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FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2014 MIDWEST EDITION
‘US committed to security partnership’ Nisha Desai Biswal pitches for closer India-US ties
ARUN KUMAR, WASHINGTON
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escribing US security engagement with India as crucial to security in the Indo-Pacific region, a US official says Washington is committed to a partnership including a strong and influential India in the security realm. “Our security engagement with India is a central element of the broad US-India strategic partnership,” Nisha Desai Biswal, Washington’s Indian-American point person for South Asia, said las week at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “That’s why we are committed to a partnership that includes a strong and influential India in the security realm,” she said speaking on ‘US Foreign Policy in South Asia: A Vision for Prosperity and Security’. Asserting that the partnership “can contribute to the stability of the Indian Ocean region”, Biswal said “We remain committed to working with India as we develop a joint approach security in the Indo-Pacific.” The U.S. had also expanded its regional consultations with India to include South, Central, West, and East Asia and would soon hold new rounds of several of these dialogues, said the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs.
NEW YORK: Rajat Gupta, Indiaborn former director of Goldman Sachs Group, convicted in 2012 for insider trading, has agreed to surrender to prison authorities on June 17 to begin a two-year sentence. US District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan directed Gupta, 65, who lost a bid for a new trial last month, to
Nisha Desai Biswal, Indian-American point person for South Asia
Obama to underscore continued focus on Asia WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama’s trip to Asia next week is an “important opportunity” for him to underscore continued US focus on the region, the White House said on April 18. Calling it the world’s largest emerging region, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said: “We increasingly see our top priorities as tied to Asia,
whether it’s accessing new markets or promoting exports, or protecting our security interests and promoting our core values.” Obama’s week-long trip to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines, which begins on April 22, makes up for his October travel cancelled due to a government shutdown over budget row.
Last year, she noted, US sent a senior-level representative to participate for the first time in the Indian Ocean Regional Association (IORA) as a dialogue partner. Turning to what she called “our path-breaking defense relation-
ship”, she said spanning the last decade, the US has “made significant progress in helping India modernize its armed forces and in expanding joint exercises that enhance regional security,” maintained the US official.
NRI mom kept dead son on ice for Hindu ritual ARUN KUMAR, WASHINGTON
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NRI Rajat Gupta starts prison term from June 17
n Indian-American woman in north Texas, accused of killing her son and leaving his body in the bathtub for four days, claims she did so in accordance with her Hindu beliefs. Pallavi Dhawan, 38, who is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her 10-year-old son, Arnav, almost three months ago, describes the events in a sworn affidavit sent to police through her lawyer, David Finn. 38-year-old Pallavi Dhawan’s son was found dead on January10. In the affidavit published by Dallas Observer, Dhawan said when she heavily towards natural causes,” tried to wake her son for school on according to CBS News. Pallavi is charged January 29, he was cold and unreThe family said the boy had prewith first-degree sponsive. She said at first she existing medical conditions. murder in the death thought her son was faking being In the affidavit, Dhawan says, “I asleep to get out of going to school, of her 10-year-old son proceeded to give (Arnav) his but when she picked him up to deceased bath according to Hindu carry him to take a bath, she realized customs, dressed him in his favorite he was dead. state of shock. In March, a medical clothes and kept his favorite toy next After checking Arnav’s pulse and examiner said Arnav’s cause of death to him and I later put his head on heartbeat and trying to perform could not be determined, but Finn his Favorite pillow along with his CPR, Dhawan said she went into a said the results trend “very, very favorite blanket.”
surrender by 2:00pm on that date. In an order made public on April 17 Rakoff said that Gupta and prosecutors consented to the surrender date. Gupta is the highest profile executive convicted since Manhattan’s Indian-American US attorney Preet Bharara, nicknamed the “Sheriff of Wall Street” by Time magazine, began a crackdown on insider trading at hedge funds in 2007. At Gupta’s sentencing, Rakoff agreed to recommend that he serve his sentence at the federal prison in Otisville, NY. Gupta was convicted in June 2012 of passing confidential tips to billionaire hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, the co-founder of Galleon, about Berkshire Hathaway’s $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs. A panel upheld the conviction on March 25, rejecting Gupta’s claim that Rakoff improperly admitted wiretapped telephone conversations in which he wasn’t a participant.
Hate crime charge against Sikh professor’s attacker in US NEW YORK: New York police have arrested a 20-year-old man in connection with an attack on a Sikh professor last September and charged him with a hate crime. Christian Morales was charged with aggravated harassment and committing a hate crime in the attack on Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs professor Prabhjot Singh, at a court appearance Saturday, Daily Columbia Spectator reported. While the investigation is still ongoing, Morales who was arrested on April 18 is the only person in custody, a New York Police Department spokesperson said. Singh, an observant Sikh who wears a turban and has a beard, was walking with a friend along 110th Street near Lenox Avenue in Harlem on the evening of September 21, when he was approached by a group of around 20 young men, Spectator said. At the time, the men “made anti-Muslim statements and
then they began punching the victim in the face.” Despite suffering a broken jaw and bruising, Singh returned to work the following Tuesday. “I think it’s critical to see that this is not the community we expect, and certainly not the country we expect,” Singh was quoted as saying. “It’s not the Harlem I know, and it’s certainly not going to change how I move around that neighborhood.”
100 Punjabi youths still detained in US for illegal entry WASHINGTON: An Indian-American community organization has sought the intervention of US lawmakers for securing the release of about 100 Punjabi youths detained by US immigration authorities in Texas for entering the US illegally. Only 37 of the detainees at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) El Paso Processing Centre in Texas had gone on a hunger strike earlier this month, but all of them have since called off their protest at its intervention, North
American Punjabi Association (NAPA) stated on April 21. The youths were arrested while crossing the US Border illegally at different times between January and November 2013, Satnam Singh Chahal, executive director of the Milpitas, California based organization said in an e-mail sent by IANS. Satnam Singh Chahal has also written to several law makers seeking their intervention to get the detainees released on “parole or on bonds as soon as possible.”