Over the past 20 years, Indian-Americans have been dominating the Spelling Bee contest even though they comprise only about 1 per cent of the US population…..reports Asian Lite News
First Lady Jill Biden will attend on July 8 the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals in Orlando in which nine of the 11 finalists are Indian-Americans, who have been dominating this prestigious and high-pressure endurance test for more than a decade now.
Over the past 20 years, Indian-Americans have been dominating the Spelling Bee contest even though they comprise only about 1 per cent of the US population.
“Immediately before the Bee’s primetime Finals, Dr Biden will meet with the spellers and their families, and will congratulate them on this tremendous academic achievement,” the White House said on Tuesday.
Jill, a community college educator, previously attended the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals when it was held in Washington, DC.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee is the nation’s largest and longest-running educational programme, having been launched in 1925. It is a high-profile, high-pressure endurance test as much as a nerd spelling match and spellers spend months preparing for it.
After advancing through all of the virtual rounds of the national competition, 11 spellers will compete for the championship title during the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee Finals.
The final rounds of this year’s contest will be hosted in-person at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida.
The 11 finalists are Roy Seligman, 12, from Nassau, The Bahamas; Bhavana Madini, 13, from New York; Sreethan Gajula, 14, from Charlotte, North Carolina; Ashrita Gandhari, 14, from Leesburg, Virginia; Avani Joshi, 13, from Illinois; Zaila Avant-garde, 14, from New Orleans; Vivinsha Veduru, 10, from Texas; Dhroov Bharatia, 12, from Dallas; Vihaan Sibal, 12, from Texas; Akshainie Kamma, 13, from Texas and Chaitra Thummala, 12, from San Francisco.
The Bee was cancelled in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. There were eight co-champions in 2019, seven of whom were Indian-Americans, bringing the total number of Indian-American champions since 1999 to 26.
After troops exit, safety of US Embassy in Kabul top concern
A US Embassy spokesperson said that security assessments are frequent these days….reports Asian Lite News
As the end to America’s “forever war” rapidly approaches, the U.S. Embassy and other diplomatic missions in Kabul are watching a worsening security situation and looking at how to respond.
In the countryside, districts are falling to the Taliban in rapid succession. America’s warlord allies are re-arming their militias, which have a violent history, raising the specter of another civil war once the US withdrawal is finished, expected in August.
A US Embassy spokesperson said that security assessments are frequent these days. Speaking on condition of anonymity in line with briefing rules, she said the embassy is currently down to 1,400 US citizens and about 4,000 staff working inside the compound the size of a small town.
US troops in Afghanistan. (File Photo DoD_IANS)
A well-fortified town, that is. Besides its own formidable security, the embassy lies inside Kabul’s Green Zone, where entire neighborhoods have been closed off and giant blast walls line streets closed to outside traffic. Afghan security forces guard the barricades into the district, which also houses the Presidential Palace, other embassies and senior government officials.
The only route out is Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, currently protected by U.S. and Turkish troops. Before America can declare its war over, the security of the airport will have to be settled. Ankara is in talks with Washington, the United Nations and the Afghan government to decide who will protect the airport and who will foot the bill.
For now, the airport is running without interruption, except for restrictions imposed by a deadly third COVID surge that has prompted some countries to suspend flights to Kabul. However, India is not one of them — as many as eight flights arrive weekly from India — and as a result, the virus’ delta variant, first identified in India, is rampant in Afghanistan.
Early this year, the US became the first country in the world to declare the Chinese actions in Xinjiang as “genocide….reports Asian Lite News
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday virtually met Uyghur internment camp survivors, and relatives of individuals detained in Xinjiang, and expressed Washington’s commitment to pressure China to halt ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs minority.
The State Department said Blinken wanted to hear directly from the seven former detainees, relatives of others and advocate about conditions that they and the Uyghur community more broadly face.
“Today Secretary Blinken met with seven Uyghur internment camp survivors, advocates, and relatives of individuals detained in Xinjiang to express the United States’ commitment to work with allies and partners in calling for an end to the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide against Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang,” said State Department spokesperson Ned Price.
China has been rebuked globally for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and sending members of the community to undergo some form of forcible re-education or indoctrination.
Early this year, the US became the first country in the world to declare the Chinese actions in Xinjiang as “genocide.
Recently, US State Department released its 2021 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) placing China among the worst countries in human trafficking following its increasing repression of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.
The report accused China of using surveillance technologies and criminal charges to abduct and detain more than one million Muslims, including Uyghurs, ethnic Hui, ethnic Kazakhs, and more, in up to 1,200 state-run internment camps.
The United States will continue to place human rights at the forefront of our China policy and will always support the voices of activists, survivors, and family members of victims who courageously speak out against these atrocities, said the spokesperson. (ANI)
Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby says “final conversations” with the Afghans took place 48 hours prior and there had been a general understanding, reports Asian Lite News
The United Sates on Tuesday said the Bagram base was turned over after discussions and coordination at “higher levels” in both the Afghanistan government and forces and disputed an Afghan commander’s account of Americans leaving quietly in the night without notifying anyone.
Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told reporters the “final conversations” with the Afghans took place 48 hours prior and there had been a “general understanding and again, as we got closer, more detail was provided to Afghan leaders”.
But, he conceded, “we didn’t go into the exact hour at which all US would leave Bagram” for operational security reasons.
A top Afghan general who is the new commander of the Bagram base, Mir Asadullah Kohistani, had told reporters earlier, “We (had heard) some rumour that the Americans had left Bagram … and finally, by seven o’clock in the morning [last Friday], we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left Bagram.”
Bagram Airfield(Pic credits Wikipedia)
Asked about the Afghan commander’s remarks, Kirby said, “I can’t speak for the level of information that went down the Afghan chain of command, but I can tell you that Afghan leaders, civilian and military, were appropriately coordinated with and briefed about the turnover.”
Kirby said these conversations with Afghans included a walk-through of the Bagram base to give them a preview of what was being turned over to them.
Bagram is the seventh and last of such bases the US has handed over to Afghan forces as it winds down its military presence there of two decades and leave much ahead of the self-imposed deadline of September 11 announced by President Joe Biden.
A smaller number of US military personnel will be stationed in Afghanistan to provide security to the sprawling American diplomatic compound in Kabul and guard the Kabul airport till Turkish forces take over at the conclusion of a final agreement currently in discussion.
The US Central Command, which has military jurisdiction over US deployment in Afghanistan, has said 90% of the drawdown has been finished.
The US has said it is also watching closely the tightening military grip of the Taliban on the country. Though it has declined to change its drawdown schedule or slow it down, the US has said politically negotiated settlement is the only way forward in Afghanistan, and not a military solution.
State department spokesperson said at a separate briefing that “any Afghan government that comes to power at the barrel of a gun, that comes to power through the use of force, is almost certainly going to lack … critical ingredients” that will be needed – international assistance, international legitimacy and popular support of the Afghan people.
The Taliban have sought to assure the world of their commitment to a negotiated settlement but have stalled talks till the US forces are out. The last round that was supposed to take place in Istanbul, Turkey was never held.
As an important stakeholder in Afghan peace, India has watched US drawdown with some concern. On a recent US visit, external affairs minister S Jaishankar attributed US drawdown to “political expediency”. And at a UNSC debate, he reiterated India’s call for a “permanent and comprehensive ceasefire” in Afghanistan and for the United Nations to play a leading role.
The ties between Washington and Beijing had deteriorated after the US has taken sharply opposing positions against China in various issues…reports Asian Lite News
Amid strained ties between Washington and Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Monday said that the United States is “the top threat to global cybersecurity.”
“As facts have proven time and again, it is the US that has been forcing companies to install backdoors and obtaining user data in violation of relevant rules. The US itself is the top threat to global cybersecurity,” Wenbin said during a press briefing.
Wenbin stated that the US has long been taking advantage of its advanced tech capacity to run invasive surveillance on people at home and abroad, steal various types of data and violate all kinds of privacy.
“The Patriot Act adopted after 9/11 requires cyber companies to offer regular updates on user information. This move has drawn much attention from around the world. France’s CNIL decided in December last year that the French websites of Google and Amazon breached relevant French law by placing cookies on the computers of users without obtaining prior consent and without providing adequate information. Earlier, Ireland asked Facebook to suspend the transmission of EU user data to the US,” he further said.
“We call on the international community to jointly expose and reject US practices that endanger global cybersecurity and undermine global rules,” he added.
The ties between Washington and Beijing had deteriorated after the US has taken sharply opposing positions against China in various issues including the trace of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the human rights exploitations of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province.
China targets US-listed tech firms
A day after Chinese Cybersecurity Review Office ordered app stores to remove ride-hailing app Didi Chuxing, the regulator announced on Monday that it will investigate job recruiting platform Boss Zhipin, and two commercial freight platforms, over national security concerns.
A notice by the Chinese regulator said that cybersecurity reviews will be conducted against Boss Zhipin and truck-booking platforms Yunmanman and Huochebang under Full Truck Alliance, to address national data security risks, maintain national security, and protect public interests, Global Times reported.
New user registration on the three platforms has been blocked during the review, the regulator said. Kanzhun, the owner of Boss Zhipin, was listed in US’s NASDAQ on June 11. Full Truck Alliance, the Chinese service that connects freight shippers and truck drivers conducted an IPO in the US on June 22.
“These companies are now listed in the US. In this process, some important data and personal information held by the companies may be leaked due to US regulation. In other words, the listing in the US could lead to data’s outbound security risks,” Zuo Xiaodong, vice-president of the China Information Security Research Institute, told the GT on Monday.
On Sunday, the Chinese Cyberspace Administration ordered online mobile app stores to take ride-hailing app Didi Chuxing off their shelves due to “serious violations of law and regulation” in the collection and use of personal information.
The Chinese watchdog said the application severely violated relevant laws and regulations while collecting and abusing user data. The regulator told the ride-hailing company to take concrete measures to fix the loopholes in accordance with the law and national standards.
Last week, China’s internet watchdog started an investigation into the Didi Chuxing, for issues related to national data security. This development came just two days after the company made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), NHK World reported.
Liu Dingding, a Beijing-based independent tech analyst said that given the current situation, more Chinese firms that intend to list in the US, would have a second thought amid the country’s tightening security on data protection.
Other experts believe that the review is another example of Beijing’s crackdown on influential IT giants. Earlier this April, the Chinese government imposed a huge fine on Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group.
Claiming a crackdown on anti-competitive practices among Chinese internet giants, Beijing has ramped up a broader effort to clean up the operations of the country’s fast-growing and freewheeling tech sector.
Chinese regulators have been calling out tech companies for alleged offences, including inconsistent pricing, user privacy concerns and difficult working conditions, reported The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
Beijing has been infamous for using antimonopoly rules to curb the market influence of foreign firms. Chinese regulators have also called on the nation’s citizens to help supervise the behaviour of tech companies. Tech companies have responded with pledges to be good corporate citizens. (ANI)
Early Monday, Santa Rosa police officers responded to the incident at an illegal fireworks gathering and found four gunshot victims…reports Asian Lite News.
A series of shooting incidents were reported in three US cities in which 5 persons were reportedly killed and several injured.
Two people are dead and three others injured in a shooting on Sunday (local time) in a park in downtown Cincinnati, a city in the US state of Ohio.
Cincinnati police have identified the two dead as a 16-year-old and 19-year-old. The three injured were taken to hospital. Police have not released any information about a suspect as of Monday morning.
According to a police news release, the shooting happened around 11 p.m. Sunday (0400 GMT Monday) during an “Independence Day” celebration when about 400 teenagers gathered in the park. It was unknown whether the shooting was random or targeted, the police said.
Two people were killed and seven others injured in a shooting in the US state of Nevada, police said. In a report on Monday, KTNV-TV, an ABC-affiliated local television station, the North Las Vegas Police Department received a call of the shooting at around 11:14 p.m. local time.
Upon arrival, they found one person with multiple non-life-threatening gunshot wounds and transported the victim to a nearby hospital. The department was subsequently contacted by two local hospitals that they had multiple shooting victims.
Each of the two hospitals had one victim who died as a result of a shooting, the news outlet reported. Citing police, KTNV-TV said both victims were men in their early 20s and there were multiple scenes.
Meanwhile, one man was killed and three others were injured in a shooting incident in California’s Santa Rosa city. Early Monday, Santa Rosa police officers responded to the incident at an illegal fireworks gathering and found four gunshot victims.
A 35-year-old Santa Rosa man died at the scene and his identification is not yet released. A 29-year-old woman and a 17-year-old girl, both from Santa Rosa, were critically injured in the shooting. A 16-year-old boy was also shot, but his injury was not considered life-threatening, according to the police.
The incident happened as dozens of people participated in a large, illegal fireworks show, police said. According to a report by San Francisco Chronicle, a car drove into the neighbourhood and one or more people from the car started shooting.
A person in the crowd exchanged fire with the car occupants. The car crashed into a parked car and the suspects fled on foot. Investigators searched for the suspects on the spot but failed to find them, the police said.
Gunfire killed more than 8,100 people in the United States in the first five months of 2021, averaging about 54 per day, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research organization.
That’s 14 more deaths per day than the average toll during the same period in the previous six years. (ANI/Xinhua)
He further called on Americans to vaccinate in large numbers and said it is “the most patriotic thing” one can do for their nation….reports Asian Lite News
President Joe Biden on Sunday hosted a large gathering of healthcare workers and first responders at the White House to mark the celebrations of the country’s 245th independence day. Addressing the large, cheering crowd, Biden also called on Americans to do their parts to end the Covid-19 pandemic.
The US has “gained the upper hand against this virus,” he announced while adding a caution of warning about the dangerous mutations of Covid-19. “Don’t get me wrong. Covid-19 has not been vanquished. We all know powerful variants have emerged, like the Delta variant,” he added.
“Today, all across this nation, we can say with confidence: America is coming back together,” Biden also said.
He further called on Americans to vaccinate in large numbers and said it is “the most patriotic thing” one can do for their nation.
He also drew a comparison between the declaration of independence from the British Empire in 1776 and today’s rapid recovery from the viral infection. “Two hundred and forty-five years ago, we declared our independence from a distant king. Today, we are closer than ever to declare our independence from a deadly virus,” he told the crowd.
He further said that this year’s celebration is “special” as the country is “emerging from the darkness of a year of pandemic, isolation and a year of pain, fear and heartbreaking loss.”
While maintaining an upbeat tone mostly about how the country has overcome the spiralling crisis of Covid-19 under his leadership in the address, Biden also paid tribute to those who have lost their lives to the disease. “Over the last year, we have lived through some of our darkest days,” Biden said, adding, “We are about to see our brightest future.”
The US was one of the top countries in the list of nations with the highest number of cases and deaths. Since the beginning of the pandemic in December 2019, the virus claimed 605,000 lives, while more than 33.7 million people have been infected.
For Biden, the White House celebration of the fourth of July was a long-awaited opportunity to highlight the success of the vaccination campaign he championed. The event was the largest yet of his presidency, in a clear indication that the US has moved into a new phase of virus response. Shifting from a national emergency to a localised crisis of individual responsibility, the nation also moved from vaccinating Americans to promoting global health.
Turkey rejected these allegations as ‘unacceptable and baseless’ and complained that Washington turns a blind eye to the activities of the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units…reports Asian Lite News
The Turkish Foreign Ministry last Friday reacted angrily to its inclusion in a US report in the list of countries that are implicated for the use of child soldiers by Turkish-backed groups in Syria and Libya.
Turkey rejected these allegations as ‘unacceptable and baseless’ and complained that Washington turns a blind eye to the activities of the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria and Iraq who is involved in supplying arms and training to children for war. The Foreign Ministry criticised “allegations made by some NGO reports, which are of dubious reliability” and based on “unfounded assumptions” and claimed that Turkey makes every effort to prevent human trafficking, punish criminals and protect victims of crime.
“Making such baseless accusations against US ally Turkey, with which it cooperates closely on many regional issues, is a grave contradiction and is never acceptable,” the Turkish Ministry concluded. On July 1st, the United States in its 2021 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report said that Turkey was providing “tangible support” to the Sultan Murad Division in Syria, a faction of Syrian opposition supported by Ankara which recruited and used child soldiers and also referred to the use of child soldiers in Libya.
Noting that it is the first time that a NATO member is included in such a list, the State Department added that “as a respected regional leader Turkey, has the opportunity to address this issue. The United States hopes to work with Turkey to encourage all groups involved in the Syrian and Libyan conflicts not to use child soldiers,” a senior State Department official said last week. The list is compiled from first-hand information by US government personnel and research and credible reporting from various UN agencies, international organizations, local and international NGOs, and media outlets.
This year’s list includes Afghanistan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela and Yemen. Human Rights Watch says that thousands of children are serving as soldiers in armed conflicts around the world. “These boys and girls, some as young as eight years old serve in government forces and armed oppositions groups. They may fight on the front lines, participate in suicide missions, act as spies, messengers, or lookouts. Girls may be forced into sexual slavery. Many are abducted or recruited by force, while others join out of desperation, believing armed groups offer them best chance for survival.”
Back in 2008, US lawmakers adopted the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) which requires the US Secretary of State to publish an annual list of countries whose armed forces or government-backed armed groups recruit or use child soldiers. This list is commonly referred to as the CSPA list and is published in the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Person report. Countries included on the list are prohibited from receiving certain types of US military assistance, training, and defence equipment.
The restrictions will apply from October 1 till the end of the fiscal year 2022, except for those who receive a presidential waiver. State Department spokesperson Ned Price declined to say if Turkey will face any limitation on military assistance following the report. It was not immediately clear whether any restrictions would automatically apply to Turkey, but there is no doubt that Turkey’s inclusion in the CSPA list will further worsen the uneasy relations between Ankara and Washington, which in recent years have been strained due to the Turkish purchase of the S-400 Russian missile system and the imposition of US sanctions, differences over Syria, Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Ankara’s aggressive moves in the Eastern Mediterranean and US President Joe Biden’s concern over abuses of human rights in Turkey.
Nearly after two decades, the US along with other foreign forces has decided to completely withdraw its troops from Afghanistan…reports Asian Lite News
Former Ambassador John Gunther Dean had described April 12, 1975, as the day when the U.S. “abandoned Cambodia and handed it over to the butcher”, there are apprehensions that Afghanistan may be in a similar situation following the US troop pullout from the country.
Writing in Nikkei Asia, Denis D Gray said that the Taliban may not prove as brutal as the ultra-communist Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, but their record during their five years in power (1996-2001) speaks for itself: suppression of women, including selling many into sex slavery, executions, destruction of traditional culture and education, executions and systematic massacres of perceived opponents.
Nearly after two decades, the US along with other foreign forces has decided to completely withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, and many believe that the Taliban is headed for victory in the 20-year conflict.
US troops in Afghanistan. (File Photo DoD_IANS)
Bob Mulholland, a Vietnam War combat veteran, and senior Democratic Party member said, “Only an intern in the Pentagon would not know that the Taliban will be the government in control this year or next”.
Another expert Michael D Eiland expressed, “Getting out now may be a strategic and political imperative. But I think there is a moral imperative to take care of those who have been with us.”
Eiland further said, “It happens every time. We seduce and abandon. The people we coerce, rent or otherwise draw into our web have a choice, of course, but they really don’t. If it’s a choice it’s a cruel Hobson’s choice.”
The Taliban have taken control of several districts across the country, US intelligence assessments have suggested the country’s civilian government could fall to the terror group within months of US forces withdrawing completely. (ANI)
According to Biden’s plan, of its first 25 million doses, about seven million are allocated for Asia, especially India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Vietnam, reports Asian Lite News
Covid-19 vaccine donation from the US is set to reach India within the next few days. US is likely to send around 3-4 million doses of the vaccine via COVAX, sources said.
Moreover, India will also receive doses of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine via COVAX after the legal formalities are completed in India. Moderna Covid-19 vaccine received emergency use authorisation from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) in June end.
President Joe Biden had in June announced the US’ plan to distribute 80 million coronavirus vaccine doses before July, with 75 percent of shots disbursed via the COVAX program.
In a fact sheet, the White House said that for the doses shared through COVAX, Washington would prioritize countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa as it aims to help stave off fresh surges of infections.
Biden had earlier pledged to export 60 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to countries around the world. It was later bumped up to 80 million.
Modi-Biden
According to the US plan, of its first 25 million doses, about seven million are allocated for Asia, especially India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Vietnam.
Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access, abbreviated as COVAX, is a worldwide initiative aimed at equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines directed by Gavi.
Gavi, a public-private partnership, manages the program along with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, the WHO and UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency that helps deploy doses once they get delivered to recipient countries in the COVAX program.
Last week, describing India as an important friend and ally of the United States, top American lawmakers on Monday urged the Biden administration to help facilitate assistance for the country that has been gravely impacted by the deadly Covid-19 pandemic.
Senior American lawmakers had taken up the floor of the US House of Representatives in support of the House Resolution that urges the Biden administration to facilitate private, in-kind medical supply donations to India and work to deliver additional, urgently needed medical supplies to India, including oxygen generator plants and a cryogenic oxygen tanker and containers.
Introduced by Congressmen Brad Sherman and Steve Chabot, co-chairs of the India Caucus, the bipartisan resolution stands with the people of India as they collectively work to stem the spread of Covid-19 throughout the country.
Congresswoman Young Kim said in the spring of 2020, when the United States was experiencing a spike in Covid-19 cases, India came to its aid and lifted its export ban on certain drugs in response to a request by the United States.
On 3 June, US vice president Kamala Harris telephoned Prime Minister Narendra Modi, among other world leaders, to explain the Biden administration’s plans to donate 25 million of a possible 80 million doses of anti-Covid-19 vaccines.
The US said 19 million vaccine doses were to be shared with COVAX—an international coalition under the World Health Organization aiming for the equitable delivery of covid-19 vaccines to poor countries. The rest was to be shared with “countries experiencing surges, those in crisis, and other partners and neighbours, including Canada, Mexico, India, and the Republic of Korea”, US president Joe Biden said in a statement that also recalled that he had previously stated that “by the end of June, the United States will share 80 million doses of our vaccine supply with the world”.
