Vol.7 Issue 46 March 21-27, 2015

The South Asian Times
e x c e l l e n c e
Vol.7 No. 46 March 21-27, 2015 60 Cents
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Exclusive Interview
Xavier medical school is growing in global repute
Amb. Mulay launches

new outreach program:
'Consulate At
Your Doorstep'
Jordans Minister of Higher Education Dr Amin Mahmoud visited the Xavier
University School of Medicine campus in Aruba as well as Wyckoff Heights
Medical Center in New York, where Xavier students go for clinical rotations.
Seen in the picture are (front row, from left) Xavier President Ravishankar
Bhooplapur, Dr Mahmoud, Chancellor Dr J.G Bhat (second from right),
Wyckoff CEO Ramon Rodriguez (back row left) and other dignitaries.
Detailed story on page 2.
ISIS claims responsibility IAS officer's death: Centre

ready for CBI probe
for Tunisia attack
if Karnataka agrees
A member of the Tunisian security

forces stands guard at the visitors
entrance of the Bardo Museum in Tunis.
Tunis, Tunisia: Police in Tunisia moved to

arrest nine people in connection with the terrorist attack even as Islamic State claimed
responsibility for Thursdays attack, in
which two gunmen armed with assault rifles
fired indiscriminately at tourists inside the
National Bardo Museum here killing at least
20 and wounding dozens.
The raid shocked Tunisia, regarded as a
bastion of moderate Islam and the only success story to emerge from the so-called Arab
Continued on page 4
Detailed story on pg 22
US AFFAIRS 9
OP ED 13
Bangalore/Delhi: The controversy surrounding the mysterious death of IAS officer

D.K. Ravi took on a stronger political color
on Thursday with the BJP-led central government saying it was ready for a CBI probe
if Congress-ruled Karnataka agreed to this.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh said in the
Lok Sabha that the central government was
ready to order a probe by the CBI into Ravi's
death. Ravi was found dead on March 16 in
his official apartment by his wife Kusuma.
Police prime facie termed the death as
Continued on page 4
D.K. Ravi was an upright officer known

for taking on land and sand mafia.
ICCWORLD CUP 24-25
During the New York consulates Community Outreach program in Boston earlier
this month, Amb. Dnyaneshwar Mulay presenting a plaque to Mayor Marty Walsh
with Rishikant Singh, Regional Manager-Americas, Air India, in the background.
By Jinal Shah
New York: Ever since he took charge as
Consul General of India in New York,
Amb. Dnyaneshwar Mulay has introduced
many programs to bridge the gap between
the Consulate and the ever growing Indian
community. One initiative he recently
rolled out is Consulate at your doorstep,
an outreach program to not only improve
relationship between the Consulate and the
community, but also to further the programs introduced by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi in India. Ambassador
Mulay shared his vision behind this program with The South Asian Times.
SPIRITUAL AWARENESS 30
Excerpts from the exclusive interview:

The South Asian Times: Can you share
a little bit about your outreach program
that you are currently undertaking?
Ambassador Mulay: Our approach has
been to build partnerships with the community and that partnership should be based
on mutual trust and something that will
help in the empowerment of the community
here in America, their improved role in
building relations between India and US
and helping out in their desire to contribute
towards Indias development in whatever
field they desire. But to do this, we needed
to improve relationship and increase interactions between
Continued on page 4
excellence in journalism
March 21-27, 2015
MEDICAL EDUCATION
XUSOM: Med school with growing global repute
Xavier University at Aruba has recently been recognized by Jordan, and starting this year has been approved for student loans in Canada.
avier University School of Medicine (XUSOM) is located

on the beautiful Caribbean island of Aruba. Located in the
capital, Oranjestad, the school has over a hundred thousand sq
ft of space offering cutting edge facilities for classroom teaching, small group learning, auditoriums, etc. A library equipped
with online access to a number of books, journals and online
databases, a canteen providing nutritious food and a National
Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) certified test center are
located on the campus. The school with students from over 17
countries has the mission of preparing leaders in primary health
care. XUSOM is committed to providing affordable quality
medical education to students and in addressing the physician
shortage noted in the US, Canada and other countries. A recent
article published in the journal Annals of Family Medicine
states that over 44,000 primary care physicians will be needed
in the next 20 years to meet demand in the US alone.
Visit by Jordans Deputy PM

XUSOM has been accredited by different agencies providing external certification of the quality of teaching-learning
offered. It has been provisionally accredited by the Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Education in Medicine and
other Health Professions (CAAM-HP). The school has been
recently recognized by the Ministry of Higher Education and
Scientific Research, Jordan, for the undergraduate medical
(MD) course as a non-Jordanian University, outside Jordan.
His Excellency, the honorable minister of Higher Education
and Scientific Research and Deputy Prime Minister of Jordan, Dr Amin Mahmoud visited the XUSOM campus in Aruba and the clinical facilities in New York State three weeks
ago. During his visit he interacted with the school management, faculty, students and also visited the Horacio Oduber
hospital, the main tertiary care hospital in Aruba.
In Aruba, Dr Mahmoud interacted with students of Middle
Eastern descent and with representatives of various student
organizations including the Student Government Association.
Both His Excellency and the students enjoyed the encounters. He interacted with XUSOM President, Mr. Ravishankar
Bhooplapur, the Dean Dr Arun Kumar Dubey and curriculum
committee members regarding teaching-learning activities in
the institution. He evinced keen interest in the new state of
the art campus in Aruba, the ground breaking ceremony for
which is scheduled in mid 2015. Bhooplapur introduced His
Excellency to the faculty members at a brief function.
Jordans Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Dr Amin Mahmoud touring XUSOM.
In New York Dr Mahmoud interacted with the school

management including the President Bhooplapur, Chairman
Edwin Casey and Chancellor Dr J.G. Bhat. During his visit
to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in New York, he met the
hospital CEO, Mr. Ramon Rodriguez and the CMO, Dr Gustavo Del Toro. Wyckoff is a key hospital for clinical rotations for Xavier University students and students undergo a
hospital observership at the Oduber hospital during the basic
science years. Dr Amin Mahmoud is a Jordanian politician,
educator and author. He has served three times as a minister,
and has been President of 4 Jordanian universities. He has
written widely on education and public health issues.
Approval for
Canadian loans
XUSOM attracts students from a variety of countries
and ethnic backgrounds including a large percentage
from Canada. Starting with 2015, it has been approved for
student financial assistance in the Canadian provinces of
Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. This will cut the
financial burden for Canadian students. Xavier is proud of
its expanding place in medical education.
Private loan programs

and scholarships
Xavier is offering affordable student loans to qualified students from Richland Savings Bank with attractive terms of repayment. US citizens and permanent residents can avail of this
loan program. Also offered are scholarships - up to $ 20,000 based on GPA and on USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 performance.
The integrated curriculum
His Excellency Dr Mahmoud interacting with

students of Middle Eastern descent at Xavier.
Dr Amin Mahmoud with Xavier President Mr Ravi

Bhooplapur and Chairperson Mr Edwin Casey.
From January 2013 the school has shifted to an integrated curriculum during the basic science years of the
program. XUSOM is one of the few Caribbean schools
offering a state-of-the-art integrated MD curriculum.
The Honorable Minister being introduced

to the faculty by President Bhooplapur.
Problem-based learning, active small group learning, the

medical humanities, behavioral and ethical aspects of medicine and early clinical exposure are emphasized. Students
are trained in critical appraisal of scientific literature. Prescribing skills, personal (P) drug selection, and counseling
is being emphasized and standardized patients are being increasingly used for both education and assessment.
We are confident that the students learning under the
integrated curriculum will have improved knowledge
and skills which will confer a significant advantage in
their licensing exams and future medical practice, comments Dr P Ravi Shankar, Chair of XUSOMs Curriculum Committee. He explains that in the US and Canada,
most medical schools follow an integrated basic sciences
curriculum during the first two years of the undergraduate medical (MD) course. Integrated learning provides a
powerful impetus to learn the basic sciences as students
are able to understand the importance of these subjects
to clinical practice. The United States Medical Licensing
Exam (USMLE) step 1 is increasingly using integrated
questions for assessment. And learning under an integrated curriculum is expected to improve student performance in this critical exam. Xavier offers standardized
examinations coordinated by the National Board of Medical Examiners, which prepares students for success in the
USMLE step 1 and provides them information on how
their performance compares to students in other medical
schools including those in the US and Canada.
Rising USMLE step 1 performance

Students who entered XUSOM under the new curriculum
have begun to sit for the exam in the last few months, and
the results have shown that XUSOMs curricular strategy is
working. Students are passing the exam at an even higher
rate, and are doing so with higher scores. USMLE scores
are important in helping students get good residencies.
High quality clinical rotations

To offer high quality clinical education, XUSOM has entered into affiliation agreements with over 31 hospitals in the
US and Canada, which have been accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) for
residencies in the respective disciplines. XUSOM has a single
curriculum committee which oversees teaching-learning and
the clinical dean and the clinical chairs of various disciplines
are members of the committee which meets frequently.
With a dynamic and inspired leadership, committed faculty and other human resources and state of the art infrastructure, Xavier University will confidently march ahead
in its mission of producing leaders in primary health care
and will continue to produce physicians with sound technical knowledge and good human and emotional skills!
Contact: XUSOM New York office: Ph. 516-333-2224; email admissions@xusom.com
TRISTATE COMMUNITY
March 21-27, 2015
NFIA meet draws US

politicians
Cerritos, CA: Recognizing the
growing influence of IndianAmericans in public life, several
top politicians, including three
women members of the US
Congress, attended the 18th biennial convention of the National
Federation of Indian American
Associations (NFIA).
The March 6-8 meeting of the
largest umbrella organization in
the US, representing over 3.5 million Americans of Indian origin,
in Cerritos, California was inaugurated by Indian Consul General
Venkatesan Ashok and California
State Treasurer John Chiang.
Besides US House members
Judy Chu, Loretta Sanchez, Linda
Sanchez, the convention was
attended by the Mayor of

Cerritos, Mark Pulido, according
to a media release.
The opening session on the convention theme "Indian Americans
Making an Impact in America"
was chaired by NFIA Founder
President Dr Thomas Abraham.
Three more sessions followed:
Indian Americans Contributing to
India, chaired by Inder Singh,
past NFIA chairman; Indian
American Impact in Technology
& Medicine, chaired by Boeing
Company Technical Fellow Paul
Sikand; and Impact in US-India
Trade & Business, chaired by
Amritt Inc MD Gunjan Bagla.
Speakers included Long Beach
Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal, for-
Honorees inclueded
included physician
Honorees
physicianBharat
BharatBarai
Baraiand
andAparna
AparnaHande
Handefor
forcommunity
communityservice,
service,TV
TVAsia
Asia
chairman
chairman H.R.
H.R. Shah,
Shah, musician
musician Rita Sahai, Kathak dancer Amrapali Ambegaokar, Rangaesh
Gadasalli
Gadasalli for
for medicine,
medicine, management consultant K.V. Kumar and attorney Navneet S. Chugh.
B.N.
B.N. Viswanath,
Viswanath, founder
founder of
of ITV,
ITV, was
was honored
honored posthumously.
posthumously.
mer Anaheim Councilman Harry

Sidhu, Stem cell therapy practitioner Dr Gaurav Goswami, and
Attorney Sunny Kalara.
New NFIA office bearers were
elected. Ashok Madan of
Southern California was elected
as president unopposed. Sudip
Gorakshakar from Washington
State was elected as Executive
Jennings of Girl Rising receives rst

Red Bangle Award at Consulate
In the next phase, the global campaign to change the lives of girls through education goes to India.
By Jinal Shah
New York: In celebration of
International Womens Day,
Womens Education Project (WEP)
on Monday honored Kaycee
Jennings of the Documentary
Group and producer of the film
Girl Rising with WEPs first ever
Red Bangle Award at the Indian
Consulate here. The award goes to
exceptional women who by their
life and accomplishment demonstrate the indomitable eloquence of
the human spirit and inspire others
to higher goals.
The film, from Oscar-nominated
director Richard E. Robbins, presents the stories of nine courageous
young girls/women from developing countries and the challenges
they overcame to pursue their
dreams. Jennings is the first to be
honored with the Red Bangle. She
accepted the award on behalf of the
nine young girls/women featured
in the film.
It could be depressing -extreme poverty, child marriage,
gender violence, child trafficking,
Mythili Rao of SAAJA, Zoe Timms, WEP project director,

and Kaycee Jennings, prroducer of Girl Rising.
(Photo: Parash Chettri)
HIV/AIDS -- except that there is a

solution: education. Let them go to
school, let them stay in school, let
them thrive, let them contribute to
our world, said Jennings adding,
These nine girls are the faces of
Girl Rising, they are also faces of
change - Sokha from Cambodia,
Wadly from Haiti, Suma from
Nepal, Yasmin from Egypt,
Asmera from Ethiopia, Ruksana
from India, Senna from Peru,
Mariama from Sierra Leone and
Amina from Afghanistan. I am
proud to be here representing

them. The circumstances these
girls come from were tough and
the barriers they face are truly
daunting, but these girls spirits are
indomitable. They are strong,
courageous and determined and
given an opportunity they can
change our world.
Take Ruksana, daughter of a
pavement dweller in Kolkata.
Ruksana is a dreamer. She sleeps
in the colorful world of her imagiContinued on page 4
Vice President. The three vice

presidents are Ajoy Dube from
California, Babu K Patel and
Satheesan Nair both from Illinois.
The position of the NFIA secretary went to Dr Yogendra Gupta
from Maryland and Joint
Secretary to Vasu Pawar from
Southern California. Makam
Subbarao
from
Southern
California was elected as the

Treasurer.
The new Board appointed
Chandu Patel from Southern
California as Chairman of the
NFIA Foundation, Dr Hari Har
Singh from NCR as Executive
Director (Administration) and Dr
Joydeb Roy from NCR as
Executive Director .
TNTs Cold Justicelands

Indian American killer in Jail
Los Angeles: TNTs Cold
Justice true crime series aired
on Mar. 6 an episode that delved
into the 2007 case of Rupinder
Kaur Goraya, who went missing
from her home in Bradenton,
Fla. Her body has never been
found.
Working with local law
enforcement in Ft. Myers, Fla.,
the team from Cold Justice has
made dramatic progress on the
case: her husband, Kultar Singh
Goraya, 40, has been charged
with second-degree murder
stemming from her disappearance and is now in jail, India
West reported.
The Cold Justice team dig
into still-unsolved and largely
forgotten small-town murder
cases..
Rupinder, 34, was a registered
nurse who worked at a hospital
near Ft. Myers, Fla. Originally
from Amritsar, she married d
Kultar Singh in 2006 and came
to the US. According to news
reports, she told relatives she
was not happy with her marriage; in May 2007 Kultar was
arrested on domestic violence
charges. He claims she was hav-
Missing since 2007,

Rupinder Kaur Gorayas
body was never found .
ing extramarital affairs, but no

evidence has been found to support his claim. Shortly after
Kultar reported Rupinder missing Oct. 2, 2007, he flew with
his two-year-old special-needs
son Devyn to India, returning to
the US several months later and
surrendering Devyn to a social
services agency.
Cold Justice team told the
Collier County Reporter that
Goraya probably stuffed
Rupinders body into a trash
compactor in their apartment
complex.
TURN PAGE
March 21-27, 2015
Amb. Mulay on his new outreach program
As part of giving back to community, Indus American Bank,

Hicksville branch, held March 19 an educational seminar on
credit scores personal and business, by Tracy A Becker, of
North Shore Advisory, who is an authority on the subject.
Tracy is flanked in the picture by Jasbir Chopra, the banks
President and CEO (on her right) and Akshat Kaul, Loan
Officer, and Manager Roopam Maini on the left.
ISIS claims responsibility for...

Continued from page 1
Spring, and raised fears that it could
cripple the countrys vital tourism
sector. ISIS praised the two gunmen,
both reportedly Tunisian, who were
shot dead by police, in an audio
recording in Arabic, calling them
knights of the Islamic State. The
authorities said that four of the people arrested had direct links to the
assault, while the other five had an
indirect connection. Hundreds of
people gathered outside the locked
gates of the Bardo Museum,
renowned for its collection of Roman
mosaics, to protest against the attack,
voicing sympathy for the victims and
concern for their countrys future.

IAS officer's death: Centre ready..
suicide as there were no external
injuries on the body, which was
found hanging from a ceiling fan in
the officer's bedroom. Ravi was a
2009 batch officer, who was working as additional commissioner of
the state commercial tax department
in Bangalore and was investigating
real estate majors and big jewelers
for alleged tax evasion and had conducted several raids. He had also
taken on the sand mafia during his
tenure as district collector in Kolar
and was reportedly still getting
threats.
Jennings of Girl Rising receives first Red Bangle Award at Consulate

nation - world of flowers and birds and bright blue skies. Its a stark contrast
from her real world pavement of Kolkata where she lives. Ruksanas parents
are committed to their childrens education and despite their hardships they
moved to the city just so that their daughters could be educated. Ruksana is
now going to school, and learning dance and karate and when she grows up
she says she wants to teach art, said Jennings. Ruksana represents the next
phase of the Girl Risings global campaign - Girl Rising India. "The transformative power of education is overwhelming, so were incredibly excited
to have the opportunity to bring the Girl Rising campaign to India.
With the support and guidance of a group of local partners, we look forward to using all the persuasiveness of Girl Rising storytelling to focus
attention on the critical goals of raising secondary school completion rates
for girls and reducing gender-based discrimination, said Jennings.

the community and the consulate. So
we have started many activities in the
consulate that include improved consular services, monthly lecture series,
and India state by state where we
focus on the states and events which
are specific to Indian films, fashion,
cuisine and sports -- because these
are the areas which are not been really highlighted by the consulate in the
past. Along with improving the services and arranging special events we
are now bringing into focus new programs that Prime Minister Modis
government is emphasizing as part of
our outreach program.
What are these programs?
Amb. Mulay: They are Digital
India, Make in India, building smart
cities, Swachch Bharat and several
other programs which are energy
related, climate change related etc.
We have been doing outreach work
for past one and half years where my
officers and I are individually speaking to the people in the community in
different states, but from January
onwards we are doing it in systematic
manner. We call this outreach consulate at your doorstep.
How different is this outreach
program than the previous ones?
Amb. Mulay: Consulate at your
doorstep is a brainchild of this consulate to bridge the gap between people and the consulate. So what do we
do in this? We contact business community, chambers of commerce,
other major organizations of that state
(we have 10 states in our jurisdiction), including the governor, mayor,
US Congress members, senate members and the Indian community. We
generally go for a two day program:
on the first day we have meetings
with political officials - mayor, congressmen and other government officials and also prominent business
community, who need not be Indian
Americans. I apprise them of Indias
development, Indias place in the
world including ties with the US and
request them to participate in this
relationship in an active manner. First
by talking more about India-US relationship, then proactively help
empowering our community and
finally lead a delegation to India.
US secretary of State John Kerry
said that trade between the two countries should grow from $100 billion
to $500 billion. It will happen only if
there is a groundswell and we are trying to create that groundswell. To the
business community we give the latest overview of the business opportunities in India, government policies,
liberalization, reforms and this creates a healthy environment. Day 2 is
devoted to the community of which
Indian community forms a prominent
part. We had a huge response both in
New Jersey and Boston.
You take a delegation of people
with you, can you share who are in
the team?
Amb. Mulay: We generally take
15-30 people including our visa service providers CKGS, CEOs of the
Indian banks in New York, Air India
CEO, Indian Tourism officers, travel
agents specializing in India, representatives of CII and FICCI and from
Washington US-India Business
Council. On the second day we set
up a visa camp for those who want to
submit their long term visa application, OCI, PIO application forms
physically so that they dont have to
line up in New York. The camp is followed by a huge direct interface program with the people where I first
give an overview of our relationship
and various programs. There are individual presentations from the members of the delegation.
What has been the response
from the community?
Amb. Mulay: For the visa camp
150-200 people applied which was a
very good turnout. Generally people
still tend to focus on passport-visa
issues. I dont blame them because
we have not tried to tell them that the
relationship is bigger and they need
to take interest. But passport and visa

is a bread and butter issue. So, slowly
they are taking interest in Indias
development from philanthropic
activities to going back to India, they
are opening up to discuss issues in
doing business with states to law and
order situation prevailing in India.
Is New York the only consulate
doing outreach program of this
kind?
Amb. Mulay: Absolutely, but others might follow. We keep our
embassy in Washington and Ministry
of External Affairs informed.
Can you talk a little bit about
Make in India campaign promotion?
Amb. Mulay: For my outreach
program I also take my officers with
me. They make presentations on various things like visa-passport issues,
commercial economic relations and
in that we cover Make in India campaign. We distribute special Make in
India pen drives and hard copies that
detail various programs currently
underway in India.
What is the follow-up to these
outreach programs?
Amb. Mulay: For the other programs, the idea of outreach is not
really to generate any concrete business. It is supposed to generate long
term sustainable interest in and support to India, which in turn will give
rise to a lot of activities in terms of
participation with the consulate but
yes the moment we came back there
was much positive feedback we
received.
How do you intend to grow the
outreach program?
Amb. Mulay: We are going to all
10 states: Connecticut on April 10,
Ohio on May 15, Philadelphia on
June 12. And so on.
After the success of MP Conclave
are there any other state representatives coming to the US?
Amb. Mulay: Chief ministers of
both Rajasthan and Maharashtra have
expressed their interest to come in
June and July respectively.
New Delhi Bureau

Meenakshi Iyer
Delhi@TheSouthAsianTimes.info
Art and Design: Vladimir Tomovski

Bhagwati Creations,
Dhiraj Kumar
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TRISTATE COMMUNITY
March 21-27, 2015
Kiran Bedi attends NY fundraiser for her charity

New York: The spirit of giving back continued in the inspirational presence of Kiran
Bedi, founder of India Vision Foundation
(IVF), at a gala Sunday in Richmond Hill, NY
under the overall motivational leadership of
Pam Kwatra, National Chairperson of G30
for India Vision Foundation.
IVF focuses on educating children of prisoners to make them self-reliant and become
bread earner for their parents.
We should lessen the gap between have's
and have-nots, said Kiran Bedi, Indias first
woman IPS officer who was in the news recently as BJPs CM candidate in Delhi and
was in the US to raise funds for her charity.
We must stay connected and keep a watch on
what is happening around us, which will empower us with greater responsibility for a better world.
G30 for India Vision Foundation provides
an overseas platform and opportunity to con-
nect generous hearts and donors with these

needy children, said Eric Kumar, co-founder
& co-chair G30 for IVF which was started 4
years ago.
The gala was held in the presence of
Chamunda Swamiji and Congresswoman
Grace Meng and generously sponsored by
Gurdev DP Singh, H.K. Shah-Vegetarian
Vision, Flora & Paresh Parekh, Manny Sethi,
and Jarnail Singh of Richie Rich restaurant.
Emotions permeated the air when over 67
children were adopted by the community
thereby laying an example of Giving Back to
the Community.
Practice what you preach, our action
should be an example, said Pam Kwatra.
Presentation by Monica Dhawan, the Director of IVF, educated the audience on their
various projects and activities.
Contact: www.TEAMIVFUSA.org.
US woman faces 25 years in jail

for pushing Indian to death
New York: A woman who pushed
an Indian man to his death from a
subway train platform two years ago
in what the authorities said was a
hate crime faces 22 to 25 years in
prison. The woman, Erika
Menendez, 33, who pleaded guilty
on Friday to first-degree manslaughter will be sentenced on April 29 for
pushing Sunando Sen, 46, to the
tracks in New York on December
27, 2012, CNN reported.
Menendez told authorities she
"pushed a Muslim off the train
tracks" because she had hated
Hindus and Muslims ever since the
9/11 terrorist attacks, according to
Queens District Attorney Richard
Brown.
The woman, who was originally
charged with second-degree murder
as a hate crime was allowed on
Friday to plead guilty to first-degree
manslaughter, Brown said in a statement. The judge indicated he would
sentence her to 22 to 25 years in
prison on April 29.
Conviction on the original charge
would have resulted in a tougher
sentence -- 25 years to life imprisonment, CNN cited Meris Campbell, a
spokesperson for the district attorney's office, as saying.
The district attorney's office
accepted the plea because Menendez
promised not to appeal and because
of Menendez's "substantial psychi-
Sunando Sen was pushed into

path of oncoming
train by Erika (right)
atric history and serious drug problem", Campbell said.

"We are assured she'll serve a substantial amount of time behind
bars." The incident happened at
night at the 40 Street-Lowery Street
station in Sunnyside, Queens.
Witnesses told police a woman
paced the platform and talked to
herself before pushing Sen as the
11-car train entered the station.
Security video showed a woman
running from the scene.
Menendez was recognized on a
street in Brooklyn by a passerby
who had seen the video and called
911, police said. "The defendant is
accused of committing what is every
subway commuter's worst nightmare -- being suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an
oncoming train," Brown said on
Friday. "The victim was allegedly
shoved from behind and had no
chance to defend himself."
(Front row): Kiran Bedi with Chamunda Swami and Pam Kwatra
S. Mitra Kalita appointed

managing editor of Los
Angeles Times
New York: Indian American S.

Mitra Kalita has joined the Los
Angeles
Times as its
managing
editor. Kalita,
whose parents come
from Assam
in India, has
been hired for
editorial strategy for the
paper. She has previously worked
for the Wall Street Journal, the
Washington Post, AP and Quartz
where she was the ideas editor.
In an announcement circulated
among the staff, LA Times publisher Austin Beutner and editor Davan
Maharaj said Mitra will work to
develop and refine new styles of
journalism similar to those she
helped pioneer at Quartz which
was launched in 2012. Mitra will
also lead newsroom efforts as part
of an enhanced effort at audience
acquisition bringing more people
to see our terrific journalism and
finding new communities of readers.
Mitra has a notable record in
high-quality journalism. At the
Wall Street Journal, she oversaw
coverage of the Great Recession,
launched a local news section for
New York City and reported on the
housing crisis as a senior writer.
A Master Chef celebrates the

taste of Indias street food
By Ashok Ojha/The SATimes
Edison, NJ : When Kamal Arora,
head of Arora Hospitality Group,
decided to establish his business in
USA, he chose street food of India,
also called finger food, as a brand
and promoted it through fast food
outlets named, Mithaas, meaning
sweetness in Hindi. Spread over
three locations in New Jersey, this
fast food restaurant has popularized down to earth spicy dishes
sold by street vendors in Indian
towns and cities, from Dahi Bhel
of Delhi to Raj Kachouri of Jaipur
and Tokri Chaat of Lucknow.
Mithaas now also offers fusion
dishes - improvisation of traditional ethnic dishes enjoyed for generations.
Arora group partnered with Master Chef Pankaj Bhadouria to bring
some of her signature dishes onto
their menu at Mithaas. These new
items were unveiled at a press meet
at Mithaas, Edison on March 16 by
Bhadouria herself. She showcased
Lucknow Tokri Chaat. She began
with cooking Ghughuni, a stirfried spicy snack made out of
green peas or Hara Chana, but
eventually turned it into a pure,
paste mixed with heavy cream. The
fusion dish was served in small
eatable cups made from potato
peel. Many customers enjoyed the
Master Chef Pankaj

Bhadouria at a presentation
at Mithaas, Edison.
paste but others wished they had

been offered the original Ghughuni. The audience applauded
Bhadouria for her demonstration.
She will continue to present her
dishes at sister locations, such as,
Urban Spice in Iselin, NJ on March
22.
Bhadouria transformed from a
schoolteacher into TV celebrity in
2011 after she launched her cookery reality show on Star Plus and
became Indias first Master Chef.
She currently hosts Kifayati
Kitchen.
NATIONAL COMMUNITY
March 21-27, 2015
IN BRIEF
India Association of Long Island celebrates Holi
Donors were recognized for their noble gesture of donating towards IALI Home (right) IALI members performing on Holi song.
ndia Association of Long Island(IALI)

celebrated Holi at Antuns Hicksville,
Long Island on March 8th. The event,
which had an overwhelming turnout of
more than 200 guests was celebrated in
style, with lots of fun and Holi spirit. As
guests arrived, they were welcomed with
Gulal Teeka and served Thandai which is
traditional drink of Holi. They were also
served delicious snacks and sumptuous
lunch by Antuns.
The program was commenced by the
IALI President, Satnam Singh Parhars
welcome speech, in which he requested all
members to donate generously to IALI to
help pay for renovation and maintenance of
IALI Home(India Center) purchased this
year. Padam Shri awardee Dr. Dattatreyudu
Nori was the guest of honor and was recognized for his accomplishments in the field
of medicine. He was presented a plaque by

Mr.Parhar and honored with a citation by
Mrs.Nasrin Ahmad, Town Clerk of Town of
Hempstead. Mr. Parhar acknowledged and
presented Certificate Of Appreciation to
Bronze donors who donated up to $2000 for
the purchase of IALI Home(India Center).
A wonderful entertainment program followed, with lovely performances by students of Shilpa Jhurani, presentation by Ms.
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community launches nationwide

Muhammad Messenger of Peace campaign
hmadiyya Muslim Community USA is holding nationwide Muhammad - Messenger of
Peace conference to respond to allegations
against Prophet Muhammad. This campaign is a rebuke to terrorists and anti-Islam personalities alike,
and is designed to build bridges of education.
This event is an opportunity for people of all backgrounds to learn about Prophet Muhammad from practicing American Muslims. Over the past several years
Prophet Muhammads character has been maligned on
numerous occasions, including a hateful video. This
event provides an educational and civil response,
demonstrates why over 1 billion Muslims revere
Prophet Muhammad, and serves to build bridges of
understanding. Speakers include Imam Azhar Haneef,
National Vice President of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA and Harris Zafar, National Spokesperson
for Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA and author
of Demystifying Islam.
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community New Jersey is
holding this conference on March 24th from 6:30 pm
to 9 pm at Rutgers University, Student Center Multipurpose Room, New Brunswick. The event is free and
open to the public. The worldwide Ahmadiyya Mus-
lim Community was established in Qadian, India in

1889. Ahmadi Muslims believe Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
is the awaited Messiah and Mahdi foretold in the
Quran and the hadith of Prophet Muhammad. The India chapter of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is
the oldest chapter, which is especially significant because the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is now established in 206 nations worldwide with tens of millions of members. Ahmadi Muslims enjoy religious
freedom in India. On the contrary, Pakistan has enacted state sanction persecution of millions of Ahmadi
Muslims residing in Pakistan. In 1974 the Pakistani
government passed the second amendment to its constitution, which declared Ahmadis as non-Muslim for
purposes of law. A decade later Dictator General Zia
ul Haqq instituted Ordinance XX, which criminalized
any Ahmadi posing as a Muslim or using Muslim terminology. Dictator Zia likewise implemented death
for apostasy and death for blasphemy laws to further
target Ahmadi Muslims. Despite the ongoing persecution, violence, and terrorism against Ahmadi Muslims,
the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Pakistan has
refused to engage in a single act of terrorism or
retaliation.
ATA celebrates International Women's Day on a grand note

nternational Women's Day celebrations were held in major metropolitan areas like New Jersey/New York, Washington DC
Metro Region, Dallas/Ft Worth, Atlanta, Chicago, Maryland, Richmond, Delaware Valley and many
more areas across the U.S. in March
2015. Sudhakar Perkari, President
of American Telugu Association
said, "ATA is the first Telugu Association in USA which has been cele-
brating International Womens Day"

every year since 2013. Women's
Day celebration with ATA became a
major social networking event to interact with successful stalwart ladies
in our society. Many distinguished
guests spoke on the occasion, on
how to achieve balance between
work and life, personal life, climbing up the corporate ladder, health,
raising kids in the USA, entrepreneurship, empowerment, economic
independence, stress management,

violence against women. Over 2000
women attended this event across
various cities, and guests included
from various walks of life including,
including, politicians, doctors,
lawyers, entrepreneurs, IT professionals, and community leaders attended these events and shared their
experiences and achievements,
which inspired the audience to face
challenges with courage.
Teen USA, dances by Arya academy, Holi

song by Parth Merai and an energetic folk
dance performance by Preya Patel. Holi atmosphere was captured by elegant and enchanting dance performance by Gunjan
Rastogi & Garima Bhatia to the melodious
singing of Holi songs by Jyoti Gupta.
IALIs next program will be Vaisakhi
Mela Cruise, cruise for a nobel cause on
May 2nd .
Metropolitan Museum announces

Lord Vishnu exhibition
he Metropolitan Museum
of Art (Met) in New York
will organize Encountering Vishnu: The Lion Avatar in Indian Temple Drama exhibition
from December 19, 2015 to June
5, 2016. Dramas presented during religious festivals in southern
India are an important aspect of
popular Hindu celebration. This
exhibition highlights five rare
wooden sculptural masks that represent a largely unrecorded category of late medieval Indian devotional art. The masks depict the
protagonists in a deadly battle between Vishnu in his man-lion
avatar, Narasimha, and an evil
king whose destruction was essential for the restoration of order in
the universe, a Met announcement says.
Neal Katyal receives AALDEF 2015

Justice in Action Award
he Asian American Legal Defense Fund honored partner Neal
Katyal Feb. 23 with a 2015
Justice in Action Award, which
was presented to him at
AALDEF's Annual Lunar
New Year Gala in New York
City.
AALDEF
honored
Katyal in recognition of his
professional and personal accomplishments as one of the
nations most influential Indian American lawyers and his
longtime commitment to social justice.
Katyal has argued 24 cases
before the United States
Supreme Court, most recently
securing a landmark victory in
a whistleblower case before

the court for former federal air
marshal Robert J. MacLean, a
pro bono client.
The AALDEF Justice in Action Awards recognizes exceptional individuals for their outstanding achievements and efforts in advancing social justice. I am humbled and honored by this award, which
means a great deal to me,
Katyal said in a press release.
Lawyers play a crucial role in
driving this country toward an
even fairer and more humane
land, and I've been fortunate to
work with so many who are involved in this important
work."
NATIONAL COMMUNITY
Renu Khator elected head of

American Council on Education
Washington, DC: IndianThe UH System's rst
American Renu Khator has
woman chancellor and the
been elected chair of the
rst Indian immigrant to
Board of Directors of the
head a comprehensive
American Council on
research university in the
Education (ACE), the major
US, Khator assumed her
coordinating body for US
post in January 2008. As
colleges and universities.
chancellor, Khator oversees
Uttar Pradesh born
a system that serves nearly
Khator, University of
70,000 students, has an
Houston President and
annual budget that exceeds
System Chancellor since
$1.5 billion and has a $3.8
2008 became board chair
billion-plus economic
during ACE's 97th Annual
impact on the Greater
Meeting in Washington, DC
Houston area each year.
Monday.
As president, she is the
Renu Khator is University of
Earning a bachelor's
chief
executive ofcer of
Houston President and
degree at the University of
the largest and oldest of the
System Chancellor
Kanpur, she received her
four UH System universisince 2008
master's and PhD in politities.
cal science from Purdue University, Indiana.
During her tenure, UH has experienced
She succeeds James H. Mullen, Jr., president record-breaking research funding, enrollment
of Allegheny College, Pennsylvania and will and private support. In 2011, UH became a
serve for one year. Before becoming ACE Tier One university, with the Carnegie
Board chair, Khator served as vice chair.
Foundation elevating it into the top category
"It will be a privilege to serve as chair of the of research universities.
American Council on Education during a
A noted scholar in the eld of global enviperiod of major challenges and enormous ronmental policy, Khator has published
opportunities for higher education," Khator numerous books and articles on the subject.
said.
Prior to her appointment, she was provost
"I look forward to working with my col- and senior vice president at the University of
leagues on key issues such as college comple- South Florida, capping a 22-year career at
tion, global competitiveness and innovation."
that institution.
March 21-27, 2015
Aneesh Chopra's new role: Tackling US

unemployment with government data
Washington, DC: Indianproject. The closest thing to a
American Aneesh Chopra, who
standard national database is
was named by President
the Labor Department's
Barack Obama as the rst
Occupational Information
White House chief technology
Network Web site, known as
ofcer, is now working to
O*Net.
make government data accessiBuilt in the 1990s, the site
ble for tackling unemployment.
compiles data on more than
During his tenure, Chopra's
900 occupations, with details
role involved making governabout job skills, average comment data more accessible. It's
pensation and a search tool to
Aneesh Chopra was
a mission he has continued the White Houses first nd jobs by state.
Chief Technology
after his departure, according
But although the site is conOfficer
to the Washington Post.
tinually updated, it has been
After leaving the White
slow to keep pace with the
House, he has founded Arlington-based changing job market, according to Chopra
start-up Hunch Analytics, assembling a and Levensaler.
band of public ofcials, tech entrepreneurs
Chopra convened a roundtable of governand think-tank analysts whose focus is rm- ment ofcials, academics and private-sector
ly on the labor market. "With today's tech- executives last month to discuss measures
nologies, we can do a lot more to build open to improve O*Net, according to the Post.
data sets for skills," Chopra was quoted as
Workday and LinkedIn are among the
saying.
companies interested in the effort - which is
One of Chopra's pilot efforts using data to still at a conceptual stage, Chopra said.
tackle unemployment was a job portal for
Last year, LinkedIn worked with the City
veterans called Veterans Talent, created last of New York on a program led by the
autumn. The site scraped data from Monster mayor's ofce to train and hire New Yorkers
and LinkedIn and mapped the locations of for technology jobs. The plan served as a
unemployed veterans to geographic regions model for the president's initiative.
that had veteran-friendly job openings.
"No one company, no matter how amazThe project was intended as a proof-of- ing they are, has the capacity to get every
concept, but it taught the group about the employer in America to open up their skills
importance of open data, said Leighanne data for every job posting," Chopra was
Levensaler, senior vice president of prod- quoted as saying.
ucts at Workday, a human resources soft"The government has the capacity to conware company that was involved in the vene stakeholders to open up the data."
Starbucks teams up with journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran to produce films

Washington, DC: Coffee retail
giant Starbucks is teaming up with
long-time Indian-American journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran to produce
"constructive" lms and TV shows
around issues "that matter."
The new media start-up "will create and produce non- ction, social
impact content," according to the
company's
founder
Rajiv
Chandrasekaran, who bid adieu to
The Washington Post for this venture on March 2.
The company will start with producing television and lm projects
around Chandrasekaran's 2014 book
'For Love of Country: What Our
Veterans Can Teach Us About
Citizenship, Heroism and Sacrice.'
"I am not doing this so they can
sell more cups of coffee. What we
are doing is trying to play a positive
and constructive role - and broaden understanding across the country
around issues that matter to our

nation," he said in an interview.
His new venture is an outgrowth
of a collaboration last year with
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz on
the book about US veterans.
Schultz has made social causes an
important part of the company's
mission since he rejoined it fulltime in 2008.
Chandrasekaran has had several
jobs at The Post, including national
editor, assistant managing editor and
Baghdad bureau chief.
He is also the author of Imperial
Life in the Emerald City, a book
about the post-invasion reconstruction of Iraq, which won the
Overseas Press Club book award
and was a nalist for the National
Book Award.
Chandrasekaran also covered the
David Petraeus affair for The
Washington Post, chronicling the
scandal's affect on other military

ofcials, the lifestyle perks afforded
a top general and the embattled ofcial's consultation of civilian military analysts. Chandrasekaran said
his departure from The Post is "not a
reection of how I feel about the
newspaper business," but rather the

uniqueness of the opportunity that
grew out of his work with Schultz.
"I think the Post is a remarkable
place today," he said, describing it
as brimming with energy and
dynamism.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
bid adieu to The
Washington Post for this
venture on March 2. The
company will start with
producing television and
film projects around
Chandrasekaran's 2014
book 'For Love of
Country: What Our
Veterans Can Teach Us
About Citizenship,
Heroism and Sacrifice'
which he co-authored
with Starbucks CEO
Howard Schultz.
(Photo:
Seattletimes.com)
March 21-27, 2015
NATIONAL COMMUNITY
IN BRIEF
Indian student falls to death while

hiking in Arizona
Facebook acquires Indian American owned

e-commerce startup
acebook has acquired The Find
an e-commerce firm co-founded in
2006 by Indian American CEO
Siva Kumar and CTO Shashikant Khandelwal. In its webpost, TheFind said
many of its employees would be joining
Facebook and work on improving the
relevance of the social networks advertising. TheFind added that its search engine will go offline in the next few
weeks.
Facebook has been testing a buy button since July 2014 that lets users pur-
chase goods directly. Now, with

TheFind, it would be able to add additional shopping tools to its service.
Facebook and TheFind cast the acquisition as a way to lift the digital advertising business of Facebook, which with
$12.6 billion in annual ad sales last year,
is unquestionably a dominant player in
the industry. Together, we believe we
can make the Facebook ads experience
even more relevant and better for consumers, Facebook said in a statement
about the deal.
George Washington Univ student found

guilty of friends murder
25-year-old Indian student at
George Washington University
has been found guilty of murdering his friend in 2013 over suspicion that
his girlfriend was cheating on him with
his high school buddy and faces life in
prison when sentenced.
Rahul Gupta was found guilty on Monday of first-degree murder by a jury in
Maryland after an 11-day trial. He had
initially told the police that he killed his
friend 23-year-old Mark Waugh as he
suspected that his girlfriend was cheating
on him with Waugh.
Gupta later sought to put the blame on
his girlfriend Taylor Gould, saying that he
hishav Choudhury, an Indian student from Guwahati, India, studying at a private liberal arts college
in Ohio, fell to his death while on a spring
hiking trip in Arizona.
The College of Wooster is mourning
the death of Choudhury, 22, College
Dean Kurt Holmes said in a Thursday
message to the campus community.
He fell to his death on Wednesday
"while hiking a canyon in the Coconino
National Forest in Arizona during a
spring break camping trip with WOODS,
the College's outdoors club."
"We are heartbroken by the news of this
terrible accident, and our thoughts and
prayers go out to Rhishav's family and
friends," Holmes said.
According to the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office, as reported on azcentral.com,
Choudhury was hiking West Clear Creek
near Camp Verde with members of his
group, but wandered away and fell about
100 feet in a rocky area near the trail.
Despite sparse cell phone reception, the
group summoned help.
Rhishav Choudhury
The report said Choudhury was already

dead when a paramedic was able to reach
him by hiking through the canyon.
The incident is being investigated and
no foul play is suspected, according to the
sheriff's Office.
TANA elections kickoff in Bay Area

Rahul Gupta
had lied to protect her. Gupta will be sentenced on April 16 and faces life in
prison.
Asian American Coalition of Chicago honors

Dr. Amarjit Singh and Anukool Vasudevan
he Asian American Coalition of
Chicago honored Indian Americans
Dr. Amarjit Singh, and Anukool Vasudevan, at their 32nd Conference on Business And Networking and Annual Lunar
New Year Celebration on February 28 at the
Hyatt Regency O'Hare Hotel in Rosemont
Illinois. This year's gala event themed "Unity in Diversity" was hosted by the Indonesian American community of Chicago, with
Martino Tangkar serving as the event chairperson. More than 1300 attended the blacktie event. Amarjit Singh M.D, past president
of Indian American medical Association of
Illinois and also Past Chairman of Punjabi
Cultural Society of Chicago, with a stellar
TANA members at the elections kick-off dinner on March 13 at

Peacock Party Hall in Bay Area
Dr Amarjit Singh (second from left)
among the awardees
record of community service won the Indian

American Exemplary Community Service
Award. Anukool Vasudevan a senior at Loyola University won the Indian American
Youth Who Excel Award.
ore than 300 members gathered

at the Peacock Party Hall in
Bay Area on March 13 to lend
their support to TANA (Telugu Association of North America) as the organization kicked off its elections for the new
executive team. For the first time in
TANA there should be elections between

two internal groups. Ballots will be
mailed on March 30th. Chandra Guntupalli who is contesting for California Regional Representative requested everyone
to cast their valuable vote without wasting it by not selecting anybody.
US AFFAIRS
Republican budget cuts social

spending, boosts military
March 21-27, 2015
Second GOP Rep resigns

under a cloud
Washington:
House
favor of savings similar to those
Republicans on Tuesday proproposed by Obama.
posed higher defense spending
Price's plan could struggle to
and deep cuts to social services
gain the support of deeply dividincluding healthcare for the poor
ed House Republicans. It seeks
in an aggressive new budget plan
to skirt "sequester" spending
that seeks to eliminate decits by
caps, nominally keeping them in
2024.
place to please decit hawks
The blueprint from House
while boosting military spending
Budget Committee Chairman
by adding nearly $40 billion to
Tom Price, which has almost no
an off-budget war funding
chance of becoming law, preaccount.
scribes $5.468 trillion in spendPro-military Republicans
ing cuts and interest savings
greeted the plan with skeptiThe budget presented by Chairman
over 10 years compared to curcism. "I'm not convinced this
of the House Budget Committee Tom
rent policies.
budget
does
it,"
said
Price has almost no chance of
Like the budgets of Price's
Representative
Ryan
Zinke,
a
becoming law.
predecessor, Paul Ryan, the docformer Navy Seal commander.
ument assumes $2 trillion in 10The plan contrasts with
The non-binding resolution
year savings from full repeal of reasserts the Republican Party's Obama's 2016 budget request,
the Affordable Care Act, the sig- long-standing vision of a smaller which would raise taxes on the
nature healthcare reform law that federal government, less national wealthy by about $1 trillion
President Barack Obama has debt, lower taxes and a stronger through 2025 to help pay for infravowed to defend.
economy, all likely themes in the structure and education spending
Price's plan also recycles Ryan's 2016 presidential campaign.
while running annual decits from
prescription for controversial
Senate Budget Chairman Mike $400 billion to $800 billion.
changes to the Medicare health Enzi plans to unveil his version of
Democrats said the House
program for seniors, turning it into the Republican budget on Republican budget was full of
a system of subsidies for private Wednesday but it is expected to be "gimmicks" and would shred proinsurance, affecting those born in more cautious, excluding the grams that aid the poor, the elderly
1959 or later.
Ryan-style Medicare reforms in and working families.
Washington: Rep.
Aaron Schock will
resign
from
Congress following
weeks of scandalous stories about
how the Illinois
Republican and his
ofce spent taxpayers money on
everything from a
Downton Abbeythemed ofce renovation to mileage
reimbursements.
A couple of
months ago, anothRep. Aaron Schock from Illinois
er
GOP
Rep,
Michael Grimm of
State Island, NY, resigned from member of the US House of
Congress after pleading guilty to Representatives, effective March
31, Schock said in a statement
a felony tax evasion charge.
Politico reports that Schock Wednesday. The constant quesexpensed 170,000 miles on his tions over the last six weeks
personal vehicle but then sold it have proven a great distraction
with only 80,000 miles on it. that has made it too difcult for
That means Schock was billing me to serve the people of the
taxpayers for 90,000 miles that 18th District with the high stanwere never driven. Today, I am dards that they deserve and
announcing my resignation as a which I have set for myself.
Workplace suicides on the rise in USA
Washington: Workplace suicide cases are on

the rise and people belonging to specific occupations like law enforcement, agriculture,
medicine and the armed forces are at higher
suicide risk than others, finds a US-based
study.
The highest workplace suicide rate is in protective services occupations (5.3 per 1 million), the study published in the American
Journal of Preventive Medicine said.
The increased suicide risk among specific
occupations is the availability and access to
lethal means, such as drugs for medical doctors and firearms for law enforcement officers.
Workplace stressors and economic factors
have also been found to be linked with suicide
in these occupations.
"Occupation can largely define a person's
identity, and psychological risk factors for suicide, such as depression and stress, can be
affected by the workplace," said lead investigator Hope M. Tiesman, epidemiologist with
the US National Institute for Occupational

Safety and Health.
"The workplace should be considered a
potential site to implement suicide-prevention
programs and train managers in the detection
of suicidal behavior, especially among the
high-risk occupations identified in this paper,"
he added.
This study compared workplace versus nonworkplace suicides in the US between 2003
and 2010, using data from the Bureau of
Labor Statistics' Census of Fatal Occupational
Injury database.
Besides firefighters and the police, people
working in farming, fishing, and forestry
occupations had the second highest suicide
rate (5.1 per one million).
Those in installation, maintenance, and
repair occupations also had high workplace
suicide rates (3.3 per one million).
Suicides within the military was excluded
from this analysis.
Cuomo, assembly speaker agree

on ethics reform plan
Albany, NY: New York Gov. Andrew
Cuomo and the new Assembly Speaker Carl
Heastie say they have agreed on new ethics
reforms that would include more detailed
disclosures of lawmakers' outside income.
Cuomo says the state Senate has not
signed off on the reforms, which he has proposed as part of a state budget for the coming fiscal year. Details were to be available
Wednesday. Heastie says the Assembly
majority's Democratic Conference has been

briefed and is in agreement.
Cuomo says there will be more public disclosure than before, plus restrictions on
whom officials can do outside business with
if there are connections with their government actions. He says that it's a part-time
Legislature and they wanted to make sure
people could do their private sector jobs and
serve in government.
Corporate Office: 385 Seneca Avenue, Ridgewood NY 11385

718.821.3182, www.AtlanticDialysis.Com
10
INDIA
March 21-27, 2015
SC quashes Jat reservation, community shocked

New Delhi: The Supreme Court,
refusing to accept the central government's view that Jats are a backward community, has quashed the
March 4, 2014, notification by the
then UPA government extending
reservations to the community's
members in nine states.
Jat community leaders expressed
shock at the verdict and some said
they will seek a review.
A bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi
and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman
said: "We cannot agree with the
view taken by the union government that Jats in the nine states in
question are a backward community so as to be entitled to inclusion in
the Central List of Other Backward
Classes."
"We must hold that inclusion of
the politically organized classes
(such as Jats) in the list of backward classes mainly, if not solely,
on the basis that on same parameters, other groups who have fared
better have been so included, cannot be affirmed", said Justice Gogoi
pronouncing the judgment.
While the UPA government
extended reservation benefits in
education and government employment to the Jat community, ignor-
Jat community leaders expressed shock at the verdict

and some said they will seek a review.
ing the recommendation of the

National
Commission
for
Backward Classes (NCBC) to the
contrary, the decision was also
endorsed by the Narendra Modi
government, which brushed aside
the suggestion that it was rooted in
electoral exigencies of the previous
government.
On determination of backwardness, the court said that "the gates
Budget session's
first phase may
be extended
New Delhi: The first phase of the parliament's
budget session may be extended by two days to
pass bills on coal, mines and minerals on which
the government has issued ordinances, sources
said. The coal bill, the mines and minerals bill
and the land bill are required to be passed in parliament to replace the ordinances promulgated
by the government. The ordinances lapse on
April 5.
Under the rules, the government cannot reissue the ordinances during the session.
Parliament is scheduled to take a break on
March 20 and reconvene on April 20. The budget session is expected to end on May 8.
According to official sources, the issue of
extending the first phase of the budget session
was discussed in a meeting of the Cabinet
Committee on Parliamentary Affairs on
Wednesday.
Sources said a final decision will be taken by
the government on Thursday.
The government is hopeful to get the coal allocation bill and mines and minerals bill passed in
the upper house but if the bills are passed with
some changes, they will have to come back to
the Lok Sabha.
However, the government does not appear to
have hope about passage of land acquisition bill
which is strongly opposed by most opposition
parties.
Sources said the government was looking at
the possibility of proroguing one of the houses
of parliament after the first half of budget session to re-promulgate ordinance on land bill.
would be opened only to permit

entry of the most distressed. Any
other inclusion would be a serious
abdication of the constitutional
duty of the state".
It held backwardness "a manifestation caused by the presence of
several independent circumstances
which may be social, cultural, economic, educational or even political" and that due to "historical con-
ditions, particularly in Hindu society, recognition of backwardness has

been associated with caste".
It is the identification of "new
emerging groups" that "must
engage the attention of the state"
and the "constitutional power and
duty must be concentrated" to discover such groups rather than to
enable groups recover "lost
ground" in claiming preference and
benefits on the basis of historical
prejudice.
Holding the March 4, 2014 notification as not justified, the court
said: "The view taken by the NCBC
to the contrary is adequately supported by good and acceptable reasons which furnished a sound and
reasonable basis for further consequential action" by the government.
"Accordingly... the aforesaid notification... including the Jats in the
Central List of Other Backward
Classes for the states of Bihar,
Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal
Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, NCT of
Delhi, Bharatpur and Dholpur districts of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh
and Uttarakhand is set aside and
quashed," it said, ruling on a batch
of petitions challenging the notification. Pointing out that the date on
which the exercise of extending

reservation is undertaken "has to be
contemporaneous", the court said
that most of the data, except in the
case of Haryana, was at least a
decade old and hauled up the government for "negative governance".
Jat community leaders and other
political figures reacted immediately given the high political stakes
involved with the Jat community
votes in various states.
Leaders in Haryana, where Jats
are the politically dominant community and account for nearly 25
percent of the opulation, treaded
cautiously, saying they would first
examine the apex court judgment
before making any observation.
"Our government will examine
the Supreme Court decision. Only
then we will be able to say something," said Finance Minister
Captain Abhimanyu.
He said the ruling Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) believed in
allowing reservation for those who
were socially and economically
lagging.
Jat leaders in Rajasthan, where
the community accounts for 14-15
percent of the state's population,
expressed shock.
It's a fight to the finish over land bill: Opposition

Lok Sabha passed the Right to
Fair Compensation and
Transparency in Land
Acquisition, Rehabilitation and
Resettlement (Amendment) bill,
2015, with nine amendments.
New Delhi: A united opposition has
sounded its battle cry over the land
acquisition bill as leaders of 14 political
parties, led by Congress president Sonia
Gandhi, marched to Rashtrapati Bhavan
to urge President Pranab Mukherjee not
to let the government go ahead with the
"anti-farmer bill".
"Yeh aar paar ki ladai hai (this is a
fight to the finish)," declared Janata DalUnited chief Sharad Yadav.
"This is the beginning of a major battle
that will be waged in every nook and
corner of the country," he said at
Rashtrapati Bhavan where the MPs
assembled.
The march saw an energized Congress
take on the Narendra Modi government
over the bill, which they allege would
allow corporates to gobble up agricultural land.
Sonia Gandhi, with former prime minister Manmohan Singh standing next to
her, declared that the opposition was
determined to defeat the land acquisition
bill. Gandhi said "democratic, secular
and forward-looking forces are determined to defeat the Modi government's
designs" to promote corporate interests
at the cost of farmers by taking away
their land. Around 20 of them went in to
Congress president Sonia Gandhi leads a march of leaders and

MPs of 10 political parties from the Parliament House to protest
against the land acquisition bill in New Delhi.
submit the memorandum -- signed by 28

leaders -- to the president.
The two-page memorandum said "all
the progressive, secular, democratic forward-looking forces are determined to
defeat the Modi Sarkar's design to promote division and social disharmony.
"We request Rashtrapatiji to intervene
to protect the interests of the kisans
(farmers), and impress upon the Modi
sarkar, not to go ahead with the amendment in the Rajya Sabha."
The ruling BJP-led National
Democratic Alliance which is in majority in the Lok Sabha passed the Right to
Fair Compensation and Transparency in
Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and
Resettlement (Amendment) bill, 2015,
with nine amendments.
However, it looks destined for tough
times in the Rajya Sabha where the
opposition holds the upper hand.
The united opposition is demanding
that the amendments should have been
considered by a standing committee
before being taken up in parliament.
INDIA
March 21-27, 2015
11
CBI probe into Karnataka IAS Nun's gang rape: Mamata orders CBI probe
officer's death
New Delhi: The central government is ready for a CBI inquiry
into the death of Karnataka IAS
ofcer D.K. Ravi if the state government wants, Home Minister
Rajnath Singh said.
Making an intervention during
zero hour in the Lok Sabha,
Rajnath Singh said a delegation of
parliament members met him and
demanded that a CBI inquiry be
initiated into the incident.
"Some senior IAS ofcers have
also raised this demand," he said.
The home minister said: "I have
spoken with the Karnataka chief
minister and he has said he will
send a detailed report within a couple of days".
"If the state government wants
(CBI probe), then as soon as I get a
representation from them, we will
be ready for a CBI inquiry".
D.K. Ravi, a 36-year-old additional commissioner in the state
commercial tax department, was
found dead on March 16 at his
ofcial apartment. His wife found
him hanging from a ceiling fan.
The issue was raised in the Lok
Sabha on Thursday by BJP member Prahlad Joshi, who is from
Karnataka.
Joshi said: "We met Rajnath
Home Minister Rajnath Singh
Singh to apprise him of the situation and how people are been treated there (Karnataka)".
"I demand a CBI inquiry," he
said, adding that the parents of the
ofcer are also demanding it.
"The CID works under home
minister of Karnataka against
whom ngers are being raised,"
Joshi said.
Joshi's comments led to a protest
by Congress members in the
house. Amid the uproar, Speaker
Sumitra Mahajan adjourned the
house briey for 15 minutes.
Kolkata: In the face of massive

protests over the brutal gang-rape
of a septuagenarian nun inside a
convent, West Bengal Chief
Minister Mamata Banerjee has
announced she would "entrust the
investigation" to the CBI, hours
after a high-level Catholic delegation visited the spot and demanded "visible" action including
arrest of the culprits.
Banerjee's announcement on
Twitter and Facebook came over
ve days after the gruesome incident, that has caused revulsion
across the country and beyond.
Despite releasing images from
CCTV footage of four of the purported criminals, police detained
10 people but were unable to
arrest even one of the culprits,
who raided the Convent of Jesus
and Mary in Nadia district's
Ranaghat, some 80 km from
Kolkata, on March 14 and gangraped the 71-year-old Sister
Superior.
Earlier in the day, the National
Human Rights Commission took
suo motu cognizance of the incident and shot off separate notice
to the state chief secretary and
director general of police, calling
for reports within two weeks.
Banerjee said she decided to
hand over the case to the Central
Bureau of Investigation consider-
West Bengal Chief Minister

Mamata Banerjee.
ing its "seriousness and sensitivity". "The Ranaghat incident of

March 14, 2015 is a very serious
matter. The police administration
was instructed to take swift action
to nab the culprits. They are making their best efforts.
"Considering the seriousness
and sensitivity of the case and
also the fact that the place of incidence is very close to the border
area, I have decided to entrust
investigation of the case to CBI,"
Banerjee said, and promised that
her government will provide all
"necessary cooperation and assis-
tance" to the federal agency.

Interestingly, Banerjee had condemned protesters in Ranaghat,
who had blocked her convoy
seeking a CBI probe and expressing anger over police failure to
arrest any of the culprits.
"Those who are shouting 'CBI,
CBI' and trying to play politics
over rape, I condemn you," the
chief minister had said after her
convoy was stranded for over an
hour when she came out of the
hospital where the victim was
under treatment.
The Banerjee government has
also over the past months spewed
venom on the CBI and organised
road protests against it after the
probe agency arrested and
quizzed several Trinamool
Congress leaders in connection
with the Saradha chit fund scam.
Urban Development Minister
Firhad Hakim said the decision to
hand over the case to the CBI was
taken as the police had "some limitations".
Throughout this week, Kolkata
continued to be rocked by protests
over the Ranaghat crime. The
Bharatiya Janata Party Mahila
Morcha took out a march to the
secretariat, while the Left Front's
women activists organised a silent
protest rally from College Square
to Esplanade.
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12
INDIA
March 21-27, 2015
After Delhi success, AAP to go national

Ghaziabad: A month after it took power
in Delhi after crushing the BJP and the
Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)
has announced that it has decided to go
national.
"After our spectacular victory in Delhi
and seeing the love of the people, we
have decided to expand at the national
level," party leader Sanjay Singh told
the media here.
He added that the crisis in the party
would soon end, and party leaders
would reach out to Prashant Bhushan,
who, along with Yogendra Yadav, was
ousted from the PAC this month.
The AAP's Political Affairs
Committee (PAC), its highest decisionmaking body, also decided to enrol
"active volunteers" and to form a committee to decide their role in different
states. Five of the PAC's seven members
met at the residence of Delhi Chief
Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who returned
to the capital after 10 days of naturopathy treatment in Bengaluru for his nagging cough and high blood sugar.
The AAP, India's youngest political
party, would also decide in which states
it should contest elections, Sanjay Singh
said. Those who took part in the meeting
Patch up efforts with Yogendra

Yadav and Prashant Bhushan
started as Kejriwal returned
from Bangalore.
included Kejriwal, his deputy Manish
Sisodia, Delhi minister Gopal Rai,
Sanjay Singh and Ashutosh. Ashish
Khetan and Dilip Pandey also attended.
Two PAC members were not in town.

The announcement marks the most
significant decisions taken by the AAP
following the return to Delhi of
Kejriwal, who had earlier expressed his
reservations about fighting elections in
other parts of the country.
Yadav has time and again insisted that
party spreads itself.
AAP leaders have in the past stated
that the party was determined to contest
the next assembly election in Punjab,
where it scored a quarter of all votes in
the Lok Sabha polls. Of over 400 Lok
Sabha seats it contested, the party won
only four seats in Punjab.
The AAP is also said to be keen to
fight municipal elections in Mumbai and
Bengaluru, two cities where it enjoys a
wide network of volunteers.
Kejriwal loyalists had a late Monday
night meeting with Yadav.
"We met and discussed the issues. We
will definitely let you know if something constructive happens," Sanjay
Singh told the media on Tuesday.
Later in the day, Kejriwal reportedly
sent a text message to Bhushan saying
"will meet soon". Bhushan had sought
time with Kejriwal.
Court orders to ground six

SpiceJet aircraft, airline to appeal
New Delhi: The Delhi High
Court has ordered the civil
aviation regulator to de-register six aircraft of SpiceJet for
non-payment of dues to some
of its lessors -- an issue which
the budget carrier said is
being resolved.
Justice Rajiv Shakdher also
asked the Directorate General
for Civil Aviation to decide in
two weeks' time a plea by two
Irish firms to export the
planes. The court's directives
came on the pleas of leading
global aircraft lessors AWAS
Ireland and Wilmington Trust
SP Services (Dublin). The
firms sought directions to deregister the aircraft leased by
them to SpiceJet, on grounds
of alleged non-payment of
dues. "We are studying the
order and if so advised, we
will take the matter to higher
judicial forum. Dialogues are
on with the lessors and
expecting to resolve the issue
very soon," a spokesperson

for SpiceJet told IANS.
The move comes even as
co-founder Ajay Singh, now
back at the airline's helm,
intervened and paid $10 million of the dues. The airline
said the remaining amount
was expected to be settled
soon with the lessors of the
Boeing B737 planes.
The order to de-register the
six planes comes at a time
when the airline is trying to
overcome its turbulent times
since last year.
In Singh's second innings
with the airline, he and his
associates bought back the
53.5-percent stake in the airline that was sold to the
Marans of Chennai, who own
the Sun Group.
SpiceJet stock closed on
Thursday at Rs.21.75 -- down
4.40 percent from the previous day's closing in the
Bombay Stock Exchange.
'Modi better than Jinping in

managing global affairs'
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with

rival Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Beijing: Indian Prime Minister

Narendra Modi has been ranked by a
study the best world leader in handling domestic and international
affairs, pipping rival Chinese leader
Xi Jinping in the process, media
reported. "Xi's handling of both
domestic and international affairs
has won high praise. He ranks second, after newly elected Indian PM
Modi, for his capability of handling
domestic and international affairs,"
said Wang Gangyi, vice-president of
China International Publishing
Group, according to a China Daily
report. The findings of China's
National Image Global Survey 2014
were released in Beijing this week.
The survey was jointly conducted by
the Centre for International
Communication Studies of China
Foreign Languages Publishing
Administration, Millward Brown
and Lightspeed GMI. It was based
on 4,500 responses from nine coun-
tries last year. The nine countries -the US, Britain, Australia, Japan,
South Africa, India, Russia, Brazil
and China -- represent different geographic regions and stages of economic development.
The survey found that China's
overall image has been increasingly
recognized by the global community, even though overseas respondents were divided about China's
global image.
The average score of China's
national image in 2014 was 5.9 on a
scale of 1 to 10, up from the previous year's 5.1, according to the
study. The survey found that Xi was
the fourth best-known among the
leaders of the nine countries, with 70
percent of the respondents having
heard of him, after US President
Barack Obama (97 percent), Russian
President Vladimir Putin (91 percent) and British Prime Minister
David Cameron (86 percent).
OP-ED
March 21-27, 2015
13
Narendra Modi net gainer from Manmohan summons
By Amulya Ganguli
he summons issued to former prime minister

Manmohan Singh to
appear before a special court in
connection with the allocation of
coal blocks has come at an inappropriate time for the Congress.
As it is, the party is down in the
dumps because of a series of poll
debacles. Its tally of 44 Lok
Sabha seats shows that its fortunes have never been at a lower
ebb. To complicate matters, the
party's temperamental vice president, Rahul Gandhi, has again
shown his unpredictability by virtually disappearing from public
view.
Arguably, Manmohan Singh's
legal troubles may compel the
Congress to rally together in his
defence, as the "march" of 100odd Congressmen led by party
president Sonia Gandhi in New
Delhi on Thursday showed.
But, the difficulty of such political responses is that they do not
circumvent the illegalities with
which Manmohan Singh is
charged, along with a former coal
secretary and a business tycoon,
Kumar Mangalam Birla.
It is not surprising that Sonia
Gandhi has jumped into the fray
despite her indifferent health.
There is no one else in the party

who has the requisite image and
calibre to take up the challenge.
However, she has only herself
to blame for the present predicament. Had she allowed
Manmohan Singh a free hand in
2010, when he first suspected
that the telecom minister of the
time, Andimuthu Raja, was not
playing straight, the party wouldn't have found itself in the present
situation.
Manmohan Singh, too, is
responsible for his own humiliation. If he had insisted that he
would not compromise with principles for the sake of saving the
party, he would not have to face
prosecution.
If he is indicted, the Congress is
bound to face further political
setbacks from which neither the
absentee heir apparent nor the
dowager queen may be able to
rescue it.
Unfortunately, the latest case
cannot but confirm the
Congress's reputation for financial and political improprieties.
In 1996, P.V. Narasimha Rao
became involved in a case of
bribing MPs to secure their support for the Congress in parliament. It was also the year when
the Congress lost and remained
out of power for the next eight
Narendra Modi with former prime minister Manmohan Singh.
years. In 1987, prime minister

Rajiv Gandhi's name came up in
what has come to be known as
the Bofors howitzer scam. The
adverse publicity was the reason
for the Congress's defeat in 1989.
Indeed, it is this "reputation"

for corruption, reinforced by the
series of instances of malfeasance
- the spectrum scam, the
Commonwealth Games scam, the
Adarsh housing society scam and
finally, the allocation of coal

blocks - which led to the upsurge
of Anna Hazare's movement in
2010-11, resulting in the formation of the Aam Admi Party
(AAP) with its promise of cleansing the system.
But, now that the AAP is
embroiled in travails of its own,
the net gainer from the
Congress's decline and fall will
be Narendra Modi - the man who
Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi
were reluctant to congratulate
when he won his famous victory
in May 2014.
The lesson for the Congress is
that temporizing tactics of the
kind it adopted after its own
famous victory in 2009 are politically counter-productive because
they do not deceive the voters.
They first saw through them in
Tamil Nadu, where Raja's
sheninigans led to the Congress's
and the DMK's defeats in the
assembly election. Then came the
series of election defeats for the
Congress in assembly elections
from 2013, followed by the massive drubbing in the 2014 general
election.
Now, Manmohan Singh is playing the price for driving horses
and carriage through the norms of
morality at Sonia Gandhi's
behest.
'India's Daughter' projects unevenness between West and India
By Jawhar Sircar
I am genetically programmed against

any concept of censorship, but I would
still like to question a few assumptions
that are floating around. In spite of an
obsession in the belief that it is best to
live and let live, I would still place a few
worrisome facts in the public domain
about this whole episode.
My first question is whether we really
need periodic lessons in civility from our
former colonial masters. One has been
bombarded with the virtues of this documentary film made on the pitiable state in
India with rapturous descriptions of the
BBCs production. The gang rape of
December 16, 2012, did anger a billion
people against rampant sexual offences in
India and the brutality of the perpetrators.
But was it necessary to agitate even the
most placid humans with the unrepentant
statement of one of the convicted rapists,
as if all Indians are like this?
The same BBC had brought out a
detailed report on January 31, 2014, on the
state of Rape in the UK and had stated
rather sadly that recorded rape figures
show up to one third of cases dropped. It
went on to quote Katie Russell of Rape
Crisis England and Wales, who said the
figures seemed to suggest there has been
little change or improvement. One did not
see the BBC making a sensational documentary about the sorry state of affairs at
home.
The annoyance that runs through this entire article is more about whether India
needs to be repeatedly stereotyped in such a negative bracket.
The annual rape rate in India increased

from 1.9 to 2 per 10,000 people during the
period 2008 to 2012, and this compares to
a reported lower rate of 1.2 per 10,000 in
Japan. But there are far higher rates like
24.1 in the United Kingdom, 28.6 in the
United States, 66.5 in Sweden and the
worlds highest rate of 114.9 rapes per
10,000 in South Africa. The UK, thus,
confesses to 12 times more rape cases than
India.
Hence, my next question is whether the
BBC really needed to come and muddy the
waters here. As a public broadcaster, I am
not even suggesting to my colleagues that

they might like to do a similar film in the
UK because their country is their business.
After all, the British citizens, who pay
some Rs 14,000 per person per year to
maintain the BBC (none in India would
ever dream of such impositions), can certainly decide for themselves. Its commendable that the BBC can spend more
than 70% of its enviably big budget for
building good content, while poor souls in
India have to do with a bland Prasar
Bharati and Doordarshan, which can barely afford to spend between 8% and 13% of
The views expressed in Op Eds are not necessarily those of The South Asian Times.
their far smaller fund on content production. This is what the Sam Pitroda committee on Prasar Bharati analysed. This
committee also discovered that while
Indias broadcaster earned about 40% of
its upkeep through its own sweat and revenue, the BBCs equivalent figure was
then just around 20%.
It is time to remind a particularly attractive English TV news channel that viewership of all English news TV channels put
together is just 0.1% of Indias total gross
TV watching. So, let not the microscopic
assume to represent India.
In the last four decades, I have lived
through a lot of pompous posturing within
the governmental system and one can live
with such swagger so visible in the electronic media.
Was there really any ham-handed censorship of the BBCs viral-video on the
rape of December 16, 2012? The Hindu of
March 10 put it this way: The ban that
actually isnt. It then reports about an FIR
filed by an inspector of police, and on that
the chief metropolitan magistrate was
pleased to pass a restraint order. The
righteous can always agitate against this
clampdown to the several higher courts of
law.The annoyance that runs through this
entire article is more about whether India
needs to be repeatedly stereotyped in such
a negative bracket.
(Jawhar Sircar is CEO, Prasar Bharati
and former culture secretary)
14
March 21-27, 2015
OP-ED
Governing by crisis isnt governing at all
Great democracies do not veer from one doomsday moment to the next, nor do they fund government on a week-to-week basis.
Yet that is precisely the habit Capitol Hill has developed.
By Lee H. Hamilton
fter US Congress came a
hairs breadth from shutting down the Department
of Homeland Security a few weeks
ago, members of the leadership
tried to reassure the American people. Were certainly not going to
shut down the government or
default on the national debt,
Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell declared on CBSs
Face the Nation. Congress, he said,
would not lurch from crisis to crisis. I wish I could be so confident.
Because if you look at the year
ahead, the Congressional calendar
is littered with opportunities to do

just that.
Next month, unless Congress
acts, doctors will see a steep cut in
Medicare reimbursements. In May,
the Highway Trust Fund runs out
of money, meaning that infrastructure projects all across the country
could grind to a halt. The following
month, the federal Export-Import
Banks charter runs out. By the end
of summer, Congress will need to
raise the debt ceiling. Then it will
have to find a way of funding the
government for next year, deal
with across-the-board spending
cuts that are scheduled to take
hold, and make it possible for the
Treasury to continue to borrow

money.
I dont know about you, but my
bet is not on smooth sailing.
This is a huge problem. Great
democracies do not veer from one
doomsday moment to the next, nor
do they fund government on a
week-to-week basis. World superpowers do not risk their creditworthiness or threaten to strangle their
own agencies or force them to plan
repeatedly for shutdowns. Yet that
is precisely the habit Congress has
developed. Its embarrassing.
Why? Look at what happened
with Homeland Security. The issue,
essentially, was that members,
The South Asian Times proudly supports

unhappy with President Obamas
plan to shield undocumented immigrants from deportation, tried to
use the DHS funding measure to
force him to back down by tying
the two unrelated issues together.
The solution ultimately lay in separating them, allowing a vote on
each.
But during the weeks Congress
spent arriving at this commonsense
approach, DHS had to get ready for
roughly 30,000 employees to be
furloughed, arrange to wind down
administrative support functions,
prepare law enforcement across the
country for the loss of training
funds, and ask crucial employees
to be willing to work without pay
were talking the border patrol,
Coast Guard, screeners at airports,
cargo inspectors...the people on the
front lines.
The impasse threatened ongoing
research and planning on making
the country safer and grants to
local communities to pay salaries
for emergency personnel. At the
very point when terrorism overseas
was consuming the attention of our
security agencies, the department
charged with protecting the nation
at home had to be consumed with
shuttering its operations.
Small wonder that much of the
world thinks the US is incapable of
governing itself.
I know that the politics of Capitol
Hill are difficult right now. But
theyve been troublesome for

years, and legislating is about getting things done in a difficult environment. Congress is designed to
be an institution where the dilemmas of the moment can be overcome by skillful legislators. We
need a Congress that can address
its problems before a crisis comes
up.
What will it take to do so? Part of
the answer lies in dedication to
Congresss job. Its leaders need to
make clear their determination to
move legislation through in an
orderly fashion. The so-called
Hastert Rule that the Speaker
of the House will not allow a vote
on a bill unless he has a majority of
his own party behind it needs to
be jettisoned for good. Allowing a
majority of the House and the
Senate to work its will, whatever
the partisan alignment, would do
wonders.
The parade of make-or-break
issues that Congress faces this year
presents myriad opportunities for
legislative mischief. If all we see
before us is one government-shutdown threat after another, the
remaining faith Americans hold in
our chief lawmaking body could
disappear
altogether. And
deservedly so.
Lee Hamilton is Director of the
Center on Congress at Indiana
University and was a member of
the US House of Representatives.
Print Partner
The South Asian Times

e x c e l l e n c e
i n
j o u r n a l i s m
The views expressed in Op Eds are not necessarily those of

The South Asian Times.
FESTIVAL
March 21-27, 2015
15
Magical experience of colors at Radha Madhav Dham

Austin TX: Despite the lingering cold and
threats of rain, more than 4,000 people
thronged the Radha Madhav Dham here to
celebrate the annual Holi festival on March
7.The sights, tastes and sounds of India greeted people as they strolled around the 200
acres of beautiful temple grounds, along with
chirping of birds, beautiful peacocks and deer
that came to witness the scene. The Holi
Mela, hosted by community volunteers, was
enjoyed by Indians and Westerners alike, who
flocked around the food booths eager to taste
the delectable Indian dishes freshly prepared dosas, paav bhaji, chhole bhature,
papdi chaat and samosas, along with mango
lassi and sweets, not to mention the masala
chai for a cold day. Kids were transported
into a fun world of games, as they rolled
around the grass inside a Zorb ball, jumped
up and down in the Bounce house, and
watched clowns. Inside the Prayer Hall, the
deities of Radha and Krishna looked stunning
in a new Holi Shringar (adornments) with
heaps of colorful Holi powder and decorated
pichkaris placed at their feet, creating a colorful depiction of Holi as played in Vrindavan
in India by the divine duo.
All programs celebrated the spiritual aspect
of Holi, enabling loving remembrance of
Krishnas mischief in the play of Holi with
Gopis in Vrindavan. Uplifting Braj kirtans,
and fun folk dances showcased Krishnas
naughty leelas. The speech by Swami
Nikhilanand Ji explained to the audience how
to practically integrate this devotional
remembrance into their fun festivities.
In the evening gulal play began with Ho,
Ho, Ho, Ho, Holi Hai! reverberating
throughout the grounds as it was sung by
the live band and repeated by the thousands
of participants playing Holi. The atmosphere
4
quickly
turned 3
vibrant, exuberant
and joyful bright
florescent colors of
spring could be seen
flying everywhere,
creating clouds of
pink, purple, blue
and red hues in the
air. Young and old,
male and female,
Indian and Western
all opened their
hearts, sharing of the
joy and in celebration
(1) Radha-Krishna looked stunning in a new Holi
of the human values
shringar (adornments). (2) Over 4,000 people
of compassion, forthronged the temple grounds in Austin, TX.(3) The
giveness and love,
live band got people dancing. (4) Young and old,
which underlies the
Indians and Westerns they all enjoyed the festival.
spirit of this colorful
Indian festival of
dren experience our culture in
Holi. In the words of one enthralled visitor,
this way.
Holi at Radha Madhav Dham was a magical
experience - It's the best, its so magical, I For event photos :
want to thank the temple for letting my chil- www.facebook.com/Radha Madhav Dham.
Two go-to events
Rimli Roy & Suratis Holi Hai!
Holi at an NJ Library
Where: Exchange place, Jersey City

When: Saturday, Mar 28; 12:00 noon
(Rain date: Sun March 29).
Hosted by Rimli Roy, Surati for Performing
Arts and Education, this Holi event will have
live multicultural performance, color playing
(organic colors), fun workshops, Bhangra
and dhol, DJ, dancing, cash bar, food, henna,
thandai, family fun and festivities. So come
out and play Holi by smearing folks
with color.
Where: The New Brunswick Free Public Library

When: March 28; 12:00 noon
This library is hosting its annual Holi festival in collaboration with the Rutgers Indian Graduate Students
Association, Hindi USA, Taalim School of Indian
Music, and South Asian Total Health Initiative
(SATHI). The fun-filled program of music, dance,
henna, regional dresses and delicious Indian food
besides color play is free and open to all ages. Contact
Kavita Pandey, Librarian, Ph: 732-745-5108 x20.
16
ULTIMATE BOLLYWOOD
March 21-27, 2015
Appetite for sex,

food equally
normal: Radhika
a
r
e
m
a
c
t
n
i
o
p
n
a
C
n
i
g
n
i
h
t
at any
r
e
k
a
m
m
India: Fil
Madden
ndia's vibrancy, rich culture
and chaos of urban life turned
out to be magnets for John
Madden, who has shot two of his
films --"The Best Exotic Marigold
Hotel" and its sequel -- in the
country. The English director says
every frame in the nation is worth
capturing.
His film's sequel, "The Second
Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", is
being released by Fox Star Studios
in India on Friday. The movie has
more things Indian than its locations -- there are actors like Lillete
Dubey, Tina Desai and British
actor of Indian descent Dev Patel.
"It is so different culturally. It is
colours that define Rajasthan, but
it also has an energy which is so
powerful," he said.
Both his films are extensively
Actress Radhika Apte
ctress Radhika Apte, who will be seen in a

film about a sex addict, feels that having an
appetite for sex is as normal and healthy as
it is for food. Only, it is made out to be a "big
thing" in India, she says.
I think in our country in general, to have an
appetite for sex is considered a big thing. But having an appetite for sex and food is equally normal
and healthy," Radhika, whose film "Hunterrr" was
just released, said.
In the film, her co-actor Gulshan Devaiah will be
seen playing the role of Mandar Pokshe, a man
obsessed with sex. Radhika feels that the society
looks at a "bigger sex appetite" as a "bad thing".
shot in
Jaipur and
U d a i p u r . John Madden has shot two of his films 'The Best Exotic
Marigold Hotel' and its sequel in India.
"The films
are
more
"I understood it better. I felt a
about chaos of urban life in
Rajasthan and I was very affected stronger sense of identity with
by that. My point is that you can India. The country is stimulating,
point your camera on anything, vibrant and astonishing to the
and you will find something inter- greyer tones to the British life or
esting (in India)," added the 65- western lifestyle," said the filmyear-old, who was here to promote maker. His 2012 movie revolved
around life of a bunch of Britons
his movie.
The director, whose film who come to India to find a new
"Shakespeare in Love" won an meaning to their life post-retireAcademy Award, has captured the ment, and how they end up in a
essence of daily life in India - with hotel in Rajasthan; while the secits cycle rickshaws, bargaining in ond one in the franchise narrates
their journey after they decide to
flea markets and more.
When Madden came to India for stay back. Madden says the sequel
his new film, he says it strength- is about "simulation" with "more
Indian perspective".
ened his bond with the country.
hen was the last time you were scared, really

scared, while watching a film? Forget the creaky
gates, flapping windows and banshee wails of
the so-called horror movies which are manufactured with
assembly-line monotony. The real horror resides on the
roads and highways where marauders and prowlers lurk
with all the evil force of modern-day servants of satan in
search of prey.
As a road thriller about a couple waylaid by criminals
on a bleak stretch of highway outside Gurgaon,
NH10 holds a great amount of riveting
resonance. As a thriller that tears into the
monstrous gender inequalities that
engender gruesome crimes such a
honor killing, NH10 puts forward an
even stronger case.
This is the beauty of this dark and
passionate film. It works on a multiple level without evoking a selfconscious attitude of moral altitude. At
the outset we see the well-to-do couple
Meera (Anushka) and Arjun (Neil)
take off on a celebratory weekend. It is
Meeras birthday and boy, what a birthday its going to be for her! By the time
her car-wreck of a holiday stutters to a
heaving sadistic halt Meera has lost her
husband and has mowed down a slew of
bigoted sociopaths.
The night ironically ends when Meeras
revenge is complete. By the time you get even
with your enemies, the act of vendetta loses its
relevance. Thats the way life is. Thats the
A scene from the
way life teaches us to exercise self-control.
film NH10.
Turning a blind eye is one option of survival
'NH10' dramatic
telling of an
urban fable
REVIEW
Kohli 'blown away' by

Anushka in 'NH10'
ricketer Virat Kohli has openly praised his ladylove
Anushka Sharma's performance in her debut film
production "NH10", saying that he is "blown
away". "Just watched #NH10 and I am blown away. What a
brilliant film and specially an outstanding performance by
my love @AnushkaSharma. SO PROUD:)," Kohli, who is
currently busy with the Cricket World Cup, tweeted.
Earlier, the duo used to keep their relationship under wraps,
but now it seems they are warming up to the idea of going
public about their being together.
that Neil's character refuses to exercise. He looks for trouble.

He cant turn away. The film triumphs on every level, beginning with the script by Sudip Sharma which portrays both the
gleaming glory and the gory side of Gurgaon in one deft and
lucid range of vision. The film is so authentically shot by cinematographer Arvind Kannabiran that often-times we forget
the locations, the people and situations are trapped in the
frames of a film. The narrative has a sense of jump-out vigour
and ruggedness that enthrals you and rivets you to the goingson.
The dialogues range from the brilliantly ironic to the unmistakably authentic. When at the beginning Meeras car is
attacked by two motorbike riding adventurers, the cop sighs
and says, "Gurgaon is like a growing infant. Its bound to
jump around." NH10 is a relentlessly thoughtful, constantly
edgy and dramatic telling of an urban fable, so real and yet so
cinematic that you feast on the ferocious twists and turns
wondering how Meera will ever wriggle out of her night-long
nightmare.
ULTIMATE BOLLYWOOD
March 21-27, 2015
17
'Dil Ki Baatein' celebrates life, not death: Bhatt

ilmmaker Mahesh Bhatt,
who was in New Delhi to
promote the forthcoming
TV show "Dil Ki Baatein", which
touches upon euthanasia, says the
Ram Kapoor-Gurdeep Kohli starrer will promote a zest for life
among the people.
"'Dil Ki Baatein' celebrates life
because there is death, and thank
god there is death because (otherwise) people won't realise what
life is all about. It is about a zest
towards life," Bhatt, who has
penned the show's concept, said
here. The filmmaker said the show
"has been made passionately
because it comes from an area of
my life where I've gone through
such circumstances".
"It's possibly the most powerful
autobiography and narratives that
I've drawn out from my heart,"
Rohit
Shetty signs
Devgn-SRK
for his next!
f t e r
much speculation it was
confirmed recently that
Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, who
rocked as iconic pair Raj and
Simran of "Dilwale Dulhania Le
Jaayenge" have been signed by
Rohit Shetty for his film "Dilwale"
said Bhatt, who was joined by

Ram and the show's co-producers
Guroudev Bhalla and Dhaval
Gada at a press conference here.
Talking about what aspect of his
life the show highlights, the
"Arth" director said: "It comes
from a very intense relationship
that I had with this man named
U.G. Krishnamurti, who was my
friend, guide and philosopher.
Whatever I am, is based on the
backdrop of my understanding
that I had towards him.
"In March 2007 (when
Krishnamurti died), I had to go
through this very painful process
of making a decision, similar to
what the character (in the show)
does -- how do you go about executing the desire of the person
who you love the most...when that
person says allow me to make an
exit from the world, what will you

do then... Will you allow him to go
or do you and your own selfishness will block his way?"
The story of the show -- loosely
based on Bhatt's 1989 film
"Daddy" -- revolves around Ram
(played by Ram himself), who
wants to rescue his terminally ill
wife Anandita (essayed by
Gurdeep) and how he and his children try to bring her back into
their lives.
Talking about his character, Ram
said: "I'm very privileged and honoured to be a part of this project. I
know it's going to take a lot from
me because I'm an actor who likes
to connect to his roles and feel
them intentionally."
Ram says he didn't do any
preparations for his role in the
show.
Filmmaker
Mahesh Bhatt.
No one will doubt my integrity: Nihalani

he
Central
ments in the CBFC to
Board of Film
create bad blood
Certification
between me and the
(CBFC) chairperson
film fraternity."But
Pahlaj Nihalani, who
they forget I've been a
is in the news after
part of the film indusfilm fraternity memtry for many decades.
bers reportedly comNo film producer will
plained against his
doubt my integrity," he
The Central Board
autocratic ways, says of Film Certification said. Nihalani was
no film producer can (CBFC) chairperson appointed
CBFC
doubt his integrity.
chairperson
in
January.
Pahlaj Nihalani.
Amid all the controHis stance against vulversy, Nihalani is playing it cool. garity and abusive language in
"Let them try to get rid of me. The films has led film industry meminformation and broadcasting min- bers to stand up against his 'diktats'.
istry is aware of what I am doing Some film celebrities, including
and who are the people who want Ramesh Sippy and Aamir Khan
me out.
even met Minister of State for
The brokers and middlemen are Information and Broadcasting
conspiring with the disgruntled ele- Rathore on Monday.
T
Ajay Devgn is Rohit Shettys close friend and will make a
cameo appearance in Dilwale starring SRK and Kajol
and now the latest scoop added to it

is that Kajol's husband, actor Ajay
Devgn will also be a part of the
film. Well, if you all remember then
Shah Rukh and Ajay Devgn's relationship hit a rough patch during the
release of their respective productions- 'Son Of Sardar' and 'Jab Tak
Hai Jaan' but seems Shetty, who
enjoys a good bond with Ajay and

Shah Rukh, has managed to get an
interesting coup for his film.
Seems fans will get a double treat
from Rohit Shetty as he is not only
set to bring together the superhit
jodi of Shah Rukh and Kajol but
also Ajay Devgn, with whom he has
helmed many blockbusters.
Sippy, Aamir discuss censorship issues with Rathore

ollywood celebrities
like Ramesh Sippy
and Aamir Khan discussed film censorship and
certification related issues
when they met Minister of
State for Information and
Broadcasting Rajyavardhan
Singh Rathore.
Rathore said the meeting
was not to displace Central
Board of Film Certification
(CBFC) chairman Pahlaj
Nihalani, who has been
reportedly facing the ire of
the film fraternity for 'creating a hostile environment'.
"The discussion was on the
issues, ideas and suggestions... and the film industry
members came up with wonderful suggestions which we
will take forward. The meet-
ing was not on individuals,"

Rathore said.
"Sholay" director Sippy,
who attended the meeting,
said: "It happened because
some of the film industry
people were insecure and
angry over censor board for
creating a hostile environment and making it impossible for them to work.
"But minister sahab
(Rathore) has assured that
everything will be set right as
it is (censor board) a
Certification Board and not
the Censor Board and therefore, films will be viewed on
the certificate basis."
Rathore is hopeful that
"things will get better".
Aamir was also happy with
the meeting.
Ramesh Sippy.
Rati Agnihorti's husband

shocked at the wife
harassment allegations
n Saturday, Bollywood and

Rati Agnihotri's friends
were shocked when the
usually pleasant
and mild-mannered actress
went to the Worli
Police, citing a
case of domestic
violence against
her husband,
Anil Virwani.
Having known Rati and Anil for
three decades; and having caught
up with them from time to time,
individually and as a couple, one
was concerned. In fact, Rati who
has been one of the most upfront
actresses in the business has
always conducted herself with dignity inside and outside of her
home.
March 21-27, 2015
DIASPORA
March 21-27, 2015
19
Gandhi gets most central position in London's Parliament Square

London: A statue of Mahatma
Gandhi has been extended the
most central position in London's
Parliament Square directly facing
Britain's Palace of Westminster or
Houses of Parliament.
In a park where there are statues
of Sir Winston Churchill and
Nelson Mandela in two corners, it
is highly significant that arguably
the most prestigious location has
been given to Gandhi.
The statue was unveiled by
Indian Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley in the presence of British
Prime Minister David Cameron on
a glorious sunny, albeit cold morning in London in the presence of a
hundreds of members of the public.
Prime Minister Cameron said
the sculpture is a "magnificent
tribute" to one of the "most towering figures" in history, Sky News
reported.
The nine feet high bronze sculpture has been created by leading
British sculptor, Philip Jackson,
Jaitley presents NRI award to G.P. Hinduja
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley unveils the Gandhi statue
renowned for statues of Queen

Elizabeth and Bomber Command.
Jackson started work on the statue
in July.
The sculpture is inspired by photographs of the civil rights leader
outside 10, Downing Street in
1931.
A band played Indian classical
music, Indian flags adorned the
square, and schoolchildren stood

in the crowd to watch.
"This statue is a magnificent
tribute to one of the most towering
figures in the history of world politics and by putting Mahatma
Gandhi in this famous square we
are giving him an eternal home in
our country," Cameron said.
"Many of his teachings remain as
AGSA'S 22nd International Sindhi Sammelan,

a 7 night cruise in Sept 2015
New York: Alliance of Global
Sindhi Associations (AGSA) has
organized its 22nd International
Sindhi Sammelan which will be a
seven night cruise, round trip from
and ending at Fort Lauderdale
Florida beginning September 26. To
avoid price increase the reservations
need to made before March 31st.
Questions concerning the cruise
can be found answered online at
http://www.landmarktravel.com/sindhi/.You can also
email:
sindhi@landmarktravel.com. All Sammelan programs
Sindhis worldwide a google survey

By Shobha Motwani
Sindhis' total population is only 0.5% of the world
30% of India's businesses are run by Sindhis
They are the 6th most richest community in the world
Sindhis have 423 different surnames ending in 'ani'
35% NRIs globally are Sindhi. It is the official caste of 43 countries and counting
In 2024 it will be the richest minority community worldwide
shall be uploaded and updated at
www.Sindhi Sammelan.com from
time to time where they could be

viewed from all over the world.
World War 1 Commemoration in France: Ambassador

Arun K. Singh laid wreath at the Indian Memorial at
Neuve Chapelle on March 13 during the Centenary
Commemoration Ceremony of Battle of Neuve Chapelle
. The ceremony was organized in association with the
cities of Neuve Chapelle and Richebourg.
Representatives of the French Army, local political
leadership, officials, civil society and school children
attended the solemn ceremony. Ambassador also inaugurated three exhibitions on the contribution of Indian
soldiers in World War 1 that were organized on the
sidelines. During the First World War, 130,000 Indian
men served in France and Belgium, out of which 9000
made the supreme sacrifice. Their
contributions are acknowledged by the Neuve Chapelle
Memorial that was inaugurated on Oct 7, 1927.
London: Britain-based industrialist G.P.Hinduja was presented the

inaugural NRI Foundation Award by the visiting Indian Finance
Minister Arun Jaitley here.
"The India-UK partnership is furthered by a very strong 1.5 million
British Indian community, which has come into this land, adopted it
as its own," Jaitley said at the awards ceremony.
Hinduja, the co-chairman of the Hinduja Group, was honoured for
establishing a global business presence across various sectors. His
philanthropic works in Britain and India were also recognised.
The other NRI Foundation Award winners were the Asian Media
and Marketing Group, Lloyds Banking Group's Head of Responsible
Business Kamel Hothi and the British government's Dealmaker for
India Alpesh Patel.
The three Hinduja brothers - Srichand, Gopichand and Prakash figured in the Bofors scandal that came out in 1986. In 2005, the
Delhi High Court dismissed the allegations against them.
potent today as when he first made
them. "'The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others' and 'be the change
that you want to see in the world'
remain timeless, profound and
inspiring words of wisdom," he
added.
Several other notable personalities attended the ceremony,
including Chair of the Gandhi
Statue Memorial Trust, Meghnad
Desai, and Bollywwod superstar
Amitabh Bachhan.
New Zealand PM backs

Sikhs on 'kirpans'
Wellington: Prime Minister John
Key said on Monday that the
International Cricket Council's
(ICC) decision to bar Sikh fans from
carrying 'kirpans' at World Cup
matches was wrong.
Seven Sikh cricket fans were
stopped from entering Eden Park to
watch India play Zimbabwe in a
match on Saturday as they were carrying kirpans, The New Zealand
Herald reported.
The kirpan is a small ceremonial
sword carried by Sikhs as part of
their religious attire. To the ICC, it
is a weapon. Key said the ICC rightly set the rules for what could be
brought into New Zealand cricket
venues. "It's their tournament, not
ours. So we can't dictate that to
them." However, Key told a group
of Sikhs that he was sympathetic to
their position. "My understanding of
the kirpan is it is for the most part
very small, it's a blunt instrument.
"And, actually, if you want to
make the case that someone could
cause harm with that, they're probably much more likely to be able to
cause harm with anything else you
can get at the grounds, including a

wine bottle or something else," the
prime minister said.
Daljit Singh, chairman of the
Supreme Sikh Council, said many in
the Sikh community were unhappy
with the ICC decision and their
council was considering taking legal
action.
"This decision has huge implication because we have about 500 in
our community who already bought
tickets for the semi-finals, and are
now worried that they cannot get
in," he said.
"We have been told that, under
New Zealand law, it is legal to carry
a kirpan, but this ban is being
imposed by the ICC which we feel
should follow the law of the land."
It is legal to wear a kirpan in New
Zealand but these cannot be taken
on to flights.
Key also said he wanted the government to look at making an
exemption in aviation rules for the
kirpan.
"Some countries have legislated
that, I think Britain and Australia.
We might look at it."
March 21-27, 2015
SUBCONTINENT
Lakhvi release hype affecting Pak judicial system: Basit

Kolkata:
Pakistan
High
Commissioner to India Abdul
Basit said the "hype" created over
an Islamabad court ordering the
release of Mumbai terror attack
mastermind Zakiur Rehman
Lakhvi was "indirectly affecting"
the judicial process in Pakistan.
Participating in an interactive
program here, the envoy asserted
that Pakistan "has changed" in the
last decade and called for having
faith in its judiciary.
"There is a judicial process in
Pakistan like any other democratic country. The prosecution is
doing its best, I won't like to jump
the gun." "Even if he is granted
bail, why create hype, the trial
hasn't stopped. We would like the
trial to end as soon as possible.
Don't judge us from a narrow
prism, Pakistan has changed a lot
in the last decade," said Basit during a three-day visit to Kolkata.
"By creating this hype, which in
my view is not called for, you are
indirectly affecting the judicial
process in Pakistan. Let the judicial process take its course, we are
doing our best," said Basit, who
was summoned by the Indian
Mumbai terror attack

mastermind Zakiur
Rehman Lakhvi.
external affairs ministry after the

court order. The Islamabad High
Court on March 13 struck down
the detention order of Lakhvi,
who is said to have overseen the
2008 Mumbai attack that left 166
Indians and foreigners dead and
brought India and Pakistan close
to war. Lakhvi, however, contin-
ues to be in detention following

an order by the home ministry of
Pakistan's Punjab province.
The envoy also dispelled
notions that Pakistan was intentionally going slow on the trial.
"It takes time because the crime
scene was in India. We got all the
evidence from India... there are so
many gaping holes... but I would
not enter into that debate."
"Don't draw premature conclusions, terrorism is a huge problem
for us. You may have your 26/11
but we have these almost daily,"
said Basit, adding that terrorism
had destroyed the social and economic fabric of Pakistan.
The envoy insisted that India
should have agreed to Pakistan's
proposal for a joint investigation
into the Mumbai attack.
Basit refused to comment on the
recent release of Kashmiri separatist leader Masrat Alam.
"I won't like to comment on that
because there are divergent views
on this. So far as I get to know
from media reports, the legal position was such that he could not be
put behind bars anymore," said
Basit.
March 21-27, 2015
21
Indo-Pak state of affairs

historic opportunity'
Kolkata: Terming Nawaz Sharif

and Narendra Modi, prime misters
of Pakistan and India, as leaders oriented towards "development and
peace in the region", Pakistan's High
Commissioner Abdul Basit said the
current scenario was a "historic
opportunity".
"Our prime minister (Sharif)
believes Pakistan cannot realize its
potential unless it has good normal
relationship with all its neighboring
countries, particularly India and
Afghanistan," Basit told media persons at an event organized by the
MCC Chamber of Commerce.
"It is a historic opportunity
because on the Indian side too, there
is a prime minister who strongly
believes in the development agenda
and he also believes that it is essential for this region to come together
and grow together," he said. Basit
said Sharif's vision of "peace for
development and development for
peace" envisages a "good, normal
relationship with India and peace in
the entire region". "This is a historic
opportunity and in my view should
Pakistan's High
Commissioner Abdul Basit.
not be lost because opportunities

come rarely. We shouldn't lose this
opportunity which is there now
because of the two leaders."
The top envoy said Pakistan was
keen to normalize its relations with
India and not a single politician in
his country made an anti-Indian
statement during the 2013 elections.
"There is an immense desire in
our country to reach out to India and
normalize our relations. All political
parties (in Pakistan) are committed
to strengthening and normalizing
relations with India," he said.
Modi took up fishermen issue with Lanka Maldives ex-president's trial flawed
New Delhi: Prime Minister
Narendra Modi took up the
problems of Indian shermen with Sri Lanka during
his visit to the island-country last week, External
Affairs Minister Sushma
Swaraj said.
"The problems of shermen were also discussed
during the talks. The prime
minister pointed out that
this was a complex issue
involving livelihood and
humanitarian concerns on
both sides. India and Sri
Lanka need to nd a longterm solution," she said
The fishermen issue is a major
making a suo motu stateirritant in bilateral ties.
ment in the Lok Sabha on
PM Modi's visit to the Seychelles, in its efforts to build a future that accomMauritius and Sri Lanka. She informed the modates the aspirations of all sections of
house that the Prime Minister told Sri society, including the Sri Lankan Tamil
Lanka that shermen's associations of both community, for a life of equality, justice,
countries must meet at the earliest to work peace and dignity in a united Sri Lanka.
Prime Minister also declared that we
out a mutually acceptable arrangement.
The External Affairs Minister said believe that the early and full implementaModi's talks with the Sri Lankan leader- tion of the 13th Amendment and going
beyond it would contribute to this
ship covered a very wide range of issues.
"He conveyed India's sincere support process," Swaraj added.
PM Modi was in Sri Lanka on a two-day
and good wishes for Sri Lanka's new journey of peace, reconciliation and progress," visit, the rst by an Indian prime minister
Swaraj said. "India stands with Sri Lanka in 28 years.
Geneva: The jailing of former

Maldives president Mohamed
Nasheed for 13 years last week
followed a trial marked by "agrant irregularities," the U.N.
high commissioner for human
rights said.
Nasheed, ousted in 2012 in
what his supporters say was a
coup, was found guilty of terrorism for ordering the arrest earlier
that year of a judge, in a case that
raised fears of further political
instability in the Indian Ocean
state.
In
a
statement,
High
Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al
Hussein said the sentence handed
down by the criminal court in Male, was
part of "a rushed process" that prevented
Nasheed's defense from calling witnesses.
The trial "appears to contravene the
Maldives' own laws and practices and international fair trial standards in a number of
respects," said Zaid, a former Jordanian
ambassador to the United Nations in New
York.
India and the United States have also
voiced concern over the case, but they were
brushed aside by the government of the
Indian Ocean archipelago, a major destination for afuent tourists off the southern tip
of India.
"The trial was conducted in accordance
Former Maldives president

Mohamed Nasheed.
with the relevant laws and criminal procedures prevailing in the Maldives. Due
process was followed," Foreign Minister
Dhunya Maumoon said.
When Nasheed, the country's rst democratically-elected leader, was arrested last
month, thousands of supporters of his
Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and
other groups from across the nation of 1,190
islands protested in Male.
Nasheed won the presidency in 2008 in
elections that ended the 30-year-rule of
authoritarian leader Maumoon Abdul
Gayoom. Current president Abdulla
Yameen, elected in 2013 in a contested
vote, is Gayoom's half-brother.
22
INTERNATIONAL
March 21-27, 2015
Tunisia museum attack leaves 19 people dead

Tunis: At least 19 people, including 17 tourists, were killed and
over 20 others injured when gunmen attacked a museum in
Tunisia's parliament complex here,
according to media reports. Two of
the terrorists were later killed.
Five "terrorists" carried out the
attack on Bardo Museum, and two
of them were killed by security
forces, Prime Minister Habib Essid
said at a press conference.
A Tunisian citizen and a policeman were also killed in the attack,
while at least 22 tourists and two
Tunisians were injured, the prime
minister added.
"It is a critical moment in our
history, and a defining moment for
our future," he said, according to a
BBC report.
"We have not established the
identity of the two terrorists," he
said, adding that the two terrorists
"could have been assisted by two
or three other operatives". Security
UN chief slams deadly attack

United Nations: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned
"in the strongest terms" an attack on the Bardo Museum in central
Tunis, capital of Tunisia, which reportedly left at least 19 people
killed, including 17 European tourists.
The secretary-general on "deplores the loss of life," said a statement
issued by Ban's spokesman. "He conveys his deepest condolences to
the families of the victims of this deplorable act," Xinhua reported.
"The secretary-general also expresses his solidarity with the
Tunisian people and the Tunisian authorities," the statement said.
Tunisian security forces secure the area after gunmen

attacked Tunis' famed Bardo Museum.
operations were still underway,

with forces continuing to comb the
area to find out the remaining operatives, if any, according to the
reports. Essid said about 100
tourists were inside the museum
when it was attacked.
BBC cited Essid as saying that
Italian, Spanish and German citi-
Netanyahu set to
remain Israel PM
Jerusalem:
Prime Minister
Benjamin
Netanyahu's
right
wing
Likud party
took a clear-cut
lead over the
centre-left
Zionist Union
in the Israeli
general elections and the
Israeli Prime Minister
Palestinian
Benjamin Netanyahu
presidency
reacted to the surprise Beiteinu party, and Moshe
results by saying that there Gafni and Yaakov Litzman
will be no peace in the of United Torah Judaism.
Netanyahu seeks, with the
Middle East without estabsupport of these parties, to
lishing a Palestinian state.
Tallying 99 percent of the achieve a majority of 67
ballots, results showed the seats in the 120-seat
Likud party had garnered Knesset through a rightultra-orthodox
30 seats out of the overall wing,
120 parliamentary seats, alliance.
The election results easily
with the Zionist Union winenable Netanyahu to estabning 24 seats.
Netanyahu announced lish a government along
that he intended to form a with the Jewish Home
new Israeli government (which won eight seats),
within two to three weeks, Israel Beytenu (six seats),
the ultra-orthodox parties
Efe news agency reported.
He has already spoken to Shas and United Torah
the parliamentary party Judaism (15 combined).
leaders he considers as pos- Netanyahu calls these parsible coalition partners, ties his right wing "natural
according to a Likud party allies".
Netanyahu still needs
statement. The prime minister spoke with party leaders increased support set to
Naftali Bennet of the come from Moshe Kahlon,
Jewish Home party, Moshe a former Likud member
Kahlon of Kulanu, Aryeh who in 2014 established the
Deri of Shas, Avigdor Kulanu party, which got 10
Lieberman of the Yisrael seats.
zens were among those killed.

At the time of the attack, deputies
in the neighboring parliamentary
building were discussing an antiterrorism legislation, the BBC
report said.
British, Italian, French and
Spanish nationals were among
those taken hostage during the
attack, local radio reported.

Essid said the attack targeted the
country's economy, and that the
struggle against terrorism was a
"long battle to fight", according to
a Guardian report.
He praised the Tunisian armed
forces and called on all political
parties, civil society and state institutions to come together to fight
terrorism. According to an earlier
report, a group of militants disguised as soldiers entered the
Bardo museum through the parliament building. Gunshots were

heard near the parliament complex,
which was immediately evacuated.
Ambulances removed people
from the museum as helicopters
flew overhead, CNN reported.
Bardo Museum is the biggest
Tunisian museum and a major
tourist attraction. The museum is
housed in a 19th century palace
and describes itself as "a jewel of
Tunisian heritage".
US mass surveillance becomes routine: Snowden

Berlin: Mass surveillance of US
intelligence agencies has become
routine, American whistleblower
Edward Snowden has said.
"Extensive monitoring has
become routine," said Snowden
while taking a video interview at the
annual IT trade fair taking place in
Germany.
"Thus, the activities of the NSA
have become invisible. Even in the
White House," he added.
The whistleblower further said
that surveillance was not confined
to the US.
Citing the GCHQ as example,
Snowden said the British intelligence agency "has developed programs to monitor webcams which
affects billions of people."
Speaking about possibilities of a
return to the US, Snowden, who is
currently staying in
Russia on a threeyear residence permit, said "there is no
dictation of terms, if
I wanted to go home.
It would be the best
for the U.S. government, too."
He specifically
noted that IT experts
were also targets of
intelligence agencies
because they "have
access to systems,
infrastructure and
private records, callAmerican whistleblower Edward Snowden
ing on people working in this industry to
lished leaks that exposed the NSA
come together to protect communi- monitoring program "Prism" on the
cation and improve security."
basis of classified documents from
Glenn Greenwald, who had pub- Snowden, also showed up.
Ex-US official charged with trying to join IS
Washington: A former US Air Force

mechanic has been formally charged
with trying to join the Islamic State
(IS) terror group in Syria.
Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh, 47,
served as an avionics and instrumentation specialist in the Air Force from
1986-1990, the Justice Department
said.
He is facing charges of "attempting
to provide material support" to a terrorist organization and obstruction of
justice for destroying evidence.
"Born and raised in the US, Pugh
allegedly turned his back on his
country and attempted to travel to
Syria in order to join a terrorist
organization," President Barack
Obama's nominee for attorney general, Loretta. E. Lynch said.
"We will continue to vigorously
Air Force veteran from

New Jersey Tairod Nathan
Webster Pugh
prosecute extremists, whether based

here or abroad, to stop them before
they are able to threaten the US and
its allies," she added. Legal documents in the case revealed that Pugh
attempted to join the IS between
May 2014 and January 12.
Authorities said that Pugh on
January 10 flew from Egypt to
Turkey to join the jihadis in Syria
after losing his job as an aircraft
mechanic in the Middle East.
Pugh was deported from Turkey to
Egypt and then to the US, where he
was arrested on January 16.
Before his arrest, Pugh tried to
destroy four thumb drives which,
investigators say, contained information regarding border crossing points
between Syria and Turkey controlled
by the IS and downloaded videos
showing executions by that group.
If found guilty, Pugh could face up
to 35 years in prison.
BUSINESS
March 14-20, 2015
Black money bill: 10 years jail, 300 percent penalty

New Delhi: Giving concrete shape to
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's budget
announcement last month on recovering
black money stashed away abroad, the
cabinet-approved anti-black money law
provides a short window to income tax
assessees to declare assets, pay tax and
penalty and avoid imprisonment.
The Foreign Income and Undisclosed
Assets (Imposition of New Tax) Bill,
2015, to be tabled in the Lok Sabha, provides for a maximum of 10 years rigorous
imprisonment for offenders who evade
taxes in relation to foreign assets.
Under its provisions, the concealment
of foreign income and assets will be noncompoundable and offenders will not be
permitted to approach the Settlement
Commission for resolving disputes.
There will also be a penalty at the rate
of 300 percent of taxes on the concealed
income and assets.
The new legislation will provide that
income in relation to any undisclosed foreign asset or undisclosed income from
any foreign asset will be taxable at the
maximum marginal rate. Benecial owner
or beneciary of foreign assets will be
mandatorily required to le return, even if
there is no taxable income.
The Bill seeks to make non-ling of
India has no official estimates of illegal money stashed away overseas, but
the unofficial ones range from $466 billion to $1.4 trillion.
income tax returns or ling returns with

inadequate disclosure of foreign assets
liable for prosecution with punishment of
rigorous imprisonment up to seven years.
An Indian Express report last month
said that 1,195 Indians were in the list of
clients who held accounts in HSBC bank's
Geneva branch from 2006-2007,
Reacting to the report, Finance Minister
Jaitley said the government has complet-
ed assessment of 350 foreign accounts

while tax-evasion proceedings have been
initiated against 60 account holders.
Meanwhile, the income tax department
has shifted its attention from civil consequences to criminal consequences in serious cases of tax evasion. India has no ofcial estimates of illegal money stashed
away overseas, but the unofcial ones
range from $466 billion to $1.4 trillion.
Government re-examining nine

coal mine bids
New Delhi: Even as the central government
races against time to secure legislative sanction for the auction of canceled coal blocks
before parliament goes into its scheduled
month-long recess on Friday, it is "re-examining" nine winning bids out of the 33 coal
blocks auctioned so far.
The development comes even as the bill
which seeks to replace the ordinance under
which mines are being e-auctioned, was
approved by a Rajya Sabha panel, paving the
way for its passing by the upper house.
The coal ministry will take a decision this
week on whether there are any price discrepancies in case of the nine winning bids,
including those made by companies like
Jindal Steel and Balco.
The nal decision on whether mine winning companies like Hindalco, Jindal Steel
and Power, Jaypee Cements and Usha Martin
would depend on the re-examination of these
bids by the auction nominated authority.
Five of these blocks belong to Schedule III
(near operational) category, while four are
under Schedule II (operational), a coal ministry ofcial told IANS on Wednesday.
The ministry is considering whether these

bids were too low when compared with the
winning bids for other similar blocks
through an analytical tool called "outlier",
which looks for unusual observations that
are far removed from the mass of data, the
source added. "Not making any allegation of
cartelisation as of now," Coal Secretary Anil
Swarup tweeted on the matter.
The ministry is looking at instances like
the Brinda and Sasai blocks, bidding for
which opened at Rs.1,802 per tonne and
closed at Rs.1,804 per tonne. Similarly, bidding for the Meral mine opened at Rs.725 a
tonne and closed at Rs.727 a tonne.
Meanwhile, the Rajya Sabha Select
Committee on the Mines and Minerals
Amendment Bill on Tuesday also recommended its approval without any change.
However, it wanted the government to consider issues like impact of mining activities
on environment, rampant illegal mining, lack
of proper and scientic mine closure, land
acquisition and resettlement and capturing
windfall prots for the welfare of local and
tribal communities.
23
Marketers can
connect with expats
on Facebook
New Delhi: To help businesses reach people living abroad, Facebook has launched a new targeting feature that enables advertisers to reach the
92 million-odd expats on the social networking
site, a company statement said.
"People living abroad use Facebook to connect
with friends and family back home, sharing key
life milestones and everyday moments alike. And
expats aren't just using Facebook to keep in touch
with people.
Brands, organizations, celebrities and news
outlets also offer a vital connection to home," the
statement said.
Marketers can now connect with expats living
within a given country and expats originating
from a specic country.
Nationality-specic targeting is currently available for people from Brazil, Indonesia, China,
South Africa and India.
The statement, however, added: "Like all
Facebook products, this new targeting capability
is built in a privacy-protective way. We don't
share information with advertisers that tells them
who a person is.".
Solar Impulse 2 leaves

Ahmedabad for Varanasi
The Solar Impulse (Si2) aircraft

leaving Ahmedabad.
Ahmedabad: The Solar Impulse (Si2) aircraft, powered solely by the sun's energy,
took off from Ahmedabad's Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport for its
next leg to Varanasi on its global flight, an
official said.
Taking off at 7.18 a.m. in bright sunshine,
the Si2 is expected to cover the 1,128-km
long flight to Varanasi's Lal Bahadur Shastri
Airport in around 12 hours, or around 8 p.m.
on Wednesday.
The zero-fuel airplane, which landed in

Ahmedabad around midnight on March 10
and was stationed here for six days, will
maintain a minimum altitude of around 5,200
meters on its flight to Varanasi.
Earlier the airplane had a scheduled fourday stopover here, but the onward flight was
delayed on account of the inclement weather
conditions due to western disturbances.
From Varanasi, the Si2 will fly on its
onward trip to Mandalay in Burma.
24 March 21-27, 2015
India thrash Bangladesh, enter World Cup semis

Melbourne: Powered by a scintillating century from Rohit Sharma
(137), India registered a comprehensive 109-run win over neighbors Bangladesh to enter the cricket World Cup semifinals at the
iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground
(MCG) here.
Guided by Rohit, the defending
champions posted a challenging
total of 302/6 in 50 overs in the
quarterfinal. Later, the Bangladeshi
batsmen proved no match for the
Indian bowlers, who skittled out
the youngest Test-playing nation
for 193 runs in 45 overs.
No team has ever chased down a
300-plus target at the huge MCG
and Mahendra Singh Dhoni's men
ensured that they maintained the
record. Dhoni also entered his
name into the record books to
become only the third captain in
One-Day International (ODI) history to win 100 matches after Allan
Border (107) and Ricky Ponting
(165).
Chasing 303, Bangladesh never
got going and kept losing wickets
steadily. Opener Tamim Iqbal (25)
looked a little dangerous at the start
but his wicket in the seventh over
started the collapse.
None of the Bangladesh batsmen
stepped up to play the anchor's
role. The only notable partnership
came from Nasir Hossain (35) and
Sabbir Rahman (30) who struck a
President, PM congratulate Indian cricket team
Indian players celebrate during the ICC World Cup quarterfinals

with Bangladesh at Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia.
50-run stand for the seventh wicket. But it was a little too late to resurrect the innings for Bangladesh,
who had lost six wickets at 139 by
the 36th over. On a day when
Mohammed Shami (2/37) and
Mohit Sharma (1/36) went for a
few runs, it was Umesh Yadav who
rose to the occasion to clinch his
career-best figures of 4/31. Also,
with his two wickets, Shami is now
the highest wicket-taker of the
World Cup with 17 scalps.
The spinners were also effective.
While Ravindra Jadeja (2/42)
picked up a couple, offie
Ravichandran Ashwin tied down
the batsmen with figures of 10-1-
30-0. Earlier, Rohit's 122-run

fourth-wicket partnership with
Suresh Raina (65) provided the
platform for India to put up a big
total. After opting to bat, India
started off quite smoothly with
openers Rohit and Shikhar Dhawan
(30) crafting a 75-run opening
wicket stand to take India through
the initial overs.
The Bangladesh pacers lacked
sting at the start. Seeing this, captain Mashrafe Mortaza brought in
spin via Nasir Hossain in only the
fifth over. When he was unsuccessful,
part-time
spinner
Mahmudullah also rolled his arm
over. Such impact-less were the
New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister

Narendra Modi congratulated the Indian cricket team for its 109-run
victory over Bangladesh in the second World Cup quarter-final in
Melbourne.
With this victory, defending champions India entered the semi-final
of the tournament. They will meet the winner of the Australia vs
Pakistan quarter-final.
"Congratulations Team India on the win against Bangladesh; sportsmanship of both teams commendable," the president tweeted.
"Excellent game, excellent performance! Congrats yet again Team
India," posted Modi.
Guided by opener Rohit Sharma's 137, India posted a challenging
total of 302/6 in 50 overs in the quarter-final.
The Bangladeshi batsmen proved no match for the Indian bowlers
who skittled out the youngest Test-playing nation for 193 runs in 45
overs. This is Indias seventh straight win in the quadrennial tournament.
Sports minister Sarbananda Sonowal also congratulated the side led
by Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Bangladeshis that Mortaza had
introduced five bowlers within the
first 12 overs as Dhawan and Rohit
batted with ease, without taking
chances.
Bangladesh stepped up the pressure on India, curbing their run
flow. Under pressure, middle-order
bat Ajinkya Rahane (19) did not
last long, chipping one to mid-off
to put India in more than a spot of
bother at 115/3 in the 28th over.
Enter Raina. The left-hander cut
loose from the start to up the ante.
Seeing his partner, Rohit also started going for the shots. Raina, who
scored a match-winning unbeaten
century in the last game against
Zimbabwe, brought his form into
this crucial contest to hit seven
boundaries and a six in his 57-ball
innings. The two smashed 50 runs
in the batting powerplay (35-40
overs) to help India reach 205/3.
India have till now not lost even a
single wicket in the batting powerplay, unlike other teams in the tournament.
Unfazed Rohit delivers again
Melbourne: With his well-paced hundred

against Bangladesh in the cricket World
Cup, opener Rohit Sharma not only piloted India to an impressive total but also
gave a further demonstration of his maturity.
The Mumbai boy, who holds the world
record of the highest individual ODI score
in an innings, cut down on his characteristic fluency in the face of some good bowling by Bangladesh in the earlier part of the
knock.
But he went all guns blazing in the slog
overs as India put up a formidable 302 for
six and then skittled Bangladesh out for
193 in 45 overs to march into the semifinal in style.
With Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli and
Ajinkya Rahane back in the hut midway
into the Indian essay, the team needed
Rohit to fire, and he did not disappoint.
The 126-ball 137 was not only Rohit's
seventh One-Day International (ODI)
hundred, but he also joined the elite club
of cricketing legends Englishman David
Gower and the West Indies Viv Richards
by becoming the third batsman to score
two centuries at the historic Melbourne
Cricket Ground as an overseas player.
His earlier century - 138 on January 18 was against Australia in the recently con-
cluded tri-series, but it was in a losing

cause. In a tournament where most of the
top Indian batsmen are having a run feast,
the 27-year-old's performance had been
mediocre so far. While he produced two
superb half-centuries - 57 not out against
the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and 64
opposite Ireland - his scores in other pool
matches were 15, 0, 7 and 16.
Rohit put on a 75-run opening partnership with left-hander Shikhar Dhawan, but
then began losing partners at the other
end. At one stage the Indians were in a
spot of uncertainty at 115 for three.
However, Rohit remained unfazed and
anchored the innings through, in between
belting three sixes and 14 boundaries.
It was important for me to stay at the
crease, especially knowing we lost a few
wickets in the middle. We knew it would
be slow and low, so I wanted to take my
time. I knew if I could stay till the 35th
over I could make it count, Rohit said at
the mid-innings break of the match.
Rohit finally was bowled by a brilliant
Yorker from pacer Taskin Ahmed but
India managed to scrape past the 300
mark.
The Rohit one saw at the MCG against
Bangladesh looked the one that had promised loads of talent coming into the Indian
Rohit Sharma declared Man of the Match.
team. Rohit was member of the senior

sides which won the World Twenty20
campaign in 2007 and the CB Series in
Australia in early 2008, scoring two
fifties, including a vital 66 in the first final
in Sydney.
Rohit's lack of consistency saw him
being dropped from the 2011 World Cup
campaign, which India clinched on home
soil. He was again called back to the side

when the Indian team toured the West
Indies in 2011 and some senior players
were rested. But again he fell out of
favour with the selectors after some time.
Finally consistency found him in 2013,
as Rohit did justice to his talent by hitting
a few big scores which included a double
ton (209) against Australia in Bangalore.
March 21-27, 2015 25
Proteas thrash Sri Lanka to enter semis
Sydney: Spinners Imran Tahir

(4-26) and Jean-Paul Duminy (329) starred for South Africa as
they thrashed Sri Lanka by nine
wickets to reach the cricket
World Cup semi-finals at the
Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG)
here.
Duminy's hat-trick -- the first
by a South African in World Cup
history - and leg-spinner Tahir's
four wicket burst helped South
Africa bowl out Sri Lanka for
133 runs in 37.2 overs in the first
quarter-final.
In reply, young wicketkeeperbatsman Quinton de Kock (not
out 78), Hashim Amla (16) and
Faf du Plessis (21 not out) completed the formalities for South
Africa with nine wickets and 32
overs to spare.
With such a low total by Sri

Lanka, the South Africans didn't
feel the pressure and overhauled
the target with ease. De Kock,
with only 53 runs in the tournament so far, returned to form and
registered his fourth half-century
in One-Day International (ODI)
cricket and helped his country to
notch up the first World Cup
knock-out win.
South Africa's win by 32 overs
to spare is their biggest victory in
World cup knock-outs.
South Africa will now travel to
Auckland to face the winners of
the quarter-final between New
Zealand and the West Indies.
Earlier, South Africa exerted
pressure on the Sri Lankans quite
early. Right-arm pacers Kyle
Abbot and Dale Steyn removed
With such a low total by Sri Lanka, the South Africans didn't
feel the pressure and overhauled the target with ease.
Australia count on steep bounce

to trouble Pakistan
openers Kusal Perera (3) and seasoned Tilakaratne Dilshan (0)

respectively to leave Sri Lanka in
trouble at 4/2 in the fifth over.
Veteran wicketkeeper-batsman
Kumar Sangakkara, 37, didn't bat
with the elegance and style he is
known for and scored a 96-ball
45. Sangakkara, who scored four
centuries in the previous four
matches, took 16 deliveries to get
off the mark. After he scored five
runs, he became just the sixth
batsman to score more than 500
runs in a World Cup.
That speaks volumes of the
tight line and length maintained
by the South African bowlers.
Sangakkara, who will quit ODI
cricket after this World Cup,
forged a 65-run partnership with
Lahiru Thirimanne (41).
Cricketing world congratulates

Sangakkara, Jayawardene
Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene
Adelaide: Ahead of their cricket World

Cup quarter-final against Pakistan,
Australia coach Darren Lehmann said it
will be a "different story" for the Asians as
they will face steep bounce at the Adelaide
Oval wicket unlike those in the United
Arab Emirates (UAE) where they had
beaten the four-time champions last year.
The wicket did not bounce at all in
Dubai so you can say we will have three
times as much bounce in Adelaide as
Dubai where it didnt bounce above knee
height. It is a totally different story which
we are looking forward to, Lehmann was
quoted as saying by news.com.au.
The comments were made after Pakistan
cited the 2-0 Test series win, saying they
know how to beat Australia. Pakistan
opener Sarfraz Ahmed had said they are
stocked with left-arm pacers and would
not fear the opposition who have been
conquered before.
Lehmann countered by saying that
spearhead Mitchell Starc has been outstanding and Mitchell Johnson is slowly
inching towards his best.
Mitchell Starc has been outstanding
and the bowler of the tournament and I

have been really happy with Mitchell
Johnson, the way he has come back. He is
starting to hit his straps at the right time
and looking good. Our attack is looking as
good as theirs," said Lehmann.
The 45-year-old, who had hit the winning runs in the 1999 World Cup final,
said it will be a tough game on Friday and
urged the fans to fill the stadium.
It will be a tough game. We are looking
forward to some support, we want a
packed house obviously and we need to
bring our A-game as you do. The batting
performances from both sides will be the
key.
He added the match would prove to be a
fascinating contest as two good attacks
will clash head-on.
They are going to be a really good side,
have lots of tricks in their cupboard as we
have. We are looking forward to two good
attacks going at it. When you reach the
knockout stages you have to perform well.
Hopefully, the result goes our way against
a quality side and we move on to Sydney,
he said.
Sydney: As Sri Lankas two batting

icons Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela
Jayawardene retired from limited overs
cricket after their loss to South Africa in
the World Cup quarterfinals here, greats
of the sport congratulated the duo on
their splendid careers.
The duo have been a foundation that
carried Sri Lanka to the 2014 World
Twenty20 title and twice reached the
final of the 50-over World Cup in 2007
and 2011, a remarkable achievement for
a relatively young cricketing nation of 20
million people.
Now after 550 matches, the
Sangakkara and Jayawardene partnership
has been broken finally. As brilliant as
they have been individually over the
years, the two have been just as good in
their partnerships across all formats of
the game.
Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar congratulated them on their incredible
career. Well done on glorious ODI
careers Sanga and Mahela. Being an
integral part of the ODI side for so many
years, it is difficult to imagine the side
without the 2 of you. Wishing you the

very best and will miss the 2 of you constructing the innings in coloured
clothes, Tendulkar tweeted.
Former Australian fast bowling great
Glenn McGrath tweeted, Well played
on a South Africa dominate win over Sri
Lanka. Sad to see the legends finish their
one day careers.
Australia batsman Shane Watson also
applauded their journey: Sad to see two
of the greats leave the one day
game...Quality, Class, Humility.
South Africas Graeme Smith also
joined the chorus: Congrats to Mahela
and Sanga on incredible careers and what
brilliant memories they gave us all.
Former Australia pacer Damien
Fleming added: And that's all she wrote.
Saf win by 9 wickets. Mahela and Sanga,
end of their fabulous one day careers
congrats Guns.
Zimbabwe coach Dav Whatmore
tweeted, To Mahela and Sanga, bad
luck tonight but well done on your
superb careers. Good luck and hope to
see you both in the future!
26
SELF HELP
March 21-27, 2015
Tips to protect your identity and wallet Three wedding trends likely to last
ith so many new methods for cyber

theft, taking extra steps to protect
your bank accounts and money just
makes sense.
Luckily, consumers and businesses are learning new methods to defend against this growing problem. Here are a few ways you can conduct your online shopping and banking business more securely:
Create unique pin numbers for your debit
cards, as well as complex usernames and passwords for accounts with your banks and online
retailers. Never share this information with
anyone, and be sure to log out of your accounts
when your transactions are completed. Conduct
personal business on your home computer or
personal device as opposed to public WiFi, and
always use a secure Internet connection.
Manage privacy settings on your mobile
devices and apps. Review the privacy disclosures for retailers or websites to ensure you are
comfortable with how they will use your personal information. Set your mobile devices and
PCs to lock when they are not being used, to
help prevent someone from getting access to
your personal data.
Before responding to any request for personal, financial or account information, make
sure you know who is asking and why they
need it. Be extra careful if a request is made
with an urgent or threatening tone, or an offer
that sounds too good to be true. Criminals use
these tricks to get personal information to
access your accounts or commit identity theft.
Monitor accounts and spending activity
frequently. Take advantage of banking features,
such as alerts that trigger when you have a low
balance or unusual spending activity.
Most banks provide mobile banking apps
that allow you to keep tabs on your account
activity on-the-go, says Diane Morais, Ally
Bank deposits and line of business integration

executive. In addition to their convenience,
mobile apps are an excellent resource to spot
unusual transactions in a timely manner.
Before providing your debit or credit
information while shopping online, ensure your
computer protection software and operating
system are up to date. Some banks offer customers free or discounted anti-virus protection.
For example, Ally Bank, Member FDIC, provides its customers Webroot SecureAnywhere
anti-virus software to protect their devices,
including PCs, tablets and smartphones, for
free. Most people understand the importance of
protecting their computers, but its important to
protect your smartphones too.
Look for https in the web address field of
your browser to ensure a website is secure.
Check that the site is verified by TRUSTe or a
similar data security service.
Check your credit reports periodically.
Getting a free credit report is easy. Consider
putting a fraud alert on your credit report
before any new accounts can be opened.
Dont let cyber criminals get the best of you.
In an increasingly digital world, follow these
simple steps to increase security while taking
advantage of the convenience of conducting
your personal business online.
Many couples are opting for a more

photojournalistic feel to their wedding album
ho hasnt seen a lineup of baby

blue tuxedoed groomsmen on the
mantle of an older relative? While
some matrimonial trends thankfully expire,
there are some newer ones that may be here
to stay.
Here are three worthwhile developments in
the world of wedding planning that have
taken hold in the past few years:
Personal training: Many fitness clubs
offer personal training packages for engaged
couples. Working out together is a great way
to get in shape for your big day and beyond,
de-stress during a stressful period, and start
your marriage off on a healthful foot.
Wedding websites: Want to communi-
cate fluctuating information about accommodations, your registry and more to your
guests? The best way to give your friends and
family all the pertinent details they need to
help you celebrate is through a wedding website. User-friendly hosting sites can make creating your site easy, no matter the extent of
your design skills.
Photojournalism: While posed photography likely will never go out of style, many
couples are opting for a more photojournalistic feel to their wedding album. Whether
sepia-toned, black and white, or full color,
wedding photos are taking on a more kinetic
feel that can truly showcase a couples personality.
Is your home hurting you? Reducing pollutants & chemicals at home
New study reveals the season's

T
least breakable tablets
eople of
all ages
a
n
d
lifestyles use
tablets for just
about everyt h i n g .
Unfortunately,
the way we use
these
fragile
devices often
puts them at risk
for breaking, and
certain models
are more susceptible to going kaput. To help
shoppers make smart decisions,
SquareTrade, a protection plan
provider for tablets, smartphones
and other electronics, decided to
find out how durable the most
popular tablets are. Evaluating
key elements such as front and
back panel design, edge construction and materials, size,
weight, slide-ability, water
resistance and grip-ability,
SquareTrades Breakability
Score tests devices in everyday
danger situations brought on by
our lifestyles and habits. Overall,

larger tablets proved to be far
more breakable than smaller
ones, as well as the least water
resistant. No matter how durable
your device is, accidents do happen and an affordable protection
plan can help you protect your
pricey tablet investment. More
information can be found at
www.SquareTrade.com.
If youre buying a new tablet,
make sure you research your
options first, and consider
adding a protection plan.
he spring cleaning season is a

great time to take a closer
look at some of the potentially harmful chemicals present in your
home -- and to seek out healthier
alternatives.
In recent years, homeowners have
started asking better questions about
what pollutants are lurking around
nearly every corner -- from building
materials to the paint on the walls
down to the backing on carpeting.
While its neither realistic nor necessary to remove every toxin from a
home, there are a few common
sources that can be addressed easily.
The good news is, you dont
have to be a chemist to understand
what products and materials are safe
to have in your home, says Anne
Hicks Harney, architect and Director
of Sustainability at architectural
firm Ayers Saint Gross and member
of the American Institute of
Architects (AIA) Materials
Knowledge Working Group. You
can arm yourself with the knowledge needed to make smarter choices for you and your family.
Harney offers a few tips to help
reduce or eliminate common toxins
in the home:
Go Natural : Whenever possible,
use natural or water-based materials
and cleaning agents. Also, be
aware of:
Volatile Organic Compounds
(VOCS): From paint to composite
wood, VOCs are found in many
products and are responsible for that
tell-tale chemical smell. When it
comes to paint, Low VOC or No
VOC are your best options and are
easy to find.
Flame Retardants and
Petrochemicals: Commonly found
in such foam products as couch
cushions and insulation, these are a
bit more challenging to avoid. The
risk is that these chemicals are
known to accumulate over time in
the human body. Looking for an
alternative? Try a natural fiber such
as down in your upholstery.
Plastic Additives: Plastics are
beneficial in a number of household
materials but their use should be
limited when possible. Search for a
carpet with a polyvinyl chloride
(PVC)-free backing or try wool, a

natural alternative. For tile or sheet
flooring, avoid vinyl products and
consider linoleum or cork and rubber options instead.
Ventilate Your Home : Its good
to open your windows every now
and then to get the air circulating
into your home and any chemical
smells out. If you cant open your
windows due to outdoor allergies or
poor outdoor air quality, indoor
plants constantly regenerate air and
provide a pretty alternative.
Take to the Web : Manufacturers
and professional organizations are
becoming more transparent about
educating consumers. Check out
resources like the AIA Materials
webpage
or
http://architectfinder.aia.org to learn
more about sustainable products and
to find professionals who can assist
your efforts.
Dont Know? Dont Buy : As a
general rule of thumb, if you dont
know and understand what a product contains, dont put it inside your
house. Take advantage of the wealth
of information now available at your
fingertips to make safer choices.
During this spring cleaning season,
take the time to protect your family
by removing harmful pollutants
from your home.
LIFESTYLE
When you eat impacts your heart health

New York: A team
of Indian American
researchers
has
found that not just
what you eat but
when you do so is
equally important in
order to protect your
heart from early
aging.
The results from
experiments with
fruit flies can one
day translate into
cardiac and obesityrelated health benefits for humans, they
noted.
Time-restricted feeding would
not require people to drastically
change their lifestyles but just the
times of day they eat, said
Girish Melkani, biologist at the
San Diego State University.
The benefits of a time-restricted diet were not exclusive to
young flies.
When the researchers introduced these dietary time restrictions to older flies, their hearts
became healthier, too.
Even if you introduce timerestricted feeding very late, you
still have some benefit, Melkani

pointed out.
Melkani,
along
with
Satchidananda Panda, circadian
rhythms expert at the Salk
Institute for Biological Studies
and Shubhroz Gill from the
Broad Institute in Boston, found
that by limiting the time span
during which fruit flies could eat,
they could prevent aging- and
diet-related heart problems.
Previous research has found
that people who tend to eat later
in the day and into the night have
a higher chance of developing
heart disease than

people who cut off
their food consumption earlier.
So what is happening when people
eat late? They are
not changing their
diet, just the time,
Melkani said.
In their experiments, one group of
two-week-old fruit
flies was given a
standard diet of
cornmeal
and
allowed to feed all
day long.
Another group was allowed
access to the food for only 12
hours a day.
After three weeks, the results
were clear.
Flies on the 12-hour timerestricted feeding schedule slept
better, did not gain as much
weight and had far healthier
hearts than their eat anytime
counterparts, even though they
ate similar amounts of food.
The take-home message is to
cut down on the late-night
snacks, the trio concluded.
March 21-27, 2015
27
Flexible work schedule good

for workers' well-being: Study
New York: Flexible work schedules aren't just more convenient,
they can really make a difference
in the way we feel and for our
long-term health, a study reiterates.
In today's fast life, our daily
schedules often don't match our
bodies' natural rhythms. This causes a 'social jetlag' as we lose sleep.
The condition can be a particular
problem for shift workers, who
work into the night or on a shifting
schedule.
"A 'simple' re-organization of
shifts according to chronotype
allowed workers to sleep more on
workday nights," said Till
Roenneberg of the LudwigMaximilian-University
in
Germany.
"As a consequence, they were
also able to sleep less on their free
days due to a decreased need for
compensating an accumulating
sleep loss. This is a double-win
situation," Roenneberg added.
The researchers got the chance
to implement their ideas about
sleep and work schedules in a

real-world factory setting.
The factory workers were
assigned to an early, late, or intermediate chronotype based on their
normal sleep patterns.
The researchers then implemented a chronotype-adjusted ("CTA")
shift schedule.
Morning people were never
made to work late and night owls
were never forced to get up early
for work.
With those adjusted schedules,
people felt more satisfied with the
sleep they did get and experienced
slight improvements in their general well-being.
It also reduced social jetlag - the
difference between the midpoint
of workers' sleep on work versus
free days - by one hour.
While the new findings weren't
exactly a surprise, Roenneberg
said, it was still "utterly satisfying
to find that theory actually works
in the real and 'dirty' world."
The findings were reported in
Current Biology.
Photo sharing on social media Use of smartphones by kids rampant in Australia: Report
killing real-life enjoyment
New York: Is your penchant for

sharing photos on social networking sites preventing you from
enjoying real life experiences?
May be, suggests a new study.
The study has found that 58 percent of people believe that "posting
the perfect picture has prevented
them from enjoying life's experiences."
The study was conducted by the
New York Times best-selling
authors Joseph Grenny and David
Maxfield, who surveyed 1,623
people to see how social media
affects their lives, Mashable reported. Maxfield decided to explore
this subject after going on vacation
with his family on his 60th birthday and finding that he was more
focused on documenting the
moments than he was on experiencing them.
He and Grenny have come up
with a name for it - Trophy hunt-
ing. Trophy hunters are driven by

something other than experiencing
things and shooting photos to
remember those moments - they
want trophies to hang up.
"They want to kill it and stuff it
and put it on their wall," Maxfield
was quoted as saying by Mashable.
Ninety one percent of the participants in the study also reported
seeing tourists missing memorable
moments because they were too
busy trying to capture and share
photos of the places they were visiting.
Other participants reported
engaging in unethical or dangerous
behavior in order to capture a wellliked photo.
Maxfield suggests people should
become more self-aware, limit
their social media usage and should
be intentional about experiencing
life instead of simply "hunting for
trophies."
Canberra: Over two-thirds of

Australian children aged three to
17 own a smartphone and spend
almost an entire day of the week
on the device, a new report
revealed on Monday.
The report released by national
communication carrier Telstra discovered that children spend an
average of 21 hours and 48 minutes per week on a smartphone,
Xinhua news agency reported.
The online survey of 1,365 parents said that their top concerns
involved risks around cyber safety
and sexting.
Two-thirds of the parents said
they had talked with their children
about usage, but 25 percent said
their children did not comply with
their promise of limiting their
time on smartphones.
According to the report, the
average age of ownership is 12
years but 10-year-olds spend an
average of 14.7 hours on their
phones and 17-year-olds spend an
average of 26.3 hours on their

phones.
Parents said that Facebook and
instant messaging were the most
time consuming and distracting
programs for their children.
Depressed dads turn toddlers into troubled kids
New York: Not just mothers but

new fathers who are depressed do
not make as much eye contact or
smile at their toddlers, leading them
to develop troubling behavior such
as hitting, lying, anxiety and sadness
as they grow, new research has
found. The more disengaged parents
are from their child, the greater the
risk the child will have forming
close attachments and healthy emotions, the team from the
Northwestern University noted.
"Father's emotions affect their
children. New fathers should be
screened and treated for postpartum
depression just as we do for mothers," said lead study author Sheehan

Fisher. Depression affects the way
people express emotions and it can
cause their behavior to change.
For the study, Fisher collected
data from a cohort of nearly 200
couples with three-year-olds.
These couples had participated in
a previous depression study around
the time of their child's birth. Fisher
found that both maternal and paternal depression levels during toddlerhood were each uniquely associated
with child internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Parents who
reported signs of postpartum depression soon after the birth of their

child also showed these signs three
years later.
These findings suggest that both
maternal and paternal depression in
the postpartum period set the stage
for future parental depression.
"Fighting between parents did not
contribute to children's bad behaviors as much as having a depressed
parent did," Fisher noted. Previous
studies have shown that fathers are
at a greater risk of depression after
the birth of a child than at any other
time in a typical male's life.
28
HUMOR
March 21-27, 2015
Funny Side by Nury Vittachi
Enter the age of over reaction
COLLEAGUE ACCUSED ME of
having a tendency to over-react, so
I have no choice but to burn down
his house and curse his family for seven
generations. Fairs fair, right?
I learned to respond strongly to things
from a former boss who used to say the following sentence at least once a day: Some
IDIOT has moved my [random object] and
when I find out who did it, God help me, I
am going to tear him limb from limb with
my bareoh, there it is.
***
Some people think overreacting is a bad

thing, but look at the evidence.
The richest country in the world is the
United States, from which a reader just sent
me a video of a man riding a moped pursued by 12 police cars.
A moped, for those who dont know, is a
motorbike powered by an engine with the
strength of a mosquito suffering from
chronic fatigue syndrome.
***
I had a moped once, but gave it up after it
went from being considerably slower than
walking, which I didnt mind, to being
considerably slower than standing still,
which I did mind.

***
But just days later, the US record on maximum overreaction was beaten by a news
report sent to me by a reader in Canada.
Twelve police squad cars and a tactical
attack squad were sent to a block of flats in
Winnipeg, after an unknown person
slammed a door in the building.
Canadians are so mild-mannered that the
sudden dramatic noise caused residents to
dial the emergency services.
***
This makes me want to live in Canada.
Ive lived in places where the police dont
even react to murders unless they happen at
the actual police station, and even then, the
only reaction is an irritated desk sergeant
looking up from Candy Crush and raising
an eyebrow.
***
I asked regular contributors for similar
examples from Asia, but drew a blank.
The only response was from a European
reader, who said police raced to a house in
Norway after neighbors heard screaming. It
turned out to be a chess-player expressing
fury at his chess computer.

In Asia, we wouldnt get that excited
about wars or earthquakes.
***
A colleague says Westerners are more
like dogs, enjoying getting excited, while
Easterners are more like fish, watching life
go by without saying a lot.
***
It must be wonderful to be a fish. At the
end of a tough day they think: Geez, I
really need a drink. And theres always a
drink right there.
***
Your narrator eventually stumbled on an
example of overreaction from Asia in my
son Jereds anime cartoons.

When something negative happens,
waterfalls flow from the characters eyes
and when the hero sees a pretty girl, his
only physical reaction is to have a nose
bleed.
This must be a Japanese-only genetic
mutation which explains that countrys
drastic population slump.
***
Meanwhile, heres a message to my colleagues in the sub-editing department. You
may be thinking of changing a word or two
in my column. In which case I may have to
cut you into cubed, diced pieces to scatter
over a wide area of remote scrubland,
laughing maniacally.
I mean, fairs fair, right?
Laughter is the Best Medicine
by Mahendra Shah
Mahendra Shah is an architect by education, entrepreneur by profession, artist and
humorist, cartoonist and writer by hobby. He has been recording the plight of the
immigrant Indians for the past many years in his cartoons. Hailing from Gujarat,
he lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
ASTROLOGY
March 21-27, 2015
29
Chandigarh, India: +91-172- 256 2832, 257 2874

Delhi, India: +91-11- 2644 9898, 2648 9899
psharma@premastrologer.com; www.premastrologer.com
By Dr Prem Kumar Sharma
March 21-27, 2015

ARIES: You can be on the centre stage
on the social front as your popularity
soars. A suitable match for the eligible
may be found. Marital ties are likely to get
strengthened. Those planning a vacation will
get lucky to get a good bargain. Sharing your
innermost thoughts with someone close will
ease your mind. You may not be in the right
frame of mind to undertake a project you
have been saddled with. Monetary situation
can put a damper on your grand plans, but
you will find a way out!
TAURUS: You may try to dominate
those around at work, but there is really no need for it. Your financial situation may make you feel a bit hemmed in, but
things are set to improve. An issue may
engage you and demand a major chunk of
your personal time. Some of you may resent
the restrictions imposed upon you.
Controlling your diet in the absence of physical activity may not be enough to remain in
tip top shape. Travelling with friends will be
fun and make for a refreshing change.
GEMINI: You can be in two minds
about taking a particular course of
action. Dont be in any rush as you are
liable to err. Be upfront with someone at work
who is reluctant to do your bidding, instead of
whining away in privacy.
A relation may try to get an upper hand on the
family front, but will not be able to usurp
your authority. There are times when you
should give romance a break and concentrate
on things which require your immediate
attention.
CANCER: Things will start moving

the way you like them on the professional front. Bigger responsibilities
and added prestige will come your way at
work. Home will be a happy place to be in as
love and affection is exchanged amongst the
family. Chance of catching someones eye
holds the possibility to kick start a budding
romance. A long journey will help you unwind
and also prove interesting. This is a good time
to purchase property or construct a house.
Slowly and steadily your financial front will
become stronger.
LEO: You may decide to befriend
someone you had recently met. A good
strategy will have to be thought out to
expand what you have started. Handling an
errant subordinate with patience and sympathy
will prove to be the right approach. If there is
any element of doubt in a contentious domestic
issue, ask for some more time. You may feel
emotionally drained, so rejuvenation will be
the right course of action now. It is best not to
discuss a property matter in the presence of
those not involved.
VIRGO: Professionally you are slated
to achieve much this week. Some of
you will succeed in avoiding a job that
you dislike. Some good avenues are likely to
be found to park your spare money. Being
mindful of what you eat will help you in keeping good health. A help that you seek will be
given without your having to run around for it.
Lover can be a bit sensitive towards you and
can make a mountain out of a molehill of some
trivial issue. Travel is on the cards for some.
LIBRA: If you put in money in a

risky proposition and expect to come
out unscathed, you are certainly living in fools paradise. Avoid dubious financial
schemes like plague. Gastric or thyroid problems may compel you to seek urgent treatment. Your competence on the professional
front will come to fore in solving a workplace
situation. A lucrative deal promises to be
yours. Positive developments are envisaged
on the romantic front. Your love for wayside
food can jeopardize health.
SCORPIO: You can find yourself in a
dilemma on the social front. It will be
better to deliberate upon your options
before taking a final decision. There is much
you can do to get your career graph moving
upwards, but something is pulling you back.
Find out what it is. Thought of making a
quick buck may tempt you, but dont indulge
in speculation or betting as you may end up
losing, instead of gaining. You may be careful
about your health through diet control, but
shake a leg too.
SAGITTARIUS: This is an excellent
time to sort out all your pending work
on the professional front. A prestigious assignment or project is likely to come
your way. Previous investments will help to
substantially fill up your empty coffers. Some
of you will discover happiness the moment
you start participating on the social front.
Luck shines on those hungry for love and in
need of companionship. Mental worry about
health may get transformed into physical ailment, if you dont change your mindset.
CAPRICORN: There are too many

things going in your mind that are
keeping you mentally engaged. This
may interfere in what you are involved in
presently. A relaxing atmosphere is what you
need. You can get worried about your health
and may even press the panic button, but it will
turn out to be nothing serious. Someone who
perpetually irritates you is likely to mend his or
her ways. You will have to do something extra
to gain the attention of the one you love.
AQUARIUS: You are likely to
come into big money soon. Financial
matters will be settled favourably. An
old ailment that had been pestering you will
soon disappear. Seek timely help if you dont
want to get bogged down with a workplace
problem. There are certain unresolved issues
on the professional front which may require
your attention. A relationship is likely to be
formed with someone who was a stranger till
recently. Nearness to the one you love may
not be enough for you, so prepare to take the
next step!
PISCES: Things are likely to become
favorable on the professional front.
Only a little effort will be able to
resolve the problems faced by students on the
academic front. Financial situation may need
to be reviewed in the light of some recent
developments. You may find a kind of aloofness seep into your relationship with someone
close, but a little effort on your part will help
smoothen things out. If you genuinely help
out someone in need, there is no way that he
or she will not reciprocate.
Annual Predictions: For those born in this week

21st March, 2015
Ruled planet: Jupiter Ruled by no: 3
Traits in you: Being number 3, you are confident, ambitious and independent person who loves to work with optimistic attitude. You are a born leader, and you are always
appreciated for your work, whether it is at home or work
place. Your efforts are always sincere and thats why you
balance your personal and professional life very smoothly.
Health this year: It is high time for you to be disciplined
in eating habits. Make sure that you avoid snacking in between your meals at all costs. This would enable you to
keep yourself fit and enable you to enjoy life to the fullest.
Finance this year: Important projects might suffer due to
shortage of funds this year. Chances are that some projects
may even end half way, if some alternative arrangements are
not made immediately. You need to keep the project within
stipulated budget to avoid additional financial burden.
Career this year: The coming year, will see you achieve
honour and fame, in your professional front. You might
have to travel a lot for work purpose. Make sure you use
your professional expertise to solve stumbling blocks in
your progress. Your little effort could resolve the problem
once for all.
Romance this year: A very good year to sort out all misunderstandings with lover/beloved, if you have! Let these
small problems not affect your relationship. Therefore resolve all these rightno to enjoy this lovely bond.
Lucky month: June, September, December and March
22nd March, 2015
Ruled planet: Uranus Ruled by no: 4
Traits in you: Being number 4, you are a person who likes
to take responsibilty and do your work with full dedication
and honesty. You are a very down to earth person with religious beliefs. This year you might plan to go for a piligrimage. Sometimes you become bossy, jealous or stubborn, which you should avoid to lead a happy life with
smiling people around you.
Health this year: This year keep in mind that keep your
cool and don't allow anybody to lose your temper on trivial issues especially when someone is deliberately trying
to provoke you. Restrain yourself otherwise chances are
that this might harm your personal interests.
Finance this year: Most of you will be lucky in money
this year. You need to grab any new business offer, which
comes to your way. It might appear to be too small to invest but a closer look would be required on your part. You
need to realise that it has long-term potential.
Career this year: Those of you in your 40th year and
above, should expect to reach the height of your professional career, in the coming year. Time to evaluate situations and work on priorities to succeed at professional
front. Keep in mind that setting priorities would enable to
complete work on time and at the same time give time to
enjoy life.
Romance this year: Most of you will be lucky in love
matters. This year is likely to bring a surprise gift of love

for you. You should convey your feelings to begin your
ride in the sea of love.
Lucky month: June, July, October and January
23rd March, 2015
Ruled planet: Sun Ruled by no: 5
Traits in you: Being number 5, you are very strong headed person with friendly nature and practical thoughts. You
inspire others to do their work with full dedication and
perfection. You have an ability to make many friends and
the best is that you are known as a very loyal friend to all
your friends. This year keep control over your moody nature, which can put you in trouble. You strongly believe in
destiny and have strong concentration power. This year
you will feel more inclined towards religious activities.
Health this year: Make sure you keep yourself away from
two demons, greed and egoism to enable yourself to enjoy
sound health. Their presence in your life would make it
difficult for you to live a peaceful life.
Finance this year: Financially too, it will be a good year.
Some of you can expect to inherit property from your ancestors. It would be in your interest if you keep your investment plans secret. At this time you must focus all attention on future goals.
Career this year: Those of you in the field of writing, or
teaching, can expect it to be an exceptionally good year.
Your extensive vocabulary and communication skills, will
take you to greater heights of success. You like your projects and plans to move in double quick time. You will be
able to achieve success and that too in a short time, in the
coming year.
Romance this year: Separation from romantic partner for
few days would act as a blessing in disguise for you this
year. This will make you realise that what is true love and
will contribute in cementing your romantic bond.
Lucky month: May, July, September and December
24th March, 2015
Ruled planet: Venus Ruled by no: 6
Traits in you: Being number 6, you are lover of simplicity and originality. You are always there to help others.
You are an ambitious person, who always climb the stairs
of success in whatever work you take in hand. You are
very out-spoken in nature and good at solving other's
problem. The best quality in you is that you have an ability to laugh at yourself and make others smile.
Health this year: This year as far as possible, avoid
overindulgence in the work you do. Keep in mind that this
will only affect your health. It would therefore be in your
interest to give body the much-needed rest to keep yourself physically fit.
Finance this year: Good year as investment progress by
leaps & bounds. You need to invest the money in a regular income bond. You will also love to spend a lot of time
in collecting donations for charitable institutions.
Career this year: You are full of confidence and do not

underestimate you capabilities. In this year, you will try to
impose your ideas on others. This may not be liked by
your colleagues, who tend to drift away. You will achieve
success in your pursuit of knowledge.
Romance this year: This year, take a pledge that you will
not get disappointed on a sad beginning in romance. Keep
in mind that love being the matter of hearts takes a little
time in blossoming. Just be sincere in your efforts.
Lucky month: June, August, January and February
25th March, 2015
Ruled planet: Neptune Ruled by no: 7
Traits in you: Being number 7, you are an intelligent, independent and kind hearted person. You know how to play
with words. Using your this quality you will easily impress people around you. Your supportive nature makes
you famous in your group. justice. You love to be a leader
in a group and can easily sense positive and negative energies coming from the people around you. This year you
might go for a foreign trip, which would be both pleasureable and rewarding.
Health this year: This year try to start your day with jogging and make it an essential part of your daily routine. It
would help you in being in a very good shape. Moreover
in case of any ailment medicines will only effect when you
keep yourself physically fit.
Finance this year: This year your flourishing business
would bring rich dividends. The need of the hour is that
you invest in new business projects individually to regain
higher returns. You might also lend loans to someone,
which will be favourable to you.
Career this year: This year you will be able to pursue
many subjects, rather than confine yourself to any one.
Your honesty and loyalty, towards your work, will impress
your seniors. Those of you, who are in a teaching line, will
do well, professionally. Your skills and strong determination will bring applaud for you.
Romance this year: This year if you are looking for a
partner, then be ready to meet a dazzling beauty/handsome
guy who has the power to mesmerise you. However before
taking any initiatives make sure that he/she is the right person and you are not under the spell of infatuation.
Lucky month: August, November, March and April
26th March, 2015
Ruled planet: Saturn Ruled by no: 8
Traits in you: Being number 8, you are a person who
loves challenges in life and always come out as a winner
which ever task you take in hand. You are very practical,
systematic and friendly person who is always there to help
needy people. You determination and sincerity at work
will fetch you both good finances and respect in society.
Although you don't like anyone assisting you, but when
you do any mistakes, you accept them easily and learn not
to repeat it again.
Health this year: This year you will start your day with a
positive attitude and a preventive care, which would bring
immense relief from your ailments. It will be in your interest to continue to enable yourself to enjoy a healthy life.
Finance this year: This year monetary gains in the form
of shares dividend will definitely improve your financial
health. Investing it for further income would not be a prudent option. Rather spend it in purchasing a new home appliance, which would be a better investment.
Career this year: You are full of energy and enthusiasm,
and would like to undertake big projects. In the coming year,
you will have to give up your lethargic tendency, if you have
to achieve success in the projects you have taken in hands.
You will get many opportunities, and it is up to you, how
much advantage you can take of these opportunities.
Romance this year: You will go all out to give the best to
your family members. You do not like to reveal your sentiments and emotions, even to your loved ones. Sometimes, this creates misunderstandings. Sp, try to express
your love and emotions, this will do wonders for you. You
are easily attracted towards the opposite sex.
Lucky month: May, November, January and April
27th March, 2015
Ruled planet: Mars Ruled by no: 9
Traits in you: Being number 9, you are one of the most energetic, courageous and brilliant person, who successfully
completes the work taken in hand. You can be called cleanliness freak person. You always help those who need your
help. You love to be in the company of those people who
are intellignet and sophisticated. You are good at evaluating any situation and work accordingly. For you emotional happiness is more important than material happiness.
Being focused in life, you climb the ladder of success.
Health this year: This year make sure you make your
mind receptive to all the good things you will see in your
environment. To motivate yourself join some yoga or aerobics classes. Keep your smile going which would work
like a trouble-shooter against depression.
Finance this year: This year you need to reinvent your
business strategies to gain new opportunities. Taking advice from friends would allow you to spend the money on
some lucrative projects. Initiate any action only after making sure that this will be profitable to you.
Career this year: This year your imagination and new ideas
will catch the attention of your seniors, who will be impressed with your creativity. You might also try to dominate
over others, by imposing your views on your colleagues.
This might upset them, so be careful towards your attitude.
Romance this year: In love matters, you will have to be
very careful this year. Take a step forward, only when you
are sure of a positive response from the other end. A little
care for the sentiments of your love partner or your
spouse, will do wonders to bring harmony and peace in
your married life.
Lucky month: August, December and February
30
March 21-27, 2015
SPIRITUAL AWARENESS
Moral Dimensions of Leadership
By Sant Rajinder Singh

Ji Maharaj
o be a leader requires knowing what to do, and why to
do it. Enthusiasm, motivation, skill, and knowing how to do
things right is not enough. We have
to know whether it is the right thing
to do. For that, moral leadership is
required.
Moral leadership has two central
aspects: understanding our true self
and serving others. True leaders
need knowledge of the self that
gives access to an inner moral compass that guides our activities and
gives direction for those who follow us. A clear and simple directive
has come to us through the
ages:Know Thyself.
Leadership is about who we are
, and what we do.Along with
learning to act as a leader, we must
possess the characteristics, behavior and habits of mind and heart of
true leaders. True leaders have the
courage to confront the meaning of
existence. They have the courage to
live in a manner that offer meaning
to others, By their example, they
inspire hope in others that they too

can become one of Gods noble
works. Such leadership transcends
organizational leadership and also
moral leadership. It is life leadership. Such leaders enter within their
own hearts and souls, engage in
self-analysis, and connect with the
spiritual force within themselves.
They become connected to the limitless spiritual power within and
radiate unmatched strength of character and will. Yet they are the most
humble and compassionate of leaders. True leadership is not acting a
certain way; it is a reflection of
who we are within. Many focus on
the routines of life, such as waking
up, getting dressed, eating, driving,
working to earn a living, coming
home, and repeating the cycle the
following day. We go through life
growing up, having a job, raising a
family, retiring, and then passing
away. We wonder if that is all there
is to human existence. Those who
raise this question cannot rest until
they find answers. They conclude
that there is a higher power within
that guides us. That inner spiritual
power is the source of morals,
virtues, power, and life. It does not
matter what name we call it
whether God, consciousness, soul
that power is within, enlivening
each of us.
Once we contact the eternal spiritual power, we connect with the
source of the qualities of true leaders. We automatically and effortlessly inculcate the virtues and
characteristics associated with great
Great moral leaders of history have

said that service
before self was
the key to a full
and rewarding
life. A leader must
be a servant first.
It is by serving
others that we
earn the right to
lead them.
leaders.
The second aspect of leadership
is service. Great moral leaders of
history have said that service before
self was the key to a full and
rewarding life. A leader must be a
servant first. It is by serving others
that we earn the right to lead them.
We may act as leaders , but we
must be servants to lead meaningfully. How is it possible?
Those who are spiritually aware
see the same power enlivening all
creation. A life of service is based
on deep spiritual and moral principles that are understood and internalized when we contact the Truth
within. Intellectually understanding
service does not provide the conviction we need when we are tested, as we most certainly be, by people and circumstances.
Becoming a true leader is aboutbecoming a true human being.
Leadership is aproduct of deep,
ongoing self-analysis. It is about
choosing a life committed to spiritual growth and service. If we tap
into spiritual sources within, we
will become leaders whose lives
will inspire others to follow and
who will be a blessing to those we
meet. We need dedication and perseverance to achieve anything. For
those who turn towards spiritual
path, moral leadership will come
without fail. We do not need to act

or pose. Our moral leadership and
spiritual strength will flow from our
words and actions and will reach
the hearts of others as naturally and
inevitably as a stream flows
towards its source.
Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj
is an internationally recognized
spiritual leader and Master of
Jyoti Meditation who affirms the
transcendent oneness at the heart
of all religions and mystic traditions, emphasizing ethical living
and meditation as building blocks
for achieving inner and outer
peace. www.sos.org.
Mysticism, the Science that Injects Life with Peace and Joy
By Sant Rajinder
Singh Ji Maharaj
ysticism,
rightly
understood, is the
most universal and
fundamental approach to achieving an integrated and fulfilling
life. In a world that has made
such remarkable scientific and
material progress, the challenge
before us, individually and collectively, is to make similarly
spectacular progress in the spiritual sphere.
Each of us is allotted a limited
amount of time on earth. During
this time we have a unique
opportunity to investigate the
purpose for which we were born
and try to understand the meaning of life itself.
The desire to know and understand things seems to be innate
in human beings.
Scientists are engaged in this
pursuit, but the tools they use
are limited to those that are
physical and intellectual. Over
the years, saints and mystics
have unraveled the mysteries of
life and death and have discov-
ered that complete understanding could only be gained at the

spiritual level. Because the spiritual pursuit deals with realms of
experience that ultimately transcend that which is physical and
mental, it seems mysterious.
That is why this approach came
to be known as mysticism.
Mysticism, however, is a science that injects life with understanding, joy, peace, and love. It
is a practical approach to living
that enriches our inner life and
enriches our relationships with
others. The basic premise of
mysticism is that each of us, in
reality, is a soul inhabiting a
physical body for a rather short
period of time. It may be twenty,
forty, sixty, eighty, or even a
hundred years, but in the not too
distant future, each of us will die
and leave this world.
Where did our soul come from
before we entered this world?
Where will it go after we leave
here? What is the purpose of this
world, and of life itself? These
questions are fundamental to
understanding our human existence.
The mystics are those enlightened individuals who have

searched and found the answers
to these questions. They tell us
that the purpose of our life is to
reunite our soul with its Creator,
and they offer to teach us a
method by which we can do so.
Throughout the ages many
methods have been taught to
achieve this union, but in our
contemporary world, we need an
approach that takes into account
the realities of modern life. Such
an approach to mysticism offers
unlimited opportunities for
improving our lives and improving the lives of people throughout the globe.
The beginning of our souls
journey is the contact with the
Light and Sound of God. The
Light and Sound current flows
out from God, but it also flows
back to God.
We can catch this current at
the point of the third or single
eye. That is the connecting point
between our soul in the body
and the Light and Sound current
emanating from the Creator. If
we can concentrate our attention
at that point, we can soar on it

back through the higher regions
of existence. The current will
ultimately lead us to our primary
Source, back to the Lord.
The method is simple. As we
gaze within, we transcend
awareness of body consciousness into realms of Light and
Sound within. As we continue
this process we will prove to
ourselves that there is Light and
Sound beyond, that we can exist
separately from the physical
body, and that there are higher
realms of divine consciousness.
The test is to prove it to ourselves.
Those who spend time daily in
this process have had success in
proving the hypothesis that there
is an existence beyond this
world.
Through meditation on the
inner Light and Sound we can
achieve the peace, harmony,
love, and bliss that we so desperately seek, and we can be a
part of an ever increasing group
of people who are spreading
peace and human unity throughout the world.
Where did our soul come from

before we entered this world?
Where will it go after we leave
here? What is the purpose of
this world, and of life itself?
These questions are fundamental to understanding our
human existence.
March 21-27, 2015

Vol.7 Issue 46 March 21-27, 2015

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Vol.7 Issue 46 March 21-27, 2015

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The South Asian Times

Vol.7 No. 46 March 21-27, 2015 60 Cents

New York Edition

Xavier medical school is growing in global repute

Amb. Mulay launches

ISIS claims responsibility IAS officer's death: Centre

A member of the Tunisian security

Tunis, Tunisia: Police in Tunisia moved to

Bangalore/Delhi: The controversy surrounding the mysterious death of IAS officer

D.K. Ravi was an upright officer known

ICCWORLD CUP 24-25

Excerpts from the exclusive interview:

March 21-27, 2015

XUSOM: Med school with growing global repute

avier University School of Medicine (XUSOM) is located

Visit by Jordans Deputy PM

In New York Dr Mahmoud interacted with the school

Private loan programs

The integrated curriculum

His Excellency Dr Mahmoud interacting with

Dr Amin Mahmoud with Xavier President Mr Ravi

The Honorable Minister being introduced

Problem-based learning, active small group learning, the

Rising USMLE step 1 performance

High quality clinical rotations

Contact: XUSOM New York office: Ph. 516-333-2224; email admissions@xusom.com

March 21-27, 2015

NFIA meet draws US

attended by the Mayor of

mer Anaheim Councilman Harry

Jennings of Girl Rising receives rst

Mythili Rao of SAAJA, Zoe Timms, WEP project director,

HIV/AIDS -- except that there is a

proud to be here representing

Vice President. The three vice

California was elected as the

TNTs Cold Justicelands

Missing since 2007,

ing extramarital affairs, but no

March 21-27, 2015

Amb. Mulay on his new outreach program

As part of giving back to community, Indus American Bank,

ISIS claims responsibility for...

concern for their countrys future.

Jennings of Girl Rising receives first Red Bangle Award at Consulate

Continued from page 1

to take interest. But passport and visa

New Delhi Bureau

Art and Design: Vladimir Tomovski

Printed Every Saturday by

Managing Editor: Parveen Chopra

Strategy and Marketing

Web Editor: B.B.Chopra

Marketing & PR (Washington DC)

IANS Washington Bureau

Chairman and Co-Founder

Contributing Editors: Melvin Durai,

Co-Founder: Saroosh Gull

Contributing Editors (Youth):

Jaipur (India) Bureau

News Service: HT Media Ltd.

Printing: Five Star Printing, NY

March 21-27, 2015

Kiran Bedi attends NY fundraiser for her charity