United States

PIONEER HISTORIAN Tejinder Singh Sibia, who documented the arrival of early Indian migrants to Canada and the US and their struggles, died in Sacramento following a brief illness. He was 70.
Popularly known as Ted, he was the first Indian-American to document the history of the Gadar movement in California, the Komagata Maru and early Indian pioneers in America.
After his retirement as a librarian from the University of California at Davis, he devoted his time to chronicling the history of Gadar leaders and early Indian Sikh pioneers through his web site www.sikhpioneers.com. It became a rich reference source for research on the Indian diaspora.
Ted was able to procure rare pictures and documents from the forgotten families of the Indian pioneers in California.
Born at Killa Raipur in Punjab in Aug 1937, Ted came to the US in 1960 for his masters in horticulture from Kansas State. 
He earned a masters in library science from Emporia State University and joined the University of California at Davis where he retired as head of the Research Library Unit for Biology & Agriculture at the Shield Library.

HARPAL VACHER will finally get justice. On May 24, 2007, Umair Ahmed, a Pakistani, cut off his hair with a pair of scissors after threatening him in their New York school bathroom. 
Ahmed could face four years in prison. A Queens County jury, after two-and-a-half days of deliberations, found Ahmed guilty of hate crime, coercion, criminal possession of a weapon and third-degree harassment. He is scheduled to be sentenced on April 11. 
Queens district attorney Richard A Brown said, "The defendant has been convicted of a serious attack on the fundamental beliefs of the victim's religion and freedom to worship freely. Crimes of hate will never be tolerated here in Queens County.”

AN INDIAN-American man has been awarded $40.1 million as compensation after a malfunctioning machine burnt his heart, forcing him to go for a transplant. 
Lawyers for Paramjit Singh, 54, had asked for up to $38 million in damages and the award is one of the largest personal injury verdicts in the US state of Washington.
Singh had checked into Providence Everett Medical Centre in October 2004 for cardiac surgery. However, a monitor malfunctioned, causing a catheter to overheat and burn his heart, his lawyer said in a statement.

Canada

WITH HIS appointment as MP for Calgary East and parliamentary secretary to the minister of international cooperation, Deepak Obhrai has been become the highest-ranking Indian in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s ministry.
Obhrai will also retain his current position of parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs that he has held since February 2007.
"I am very pleased that the prime minister and the government have found confidence in me to grant me this additional responsibility," Obhrai said.
"Vested with these dual responsibilities, I intend to do my utmost to ensure that Canada stands proud and tall on the world stage and Canadian interests are well represented both at home and abroad." 
Obhrai, who was in India last month with the foreign minister, said, "Thus far I have thoroughly enjoyed working closely with Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier and his predecessor Peter MacKay. Similarly, I look forward to working closely with International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda."
Calgary law student Manmeet Bhullar, 28, who was appointed Parliamentary Assistant for advanced education and technology, has become the youngest minister.

Malaysia

MALAYSIA’S GENERAL election last month may have caused many upsets among the Indian diaspora, but the family of opposition lawyer-lawmaker Karpal Singh has emerged victorious.
Though bound to his wheelchair after a 2005 road accident, Singh, 68, campaigned to retain his Bukit Gelugor parliamentary seat. One of Karpal’s four sons, Jagdeep Singh Deo, won the Datuk Keramat state seat. Giving him company in Parliament will be another son, Govind Singh Deo, who won the Puchong seat.
The family belongs to the opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP), which won 28 seats in an opposition tally of 82 in a house of 222.

India

PUNJAB POLICE records show over a thousand NRIs from the state are listed as proclaimed offenders. The other side of the coin however shows that a growing number of NRIs have been referring to police with complaints of crimes committed against them.
A total of 327 criminal cases were registered on complaints filed by overseas Punjabis. Most complaints were filed through the email or by phone, facilities recently introduced by the department.
A majority of the cases registered relate to property disputes and complaints by NRIs of properties owned by them being grabbed by family and relatives during their absence from the country.

KERALA DIASPORA

INDIA

A PUBLIC limited company, Aranmula Aviation Ltd (AAL), plans to set up Kerala’s first rural airport with NRI funds. Chairman P.S. Nair, said: “If all goes well, the first domestic flight would take off from the Aranmula airport in the next three years.” 
The 8,000 ft runway work is in progress on 400 acres owned by Abraham Kalamanil, chairman of Mount Zion Education Society and Charitable Trust, Kozhencherry. “Mr Kalamanil is on the board of directors of AAL, he and Mr Nair have agreed to invest Rs 12.5 crore each as start-up capital. The rest can be raised from the Federation of Kerala Associations in North America (FOKANA) and via shares.”

United States

STEEL SUPERMAGNATE Lakshmi Mittal was listed as the fourth richest in the world by Forbes magazine with a net worth of $45 billion. The Ambani brothers and real estate tycoon K P Singh are also among the 10 richest on US magazine Forbes' annual list of billionaires.
Mittal’s ArcelorMittal is the world's largest steelmaker, (sales $105 billion) and accounts for 10 per cent of all crude steel production globally. He has just delivered 580 tonnes to be used in construction of the World Trade Center memorial in New York. 
Anil Ambani topped followed by brother Mukesh in terms of wealth created in the last year. Mukesh is worth $43 and Anil $42 billion.

United Kingdom

WHEN ANIL Agarwal floats his mining company Vedanta on the London Stock Exchange, he will be one of the wealthiest businessmen on the list, with a paper fortune of 800 million pounds sterling.
Vedanta is wholly owned by the Agarwal family and his proposal to float Vedanta is the primary listing of an Indian firm in the London market.
Agarwal has bought a £20 million home in London's desirable Mayfair area and is said to be applying for British citizenship. His total assets could make him one of Britain's top 20 richest individuals.

STATE LEGISLATOR Jay Goyal 25, has been named a ranking member in Ohio state's ways and means committee that has jurisdiction over all state taxation tariffs and other revenue related measures. He will serve as lead voice on the committee for the House Democratic Caucus.
Goyal said he is honoured and will work to move the state forward, planning to fight for causes that matter to working families to help better their lives.
Governor Ted Strickland said Goyal is a rising young legislator whose effectiveness in servicing his residents is borne out by his appointment to the body.

MARATHI DIASPORA

United States

LISA STHALEKAR was named the women's international cricketer for a second straight year at the Allan Border medal presentation in Melbourne.
Lisa 28, Australian vice captain, is one of two women to win the Australian women's cricket highest honour more than once. She was nominated in 2007. The all rounder played one Test and 14 one day internationals in which she scored 558 runs at 62.00 including four half centuries and a top score of 87 not out.

United States

LEGENDARY TECH guru Amar Bose's was inducted into the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame for contribution to acoustics technology. The founder of Bose Corp joins inventors who gave the world the television remote control (Robert Adler), electrocardiograph (Willem Einthoven), hip replacement surgery (John Charnley), and Containerized Shipping (Malcolm McLean) in the national scroll. 
The only other Indian in the Inventors’ Hall of Fame is Rangaswamy Srinivasan, a former IBM scientist named for his pioneering work on excimer laser surgery.
The list has storied names like Thomas Edison and Wright Brothers.

AN INDIAN-american has developed a revolutionary new bio-sensor capable of simultaneously screening thousands of food samples for deadly pathogens. 
Besides taking the pain out of such analysis, the technique would help neutralise potential threats and improve food-processing techniques, said Arun Bhunia, a professor of food science at Purdue University. 
"For food safety and bio-security purposes, you need a quick test—a first line of defence—to be able to tell if there is something pathogenic in the food or water," a report in Sciencedaily quoting Bhunia said.

HIMACHALI DIASPORA

United States

SHIVANI SUD, a high school student, has won the top prize at the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search contest in the US, dubbed the 'Junior Nobel', for her project on cancer.
The 17-year-old resident of Durham, North Carolina, was declared the grand prize winner for 2008 in Washington DC. She will get a $100,000 scholarship from the Intel Foundation.
Shivani's project turns to bioinformatics and genomics to identify stage-II colon cancer patients at high risk for recurrence and the best therapeutic agents for treating their tumours.

PROTEIN INTERLEUKIN-8 has been found to be a potential therapeutic target in ovarian cancer, as lab experiments and research have shown that short interfering RNA can cut interleukin-8 concentrations, reducing tumour size by attacking its blood supply.
Anil Sood of the MD Anderson Cancer Centre, a co-author of the study, said he and his colleagues analysed tumours from 102 patients at the Centre and the University of Iowa. They concluded interleukin-8 is a major factor in many types of cancer, says the surgeon who spent his boyhood in India.