The Indian Panorama

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  • Indian American gets Top Job in US Homeland Security Department

    Indian American gets Top Job in US Homeland Security Department

    WASHINGTON (TIP): US President Joe Biden has appointed Indian American doctor Dr. Pritesh Gandhi as Chief Medical Officer in the Department of Homeland Security.

    In this role, Mr. Gandhi serves as principal adviser to the Department of Homeland Security secretary, assistant secretary for the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office and the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator, a media release said.

    He will lead on issues related to natural disasters, border health, pandemic response, acts of terrorism and other human-caused disasters.

    Mr. Gandhi was a Democratic Congressional Candidate last year in the 10th Congressional District of Texas. He lost in the primaries.

    A public health trained and board-certified internal medicine specialist, Mr. Gandhi most recently served as the Associate Chief Medical Officer and Director of Adult Medicine at People’s Community Clinic, an Austin-based federally qualified health center, which provides care to over 20,000 uninsured and medically underserved Central Texans.

    He is a Fulbright Scholar, Schweitzer Fellow, National Health Service Corps Scholar, and was named a Presidential Leadership Scholar in 2018.

  • US coronavirus death toll passes 150,000: Johns Hopkins

    US coronavirus death toll passes 150,000: Johns Hopkins

    The country recorded more than 4.38 million total cases.

    WASHINGTON (TIP): More than 150,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University.

    The world’s worst-hit country announced its first coronavirus-related death at the end of February and has now recorded more than 4.38 million total cases, the Baltimore-based university reported on Wednesday, July 29.

    Trump ally who skipped mask tests positive

    A Republican lawmaker who made a habit of walking around Congress without a mask tested positive for the coronavirus Wednesday, July 29, as he prepared to leave for his native Texas with President Donald Trump.

    Louie Gohmert announced his diagnosis a day after attending a major hearing featuring testimony from Attorney General Bill Barr, with whom he was seen walking and chatting at a close distance while neither wore a mask.

    Gohmert, 66, said he was asymptomatic and downplayed his diagnosis.

    He has worn a mask sporadically in recent weeks, and suggested Wednesday that moving it around on his face because it is uncomfortable “puts some germs in the mask” and maybe this caused his infection.

    Even as the pandemic has raged in the US, President Donald Trump steadfastly ignored recommendations from US medical experts that people wear masks to help curb the spread of the virus and he did not wear one in public until July 11.

    Since then, Republican lawmakers who shunned masks have begun to wear them more regularly. But to wear or not wear a mask remains a political flashpoint in America.

    Gohmert was tested Wednesday at the White House because he was supposed to accompany Mr. Trump on a visit to Texas.

    “So I’m asymptomatic, I don’t have any of the symptoms that are listed as part of COVID-19, but apparently I have the Wuhan virus,” Gohmert said in a video using a term that angers China.

    Gohmert said he has worn the mask more in the last week or two than in all of the past four months and did so during Tuesday’s hearing with Barr.

    But he took it off a few times and was seen walking and talking with Barr before the hearing.

    “Wear a damn mask,” said Democratic representative Jennifer Wexton from Virginia.

    “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you’re a Member of Congress who refuses to wear a mask on Capitol Hill, you’re not only putting your colleagues at risk — you’re endangering the staff who works here, including many of my constituents,” she said.

    (Source: AFP) )

  • Indian Origin Nobel Laurate Venki Ramakrishnan Elected to American Philosophical Society

    Indian Origin Nobel Laurate Venki Ramakrishnan Elected to American Philosophical Society

    NEW YORK (TIP): Venkatraman ‘Venki’ Ramakrishnan, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist of Indian origin,is among 34 new members recently elected to the American Philosophical Society (APS), the nation’s oldest scholarly organization. Ramakrishnan has been inducted into APS’ biological sciences class.

    Candidates for APS membership are nominated by existing members and elected for extraordinary accomplishments in their fields. Election to the American Philosophical Society honors extraordinary accomplishments in all fields. The APS is unusual among learned societies because its Membership is comprised of top scholars from a wide variety of academic disciplines.

    Venki Ramakrishnan is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and President of The Royal Society, London. In 2009, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath, “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome”

     

  • Police: Austin bomber left 25-minute confession video on phone

    Police: Austin bomber left 25-minute confession video on phone

    AUSTIN, TEXAS (TIP): A CNN report says that as the Austin bomber sensed that authorities were closing in on him on Tuesday, March 20, night, he took out his cell phone and recorded a 25-minute video confessing to building the explosive devices — but didn’t explain why he targeted his victims, interim Austin police Chief Brian Manley said.

    “It is the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his life that led him to this point,” the interim chief said. “I know everybody is interested in a motive and understanding why. And we’re never going to be able to put a (rationale) behind these acts,” Manley told reporters Wednesday, March 21 night.

    The video made by Mark Anthony Conditt, whose string of package bombs killed two people and wounded five in Texas, was found on his cell phone when police recovered his body Wednesday morning. The cell phone was in Conditt’s possession at the time of his death, police said.

    Manley says that Conditt did not make any terror- or hate-related references in the confession.

    Hours after he made the video, police found Conditt leaving a hotel. They followed him until they made a move to stop him from getting on an interstate and Conditt ended up in a ditch.

    Authorities say Conditt, 23, killed himself with his last explosive device.

    Federal agents went to the bomber’s home Wednesday while police interviewed his roommates, attempting to determine whether any bombs remained and if Conditt acted alone.