WASHINGTON, DC (TIP): A number of information technology workers who were formerly laid off by Disney have come forward in an interview with Computerworld to describe a system they believe was systematically designed to replace American workers with H-1B visa and L-1 visa workers, primarily from India.
The restructuring, which transpired in October 2014, was not intended to displace workers, according to Disney.
“We have restructured our global technology organization to significantly increase our [staff] focus on future innovation and new capabilities, and are continuing to work with leading technical firms to maintain our existing systems as needed,” stated a spokesperson for the company.
However, from the perspective of five laid-off Disney IT workers, all of whom agreed to speak to Computerworld on the condition of anonymity, Disney was cutting well-paid and longtime staff members – some who had been previously singled out for excellence – as it shifted work to contractors.
The laid-off workers believe the primary motivation behind Disney’s action was cost-cutting.
“Some of these folks were literally flown in the day before to take over the exact same job I was doing,” said one of the IT workers who lost his job. Computerworld noted he had to train his replacement and was angry over the fact he had to train someone from India “on site, in our country.”
The IT workers who were let go alleged Disney cut several hundred employees last year, although the company placed the number at about 135. Disney reportedly encouraged the terminated staffers to apply for new innovation-based positions, but the former employees who were interviewed said they knew of few co-workers who landed one of the new positions.
One of the laid off workers opined there were alternative methods for Disney to achieve its goals. “There is no need to have any type of foreigners, boots on the ground, augmenting any type of perceived technological gap,” said one former employee. “We don’t have one, first off.”
Several of the interviewees told Computerworld they didn’t want to appear as xenophobic, but as one noted,
“There were times when I didn’t hear English spoken” in the days leading up to his or her layoff. “I really felt like a foreigner in that building,” the worker said, primarily referring to the widespread use of Hindi.
Congress has begun to focus on the displacement of American workers ever since Southern California Edison made national headlines for replacing hundreds of IT employees with H-1B guest workers. Disney is one of a slew of top tier companies that have been pushing lawmakers to allow more H-1B workers into the country.
WASHINGTON (TIP): The median income of Indian-Americans, which is the richest ethnic community in the US, in the year 2013 was $100,547 (about Rs. 60 lakhs), Census Bureau said in its latest report.
In its latest report, the US Census Bureau said Indian Americans are the third largest Asian community in the United States after Chinese and Filipinos.
The Chinese (except Taiwanese) population was the largest Asian group, followed by Filipinos (3.6 million), Indian American (3.5 million), Vietnamese (1.9 million), Koreans (1.8 million) and Japanese (1.4 million).
The median income in 2013 for Indian Americans was $100,547; while for Bangladeshis, it was $51,331. The estimated number of US residents in 2013 who were Asian, either one race or in combination with one or more additional races was 19.4 million.
California has the largest population of Asian Americans (6.1 million).
The Asian population alone represented 37.7 per cent of the total population in Hawaii.
PLACERVILLE (CALIFORNIA) (TIP): A 95-year-old California man has become the world’s oldest active pilot.
The Sacramento Bee reported Tuesday that Guinness World Record keepers confirmed that a flight last month by Peter Weber Jr. qualified him for the record book.
Weber was 95 years, 4 months and 23 days old when he flew three looping circles around an airfield near Sacramento on March 30.
Guinness lists Cole Kugel as the oldest pilot ever. Kugel, who lived in Colorado flew for the last time in 2007 at age 105 and died the same year.
Weber says the record keepers have designated a new category: Oldest qualified pilot still licensed and flying solo.
The Air Force veteran has been pilot for 72 years and says he flies about twice a month.
Washington: An Indian-origin woman from California, nicknamed the “Bombshell Bandit” and convicted of robbing four banks in three US states, has been sentenced to 66 months in prison.
Sandeep Kaur, 24, of Union City, California, was sentenced in the federal district court in St. George in the US state of Utah on Tuesday, according to a St. George News report. Her attorney, Jay Winward, unsuccessfully requested for a lesser sentence for Kaur.
Kaur pleaded guilty in January to four felony charges of bank robberies that occurred during the summer of 2014.
Kaur’s crime spree began in California and ended after robbing the US Bank in the city of St. George, and leading police officers on a high-speed pursuit to Nevada, where she was arrested after an hour-long stand-off.
Winward asked the court for a sentence of 48 months. He told the court that Kaur was young, well-educated, capable of paying restitution, and had no prior criminal history.
She was raised in a traditional Indian family and grew up feeling “trapped” and bullied, Winward said.
She had run from an arranged marriage, to her boyfriend, whom she subsequently married. However, the relationship turned abusive, Winward said.
After making some money in the stock market, Kaur ended up in Las Vegas, acquiring a gambling addiction and becoming indebted to loan sharks, according to the attorney.
He told the court that Kaur was not a run-of-the-mill criminal, but rather a “good, wholesome person who made some horrible decisions”.
Kaur felt remorse, Winward said, and had been a model prisoner; and she had turned back to her religion. She was willing and capable of paying back the money she had stolen in the bank robberies, and could become a useful member of society, he said.
Winward also said that even though Kaur threatened violence during the robberies, she was not a violent person and did not have a firearm or explosives during the robberies.
However, prosecuting attorney Paul Kohler said that during the robberies, the bank tellers did not know Kaur did not have a weapon, and so were afraid for their lives. The tellers were “trapped”, as were the families driving on the I-15 motorway during the police chase, and the police officers who responded.
Before pronouncing the sentence, US District Judge Ted Stewart called the case “complex”, citing both the violence of Kaur’s crimes, and her intelligence and opportunities. Kaur graduated from high school at the age of 15, and from nursing school at 19, he said.
However, the circumstances of Kaur’s life explained, but did not justify the crimes, the judge said, and did not warrant a lesser sentence. The public must be protected, he said.
Besides serving 66 months in prison, Kaur was ordered to repay the $40,000 taken in the four robberies.
According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Kaur derives her nickname of “Bombshell Bandit” from the bomb threats she made during the robberies.
WASHINGTON (TIP): A popular visa program allegedly is being misused by U.S. companies to lay off thousands of American workers and replace them with foreign labor.
And, adding insult to injury, many of the laid-off workers allegedly have been forced to train their replacements, in what one anonymous whistleblower called a “humiliating” experience.
The allegations have caught the attention of a bipartisan group of senators — including immigration hawk Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and the No. 2 Senate Democrat, Illinois’ Dick Durbin — who are calling for a federal probe. A letter sent by 10 senators urging an investigation specifically cited reports of the firing and hiring practices at Southern California Edison, California’s second-largest utility. The incidents are concentrated in the IT field, and involve American workers being replaced by H-1B visa holders.
“A number of U.S. employers, including some large, well-known, publicly-traded corporations, have reportedly laid off thousands of American workers and replaced them with H-1B visa holders,” the senators wrote. In the letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, the senators urged the departments to “investigate the unacceptable replacement of American workers” to see whether laws were broken.
ECHO LAKE, CALIFORNIA (TIP): California governor Jerry Brown ordered officials April 1 to impose statewide mandatory water restrictions for the first time in history as surveyors found the lowest snow level in the Sierra Nevada snowpack in 65 years of record-keeping.
Standing in dry, brown grass at a site that normally would be snow-covered this time of year, Brown announced he had signed an executive order requiring the State Water Resources Control Board to implement measures in cities and towns to cut the state’s overall water usage by 25 percent compared with 2013 levels.
The move will affect residents, businesses, farmers and other users.
”We’re in a historic drought and that demands unprecedented action,” Brown said at a news conference at Echo Summit in the Sierra Nevada, where state water officials found no snow on the ground for the first time in their April manual survey of the snowpack. ”We have to pull together and save water in every way we can.”
After declaring a drought emergency in January 2014, Brown urged all Californians to cut water use by 20 percent from the previous year. Despite increasingly stringent regulations imposed on local water agencies by the state, overall water use has fallen by just half that amount, prompting Brown to order the stronger action by the water board.
”We’re in a new era; the idea of your nice little green grass getting water every day, that’s going to be a thing of the past,” Brown said.
The executive order will require campuses, golf courses, cemeteries and other large landscapes to significantly cut water use; direct local governments to replace 50 million square feet (4.65 million sq. meters) of lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping; and create a temporary rebate program for consumers who replace old water-sucking appliances with more efficient ones.
It calls on local water agencies to be more aggressive in charging for high water use, including extra fees for the highest water consumption.
The snow survey on Wednesday showed the statewide snowpack is equivalent to 5 percent of the historical average for April 1 and the lowest for that date since the state began record-keeping in 1950.
Snow supplies about a third of the state’s water, and a lower snowpack means less water in California reservoirs to meet demand in summer and fall.
Critics of the Democratic governor said his order does not go far enough to address agriculture — the biggest water user in California.
The order contains no water reduction target for farmers, who have let thousands of acres go fallow as the state and federal government slashed water deliveries from reservoirs. Instead, it requires many agricultural water suppliers to submit detailed drought management plans that include how much water they have and what they’re doing to scale back.
In the past year, the state water board has imposed mandatory water-saving restrictions on urban users that prohibit sprinklers running off onto pavement, bans residents from watering lawns two days after rain, and bars restaurants from serving water unless customers ask for it.
WASHINGTON (TIP): Six US lawmakers along with leading advocacy groups have welcomed the inclusion of Sikh, Hindu, and Arab American communities in the Department of Justice’s hate crimes tracking effort.
This is the final step in the long-fought effort to encourage the US federal government to finally begin tracking and quantifying hate crimes against these at-risk communities, the lawmakers said at an event on Capitol Hill Wednesday, March 25.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently updated its hate crimes database and FBI training manual in order to start tracking hate crimes committed against these groups – that system is now fully operational.
Ami Bera, the lone Indian-American member of the US House of Representatives, along with fellow House members Joe Crowley, Bill Pascrell, Mike Honda, Grace Meng and John Garamendi attended the event. These lawmakers led a Congressional effort to encourage the Department of Justice and FBI to document hate crimes against Sikh, Hindu, and Arab Americans.
They spearheaded numerous letters to the DOJ and FBI and introduced a Congressional resolution in the wake of the tragic August 2012 massacre in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and submitting testimony urging action on hate crimes.
In 2011, two elderly Sikh Americans, Gurmej Atwal and Surinder Singh, were shot and killed while out for a walk in Elk Grove, California, a part of Bera’s constituency, in a suspected hate crime that is still unsolved.
“Since the September 11th attacks, too many Americans, especially Sikh, Hindu and Arab-Americans, have been wrongfully subjected to hate crimes and discrimination, including the shooting of two Sikh Americans in my own city,” Bera said.
“Religious tolerance is a fundamental value of our nation and we must do everything we can to prevent these crimes motivated by bias against a victim’s religious beliefs,” he said.
“Until now, anti-Sikh hate crimes were not recognized by the FBI,” said Rajdeep Singh, Director of Law and Policy at the Sikh Coalition.
“For the first time, the FBI now officially acknowledges that Sikhs are targeted for being Sikhs. While refinements are needed to the agency’s tracking system and training standards, we are making progress,” he said.
“The federal tracking of anti-Hindu, anti-Sikh, and anti-Arab hate crimes is an important, if long-overdue, development. Even as our community grows, Hindu Americans remain uniquely vulnerable to harassment, bullying, and violence,” said Harsh Voruganti, Associate Director of Public Policy, Hindu American Foundation.
The updated FBI manual “marks a step towards ensuring accurate reporting of hate crimes committed against Sikhs, an important step that will ultimately aid the Sikh community as we continue to address the roots of anti-Sikh bias,” said Jasjit Singh, executive director of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF).
Update of FBI hate crimes training manual to include Arab, Hindu, and Sikh categories “is more important now than ever with the recent spike in hate violence targeting our communities,” said Lakshmi Sridaran, Director of Policy and Advocacy, South Asian Americans Standing Together (SAALT).
“Our work ahead will be to ensure our communities are informed of these critical updates and are able to build trust with law enforcement so that hate crimes targeting South Asians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Middle Easterners, and Arabs are appropriately documented and prosecuted,” she said.
WASHINGTON: Declaring Shivraj Singh Dabi, an Indian national, a cyber-fugitive, the FBI has put him on its most wanted list with posters in English, Punjabi and Hindi seeking information about him.
Wanted by the FBI notice put out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation accuses Dabi, 42, of “Unlawful Flight to Avoid Confinement – Computer Crimes” and says he may have fled to India.
Dabi, it says goes by aliases of “Shivra Dabi, Shivrha Dabi, Shivrha S. Dabi, Shivrha Singh Dabi.”
According to FBI he is 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighs 140 to 160 pounds and has black hair and brown eyes.
In 2007, FBI says “Dabi fled from Sacramento County, California, after he was found guilty of charges related to accessing the computers of his previous employer and deleting and purposely damaging the computer data on those computers, a felony.”
On July 21, 2008, a federal arrest warrant was issued by the US District Court, Eastern District of California, Sacramento, California, after Dabi was charged with unlawful flight to avoid confinement.
Dabi should be considered an international flight risk, FBI said asking people with any information concerning him to contact the local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate.
LOS ANGELES (TIP): The National Federation of Indian American Associations (NFIA), which is the largest umbrella organization in the US, representing over 3.5 million Americans who trace their roots to India, held its 18th biennial convention, March 6-8, 2015, at the Sheraton Cerritos Hotel in Cerritos, California,
The three day event was replete with intellectually stimulating seminars, graced by three members of the US Congress, Mayor of the city, Consul General of India San Francisco, Minister from Indian Embassy and other political leaders. On the nights of both Friday and Saturday were filled with excellent entertainment by local talent.
The convention started with a welcome reception/dinner and inauguration by Indian Consul General Venkatesan Ashok and California State Treasurer John Chiang on Friday, March 6th, followed by a full day of conference on Saturday.
The convention theme was “Indian Americans Making an Impact in America”. After an opening session on the theme chaired by NFIA Founder President Dr. Thomas Abraham, three more sessions followed: Indian Americans Contributing to India, chaired: Inder Singh, Past NFIA Chairman; Indian American Impact in The Area of Technology & Medicine, chaired by Boeing Company Technical Fellow Paul Sikand and Impact in US-India Trade & Business, chaired by Amritt Inc. Managing Director Gunjan Bagla. Various eminent speakers included: Long Beach Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal, former Anaheim Councilman Harry Sidhu, Stem cell therapy practitioner Dr. Gaurav Goswami, and Attorney Sunny Kalara.
Newly elected Board
In the election for the new NFIA Board, many of the positions were unopposed. However, the elections were conducted for the other positions, in a very fair and transparent manner by the Election Committee chaired by Dr. Thomas Abraham of Connecticut (Founder of NFIA), Pramod Kamdar of San Diego and Inder Singh of Los Angeles.
At the General Body Meeting (GBM) chaired by President Sohan Joshi of Chicago, various reports were presented including reports from President and Secretary (Satheesan Nair of Chicago). Secretary Nair also presented treasurer’s report. Selfless and lifelong service of the Executive Director, Dr. Joydeb Roy, was acknowledged and applauded.
Coming off from a successful Convention the night before, the mood was upbeat and reinvigorating. A general discussion ensued on the progress and future of NFIA with many former NFIA Presidents making enlightening and spirited statements. Three (Dr. Thomas Abraham, Subash Razdan and Dr. Parthasarthy Pillai) of the former NFIA presidents are also accomplished global NRI leaders and recipients of the Pravasi Samman Award from the Government of India.
As part of the unfinished businesses from the past GBM, the subject of change of the 2 year term of office to a 1 year term was discussed and voted on after former President Subash Razdan (of Georgia) made the motion to change the 2 year term to a 1 year term with some qualifiers. This was seconded by Om Sharma (of Washington DC) and was approved by a voice vote, with a near unanimity.
At the conclusion of the GBM the general elections were declared open along with a sumptuous luncheon. The delegates from across the USA made a beeline for electing the remaining officers of NFIA for the term of 2014-2016 and as follows:
In the election of NFIA officers, Ashok Madan from Southern California was elected as President without opposition. Sudip Gorakshakar from Washington State was elected as Executive Vice President. The three vice presidents elected without opposition were Ajoy Dube from California, Babu K. Patel from Illinois, and Satheesan Nair also from Illinois.
The position of the NFIA secretary went to Dr. Yogendra Gupta from Maryland, VA, and Joint Secretary to Vasu Pawar from Southern California. Makam Subbarao from Southern California was elected as the Treasurer.
The seven Directors-at-Large were Rachel Verghese (Texas), Anjali Sachdev (Washington State), Dr. Satish Misra (Maryland), Madhavan Nair (Illinois), Ramesh Ramnani (Southern California)., Sachin Amin and Ashok Patnaik from California.
The six Regional Vice Presidents (RVP) elected unopposed were: Dr. Om Sharma (National Capital Region), Vandana Jhingan (Illinois), Mihir Patel (New York), Raj Razdan (Georgia), Lavanya Reddy (Washington State), and Kewal Kanda (California)
In closing and customarily, NFIA veteran Dr. Rajen Anand administered the Oath of Allegiance to the NFIA for the newly elected officers, with assurance of contribution of the newly elected leaders of their personal time, money, communication and talent.
The new Board under the presiding officer, Ashok Madan met after the elections and appointed:
Chandu Patel from Southern California as Chairman of the NFIA Foundation,
Dr. Hari Har Singh from NCR as Executive Director (Administration)
Dr. Joydeb Roy from NCR as Executive Director
Angela Anand was appointed by the President to chair the taskforce on Women’s Affairs.
The remaining 6 vacant RVPs positions are yet to be filled, for which the NFIA leadership under the newly elected Board will seek qualified and well-known community leaders from the following regions: Great Lakes (IN, MI, OH); Mid Atlantic (DE, PA, NJ); New England (CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT); Mountain (ID, CO, KS, MT, NE, ND, SD, UT, WY); South (AK, AL, KY, MS, LA, TN); South-West (AZ, OK, TX, NM).
After review of their resumes, their commitment of time, talent, money and connections, the NFIA Board will appoint them in the next Board meeting. NFIA has urged its media partners to help promote and help find qualified candidates for the above vacant positions. The main qualifier being the interested RVP has to belong to that region and commit to do a major activity in the region in compliance with NFIA goals, objectives and Bylaws.
The event on Saturday night was very successful with a packed hall for the Gala Awards Banquet. Indian Embassy was represented by Counsel General of India San Francisco, Mr. Venkatesan Ashok and Minister of Personnel and Community Affairs, Mr. N.K. Mishra from Washington DC.
Congresswomen, Judy Chu, Loretta Sanchez, Linda Sanchez, and Mayor of Cerritos, Mark Pulido graced the banquet and enlightened the audience with their thoughts on India and the Indian American community in the USA.
NFIA, with Lal K. Motwani as the chair of awards committee, honored high achiever Indian Americans including, physician Bharat Barai and Aparna Hande for community service, TV Asia chairman H.R. Shah for mass media, musician Rita Sahai and Kathak dancer Amrapali Ambegaokar for performing arts, psych-pharmacologist Rangaesh Gadasalli for medicine and health sciences, and management consultant K.V. Kumar and attorney Navneet S. Chugh in business and finance. The late New York cardiologist B.N. Viswanath was honored posthumously for his lifetime contribution to NRIs through broadcasting and philanthropy. In addition, Heart and Hand for Handicapped, a New York-based organization, received an award for its outstanding services to the handicapped in the U.S. and India.
California (TIP) 16th March: Randhir Kaur, 37, an Indian woman studying dentistry at a California college was found shot dead in her apartment just hours after attending prayer services at a Sikh temple, (Gurdawara Shaib in El Sobrante) said authorities in Albany, Calif.
Kaur was shot in the head and was found in her apartment by family members in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Authorities say that’s when she was shot — but why and by whom remains unknown and that they are examining all possibilities.
There was no sign of forced entry, but personal items belonging to Kaur, stolen from her apartment, were found tossed in the trash some two miles away in Richmond.
The temple Kaur attends was the scene of a fatal shooting in 2000, when a man armed with an AR-15 killed a founding member of the congregation inside the ornate building because he was upset he was not allowed to address the congregation, according to a Chronicle story at the time.
The dental school described Kaur as “a beloved friend, student and colleague.”
Criminalists from the Alameda County sheriff’s crime laboratory have been called to assist in the investigation, which police said is a standard practice for any homicide in the city.
Two additional investigators have been assigned to the case, bringing the total number of full-time investigators to six, along with several part-time personnel.
Police are asking for the public’s help, particularly those who live on or frequent Kains Avenue in Albany or Panama Avenue in Richmond, in providing any information about suspicious people or activities on Monday or March 8 in those areas.
Anyone with information is asked to call Albany police investigators at (510) 525-7300.
A candlelight vigil is planned on campus for 5 p.m. today.
DALLAS (TIP): An Orthodox Jewish Dallas rabbi was the victim of vandals who defaced his vehicle by spray painting it with the very emblem of hatred — a swastika. The incident happened in the early evening hours of Wednesday, March 11, according to a Breitbart Texas report.
“I feel completely violated. As a Jew, the swastika is the most offensive symbol that there is. They didn’t just attack me; they attacked every Jew in the City of Dallas. I am very grateful, however, that the members of Congregation Toras Chaim are banding together to ensure that there is no disruption in our activities,” the synagogue’s Rabbi Yaakov Rich told Breitbart Texas. Congregation Toras Chaim is a small Orthodox Jewish community that serves 20 families in North Dallas where they meet in a home for private worship.
Last month, Breitbart Texas reported that a Collin County district judge dismissed a lawsuit by the neighborhood home owner’s association that attempted to stop the rabbi’s congregation from worshiping inside the residence.
On Monday, March 2, the City of Dallas turned around and filed a lawsuit against the Congregation Toras Chaim, demanding that they get a certificate of occupancy for the home and make improvements that comply with building, fire, safety and parking codes or face fines of $1,000 per violation per day. The residential property in question sits in the City of Dallas in a portion of the neighboring Collin County.
The act of vandalism came the week after the City of Dallas filed that lawsuit. The timing is a little suspicious, although the rabbi only speculated that he thought the hate-crime may have been perpetrated by a juvenile, one who did not fully understand the heinous connotation behind the swastika historically associated with Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
Texas is not one of the five states that mandate Holocaust education. Those states are California, New York, New Jersey, Florida and Illinois. However, states that teaches the Holocaust as part of a larger study on genocide in the high school grades.
The incident was disconcerting to the rabbi regardless of whether or not the swastika was spray painted onto his car by a juvenile. Rich feared the possibility of a copy cat crime. “We have to be vigilant about what’s going on,” he told Breitbart Texas.
This is not the first time the congregation has dealt with anti-Semitism. Liberty Institute Senior Counsel Justin Butterfield, who has represented Congregation Toras Chaim in its legal battles to remain at its residential location, previously told CBS DFW that the religious signpost on the door frame of the Jewish house of worship was ripped off.
“They’ve also had people drive in front of the home screaming obscenities at them,” said Butterfield.
“Acts of violence against religious beliefs are being perpetrated around the world. But these acts should never be tolerated in America, which was founded on the principle of religious liberty for all,” said Butterfield who affirmed Liberty Institute’s commitment to stand by Rabbi Rich, his family, and Congregation Toras Chaim until their religious freedom rights are secured and justice is done.
Breitbart Texas reached out to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in Dallas, which serves North Texas and Oklahoma, and attempted to speak to its Regional Director Roberta Clark, who did not return our calls before press time.
The ADL, which was founded in 1913, is the world’s leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry. Although they applauded the condemnation of students in the Oklahoma University in this week’s SAE fraternity racism scandal and recently, they commended the City of Plano for its Equal Rights ordinance, there was no mention of the anti-Semitic hate-crime against the rabbi on their news web page at the time of this report.
For now, the hate-crime appears to have rallied the community and their neighbors together. Rich told Breitbart Texas that residents of many religious faiths and backgrounds have reached out to the congregation since the incident.
He said that someone “very graciously donated a security system” to the synagogue.
The incident has also brought the congregation closer. Rich said that because of concern for his safety congregant’s husbands are walking him home after services.
The rabbi believes that, in the end, this may have the opposite effect of what the individual who defaced his vehicle with a swastika may have intended.
He told Breitbart Texas that on the day after his car was spray painted, Thursday, March 12, he was walking to the synagogue and was stopped by a neighborhood man who was driving down the street. The man rolled down his window and asked, “Do you know the rabbi that worships at that house by Mumford and Meandering Way?” Rich looked at the man and said, “I am that person.”
The rabbi said that the driver’s eyes welled up with tears and then, he began to cry as he told the rabbi, “After everything that your people have gone through and all that you have suffered, this should never have happened and I want you to know from the bottom of my heart I am apologizing on behalf of everybody. This is not indicative of the people of this neighborhood and I am so sorry this happened to you.”
The rabbi was quite touched by the stranger’s heart felt words. He told Breitbart Texas, “This was really special and amazing.”
He added about uplifting moments like, “I feel like it has motivated people not to want to give up.”
LOS ANGELES(TIP): A 21-year-old man previously charged with lying on a passport application so he could fly to Syria to join the Islamic State terrorist group was indicted on a charge of trying to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
Adam Dandach was also charged in the superseding indictment with obstructing justice by trying to destroy records of his online activity to thwart investigators.
Dandach was stopped in July in the Orange County airport while trying to board a flight to Turkey with an expedited replacement passport he got after he said he accidentally threw his old one away. Prosecutors said he knew that wasn’t true and that his mother had confiscated the passport when she heard about his plan to go overseas.
The FBI said Dandach told agents he planned to pledge allegiance and offer to help the Islamic State in Syria any way he could. He told agents he believed the killings of American soldiers were justified.
When told he could face criminal charges, Dandach said he was more disappointed about not going to Syria than about getting in trouble with the law, according to court papers.
Dandach is in custody and scheduled to be arraigned March 16 on the new charges.
“He’s going to plead not guilty and we’re going to fight them in court,” defense lawyer Pal Lengyel-Leahu said.
The defendant, also known as Fadi Fadi Dandach, previously pleaded not guilty to lying on a passport application and using a passport secured through false statements. Prosecutors added in the new indictment that he committed those offenses to facilitate international terrorism.
If convicted, Dandach could face up to 15 years in federal prison on the terrorism charge, and up to 25 years on each of the other counts, federal authorities said.
SAN FRANCISCO: Hewlett-Packard is buying wireless networking company Aruba Networks for about $2.7 billion, the 1,800-employee company was co-founded by Indian American Keerti Malkote, the company’s chief technology officer.
Aruba, based in Sunnyvale, California, makes Wi-Fi networking systems for shopping malls, corporate campuses, hotels and universities. Its business has grown as more people are using mobile devices at work, school and elsewhere. Aruba may help HP capitalize on that trend, which has cut into sales of traditional HP products such as desktop computers.
The deal also could help HP compete with tech rivals such as Cisco Systems and gain new access to Asian markets, particularly in China. Cisco currently sells about half of all commercial wireless networking gear worldwide, according to UBS analyst Amitabh Passi. He estimates HP and Aruba combined will account for 20 percent of global sales for such systems.
HP is seeking to expand its tech portfolio for business customers at a time when it is preparing to split into two companies – one focused on selling computer systems and software to businesses, and the other selling personal computers and printers. That’s part of HP CEO Meg Whitman’s plan for confronting a recent decline in sales.
Buying Aruba gives HP “a faster growing, higher margin business that fills a portfolio need without `betting the ranch’,” Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi wrote in a note Monday.
Palo Alto, California-based HP is one of the industry’s giants, with $111 billion in sales last year, but it has struggled to adapt to recent tech trends and shifting customer preferences. Whitman has focused on cutting costs and reorganizing since she took the CEO job in 2011. She recently signaled she was ready to resume making strategic acquisitions, after buying a pair of small software companies last year.
HP made a number of multi-billion-dollar acquisitions under two CEOs who preceded Whitman, and some of those deals proved costly. HP paid about $11 billion for British software maker Autonomy in 2011. A year later, it was forced to write off $8.8 billion of that purchase as a loss, while blaming accounting irregularities that it said had inflated the value of Autonomy’s business.
With the Aruba deal, HP is paying $24.67 in cash for each Aruba share. That is slightly below Aruba’s closing price of $24.81 on Friday, but marks a 37 percent premium to the roughly $18 that Aruba shares were trading for before talks with HP were reported last week.
Boards of both companies have approved the deal, which they said would be worth about $3 billion after factoring in cash and debt on Aruba’s balance sheet. Aruba had $729 million in sales last year.
A homeless man has been shot dead in the street by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers, sparking protests.
Video footage of Sunday’s shooting, which was posted on Facebook by a witness, showed a man swinging his arms violently at police before being wrestled to the ground.
As at least three officers attempted to restrain the man, they can be heard yelling, “Drop the gun!, Drop the gun!”
At least five gunshots can then be heard as officers appear to shoot the man.
Video of the incident spread quickly as it was shared on social media across the world.
LAPD Commander Andrew Smith told the Los Angeles Times that officers had attended the scene, in Los Angeles’ downtown Skid Row area, in reponse to a possible robbery and had encountered the man who began fighting with officers.
The LAPD later posted several tweets describing their version of the event.
Smith said that officers used a Taser, but it was “ineffective”.
“At some point in there, a struggle over one of the officer’s weapons occurred,” Smith said.”At that point an officer-involved shooting happened.”
As police continued to investigate the shooting, the Times reported that dozens of homeless activists gathered at nearby Pershing Square late on Sunday night to protest the shooting.
In 2011, two California police officers were captured on video beating mentally disabled homeless man Kelly Thomas to death – sparking protests and a nationwide outcry. The two officers were later acquitted after being charged over the incident.
Last year, massive protests spread from the St. Louis area across the US after a white police officer shot and killed unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown.
WASHINGTON: The US and Israel escalated their increasingly public spat on February 25 over Benjamin Netanyahu’s Republican-engineered congressional speech next week, with the Israeli prime minister accusing world powers of rolling over to allow Tehran to develop nuclear weapons. Secretary of State John Kerry openly questioned Netanyahu’s judgment on the issue.
The comments injected new tension into an already strained relationship between the close allies ahead of Netanyahu’s address to Congress next Tuesday. More Democratic lawmakers announced they would boycott the speech, which was orchestrated by Republican leaders without the Obama administration’s knowledge.
Netanyahu hopes his speech will strengthen opposition to a potential nuclear deal with Iran, President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy objective. US and Iranian officials reported progress in negotiations this week on a deal that would clamp down on Tehran’s nuclear activities for at least 10 years but then slowly ease restrictions.
Netanyahu lashed out at the US and other usual staunch allies of Israel.
“It appears that they have given up on that commitment and are accepting that Iran will gradually, within a few years, will develop capabilities to produce material for many nuclear weapons,” he said in Israel.
“They might accept this but I am not willing to accept this,” he said in remarks delivered in Hebrew and translated. “I respect the White House, I respect the president of the United States, but in such a fateful matter that can determine if we exist or not, it is my duty to do everything to prevent this great danger to the state of Israel.”
Kerry, testifying in Congress, dismissed Netanyahu’s worries. He argued that a 2013 interim agreement with Iran that the prime minister also opposed had in fact made Israel safer by freezing key aspects of the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.
“He may have a judgment that just may not be correct here,” Kerry said.
His comments, as well as statements from other top US officials, made clear the Obama administration had no plans to mask its frustrations during Netanyahu’s visit.
In an interview Tuesday, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said plans for Netanyahu’s speech had “injected a degree of partisanship” into a US-Israel relationship that should be above politics. “It’s destructive to the fabric of the relationship,” Rice told the Charlie Rose show. “It’s always been bipartisan. We need to keep it that way.”
Netanyahu’s plans to speak to Congress have irritated many Democratic members, but also have put them in a difficult spot _ fearing they will look anti-Israel if they don’t attend. Still, a number of Democrats have said they plan to skip the session.
Senate Democrats invited Netanyahu to meet with them privately while he is in Washington, but the Israeli leader refused the invitation, saying such a meeting could “compound the misperception of partisanship” surrounding his visit.
“I regret that the invitation to address the special joint session of Congress has been perceived by some to be political or partisan,” Netanyahu wrote in a letter to Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Dianne Feinstein of California. “I can assure you that my sole intention in accepting it was to voice Israel’s grave concerns” about a nuclear deal with Iran.
Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
The White House has been weighing ways to counter Netanyahu’s address to Congress, as well as his separate speech to the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The administration is considering whom to send to the conference, with some officials pushing for a lower-level representative than normal.
A California commuter train collided with a tractor trailer and derailed in Oxnard, injuring dozens of people, according to multiple media reports.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the crash occurred just before 6 a.m. Metrolink spokesman Scott Johnson told the Times the collision derailed three of the passenger train’s cars and injured at least 30 people.
KABC-TV reported that the truck caught fire after being hit by the train.
Fire-rescue personnel set up a color-coded triage area with green, yellow and red tarps at the site, KNBC-TV reported. The tarps indicate the severity of the victim’s injuries, with red being the most serious and green indicating minor injuries.
Oxnard is about 75 miles west of downtown Los Angeles.
On September 12, 2008, when a Union Pacific freight train and a Metrolink commuter train collided head-on, killing 25 people. That crash was the deadliest accident in Metrolink history.
This week, two terrible acts of violence took place in the US. First, three young Muslim-American students were killed in cold blood in North Carolina by a neighbor. The cause, it was said, was an argument about parking spaces. It was also noted that the killer was an atheist and broadly anti-religious and, therefore, it was suggested that perhaps the attack could not be described as a religious hate crime.
That suggestion was instantly, perhaps naturally, met with a barrage of opposition. Al Jazeera published a learned summary of years of media research on Muslim stereotyping. Internet memes pointed out how the American media differentiated between white and Muslim criminals. The argument was made, effectively, for continuing concern about Islamophobia.
The other terrible act of violence, of course, was the one that took place in Alabama.
An elderly Indian grandfather travels to America to see his grandson for the first time, goes out for a walk, and gets smashed into the hard concrete footpath by policemen leaving him broken and paralyzed.
There is outrage in the media, and rightly so. The Indian-American community and many American friends (though not the one who visited India recently and told us Gandhi would be shocked), have spoken out against the ignorance, prejudice and brutality that took place here. In the wake of recent atrocities like what happened in Ferguson, the idea of the dangers of “walking while brown” obviously did the rounds.
But there was one notable difference in the reactions to North Carolina and Alabama.
When a Muslim is harmed, it is Islamophobia. When a Hindu is brutally assaulted, there is not one word uttered about Hinduphobia.
One might argue, not unlike the parking dispute angle in North Carolina, that there was no Hinduphobia in the atrocity that took place in Alabama. Maybe the cops did not know he was Hindu and brutalize him for that reason. Maybe it was just racism in the black and white sense. After all, we have been told for years now by concerned south Asian activists and commentators that the Indian-American community, by virtue of its elitism, fails to recognize racial solidarity. Once again, that trope surfaced about the Alabama attacks. We are getting attacked because of racism. True enough!
But how can we be so sure that the racism that Indian-Americans sometimes face has nothing to do with prejudices about the major religion they are identified with? How can we be sure that one kind of racism is independent of another?
We cannot. And yet, for several years, every single time we have talked about the brazen misrepresentation of Hinduism in American media, pop culture, and most all in academia, we have been shouted down by the same concerned south Asian activists and commentators. We could not even talk about Hinduphobia without being rudely told that no such thing exists, or that it is a figment of Hindu extremist paranoid fantasy. We could not even do the one thing every religious minority community in America did: get old colonial-era racist nonsense about them written out of their children’s history textbooks. We were shouted down by the same general group of concerned observers who want us to fight racism but just not this racism apparently. This racism is actually not racism in their view: the California textbooks according to them contain only the true facts about Hinduism, and questioning it is tantamount to saffronisation and fundamentalism.
To this day, children in America get just one basic kind of message about Hinduism and Hindus in their school lessons: that we are the last irredeemable racist-casteists and sexists in the world. When some of them get to college or grad school, they will read even more about how we dumbly worship body organs, and how we were not just racist-casteists but actually the original Nazis, the forerunners of Hitlerian genocide no less (no exaggeration, just look at what is written on page 111 and page 144 of Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History)!
And all this is still only in the genteel, ‘educated’ side. What about the insanity that bubbles in less scholarly corners?What about the ravings of supposed men of God in their sermons who rant about our gods as nothing more than animal-headed devils and beasts? And what about Hollywood, and big media and popular culture, which, under the guise of being fair to Muslims or feeling guilty for Guantanamo, goes Slumdog on Hinduism?
All this is around us. It is real. Whether it directly contributes to specific acts of brutality against people or not, it is there, a toxin in the culture. Just think of the attacks in Australia a few years ago on Indian students where the assailants reportedly used “slumdog” as an insult at their victims.
Prejudice is not something that plays out in microscopic precision inside the heads of people about to do something nasty. It is a big ugly cloud of falsehood, envy, self-hatred, and spitefulness lurking around a society, just waiting to burst into real life. It did, this week, in Alabama. We cannot be sure what exactly squirmed about in the brains of the man who called the police on an elderly neighbor walking around the block, or in that of a policeman who had to prove himself to be tougher than a meek old man not being remotely aggressive to anyone. Was it color, envy, boredom, overzealousness, fear…? We cannot say for sure. But the fact is that the culture in which they grew up, the culture in which millions of people, Hindu, Muslim, brown, black, are all growing up, still has a thriving place in it for the ugliest and pettiest kind of falsehood and maliciousness.
Who can say for sure that the men involved in brutalizing Sureshbhai Patel did not at some point in their lives, maybe in school, maybe elsewhere, pick up on anti-Hindu myths and prejudice?
The truth is that if Hinduphobia is not named, shamed and eradicated from the halls of media and academia, its consequences might end up being even worse, and not just for Hindus. I hope the enlightened and concerned observers of south Asia who deny that Hinduphobia exists quickly come to realize that bigots are not usually well informed in their actions. After all, Islamophobes have attacked not only Muslims but also Sikhs in America. It would be appalling to keep pretending Hinduphobia doesn’t exist until one day some poor person, Hindu or not, finds himself or herself at the wrong end of a maniac believing he is stopping a casteist idol-worshipper from doing Satan’s work or some such.
There used to be a popular poster on idealistic college campuses. It had these inspiring lines which Hinduphobia-deniers might want to look at again:
They came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak for them;
They came for the Communists, and they didn’t speak for them…
And then when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me.
Storyteller and avid traveller, Zoya, is carving a home for herself in the indie folk music world. Unmasking her conscience in her confessional songwriting and orchestral arrangements, these revelations gather Zoya’s experiences and understandings of the lives with whom she has brushed shoulders.
Beginning the journey in her birth country, India, her childhood home in Southern California, and unearthing countless countries in between, Zoya has developed a genre that stretches across all borders. Zoya kept up with her roots and is intertwining the inescapable allure of the North Indian music tradition through her entrancing vocal style, coupled with intense, stirring harmonies, and eclectic instrumentation.
Now based in Boston and studying at the world-renowned Berklee College of Music, Zoya is nurturing her passion for music and after completion she hopes to move overseas to foster her eclectic sound and preserve her wanderlust nature.
HOUSTON, TEXAS (TIP): On February 6, Sheriff Adrian Garcia and members of Texas’s Harris County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) made history as they held a press conference to welcome the agency’s first Sikh American deputy who will serve while wearing Sikh articles of faith, including the turban and beard.
Sikh Americans, who have been in the United States for over 125 years, wear their articles of faith to signify a commitment to equality, service, and justice. Harris County has made history as the largest Sheriff’s office in the United States to have amongst its employees an observant Sikh American to serve his local community as a full-time deputy with his articles of faith in tact.
“We commend Sheriff Adrian Garcia and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office for their leadership, and in recognizing that Sikh Americans and residents of Harris County should have the opportunity to serve their community, as we have done throughout our 125 year history in the United States,” said Jasjit Singh, Executive Director, SALDEF (Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund). “With this policy, one of the largest sheriff’s offices in the country has affirmed that a person does not have to choose between their faith and a career of service.”
Deputy Sandeep Dhaliwal, an observant Sikh American, will for the first time be allowed to wear his Sikh articles of faith, including a dastaar (turban) and beard as part of his HCSO uniform. Dep. Dhaliwal joined the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in January 2009 as a detention officer. He became a patrol deputy in 2012 but per departmental policy at the time, he was not allowed to wear a turban or beard, both articles of faith of the Sikh religion. Due to Sheriff Garcia’s leadership that policy has now changed. In 2014, Sheriff Garcia allowed for exceptions to the HCSO’s uniform policy to allow for accommodation of religious articles under the dress code if it does not interfere with the employee’s duty. Accordingly, Sikh employees and prospective deputies can apply to wear turbans, neatly groomed beards, and other articles of faith.
“By making these religious accommodations we will ensure that the HCSO reflects the community we serve, one of the most culturally rich and diverse communities in America,” said Sheriff Garcia. “We believe that cross-cultural inclusion and understanding is imperative for law enforcement agencies in any community. HCSO deputies need to not only understand, respect, and communicate with all segments of the population, but represent it as well,” he added.
“Our turbans and beards represent our belief in equality. They represent a lifetime commitment to selfless service for the welfare of all,” Jasjit Singh declared.
“Sheriff Garcia’s commitment to inclusion will help ensure that Harris County continues to attract the best and brightest from across our community to serve,” said Bobby Singh, Regional Director, SALDEF (Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund). “Sikh Americans cherish the values that are cultivated through a career in law enforcement, like service and commitment.”
Starting in December 2008, just one month after being elected sheriff, Sheriff Adrian Garcia met with the Sikh American community at the Sikh Center of Houston in order to ensure that the HCSO will facilitate the safety of all its residents. That meeting was the first of many Sheriff Garcia has held with the Sikh community and other religious and ethnic groups since taking office in 2009. Upon taking office in January 2009, Sheriff Garcia immediately expanded diversity training for all Sheriff’s Office personnel, established regular faith leaders meetings, and created a Citizen Advisory Council to foster and improve communication with the public.
The HCSO is the largest Sheriff’s Office in the United States to have a full-time Sikh American officer with his articles of faith intact due to a religious accommodation exception to their dress code policy. “We believe that this announcement will inspire other local law enforcement units from around the country to follow in Harris County’s footsteps,” said Jasjit Singh, Executive Director, SALDEF.
SALDEF’s Law Enforcement Partnership Program provided training materials, curriculum, and instructors to the HCSO during the past six years. LEPP began as the first formalized cultural awareness training program for law enforcement about Sikh Americans in 1999. The curriculum has expanded to reach 100,000 officers and agents throughout the country.
In May 2012, Washington Metropolitan Police Department, the seventh largest police force in the nation, became the first major police department in the United States to explicitly and voluntarily allow Sikh Americans to serve as full-time, uniformed police officers while keeping their articles of faith. Subsequently, California’s Riverside PD was the first police department in California, and only the second in the nation, to proactively amend their uniform guidance. California’s AB1964 then created statewide religious accommodations in favor of employees and job applications, which allows Sikh Americans to serve in the state with their articles of faith intact.
SAN ANTONIO (TIP): A California woman has pleaded guilty to making and passing nearly $58,000 in fake cash.
The San Antonio Express-News (http://bit.ly/1y9eIqk ) reported Saturday, January 17 that Tela Lee Conerly faces up to 20 years in federal prison during sentencing this spring.
Conerly pleaded guilty Friday in San Antonio to manufacturing and distributing counterfeit currency. Investigators tracked serial numbers of some of the fake bills passed since 2011 in California, Oregon, Arizona and Texas.
Investigators say Conerly bleached real $1 bills and changed them to fake $100s.
Police in Hondo, 50 miles west of San Antonio, arrested Conerly last March on a tip that she was printing fake money in a hotel room. Officers recovered a computer, a printer, bogus bills and other counterfeiting equipment.
Information from: San Antonio Express-News, http://www.mysanantonio.com.
WASHINGTON (TIP): A Malaysian defense contractor pleaded guilty Thursday, January 15, in a corruption scandal of epic proportions, admitting that he bribed “scores” of U.S. Navy officials with $500,000 in cash, six figures’ worth of sex from prostitutes, lavish hotel stays, spa treatments, Cuban cigars, Kobe beef, Spanish suckling pigs and an array of other luxury goods.
Leonard Glenn Francis, a businessman who charmed a generation of Navy officers while resupplying their ships in Asia, admitted in federal court in San Diego to presiding over a decade-long corruption scheme involving his Singapore-based firm, Glenn Defense Marine Asia. The investigation has steadily escalated into the biggest corruption case in the Navy’s history, with Francis admitting that he bilked the service out of tens of millions of dollars by overcharging for food, fuel and basic services. Five current and former Navy officials have pleaded guilty so far, and prosecutors have made it clear they are targeting others. The Navy has also stripped security clearances from two admirals, including the chief of naval intelligence, for their alleged involvement with Francis, although they have not been charged with a crime. Known in Navy circles as “Fat Leonard” for his girth, Francis, 50, agreed to forfeit $35 million in ill-gotten proceeds and could face up to 25 years in prison. But the most severe impact may turn out to be the blow to the Navy’s reputation, given the array of evidence that so many officers were corrupted so easily by a foreign defense contractor.
“It is astounding that Leonard Francis was able to purchase the integrity of Navy officials by offering them meaningless material possessions and the satisfaction of selfish indulgences,” said Laura Duffy, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, whose office has led the investigation. “In sacrificing their honor,these officers helped Francis defraud their country out of tens of millions of dollars. Now they will be held to account.” The criminal investigation has spanned eight states and eight Asian countries, with more than 100 law enforcement agents involved, court records show. In his plea agreement, Francis admitted that he and his firm defrauded the Navy by overcharging for hundreds of Asian port visits by U.S. ships and submarines. To ensure he didn’t get caught, he plied Navy officials with an array of temptations, including lavish meals, “top-shelf” alcohol, designer handbags, fountain pens, ornamental swords, computers, furniture and handmade ship models.
Federal prosecutors disclosed Thursday that Francis has provided evidence against two more Navy officials who have yet to be charged: a lieutenant commander and a contract specialist whose names have not been made public. The unnamed contract specialist, a female civilian official based in Singapore for 20 years, was given a bottomless travel expense account, which she used to visit Bali, Bangkok, Dubai, Turkey and Greece, according to Francis’s plea agreement. In exchange, she worked as a mole for Glenn Defense Marine, handing over proprietary contracting information and advocating on the firm’s behalf. The scandal erupted into public view in September 2013, when federal agents lured Francis to a San Diego hotel and arrested him in a sting operation. The Navy says that it began scrutinizing Francis in May 2010 but that he was repeatedly able to thwart criminal investigators by bribing a senior agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, who fed him sensitive files and helped to cover his tracks.
Although Francis initially fought the charges against him, he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in recent weeks.”Today Mr. Leonard Francis has taken accountability for his actions. He looks forward to a brighter future,” said Ethan M. Posner, one of his attorneys. Navy leaders have condemned the unethical behavior of officers involved in the case and have acknowledged that the scandal could grow even worse. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has pledged to set up a special disciplinary process, led by a four-star admiral, to review allegations against Navy personnel who avoid federal criminal charges but may have run afoul of ethical regulations. “The Navy holds its personnel to the highest standards and those who fall short are held accountable,” Rear Adm. Dawn Cutler, a Navy spokeswoman, said in a statement. “NCIS uncovered the criminal activity associated with this case and continues to cooperate with the Justice Department.”
Hours before Francis pleaded guilty Thursday, federal prosecutors won another conviction when a Navy captain, Daniel Dusek, admitted to disclosing military secrets to Francis and his firm in exchange for prostitutes, cash, and visits to luxury hotels in Hawaii, Hong Kong and the Philippines. According to a copy of his plea agreement, Dusek provided classified information about Navy ship schedules dozens of times to Glenn Defense Marine, which held contracts worth more than $200 million to supply Navy vessels throughout Asia. Dusek’s attorney, Douglas L. Applegate, did not respond to a phone call seeking comment. The Navy announced in October 2013 that it had relieved Dusek of command of the Bonhomme Richard for his alleged involvement in the scandal, but his appearance in court Thursday was the first sign that he had been under criminal investigation. According to court records, in October 2010, Dusek persuaded the Navy to send an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and its strike group to visit a port in Malaysia that was largely controlled by Glenn Defense Marine. As a result, the company was able to easily inflate invoices and overcharge the Navy for a variety of services. Dusek, then working as deputy director of operations for the 7th Fleet, provided the contractor with classified information about ship movements on dozens of occasions, further aiding the company in its scheme to gouge the Navy during port visits, the records show. Francis prized the arrangement so much that he called Dusek “a golden asset” in an email to another company executive, noting that he could “drive the big decks” – or aircraft carriers – “into our fat revenue” ports,” according to the records
WASHINGTON (TIP): Two American climbers have become the first men in history to free-climb the south-eastern face of El Capitan in California’s Yosemite National Park, considered the world’s toughest rock climb. Tommy Caldwell, 36, and his climbing partner 30-year-old Kevin Jorgesen completed their ascent of the mountain’s so-called “Dawn Wall” shortly before 3.30 on Wednesday afternoon, after a 19-day free-climb, meaning ropes are used only to break a climber’s fall, not to assist in their ascent.
The pair were met at the summit by a crowd of around 40 family and friends who had trekked the long way round: an eight-mile trail up the back side of El Capitan. Since the mountain was first scaled by climbers in 1958, others have ascended by several dozen routes. But until now, none had succeeded in defeating the Dawn Wall, a baby-smooth, approximately 900-metre sheer granite rock-face, so named because it catches the day’s first rays of sunlight.
“It’s the hardest rock climb in the world,” said Leo Houlding, who became the first British climber to complete a free ascent of “El Cap” in 2012. Speaking to The Independent after Caldwell and Jorgesen began their climb on December 27, Houlding explained: “You break a cliff like this into pitches, which are basically rope lengths. This is 30 climbs, one on top of the other. Ten of them are world-class standard and two are as hard as anything anywhere.”
For the past three weeks, Caldwell and Jorgeson have spent their nights in tents suspended some 350 metres up the wall. After free-climbing each day’s pitches, they used ropes to return to the base campn, and then to rappel back to the last point of the ascent. According to The New York Times, Caldwell began planning the climb almost a decade ago, several years after severing his left finger in a DIY accident – an injury he feared would end his climbing career. In 2000, the Colorado native made news when he and three fellow climbers were kidnapped by militants during a climbing trip in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. The group’s ordeal ended six days later, when Caldwell pushed their armed guard over a cliff.
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA (TIP) Show business satire ‘Birdman’ and colorful caper ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ led the Academy Award nominees on Thursday with nine nods apiece, including best picture, in the quest for Hollywood’s top film prize.
The two Fox Searchlight films are joined in the best picture Oscar race by ‘American Sniper’, ‘Boyhood’, ‘The Imitation Game’, ‘Selma’, ‘The Theory of Everything’ and ‘Whiplash’. The Academy chose only eight films to compete for its highest honor, although it could nominate up to 10. British World War-II biopic ‘The Imitation Game’ garnered eight nominations, including best actor for Benedict Cumberbatch, while Iraq war portrait ‘American Sniper’ and coming of age tale ‘Boyhood’ each earned six.
The best picture race promises to be competitive, with no clear frontrunner before the February 22 Oscars ceremony. Several of the top films have pushed cinematic boundaries with novel approaches to storytelling.
‘Boyhood’, which director Richard Linklater made over 12 years with the same actors, was considered a favorite after winning the Golden Globe for best drama last weekend.
‘Birdman’ from Mexican director Alejandro G Inarritu lost in the best comedy or musical category to Wes Anderson’s quirky ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’. Both films offer innovative visual spectacles and original characters.
‘Birdman’ features Michael Keaton, a best actor nominee, as a washed-up former superhero actor battling to make a comeback by putting on his own Broadway play, his angst captured in what looks like one long shot in the cramped confines of the theater.
‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ was an early favorite last year with critics, with its whimsical story of a hotel concierge caught up in a murder plot. It won nominations for its colorful production design, costumes and makeup, among others.
“It’s harder and harder to get any film made, and all of these movies are really original and difficult,” said Tim Gray, awards editor at Variety. “On the scale of difficulty, all of these are off the chart.”
AUSTIN (TIP): It would seem that Texas schools might be due for a sizable funding boost when the Legislature convenes in January, particularly after a state judge ruled last summer that Texas was severely under funding its education system. But local school officials aren’t counting on much relief.
The lowest SAT scores in more than two decades.
School funding that ranks Texas among the bottom five states.
And oversized classes in nearly 1,300 elementary schools last year to save money.
“If you look at how much we spend per child, it is really sad that Texas is funding public education at a level that is significantly lower than the average for the country,” said David Anthony, former superintendent of the Cypress-Fairbanks school district and chief executive for Raise Your Hand Texas, a public education advocacy group. “Money is not the only answer. It takes more than that to improve schools. But it is certainly a significant part of the solution.”
And while legislative leaders have voiced willingness to consider some additional money for schools in the next two-year budget, they have also pointed to other state needs – and the desire of many Texans for lower taxes.
In fact, lawmakers have talked more about cutting taxes – including school property taxes – than providing a funding boost for schools. Lawmakers have already offered several tax reduction bills.
House Public Education Committee Chairman Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen, said he expects lawmakers to consider some changes in school funding. But he added that major revisions are unlikely while the state appeals the school finance decision to the Texas Supreme Court.
That order from state District Judge John Dietz found that the Legislature failed to meet its constitutional duty to adequately and fairly fund education for the state’s 5 million public school students. The decision came in a lawsuit filed by more than 600 school districts.
“We will do small fixes within the present system and possibly put some additional money in,” said Aycock, a former Killeen school board member. “Beyond that, any bigger decisions will wait until we see what the Supreme Court does.”
Lt. Gov.-elect Dan Patrick, outgoing chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said this fall that he had an open mind on school funding. But he argued that it would be irresponsible to simply pump more money into schools without demanding results.
“We just can’t give them more money and let them keep doing the same things they’ve been doing,” Patrick said. “We need accountability. We need improvement.”
Patrick has also taken issue with claims that schools are still reeling from the unprecedented funding cuts of 2011. Those reductions, which prompted school districts to sue the state, were partially restored in 2013
“Our schools survived, and we did fine,” Patrick said.
While Republican leaders generally favor a wait-and-see approach depending on what the Supreme Court does, many Democrats contend it would be a mistake to do nothing in the upcoming session.
“There’s a lack of political will to do anything about our school finance system until we’re forced to do so by the court,” said Senate Democratic leader Kirk Watson of Austin. “Everybody knows our school finance system is broken, and continuing to do nothing about it is a disservice to the schoolchildren and taxpayers of Texas.”
Watson has filed a package of bills that would boost various funding sources for school districts, such as more help with transportation costs.
Representatives for school districts note that since the 2010-11 school year, funding per student in Texas has increased about half a percent a year, while school districts continue to enroll more low-income and limited-English students, who are more expensive to educate. They also insist there is now little waste in most districts.
“Nothing more can be cut from public education,” said Wayne Pierce, former superintendent of the Kaufman school district and current executive director of the Equity Center. The center represents nearly 700 low- and medium-wealth school districts.
Pierce said any effort to delay changes beyond the 2015-16 school year “will only hurt our schoolchildren.”
But conservative groups challenge the notion that student achievement will improve with additional funding.
“The current data does not show that increased resources lead to improvements in student performance,” argued former House Public Education Committee Chairman Kent Grusendorf, now a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
In a policy brief for the conservative think tank this fall, the former GOP lawmaker from Arlington said that after decades of investigation, “it is clear that how money is spent is much more important that how much is spent.”
Grusendorf noted that some prominent studies have found that class size and school funding – “a rallying cry of education reformers for decades” – are not significant indicators of student achievement.
But in Texas, results on the primary achievement test, the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, have been stagnant in reading the past few years while school funding levels were down for many districts – and class sizes were up.
Many high school students have struggled on the five STAAR end-of-course exams. And that’s after lawmakers last year scrapped 10 course-exit tests – arguably the most difficult ones in the group.
SAT math scores for the Class of 2014 in Texas were the lowest in more than two decades. Reading scores were the second-lowest during that period on the college entrance exam.
State education officials attributed the drop to an increase in the number of minority students taking the exam. Minorities generally perform worse than white students on standardized achievement tests.
But in California, students outperformed Texas students by big margins – 15 points in math and 22 points in reading. Student demographics are similar in both states. And California had more low-income students take the SAT than Texas this year.
One difference, though, was that California spent about $800 more per student than Texas. The Lone Star State was in the bottom five among the 50 states and District of Columbia, according to figures compiled by the National Education Association, a teacher group that closely tracks spending.
Clay Robison of the Texas State Teachers Association said lawmakers should recognize that inadequate funding is having an impact. For one thing, he said, larger class sizes make teaching more difficult.
“Texas is enrolling more and more lower-income and limited-English students at the same time many of our elementary classrooms continue to exceed class size limits,” he said. “The problem is that those students need more attention. But that is hard to do when you have larger classes.”
SAN FRANCISCO (TIP): A major storm pummeled California and the Pacific northwest on december 11 with heavy rain and high winds, killing one man, knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes, disrupting flights and prompting schools to close. Some 240 departing and incoming commercial flights were canceled at San Francisco International Airport and others were delayed for more than two hours, airport managers said. San Francisco’s famed cable car system was replaced by shuttle buses and a subway station was shut down through the morning rush hour because of a power outage and flooding, and the city’s electrified bus system was halted in many areas, transit officials said.
The Embarcadero, the city’s popular waterfront walkway, was closed due to flooding and some ferries were also canceled, stranding commuters. Some streets and major intersections were flooded in the San Francisco area, including the westbound lanes of Interstate 280 in the East Bay suburb of El Cerrito, according to the California Highway Patrol. Winds howled through Sacramento, the state capital, rattling buildings and whipping through trees before dawn, followed by heavy downpours.
The launch of an Atlas V rocket was scrubbed from Vandenberg Air Force Base. In southern Oregon, a homeless man camping with his 18-year-old son along the Pacific Crest Trail in the Ashland area was killed early on Thursday morning when a tree toppled onto their tent, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office said. Portland general Electric Co and Pacific Power reported nearly 90,000 customers were without power as a storm system packing wind-gusts of 80 mph (129 kph) was moving through Oregon. To the north, in Washington state, a commuter train that runs between Seattle and Everett was canceled for two days beginning on Thursday after a mudslide on Wednesday, local transit officials said. “In certain parts of the West Coast this could be the most significant storm in 10 years,” National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Boldt said.
The Weather Service issued flashflood, heavy-surf and high-wind advisories, warning that torrential rains could lead to mudslides in foothill areas of California scarred by wildfires earlier this year. The storm was expected to provide only a small measure of relief from California’s record, multi-year drought that has forced water managers to sharply reduce irrigation supplies to farmers and prompted drastic conservation measures statewide, weather officials said.
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