Modi to Meet Trump on Jun 25/26

NEW DELHI: PM Narendra Modi's visit to the US where he will meet President Donald Trump will take place on June 25-26 with the engagement being seen as an opportunity to set equations and get a measure of the new occupant of the White House.

The dates for Modi's visit are expected to be announced on Monday and come at a time when Trump's critical comments on India while announcing the US decision to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement have injected a degree of uncertainty in bilateral ties. The contacts with the Trump administration so far have not been necessarily disquieting with US national security adviser Gen HRMcMaster reaffirming India's status as a major defence partner during a visit to Delhi in April after stopovers in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Discussions marked a large convergence on key regional and strategic concerns such as terrorism and Afghanistan but Modi's visit to Washington later this month will be a major engagement across a range of subjects that include sticky turfs like H1B visas and trade.

Trump's comments lumping India and China as countries seeking billions for signing up on climate deals has clearly hit a nerve in Delhi and Modi's discussions in Washington can be expected to concentrate in pushing synergies while finessing differences on issues that impact the domestic constituencies of both leaders. In the wake of Trump's remarks, Modi has reiterated India's support to the Paris agreement and said he is willing to go further than what has been committed under the Paris accord. But while defending itself against the charge it has sought western funds, the government has not pushed the issue further.

Given the focus of the upcoming visit, Modi will be in Washington and the Indian delegation will be occupied with engagements with the White House and top administration officials. The PM will meet the Indian community on one occasion. He will look for gains in dealing with Pakistan's role in promoting terrorism and India's case for a seat at the nuclear supplier's group besides enlarging the economic relationship.

So far, Trump has sprung more than a few surprises in his foreign policy. He has rubbed his NATO allies the wrong way , saying US is carrying more than its fair burden in supporting the long-standing trans-Atlantic alliance. He has backed Saudi Arabia against Iran, a move that some feel lacks balance but could also be seen as an attempt to contain at least one major source of instability in the middle-east.

The US President has made some tough noises over North Korea but has not yet moved to significantly reduce America's profile in the Indian Ocean and Pacific. He has moved cautiously with China, reiterating support for its "one China" policy, after initially riling Beijing by accepting a call from Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen.

The Republican administration's political and security priorities may see it take a tougher view of Pakistan's support for terrorism though its strategic geography gives it a bargaining power that no US leader has been able to ignore, allowing Islamabad to continue with a Janus-faced approach to "good and bad" terrorists.

Indian Female Sikh in Britain Polls

LONDON: Britain today got its first female Sikh and first turban-wearing MPs as the general election results began pouring in with Indian-origin Labour Partycandidates winning more seats than their rival Conservatives.

Labour Party candidate Preet Kaur Gill won her Birmingham Edgbaston seat by polling 24,124 votes, defeating ruling Conservative party rival Caroline Squire by 6,917 votes.

"I am delighted I have been given the opportunity to become the next MP for Edgbaston where I was born and raised. I want to engage with the people of Edgbaston and with hard work, passion and determination I think we can achieve great things together," she said.

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, known as Tan, won his Slough seat decisively polling 34,170 votes, to become Labour's first turban-wearing MP.

He defeated his Conservative party rival by a whopping 16,998 votes.

Dhesi said he was "humbled" and wanted to serve the town where he was born and raised.

"Credit to the Labour Party leadership for taking the bold step of giving Sikhs the opportunity to fight for winnable seats. Labour now needs to turn its attention to having visible Sikh representation in the House of Lords at the first opportunity so Sikhs are better represented and can bring fresh thinking and ideas," Sikh Federation UK said in a statement.

"Although it is early in terms of results declared this appears to be a disastrous night for the 

Conservativesand Theresa May given what she had hoped to achieve and a good night for the Labour Party. Labour is taking some important Conservative scalps," it added.

A second turban-wearing Sikh of the Labour Party Kuldip Sahota lost out to his Conservative rival by just 720 votes.

Among some of the other Indian-origin contestants' results declared so far, Conservative party's Priti Patel has held on to her stronghold of Witham in Essex with a solid majority of 18,646 votes.

Alok Sharma has held on to Reading West by 2,876 votes and Shailesh Vara has won in Cambridgeshire North West by 18,008 votes.

The 2015 general election first-timers for the Tories Rishi Sunak and Suella Fernandes have also held on to their seats decisively with a margin of 23,108 and 21,555 votes respectively.

For the Labour party, the longest serving Indian-origin MP Keith Vaz held on to his Leicester East seat attracting 35,116 votes and his sister Valerie Vaz also won a solid 25,286 votes to hold on to her Walsall South seat.

Lisa Nandy won in Wigan for Labour with 29,575 votes, Seema Malhotra held on to Feltham & Heston with 32,462 votes and Virendra Sharma polled 31,720 in his safe seat of Ealing Southall.

Among some of the prominent losses, Labour's Neeraj Patil - the former mayor of the London Borough of Lambeth - lost to Justine Greening, the UK's Education Minister.

He lost by a margin of 1,554 votes to Greening, who was defending her Conservative party stronghold.

Paul Uppal, who was expected to regain Wolverhampton South West for the Tories, also lost out to his Labour rival.

The Labour Party had selected 14 Indians and Conservative Party 13 as their parliamentary candidates.

So far, the tally looks stronger for the Labour Party with seven Indian-origin MPs to Tory's five.

The ruling Conservative party is on course to be the single largest party in the UK general election as many of the results and leads become clear in the ongoing count.

The projections indicate that the party remains shy of an overall majority, expected to win around 322 seats, down from the 2015 general election's 331 and short of the magic 326 figure for an overall majority in the House of Commons.

A Bus conductor from chennai planted more than 38000 trees

COIMBATORE: A bus conductor from the city, who has planted more than 38,000 trees, has found mention in the CBSE class V General Knowledge textbook as a green crusader. A regular on the Marudhamalai-Gandhipuram number 70 bus, Yoganathan has been working for the Tamil Nadu State Road Transport Corporation (TNSTC) for the last 18 years.

"He is a bus conductor from Tamil Nadu, who has single-handedly planted more than 38,000 trees in 28 years. He has made commendable efforts to save wildlife and spreading awareness about conservation among youth," the book says.

A Plus Two pass out, he has been planting saplings for the past 32 years, Yoganathan said. "I am a native of Mayiladuthurai near Nagapattinam. I was amazed by the beauty of the Nilgiris where I worked as a sales representative after finishing school. After witnessing trees being smuggled out, I had even staged a protest against it. Such events ignited the spark in me to work on conserving the environment," he told TOI.

The crusader in him was nurtured and supported by Tamil Nadu Green Movement's Jayachandran. Working at a tea estate in Kodanad, Yoganathan was selected in the TNSTC as a conductor and moved to Coimbatore. However, he did not stop the work to conserve the environment.

While planting trees and saving wildlife is his passion, Yoganathan also believes in spreading the message among the young generation. "I participate in conferences and guest lectures in universities and colleges to engage students about conservation of the environment. I was recently invited to a local arts and science college where I delivered the guest lecture," he said.

Besides this, the National Service Scheme (NSS) teams of schools and colleges invite him to participate in their activities and apprise them about environmental protection.

Indian student from Telangana shot at in California

HYDERABAD: A student from Telangana is critical after being shot at in California, US.

Mubeen Ahmed, 26, who is pursuing MS from California University, was shot in a shop where he had taken up part time work. His father said they had got a call from the hospital where he was admitted that Mubeen was critical and unconscious.

The incident took place at 6pm on June 4. 

The family was informed about the incident on June 5 by some relatives.

"The hospital authorities have called me and said my son is in ICU and in critical condition. We require a visa to be with him," Mujib Ahmed, father of the victim, who works for a defence establishment said. The family belongs to Sangareddy

Mujib said they had met Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao and other public representatives who were helpful.

Mubeen had gone to California in February, 2015. MBT leader Amjedullah Khan has written to Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and NRI affair minister K T Rama Rao to help Mubeen's family.

Plastic rice hal chal in AP and Telangana States.

HYDERABAD/VISAKHAPATNAM: Rumours of alleged sale of plastic rice at some grocery stores caused jitters among the people of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday.

Two days after a customer found plastic rice being used in a biryani point in Saroornagar in Hyderabad, another customer, this time from Meerpet, approached the local police on Tuesday claiming that the rice which he bought from a grocery store turned out to be a plastic one. By the evening, task force officials of the civil supplies department raided the shop in Meerpet and seized samples which are now being examined. Meanwhile, rumours went viral on social media that plastic rice was being sold on a large-scale at various stores in Andhra Pradesh triggering panic among the public.

Meerpet police said Ashok, a resident of Nandanavanam colony, complained that for the last several days, he and his family members have been suffering from various health problems like stomach ache, pain in hands and legs. It was on Monday night that when Ashok returned home from work in the night, he found that the rice served to him by his wife was mashed and unedible.

Rumours of plastic rice and the continuous flow of posts, videos and messages on social networking sites, particularly Facebook and WhatsApp, created panic on Tuesday in Andhra Pradesh too.

Even as the reports are yet to be verified, officials in the state are taking no chances. The department of weights and measures (W&M) is planning to keep a tab on this novel method of rice adulteration by forming a special enforcement team.

"We also came to know about plastic or fake rice through media and social networking sites. We have not received any instructions from our higher-ups so far on this issue, but locally I am sending four food inspectors to check rice with the main rice traders in Visakhapatnam," Srinivasa Rao, W&M assistant food controller, told TOI. Until then, he said, they had come across only cases of adulteration of red gram and other commodities.

If any citizen lodges a complaint with the department, they would take it seriously, examine the facts and take action under the Food Safety and Standards Act 2006, Rao added. Rice traders, however, rule out the possibility of plastic rice in the port city. "There is no sale of such plastic rice in the city. By God's grace, Andhra Pradesh does not have any rice shortage to leave space for fake or plastic rice," said K Bhima Rao, a rice trader.

H1-B Visa Report for 2017--Top Companies received fewer Visas

WASHINGTON: Top seven India-based outsourcing companies in the US received fewer H-1B visas in 2016 as compared to 2015, and as a group their numbers dropped 37 per cent, according to a new report.

The companies experienced a drop of 5,436 approved petitions (37 per cent) in 2016 as compared to previous year, a report by the National Foundation for American Policy - a Washington-based non-profit think-tank said.

It said, the 9,356 new H-1B petitions for the top seven Indian-based companies approved in fiscal 2016 represent only 0.006 per cent of the US labour force.



"While the threat of job loss has long been exaggerated by critics, it reaches illogical proportions when discussing fewer than 10,000 workers in an economy that employs 160 million workers nationwide," the National Foundation for American Policy said in a statement after releasing the report.

According to the report, the number of approved new H-1B petitions for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) declined by 56 per cent in FY 2016 compared to FY 2015, from 4,674 to 2,040, a drop of 2,634.

For Wipro, the petitions declined by 52 per cent between FY 2015 and FY 2016, a drop of 1,605, going from 3,079 to 1,474 approved petitions for initial employment during those years.

For Infosys, it declined by 16 per cent (or 454 petitions), with 2,376 approved H-1B petitions for initial employment in FY 2016, compared to 2,830 in FY 2015, said the report, which based its research from government data.

"The drop in new H-1B visas for Indian-based companies, which is expected to continue when data are released on cases filed in April 2017 for FY 2018 start dates, is due to industry trends toward digital services such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence, which require fewer workers, and a choice by companies to rely less on visas and to build up their domestic workforces in the US," the report said.

"H-1B petitions approved for initial employment in FY 2016 were filed by employers in April 2016, which means the drop in H-B visa use by these companies is not due to Donald Trump's election.

"In the past, US policymakers have used the number of visas going to Indian-based companies as a political or policy reason to propose new immigration restrictions and to not raise the low annual supply of H-1B visas , which has been exhausted every year for the past 15 fiscal years," said NFAP executive director Stuart Anderson, former head of policy at the Immigration and Naturalisation Service under President George W Bush.

Among the top companies with new H-1B petitions approved in 2016 were Cognizant (3,949), Infosys (2,376), TCS (2,040), Accenture (1,889), IBM (1,608), Wipro (1,474), Amazon (1,416), Tech Mahindra (1,228), CapGemini (1,164), Microsoft (1,145), HCL America (1,041), Intel (1,030), Deloitte (985), Google (924), Larsen &Toubro (870), PricewaterhouseCoopers (713), Ernst & Young (649), Apple (631), Syntel (583), Facebook (472), Oracle (427), Cisco (380), Mindtree (327), Goldman Sachs (287), UST Global (283), JPMorganChase (271), IGATE (255), Stanford (221), Yahoo! (206) and KPMG (198).

An analysis of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data on FY 2016 H-1B petitions shows, similar to FY 2015, approximately 25,000 different US employers hired at least one high-skilled foreign national on a new H-1B petition in 2016.

Employers in manufacturing include Tesla Motors with 108 approved new H-1B petitions and Cummins with 197.

Uber had 121 approved H-1B petitions in FY 2016, eBay 115, and the Mayo Clinic 111.

National Foundation for American Policy said the April 2017 unemployment rate in the US for "computer and mathematical science" occupations was 2.5 per cent - a very low rate, even lower than the 4.4 per cent for "all occupations," according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The unemployment rate for "architecture and engineering" occupations is even lower at 2.1 per cent, it said, adding this illustrates a disconnect between reality and claims that high-skilled foreign nationals are preventing US workers from pursuing careers in tech fields.

According to Code.org, Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicate there will be "1.4 million more software development jobs than applicants who can fill them by 2020 ... and there are more than 500,000 open computing jobs nationwide."

An analysis by Glassdoor shows 9 of the 10 highest paying majors for US students 5 years out of college are in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, the report said.

The report disputed the figures of the Trump Administration that about 80 per cent of the H-1B workers are paid less than the median wage in their fields.

"This statistic is misleading as it relies on a Department of Labor database that includes multiple applications for the same individuals, since a new filing is generally required when an H-1B professional moves to a new area," the report said.

That means it "double or triple counts anyone who works in more than one geographic location (primarily younger workers sent to multiple offices)." Moreover, it may not reflect what employers actually pay individual workers, only the minimum required to be listed for government filing purposes.

The median salary in 2015 for H-1B computer-related recipients who have worked about three years (listed as "continuing employment" in DHS data) was about $7,000 higher than the median salary in the industry," the report said.

The foundation argued that H-1B temporary visas are important as they are typically the only practical way a high-skilled foreign national working abroad or an international student educated in the United States can work long term in America.

At US universities, 77 per cent of the full-time graduate students in electrical engineering and 71 per cent in computer science are international students.

Reforms to increase the labor mobility of H-1B visas, raise the employment-based green card quota and eliminate the per country limit would be welcome but are not currently on the agenda. New restrictions on high-skilled immigration are more likely, it said."In today's global economy, companies and high-skilled professionals possess many options," said Anderson.

"The United States should maintain an openness toward high-skilled immigration or those options likely will not be in America," he added.

GSLV Mk III rocket launch today.

GSLV Mk III rocket

1. The GSLV Mk III D1 rocket is scheduled for lift off at 5.28pm today  from the second launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.
 

2. The GSLV Mk III D1 is a three-stage vehicle with indigenous cryogenic upper stage engine+ designed to carry heavier communication satellites into the Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO).

3. Apart from the cryogenic engine, designated C25, carrying about 28 tonnes of propellants, it has two solid strap-on motors (S200) and a core liquid booster (L110). 

4. The mission is significant as the GSLV Mk III+ , that weighs equivalent to the weight of five fully-loaded Boeing Jumbo Jets or as much as 200 fully grown elephants, is the heaviest rocket to be launched from our own soil. Till now, Isrohad to depend on foreign launchers for communication satellites weighing more than 2,300 kg.
 

5. The GSLV Mk III D1 is capable of lifting payloads of up to 4,000 kg into the GTO and 10,000 kg into the Low Earth Orbit.
 
6. The mission would also augment India's communication resources as a single GSAT-19 satellite will be equivalent to having a constellation of six to seven of the older variety of communication satellites in space.
 
7. This is India's rocket of the future as it will undoubtedly be human rated to carry Indian astronauts likely to be named 'gaganauts or vyomanauts'. Former Isro chairman K Kasturirangan, the man who conceived the GSLV Mk III, confirms it will be the country's vehicle to ferry Indians into space.
8. The most innovative development on GSAT-19 is that for the first time there will be no transponders on the satellite. Instead for the first time, Isro is using a whole new way beaming data down using multiple frequency beams and hence it is dubbed "a high through put satellite".
9. GSAT-19 is going to be powered for the first time with indigenously-made Lithium-ion batteries. These batteries have been made so that India's self-reliance quotient can increase. In addition, similar batteries can then be used to power electric vehicles like cars and buses.


10. Isro says GSAT-19 also features certain advanced spacecraft technologies including "miniaturised heat pipe, fibre optic gyro, Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) accelerometer". These are all important developments being tested so that they become mainstay systems on future missions.