Austin South Asian. February. 2023

Waterloo Greenway’s second phase- Approved

1% Of U.S. Population, Indian-Americans Pay 6% Of Taxes: Congressman

On January 18, 2023, the Waller Creek Local Government Corporation (LGC) approved a contract with Jay-Reese Contractors, Inc. for construction of the second phase of Waterloo Greenway, The Confluence. The Confluence, formerly called the Creek Delta, is the continuation of the 35-acre Waterloo Greenway park and trail system along Waller Creek in downtown Austin. A public-private partnership between the City of

Biden Asian American Plan

By Kimmy Yam

Austin and Waterloo Greenway Conservancy help make this work possible. (Continued On Page 24)

Benefits Of Walking

Is walking good for you? Walking can offer numerous health benefits to people of all ages and

Indian-Americans who constitute about 1% of the U.S. population pay about 6% of the taxes, a Congressman told his Congressional

Ayurveda

What Is Ayurveda?

Ayurvedic medicine (“Ayurveda” for short) is one of the world’s oldest holistic (“whole-body”) healing

colleagues noting that this ethnic community does not cause problems and follows the laws. In his

(Continued On Page 13)

Indian-American JUDGE

Indian-American Democrat Juli A. Mathew took oath as a judge in

The Biden administration released its first national agenda aimed at addressing the range of disparities that Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities face. (Continued On Page 09)

fitness levels. It may also help prevent certain diseases and even prolong your life.

Walking is free to do and easy to fit into your daily routine. All you need to start walking is a sturdy pair of walking shoes. Read on to learn about some of the benefits of walking. (Continued On Page 11)

systems. It was developed more than 3,000 years ago in India.

It’s based on the belief that health and wellness depend on a delicate balance between the mind, body, and spirit.

Its main goal is to promote good health, not fight disease. (Continued On Page 12)

Fort Bend County, Texas, for a second consecutive term.

Mathew, a native of Thiruvalla in Kerala, was sworn-in via videoconferencing from Bheemanady in Kasaragod, and will continue to serve as presiding judge for Number 3 of the Fort Bend County Court for a period of four years.

(Continued On Page 24)

More Rebates, More Savings

How Technology Will Transform Shopping In 2023 And Beyond

Above all, consumers value convenience, speed and good deals, according to new research by Sensormatic Solutions, and they can expect retailers to deliver these benefits in 2023.

In the recent survey, respondents cited stocked shelves (64%), quick and easy checkouts (63%), and discounts or sales (63%) as the top three contributors to positive shopping experiences.

With 42% of respondents either very likely or moderately likely to abandon their shopping trip due to a long checkout line, omnichannel fulfillment options – from selfcheckout to buy-online-pickup-instore (BOPIS) – are gaining widespread adoption by both retailers and customers, alike.

Self-checkout for example, once a novelty, is now viewed as a way to complete a transaction more quickly, easily and privately than traditional checkout. In fact, nearly one-third of respondents said they

will use self-checkout more often in 2023, with over half (52%) of respondents citing their main reason for doing so is because it’s quicker. Likewise, options like curbside pickup and BOPIS are being employed by customers more frequently, with 63% of respondents noting convenience as their primary reason for using these services.

At the same time, retailers are embracing B2B technology to improve the in-store experience.

Shopper traffic data is helping retailers optimize staffing and reimagine floor layouts to mitigate crowding and encourage browsing, while inventory intelligence is helping customers find what they need, when they need it.

The survey also reveals that shoppers are eager to embrace the next big thing: 63% of respondents said they would like to see retailers implement interactive mobile apps to better blend in-store and online

experiences, and many shoppers said they would like to see retailers implement virtual reality (24%) and augmented reality (17%).

“Shoppers are eager to try new options and explore the benefits of digitalization. They are seeking convenience to pursue better instore experiences, while simultaneously thinking about their carbon footprint in relation to where they shop,” said Kim Melvin, global leader of marketing and communications, Sensormatic Solutions. “When it comes down to it, shoppers want safer, quicker, and more affordable and sustainable options.”

Along these same lines, consumers are still invested in what retailers are doing for the sake of the environment, with 69% noting that it is important to them that retailers continue to improve environmental performance and energy management in their stores.

Consumers are looking for this to

happen with the following changes: less plastic and packaging waste (62%), recycling bins for shoppers and employees to use (42%), and increased sustainable product and brand options (41%).

Further, consumers are planning to create their own sustainable habits in 2023, with 39% buying more items in-store to reduce shopping trips, 38% shopping in-store more often to eliminate packaging waste, and 33% shopping at thrift stores more often.

What’s clear from these trends and insights is that the industry’s march toward more sustainable, flexible, streamlined and efficient operations is just beginning.

To learn more about the evolving retail industry, as well as how emerging technology can help stores meet customers’ expectations in the 2023, visit sensormatic. com. (StatePoint)

On-Trend Colors Reflecting Comforting Lifestyle Design

Upgrading your home design is an opportunity to tap into new color schemes. Knowing what shades are trendy and how different hues can work together for a cohesive design is an important step in creating an attractive design aesthetic.

While you might turn to family or friends for inspiration for your next DIY project,

ors that evoke positive energy and lasting change.

Comfort and Contentment: If your goal is to create a space that envelopes you in a sense of comfort, consider a white with a yellow undertone that makes a space cozy like a soft blanket, like Cozy White from Valspar. Complement the softness with a muted clay

Natural Balance: Bringing hints of the outdoors into a well-loved living space creates a soothing ambiance. Consider a warm neutral brown tone inspired by the shades found in nature or a cooled down blue that strikes a beautiful balance between cool and warm shades in your design.

Inspirational Thought: A work-from-home

or crafting space needs color to inspire great thinking. Try a faded natural terracotta that sparks individuality and warmth or a deep blackened olive, an on-trend neutral that embodies charm and sophistication.

Explore the tool and find more colorful ideas at Valspar.com.

(Family Features)

Gift Decadence During This Season of Love

Valentine’s Day may traditionally be a lovers’ holiday, but it’s also an opportunity to connect with those who make your heart happiest, whether it’s family, friends or anyone who enriches your life. Celebrate all types of love this Valentine’s Day with thoughtful gifts that show how much you care.

explore more unique gifts this Valentine’s Day.

Handcrafted with Care

another resource for collecting concepts and options to upgrade your space is the internet. Consider the Valspar Color-verse, which allows visitors to explore colors in a unique way and offers paint color inspiration and decor trends they can envision within their own homes.

After experiencing the Valspar 2023 Colors of the Year firsthand by painting walls and art from the collection to see the 3D virtual house come to life, you can find the perfect paint shade for your space.

“Through the Color-verse, visitors can experience the 12 Colors of the Year in a realistic virtual home,” said Gus Morales, vice president of brand marketing for CBG Sherwin-Williams. “Aside from exploring the Colors of the Year, the home is an engaging space for visitors to create art, play games and order paint chips to see how their top color picks look and feel in their homes.”

Color Trends to Consider

Many of this year’s popular nature-inspired designs are all about finding comfort, embracing a flexible lifestyle, rediscovering joy and leaning into the growing DIY movement. The most trend-worthy, forwardthinking and livable colors reflect specific facets or emotions of life so you can update your well-used spaces with thoughtful col-

that brings in brown undertones that suggest gentle contentment.

Calming Restoration: Tap into the calming tones of nature with a hazy green that has duality, which brings in both the calm and liveliness of the great outdoors. Another option is a deep midnight blue used as an elegant calming shade to restore mind, body and home.

Healthful, Mindful Living: Create an uplifting space where your wellness is a priority. Evoke a greater sense of health consciousness with a light blue that has a dose of softness used as a fresh neutral with uplifting qualities of a modern pastel, like Valspar’s Rising Tide.

Reinforce the benefits of mindful living with a cool gray that is balanced by the warmth of the yellow undertone, a natural hue like a cotton muslin cloth.

Connections and Joy: Establish spaces where you can celebrate relationships with others, the world around you and happiness in your being. Consider hues like a white softened by a violet undertone, a harmonious shade promoted by digital connectivity. Evoke joy with a dependable classic tan that features a yellow undertone suggesting new life with uplifting qualities.

As the old adage says, the fastest way to one’s heart is the stomach. Sweet treats are a sure sign of your affection, and for centuries, chocolate has been revered as the flavor of love.

From gifting to hosting and all the other moments throughout the season of love, you can delight your nearest and dearest with gourmet chocolates from Ethel M Chocolates.

Treat those closest to your heart to a delicious experience and visit EthelM.com to

Topped with a red bow for a final touch, the Ethel M Chocolates 5-piece Love Collection features a series of heart-shaped, premium chocolates nestled in an elegant box. The sampler features popular selections including Milk Chocolate, Lemon Satin Crème, Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter and White Chocolate.

This sweet collection of handcrafted chocolate is a decadent way to show how much you care. It’s ideal as a thoughtful gesture of appreciation for friends and family, or for a more romantic connection, it’s the perfect item to pair with jewelry or flowers to surprise your loved one.

Heartfelt Appreciation

If your gift list includes chocolate aficionados, there’s no better way to speak straight to their heart than the Ethel M Chocolates 28-piece Large Heart Gift Box. This popular seasonal assortment showcases an expanded selection of mouthwatering, handcrafted, premium chocolates.

The collection includes an array of flavors, from Dark Chocolate Sea-Salt Caramel and Milk Chocolate Raspberry Satin Crème to Milk Chocolate Almond Butter Krisp and Milk Chocolate Pecan Toffee Crisp. The gourmet variety is sure to delight, and the large satin-wrapped, heart-shaped box makes your affection deliciously clear. (Family Features)

5 Super Fun Activities That Get Kids Excited To Learn

Looking for activities for kids that offer some educational value? The good news is that you don’t need to sacrifice fun. Here are five awesome gift ideas that will get schoolage kids excited about learning outside the classroom.

1. With the Magic Adventures Microscope, young biologists can explore tiny worlds full of huge discoveries, zooming in on flowers, animals, food, minerals and more using eight double-sided smart slides that activate amazing BBC videos and images. Inquiring minds can discover answers to curious questions like: How do leaves changes colors? What do plant cells look like? What is sand made of anyway? They can also make their own discoveries by finding things around the house and getting a closer look using the reusable slides or large sample tray. With up to 200x magnification on this real microscope, kids will be amazed by what they see. A capture-and-save feature allows for documenting findings, and included games and quizzes add to the fun and let kids put their knowledge to the test.

2. Reading enthusiasts will love a subscription to a book of the month club offering selections for their reading level and interests. This is not only a great way to promote a lifelong love of literature, it can help a young reader build their home library.

3. Fledgling explorers can travel the world and see everything in it with the Magic Ad-

ventures Globe from LeapFrog.

Using the stylus, children can tap on the interactive learning globe and experience new places, languages, cultures, animals, geography, habitats and more through high-quality BBC videos.

Featuring an integrated video screen, animations and live-action videos fully immerse

kids in the curriculum to provide a better understanding of the world through more than five hours of videos. They can also play interactive games to explore the globe, challenge a friend and solve mysteries. With its focus on curriculum-based content and important foundational skills, LeapFrog toys offer experiences that make learning fun.

4. Encourage kids to become informed citizens of the world with a subscription to a news magazine designed just for them, such as “The Week Junior.” This is an excellent way to build vocabulary, while engaging kids on a wide range of subjects -- from culture and arts to science and government -- in a way that’s appropriate for their age.

5. Foster a love of fine arts with an all-in-one sketching, painting and coloring set complete with everything they need to unleash their inner Picasso. Pencils, markers, acrylic and watercolor paints, along with brushes, paper pads and canvas boards, will give artists of all ages the foundational tools they need to try their hand in various mediums.

SWNB - 25th Anniversary

Kim said she is confident and excited that SWNB will achieve many more milestones and continue to be the “Bank of Choice” for our customers.

20-year service award: Annie Chan (Closing Manager), Helen Liu (Deputy of Credit Officer), and Vicki Chen (Branch Manager)

Southwestern National Bank (“SWNB”) celebrated its 25th anniversary and annual holiday party on November 5, 2022, at Hyatt Regency Hotel, Houston, Texas. Over 200 attended the annual party casino night. Honorable guests, directors, and employees gathered to celebrate this important milestone. CEO Joanne Kim kicked off the party with a warm, welcoming remark thanking

the board of directors, employees, and customers.

Kim said she’s grateful for the tremendous support and warmth from the SWNB Family.

Kim was delighted to announce that SWNB had another good year, and it’s all because of the loyal, hardworking, and dedicated employees.

“As we reflect on SWNB’s 25th anniversary, we want to thank all those who have paved the way for us to reach this milestone – our founders, Board of Directors, amazing customers, and best-in-class team members,” said the Chair of the Board Dr. Jody Lee. Dr. Lee also presented 10th, 15th, 20th, and over 20 years of service awards to the following employees:

10-year service award: Trucgan Doan (Universal Banker) and Laura Zhang (Deposit Operations Specialist)

15-year service award: Chen Chen (Credit Officer), Annie Lee (Head Teller), Chi H.

Over 20 years of service award: Betsy Reese (Chief Financial Officer) and Catherine Liang (Co-Chief Lending Officer)

Dr. Lee also presented an appreciation award to four founding directors: Michael Hong, Sam Hwong, Binh Ho, and Sean Hou, and a lifetime service award to four founding directors: C.K. Lee, Doris Chen, Ted Hsieh, and Ed Malmgren

SWNB has always been a proud supporter of mentoring and developing future leaders in the communities they serve.

This year, two academically outstanding graduating high school seniors were awarded a special merit scholarship. SWNB Merit Scholarship recipients were Ian Ho and Diana Feng.

Our guests mixed, mingled, and played on the gaming tables throughout the evening, including blackjack, craps, and roulette.

Tang (IT Manager), and Anna Tse-Cheng (Operations Officer)

Fast Facts To Stay Healthy This Flu Season

December through March is peak influenza (flu) season. While common, flu is a potentially serious and highly contagious respiratory illness.

This winter, a new American Lung Association campaign funded by CLS Seqirus aims to educate Americans about the flu and steps they can take to protect themselves and others from severe flu illness. Here’s what to know:

• Who is impacted by flu? Flu can affect anyone, however, certain communities are at higher risk of severe illness and complications, such as those living with chronic medical conditions including chronic lung disease, heart disease and diabetes. During past flu seasons, approximately 90% of flurelated hospitalizations were among adults with at least one underlying medical condition.

During the 2021-22 flu season, approximately 30% of hospitalizations were among adults with chronic lung disease.

People from certain racial and ethnic minority groups are also at higher risk for being

hospitalized with flu compared to non-Hispanic white adults.

• What will this year’s flu season look like? Flu activity was relatively low the last two flu seasons, but it causes a significant burden every winter. Seasonal influenza activity is already elevated and continues to increase across the country.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that as of early January, there have been at least 22 million illnesses and 230,000 hospitalizations.

• How can I protect myself? While covering your cough, washing your hands frequently and staying home when you’re sick can help stop the spread of flu, the very best way to protect yourself, your loved ones, and your

community is with vaccination.

The flu shot is recommended on an annual basis for everyone 6 months of age and older and can be given at the same time as COVID-19 vaccination.

Flu vaccination is especially important for people with chronic lung disease and other chronic health conditions. Speak with your healthcare provider to learn more about influenza and annual vaccination.

• When should I see a doctor? If you do get sick, call your doctor as soon as possible for diagnosis and treatment -- especially if you’re at high risk for complications. You should also consult your doctor if you have complications such as difficulty breathing, chest pains or a cough persisting for weeks or months after other symptoms go away.

To learn more, visit Lung.org/prevent-flu.

Take steps to protect yourself, your family and your community flu. Practice good health habits and get your annual vaccination as early as possible. (StatePoint)

6 Things to Consider Doing if You Can’t Pay Rent This Month

The average national rent surpassed $2,000 for the first time ever in 2022, which has made keeping up with rent payments challenging for millions of people across the United States.

In fact, a recent Freddie Mac survey found that 70% of renters are concerned about making their rent payment in the short term.

If you’re among those struggling to pay rent, there is good news: many resources exist to help renters remain in their homes.

Here are six actions you can take to help keep you in your rental:

1. Contact Your Landlord. If you know you will be unable to pay your rent, contact your landlord in writing to explain your situation. Your landlord may be able to offer you such options as changing the date rent is due each month, lowering rent payments or creating a repayment plan.

2. Consider More Affordable Apartments. Finding a less expensive apartment may be the right solution if you anticipate having regular trouble paying your rent.

However, with rents on the rise every-

where, this can be a challenge. As you start your search, remember to factor in the fees and moving expenses you might incur.

Moving within your building or to another property managed by the same company may be one way to avoid onboarding fees.

3. Find a Roommate. If you have the space,

taking on a roommate can significantly reduce your monthly rent and utility expenses. Make sure to follow the terms of your lease when adding a roommate to any apartment. This could include having them sign a formal lease.

4. Access Short-Term Rental Assistance. Local housing authorities and some national organizations have short-term rent relief funds you can apply for to help cover the cost of rent while you get back on your feet.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

(CFPB) has a list of assistance programs for renters.

5. Understand Eviction Protections. Be aware of the eviction protections you’re eligible for should you be unable to pay rent. The CFPB has a list of states with protections in place that prevent landlords from evicting renters for failure to pay rent.

6. Work with a Renter Resource Organization. There are many nonprofit Renter Resource Organizations throughout the country that can assist you if you are facing a housing-related challenge. These entities provide services and resources to help you maintain housing, including eviction prevention and landlord-tenant mediation.

They also can assist you in locating alternative housing and provide financial planning advice. Services offered may vary by provider. To find an organization that can help you with your situation, contact Freddie Mac’s Renter Hotline at 800-404-3097.

For more information about renting, including resources to help you determine how much you can afford, visit My Home by Freddie Mac at myhome.freddiemac.com. (StatePoint)

Who is AC Charania, NASA’s Indian-American Chief Technologist

By CNBCTV18.com

US space agency NASA has appointed Indian-American aerospace expert AC Charania as its new Chief Technologist. Charania will serve as the principal advisor to Administrator Bill Nelson on technology policy and programmes.

AC Charania joined NASA in his new role on January 3, replacing fellow Indian-American scientist Bhavya Lal, who served as the acting chief technologist.

Charania’s position falls within NASA’s Office for Technology, Policy, and Strategy.

The Chief Technologist will “align NASA’s agency-wide technology investments with mission needs across six mission directorates and

oversee technology collaboration with other federal agencies, the private sector, and external stakehold-

To Advertise In ASA

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SCRIBBLINGS BY

DESIRES, DREAMS AND HOPES

To lead life we struggle night and day, Try to keep the dreaded death at bay, Living on hopes, with dreams and desires, Facing and battling problems diverse.

Like other years, all years will end with, Wars and storms, volcanoes and earth quakes, Fire, flood, famine, drought, disease and death, Whatever be our needs and prayers.

We give up not our aspirations,

ARUN

With hopes we welcome every year, Anticipating things to happen, To fulfill our dreams and ambitions.

Everything has at least two sides, We aim to reach the positive side, Protecting us from negative traits, Believe that all will be fine and good.

Welcome it or not, years bound to roll, Time waits for none whether big or small.

By self scripting, let us play our role, To realise our desires, dreams and hopes.

(arunsunderraj@gmail.com)

ers,” NASA noted in a statement.

Who is AC Charania?

AC Charania has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

He also has a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Emory University.

Before joining NASA, Charania served as the vice president of product strategy at Reliable Robotics, which develops automation platforms and is aiming to bring certified autonomous vehicles to commercial aviation.

According to a release from NASA, the Indian-American has served in multiple management and technology roles at SpaceWorks Enterprises, and he has helped incubate two start-ups, Generation Orbit and Terminal Velocity Aerospace.

Charania has also worked at private aerospace company Blue Origin for its lunar permanence strategy, the Blue Moon lunar lander

program.

Charania was also a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts fellow, and he served on the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group Commercial Advisory Board.

Charania previously worked for Virgin Galactic (now Virgin Orbit) in strategy and business development for LauncherOne small satellite launch vehicle programme.

His experience also includes leading the formation of the FastForward industry group which is focused on high-speed point-to-point transportation.

(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)

(Courtesy: https://www.cnbctv18. com/)

Anti-Aging Gene Shown To Rewind Heart Age By Ten Years

An anti-aging gene discovered in a population of centenarians has been shown to rewind the heart’s biological age by 10 years.

The breakthrough, published in Cardiovascular Research and led by scientists at the University of Bristol and the MultiMedica Group in Italy, offers a potential target for patients with heart failure.

Associated with exceptional longevity, carriers of healthy mutant genes, like those living in blue zones of the planet, often live to 100 years or more and remain in good health.

These individuals are also less prone to cardiovascular complications.

Scientists believe the gene helps to keep their hearts young by protecting them against diseases linked to aging, such as heart failure.

In this new study, researchers demonstrate that one of these healthy mutant genes, previously proved particularly frequent in centenarians, can protect cells collected from patients with heart failure re-

quiring cardiac transplantation.

The Bristol team, led by Professor Paolo Madeddu, has found that a single administration of the mutant anti-aging gene halted the decay of heart function in middle-age mice.

Even more remarkably, when given to elderly mice, whose hearts exhibit the same alterations observed in elderly patients, the gene rewound the heart’s biological clock age by the human equivalent of more than ten years.

Professor Madeddu, Professor of Experimental Cardiovascular Medicine from Bristol Heart Institute at the University of Bristol and one of the study’s authors, explains: “The heart and blood vessel function is put at stake as we age.

However, the rate at which these harmful changes occur is different among people.

Smoking, alcohol, and sedentary life make the aging clock faster. Whereas eating well and exercising delay the heart’s aging clock.

“In addition, having good genes

inherited from parents can help to stay young and healthy.

Genes are sequences of letters that encode proteins. By chance, some of these letters can mutate.

Most of these mutations are insignificant; in a few cases, however, the mutation can make the gene function worse or better, like for the mutant anti-aging gene we have studied here on human cells and older mice.”

The three-year study was also performed in test tube human cardiac cells in Italy.

Researchers from the MultiMedica Group in Milan led by Professor Annibale Puca, administered the gene in heart cells from elderly patients with severe heart problems, including transplantation, and then compared their function with those of healthy individuals.

Monica Cattaneo, a researcher of the MultiMedica Group in Milan, Italy, and first author of the work said, (Continued On Page 07)

Anti-Aging Gene Shown To Rewind Heart Age By Ten Years

(Continued From Page 06)

“The cells of the elderly patients, in particular those that support the construction of new blood vessels, called ‘pericytes,’ were found to be less performing and more aged.

By adding the longevity gene/protein to the test tube, we observed a process of cardiac rejuvenation: the cardiac cells of elderly heart failure patients have resumed functioning properly, proving to be more efficient in building new blood vessels.”

Centenarians pass their healthy genes to their offspring. The study demonstrates for the first time that a healthy gene found in centenarians could be transferred to unrelated people to protect their hearts.

Other mutations might be found in the future with similar or even superior curative potential than the one investigated by this research.

Professor Madeddu and Professor

Annibale Puca of the MultiMedica Group believe this study may fuel a new wave of treatments inspired by the genetics of centenarians.

Professor Madeddu added: “Our findings confirm the healthy mutant gene can reverse the decline of

heart performance in older people.

We are now interested in determining if giving the protein instead of the gene can also work.

Gene therapy is widely used to

treat diseases caused by bad genes.

However, a treatment based on a protein is safer and more viable than gene therapy.

“We have received funding from the Medical Research Council to test healthy gene therapy in Progeria.

This genetic disease, also known as Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome, causes early aging damage to children’s hearts and blood vessels.

We have also been funded by the British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK to test the protein in older and diabetic mice, respectively.”

Annibale Puca, Head of the laboratory at the IRCCS MultiMedica

and Professor at the University of Salerno, added: “Gene therapy with the healthy gene in mouse models of disease has already been shown to prevent the onset of atherosclerosis, vascular aging, and diabetic complications, and to rejuvenate the immune system.

“We have a new confirmation and enlargement of the therapeutic potential of the gene/protein.

We hope to test its effectiveness soon in clinical trials on patients with heart failure.”

(Courtesy: https://medicalxpress. com/)

No Country Reflects Arising Pragmatism Better Than India: S&P Global Market Intelligence

“A world ordered by decades of globalization and geo-economics has of late become a world oriented around geopolitics. To meet the crosscutting challenges defining the years ahead, a new pragmatism will emerge. Perhaps no country reflects that arising pragmatism better than India,” the report said.

India is projected to become the third-largest contributor to global real gross domestic product growth over the next decade, behind only China and the US, according to a new S&P Global Market Intelligence research titled “A Pragmatic World (Re)order”.

“A world ordered by decades of globalization and geo-economics has of late become a world oriented around geopolitics. To meet the crosscutting challenges defining the years ahead, a new pragmatism will emerge. Perhaps no country reflects that arising pragmatism better than India,” the report said.

Lindsay Newman, Head of Geopolitical Thought Leadership at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said: “The decade ahead will be defined by a set of crosscutting and border-

less challenges -- climate change, making the energy transition, technological guardrails and cybersecurity, pandemics and inequities. We expect countries to meet these challenges with a new pragmatism:

rilateral Security Dialogue framework and Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity on multidimensional initiatives, it also maintains economic and trade ties elsewhere, including with strategic

far its largest supplier of imported goods, the report said. Even more indicative of current geopolitical dynamics is India’s positioning during the RussiaUkraine war.

According to S&P Global’s Commodities at Sea database, as European markets imposed sanctions and sought to disengage from Russian energy resources, India became the second-largest recipient of Russian crude oil in 2022.

cooperating across spheres of mutual interest and concurrently contesting across spheres of national interest --economic policy, industrial strategy, critical technologies and resources, supply chain security.”

Even as India partners with the US (and others) under the Quad-

competitors of the US.

According to S&P Global’s Global Trade Analytics Suite, in late 2022, China remained India’s third-largest export market by value, and by

The previous year, India did not represent a top 10 export market for Russian crude oil.

This form of expedient engagement, of collaborating on commu-

nal challenges while competing in the national interest, is not only an India story.

Turkey, a U.S ally through NATO, is also a purchaser of the Russianmanufactured S-400 missile system.

South Africa is a member of the Just Energy Transition Partnership with the EU, UK and US, which aims to support the country’s decarbonization efforts, even as it remained a leading exporter of coal in 2022, including to its BRICS partners India and (less so) China.

As the demand for oil defined geopolitics in the 20th century, the scramble to secure minerals critical for the energy transition is likely to shape geopolitics in the 21st century, leaving countries working side by side to contain a changing climate while leveraging protectionism and localization, the report said. (Courtesy: https://thenewsmen.co.in/)

Lack Of Financial Literacy Cost 15% Of Adults At Least $10,000

In 2022

When it comes to money matters, what you don’t know can hurt you.

A report from the National Financial Educators Council shows that 38% of individuals in a recent survey said their lack of financial literacy cost them at least $500 in 2022, including 15% who said it set them back by $10,000 or more. That’s up from about 11% in 2021.

The majority (68%) of respondents said poor financial literacy cost them somewhere from zero to $499.

The average cost was $1,819, according to the survey, which was conducted Oct. 23 through Dec. 5 among about 3,000 adults across the country. That 2022 figure is nearly $500 higher than the average $1,389 in 2021.

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“A lot of people come out of [school] without having been taught financial literacy in any detail,” said certified financial planner Denis Poljak, a partner with the Poljak Group Wealth Management at Steward Partners in Shreveport, Louisiana.

“They end up just … learning from their mistakes,” Poljak said.

U.S. adults have big gaps in their financial knowledge

Financial literacy — which generally means understanding money topics ranging from income, budgeting, saving and investing, as well as how interest rates work and why credit scores matter — is lacking among many U.S. adults, studies show.

For instance, adults correctly answered, on average, 50% of the 28 basic money questions in the 2022 TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance index, the sixth annual barometer of financial literacy. Worse, the share of respondents (23%) who couldn’t correctly answer more than seven is higher than its been than any other year in the survey. (Continued On Page 21)

Biden Admin Releases First Plan To Support Asian American, Pacific Islander And Native Hawaiian Communities

(continued From PAge 01)

More than two dozen officials and community leaders gathered to formally unveil a strategy that was spearheaded by the White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. It includes action plans from 32 different federal agencies. Among the administration’s priorities are combating anti-Asian hate and discrimination, the disaggregation of data across the communities and better language access, according to the report.

“For too long, systemic barriers have put the American Dream out of reach for many Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, and racism and xenophobia against AA and NHPI communities continued to threaten the safety and dignity of countless families,” said Xavier Becerra, secretary of Health and Human Services, under which the White House initiative is housed.

“But now we have a choice. We can choose to stand for equity, justice and opportunity and not the status quo.”

Several high-profile people, including the actor Daniel Dae Kim, who sits on the Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, gave remarks recognizing the strategy.

The plan is the result of President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14031, signed in May 2021, which not only established the White House initiative, but also directed

the development of a government-wide interagency plan to “advance equity, justice, and opportunity” for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders communities. In the strategy, the agencies laid out some of their previous work pertaining to the communities, in addition to new goals.

The Justice Department, for example, had previously issued guidance in tandem with HHS, raising awareness around Covid-19-related hate crimes.

The agency also helped develop in-language resources to address hate crimes and incidents, according to the strategy. The agency similarly committed to ensuring those with limited English proficiency could access its programs and communicate public safety concerns.

And when it comes to data collection, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy committed to a revision of federal data standards around race and ethnicity, which could lead to the collection of “higher quality” disaggregated data and a better understanding of the communities.

“Our communities have experienced pain and trauma with lasting mental health impacts, including depression and anxiety.

But history has also taught us how resilient and strong our communities are,” Kim said.

“I’ve never seen our community come together the way it has over the past few years. And I’ve been so heartened by the support of this administration that has gone beyond the usual political rhetoric.” (Courtesy: https://www. nbcnews.com/)

5 Personalized Ways To Celebrate Galentine’s Day

Are you ready to celebrate Galentine’s Day on February 13? Originating from a 2010 episode of the popular TV show, “Parks and Recreation,” Galentine’s Day celebrates some of the most important relationships in our lives: our girlfriends. Over a decade later, the now-official holiday has skyrocketed in popularity.

Here are tips on celebrating your gal pals with personalized touches.

1. Batch of Baked Goods. Food is the way to most anyone’s heart, especially when its homemade. Test a new recipe of your gal pal’s favorite dessert; or decorate cakes, cookies or cupcakes with icing in her favorite colors. No matter what you make, the extra effort will show just how much you care.

2. Creative Customized Cards. Everyone knows that gals love a sappy, pull-on-your-heartstrings letter or card. And you can up your cardsending game with a more personalized approach that resonates with the recipient. With the contin-

ued evolution of digital greetings, SmashUps and Creatacard from American Greetings have made it easier than ever to create a card just as special and unique as your individual friendships.

Specific friendship-themed ecards include creative options like talking animals or tacos, messages from celebrities, animated folded digital greetings celebrating your “girl gang” and more! They’re sure to entertain, surprise and delight your friends.

SmashUps are smile-inducing, shareable videos that can be highly personalized in a variety of ways, including adding their name or a message into the audio and graphics.

With Creatacard, users can replicate the best parts of the offline card-sending experience without the hassle of printing, addressing and postage. In a few easy steps, you can create, personalize and sign your favorite digital cards, then send them to your girlfriends in their preferred way of receiv-

ing messages, such as email, text, through a messaging app or social post. Or, print your card from home if the moment calls for that. For that little extra something special, you can even add a gift card.

3. BYOB – Build Your Own Brunch. Brunch is all about spending time together, catching up on life, laughing until your stomach hurts…and of course the plentiful food and drinks. Hosting your Galentine’s Day brunch at home can make for a more cost-effective and customized experience—no reservations required! Make it interesting (and easier for the host) by asking each gal to bring her favorite brunch dish or drink to share, or by prepping and cooking dishes together, all while toasting with a festive mimosa, Bloody Mary or unique mocktail.

4. Mixology with a Twist. If your group of gals is more of an evening crowd, request that each friend brings her own batch of cocktails or mocktails and a snack that follow a given theme. Whether it’s

an era (Roaring 20s), a hit movie, a popular show, or one that draws from personal experience, like the “represent your ex” trend on TikTok, the more festive the theme, the more fun the party. You can even tie it all together with an activity, like spa treatments or game night, or dress the part as well.

5. Get Posh with Polaroids. Whatever you choose for you Galentine’s get-together, be sure to capture the moment. And while we love selfies and Insta pics, Polaroids can make cute and creative keepsakes. Whether you’re at home or out on the town, the charming aesthetic and instant gratification of seeing your photo masterpiece is bound to make everyone smile.

While Galentine’s Day started with fictional characters eating waffles at brunch, there are so many personal, intimate ways to celebrate the very real friendships in your life and create long-lasting memories. (StatePoint)

A New Party Registers Amidst Looming 2023 National Assembly Election

Bhutan Tendrel Party (BTP) after formally submitting its charter, name and symbol, membership list and other documents required by the law and being approved by the Election Commission of Bhutan (ECB) on January 11, the party is registered as the 6th political parties in the country to be contesting for 2023 National Assembly Election.

Dasho Pema Chewang, President of BTP, comes with more than 30 years of experience in the civil service. He has a Masters in Development Economics.

As a young civil servant, in the early 90s he volunteered as a militia officer and served in the rank of Lieutenant with the Royal Bhutan Army.

He led the Eastern Covid-19 taskforce during the pandemic, containing the pandemic, ensuring smooth service delivery, supply of

essentials and emergency movement of people during lockdowns.

Dasho Pema Chewang founded the BTP believing in his age and experience to work further closely with the people to change the existing system and institutional errors that have long existed in the public, health, and social services, facilities and other sectors .

The party says their name “Tendrel” heralds a beginning of a new era for Bhutan as BTP will remain in the centre working towards a prosperous Bhutan

Their tagline being “Your Voice, Your Hope” the party says that their tagline will emphasize on freedom of the people and their responsibilities to ensure social justice by putting themselves at the centre of development.

BTP hopes to explore more areas of opportunities for the people and to unleash their true potential and

make them competent in the global market in tune with His Majesty’s vision.

For the selection of party members, BTP within themselves has a committee where they choose people not just based on their qualifications but their moral integrity and their ability to identify problems on a grassroots level and their diligence. The party claims its concept of being a “clean party” which makes them different from the other parties.

In the stint of 15 years since the constitutional democracy was launched in 2008, the country has witnessed emergence of several political parties which some of them even closed the offices over the years and their closure are attributed to sizable population and demography of the country.

“Despite already having five political parties, BTP was registered as

the sixth party in the country, this would offer more choices to the people,” said the president.

He also added that all the political parties are products and the people should choose the best one which would benefit them and the country.

With increasing numbers of parties, it would also induce healthy competition among them leading to the quality of the parties which will benefit the people with better choices.

The party is represented with an elephant as party logo or symbol which symbolizes strength, character and stability. The party claims that currently they have almost 250 registered supporters.

The party has not unveiled all its 47 candidates however, the party informed that they plan to slowly reveal their candidates over the

time when the candidates visit their respective constituencies for the familiarization tour. BTP also plans to reveal some of their candidates during the national level coordinator meeting.

However, Bhutan Tendrel Party unveiled first of their 7 candidates in Punakha on January 14 after its registration as political party with Election Commission of Bhutan on January 11.

The candidates are from the following constituencies: Bartsham_ Shongphu, Lingmukha_Toedwang, Bongo_Chhapcha, Tashichhoeling, North Thimphu, Sombaykha and Khatoed_Laya.

Meanwhile, Druk Thuendrel Tshogpa also declared three more candidates today, representing from Gasa, Pemagatshel and Wangduephodrang.

What Are The Benefits Of Walking?

(Continued From Page 01)

1. Burn calories

Walking can help you burn calories. Burning calories can help you maintain or lose weight.

Your actual calorie burn will depend on several factors, including:

walking speed distance covered terrain (you’ll burn more calories walking uphill than you’ll burn on a flat surface) your weight

You can determine your actual calorie burn through a calorie calculator. For a general estimate, you can also refer to this chart.

2. Strengthen the heart

Walking at least 30 minutesTrusted Source a day, five days a week can reduce your risk for coronary heart disease by about 19 percentTrusted Source. And your risk may reduce even more when you increase the duration or distance you walk per day.

3. Can help lower your blood sugar

Taking a short walk after eating may help lower your blood sugar.

A small study found that taking a 15-minute walk three times a day (after breakfast, lunch, and dinner) improved blood sugar levels more than taking a 45-minute walk at another point during the day.

More research is needed to confirm these findings, though.

Consider making a post-meal walk a regular part of your routine. It can also help you fit exercise in throughout the day.

4. Eases joint pain

Walking can help protect the joints, including your knees and hips. That’s because it helps lubricate and strengthen the muscles that support the joints.

Walking may also provide benefits

for people living with arthritis, such as reducing pain. And walking 5 to 6 miles a week may also help prevent arthritis.

5. Boosts immune function

Walking may reduce your risk for developing a cold or the flu.

One study tracked 1,000 adults during flu season. Those who walked at a moderate pace for 30 to 45 minutes a day had 43 percent fewer sick days and fewer upper respiratory tract infections overall.

Their symptoms were also lessened if they did get sick. That was compared to adults in the study who were sedentary.

Try to get in a daily walk to experience these benefits. If you live in a cold climate, you can try to walk on a treadmill or around an indoor mall.

6. Boost your energy

Going for a walk when you’re tired may be a more effective energy boost than grabbing a cup of coffee.

Walking increases oxygen flow through the body. It can also increase levels of cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. Those are the hormones that help elevate energy levels.

7. Improve your mood

Walking can help your mental health. StudiesTrusted Source show it can help reduce anxiety, depression, and a negative mood. It can also boost self-esteem and reduce symptoms of social withdrawal.

To experience these benefits, aim for 30 minutes of brisk walking or other moderate intensity exercise three days a week. You can also break it up into three 10-minute walks.

8. Extend your life

Walking at a faster pace could extend your life. Researchers found that walking at an average pace compared to a slow pace resulted in a 20 percent reduced risk of overall death.

But walking at a brisk or fast pace (at least 4 miles per hour) reduced the risk by 24 percent.

The study looked at the association of walking at a faster pace with factors like overall causes of death, cardiovascular disease, and death from cancer.

9. Tone your legs

Walking can strengthen the muscles in your legs. To build up more strength, walk in a hilly area or on a treadmill with an incline. Or find routes with stairs.

vest or light so cars can see you.

Wear sturdy shoes with good heel and arch support.

Wear loose, comfortable clothing. Drink plenty of water before and after your walk to stay hydrated.

Wear sunscreen to prevent sunburn, even on cloudy days.

How to get started

To get started walking, all you’ll need is a pair of sturdy walking shoes.

Also trade off walking with other cross-training activities like cycling or jogging. You can also perform resistance exercises like squats, lunges, and leg curls to further tone and strengthen your leg muscles.

10. Creative thinking

Walking may help clear your head and help you think creatively.

A study that included four experiments compared people trying to think of new ideas while they were walking or sitting.

Researchers found participants did better while walking, particularly while walking outdoors.

The researchers concluded that walking opens up a free flow of ideas and is a simple way to increase creativity and get physical activity at the same time.

Try to initiate a walking meeting with your colleagues the next time you’re stuck on a problem at work.

Tips for staying safe while walking

To ensure your safety while walking, follow these tips:

Walk in areas designated for pedestrians. Look for well-lit areas if possible.

If you walk in the evening or early morning hours, wear a reflective

Choose a walking route near your home. Or look for a scenic place to walk in your area, such as a trail or on the beach.

You can also recruit a friend or family member to walk with you and hold you accountable. Alternatively, you can add walking into your daily routine.

Here are some ideas:

If you commute, get off your bus or train one stop early and walk the rest of the way to work.

Park farther away from your office than usual and walk to and from your car.

Consider walking instead of driving when you run errands. You can complete your tasks and fit in exercise at the same time.

The takeaway

Walking can fulfill daily recommended exercise for people of all ages and fitness levels.

Consider getting a pedometer or other fitness tracker to keep track of your daily steps. Here are some to check out.

Choose a walking route and daily step goal that’s appropriate for your age and fitness level.

Warm and cool down before walking to avoid injury. Always speak to your doctor before starting a new fitness routine.

(Courtesy: https://www.healthline. com/)

Ayurveda

(Continued

From Page 01)

But treatments may be geared toward specific health problems. In the United States, it’s considered a form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

Ayurveda and Your Life Energy

Everything in the universe –dead or alive –is connected. If your mind, body, and spirit are in harmony with the universe, you have good health.

When something disrupts this balance, you get sick. Among the things that can upset this balance are genetic or birth defects, injuries, climate and seasonal change, age, and your emotions.

Those who practice Ayurveda believe every person is made of five basic elements found in the universe: space, air, fire, water, and earth.

These combine in the human body to form three life forces or energies, called doshas. They control how your body works.

They are Vata dosha (space and air); Pitta dosha (fire and water); and Kapha dosha (water and earth).

Everyone inherits a unique mix of the three doshas. But one is usually stronger than the others.

Each one controls a different body function. It’s believed that your chances of getting sick -- and the health issues you develop -- are linked to the balance of your doshas

Vata Dosha

Those who practice Ayurveda believe this is the most powerful of

all three doshas. It controls very basic body functions, like how cells divide.

It also controls your mind, breathing, blood flow, heart function, and

Sri Lanka Expects Tourism Revival

You can disrupt it by sleeping during the day, eating too many sweet foods, and eating or drinking things that contain too much salt or water.

If it’s your main life energy, prac-

Sri Lanka hopes to double tourist arrivals to 1.5 million next year and bring in $5 billion in vital foreign exchange, the tourism minister

rolling back night-time power cuts in tourism zones, as the overall electricity situation improves from 13-hour power cuts earlier in the

ability to get rid of waste through your intestines.

Things that can disrupt it include eating again too soon after a meal, fear, grief, and staying up too late.

If vata dosha is your main life force, you’re thought to be more likely to develop conditions like anxiety, asthma, heart disease, skin problems, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Pitta Dosha

This energy controls your digestion, metabolism (how well you break down foods), and certain hormones that are linked to your appetite.

Things that can disrupt it are eating sour or spicy foods and spending too much time in the sun.

If it’s your main life force, you’re thought to be more likely to develop conditions like Crohn’s disease, heart disease, high blood pressure, and infections.

Kapha Dosha

This life force controls muscle growth, body strength and stability, weight, and your immune system.

titioners believe you may develop asthma and other breathing disorders, cancer, diabetes, nausea after eating, and obesity.

Ayurvedic Treatment

An Ayurvedic practitioner will create a treatment plan specifically designed for you.

They’ll take into account your unique physical and emotional makeup, your primary life force, and the balance between all three of these elements.

The goal of treatment is to cleanse your body of undigested food, which can stay in your body and lead to illness.

The cleansing process—called “panchakarma”— is designed to reduce your symptoms and restore harmony and balance.

To achieve this, an Ayurvedic practitioner might rely on blood purification, massage, medical oils, herbs, and enemas or laxatives. (Courtesy: https://www.webmd. com/)

said on Thursday, as the island nation seeks ways to tackle its worst financial crisis in seven decades.

The country of 22 million people, famed for its beaches, ancient temples and aromatic tea, has been struggling for months to pay for essential imports of fuel, food and medicine because of a lack of foreign exchange.

“Tourism can play a major role in Sri Lanka’s recovery and this is what we are aiming for next year,” Tourism Minister Harin Fernando told reporters in Colombo.

Sri Lanka would likely end this calendar year with 750,000 tourist arrivals and about $2 billion in earnings, Fernando said, adding his ministry would be targeting high end tourists and introducing new products in 2023.

The Indian Ocean island is also

year, Power Minister Kanchana Wijesekera said on Wednesday.

Months of protests, political turmoil, power cuts and fuel queues dampened tourism in Sri Lanka just as it was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-2022.

An estimated $4 billion loss in tourism revenue over the past two years also contributed to tipping Sri Lanka into the financial crisis, according to former ministers.

Sri Lanka signed a preliminary agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $2.9 bailout in early September but has to get prior financing assurances from private and bilateral creditors, including India, China and Japan before disbursements can begin.

(Courtesy: https://bdnews24.com)

Call

What Is The Association Between Covid-19, Cardiovascular Disease, And Mortality?

CVD symptoms have been reported in a considerable proportion of individuals with COVID-19, who exhibited cardiac structural and functional abnormalities such as myocardial injury and increased levels of cardiac tissue troponin.

Improving the understanding of cardiovascular outcomes of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections could aid in identifying highrisk patients and providing tailored therapy to improve the standard of care.

In the present study, researchers investigated cardiac presentation among COVID-19 patients and those with long COVID.

The team identified SARS-CoV2-positive from the United Kingdom (UK) Biobank database between March 16, 2020, and November 30, 2020, and followed them up for 18.0 months, through August 31, 2021.

Based on sex and age, COVID-19 cases were matched with ≤10 individuals lacking SARS-CoV-2 infections (controls) of a historical group between March 16, 2018, and November 30, 2018, and a contemporary group between March 16, 2020, and November 30, 2020.

The team adjusted individual characteristics using propensity scorematching and MMWS (marginal mean weighting through stratification) for sex, age, body mass index, ethnicity, smoking, hypertension, diabetes, Charlson comorbidity index, hypertension, multiple deprivation index, and previous history of COVID-19 outcomes.

Cox proportional hazard regression modeling was performed to assess the association between the development of cardiovascular disease and deaths within 3.0 weeks of diagnosis (during the acute period) and the period following that of acute COVID-19, and hazard ratios (HR) were calculated.

COVID-19 severity was based on data on critical care admissions and the type of healthcare support ex-

tended to each SARS-CoV-2-positive individual. Data of the participants, provided by the United Kingdom biobank, were linked to primary care (general practitioner level) data via England’s phoenix partnership and Egton medical data system through August 31, 2021.

In addition, data on hospitalized inpatients provided by the NHS (National Health Service) digital public health of Scotland and mortality records were linked to the data provided by the National Health Service of Wales, Scotland, and England, of the study participants.

COVID-19 diagnoses were based on positive PCR (polymerase chain reaction) analysis reports or the international classification of diseases, 10th revision (ICD-10) hospitalization codes U07.1 and U07.2 for COVID-19-associated diagnosis. Subgroup analyses were performed to evaluate cardiovascular and mortality risks based on COVID-19 severity and the sex of individuals.

During the acute period, in comparison to 75,790 contemporary controls and 75,774 historical controls, the cohort of 7,584 SARSCoV-2-positive individuals demonstrated a significantly greater risk of cardiovascular disease (HR 4.30; HR 5.00) and any-cause deaths (HR: 81; HR: 68), respectively, in the short-term.

During the period following the acute SARS-CoV-2 infection period, the cohort of 7, 139 COVID-19 patients exhibited a significantly greater risk of long-term cardiovascular disease (HR 1.40; HR 1.30) and any-cause deaths (HR: 5.00; HR 4.50) in comparison to 71,296 contemporary controls and 71,314 historical controls, respectively.

During the acute period, the incidence rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection-associated deaths was 700. Of note, the risk of DVT (deep vein thrombosis), AF (atrial fibrillation), and stroke was significantly greater in comparison to individuals belonging to the contemporary

group (stroke: 10; AF: 8.0; DVT: 22) and the historical group (stroke: 5.0; AF: 6.0; DVT: 11). During the period following that of acute COVID-19, the incidence rate for SARS-CoV-2 infection-associated deaths was 12. Of note, unlike during the acute period, post-acute COVID-19 patients were at a significantly greater risk of pericarditis compared to contemporary control individuals (HR 4.6) and historical control individuals (HR 4.50).

In the subgroup analyses, severe COVID-19 patients showed a greater likelihood of developing major cardiovascular diseases and of any-cause death in comparison to non-severe COVID-19 cases, and the male sex was related to a greater risk of cardiovascular disease development in the acute COVID-19 period; however, during the post-acute period, the cardiovascular risks were largely comparable among males and females.

Probable mechanisms to explain long COVID cardiac pathophysiology include direct effects of SARSCoV-2 and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor binding since the receptor, critical for SARS-CoV-2 entry, is present in cardiac tissues, including cardiac vasculature.

SARS-CoV-2 might infect myocardial cells and other cardiac cells directly, underpinned by previously published histopathological findings of marked elevation in the infiltration of macrophages in myocardial tissues.

Overall, the study findings showed that SARS-CoV-2 infections and long COVID increase the risks of cardiovascular disease development and death in the short- and long-term.

The findings indicated that regular monitoring of cardiovascular disease-associated clinical presentation till ≤1.0-year post-COVID-19 recovery could benefit SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals, particularly males with severe COVID-19. (Courtesy: https://www. news-medical.net/)

1% Of U.S. Population, Indian-Americans Pay 6% Of Taxes: Congressman

(Continued From Page 01) maiden speech on the House floor, Rich McCormick, 54, said that one of the five doctors in his community is from India and described IndianAmericans as great patriots, up-

cause they’re the most productive or family oriented and the best of what represents American citizens,” McCormick said. Georgia has a significant number of IndianAmericans.

standing citizens and good friends.

“Although they make up about 1% of American society, they pay about six per cent of the taxes. They’re amongst the top producers, and they do not cause problems.

They follow the laws,” McCormick said in a short speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

A physician by profession, Republican McCormick represents the 6th Congressional District of Georgia, which mainly constitutes the northern suburbs of Atlanta. He defeated Bob Christian of the Democratic Party in the Nov. 8, 2022 midterm elections.

“They (Indian-Americans) don’t have the problems that we see other people have when they come to the emergency room for overdoses and depression anxiety be-

“I rise to this occasion to appreciate my constituents, especially those who have immigrated from India.

We have a very large portion of my community that’s made up of almost 100,000 people who have immigrated directly from India,” he said. “One out of every five doctors in my community are from India. They represent some of the best citizens we have in America, we should make sure that we streamline the immigration process for those who come here to obey the the law and pay their taxes and be the most creative and productive in society,” McCormick said.

“God bless my Indian constituents and I look forward to meeting with the (Indian) Ambassador,” McCormick said in his brief remarks. (Courtesy: https://www.bqprime. com/)

Microsoft Fires 10,000 Employees, CEO Satya Nadella Says Company Focusing On Future Opportunities

Microsoft has officially confirmed layoffs. The tech company said it is cutting 10,000 jobs, which is almost around 5 per cent of its total

layoffs in India.

Announcing the layoffs, CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella wrote in

Microsoft informed it has already notified employees about the layoffs. Before Microsoft, Big Tech companies like Amazon, Twitter,

hire in key strategic areas,” Nadella said in the same email to employees. Nadella also emphasized the importance of building a “new computer platform” using advances in artificial intelligence.

“We’re also seeing organizations in every industry and geography exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one,” he further wrote.

Microsoft CEO in the email noted that the company will extend full support to impacted employees.

“We will treat our people with dignity and respect, and act transparently. These decisions are difficult, but necessary.

benefits including “above-market severance pay, continuing healthcare coverage for six months, continued vesting of stock awards for six months, career transition services, and 60 days’ notice prior to termination, regardless of whether such notice is legally required.”

Though Nadella didn’t specify benefits applicable for employees impacted with employees in India, he did mention that “benefits for employees outside the U.S. will align with the employment laws in each country.” “We are taking a $1.2 billion charge in Q2 related to severance costs, changes to our hardware portfolio, and the cost of lease consolidation as we create higher density across our workspaces,” the Microsoft CEO added.

workforce. The company is laying off thousands of employees as a result of “macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities.”

The tech giant hasn’t confirmed the number of employees impacted by

‘Deeply Sorry’:

Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Friday said that he is “deeply sorry” for reducing the workforce by approximately 12,000 roles, and takes “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here”.

In an email to employees, Pichai said the company has already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected by the layoffs.

“In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices,” he added. The roles the company is eliminating cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels, and regions.

In the US, Google will pay employees during the full notification period (minimum 60 days) and also offer a severance package starting at 16 weeks salary, plus two weeks

an email to employees that “less than 5 percent of our total employee base, with some notifications happening today.” In a recent regulatory filing,

Meta and many others have laid off a large chunk of their workforce in the last few months.

“While we are eliminating roles in some areas, we will continue to

They are especially difficult because they impact people and people’s lives - our colleagues and friends. We are committed to ensuring all those whose roles are eliminated have our full support during these transitions,” he wrote in the mail.

Nadella also clarified that impacted employees will receive a variety of

Besides announcing layoffs, Nadella said that Microsoft “will continue to invest in strategic areas for our future, meaning we are allocating both our capital and talent to areas of secular growth and long-term competitiveness for the company, while divesting in other areas.” (Courtesy: https://www.indiatoday.in/)

Sundar Pichai After Announcing 12K Job Cuts At Alphabet

for every additional year at Google, and accelerate at least 16 weeks of GSU (Google stock) vesting.

“While this transition won’t be easy, we’re going to support employees as they look for their next opportunity,” said Pichai. Google will pay 2022 bonuses and remaining vacation time to those impacted.

“We’ll be offering 6 months of healthcare, job placement services, and immigration support for those affected. Outside the US, we’ll support employees in line with local practices,” saod Pichai.

The Google CEO said that these are important moments to “sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities”.

The layoffs at Google’s parent

company were expected amid the deepening funding winter that has hit companies of all sizes in the global slowdown and recession fears.

Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said earlier this week that the company will be “making changes that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3 (third quarter)”.

More than 1,600 tech employees are being laid off per day on an average in 2023 globally, including in India, and the sacking episodes have gained speed amid global economic meltdown and recession fears. Amazon announced to lay off 18,000 employees globally, including nearly 1,000 in India. (Courtesy: https://www.dailypioneer. com/)

Why Some People Never Become Infected With COVID-19

With the ongoing surge of COVID-19 infections in China, many are shocked by its scale and worried about a potential new wave hitting the rest of the world.

How can you better protect yourself if another wave does come to your region? Here, we take a close look into the factors impacting our antiviral immunity.

Some People Never Get Infected by Viruses

Looking at pandemics throughout history, one cannot ignore the impacts of the Black Death, which swept through Europe and reduced the population in some areas by more than half. Yet some people never got sick.

Cholera almost wiped out Europe, but some people stayed uninfected even though they ate the same contaminated food and drank the same cholera-tainted water.

Some doctors and nurses dedicated their lives to the leprous tribes, and yet they never had leprosy in their lives.

Two human challenge trials were done during the 1918 Spanish flu by two independent groups of doctors in Boston and San Francisco with 62 and 50 healthy volunteers, respectively.

Regardless of how many aggressive means were taken to try to infect people (even dropping mucus or bodily fluids from flu patients into the healthy volunteers’ eyes, noses, or throats), none of the participants became infected.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a SARS-CoV-2 human challenge study published in Nature in 2022 found that out of the 36 healthy volunteers inoculated with the SARSCoV-2 virus intranasally, only a little over half became infected with mild symptoms, and the other half were uninfected. Two were excluded from the per-protocol analysis, so the experiment went on with 34 participants.

This experiment goes to show that some people just don’t get infected.

Viruses ‘See’ People With Weakened Immunity

While people may look similar on the outside, we look very different in the microscopic world of viruses. Our immune systems look different, too.

The immune system we were both with is sophisticatedly designed, layer upon layer, and acts like an army protecting us against various viruses and bacteria 24/7.

Viruses need suitable cells to replicate.

If a person’s cells are in a good antiviral state, there is no soil for the virus to spread its roots, so to speak, so that person won’t become infected.

For instance, mucosal epithelial cells in our nose can automatically secrete a substance that puts this cell into an antiviral state.

This substance is called interferon. It interferes with the replication of the virus, breaking down its protein, enzymes, and RNA so that the virus cannot survive in these cells.

Going deeper, there are a variety of immune cells, such as natural killer (NK) cells, macrophages, and lymphocytes. Each cell is like a special soldier possessing special skills to fight viruses.

Even if you become infected, if your immune system is strong, you will only be infected with mild disease, and you can quickly recover.

Scientific Reports of Nature proves that at the early stage of infection, the more interferon is present, the lower the incidence of developing severe symptoms of COVID.

On the contrary, if a person has poor antiviral immunity, the virus will more likely to go wild in his or her body.

Two States of Immunity

There are generally two distinct states of immunity.

One is the antiviral state. It is characterized by strong antiviral immunity of the immune cells that can secrete interferons to eradicate viruses. The other is the systemic chronic inflammation state. This state makes people susceptible to viral infections.

A study published in Nature Medicine summarizes the causes of chronic inflammation and its consequences.

Having Purpose Promotes Antiviral Immunity

When we talk about strengthening immunity, people often think about improving nutrition or developing antibodies.

Those factors are important; boosting nutrition and adding exercise to one’s regimen will certainly help. At the same time, there are other internal ways to enhance our ability to fight viruses.

Everyone has emotions, thoughts, characteristics, and different mental states. People think that our thoughts are intangible, but they do

A study was conducted by the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in the Departments of Behavioral Sciences and Neurological Sciences at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago on the important determinant of health outcomes and mortality in community-dwelling elderly persons in the United States.

in fact have material applications. Science has proved this point already.

In psychology, there are two sorts of concepts regarding happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic refers to the happiness gained through pleasurable experience, and eudaimonic refers to happiness that comes from achieving purpose and meaning. A 2013 study published in a top-ranked journal discovered that people who were inclined to pursue justice and noble goals (eudaimonic) had higher interferon gene expression, higher ability to produce antibodies, and significantly lower expression of chronic inflammatory genes.

Furthermore, according to a Harvard University and University of California, Berkeley, study published in Current Opinion in Psychology in 2015 (pdf), people with honest hearts are less prone to viral infections. This is because the cortisol responsiveness of liars is significantly higher than that of truthtellers. And the higher the cortisol responsiveness, the easier it is for the stress hormone levels in the body to rise.

Corticosteroids and cortisol have an inhibitory effect on immune cells and suppress the body’s ability to fight viruses. Therefore, dishonest behavior will lead to a decline in antiviral ability.

Additionally, research has found that people who seek purpose in life have stronger natural killer cell function and immunity.

Researchers found that having a stronger sense of purpose in life effectively prevents lethal events. A person with a high score on the purpose in life measure had a 43 percent reduced risk of mortality compared to a person with a low score. Thus, developing and refining people’s sense of purpose can protect health and potentially save lives.

The scientific evidence supports that our thoughts, mindsets, and moral standards can affect the genes and functions of immune cells, affect hormone levels, and impact holistic antiviral immunity.

As a whole, our thoughts can contribute to whether or not we are infected in an epidemic, or whether or not we will be seriously ill after we are infected.

In traditional cultures, people who are kind, altruistic, honest, and who have a calm heart and humble attitude are normally healthier. Now we understand that it is because they produce high levels of interferon, strong NK cell function, and strong antiviral immunity. Such people are less susceptible to viral infections.

People with these qualities usually have a stable mind and better mental health and do not easily become anxious, depressed, or have negative and intense emotions.

Throughout the recent COVID surge in China, there have been an unusual number of high-profile Chinese officials who have died of suspected COVID-19 infections. As high-ranking officials in China, they enjoy state-of-the-art medical care and have adequately supplied first-class food, nutrients, and dietary supplements. So why have they been dying during this wave? (Courtesy: https://www.theepochtimes.com/)

Techies Taking To Social Media To Announce Layoffs

There was a time when most would be wary of disclosing they have been laid off over fears that people would interpret it as a reflection of their incompetence.

But no longer. Many laid off by tech companies and startups in recent times have taken it in their stride, and are announcing it on social media so that they can get help in finding new jobs.

There’s also wider recognition that the layoffs are not the result of incompetence, but excessive hiring post-Covid.

Shubham Sahu, an IIT Kharagpur graduate who joined Goldman Sachs right after college, was laid off six months after joining the company.

“At the beginning of 2023, I was also impacted by the layoffs at Goldman Sachs just after my 23rd birthday. Wow this is truly a different way to start a year,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post.

Harsh, who was laid off from Amazon, wrote on LinkedIn that he hadn’t wanted to start 2023 like this.

‘Layoffs are painful, but no more a doomsday scenario’

He said although his stay at Amazon was

short, he was grateful for the opportunity he got to learn new skills and grow as a software engineer.

IIT-Kanpur alumnus Samyak Jain, who was affected by the Amazon layoffs, wrote that it was disheartening that people were being laid off without any performance considerations.

Many are reaching out to college alumni and professional networks to find work. An IITian who works in a tech firm told TOI on condition of anonymity that layoffs in his company were only because they needed to reduce the headcount. “Our manager said salary was a consideration to some extent on deciding who to lay off,” he said.

Amazon is said to be laying off 1,000 employees in India, Goldman Sachs about 500. TOI reported on Tuesday that Indian startups are estimated to have laid off almost 20,000 employees in the past few months.

S Sadagopan, founder director of IIIT-Bangalore, said the layoffs are unfortunate and painful, but it’s not a “doomsd scenario”. “And it’s not viewed as somebody’s incompetence.

Its social acceptability is reasonably okay, and there’s hope that the next opportunity will be a good one,” he said.

(Courtesy: https://timesofindia.indiatimes. com/)

No Change In Covid Entry Rules Despite Raging Chinese Wave

BY Mirudhula Thambiah

Covid-19 related guidelines on tourists entering Sri Lanka would remain unchanged for the time being, despite a rapidly spreading wave of the virus in China, one of Sri Lanka’s largest tourism markets.

Speaking to The Daily Morning yesterday (22), Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) Chairman Priantha Fernando said that the Covid-19 guidelines would remain the same as those issued by the Ministry of Health.

“There was a discussion last week among officials of the Ministry of Health and the tourism industry. It was decided that the guidelines would remain unchanged,” he said.

He noted that the Ministry of Health had indicated that there was no reason to be alarmed regarding the spread of the new Covid variants at present, and that it is monitoring the situation closely and would release updated instructions as the need arises.

Although there were initial decisions made to impose new guidelines on 17 January, it was later postponed to 20 January.

Health Ministry Communications Director and Deputy Director General of Health Services Dr. Heman-

tha Herath noted that the public needs to be regularly advised to wear facemasks and, although not mandatory, that there are certain actions that need to be followed. He further said that any new actions with regard to the above should only be initiated once costs

and benefits are determined.

Earlier, Dr. Herath said that though

there will not be any special arrangements made to handle Chinese tourists, health officials would continue with their surveillance of Covid-19 cases by subjecting symptomatic patients to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.

“Symptomatic Chinese travellers will be tested for Covid-19,” he said.

The Health Ministry, on 7 December, relaxed Covid-19 restrictions that were in force for inbound travellers. Tourists were thus no longer required to produce a vaccination certificate and PCR test on arrival.

(Courtesy: https://www. themorning.lk/)

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is a temple complex in Cambodia and is the largest religious monument in the world, on a site measuring 162.6 hectares (1,626,000 m2; 402 acres).

Originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire by King Suryavarman II during the 12th century, it was gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the century; as such, it is also described as a “Hindu-Buddhist” temple.

Angkor Wat was built at the behest of the Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura, present-day Angkor), the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple.

It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology: within a moat more than 5 kilometres (3 mi) long and an outer wall 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi) long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next.

At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. Unlike most Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west; scholars are divided as to the significance of this. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs, and for the numerous devatas adorning its walls.

The modern name Angkor Wat, alternatively Nokor Wat, means “Temple City” or “City of Temples” in Khmer. Angkor meaning “city” or “capital city”, is a vernacular form of the word nokor, which comes from the Sanskrit/ Pali word nagara.Wat is the word for “temple grounds”, also derived from Sanskrit/Pali vāṭa meaning “enclosure”.

The original name of the temple was Vrah Viṣṇuloka or Parama Viṣṇuloka meaning “the sacred dwelling of Vishnu.”. The literal

translation of the name Ankur Vat in Sanskrit is “Temple of Blossoms” or “Temple of Flower Buds”

Since the 1990s, Angkor Wat has become a major tourist destination. In 1993, there were only 7,650

and Vietnamese forces put a few bullet holes in a basrelief.

Far more damage was done after the wars, by art thieves working out of Thailand, which, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, claimed

of unknown purpose on its south side and wooden fortifications.

The findings also include evidence of low-density residential occupation in the region, with a road grid, ponds, and mounds.

ment of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC), in association with representatives from the Royal Government and APSARA, organised seminars to discuss the concept of “cultural tourism”.

Wanting to avoid commercial and mass tourism, the seminars emphasised the importance of providing high-quality accommodation and services for the Cambodian government to benefit economically, while also incorporating the richness of Cambodian culture.

In 2001, this incentive resulted in the concept of the “Angkor Tourist City” which would be developed about traditional Khmer architecture, contain leisure and tourist facilities, and provide luxurious hotels capable of accommodating large numbers of tourists.

visitors to the site; by 2004, government figures show that 561,000 foreign visitors had arrived in Siem Reap province that year, approximately 50% of all foreign tourists in Cambodia.

The number reached over a million in 2007, and over two million by 2012. Most visited Angkor Wat, which received over two million foreign tourists in 2013, and 2.6 million by 2018.

The site was managed by the private SOKIMEX group between 1990 and 2016, which rented it from the Cambodian government. The influx of tourists has so far caused relatively little damage, other than some graffiti; ropes and wooden steps have been introduced to protect the bas-reliefs and floors, respectively.

Restoration work was interrupted by the Cambodian Civil War and Khmer Rouge control of the country during the 1970s and 1980s, but relatively little damage was done during this period. Camping Khmer Rouge forces used whatever wood remained in the building structures for firewood, and a shoot-out between Khmer Rouge

almost every head that could be lopped off the structures, including reconstructions.

The temple is a powerful symbol of Cambodia and is a source of great national pride that has factored into Cambodia’s diplomatic relations with France, the United States, and its neighbour Thailand. A depiction of Angkor Wat has been a part of Cambodian national flags since the introduction of the first version circa 1863.

From a larger historical and even transcultural perspective, however, the temple of Angkor Wat did not become a symbol of national pride sui generis but had been inscribed into a larger politico-cultural process of French-colonial heritage production in which the original temple site was presented in French colonial and universal exhibitions in Paris and Marseille between 1889 and 1937.

In December 2015, it was announced that a research team from University of Sydney had found a previously unseen ensemble of buried towers built and demolished during the construction of Angkor Wat, as well as a massive structure

These indicate that the temple precinct, bounded by a moat and wall, may not have been used exclusively by the priestly elite, as was previously thought. The team used LiDAR, ground-penetrating radar and targeted excavation to map Angkor Wat.

According to a myth, the construction of Angkor Wat was ordered by Indra to serve as a palace for his son Precha Ket Mealea.

According to the 13th-century Chinese traveller Zhou Daguan, some believed that the temple was constructed in a single night by a divine architect.

Tourism has also provided some additional funds for maintenance—as of 2000 approximately 28% of ticket revenues across the whole Angkor site was spent on the temples—although most work is carried out by teams sponsored by foreign governments rather than by the Cambodian authorities.

Since Angkor Wat has seen significant growth in tourism throughout the years, UNESCO and its International Co-ordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Develop-

The prospect of developing such large tourist accommodations has encountered concerns from both APSARA and the ICC, claiming that previous tourism developments in the area have neglected construction regulations and that more of these projects have the potential to damage landscape features.

Also, the large scale of these projects have begun to threaten the quality of the nearby town’s water, sewage, and electricity systems.

It has been noted that such high frequency of tourism and growing demand for quality accommodations in the area, such as the development of a large highway, has had a direct effect on the underground water table, subsequently straining the structural stability of the temples at Angkor Wat.

Locals of Siem Reap have also voiced concern that the charm and atmosphere of their town have been compromised to entertain tourism. Since this local atmosphere is the key component to projects like Angkor Tourist City, the local officials continue to discuss how to successfully incorporate future tourism without sacrificing local values and culture.

One Type Of Physical Activity Protects The Brain More Than Others

What if you could look at all the things you do daily — walking from room to room, preparing a presentation at your desk, running up and down stairs to deliver folded laundry or taking a jog around the block — and know which ones will best help or hurt your brain?

A new study attempted to answer that question by strapping activity monitors to the thighs of nearly 4,500 people in the United Kingdom and tracking their 24-hour movements for seven days. Researchers then examined how participants’ behavior affected their short-term memory, problem-solving and processing skills.

Here’s the good news: People who spent “even small amounts of time in more vigorous activities — as little as 6 to 9 minutes — compared

to sitting, sleeping or gentle activities had higher cognition scores,” said study author John Mitchell, a Medical Research Council doc-

toral training student at the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health at University College London, in an email.

Kids Corner

Moderate physical activity is typically defined as brisk walking or bicycling or running up and down stairs.

Vigorous movement, such as aerobic dancing, jogging, running, swimming and biking up a hill, will boost your heart rate and breathing.

The study, published Monday in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, found doing just under 10 minutes of moderate to vigorous exertion each day improved study participants’ working memory but had its biggest impact on executive processes such as planning and organization.

The cognitive improvement was modest, but as additional time was spent doing the more energetic workout the benefits grew, Mitchell said.

“Given we don’t monitor participants’ cognition over many years, this may be simply that those individuals who move more tend to have higher cognition on average,” he said.

“However, yes, it could also imply that even minimal changes to our daily lives can have downstream consequences for our cognition.”

Steven Malin, an associate professor in the department of kinesiology and health at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told CNN the study provides new insight in how activity interacts with sedentary behavior as well as sleep.

“Understanding the interaction of sleep and various physical activities is often not examined,” said Malin, who was not involved in the new study.

While the study had some limitations, including a lack of knowledge about the health of the partic-

ipants, the findings illustrate how “the accumulation of movement patterns in a day to a week to a month is just as, if not more important, than just getting outside for a single session of exercise,” he said.

A decline in cognition

There was bad news as well: Spending more time sleeping, sitting or engaged only in mild movement was linked to a negative impact on the brain.

The study found cognition declined 1% to 2% after replacing an equivalent portion of moderate to vigorous physical activity with eight minutes of sedentary behavior, six minutes of light intensity or seven minutes of sleep.

“In most cases we showed that as little as 7 to 10 minutes less MVPA (moderate to vigorous physical activity) was detrimental,” Mitchell said. That change is only an association, not a cause and effect, due to the observational methods of the study, Mitchell stressed.

In addition, the study’s findings on sleep can’t be taken at face value, he said. Good quality sleep is critical for the brain to operate at peak performance.“The evidence on the importance of sleep for cognitive performance is strong,” Mitchell said, “yet there are two major caveats. First, over-sleeping can be linked to poorer cognitive performance.

“Secondly, sleep quality may be even more important than duration. Our accelerometer devices can estimate how long people slept for, but cannot tell us how well they slept.” Additional studies need to be done to verify these findings and understand the role of each type of activity.

However, Mitchell said, the study “highlights how even very modest differences in people’s daily movement — less than 10 minutes — is linked to quite real changes in our cognitive health.”

(Courtesy:https://edition.cnn. com/)

Tripledemic: How Viruses May Outcompete Each Other

THREE YEARS into the pandemic, Covid-19 is still going strong, causing wave after wave as case numbers soar, subside, then ascend again. But this past autumn saw something new — or rather, something old: the return of the flu.

Plus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) — a virus that makes few headlines in normal years — ignited in its own surge, creating a “tripledemic.”

The surges in these old foes were particularly striking because flu and RSV all but disappeared during the first two winters of the pandemic. Even more surprising, one particular version of the flu may have gone extinct during the early Covid pandemic.

The World Health Organization’s surveillance program has not definitively detected the B/Yamagata flu strain since March 2020. “I don’t think anyone is going to stick their neck out and say it’s gone just yet,” says Richard Webby, Ph.D., a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

But, he adds, “we hope it got squeezed out.” Such an extinction would be a super rare event, Webby says.

But then, the past few years have been highly unusual times for human-virus relations, and lockdowns and masks went a long way toward preventing flu and RSV from infiltrating human nostrils. Still, Webby thinks another factor may have kept them at bay while Covid raged. It’s called viral interference, and it simply means that the presence of one virus can block another.

Viral interference can happen in individual cells in the lab, and in individual animals and people that are exposed to multiple viruses — but it can also play out across entire populations if enough people get one virus for it to hinder the flourishing of others at scale. This results in waves of infections by individual viruses that take turns to dominate. “Looking back over the past couple of years, I’m pretty

confident in saying that Covid can certainly block flu and RSV,” Webby says.

It wouldn’t be the first time that scientists have observed such patterns. Back in 2009, for example, the virus to fear was swine flu, which had jumped from pigs to

new viral proteins or the means to escape that cell to infect others. “Think of it as a race between two viruses,” Webby says.

But the best-understood method of interference concerns a defensive molecule called interferon that’s made by cells of all animals with

the same person from an entirely different virus, such as norovirus. But the situation will vary depending on the viruses involved, the amount of interferon produced, and other factors.

“Most of the viruses themselves have ways to neutralize the interferon system,” says Ganes Sen, Ph.D., a virologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, who wrote about the interactions between interferon and viruses for the Annual Review of Virology in 2015. “It’s a tug of war.”

Scientists study that back-andforth in animals and other systems in the lab. For example, Dr. Ellen Foxman, M.D., Ph.D., an immunologist at Yale School of Medicine, investigates viral interactions in lab-grown tissues made from real human airway cells.

flu makes people more susceptible to a secondary bacterial infection. In the ongoing pandemic, it’s still hard to say how much of a role, if any, interference played in shutting down RSV and flu in populations around the globe. During the first Covid wave in 2020,

Foxman thinks that not enough people had Covid for it to be interfering with other viruses on a grand scale. (RSV underwent an unusual summer peak in 2021 as people eased up on masking and other precautions.)

But by the second Covid winter, in 2021-22, Webby thinks he sees population-level evidence for interference. Influenza was starting to pick up in the fall, he says, but then the omicron variant of Covid burst onto the scene.

people in the spring of that year. It looked poised to ramp up as autumn arrived — but suddenly, in some parts of Europe, it stagnated.

The rhinovirus, responsible for the common cold and likely spread by children returning to school, took center stage for a series of weeks before swine flu recaptured dominance. That flu strain then delayed the typical autumn rise of RSV by as much as two and a half months.

RUNNING INTERFERENCE

There are a number of ways that interference can happen in the body. One occurs when two viruses use the same molecule to gain entry into host cells. If virus A gets there first and grabs onto all those molecular doorknobs, then virus B will be out of luck.

Another kind of interference might happen if two viruses compete for the same resources inside the cell, such as the machinery to make

backbones (and possibly some invertebrates too). Indeed, viral interference is the reason interferon got its name, to begin with. When a cell senses a virus, any virus, it starts making interferon. And that, in turn, activates a slew of defensive genes.

Some of the products of those genes work inside the cell or at its boundaries, where they prevent additional viruses from entering and block viruses already present from replicating or exiting the cell.

Cells secrete interferon into their surroundings, warning other cells to put up their guard. The result of all this: If a second virus then comes along, cells have their defenses already activated, and they may be able to shut it out.

This “beware” message can spread throughout the body. So, in theory, getting a respiratory virus such as the rhinovirus could activate defenses in, say, the gut, protecting

In one experiment, she studied swine flu and a typical representative of the rhinovirus family. When the researchers infected the human tissue first with the rhinovirus, and then with swine flu, interferon prevented the flu from getting a foothold. In similar studies, she found that rhinovirus infection also interfered with subsequent SARSCoV-2 infection.

It’s iffy to extrapolate from tissues in the lab to people or populations, but Foxman thinks the studies reflect biological truth.

“It’s probable that if you get a rhinovirus infection, that’s going to make you relatively resistant to another virus for some period of time,” she says. Foxman speculates that the protective effect probably lasts days or weeks.

But don’t go counting on a cold granting you temporary immunity from other viruses. Interference isn’t guaranteed: It’s certainly possible to catch more than one virus at the same time. And interferon isn’t always beneficial, either; sometimes, it can make people more susceptible to infection, not less.

A well-known example is that the

Flu rates fell — even though people were back at work and school and traveling for the holidays. The coronavirus had a big advantage that season, he says because many people still lacked immunity to it. It doesn’t mean Covid will always edge out influenza in the future.

In the third Covid winter now underway in the Northern Hemisphere, conditions are different yet again. Many people now have immunity to Covid, from a recent bout or from vaccination, but fewer have experienced RSV or flu in recent memory.

That set the scene for flu and RSV to stage a massive dual comeback, hitting early and hard.

Any potential interference during the 2022-23 tripledemic winter will become more obvious once epidemiologists can look back on the season and see if each virus took its turn. Already, there are indicators that the fall surges of RSV and flu might have peaked, while Covid is on the upswing after the winter holidays. But there are still several cold months to come, providing ample opportunity for any of the trio to rise again.

(Courtesy: https://www.inverse. com/)

US Proposes Massive Hike In H-1B, Other Visas’ Fees

US grants around 85,000 visas under the H-1B programme to foreigners to work at US companies to make good the shortage of locally available hands in speciality occupations.

The US government has proposed a steep hike in fees for immigration and naturalisation benefits, with the heftiest jumps slated for employment-based categories such as H-1B temporary work visas for speciality occupations, whose principal beneficiaries have been Indian, and intra-company transfers.

The fee for pre-registration for H-1B visas are proposed to go up by a massive 2,050 percent from $10 currently to $215, 70 percent for H-1 category that includes H-1B from $460 to $780, 201 percent for L visa for intra-company transfers to the US, from $460 to $1,385, and 129 percent for O category for workers with extraordinary skills.

EB-5 vias for investors and entrepreneurs – also called the millionaires’ visa – will also become expensive, going up by 204 percent to $11,160 from $3,675 currently.

Some charges are proposed to re-

main the same, specially premium processing of all kinds of visas – at $2,500 – and some are slated to be reduced.

The US grants around 85,000 visas under the H-1B programme to foreigners to work at US companies to make good the shortage of locally available hands in speciality occupations.

Around 75 percent of these visas go to Indians, employed either

its operations, which, it said, come mostly from these fees – at 98 percent – and not from congressional appropriation.

“The proposed fee rule is the result of a comprehensive fee review at USCIS. That review determined that the agency’s current fees, which have remained unchanged since 2016, fall far short of recovering the full cost of agency operations,” the agency said justifying the hike.

The agency’s 2020 revenue shrank by 40 percent due to the Covid-19 epidemic, the agency said, adding:

Illegal Immigration From India To US Doubled In 2021-22

The death of an Indian man who fell trying to climb a border wall into Texas has put a spotlight on illegal immigration from India to the US which has shown a sudden surge along the border with Mexico in the last two months.

US Border Patrol caught 4,297 Indians crossing the Mexican border in October and November, compared to 1,426 during those two months last year and 16,236 in all of the fiscal year that ended in September, according to American government data.

ties have registered 2.77 million encounters with people of different nationalities illegally in the US during the fiscal year that ended in September, up 41 per cent from the 1.96 million in the previous period.

In 2019-20, there were only 646,822 encounters. The Biden administration that has been struggling to cope with the surge of people trying to enter the US illegally at the southern border received a reprieve from . the Supreme Court, even though it glibly opposed it.

from US schools and colleges or from India.

The proposed hikes were published in the Federal Register – the US version of the Indian Gazette – by the Department of Homeland Security, which is the mother agency of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services tasked with processing immigration and naturalization requests.

The proposed rule will be open to comments and challenges for the next 60 days, at the conclusion of which period they will either be notified at the proposed or modified rates.

The USCIS chalked up the proposed hike to the need for funds for

“The combination of depleted cash reserves, a temporary hiring freeze, and workforce attrition has reduced the agency’s capacity to timely adjudicate cases, particularly as incoming caseloads rebound to pre-pandemic levels. Increasing demand for low- or no-fee humanitarian programs has added to these fiscal challenges.”

The proposed hikes are expected to increase USCIS’s annual yield from $3.28 billion in 2022-2023 with the current rates to $5.2 billion over the same period. These rates were last revised in 2016.

In an FAQ, the USCIS defended the 2,050 percent hike in pre-registration fee for H-1B petitions. While acknowledging the hike may seem “dramatic”, it said the $10 fee was established in 2019 simply to cover a small portion of the costs of the programme, as opposed to no fee at all. (Courtesy: https://www.siasat. com/)

Overall, the number of Indians apprehended by US authorities right on the border and elsewhere has more than doubled since last year.

US authorities encountered 63,927 Indians who had entered the country illegally, during the 2021-22 fiscal year that ended in September, a 109 per cent increase from the 30,662 they found the previous fiscal year, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

In just the last two months, a total of 13,655 illegal immigrants from India were caught compared to 6,865 during those two months in 2021, the data showed. In the fiscal year 2019-20, the number of Indians illegally in the US who were apprehended by the CBP was only 19,883, according to the agency.

Indians are only a part of the phenomenon of Illegal migration to the US that has been spiralling since the election of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been tasked to stop the flow of migrants from Latin America.

Although Harris has asserted that the border is “secure”, US authori-

Biden had kept in place a rule instituted as a health measure because of the Covid-19 pandemic by his predecessor Donald Trump to return Latin Americans from most countries to Mexico when they are caught but revoked it in May under pressure from his Democratic Party’s left.

A group of Republican state officials went to court against it and the Supreme Court temporarily stayed the revocation till February, staving off an expected rush to the border. The rule known as Title 42 is not used against Indians and people from outside Latin America as Mexico will not take them back.

The illegal migration numbers are only of those caught by the CBP and several more would have successfully evaded authorities and those who entered legally but overstayed their visas making their presence in the country illegal are not included in the data.

In the 2019-20 fiscal year, the latest period for which data is available, 14,389 Indians were suspected of overstaying, up from 13,203 the previous year, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). (Continued On Page 21)

Lack Of Financial Literacy Cost 15% Of Adults At Least $10,000 In 2022

(Continued From Page 08)

The problem, say experts, is the lack of knowledge can affect everything from how much you save — whether for emergencies or the long term (i.e., retirement) — to how much debt you take on and under what terms.

Some important financial decisions can emerge before you reach adulthood or soon after.

To name just a few: deciding how to pay for college, managing a credit card or auto loan, boosting your credit score, paying taxes, and starting to save for retirement despite it being decades away.

Financial literacy is ‘a key tool in the toolkit’

Advocates of financial literacy say the teaching needs to start before

teens reach their high school graduation.

As of last year, 24 states require

cation.

“There’s good data showing people make better decisions when

For example, Morrison said, you’ll likely have a better credit score and be less likely to default on a loan if you have some personal finance know-how.

A 2015 study from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s Investor Education Foundation bears that out: Three years after personal finance education was implemented in Georgia, Texas and Idaho, all three states saw severe delinquency rates go down and credit scores rise.

personal finance coursework by grade 12, according to the nonprofit Council for Economic Edu-

they have financial literacy,” said Nan Morrison, CEE president and CEO.

Additionally, in 2021, individuals who scored above the median on a seven-question financial literacy quiz were

more likely to make ends meet, according to the FINRA foundation’s latest financial-capability study. Specifically, they spent less than their income (53% versus 35%) and had three months’ worth of emergency funds at higher levels (65% versus 42%).

They also were more likely to have calculated their retirement savings needs (52% versus 29%) and to have opened a retirement account (70% versus 43%), according to the study.

“To me, the bottom line is that to live the life you want to live, you need to understand how to manage money,” Morrison said.

“It’s not the only important thing, but it’s a key tool in the toolkit.”

(Courtesy: https://www.cnbc. com/)

Illegal Immigration From India To US Doubled In 2021-22

(Continued From Page 20)

On the northern border with Canada, where an Indian family of four were found frozen to death about a dozen metres from the US border in January, 84 Indians have been apprehended in the last two months.

During the US fiscal year ending September 237 Indians had been caught there, compared to 42 in the previous 12 months and 129 in the period before that.

Most of those caught by US authorities are released, usually with a notice to appear before an immigration judge, but with little or no follow-up and few are detained.

A breakdown by nationality of how those caught by the CBP were dealt with was not available.

According to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a database maintained by Syracuse University, 34,230 asylum cases of Indians

were pending before Immigration courts last month.

People can ask for asylum on various grounds including fear of religious or political persecution, domestic violence and threats due to

In the fiscal year 2019-20, the latest period for which data is available from the Homeland Security Department, 1,337 Indians were granted asylum, down from the 2,256 who received it the previous year.

ment. A breakdown of reasons for granting asylum was not available. TRAC provides a breakdown by languages spoken by those whose asylum cases are pending and Punjabi-speakers, who could be from India or Pakistan or elsewhere, numbered 21,961.

There were 6,770 Hindispeakers, 6,315 Bengalispeakers, who could be from India or Bangladesh or elsewhere, and 376 Tamil-speakers, who could be from India, Sri Lanka or other countries.

In addition, TRAC listed 222 Haryanvi-speakers, 166 Telugu-speakers and 32 Marathi-speakers.

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2,312 Indians were deported from the US during 2019-20, and 1,616 in 2018-19.

officials are single adults. They constituted 56,739 of those caught in 2021-22 and 11,780 in the last two months.

Those who came in as families were 6,577 in the last fiscal year and 1,736 in the last two months.

Brijkumar Yadav fell to his death on Dec 14 while holding his threeyear-old son and climbing the border wall built by the Trump administration between San Diego and Mexico.

His wife also fell, but on the US side and survived and the child was reunited with her, according to reports.

On the border with Canada, Jagdishkumar Patel, 39, his wife Vaishaliben, 37, and their daughter Vihangi, 11, and son Dharmik, 3, were found frozen to death on January 19.

sexual orientation but will have to prove it to a judge.

In 2017-18, 1,302 Indians received asylum, according to the Depart-

The deaths at the border of Indians involved families, but most of the Indians apprehended by US

(Courtesy: https://economictimes. indiatimes.com/)

THEME: SUPER BOWL

ACROSS

1. COVID tester

5. Pep rally syllable

8. To overlay with thin gold coating

12. Sky bear

13. Abundant

14. Worrier’s worry?

15. Fishing spot

16. Blackhearted

17. Full of coral

18. *2023 Super Bowl stadium sponsor

20. Research facil.

21. Egg cell

22. King Charles to Prince Harry

23. Thief’s target

26. *2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show star

30. Mozart’s “L’____ del Cairo”

31. Bob Marley’s music

34. Yarn spinner

35. “The Poky Little ____”

37. Skedaddle

38. 18-wheelers

39. “Guilty,” e.g.

40. Fabric inset

42. One of the sibs

43. *Super Bowl advertiser’s purchase

45. Anatolian language

47. Decay

48. “There it is,” à Paris

50. “Hold on!”

52. *Home of the Ravens, for both Super Bowl appearances

56. Cuckoo for these puffs!

57. Curved molding

58. Medicinal plant

59. Court orders, e.g.

60. Sonny & Cher and Abbott &Costello

61. Talk like a drunk

62. Actor Danson and character Lasso

63. “Owner of a Lonely Heart” band

64. *Star of the most-watched Super Bowl Halftime Show

DOWN

1. Paddleboarding acronym

2. Court order

3. Between ports

4. Hungarian composer Bela ______

5. *Either one of the opposing Super Bowl teams

6. Flambé

7. Position of leadership

8. *2023 Super Bowl AZ location

9. Frosts, as a cake

10. Hit the road

11. Like certain humor

13. Disprove

14. Dickens’s Heep

19. Each and all

22. One of a set of dice

23. Father, colloquially

24. Round openings

25. Pickled garnish

26. *Last year’s Super Bowl winners

27. Nimbus, pl.

28. Nigerian money

29. Torcher’s crime

32. Elmer’s, e.g.

33. Found at the pump

36. *Team with most Super Bowl appearances

38. Signing tool at the cash register

40. Greenwich-related acronym

41. Superior ones

44. Itsy-bitsy bits

46. Patterned table linen

48. Lacking clarity

49. Bread spreads

50. Donned

51. As opposed to base in chemistry

52. Snatchers’ quest

53. Cantina pot

54. *Overwhelming Super Bowl defeat

A Joint Program To Be Implemented Between India And Sri Lanka

• Favourable response from India on debt restructuring

During a meeting held between President Ranil Wickremesinghe and India’s Minister of External Affairs Dr S. Jaishankar, it was agreed upon to implement a joint program between Sri Lanka and India.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe warmly welcomed the Indian External Affairs Minister at the Presidential Secretariat this morning (20) where the duo engaged in cordial discussions.

Prior to the official meeting, President Wickremesinghe hosted the visiting Indian External Affairs Minister Dr Jaishankar for breakfast and tea at his official residence at Paget Road, Colombo.

In addition, in the official meeting held between the President and Indian Foreign Minister Dr S. Jaishankar, many political, economic and social issues as well as investment matters between the two countries were discussed at length.

During this discussion, special

attention was paid to the debt-restructuring program in Sri Lanka which had received a positive response from the Indian government.

The Indian External Affairs Minister recalled that in 1991, during the tenure of former Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, India had to face an economic crisis sim-

the situation Sri Lanka is currently facing and said that the Indian government will provide all possible support to solve the current economic problems faced by Sri Lanka.

The bilateral agreement related to raising the limit of the High Impact Community Development Project

of Sri Lanka and the Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka HE Gopal Baglay signed on behalf of India.

This agreement guides many community development projects in Sri Lanka with the support of the Government of India.

This agreement related to community development projects in Sri Lanka was signed in May 2005. Its project limit was Rs. 300 million, which will now be doubled to Rs. 600 million by the agreement signed today.

support of the Indian Government, was also done virtually by the President and the Indian External Affairs Minister.

In this project of 60,000 houses, 50,000 houses have been completed. The third phase of the project of 400 houses for the people of the upcountry estate sector is currently underway and over 3,300 houses built under it have already been completed and are ready to be handed over to the beneficiaries.

ilar to what Sri Lanka is currently facing. He added that the Indian Government overcame the crisis by pledging the government’s gold reserves.

Therefore, Dr Jaishankar said that India has a good understanding of

(HICDP) implemented in Sri Lanka with the support of the Government of India was also signed during the meeting.

The Secretary to the Ministry of Finance, Mr Mahinda Siriwardena, signed the agreement on behalf

Meanwhile, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Sri Lanka in 2017, the foundation stone was laid for the construction of an Academy for Kandyan dancing as a gift given to Sri Lanka by the Indian Government and its people. The Indian Foreign Minister also virtually declared open the academy, which was built near the historical Dalada Maligawa in Kandy.

The handing over of 300 completed houses in Galle, Kandy and Nuwara Eliya – (100 houses each) under the housing project implemented in Sri Lanka with the

January 2023 Sudoku Answer

The handing over of houses built in Anuradhapura and Badulla districts under the “Model Village Housing Program” implemented with the support of the Government of India for low-income families in Sri Lanka, were also symbolically handed over to the beneficiaries.

Senior Advisor to the President on National Security and Presidential Chief of Staff Mr Sagala Ratnayake, President’s Secretary Mr Saman Ekanayake and other officials and a special Indian delegation attended the discussion.

President’s Media Division (PMD) (Courtesy: https://www.news.lk/)

Mr. Yudhveer Bagga Mr Venkata Rao Tirupathi

Ms Kumari R.Samineni Ms Ketika Tyagi

Construction Contract Approved For Waterloo Greenway’s Second Phase, The Confluence

(Continued From Page 01)

“We are thrilled to announce the selection of our construction partner, Jay‐Reese Contractors, who will help us bring the next phase of Waterloo Greenway to life and build upon their legacy of authentically-Austin projects,” said Waterloo Greenway CEO Jesús Aguirre. “The Confluence is an incredible example of how we can celebrate and preserve our green spaces in the middle of one of the busiest and most rapidly growing areas of downtown Austin. This next phase is centered around nature and helping connect our community to many amazing historic and cultural downtown destinations.”

The Confluence, located at the southernmost point of the Waterloo Greenway, sits at the cultural epicenter of Palm Park, Rainey Street Historic District, Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center, Austin Convention Center, Brush Square Park, and Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail. “The LGC Board is excited to get to this next milestone for Waterloo Greenway,” said Waller Creek LGC President Rodney Gonzales. “As with Waterloo Park, we anticipate that, once completed, The Confluence will deliver upon the vision for a connected park system and creek restoration.”

The work includes reconstruction of the creek channel to stabilize severely eroded slopes, construction of creek features that create habitats for wildlife, native plants and trees along the riparian corridor, a biofiltration pond, inline stormwater treatment devices, new bridges and trails. The lush new landscape will include nearly 1,550 trees, 200,000 mature plants, and 10 acres of seed mixes to improve downtown air quality, improve creek health, mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce the urban heat island effect. The Confluence is also pursuing certification under the Sustainable SITES Initiative (SITES), which recognizes sustainable land development projects that increase resiliency using nature-based solutions. Park-goers can enjoy a one-of-a-kind immersive experi-

ence within the 13-acre park, including the deepest and most ecologically diverse section of Waller Creek.

“This project continues to move forward the Waller Creek District vision of a healthier downtown habitat and watershed.” Austin City Council Resolution 20200827-077 gave the Waller Creek Local Government Corporation the authority to approve City construction contracts within the Waterloo Greenway. The over $75 million project phase has received a combination of City and federal funding and private philanthropy. City of Austin funding, totaling over $50 million, comes from multiple departments, including Watershed Protection, Parks and Recreation, Development Services, Austin Energy, Convention Center, and Austin Water. Additionally, the project has received approximately $9 million in federal funding from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Waterloo Greenway Conservancy is seeking donations from the Austin community to reach its $13 million commitment to help fund construction of The Confluence. The Conservancy has a total of $38 million in support left to raise to complete design and construction of the full park project. Construction on The Confluence will begin in Spring 2023 with an estimated duration of two to three years, representing the next step toward completing the entire 1.5-mile park system that will connect Waterloo Greenway from 15th Street to Lady Bird Lake.

Jay-Reese Contractors have worked on notable Austin projects including the Pfluger Bridge, Boardwalk Trail at Lady Bird Lake, and 2nd Street Bridge. For background information about the Waller Creek District and Tunnel, visit bit.ly/3J3ZNcf. For more information on Waterloo Greenway and sign up to receive project updates on The Confluence, visit waterloogreenway.org/future.

Indian-American Takes Oath As Texas County Judge

(Continued From Page 01)

She ran for re-election and won with 123,116 votes, beating Republican Andrew Dornburg.

“I’m grateful for every supporter, prayer war-

Judge Mathew grew up in Philadelphia and attended Penn State University before attending Delaware Law School for her Juris Doctorate.

A few of her academic achievements include -- in January 2021, she founded the Juvenile

rior, and voter during this journey,” Mathew said in a Facebook (NASDAQ:META) post after winning the election.

“However, it is bittersweet this morning. Many qualified and outstanding candidates and colleagues that I know made huge sacrifices to run and some have not obtained the office they were seeking while others are still awaiting results.

Thank you for standing up to accept the call of public service and your work and time is always remembered and honored,” she wrote.

Mathew won her 2018 electoral bid for the bench against Republican Tricia Krenek by an impressive 8.24 per cent margin, making history as the first Indian-American woman elected to the bench in the US.

A practicing attorney for 15 years with experience in mass tort, civil litigation, probate, and criminal matters, Mathew also heads the first Juvenile Intervention and Mental Health Court.

Intervention and Mental Health Court to assist young people with mental health issues.

Fort Bend has a large population of Indians, including Malayalis.

According to Mathews, 28.6 per cent of Fort Bend County are foreign born and of those 51 per cent are Asian-American.

The state of Texas had the most IndianAmericans running for judicial positions in the November 8, 2022, midterms.

Apart from Mathew, two other Democrats -- Judge K.P. George and Sonia Rash -- won their re-election bids from Fort Bend County.

A month prior to the election, the three had her campaign signs stolen, defaced and vandalised.

Sharing photos of her vandalised campaign signs on social media, Mathew wrote: “What happened to integrity, sportsmanship, being fair... This just makes me work even harder.”

(Courtesy: https://in.investing.com/)

A Scam Called Film Reviews

Mumbai, Jan 8 (IANS): Film critics too can have a history. Really? Of course they do and it is a long one. Not surprisingly, it is a chequered history with mostly grey shades.

Once upon a time, this was entirely a print media domain. There were some popular critics who people followed and believed but not enough to spend on a film.

The genuine critics left their mark on the reviews they wrote. The print media does not enjoy the privilege alone anymore.

Now we have online critics and FM radio critics. Initially, these online critics wrote for an established portal, but, soon,some realised that they need not belong or be answerable to an editor.

The Net gives one all kinds of freedom. Some decided to start their own blogs or video reviews.

Thanks to social media, these online critics started gaining mileage, so much so that a few of them have a following of more than the circulation of some print media publications!

There are a few online, independent film critics who enjoy hits in some lakhs. This one who goes by the name Deeksha Sharma has as many as 34.4 lakh followers; KRK, the Dubai-based film producer-turned-online film critic, has 11.7 lakh followers, while the other two, Palat Tera Dhayn and Suraj Kumar, both have over 7.2 lakh followers. Don’t think any official media critic enjoys this kind of numbers, not even the so called trade experts.

Now, that is what is called ‘The times are a-changing’.

Film reviews have always been about a quid pro quo. Critics used to be a small community. The broadsheets never cared about films except for obits of major stars, but, usually, they all carried a film review every Sunday following a film’s release.

By that time, the people had decided if the film was a hit or a flop and in some cases, a film fared so poorly that it was withdrawn from the cinemas even before the review appeared!

The critics were a privileged lot. The filmmakers trusted them enough to hold special screenings for them a couple of days before the film’s theatrical release; the practice still continues with most makers.

Once the press screening was done, it was left to a film’s PR man to do the rest, such as getting a preferred headline and picture to be used. Then an envelope, or lifafa, would reach each critic, who did the needful in ex-

Gulzar film would get high ratings, while a Manmohan Desai film would be panned, merit and commercial success notwithstanding.

Logically as well as practically, a critic

we came out of press screenings, a Hindi media critic would explain everything to him, from what the title meant to what the film was all about! No wonder, sometimes, I enjoyed his conversation with the Hindi critic more than the film I had watched.

Then there was a Delhibased critic. For a ‘5 Star’ review the price was Rs 5 lakh for some actors; others got only four stars for the same amount.

The final blow came when the management of publications decided to hop on to the review business. No more the critic, the marketing department called the shots.

change for the favour.

A reader mostly checked the picture and the caption. Few bothered to read a review in detail. But, for all those critics, this money never reached home. It was spent on bar hopping. Easy come, easy go. This was all hush hush.

The filmmakers have one perpetual weakness. They like to hear only good things about themselves and their films. If you do otherwise, you are an enemy for life.

Very soon, the critics as well as the media understood this and started exploiting the weakness. Not only the critics, but also the media organisations started saying what the makers liked to read. Now, it was no more a matter of passing a petty cash lifafa. Deals were struck officially.

Actually, film reviews in the media were never taken seriously. People who loved cinema always counted on word of mouth. Anybody could become a critic, but a rare few could be objective. A film review was the point of view of an individual. There were critics who judged a film by its maker’s name.

For instance, a Hrishikesh Mukherjee or a

should be able to judge a film from the audience’s point of view. Except the trade papers, no other critic had that capacity!

So what are the new film critics all about?

Simply put: Money. There is also another breed, the ones who want to see themselves being acknowledged as critics!

This kind gives all films reviews ‘5 Stars’ and brings this to the notice of the PR concerned. The PR concerned, in turn, would use them to publicise the film! These are not really critics, nor do they belong to any publication.

It is all a scam, this business of film reviewing. It always has been.

One particular critic comes to mind. A former high-level government employee, he reviewed films for a major newspaper. When

The stars a film review earned was now commensurate with the ad budgets! The corporate houses running the film industry were easily convinced. Besides, the critics were no longer reviewing a film for their readers, the people; they were doing it to please the filmmaker or the star.

Earlier, a press screening for a film would be held in a limited capacity, say, 30 to 50 seats, preview theatre, now it needs a 200-to-400seat multiplex screen, thanks to the digital media as well as to self proclaimed ‘5 Star’ critics.

Some of them literally seemed to be obsessed with the number of stars they would give a film, the rest invited to a press screening knew what was expected of them.

Looks like nobody trusted the moviegoer to judge a film, but sadly no critic ever decided for people and, among numerous others, the 1975 film ‘Sholay’ is the biggest example of this. The film was panned by all critics, but it went on to create a history. (Courtesy: https://www.daijiworld.com/)

6 Indian Films On Oscars ‘Reminder List’ Of 301 ‘Eligible Productions’

Six Indian feature films — the much-favored ‘RRR’, India’s official entry ‘The Last Film Show’ (‘Chhello Show’), the sleeper hit ‘Kantara’, ‘The Kashmir Files’, ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ and Marathi film ‘Me Vasantrao’ — are on the list of 301 movies that are eligible for the 95th Oscars.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled the list which includes presumed contenders such as ‘Elvis’, ‘The Fabelmans’ and ‘Living’.

The number of movies marks an increase from last year’s 276 films that were eligible from 2021, and down from 366 in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, reports ‘Variety’.

All these expected contenders are listed on the Academy’s annual Re-

minder List of Productions Eligible for the 95th Academy Awards, in-

Gaiety-Galaxy Makes An Exception For Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Pathaan’, 51 Years After ‘Seeta Aur Geeta’

that in the last 31 years of being in operations. They had done it last for ‘Seeta Aur Geeta’. Desai further confirmed that the advance bookings of the other shows are also amazing.

He further hopes that ‘Pathaan’ brings back the crowds to the theatres and lives up to the hopes.

Meanwhile, SRK tweeted a list of single screens in the evening and said, “Bachpan mein saari filmein single screens par hi dekhi hain. Uska apna hi maza hai. Duas, Prathna aur Prayers karta hoon… aap sabko aur mujhe kaamyaabi mile. Congratulations on your reopenings.”

He also tweeted this morning, “A big hug to all for making #Pathaan so loved.

cluding the performers eligible for consideration in the acting categories.

The highest-grossing movies of the year, including ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ are on the robust list, while critically acclaimed features such as ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’, ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ and ‘Tar’ are also in the mix.

The streamers, ‘Variety’ continues, are well-represented with Netflix’s ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ and ‘Glass Onion’, Amazon’s ‘Argentina, 1985’ and ‘Thirteen Lives’ and Apple’s ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ and ‘Emancipation’.

There’s also a good number of international features, even if they’re not their country’s official submission, such as ‘RRR’ and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Korean drama ‘Broker’.

The official Oscar nominations will be announced January 24, with the ceremony airing live on the American TV network ABC on March 12 from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

‘RRR’ will win Oscar for best film: Producer Jason Blum

Hollywood producer Jason Blum is sure that Indian filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli’s magnum opus ‘RRR’ will be feted with the Best Film honor at this year’s Oscar awards.

Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone and John Abraham starrer ‘Pathaan’ is set to hit the screens tomorrow.

Fans have been curiously waiting for this moment, especially to see SRK on-screen after more than four years.

On this ocassion, about 20 single screen theatres which had shut dur-

ing the pandemic have re-opened and are set to release this film.

Moreover, Gaiety Galaxy is set to make an exception for ‘Pathaan’ after 51 years. Here’s what it is.

As per a report in Pinkvilla, Manoj Desai, Executive Director of G7 Multiplex and Marathi Mandir Cinema, have scheduled two morning shows of the film for tomorrow.

Desai added that in Gaiety and

Galaxy there will be two extra shows of ‘Pathaan’ since Shah Rukh Khan’s fan clubs have requested the theatre. He confessed that he’s never done

Those who danced, put up cut outs, bought out halls, all fan clubs, made t shirts, prayed, helped to ease issues & made it a festival. It’s good to be in theatres, feels like home.”

Post ‘Pathaan’, SRK will be seen next in Atlee’s ‘Jawan’.

The founder of Hollywood studio Blumhouse, who has produced Oscar-winning movies such as ‘Get Out’ and horror movies such as ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘Insidious’ took to Twitter and wrote: “I’m going with RRR winning best pic. You heard it here first. Mark it down, please.”

“If I’m right, I am awarding myself my own Oscar,” he added.

Images courtesy of (Photo: Instagram) and (courtesy: Twitter)

(Couretsy: https://thesouthasiantimes.info/)

‘USA Today’ Names NTR Jr On Its List Of Best Actor Oscar Hopefuls

Tollywood star and ‘RRR’ lead actor NTR Jr has been in the global limelight after the pan-India movie’s wins at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards.

Now, in more good news for the talented actor (especially after the BAFTA snub for ‘RRR’), the website of the influential American publication ‘USA Today’ has shortlisted NTR Jr as one of the hottest contenders for a Best Actor Oscar.

The website has predicted that NTR Jr’s Komaram Bheem performance in ‘RRR’ will not go unnoticed by the Academy when it gets down to vote for the shortlists. Previously NTR Jr was also mentioned by ‘Variety’ among their unranked predictions for the 2023

Academy Awards, and now ‘USA Today’ has predicted that the Man of the Moment will be among the nominees for Best Actor.

That’s good news for the film and its maker, S.S. Rajamouli, despite his recent statement that he makes films to earn money and not just to win awards.

On the work front, NTR Jr will begin shooting for his upcoming 30th and as-yet-untitled film, now only known as NTR30, directed by Koratala Siva of ‘Janatha Garage’ fame. The film will hit the cinemas on April 5, 2024. The actor also has NTR31 on the cards which will be helmed by ‘KGF’ director Prashanth Neel. (Courtesy: https:// www.siasat.com/)

‘Pathaan’ Director Calls Deepika A Bonafide Action Star

Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone, who plays a spy in the upcoming spy-thriller film ‘Pathaan’, has been called a bonafide action star by the film’s director Siddharth Anand.

As one can see from the trailer and

with equal ease.

Talking about his liking towards femme fatale in films, Siddharth said, “There is nothing more cool or sexy than a woman wielding a powerful weapon on screen. As a film-buff, I have always loved

to present her in her most badass self – a gorgeous, gun-toting, femme fatale spy that people have never seen before!”

Recollecting a sequence from the film, the director added, “In one of the action sequences of ‘Pathaan’,

action superstar!

She steals the show in this scene and I’m sure people will cheer the loudest for her every time she does action in ‘Pathaan’.”

‘Pathaan’, which sees Shah Rukh

Khan returning to the silver screen after four years, also stars John Abraham.

The film is set to release on January 25 in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. (Courtesy: https://www.siasat. com/)

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the assets that have been released so far, the actress can be seen pulling off the action and sultry bit

women doing sick action sequences and so, when we got Deepika Padukone in ‘Pathaan’, we wanted

Deepika wields the gatling gun and you have to see the sequence to believe how legit she is as a bonafide