Financial Mess WASHINGTON - Neel Kashkari, the man charged with launching the US government's unprecedented $700 billion bank rescue, knows a thing or two about getting complex apparatus off the ground. After all, he could be considered a former rocket scientist. Before he went to work in high finance, the former Goldman Sachs investment banker worked in research and development at TRW Inc, a contractor for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, designing parts for a space telescope. ******************************************
LONDON - Days after enforcing stricter rules for grant of business travel visa, Britain plans to further tighten immigration rules by drastically reducing the number of migrants. The proposed tougher immigration laws was announced by new immigration minister Phil Woolas and may come amid fears that the economic downturn could raise risk of unemployment. Indicating a shift in the government policy, Woolas said: “If people are being made unemployed, the question of immigration becomes extremely thorny. It’s been too easy to get into this country in the past and it’s going to get harder.” ****************************************** WASHINGTON - Ashwin Madia, a 30-year-old attorney and Iraq war veteran, is bidding to become only the third person of Indian descent to be elected to the US Congress. And the newcomer appears to have a good shot though the race is tight and the campaign has turned nasty. Madia, a Democrat, is running against Republican Erik Paulsen, who has been a state Representative for 14 years, and Independence Party candidate David Dillon in Minnesota’s 3rd District. He leads Paulsen 46 per cent to 43 in the latest poll after trailing by three points earlier. Madia’s is a typical immigrant story. His microbiologist father and physical therapist mother came to America from Mumbai with $19. “They wanted a better life for their children,” he says. He was born in Boston, but the family eventually settled in Plymouth, a suburb of Minneapolis. After attending high school there, Madia went to the University of Minnesota and the New York University School of Law. ****************************************** NEW YORK - An India-born man, who accused two New York City police officers of assaulting him, has been awarded US$ 20,000 in compensation by a federal jury, which held the officers guilty of violating his civil rights. The man had also accused the officers of racial abuse. A Brooklyn federal jury found that two police officers from the Queens are guilty of excessive force for hitting a man in the groin with a flashlight repeatedly, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported. Harwinder Vilkhu, 36, said the officers had grabbed him by the collar while he was sitting outside the York College Performing Arts Centre and hit him in the groin and stomach with a flashlight when he asked their names and the reason they were mistreating him.****************************************** LONDON - An Indo-Brit hair specialist accused of groping women while giving them head massages has been jailed for three years in Britain. The Reading crown court also banned Praminder Mankoo for life from giving treatment without a witness present. He will also have to sign on to the Sex Offenders' List indefinitely. Mankoo had been charged with lewd acts with his clients on Sep 14. Mankoo ran a successful clinic in Thame, Oxfordshire. The instances of his lewd acts occurred between 2003 and 2007, but three of his victims came forward only recently to nail him. ****************************************** MISSISAUGA - After a lengthy investigation, officers from the Fraud Bureau have raided three Mississauga-area warehouses, in what has been described by industry experts as the largest seizure of counterfeit goods in Canadian history. On Thursday, July 31, 2008, a series of search warrants were executed at Thamesgate Drive warehouses, resulting in the seizure of over 25,000 pieces of counterfeit merchandise. These items are estimated to have a street value of over $10,000,000. The fraudulent labels included designers such Gucci, Channel, Prada, Burberry, Juicy Couture, Coach, Dolce & Gabana, Armani, Louie Vouiton, Harley Davidson and Diesel. ****************************************** LONDON - An Indian-origin landlady in Oxford has been fined 2,500 pounds because of the filthy and dangerous state of a house she was letting out to her tenants. Joginder Kaur Dhanjal at the Oxford Magistrates' Court admitted to five charges levelled against her relating to safety and hygiene at the shared house she owns in Donnington Bridge Road. The city council environmental health officers found several health and safety breaches in Dhanjal's house during a visit. Oven and surfaces in the shared kitchen were in a filthy state and officers discovered that tenants had even no access to the gas supply. ****************************************** TORONTO - With cases of foreigners coming to Canada through marriages of convenience and then dumping their partners piling up, the Canadian government has reportedly sent secret squads to many countries to collect information on these weddings to stop this trend. Immigrant communities, including Indo-Canadians, which seek matrimonial alliances in their native countries, have been the major victims of such marriages. The Globe and Mail, which is Canada's most respected daily, reported Wednesday that the department of citizenship and immigration has sent teams, each comprising up to five members, to many countries to track information on these marriages. ****************************************** Many such illegal immigration rackers also exist right here in Canada, which along with the drug business are making many South Asians wealthy. LONDON - A BBC undercover investigation has ripped the lid of a huge network in the Southall area, exploiting those who want to come to the UK, especially from the Punjab. A group of people are reportedly providing such illegal immigrants of Indian-origin with forged or stolen identity papers. They lure them with promises to get them jobs here. The undercover BBC investigation unearthed that hundreds of illegal immigrants from India have been brought in, put in cheap houses, sometime 40 packed in one hall in unhygienic conditions. Since they are here on faked documents, they are forced to take up poorly paid jobs and often asked to do dangerous work. ****************************************** LONDON - Indian-origin lawyer and Britain's foremost human rights advocate Shami Chakrabarti figures among the top 10 most powerful lawyers in The Times’ annual list of the Top 100 club. This is another feather in the cap for Chakrabarti, who is already considered among the top 50 most powerful people in Britain. Knighted by the Queen for her contribution to law and human rights in 2007, she beat Tony Blair and David Cameron in a 2006 vote for Britain’s most inspiring figure. In 2005, she was on the BBC’s shortlist of the 10 people who may run Britain. A law graduate from the London School of Economics, she currently heads one of the world’s best known human rights organisations, Liberty. She has recently been appointed as chancellor of Oxford Brookes University. ****************************************** The UK-based widow was 'drugged by her in-laws and forced to re-marry' her dead husband’s cousin after flying to India for husband's funeral. But she escaped and once back in the UK, she got the marriage annulled. LONDON A woman who went to India for the funeral of her husband was kidnapped by his family and forced to marry her father-in-law’s nephew, a High Court judge was told . The 29-year-old Indo-British woman was allegedly told she would be killed if she didn’t wed the 27-year-old groom, whom she eventually fled from and returned to the UK. Today Justice Parker ordered that the marriage - which came two-and-a-half weeks after the death of the first husband - should be annulled because it was forced on the woman. ****************************************** The recount was triggered because turncoat Dosanjh's margin of victory was less than one-one thousandth of the votes cast. Another Liberal MP from BC faces a recount next week in the Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca riding. Incumbent Keith Martin held onto his seat by only 68 votes over Indo-Canadian Conservative Troy DeSouza. The Liberals won only five seats in the province in the recent election, compared to eight in the 2006 election. Judicial recounts are automatically conducted when a candidate wins by less 0.1 per cent of the total votes cast. They can also be requested if there is reason to believe an error may have led to a miscount. Reports say that Troy has conceded defeat to Keith Martin, who claims his grandmother was possibly a Goan. ****************************************** Eugene
