As heavy rain washed away low-lying shanties and submerged cars in Jaipur last Friday, the staff at the historic Albert Hall museum was busy in a different rescue operation. As water started filling the museum, housekeeping officials and guards hopped the stairs to the museum’s basement to get to a 2,400-year-old Egyptian mummy encased in a glass chamber.
Standing in waist-deep water and using the lights from mobile phones and torches, the staff broke the glass and carried the mummy to a drier area of the museum. “The ancient mummy is our most delicate antique and since a display in 2016, it has been extremely popular with local and international visitors,” said Rakesh Cholak, the museum superintendent
“With timely intervention, we saved it from the slush and water that badly affected almost 17,000 artefacts in our store and display areas,” he said.
Jaipur received 132mm of rainfall on Friday. The rainwater, which inundated streets, entered the museum’s windows and corridors starting from its Moti Dungari Road side, and submerged several historical items such as Japanese pottery, ancient statues, Buddhist paintings, photographs, brassware, arms and armour, and wooden art, among others.
Anthony refused to pay the fine and the authorities took no further action against her. Hundred years ago in 1920, her struggles bore fruit and the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution gave women the right to vote.
Anthony was an active participant in the abolitionist movement of the 1840s, temperance movement (against consumption of alcoholic beverages), and a founding member of National Woman Suffrage Association (1869).
Trump’s pardon comes amid outcry overthat Democrats say could render people unable to vote if they opt for mail-in voting. As a result of the protest, the United States Postal Service (USPS) decided to suspend the proposed operational changes till after the 2020 elections.
In an attempt to win the support of women voters in upcoming elections, US President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned women suffrage movement activist Susan B Anthony who was arrested for voting in 1872.
was an American social reformer and a prominent anti-slavery rights activist but was best known for her role in the 19th century movement to secure voting rights for women. At the age of 52, she was arrested for voting in the 1872 elections held in Rochester, New York, in violation of laws permitting only men to vote.
India’s top naval commanders will discuss important operational issues during a three-day conference in New Delhi beginning today, amid the ongoing border tensions with China in eastern Ladakh. The navy has been on an operational alert in the Indian Ocean region (IOR) where scores of warships are ready for any task in the aftermath of the border row.
While the Indian Navy is keeping a sharp eye on the IOR, it is also playing a key role in the Ladakh sector. Its P-8I maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft, imported from the US, are being used for surveillance of the Ladakh sector and gathering intelligence on Chinese deployments across the contested Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Here are five reasons why the conference is significant:
• It comes at a time when the navy has stepped up surveillance and activities in the IOR, which, it believes, China will inevitably try to enter in its quest to become a global power, just as it has laid claim to large portions of the disputed South China Sea.
The conference will provide the naval leadership a forum to discuss issues related to operations and the scenario in the IOR where the Chinese navy has been trying to expand its footprint.
• India is keeping tabs on China’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea and taking steps to ensure that the Chinese navy doesn’t muscle its way into the Indian Ocean where combat-ready Indian warships are carrying out round-the-clock surveillance for any unusual activity.
promise when the favor is granted. Maybe the reason Brubaker & Co.
• The stage is also set for Australia to be part of the next Malabar naval exercise conducted by India with the United States and Japan. The next edition of Malabar, already delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, is set to be held by the end of the year. Australia’s participation could be discussed at the conference.
The Supreme Court’s judgement to order to allow the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to continue with the probe against Rhea Chakraborty in the Supreme Court has been hailed by the politicians.
“We welcome the decision of the Supreme Court to allow CBI to continue with its probe of Sushant death case on the basis of FIR filed in Bihar. Our stand vindicated,” Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said on Twitter.
BJP MLA Ashish Shelar also appreciated the apex court for allowing CBI enquiry into the late actor’s case stating that “hidden hands” misguiding police would “be exposed”.
“Thanks Hon’ble SC! CBI enquiry = #Justice4ssr! “Hidden hands” misguidinh (misguiding) police investigation will be exposed! Jail time for “Pub & party gang” who enjoyed illegally, while 15,000+ Mumbaikars died in lockdown! Note- Justice will b done, Shelar tweeted”
Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Chirag Paswan said the court’s order has brought relief to Rajput’s family.
“Not only the truth will surface now but those name will also come out who were behind disrupting the investigation in the case. I hope the Court’s order has brought relief to Sushant Singh Rajput’s family,” he said after the verdict.
A single-judge bench of Justice Hrishikesh Roy refused to grant relief to Chakraborty and instead agreed that Bihar Police will have jurisdiction in the case. As a consequence, the court said, “Bihar Police was competent to give consent to CBI.”
Tributes are pouring in for Indian classical music legend Pandit Jasraj, who has died at the age of 90.
The singer died at his home in the US on Monday after suffering a cardiac arrest.
He enthralled audiences across the world with his soulful performances for more than seven decades.
The maestro also wrote music for some Bollywood films but he will mostly be remembered for making Indian classical music popular across the world.
He was in the US when India went into a lockdown in March to halt the spread of coronavirus. He chose to stay back until travel restrictions were lifted, his family said.
His sudden death has shocked many, including PM Narendra Modi who led the tributes.
Pandit Jasraj was born into a family of musicians. His father was a vocalist in a royal court and his two brothers were also musicians.
His training started early and he started performing on stage with his brothers at the age of 11. He soon became known for his unique style - some describe his music as "spiritual and divine".
His fame grew steady over the years and he became a permanent fixture in many classical music festivals in India and around the world.
His also collaborated with directors on some Bollywood projects but stage performances remained his top priority. He will also be remembered for teaching and nurturing many celebrated music directors and singers.
He received numerous awards, including Padma Vibhushan - India's second highest civilian honour.
Southeast Asia is facing a strain of the new coronavirus that the Philippines, which faces the region's largest outbreak, is studying to see whether the mutation makes it more infectious.
The strain, earlier seen in other parts of the world and called D614G, was found in a Malaysian cluster of 45 cases that started from someone who returned from India and breached his 14-day home quarantine.
The Philippines detected the strain among random Covid-19 samples in the largest city of its capital region.
The mutation "is said to have a higher possibility of transmission or infectiousness, but we still don't have enough solid evidence to say that that will happen," Philippines' Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a virtual briefing on Monday.
The strain has been found in many other countries and has become the predominant variant in Europe and the U.S., with the World Health Organization saying there's no evidence the strain leads to a more severe disease. The mutation has also been detected in recent outbreaks in China.
There's no evidence from the epidemiology that the mutation is considerably more infectious than other strains, said Benjamin Cowling, head of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Hong Kong.
"It's more commonly identified now than it was in the past, which suggests that it might have some kind of competitive advantage over other strains of Covid-19," he said.
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As Southeast Asian countries take various steps to prevent a resurgence while reopening limited travel, they struggle with people breaching quarantine rules after returning from overseas as well as false negative test results at borders.
The man who returned from India had tested negative when he arrived in Malaysia. He has since been sentenced to five months in prison and fined for breaching quarantine.
NEW DELHI: Gopalan Balachandran’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing since news broke last week that his niece, Kamala Harris, had been nominated by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as his running mate, making history as the first black woman nominee on a major party ticket.
However, the candidate’s 79-year-old maternal uncle said that he wasn’t surprised to learn of of his niece’s achievement.
“My instinct told me that she would make it. Kamala has strong credentials. For us, it’s a matter of pride,” the New Delhi resident told Arab News.
Harris, 55, a US senator from California, was born to an Indian mother and Jamaican father. If elected, she will be second in line to the presidency after Biden.
Her aunt, Dr. Sarala Gopalan, a gynecologist in the south Indian city of Chennai, credits her win to “good values” and a desire to stand for what is right.
“Kamala has been brought up by her mother with good values, and she understands how to fight for her rights and liberties,” Gopalan said.
She last met Harris in the US city of Detroit earlier this year, and says keeping in touch with her extended family is one of Harris’ most endearing qualities.
“Whenever she is in India, she meets the families. Last time, she came in 2009 with her mother’s ashes,” Gopalan said, adding that Harris was always “kind and caring” as a child.
Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, moved to the US from the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu in 1959, while her father, Donald Harris, migrated from Jamaica.
On Saturday, Harris recalled her Indian roots during a joint address with Biden to the Indian community in Washington.
“When my mother, Shyamala, stepped off the plane in California as a 19-year-old, she didn’t have much in the way of belongings. But she carried with her lessons from back home, including ones she learned from her parents, my grandmother and my grandfather. They taught her that when you see injustice in the world, you have an obligation to do something about it,” Harris said.
“That is what inspired my mother to march and shout on the streets of Oakland, at the height of the civil rights movement, a movement where leaders including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, were inspired by the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi,” she said. The timing couldn’t be more telling.
India has registered more than 50,000 Covid-19 deaths, overtaking the UK to become the fourth-worst-affected country for fatalities.
But the number of deaths per million people stands at
34 - far lower than what has been reported in Europe or North America.
The case fatality rate or CFR, which measures deaths among Covid-19 patients, is just around 2%. Even in badly-hit state like Maharashtra the number of deaths is doubling only in about 40 days. "The death rates have kept low all along, even as cases rose," K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India think tank, told me.
Many epidemiologists attribute this relatively low fatality rate to a young population - the elderly are typically more vulnerable. It is not clear whether other factors, such as immunity deriving from previous infections from other coronaviruses, are also responsible. Also, they point to a pattern of low mortality in South Asian countries that share a similar demographic of a younger population: reported Covid-19 deaths per million are 22 in Bangladesh and 28 in Pakistan.
Clearly, corrected for population size, India is doing far better than Europe and the United States. Yet, as Kaushik Basu, a former chief economist of the World Bank, says: "It is irresponsible to treat this as consolation".
Prof Basu told me there are limits to the value of geographical comparisons.
"As soon as you do that, you realise India is doing very poorly. In China, Covid-19 deaths per million population is 3. In India it is 34. Within South Asia, the only country doing worse than India is Afghanistan and going by the trends, India will overtake Afghanistan."
Poorva Dixit left her husband and daughters in Fremont five months ago tocare for her dying mother in India. Now, she’s grieving and stranded near Mumbai.
Dixit has been separated from her family and the country she’s called home for more than a decade by a double blow: the coronavirus pandemic and ajn H-1B visa order that slammed shut the border for thousands of foreign citizens who live and work in the U.S. but were overseas when President Donald Trump’s rule took effect.
“The day I heard about the executive order I was literally shivering,” said Dixit, 37, who is staying in her father’s home. “I didn’t know what was next for me and my family. My kids are definitely suffering. When they’re in deep sleep they cry and call for me.”
She already missed her older daughter’s birthday and she’ll probably miss her younger daughter’s birthday, too. “I’m going to be having a lot of mom guilt the rest of my life,” said Dixit.
Dixit, who has lived and worked in the U.S. since getting a master’s degree in information networks and computer security from the New York Institute of Technology in 2006, is one of an estimated 4,000 or more U.S.-based Indian citizens stuck in India after Trump’s June “Proclamation Suspending Entry of Aliens Who Present a Risk to the U.S. Labor Market Following the Coronavirus Outbreak.”
The order immediately barred entry until at least Jan. 1 to anyone on an H-1B or L visa who was outside the country with an approved visa butwithout a routine but crucial passport stamp on the day the proclamation took effect. Those stamps became impossible to get when the pandemic closed consular services.
But even if visa services in India resume, and no date has been set, traveling foreign workers and new visa holders would still be barred under Trump’s proclamation. The State Department last week said H-1B holders seeking to return to the U.S. to the same jobs under the same visa classification could apply for emergency approval, but with limited services, some embassies and consulates “may not be able to accommodate your request.”
Dixit, employed by a healthcare technology firm, has had an H-1B visa since 2009 and knew the rules. As soon as she bought her ticket to India,she booked her embassy appointment. “I wanted to make sure I was coming back to my family,” she said. But the embassy shut visa services March 16, the day before her appointment, under a world-wide coronavirus suspension by the U.S. Department of State.
She and about 50 other Indian H-1B holders and their dependents are suing federal officials over the entry ban, part of the Trump administration’s latest crackdown on immigration and foreign workers. Facebook, Apple, HP, Uber, Twitter, Intel and Adobe last week joined about four dozen other U.S. tech firms filing a letter in support of a separate lawsuit over the order by the National Association of Manufacturers.
“The consulates and embassies abroad are starting to reopen slowly,” said Julie Gelatt, an analyst at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. “As they start to reopen, that’s where the impact of the proclamation becomes especially stark.”
In the Bay Area, technology giants rely heavily on the H-1B, intended for highly skilled workers, and tens of thousands of foreign citizens on the visa live and work in the region.
Tech firms have long pushed to increase the annual 85,000 cap on new visas, arguing they need more of them to secure the world’s top talent. Criticsclaim tech companies and staffing firms use the H-1B to drive down wages, supplant U.S. workers and facilitate outsourcing.
The vast majority of H-1B holders are Indian citizens.
In his proclamation, Trump said the pandemic had cost more than 20 million U.S. workers their jobs in “industries where employers are currently requesting H-1B and L workers to fill positions.”
Sameer Aro.
Sameer Arora, an electrical engineer from Milpitas with a post-graduate degree from the University of Texas, is stranded at his mother’s home near New Delhi with his wife and 18-month-old son.
“When I graduated from my Ph.D program they told me, ‘You should be proud of yourself, you are at the top.’ They talk on merit-based immigration. And then they throw me out,” said Arora, 34, who moved to the U.S. for school in 2010 and works as a design engineer for Renesas Electronics, a computer hardware maker. “I don’t understand that part.”
His wife, Malavika Parthan, a Cisco network engineer also on the H-1B, has a visa stamp, he said. Though she could return home, she and their son have stayed with him.
The family flew to India for a family emergency, but he couldn’t get his passport stamp in India. The embassy closed two days before his appointment, he said.
Now, he and Parthan are struggling to figure out a next step: Should she and their son return home without him? Should the family stay together? How long can they pay for a home and car they lease in the Bay Area but can’t use? “We don’t know what to do,” Arora said.
But Shah, who arrived in the U.S. in 2015 and has a master’s degree from Northeastern University in Boston and an H-1B visa, is now stranded with his new wife in the country where they were born but no longer live.Milpitas software engineer Darshak Shah and his fiancee, an H-1B holder working in North Carolina, didn’t expect major hitches when they flewto their native country in late February to get married in March. They planned to return quickly to the U.S. to start their lives together in the Bay Area.
“I paid a lot of tuition for my graduate program,” said Shah, 30, who works at consulting and engineering firm EPAM Systems. “I was definitely contributing to the economy as well as paying all the taxes and everything.”
Shah is living in a home he owns in India, but still paying rent and insurance on his Bay Area house, and although he’s able to work remotely for now, his employer wants him back with his team, and he worries he could lose his job, he said. “This is causing a lot of mental, psychological and financial stress,” he said.
The White House and U.S. Department of State declined to comment. The State Department said consular officers abroad were receiving guidance on implementing Trump’s order, but that such guidance is not public information.
At a time when the pandemic has left so many U.S. workers unemployed, “it does make sense to think carefully about what foreign workers we let into the country,” analyst Gelatt said.
However, she said, H-1B workers contribute to the economy, in many cases creating jobs or becoming entrepreneurs: assets that will be important for post-coronavirus economic recovery. “It doesn’t make longer-term economic sense to block higher-skilled workers from entering the United States,” she said, adding that the order could push companies to move jobs and work offshore.
Dixit is left worrying about what’s next. If she continues to work remotely, she believes she’ll have to switch over to the India-based payroll of her employer. That would mean losing substantial income and her health insurance, which also covers her children, she said.
“I’ve worked really hard, I’ve missed a lot with my family. And after doing all that, this is what I get,” Dixit said. “I have already lost my mother and now I’m being kept away from my motherhood.”
