www.theasianstar.com Vol 19 - Issue 51
How a South Asian woman to the top of Twitter’s Asia-Pacific business Maya Hari has made a name for herself as the second woman to head Twitter’s Asia-Pacific operations. As vice president for APAC, she is responsible for overseeing the social media company’s tech operations, managing its business divisions, and increasingly, dealing with its sociopolitical concerns. But the Indiaborn engineer, who has worked her way up the tech industry, said reaching that position was all aided by discovering one “superpower” early on in her career. “While I understood technology and engineering really well, possibly my superpower in retrospect was being able to explain the technology to people who didn’t understand it,” Hari said. Continued on page 6
Saturday, January 23, 2021
Tel:604-591-5423
15 more lives lost to Covid-19 in BC, as 564 new cases confirmed B.C. health officials announced 564 new cases of COVID-19 and 15 more deaths on Thursday. In a written statement, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix put the number of hospitalized patients at 309 people, 68 of whom are in intensive care. A total of 1,119 people in B.C. have lost their lives to COVID-19 since the pandemic began. There are currently 4,450 active cases of coronavirus in the province, with public health monitoring 6,816 people across the
province who are in self-isolation due to COVID-19 exposure. More than 56,010 people who tested positive have recovered. There is a new community cluster in the Cariboo-Chilcotin region, in and around Williams Lake. “We remind people to pay close attention to how they are feeling and to immediately arrange to get tested if they are feeling unwell with symptoms of COVID-19,” Henry and Dix said in the written statement.
Continued on page 7
Make-shift Indian team shocked Australians at their home ground in historic cricket victory A “shocked” former captain Ricky Ponting finds it difficult to comprehend how an “A team” from India beat Australia in the Test series in their own backyard but admitted that the visitors deserved the win. An injuryravaged India beat Australia by three wickets in the series-deciding fourth Test at the Gabba,
a month after the Adelaide debacle where they scored their lowest Test score of 36. “I’’m quite shocked that Australia weren’’t quite good enough to win this series. The cold hard facts of it are pretty much that was the India A team that played this Test match and (India) still won,” Ponting told cricket.com.au.
Joe Biden administration could have record number of Indian Americans - more than half women President Joe Biden will likely have a record number of Indian Americans in his administration. Biden had named or nominated at least 20 Indian Americans to his administration, including 13 women — further propelling the historic vice presidency of Kamala Harris, the first South Asian and Black woman to hold the office. “It’s an extraordinary thing, in that we are finally able to see members of our
community at the highest levels of government … even at the staff level, there’s much better representation than there has been at any other time in the past,” said Neil Makhija, executive director of IMPACT, an Indian American advocacy group and PAC working to establish a network of Indian American leaders. The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one. Neera Tanden was nominated for director of the Office of Management and Budget in November. If confirmed by the Senate, she
will make history as the first woman of color to hold the position. Sabrina Singh was named as the White House deputy press secretary earlier this month. She posted to Twitter, “I’m so grateful and incredibly humbled to join this team. It’s been an honor to work for @KamalaHarris and I’m excited to continue the work and deliver results for the American people.” Singh previously worked as press secretary for the Biden-Harris campaign. Continued on page 8
India debuts largest domestically built nuclear reactor India’s success in connecting its largest domestically built nuclear reactor to the grid is a boost for plans to deploy the technology to help the world’s third-biggest polluter limit emissions. The 700-megawatt pressurised heavy water reactor of the Kakrapar Atomic Power Station, located in the western state of Gujarat, is the first of 16 planned units that will help balance the grid against growing intermittent renewable generation, Continued on page 7
South Asian man hid inside Chicago airport for 3 months before detection A California man who police said claimed to be too afraid to fly due to COVID-19 hid out for three months in a secured area of O’Hare International Airport until his weekend arrest, prosecutors said Sunday. Aditya Singh, 36, is charged with felony criminal trespass to a restricted area of an airport and misdemeanor theft. In bond court Sunday, prosecutors said Singh arrived at O’Hare on a flight from Los Angeles on Oct. 19 and allegedly has lived in the airport’s security zone ever since, without detection. Continued on page 7