeavour. Thus, Rabindranath Tagore visited Germany in the 1920s, and, in turn, the Austrian art historian, Stella Kramrisch, joined Shantiniketan and organised a landmark “Bauhaus” exhibition in Calcutta (1922).

This two-way cultural exchange was keenly felt in cinema; the success of “Oriental” films such as “Sumurun” (1920) and “The Indian Tomb” (1921) was met with Indian filmmakers approaching German studios for technical training. Raja Ravi Verma had already popularised German chromolithographic techniques and European approaches to the body through his mass-produced calendar art. In the 1920s, intrepid nationalist filmmakers such as Dadasaheb Phalke, V. Shantaram and Himanshu Rai self-consciously reworked these influences with inspiration from passionate German plays.

And then came the Second World War, which led to a different kind of exchange when Jewish exiles such as Walter Kaufman and Willy Haas moved to Bombay and entered the local film scene. Bombay Talkies Studio, inaugurated in 1934, embodied the cultural dynamism of the moment in its core team led by Himanshu Rai, Franz Osten, Josef Wirsching, Niranjan Pal and Devika Rani.

Josef added that Bombay Talkies played a foundational role in defining India’s commercial film form, producing some of the most iconic musicals of the era which focused on urgent issues of social reform. These films borrowed freely from East and West to create a new aesthetic that many called “Swadeshi modernism” — a heady pastiche that begs us to question easy notions of Indian and foreign, traditional and experimental.

Josef Wirsching’s artistic imagination infused Bombay cinema with the psychological depth and stylistic ethos of German Expressionism. At the same time, his photographic archive gestures towards another meaning of what we call “cinematic” — a term that is commonly used to describe moments in reality that seem elevated beyond the everyday. In these images displayed at the ongoing exhibition, we see the interaction of individuals, objects and environments, framed by a vision that captures the beauty and drama beneath the surface of the laborious work of film production.

Josef said that he had contacted the Indian government and the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), but to little avail. A camera used by his grandfather, rare and vintage in its own right, along with negatives of many films, were given to the Film and Television Institute of India, all of which have disappeared now. His endeavour found momentum after he met the organisers of Serendipity, where the photographs are first exhibited.

The Wirsching Family — Wolfgang Peter Wirsching, Rosamma and their sons Josef and Georg — are the only heirs of Josef Wirsching (1903-1967) and are currently the owners of his entire personal photographic collection consisting of more than 6,000 images and the largest collection of photographic evidence of the start of the Indian film industry, which has now acquired the “Bollywood” moniker.

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Ali Abbas Zafar assisted Kabir Khan in 2012’s “Ek Tha Tiger” (There Once Was a Tiger), a blockbuster film about an Indian and Pakistani spy who fall in love. What he didn’t know then was that he would be directing the second part of what is turning out to be an action franchise. “Tiger Zinda Hai” (The Tiger is Alive) brings back Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif in lead roles, who combine forces to rescue Indian nurses held hostage in Iraq.

Billed as the festival release Bollywood needs to end the year on a high, Zafar says the film is not political in nature. He tells Reuters why nationalism and patriotism work in movies and what Indian audiences expect from an action film.

Q: How easy or difficult is it to adapt and take forward a story that you were not a part of initially?

A: When I started writing “Tiger Zinda Hai”, it was not supposed to be a sequel. It was an individual script, and because it had an Indian and a Pakistani spy, and we already had a film on the YRF banner with an Indian and Pakistani spy, we pulled those two characters into our script. It worked its magic because these were two characters which we already knew and when they come into a story which is topical and true to what is happening around us. The global phenomenon of extremism is rising around the world. It is not a political film at all – it talks about peace and brotherhood through the situation of these trapped nurses. So when I bounced this idea off people, including Kabir, they got excited about it. That gave me confidence that we were in the right direction.

Q: Does a change in director make a noticeable difference to the way a film is told, even if the characters remain the same?

A: I think the difference will be clearly visible. I have different style of story-telling and shooting a film from Kabir’s. Also, the core story decides the tone of the film. The first one was a romantic thriller, while this is more of a mission film and a docudrama in the way it’s been put together. Since it is a Salman Khan film, it will have some hero moments, but the way we have done it, it is very relatable. He is not a superman in the film – he is more of an agent, who when he gets hurt, feels the pain.

Q: Do you see this expanding beyond these two films?

A: All that depends on the love it gets from audiences at the box office. The first one was a big blockbuster, which is why we took a leap of faith with the second one. Inshallah, if this becomes successful then maybe someone else can find a good story and make a third film.

Q: How viable do you think franchises are in Bollywood?

A: It is quite viable. This year, a couple of the biggest films have been franchise films. Again, even if it’s a franchise, it needs a new story. So if you can do that and play on the strength of the franchise, then it can work.

Q: You said “Tiger Zinda Hai” isn’t a political film, but like so many films we see these days, it has an element of patriotism or nationalism. Why do you think that is necessary?

A: The story is patriotic and nationalistic, but both these words are very positive words. The problem is when it becomes jingoistic. The film is not jingoistic. It talks about what India is equipped to do today in terms of intelligence and defense. We are at par with the best in the world and we should be proud. The strength of our country is that it is a secular state and the whole idea from our Vedas to our folklore and our religious texts teach us that peace, brotherhood and humanity is the biggest thing and we can do it while co-existing. That is what the film signifies.

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WASHINGTON – U.S. President Donald Trump signed Republicans’ massive $1.5 trillion tax overhaul into law on Friday, cementing the biggest legislative victory of his first year in office, and also approved a short-term spending bill that averts a possible government shutdown.

Trump said he wanted to sign the tax bill before leaving Washington on Friday for his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, rather than stage a more formal ceremony in January, so he could keep his promise to finish work before Christmas.

“I didn’t want you folks to say I wasn’t keeping my promise. I’m keeping my promise,” he told reporters in the White House.

The two pieces of legislation represent Trump’s most significant accomplishment with Congress since taking office in January, as well as a sign of what awaits when he returns from Florida after the Christmas holiday.

The tax package, the largest such overhaul since the 1980s, slashes the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and temporarily reduces the tax burden for most individuals as well.

Trump praised several companies that have announced employee bonuses in the wake of the bill’s passage, naming AT&T, Boeing, Wells Fargo, Comcast and Sinclair Broadcast Group.

“Corporations are literally going wild over this,” he said.

Democrats had opposed the bill as a giveaway to the wealthy that would add $1.5 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt during the next decade.

The spending bill extends federal funding through Jan. 19, largely at current levels. It does nothing to resolve broader disputes over immigration, healthcare and military spending.

Republicans also are divided over whether to follow up their sweeping overhaul of the U.S. tax code with a dramatic restructuring of federal benefit programs.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he would like to revamp welfare and health programs but Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told National Public Radio on Monday that he was not interested in cutting those programs without Democratic support.

Trump’s year also closes with significant turnover of many top staffers who had been in the White House since early in his term. On Friday, the White House confirmed Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn and Jeremy Katz, who worked under White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, were leaving.

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Title: Rani Padmavati — The Burning Queen; Author: Anuja Chandramouli; Publisher: Juggernaut; Pages: 240; Price: Rs 299

There could scarcely be any Indian historical/myhtological character presenting more delicacy in artistic depiction as Queen Padmavati of Chittor, with any story of her tumultous life liable to invite a raging controversy or worse as a filmmaker and his cast have already learnt. But should she become a symbol of competing narratives than having her story told?

Bollywood, with its penchant for spectacle, simplification and sensationalisation, may have not succeeded in retelling this significant episode from late 13th-early 14th century India, but what about a gifted story-teller in an older medium? And there could be no one better than Anuja Chandramouli to tell the tragic story of this queen, in a compelling manner and with the modern sensibility she brings to bear.

In her first foray in a historical topic instead of the mythology and urban fantasy she has hitherto excelled in, Chandramouli shows the story that brings Rani Padmavati, Rawal Ratan Singh and Alauddin Khalji into a fatal clash was no “love jihad” as some vested sections would seek to categorize it.

As she presents it, it is indeed a story of love, proud traditions, honor, duty, patriotism, valor and conflict, but as it is about humans, not symbols, the noble motives are also supplemented by some more baser — and more prevalent ones — lust (for power), greed, envy, jealousy, fear, self-preservation, treachery, and so on.

And then there is the overwhelming yearning for a happy, peaceful life with someone we love.

Chandramouli begins with a prologue showing how Alauddin Khalji (depicted as cruel but clear-headed — and no psychopath) ascended to the Delhi throne, occupied by his uncle and father-in-law Jalaluddin Khalji, and dealt with the traitors who helped him, and also his wife, before launching her story proper.

We then follow the to-be queen Padmavati in her teenage years at her parents’ house, their discussion of her future, her father and uncle’s summons to their uncle and liege lord — along with her, her marriage as part of a political alliance to counter the expansionist aims of the Delhi Sultanate, and what this led to.

In parallel, we see Khalji’s plans to extend his realm, by any means possible, till people term him “Sikandar Sani” (or a second Alexander the Great), and also his energetic efforts to keep the Mongol hordes from over-running the subcontinent.

The author takes us on to the opportunities — and problems — following Padmavati’s marriage to (an already married) Ratan Singh, their marital life, along with the jealousy their closeness caused among the harem and court, and then the case of the despicable Raghav Chetana.

Action starts coming to a head when Ratan Singh acts against Chetana following his involvement in an episode of that era’s “sex tapes”, leading to the breaking of a high-profile marriage, the “honor-killing” of a blameless woman — and a rift in the realm.

However, Chetana, on the eve of his execution, is saved by a mysterious figure, who stuns him with the price he must pay. Soon he is in Delhi, telling Khalji of Padmavati’s beauty in a bid to convince him to invade Chittor and seize her.

Then follows the range of events most Indians are familiar with — Chittor’s siege and sacking, Ratan Singh’s capture and Padmavati’s self-immolation. But Chandramouli, who has consulted a number of authoritative history books, gives her story a unique but much plausible twist.

There is also a surrealistic dream scene — a particular motif of the author — and a rather unexpected but powerful ending a decade later, which shows how even a powerful ruler can succumb to ravages of time.

On the whole, this book, one of three the author has out simultaneously, combines a tender love story with some incisive political and historical insight, especially why the Rajputs failed to counter or defeat the “invaders” (who had already been around for a century), and offers a peep into Khalji’s mind — especially what later generations would think of his Chittor campaign.

This along with her deft characterization, evocative descriptions, spirited dialogue, and adding other contemporary happenings (the case of Karan Vaghela of Gujarat and arrival of Venetian traveller “Malpua Poha”) makes this possibly the best examination of this episode.

The post The Riddle Of Padmavati — A Rivetting Reconstruction appeared first on News India Times.

Last year was all about plant protein, sprouted foods and healthy fats. My prediction is that 2018 will be focused on eating to prevent and manage health conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and boosting digestive health.

This year’s Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo was held in Chicago and brought more than 13,000 nutrition professionals together to learn about food and nutrition research and innovation.

Here are the top food and nutrition trends you’ll see in the year ahead.

Omega-9s

Why it’s a trend: Healthy fats are in, and in 2018 we’ll home in on omega-9s (also known as monounsaturated fats) for their potential to regulate blood sugar levels and promote a healthy weight.

Where you’ll see it: Algae has been touted as a superfood in its own right, but the newest use for algae is in the production of omega-9 cooking oil. The process doesn’t use genetically modified organisms or chemical extraction, further broadening its appeal. Thrive algae oil is high in heart-healthy monounsaturated fats and low in saturated fats. It has a high smoke point of 485 degrees, which means you can use it in baking, roasting and sauteing.

So what does algae oil taste like? It’s completely neutral and odorless, so you can use it in any recipes where you want healthy fat without changing the flavor of the food.

Plant-based probiotics

Why it’s a trend: Probiotics have been a hot topic in the nutrition world for several years. They’re bacteria that provide health benefits such as better digestion and a stronger immune system. With plantbased eating becoming increasingly popular, people are looking for probiotic sources beyond yogurt and kefir.

Where you’ll see it: GoodBelly dairyfree probiotics come in tasty shots, juice, infused drinks and bars so you can get your daily dose of good bacteria any way you like. All GoodBelly offerings feature bacteria strain Lp299v, which has been scientifically proved to survive stomach acid and arrive safely in the intestines, where it can colonize in the gut. In other words, these probiotics go beyond “live and active cultures” – they survive and thrive to give you health benefits.

Chicory root fiber

Why it’s a trend: It’s fantastic to introduce healthy bacteria into your digestive tract, but you also need to provide the right fuel to help those good bacteria thrive. That’s where prebiotics come in.

Chicory root fibers (inulin and oligofructose) are the only scientifically proven plant-based prebiotics with proven health benefits such as weight management, improved calcium absorption and digestive health.

Where you’ll see it: Expect to find chicory root fiber in a variety of foods, including nutrition bars (ThinkThin), yogurt (Oikos Triple Zero), smoothies and oatmeal. You can also find it as a powder (Prebiotin) that can be added to your food and beverages.

Eating for ‘Type 3’ diabetes

Why it’s a trend: Alzheimer’s disease is now being referred to as “Type 3 diabetes” and “brain diabetes,” as both conditions involve insulin resistance and deficiency. In 2018, we’ll be focusing more on the importance of eating for brain health.

Where you’ll see it: A randomized control trial of the MIND (Mediterranean- DASH intervention for neurodegenerative delay) diet is looking into the benefits of a nutrient-rich diet emphasizing foods such as green leafy vegetables, nuts and berries in preventing Alzheimer’s disease. Frozen blueberries are being given to participants because they are rich in antioxidants that may be beneficial for the brain, particularly when it comes to memory loss in aging.

Recent research published in the European Journal of Nutrition found that daily consumption of the equivalent of one cup of fresh blueberries, given as 24 grams of freeze-dried blueberry powder, showed positive changes in cognitive function in older adults over a placebo.

Expect to see blueberry powder as a supplement and blueberries being used to create condiments and sauces in savory as well as sweet dishes.

Pseudograins made convenient

Why it’s a trend: Getting healthy whole grains on the table has always been a challenge because of longer cooking times. That’s why food companies are coming up with ways to bring us whole grains and pseudograins (seeds that are served as grains) much more quickly.

Where you’ll see it: Fast and portable amaranth, buckwheat and quinoa in single portions such as Ellyndale Q Cups in low-sodium flavors like Savory Garlic & Mushroom. They’re ready in five minutes; just add boiling water and steep and you’re ready to eat.

Stevia 2.0

Why it’s a trend: Stevia continues to rule as the sweetener of choice for people wanting to cut down on sugar or calories. As the demand for stevia grows, so do the product offerings.

Where you’ll see it: Look for stevia as an ingredient in more beverages, baking mixes and condiments as consumers look for calorie- and sugar-reduced versions of their favorites.

Stevia will be mixed with brown sugar, cane sugar and honey by companies such as Truvia to make lower-sugar and lower-calorie options. Because these stevia products are naturally sweeter than sugar, you need to use only half the amount.

Cottage cheese, the new Greek yogurt

Why it’s a trend: Cottage cheese used to be only for dieters because it was seen as plain and, let’s face it, lumpy. Now it’s becoming more popular because we’re all obsessed with finding more ways to pack protein into our meals and snacks. This cousin to Greek yogurt is slightly higher in protein and is mostly casein, a protein that can help you feel full longer.

Where you’ll see it: Brands such as Muuna make cottage cheese with a texture that melts in your mouth and is sweetened with real fruit and no artificial flavors. Plus it’s low in sugar, with only four grams in the plain version.

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NEW YORK – Days after the United States recognized India in its National Security Strategy as a ‘Major Defense Partner’, India decided not to abstain, like 35 countries did – including Canada and Australia, but to vote in favor of a resolution brought by Turkey and Yemen in the United Nations, opposing President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Trump’s ego, no doubt, is badly bruised.

Before the vote, he sent out an overt warning to countries contemplating to oppose him and his agenda, through his UN envoy Nikki Haley: “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, 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.”

India, however, despite the growing business and geopolitical chumminess with the US – which they well recognize as a counter to China’s ambitions in Asia and beyond, stuck to its steadfast diplomatic decision on Jerusalem, mindful of its vast business and economic interests in the 57 member countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The bet is also that the newly formed quartet of Australia-India-Japan-United States – again a snub to China’s opportunism in the region – would continue to grow in strength and purpose despite internal differences with the US, on West Asia.

India’s justifiable decision is also based on the calculation that Trump’s fixation on Jerusalem is an election rhetoric fulfilled. But it could be short-lived, come the 2020 elections, given the deeply divisive politics, and unpredictability that hovers today in America, despite a strong economy and tax cuts to benefit businesses and individuals.

Importantly, it’s also India’s way to indicate their growing displeasure to Trump.

India wants Trump to know that barring defence deals – more beneficial to the US, at the cost of Russia – the US has constantly come down hard on India, shown a devious carrot and stick diplomatic approach, which they are beginning to resent.

Trump has smartly tapped into Modi’s eagerness to strengthen India’s armed forces, and the allocation of $53.5 billion budget for it. In the recent past, India signed a deal worth Rs. 5,000 crore with the US for 145 M777 ultra-light howitzers. Lockheed Martin Corp. has tied up with Tata Advanced Systems Ltd. to bid for India’s $12-billion fighter jet deal.

India has mixed emotions about Trump’s position on Pakistan. Despite some hard talk by the US on Pakistan, the fact remains that one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, Hafiz Saeed, is walking around scot free, and partaking in the political process in Pakistan. The US has chosen to ignore India’s pleas on Saeed.

There are other growing irritants at play, regardless of the vote on Jerusalem.

Major case in point: the H-1B visa. Even as India have been beseeching for months for the work visa to be left alone, not meddled with, the US has gleefully gone about issuing rank protectionist measures to curb legal immigration, without even bothering to get a nod from Capitol Hill.

Realization has finally dawned that Trump doesn’t care two hoots for India’s concerns on the H-1B visa, despite all the goodwill between him and Modi, and growing bilateral relations. He doesn’t care for the likely drastic repercussions on India’s IT services sector.

“Our problem, which we have brought to their attention, is that you cannot and should not be doing things which discriminate against Indian companies even though you have not named them,” R Chandrashekhar, president of NASSCOM, was quoted as saying, on the H-1B visa issue, by The Economic Times. Lambasting the HR-170, The Protect and Grow American Jobs Act, which may likely become law soon, and raise the H-1B minimum salary to $90,000, he added: “We see this as clearly discriminatory because it affects only the large Indian companies and will have the effect of tilting the playing field against Indian companies.”

For decades now, India has been recognized as an important business partner by the US, so Trump has not really lifted the bar much higher. He has only stuck to that established legacy, while uplifting India through rhetoric more than previous administration, to strike and try curb China’s ambitions.

While Obama’s National Security Strategy of 2010 called India one of the “key centers of influence” in the 21st century, it was upgraded as “historic opportunities” between the two countries, in his 2015 vision.  So, it’s dubious what ‘Major Defense Partner’ status under Trump really entails, since India was already one for the US during the previous two administrations.

It’s not only the issue of work visas, which is causing internal friction.

Earlier this week, the US decided to drag India to the World Trade Organization court, in its dispute over solar power, which will, no doubt, lead to fresh round of acrimonious litigation.

It remains to be seen how Trump will execute his vengeance on India for its vote on Jerusalem. But for now, all these small cuts, from the H-1B visa issue, to solar power, is creating slow but steady friction between the two largest democracies.

(Sujeet Rajan is Executive Editor, Parikh Worldwide Media. Email him: sujeet@newsindiatimes Follow him on Twitter @SujeetRajan1)

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A Virginia businessman who used shell companies to fraudulently apply for nearly a thousand foreign workers’ visas will spend 28 months in federal prison before he is likely deported to India.

Also, his wife and U.S.-born son are being sent back.

For years Raju Kosuri ran what prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, federal court described as a visa-for-sale system using the H1-B program for specialized foreign workers, making over $20 million in the process. He pleaded guilty last year to visa fraud and making false statements.

President Donald Trump has frequently criticized the H1-B program, at times suggesting he would eliminate it altogether.

Kosuri, 45, was initially facing far more prison time as leader of the fraud conspiracy. Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said in court Friday that problems with the prosecution of the case led to a more lenient sentence, but that she had to send a message to anyone considering similar malfeasance.

The H1B-visa program “has the potential to yield great financial rewards,” the judge said. “The temptation is there.”

Kosuri’s wife, Smriti Jharia, 46, is one of the immigrants he illegally sponsored. She pleaded guilty to falsely obtaining naturalization and agreed Friday to move back to India immediately and give up her American citizenship. She said their son, a native U.S. citizen who has never lived in India, will go with her.

Steve McCool, Jharia’s attorney, said his client “was grateful that she was permitted to voluntarily remove herself from the United States. Unfortunately, her son has to pay a heavy price for her criminal conduct.”

Charges against three other defendants allegedly involved in the scheme were dismissed after Brinkema found prosecutors had failed to turn over relevant evidence, according to court records. A sixth defendant was allowed to withdraw her guilty plea; she went to trial earlier this month and a verdict has not yet been reached.

“This has been a long and unusual case,” said Kosuri’s attorney, Stuart Sears. “He regrets his conduct, and he and his family have paid a tremendous price.”

Starting in 2000, Kosuri launched over a dozen businesses that claimed to provide information technology services out of Danville, Virginia. In fact, he admitted they existed merely as vehicles to get visas for Indian nationals who would actually work elsewhere.

Kosuri, who immigrated from India in 1999 and was a lawful permanent resident, was paid millions by the companies where those visa recipients worked. Kosuri also obtained millions in bank financing by misrepresenting his business, as well as a $500,000 grant from the Virginia Tobacco Commission. He and his wife tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to win federal contracts through the Small Business Administration through one of the companies.

Seventy-one percent of H-1B visa recipients came from India in 2015, according to a 2016 DHS. Giant multinational outsourcing firms based in India every year submit tens of thousands of applications for workers in the technology and engineering fields.

“If fraud like the [Kosuri’s] becomes too prevalent, the result may be that the H-1B process is severely cut back,” Assistant United States Attorney Jack Hanly wrote in a court filing. “That would be a major setback for those who use the program honestly and benefit from its availability.”

In April Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa program and announced new steps to combat fraud and abuse, including unannounced site visits to companies with a high ratio of workers from the program.

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Program supports new career opportunities and allows patients to receive care in their native languages

LONG ISLAND CITY, NY

LaGuardia Community College/CUNY (“LaGuardia”) and the NYC Department of Small Business Services (“SBS”) today announced that 41 participants have graduated from the first class of a new Bilingual Medical Assistant Training Program, which provides immigrant New Yorkers with a path to a new career. The program trains English language learners to use their native language skills and cultural knowledge to ease communication between health care providers and patients. In addition to learning how to administer blood draws, EKGs, and other essential tasks of a medical assistant, participants learn the core competencies needed to serve as a member of a clinical team providing patient-centered care, a model of personalized, coordinated care that’s emphasized under today’s health care system.

The Bilingual Medical Assistant Training Program was launched earlier this year as a partnership between LaGuardia, SBS and its New York Alliance for Careers in Healthcare (“NYACH”) industry partnership. It was inspired by feedback from healthcare organizations across the city, which indicated the need for a more diverse workforce able to serve patients with limited English proficiency. Just 51% of New Yorkers speak only English at home; the most common non-English languages spoken in NYC are Cantonese, Mandarin, and Spanish. More than half of the 41 graduates of the first cohort speak Spanish. Additional languages spoken by members of the first cohort include Bahasa, Bengali, Cantonese, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Urdu.

Medical assistants are increasingly important members of care teams, with growing responsibilities that include patient education, record-keeping, and more, according to a report issued last month by NYACH.

The program is offered tuition-free, due to funding from SBS and Robin Hood. With no cost to participants, the program is designed to reach underemployed and unemployed New Yorkers. Starting employees typically earn$15-19/hour and work full-time hours.

“Providing new pathways to employment for New Yorkers of any background, is a cornerstone of what we do here — especially for low-income, recent immigrant, and otherwise disadvantaged New Yorkers, who make up the majority of our student population,” said LaGuardia Community College President Gail O. Mellow. “We know that New Yorkers who speak limited English have fewer job options. As a result, many are underemployed or unemployed (nearly one-third of the first cohort were unemployed before the program). This program provides them with a solid pathway to a steady job.”

“The millions of immigrants that call New York City home should have every opportunity to make it here,” said Gregg Bishop, Commissioner of the NYC Department of Small Business Services. “Through the Bilingual Medical Assistant Training Program, we’re helping foreign—born New Yorkers overcome obstacles, gain valuable skill sets, and connect to secure career paths.”

Curriculum & Program Model of Bilingual Medical Assistant Training Program Designated as a Best Practice for Replication Across The City University of New York’s (CUNY) by NYACH & SBS

“LaGuardia Community College has a deep and proven expertise in helping non-native English speakers expand their English language skills, especially through instruction contextualized for specific occupations, and in providing quality medical assistant training,” said Hannah Weinstock, Executive Director of Workforce Development within LaGuardia Community College’s Division of Adult and Continuing Education. “Medical assistants are key members of the patient care team and the ongoing transformation of the US health care delivery system requires that they be equipped with additional skills and competencies, which we have integrated into our enhanced curriculum.”

The Bilingual Medical Assistant Training Program curriculum includes advanced English language instruction delivered in part at SBS’ Washington Heights Workforce1 Career Center, where other integrated services tailored to this population were also offered. Students then transitioned to medical assistant training that included medical vocabulary in participants’ native languages, administrative medical office skills, clinical skills including EKG and phlebotomy, and NYACH’s identified core competencies including patient-centered communication, interdisciplinary teamwork, cultural competence, health coaching, care coordination, and more. In order to graduate, students were required to pass the National Healthcareer Association’s EKG, Phlebotomy, and Certified Clinical Medical Assistant certifications, and complete a 100-hour competency-based internship program where they receive clinical experience.

Outcomes have been superb. Of students in the two pilot cohorts, over 90% completed the more than 500-hour year-long evening and weekend training, and 100% of those that completed the program passed the national certification exams in CPR, EKG, Phlebotomy, and Certified Clinical Medical Assisting.

The high-quality training was noticed by hiring managers. A representative of employer-partner Community Healthcare Network commented, “When I interviewed students for the internships, I was inspired and impressed by their resumes and life experiences… [They were] a special group of people with a lot of drive and talent. It is a great opportunity for us to host them and we are happy to provide some transition from education to practice.”

The students are extremely grateful for the opportunity. Recent graduate Xuanmei Zhang wanted to pursue a job in the medical field. But as a new-immigrant struggling to make ends meet, investing her limited funds in a training program seemed too risky. So when she learned of the tuition-free Bilingual Medical Assistant Training Program, she jumped at the chance to apply to it.

“I have to support myself and there is no extra money that I can spend on things if I am not sure it is valuable. I decided to start this program because I did not need to worry about tuition. The only thing I needed to do was put my efforts to try and change my career,” said Xuanmei, who arrived in the US in 2010 from China where she had worked for a textile company. “Our class was intensive and it was not easy. However, my classmates and I persevered and we received all the national certifications. Through the program, I secured an internship at Charles B. Wang, a Chinese community health center. They recently offered me a full-time job starting at $18 an hour, which I’ll start in January 2018, and I can’t wait! Not only has this program allowed me to change my career, but it’s also encouraged me to pursue higher education—I recently enrolled at LaGuardia to pursue a nursing degree.”

About NYACH
NYACH is an industry partnership, bringing together multiple stakeholders of the healthcare workforce development system in order to address the industry’s rapidly changing labor force needs. NYACH is a public-private partnership between the NYC Department of Small Business Services, the Workforce Funders, and JP Morgan Chase Foundation. For more information, visit nyachnyc.org

About Robin Hood
Robin Hood, New York’s largest poverty-fighting organization, finds, funds and creates over 200 of the most effective programs, to help 1.8 million New Yorkers learn and earn their way out of poverty.

About the Department of Small Business Services (SBS)
SBS helps unlock economic potential and create economic security for all New Yorkers by connecting New Yorkers to good jobs, creating stronger businesses, and building a fairer economy in neighborhoods across the five boroughs. For more information on all SBS services, go to nyc.gov/sbs, call 311, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

About LaGuardia Community College
LaGuardia Community College located in Long Island City, Queens, educates more than 50,000 New Yorkers annually through degree, certificate, and continuing education programs. Our guiding principle Dare To Do More reflects our belief in the transformative power of education—not just for individuals, but for our community and our country—creating pathways for achievement and safeguarding the middle class. LaGuardia is a national voice on behalf of community colleges, where half of all US college students study. Part of the City University of New York (CUNY), the College reflects the legacy of our namesake, Fiorello H. LaGuardia, the former NYC mayor beloved for his championing the underserved. Since our doors opened in 1971, our programs regularly become national models for pushing boundaries to give people of all backgrounds access to a high quality, affordable college education. We invite you to join us in imagining what our students, our community, and our country can become. Visit http://www.LaGuardia.edu to learn more.

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NEW YORK – There are at least 300,000 children on an H-4 visa who may be forced to leave the United States if they don’t succeed in changing their immigration status by the age of 21, like a F-1 student visa or an H-1B visa, or get permanent residency.

These children are known as “H4 Dreamers” who came to the U.S. under the dependence of their parents who are mostly on H-1B visas, but when they turn 21, they are bound to lose everything if they do not change their visa status and will have to go back to India.

Today, some of these “H4 dreamers” are in their pre-teens and teens and fear their future, but a few have already been sent back to India, like Himani Punja.

In a MyStatesman article written by her father Ramesh Punja back in October, Himani had no choice but to go back to India after spending nearly her whole entire life here.

“Juvenile memories — such as her lemonade stands and attending prom her senior year — are some of the beautiful things she had to leave behind. We still cannot digest the reality of the situation. As a parent, it is bearable to see your child leave home voluntarily for college or their career — but not when they’re forced to leave through the result of unfair laws. She initially went back to India alone last year with a big smile and positive attitude. Since then, life has been a struggle to live for her: assimilating to a new culture, undergoing chronic illnesses due to her environment in India, and trying to figure out her life in general,” Punja wrote in his article.

“She says it feels like someone has spontaneously taken everything away, including her identity. On top of that, her college education in the U.S. was abruptly stopped because she was unable to obtain a student visa; there is a law where gaps between a dependent visa and the college semester start date should not exceed 30 days. Unfortunately, she was five days over the limit. She has since applied to another university in India, where she will spend another four years studying. She hadn’t been able to see us for a year but later opted for a visa to “visit” a nation that is practically her home. Due to the laws, it is difficult for us to even visit her and even our own parents. We haven’t been to India in nearly eight years,” he continues.

What’s the reason for this?

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, there are 140,000 employment-based green cards available each year but only 7 percent of them are available each year for those from India.

In short, there is a backlog of green cards which has lasted for decades and many “H4 dreamers” are stuck in this vicious cycle as they have already applied for a green card years ago when they came to this country with their parents, but their H-1B parents themselves have been waiting on theirs.

A National Foundation for American Policy report estimates that Indians could wait as many as 70 years for a green card to become available in the EB-3 category, which covers skilled workers, professionals, and unskilled workers.

A majority of the skilled workers who are seeking EB-3 green cards and are currently on H-1B visas come from India and according to figures from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, more than 2.1 million H-1B visas went to Indian nationals over the last 10 years.

As of 2016, there are 1.5 million high skilled immigrants of Indian origin waiting in line for a green card and every year the U.S. issues one million green cards, of which only 80,000 are EB-2 and EB-3, employment based visas.

With a 7 percent country cap, only about 5,000 green cards can be distributed for each country in a year, regardless of that country’s size and contribution to the American economy and since India has a massive amount of green card applicants, it suffers a huge backlog.

The Skilled Immigrants in America (SIIA), a non-profit organization which has 150,000 members, has already requested that the country cap on green cards be removed immediately.

In a Columbus Dispatch article, 12-year-old Shrivatsan, or Shri mentioned that he dreams to “work part time in high school, go to college and work for NASA one day.”

“When I heard about this, I had mixed emotions, because I really wanted to stay here and grow up with my friends. I thought I could stay here as long as I wanted, and I could work for NASA when I grow up, and I could go to college without paying an entire admission fee,” Shri told the Columbus Dispatch.

But without a green card, he can’t work and will still have to pay for college out of his pocket because he is not eligible for student loans and when it comes to starting his career, Shri will most likely have to apply for the same visa his dad holds, an H-1B, but that too has its own backlog.

The sad part is that Shri’s parents as well as other H4 dreamers’ parents, have followed the law while living in the U.S., paying their taxes and following legal instruction regarding their visas, all along.

“We just want to follow the law and get green cards. We are just asking for fairness,” Ashwin, another skilled worker who is also a local advocate for skilled workers, told the Columbus Dispatch.

Ashwin himself has a 7-year-old boy who may fall into the same circumstance like Shri and Himani in the future.

If not a green card then obtaining an F-1 student visa after H4 dreamers graduate high school, is one way in which they would be allowed to stay in the country and gain a college education in the U.S. but they would still have to pay more than what they could be paying if on a green card and would still have to apply for an H-1B visa upon graduation.

According to a Bloomberg BNA article, another option is applying for an E-2 visa as they are analogous because the visa can be renewed every five years with no limit on how long the visa holder can stay.

“But that can only happen if the Recognizing America’s Children Act or the H.R. 1468, a Republican-backed alternative to the more bipartisan Dream Act, gets passed as the bill would provide lawful status to the children of E-2 treaty investor visas, who essentially are in the same position as the children of H-1B workers,” immigration attorney Greg Siskind of Siskind Susser told Bloomberg BNA.

“It’s unfair that somebody born in Monaco gets to the front of the line and somebody born in India has to go to the back of the line and eliminating per-country caps is a good place to start, but we need some kind of mechanism for our green card system to expand,” Siskind added.

Harshit Chatur, a finance director in Houston, told Bloomberg BNA that “we accepted as a norm” that it would take five or 10 years to get a green card, but never realized it could be 70 years or even 300 years” as most Indians didn’t realize until a few years ago that being in the green card backlog will actually become a major problem.

Chatur added that he feels for the undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as young children “because it’s not the kids’ fault,” but is also upset about the lack of legislative proposals that could be put into place to help these dependent children of H-1B workers, “why can’t they see the pain of legal parents?”

Unfortunately, H4 dreamers aren’t protected under the DREAM Act or the DACA.

The H.R.392 bill is being introduced in Congress for the fourth time and has never made it to the floor and though it has close to 300 bipartisan cosponsors, it hasn’t found any numbers in the senate because it seems to be too small compared to other legislative actions that need to be taken care of first.

The SIIA met about 150 Congress members on Capitol Hill between October 23 and 24, to present their case.

“I am very scared and I fail to understand why I will not be allowed an admission into the college I aspire for”, Saana Mahajan, a sixth grader from New Jersey asked one lawmaker as the main question in all 20 children’s minds was “why are we, kids of legal taxpaying immigrants getting ignored by Congress?”

Many lawmakers did seem to be unaware of these problems and showed their support for H-1B visa holders and their H4 dreamer children.

The U.S. has given only 14 percent of its green cards to skilled workers whereas other countries give as much as 50 percent and many believe that the percentage should increase in the U.S. as H-1B immigrants have always been adding value to the economy.

Another proposal that has been brought up is the issue of unused green card numbers, which should be allowed a methodical roll over or recaptured the same year, but that has happened only twice in the last 30 years.

Currently 500,000 green cards are wasted every year and if the number is regulated, then it can eliminate the backlog.

“SIIA recommends that immediate family members should be excluded from the count and to temporarily increase the employment based green cards for a brief 2-3 years period. This will release the backlog to a great extent,” said Chatur.

“SIIA propagates that simple lifting of the country cap can do a magic easing the backlog. The country cap is part of immigration law passed 50 years ago. Today in an entirely changed economic and social scenario, this provision cannot see a relevant light,” he added.

Although the SIIA did receive positive feedback from their trip to Capitol Hill in October, they are doubtful that anything will be done.

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The BJP victory in Gujarat, especially the slim margin, indicates Modi’s ‘Midas Touch’ is the best bet for winning in 2018 and 2019, say experts, investors, and Gujarati-Americans

As election results began streaming in Dec. 18, Gujarati-Americans held their breath hoping their charismatic leader Narendra Modi would pull another rabbit out of the hat in light of dismal poll predictions. And he did. The Bharatiya Janata Party won 98 of the 182 seats instead of its expected 150, a 7 seat majority in the state assembly, and a one percent vote gain over 2012; The Congress Party walked away with 77 seats, increasing its vote gain by more than 10 percent. Despite snatching Himachal Pradesh from the Congress, the BJP ranks and leadership is rightly mulling future strategies for retaining power in the three major states, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh, in 2018. And experts here agree Modi remains BJP’s best hope for 2019, to counter what appears to be a creeping resurgence of the Congress, which played its best or worst “soft saffron” strategy to counter BJP sloganeering like “Aurangzeb Raj” and “Mughalization’.

U.S. Academics

“A win is a win,” regardless of the margin, said Walter Andersen, former senior State Department official, whose academic career has been devoted to the study of the BJP and Hindutva, and who has an upcoming book entitled, “The Messengers of Dharma: Hindu, Hindutva, and the RSS.” Modi, Andersen said, pulled the BJP out of a early morass and lack of inspiration, to push it over the victory line, no small feat in light of Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi’s seeming new avatar, and the Young Turks among Patels. “Congress played a ‘soft saffron’ strategy. Rahul went to 21 temples and no mosques,” for example. And there was no mention of the 2002 communal riots, Andersen and others noted.

Milan Vaishnav, senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing on the heels of the election outcomes, (“Modi’s going to have a much tougher 2018 than anyone’s expecting”) echoed the analysis of other American academics interviewed. “Opportunistic quid pro quos” and a combination of rural Gujarat’s relative disenchantment, the urban support for Modi, and the impact of caste politics and larger economic policies, impacted the results, Vaishnav and others, including Professor Devesh Kapur, director of University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Advanced Study of India, indicated.

“For the BJP, Modi is their ‘numero uno’,” said Professor Kapur, author of several books on India, including, Diaspora, Democracy and Development: The Impact of International Migration from India on India. “If it was not for the fact that the PM is a great campaigner, if he had not put in the effort, the election would have gone another way,” Kapur added. Nevertheless, he cautioned any predictions of 2019 saying it rested on many variables. “But we can say for sure – what looked to be an easy march, is now not likely,” just as the fiery young Patidar leaders like Hardik Patel, were not foreseen two years ago in that state, he pointed out.

In his paper, Vaishnav noted the Congress “kept its ego in check to form convenient alliances in Gujarat,” Vaishnav said. Where it had tried to “crush” upstarts like Hardik Patel, Congress not only accommodated him, but also Other Backward Castes leader Alpesh Thakor and Dalit activist Jignesh Mevani. “The Congress organization may still be in intensive care, but at least it has a pulse,” Vaishnav said.

Communications Professor Ramesh Rao of Columbus State University, was more strident. The author of the 2015 book, “The Election that Shaped Gujarat & the Rise of Narendra Modi to National Stardom,” 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.”

Congress’ resort to caste, Andersen said, “forced the BJP to play soft-caste tactics.” Analysts also underestimate the impact of the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, “which was very active in bringing up the BJP vote,” Andersen added. “The advantage BJP has in 2019 is Modi is their leader – no one compares with him,” Andersen concluded.

Rao 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’,” Rao countered, emphasizing the words.

Andersen qualified Rao’s critique of Western media and academics, saying, “Most Indian academics (his emphasis) in the U.S. dislike Modi,” not everyone.

“There is a group here, concentrated in academia, who simply don’t like Mr. Modi, no matter what he does. And vice versa. A nuanced approach is important,” Professor Kapur said.

“Gujarati Pride”

Gujarati-Americans unabashedly credit Modi with BJP’s election win, maintaining that the Prime Minister’s economic and development policies and leadership, saved the day. They, along with academics, are convinced the BJP would have lost were it not for the frenetic last few weeks of Modi’s statewide campaign.

Srujal Parikh, the incoming president of the Federation of Indian Associations of the New York tri-state area, one of the largest and oldest organization of Indian-Americans in this country, describes himself as a “diehard fan” of the BJP. The Gujarati-American community was “worried” by the polls days before the elections, he says. “This election is the biggest lesson they (BJP) have learnt – that they must have a proper leader rather than what they have now,” Srujal 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.

“Gujarati Pride,” is what Modi has imbibed in and what keeps more than 90 percent of Gujarati Americans behind Modi, says Andersen. Srujal Parikh conceded the common man in Gujarat is feeling some economic pain. “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.

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.”

“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).”

“Ninety five percent, if not more, of Gujarati-Americans are Modi supporters,” opined Andersen. “He has been able to touch “Gujarati Pride,” he added.

The community is holding celebrations on the Gujarat victory. And at one such celebration in Hicksville, New York, Jagdish Sewhani, president of the group, American India Public Affairs Committee, said, “… we need to work in a mission mode for the 2019 general election. Our objective should be not only to re-elect BJP, but also target 450 Lok Sabha seats and 50 percent of the popular votes. Such a strong mandate and popular government is essential to accelerate the pace of development march on the path of New India that we all dream of.”

Investors

Meanwhile, the U.S. investment community is encouraged by the BJP victory in Gujarat, according to some India experts, and others who are part of the corporate world interested in India.

“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.

. “Investors always like stability, and BJP’s win portends stability in 2019, as does the by-and-large favorable and reasonable record on infrastructure, GST, etc.” Kapur said, adding, “You can imagine the turmoil if BJP had lost in Gujarat.” The medium and long-term projections for the investor community are good, Kapur maintains. Despite the ups and downs, demonetization, the GST, and the positive bankruptcy code, could show positive results in the future which, “will be undoubtedly good for the country” he adds. Also, BJP’s fortunes are dependent on results of 2018 elections in heartland states like Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh.

As a business insider, 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 double-down 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.

The business headlines in the United States spell “stability” says Andersen and that’s always a positive for U.S. investors. “India should continue to attract investment,” he predicted.

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When one clicks on Dr. Sapan Shah’s campaign website for his Republican primary race for the U.S. Congress from the 10th District of Illinois, you see a wonderful video of a family celebrating Christmas. Dr. Shah and his wife, Rachna, greet parents, relatives and friends, exchange gifts, remember his childhood, his graduation from medical school and law school, all in the backdrop of a beautiful Christmas tree and a table laden with choice dishes. That approximately one minute video reveals much about the man who promises “to bring real world experience and common sense to Washington, D.C.” – that he is proud of his Indian heritage, his qualifications and accomplishments, and has weathered some mishaps, like the flooding of his house twice over the years.

The Republican primary is scheduled for March 20, and Shah will be competing against two other Republicans who have announced their candidacy so far and are vying for the party’s endorsement. They are Highland Park activist and lawyer Jeremy Wynes who declared in May.  Wynes has also worked for the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, and is responsible for launching the Chicago office of the Republican Jewish Coalition. The other candidate is Doug Bennett, a computer consultant and vice chair of West Deerfield Township Republicans.

The District 10 seat is currently held by Democrat Brad Schneider, and were Shah to win in the primary, he may have a challenge defeating the three-term incumbent who is unopposed for the Democratic primary.

Crain’s Chicago Business describes Dr. Shah as the “Number 1” candidate of the three Republicans vying for party support, in what is considered an expensive race for Congress. “Many insiders believe unseating him (Brad Schneider) now is a real long shot, given how 2018 is shaping up. But political predictions are risky nowadays,” Crain’s said. The same report said that as of early November, Dr. Shah has retained Core Strategy Group and local consultant Scott McPherson for his campaign, and that he had raised $310,000 till then, including $100,000 of his own money. That is the highest amount of the three candidates. Wynes had raised $260,000, and Bennett $125,000 by that date, Crain’s reported.

Dr. Shah runs a malpractice insurance brokerage he founded in 2007, Flagship Healthcare, which according to his website, supports some  800 physicians and several hospitals throughout the country. Shah plans to term-limit himself to a maximum of 6 years on Capitol Hill, “and then pass the torch on to the next citizen legislator.”

Born in Waukegan in 1980, Dr. Shah was brought up in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was accepted into a prestigious direct medical program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he graduated magna cum laude in just two years. He went on to earn his law degree in two years and his medical degree in four.

Shah is married to Rachna, also a graduate in medicine.  They attended undergrad and medical school together and married in 2005, soon after which the couple moved back home to Chicago.

Shah also serves as membership chair for Hyde Park Angels, an early stage investment group. He has invested in twenty-five start-ups over the past three years, according to his website. He is admitted to the Illinois Bar, and serves on the Board of Advisors for Burke Medical Research Institute. He is active in his Hindu Temple in Des Plaines.

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NEW YORK – A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is developing new depth sensors that could be sensitive enough to make self-driving vehicles practical.

The Camera Culture group at MIT’s Media Lab, which comprises two Indian American researchers, Ramesh Raskar and Achuta Kadambi, has been developing innovative imaging systems by using “time of flight” – an approach that gauges distance by measuring the time it takes light projected into a scene to bounce back to a sensor.

In a new paper in the journal IEEE Access, the team has presented a new approach to time-of-flight imaging that increases its depth resolution 1,000-fold – the type of resolution that could make self-driving cars practical.

The new approach could also enable accurate distance measurements through fog, which has proven to be a major obstacle to the development of self-driving cars.

“As you increase the range, your resolution goes down exponentially,” said Kadambi, a joint Ph.D. student in electrical engineering and computer science and media arts and sciences.

At a range of two meters, existing “time-of-flight” systems have a depth resolution of about a centimeter. That’s good enough for the assisted-parking and collision-detection systems on today’s cars.

Kadambi conducted tests in which he sent a light signal through 500 meters of optical fiber with regularly spaced filters along its length.

The tests suggest that at a range of 500 meters, the MIT system should still achieve a depth resolution of only a centimeter.

“We’re modulating the light at a few gigahertz, so it’s like turning a flashlight on and off millions of times per second. But we’re changing that electronically, not optically. The combination of the two is really where you get the power for this system,” explained Raskar, dead of the Camera Culture group.

Last year, Raskar was named the winner of the Lemelson-MIT Prize, which recognizes individuals who translate their ideas into inventions that improve the world. The Indian American researcher was awarded $500,000 for the prestigious prize.

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Indian American Karthik Krishnan was appointed as the global chief executive officer at Encyclopedia Britannica Group.

Krishnan previously served for more than a decade at RELX (Reed Elsevier, FTSE 100) where he served as senior vice president and drove business and cultural transformations, accelerating growth.

He was also the senior vice president and general manager of Clinical Reference Solutions as well as the general manager of Global Pharma and eCommerce and the vice president of Interactive Media.

According to prnewswire.com, Krishnan served close to a decade as a digital transformation consultant at Rodale, publisher of healthy active living magazines and books, where he charted its digital journey by launching award-winning websites, developing e-commerce channels, and forging business partnerships, which included Microsoft and AOL.

Krishnan was recognized by former President Clinton for his leadership in launching the Urban Enterprise Initiative and currently serves on the board of Urban Upbound, a nonprofit focused on transforming the lives of people in public housing.

Krishnan is working as an adjunct professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and holds a Master of Business Administration from NYU and a Bachelor of Engineering from Bharathiar University in India.

“I’m excited to be part of Team Britannica because the brands underpinned by their strong missions have the potential to change the face of the knowledge and education industries globally. Given the global push to transform education and the eroding public trust in the quality and veracity of information on the Internet, the time is now for Team Britannica to join forces with consumers and public and private entities to make a positive difference,” Krishnan told prnewswire.com.

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NEW YORK – Indian American general surgeon Paresh Patel and his wife Chandralekha Patel, an oncologist, will be setting up a camp called Aloha Medical Mission starting Jan. 6, to perform surgeries on 600 patients in the Charotar region of central Gujarat.

“The Aloha Medical Mission wanted to conduct a camp in India. Although they were keen on organizing the camp in South India, I insisted that their services are also needed in this rural belt of Gujarat,” said Patel, 75, told The Times of India.

“In all a team of seven surgeons, three dentists, five anesthesiologists, one plastic surgeon and one ENT surgeon will be camping at Borsad from January 6 to January 19 to operate the patients,” he added.

According to the Times of India, Patel completed his MBBS and earned his MS from Baroda Medical College in 1966, he then moved to East Africa for two years and later the U.S.

The team from US will perform gastro intestinal surgery, treat congenital deformities and also provide free mechanical prosthesis to patients who have amputation of hands.

According to the Times of India, Patel is also the president of the Chovis Gam Sacchidanand Medical and Research Center which runs Shraddha Hospital and after leaving Cleveland, Ohio, he started the hospital in Borsad in 2006, turning it into a 100-bed state-of-the-art hospital equipped with four modular operating rooms and ICU.

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NEW YORK – Shree Narayan Singh, the director of Toilet Ek Prem Katha was thrilled when he found out that Bill Gates loved his film after Prime Minister Narendra Modi already praised it before.

According to a PTI report, Gates gave a 10-tweet rundown for the year and shared some posts that inspired him in 2017.

“There’s no denying that 2017 was a really tough year… but it also delivered some amazing moments of hope and progress. Here are some inspiring tweets that you may have missed. Toilet: A Love Story, a Bollywood romance about a newlywed couple, educated audiences about Indias sanitation challenge,” Gates tweeted.

“I am falling short of words. It’s difficult for me to say this in mere words to express my gratitude towards Mr. Gates for appreciating a simple film like TEPK. But it definitely gives me a big high hearing appreciation from someone like Bill Gates. I mean…wow! Is Mr. Gates aware of any other Hindi film?” Singh told IANS.

Singh added that the film would have been incomplete without the lead actor Akshay Kumar, after many A-list actors including Shah Rukh Khan, refused to do the film which is about a bride who leaves her husband’s home when she finds out that there is no toilet in the home and will have to go into the fields at 4 a.m. every day.

“Once Akshay Sir came on board everything fell into place. His dedication to making ‘Toilet: Ek Prem Katha’ is indescribable. He would be the first one on the sets even if we shot till 1 am on the previous night. Normally he doesn’t shoot for more than 8 hours per day. But I only had to ask and he would be there for me, all ready and raring to go as long as I wanted him. He treated me like a child who needs nurturing. I don’t know if I could’ve made this film without Akshay Sir. His passion and dedication are very inspiring,” Singh told IANS.

Singh’s next film will be titled “Batti Gul Meter Chalu” and is about power theft, featuring Shahid Kapoor in the lead.

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An Indian American physician was found dead on December 12 in his Park Avenue, New York, apartment, with glassine envelopes of heroin residue near his body.

Ravindra ‘Ravi’ Rajmane, a pulmonary physician at New York University’s School of Medicine, had not been to work since December 8. A co-worker went to his apartment on December 12 with a building maintenance man, and found the physician dead on his bed.

The New York Police Department has not yet determined his death to be selfinflicted as an autopsy has not yet been completed.

The envelopes of heroin residue found near Rajmane’s body were labeled ‘Knock Out King, know n little among drug forums.

According to Urban Dictionary, ‘Knock Out King’ is a frightening game played by teens, who appoint a leader and then choose a defenseless victim at random. The leader then confronts the victim and punches him out cold, while others take a video of the attack.

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