Voice of Asia E-paper October 5, 2018

VOICE OF ASIA 1

RAISING GRADES- POSITIVE ATTITUDE

832-573-2431

VOICE OF ASIA

FRIDAY, October In Section 2 5, 2018

The Largest Asian-American Newsweekly in Texas

l HEALTHLINE e-Medicare - Another step to strenghten Medicare!

l YOUNG LIFE HCC launches online college with 32 new full degrees

l

Serving Harris, Fort Bend and Surrounding Counties for 30 years

BUSINESS

Joyalukkas Group joins in rebuilding flood-devastated Kerala

Vol. 32 No. 39 • FRIDAY, October 5, 2018 Published Weekly from Houston 24 Pages (2 sections) 50 cents 713-774-5140 • E-mail: voiceasia@aol.com

Texas Tribune Festival highlights

Houstonians show their choice of charity at SEWA’s annual fundraising gala

Former U.S. secretary of state and U.S. senator from Massachusetts John Kerry discusses his new memoir, "Every Day is Extra" with Evan Smith at the Texas Tribune Festival on Sept. 27, 2018.

More than 300 leading figures in politics, public policy and journalism are joining thousands of Texans at The 2018 Texas Tribune Festival to discuss big-picture solutions to pressing policy issues

See highlights on Page 9 and complete report on voiceofasia.news

From left to right Guest of honor Mahindra USA CEO Mani Iyer, Sewa coordinator Nikhil Jain, Delores Jones Alief ISD, Kavita Tewary Ex.Director, Deepika Agarwal, Keynote speaker Swapnil Agarwal, Gala Chair Anita Ravat, Gitesh Desai Chapter President and Achalesh Amar Chapter Coordinator. Pictures credit: Navin Medieval and Dr Nik Nikam

S

ewa International, Houston Chapter conducted their annual fundraising gala, Help 2018,

on Sunday, September 30th at the Stafford Center. With an attendance of over 600 people, the gala was a sold out event.

The program commenced with the lighting of the lamp by youth volunteers, thus paving way for a new generation

while being rooted in rich tradition. This was followed by Continued on Page 3

Asia Society Texas launches Mahatma Gandhi Sesquicentennial - yearlong celebrations starts Oct. 2018-Oct.2019

by Manu Shah

H

OUSTON - Honorable Consul General of Bharat, Dr. Anupam Ray, giving his opening remarks at launch of yearlong (Oct 2018 to Oct 2019) Mahatma Gandhi Sesquicentennial celebrations at Asia Society.

Dandi, a coastal village of Gujarat, and a lunch counter in Nashville Tenn., were the

venues for two non-violent resistance movements that would change the course of history and influence thought leaders across the world.

These two powerful movements were the subjects in “A Force More Powerful” – a documentary written, directed and produced by award winning filmmaker Steve York.

The rich archival footage such as Gandhi’s brisk trek to Dandi against a repressive British

Medical Clinic at the Ranch Excellence in medical care 9555 Spring Green Blvd, Ste H | Katy, TX 77494

salt law in the early 1900s and the sit-ins coached by Rev. James Lawson to desegregate lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee in 1959 brilliantly captured the dignity and stoicism with which the resistors faced down their oppressors without resorting to violence.

The documentary revealed that Rev. James Lawson had Continued on Page 7

Panelists from left Mr. Anthony Hall, Steve York, Atul Kothari and moderator Dr. Carla Brailey.

Photo courtesy of Satyajit Verma

Our goal is to improve health outcomes through increased participation and active engagement of patients in their health care.

• • • •

Doctors are board-certified in internal medicine Primary Care Clinic for adults 18+ In-house labs, medical nutrition therapy and many other services We accept most private insurance plans, plus Medicare and Medicaid.

To schedule an appointment call: 281.394.0093 www.medicalclinicattheranch.com

Vijaya Dwibhashi, MD Madhavi Prasad, MD

Earn FREE- Electricity, Ask Me HOW? BUY SELL - INVEST I WILL CONTRIBUTE

832-423-6973 6117 Richmond Ave. Suite 120, Houston, TX 77057 713-785-6666 (work)

50% OF MY COMMISSION TO ALL NEW HOME BUYER’S CLOSING COSTS* *Offer not valid for resale or investment properties

ONE MONTH FREE *

Admin Fee waived when you mention this ad ($25 Value).

PRESTIGE STORAGE AT RIVERSTONE 4815 LJ Parkway, Sugar Land, TX 77479 (281) 969-5730 www.prestigestorage.com *Some restrictions apply. Offer applys to new tenants only.

OP-ED/COMMENTARY/ANALYSIS

VOICE OF ASIA 2

by James Comey

T

Publisher: Associate Publisher: Editor-in-Chief: Austin Correspondent: Marketing Director: Office Manager: Multimedia & Graphics: Data Entry:

Koshy Thomas Sherly Philip Shobana Muratee Sherine Thomas Susan Pothanikat Priyan Mathew Joey Belleza Satish Philip

Contributors: OpEd: Dr. Chandra Mittal Legal: Sharlene Sharmila Richards Mala Sharma Research: Dr. Meenakshi Bhattacharjee Health: Sudhir Mathuria

www.voiceofasia.news

Editor Online: Shobana Muratee Marketing Director: Susan Pothanikat Web Designer: Joey Belleza All rights reserved. No material herein or portions thereof may be published without the consent of the publisher. Voice of Asia assumes no liability resulting from action taken based on the information included herein. Published weekly by Free Press LLC, 8303 SW Freeway, Suite # 325, Houston, TX 77074. Tel: 713774-5140. Fax: 713-774-5143. Email for editorial submissions: voiceasia@aol.com; Email for advertising inquiries and submissions: ads@voiceofasiagroup.com.

It is the policy of Voice of Asia to publish letters to the editor which evidence a variety of viewpoints. The opinions expressed in any particular letter to the editor are not necessarily those of the management. Voice of Asia welcomes letters in reply to issues raised in letters to editor. In as much letters to the editor are not articles written or researched by members of Voice of Asia, it is not the policy of the Voice of Asia to perform any investigation or confirmation of any facts or allegations contained in letters to the editor. Moreover, Voice of Asia reserves the right to edit letters to the editor as necessary to correct errors of fact, punctuation, spelling and to comply with space constraints. Although paid advertisements may appear in Voice of Asia Group Publications in print, online, or in other electronic formats, the Voice of Asia Group does not endorse the advertised product, service, or company, nor any of the claims made by the advertisement.

— The Publisher Voice of Asia (USPS 010-215) (ISSN#10705058) is published every Friday (for a subscription rate of $50 per year) by Free Press LLC, 8303 SW Freeway, Suite # 325, Houston, TX 77074.

Tel: 713-774-5140. Fax: 713-774-5143. Periodical postage paid at Houston, Texas. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Voice of Asia, 8303 SW Freeway, Suite # 325, Houston, TX 77074.

he F.B.I. is back in the middle of it. When we were handed the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2015, the bureau’s deputy director said to me, “You know you are totally screwed, right?” He meant that, in a viciously polarized political environment, one side was sure to be furious with the outcome. Sure enough, I saw a tweet declaring me “a political hack,” although the author added, tongue in cheek: “I just can’t figure out which side.”

And those were the good old days. President Trump’s decision to order a one-week investigation into sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee, comes in a time of almost indescribable pain and anger, lies and attacks.

We live in a world where the president routinely attacks the F.B.I. because he fears its work. He calls for his enemies to be prosecuted and his friends freed. We also live in a world where a sitting federal judge channels the president by shouting attacks at the Senate committee considering his nomination and demanding to know if a respected senator has ever passed out from drinking. We live in a world where the president is an accused serial abuser of women, who was caught on tape bragging about his ability to assault women and now likens the accusations against his nominee to the many “false” accusations against him.

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

James Comey: The F.B.I. Can Do This Despite limitations and partisan attacks, the bureau can find out a lot about the Kavanaugh accusations in a week.

Although the process is deeply flawed, and apparently designed to thwart the factgathering process, the F.B.I. is up for this. It’s not as hard as Republicans hope it will be.

F.B.I. agents are experts at interviewing people and quickly dispatching leads to their colleagues around the world to follow with additional interviews. Unless limited in some way by the Trump administration, they can speak to scores of people in a few days, if necessary.

They will confront people with testimony and other accounts, testing them and pushing them in a professional way.

Agents have much better nonsense detectors than partisans, because they aren’t starting with a conclusion.

Yes, the alleged incident occurred 36 years ago. But F.B.I. agents know time has very little to do with memory. They know every married person remembers the weather on their wedding day, no matter how long ago. Significance drives

memory. They also know that little lies point to bigger lies.

They know that obvious lies by the nominee about the meaning of words in a yearbook are a flashing signal to dig deeper.

Once they start interviewing, every witness knows the consequences. It is one thing to have your lawyer submit a statement on your behalf. It is a very different thing to sit across from two F.B.I. special agents and answer their relentless questions. Of course, the bureau won’t have subpoena power, only the ability to knock on doors and ask questions. But most people will speak to them. Refusal to do so is its own kind of statement.

Agents will summarize every witness encounter in a detailed report called a 302, and then synthesize all the interviews into an executive summary for the White House. Although the F.B.I. won’t reach conclusions, their granular factual presentation will spotlight the areas of conflict and

allow decision makers to reach their own conclusions.

It is idiotic to put a shot clock on the F.B.I. But it is better to give professionals seven days to find facts than have no professional investigation at all. When the week is up, one team (and maybe both) will be angry at the F.B.I. The president will condemn the bureau for being a corrupt nest of Clinton-lovers if they turn up bad facts. Maybe Democrats will similarly condemn agents as Trumpists if they don’t.

As strange as it sounds, there is freedom in being totally screwed. Agents can just do their work. Find facts. Speak truth to power.

Despite all the lies and all the attacks, there really are people who just want to figure out what’s true. The F.B.I. is full of them James Comey is the former F.B.I. director and author of “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”

Courtesy - The New York Times - Sept. 30, 2018

Most disturbingly, we live in a world where millions of Republicans and their representatives think nearly everything in the previous paragraph is O.K. In that world, the F.B.I. is now being asked to investigate, on a seven-day clock, sexual assaults that the president says never happened, that some senators have decried as a sham cooked up to derail a Supreme Court nominee, and that other senators believe beyond all doubt were committed by the nominee.

If truth were the only goal, there would be no clock, and the investigation wouldn’t have been sought after the Senate Judiciary Committee already endorsed the nominee.

Instead, it seems that the Republican goal is to be able to say there was an investigation and it didn’t change their view, while the Democrats hope for incriminating evidence to derail the nominee.

CPA • TAX • ACCOUNTING

Call us today for

FREE

Consultation

281-856-8816

Shikha Gupta, CPA LLC ACCOUNTING SERVICES • Full service book-keeping • Financial Statements • Payroll processing & Tax Filing, (941, 944, 940, W2, 1099)

• Sales Tax Return • Business Incorporation & Formation Shikha Gupta, CPA

l

TAX SERVICES • Business Tax Returns, (1065,1120 S,1120, Sch C)

• Individual Tax Returns • Multiple State Tax Filing • IRS Representation

fax: 281-712-8931 l contact@arscpa.com l www.arscpa.com l fb.com/arscpa 410 W Grand Pkwy S, Ste 380, Katy, TX 77494

GAYATRI CONSCIOUSNESS CENTER, KATY Invites you to

DIWALI DINNER GALA SAT. NOV 3rd, 5:30 pm

EMPOWERMENT CENTER 20910 PARK ROW, KATY For more INFO. please call

SANGITA TAILOR 832 382 4300

JAYANI PARIKH 832 766 0505

Tickets : Gayatri temple, Vishala Grocers-Katy, humtumdesi.com

281-717-4895

texas.awgp.org

PROGRAMS & SERVICES AT INDIA HOUSE *INDIA HOUSE CHARITY MEDICAL CLINIC Saturday | 9:00 am - 12:30 pm

FREE TECHNOLOGY CLASSES FOR SENIORS Sunday | 11:00 am to 12:00 pm (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)

FREE FOOD DISTRIBUTION (FOR NEEDY FAMILIES) Twice a month. Tuesday, October 16th & 30th 9:00 am - 1:00 pm

*FREE LEGAL CONSULTATION Family Law | Tuesday 6 - 7 pm Immigration | 1st & 3rd Wednesday 12:30 - 2 pm

FREE YOGA CLASSES Tuesday & Thursday | 11:00 am - 12:00 pm Saturday | 10:00 am - 11:00 am

FREE LINE DANCE CLASSES Friday | 11:00 am to 12:00 pm

FREE MEDITATION CLASSES Saturday | 11:00 am - 12:00 pm FREE HINDI LANGUAGE CLASSES Saturday | 10:00 am to 11:00 am

EVENT HALL RENTALS

Banquet Halls, Conference Rooms, Class Rooms

FREE VEDANTA STUDY GROUP Saturday | 11:15 am - 12:15 pm FREE SANSKRIT LANGUAGE CLASSES Saturday | 9:00 am - 10:00 am

TABLE TENNIS Every Friday | 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm (STARTING OCTOBER 12TH) AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAM Monday to Friday 3:00 pm - 6:00 pm CRICKET- TAPED BALL Saturday Full Day SAREEN HARRIS HEALTH CLINIC Monday - Friday 8:00 am - 4:00 pm Saturday 9:00 am - 11:00 am

For more information and appointments contact: 713-929-1900 | Vipin@indiahouseinc.org | www.indiahouseinc.org | 8888 West Bellfort Ave., Houston, TX 77031

* By appointments only

20914 Park Row, Katy, TX 77449

VOICE OF ASIA 3

Section 1

Community Email: voiceasia@aol.com

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Tel: 713-774-5140

Houstonians show their choice of charity Vedanta Society of Greater Houston Durga at SEWA’s annual fundraising gala to host Puja 2018

ciety. He has been walking the talk that one should participate in volunteering activities (Karma) because it's the right Dharma to help those in need. Guest of Honor for the evening, Mani Iyer, President & CEO of Mahindra Americas, congratulated the Sewa team and drew synergy on community service efforts and for their exceptional dedication during Harvey.

Sri Preston Kulkarni, candidate for the seat in the United States House of Representatives (Texas's 22nd congressional district) was acknowledged for his work.

Continued from Front page a Lord Ganesha prayer in the form of an Odissi dance by Supradipta Datta’s students.

Gitesh Desai, President of Sewa’s Houston chapter, delivered welcome speech speaking about Sewa’s accomplishments in the past year, especially the continued efforts in disaster relief and rehabilitation in the aftermath of hurricane Harvey.

He also talked about the various services that Sewa offers to the local community including family services and Aspire tutorials.

The chief guest of the evening, Honorable Consul General Dr. Anupam Ray encouraged the audience to support the noble cause and to do good for the community. Keynote Speaker, Swapnil Agarwal, CEO of Nitya Capital & Karya Property Management shared his value of giving back to so-

The inspiring evening was made even more memorable with an explosive performance from Bollywood Shake and a graceful Chinese dance from the Dance of Asian America group.

Keynote speaker Swapnil Agarwal Pictures credit: Navin Medieval and Dr Nik Nikam

Sewa also recognized several organizations and individuals that supported Sewa exten-

by Sanchali Basu

I

t is that time of the year again - Durga Puja time!

As is the norm every year, VSGH will take pride in hosting the first Durga Puja of the season in Houston. VSGH has gone through several changes over the past year. Revered Swami Atmarupananda, an authority on the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, besides authoring several books on Vedanta and meditation, has taken over as the spiritual head of VSGH since last December.

sively during the year and presented them with mementos.

Additionally, Achalesh Amar, Chapter Coordinator for Sewa International Houston, was conferred with “Sewa Sadhak” award for his yeoman contribution in rebuilding Rosharon, post-Hurricane Harvey. The Emcee for the evening was Abby Olivia and the vote of thanks was delivered by Sewa Houston Chapter Co-coordinator Nikhil Jain. This phenomenal evening was followed by a scrumptious dinner. At the end of this gala, Sewa Houston was able to raise $250,000+ in addition to the $ 2.30 million raised during the past 13 months just for Harvey relief work.

“Together we serve better” Sewa USA is 501 (c) (3) Hindu faith-based non-profit, charitable organization.

Dancers of Asia American performed at the show.

Achalesh Amar the recipient of the Seva Sadhak Award, with his wife Smita and daughters Ananya and Aagrima

320

All donations (cash, cars, clothes, securities, etc.) are tax-deductible. (Tax Id# 200638718).

Sewa serves humanity regardless of race, religion, color, gender or nationality.

He will be assisting Swami Kripamayanada from Toronto, in conducting the puja.

The puja will commence early in the morning with the Nabapatrika and the idol of Mother Durga being carried to the nicely decorated pandal outdoors to the beat of the Dhak and the blowing of the shankh, creating a divine atmosphere.

The puja will continue to the accompaniment of melodious devotional songs by the VSGH choir and end with a beautiful arati, and pushpanjali, the offering of flowers, by devotees.

Looking at the weather forecast, one can expect a bright beautiful sunny day, not too warm, to the delight of the devotees.

The puja will be followed by fruit & lunch prasad distribution to all attendees. This is one puja that all Houstonians look forward to every year, because of the sincere piety and devotion with which the puja is carried out. It imbibes a spiritual atmosphere in which all devotees bask.

A book stall is also set up at the back of the Puja pandal for attendees to check books out and purchase. Some dignitaries are expected to attend the event. A record crowd is being expected this year. A warm invitation is being extended to all to attend with family and friends. Admission and parking is free, but donations are welcome.

For further information about the event, please visit: www.houstonvedanta.org or contact Ashok Dasgupta at 979-421-0957, Swapna Chaudhuri at 281-584-0488, or leave a message at the Vedanta Society 281-988-7211.

VOICE OF ASIA 4

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

VOICE OF ASIA 5

Fort Bend View

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Sugar Land, Katy, Stafford, Missouri City, Richmond, Rosenberg and Meadows Place

Section 1

Email: voiceasia@aol.com

Fort Bend Junior Service League is accepting scholarship applications

F

ORT BEND -Wednesday, October 3, 2018 - If you are you a female high school senior or adult resident of Fort Bend County who is planning to pursue higher education you may qualify for assistance through the Fort Bend Junior Service League scholarship program.

Each year, the FBJSL awards up to four $1,000 Volunteer Scholarships and one $2,000 New Beginnings Scholarship.

The Volunteer Scholarships are awarded to female high school seniors in Fort Bend County who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in

volunteerism and community service. Recipients must have completed at least 100 hours of high school community service, have a minimum GPA of 2.5, and plan to attend an accredited two- or four-year college or university.

The New Beginnings Scholarship is offered to help Fort Bend County females improve their career opportunities by furthering their education.

Recipients must have been accepted into an accredited college, university, or vocational school after having taken a break in their education and establish financial need.

Qualified applicants can learn more about these schol-

arships and obtain a copy of the applications by visiting www.fbjsl.org. Applications and supporting documentation will be accepted from Dec. 1, 2018, until Feb. 1, 2019.

The FBJSL is a non-profit organization of women committed to promoting volunteerism, to developing the potential of women and to improving the Fort Bend County community through the effective action and leadership of trained volunteers. Our purpose is exclusively educational and charitable as well as providing an atmosphere of friendliness, goodwill and camaraderie for all members.

Courtesy: Cron.com

Yee-Haw! Giddy up for Fort Bend County Fair

R

The iconic event is bringing big-name entertainment, nightly rodeo action, a wine room experience, carnival fun and your favorite fair foods.

F

Last month, Houston firefighters called for ballistic vests. This week, Fort Bend County EMTs are being issued life-saving protection.

Emergency calls are chances for paramedics to save lives, but they can also be unpredictable.

"We got called out. A husband beat his wife pretty badly,” said Alejandra Hernandez, Fort Bend County paramedic. "But he did have a gun on him,” Hernandez said.

While caring for the woman, her husband returned with a gun. "Just kind of scary, you know?"

- KHOU

an appearance at the parade on Friday.

- CW9 News

File photo Last month, Houston firefighters called for ballistic vests. This week, Fort Bend EMTs are being issued life-saving protection.

Sugar Land city open house set for Oct. 30

The event is open to the public and will be held at City Hall, 2700 Town Center Blvd.

North, from 6-8 p.m. what attendees could expect at this year’s fair and mentioned that a special guest will make

Tel: 713-774-5140

ORT BEND - First responders wearing protective vests is a trend picking up pace across the nation.

UGAR LAND, TX – Learn about Sugar Land’s new singlemember City Council districts and Hurricane Harvey drainage projects at the city’s second-ever Open House on Oct. 30.

The fair is a family-fun event that runs until Oct. 7.

Fort Bend County paramedics to receive ballistic vests

S

OSENBERG, Texas — The Fort Bend County Fair kicked off Friday at the county’s fairgrounds along Texas Highway 36.

Kevin Patton, director of the Fort Bend County Fair, along with Go Tejano Chairman Alfred Valdez shared with Morning Dose’s Maggie Flecknoe

City departments will staff tables explaining new projects and programs provided to citizens. Participants attending the event may:

• visit with the mayor and City Council members;

• discuss projects to improve mobility;

• tour the city’s new public safety mobile command post and other public safety vehicles;

• learn about the city of Sugar Land’s 2018-2019 budget;

• get tips from crime prevention officers;

• visit with staff members representing a variety of City departments.

• get the latest crime statistics; • learn about Hurricane Harvey drainage studies; • listen to an update about how new single-member City Council districts will impact elections next year;

• have children fingerprinted; and

Interactive activities for children will be set up in the Town Square plaza, and volunteers will monitor the area to ensure a safe environment. For more information, call 281-2752304 or visit www.sugarlandtx.gov.

COMMUNITY

VOICE OF ASIA 6

Chuck Hinkle’s Priceless Presentation Pointers

by Bhaavya Rastogi huck Hinkle, Shell’s US expert in Business Intelligence and Data Visualization, spoke to a group of YLDP students and parents on September 22nd at the India House about presentation basics.

It was truly an eye-opening experience to be a part of the audience during Chuck Hinkle’s intriguing lecture on the art of effective presentations. With the priceless experience of over thirty years, Mr. Hinkle went on to show, rather than just tell, about techniques to master the creation and delivery of a presentation.

C

Chuck Hinkle, Shell's US expert

YLDP students with the speaker Chuck Hinkle.

Technology in spotlight at Advanced Manufacturing Conference

H

OUSTON, Oct. 2, 2018 – State and national industry leaders will learn how technology is transforming the manufacturing industry at the Gulf Coast Advanced Manufacturing Conference Tuesday, Oct. 9, at the HCC West Houston Institute, 2811 Hayes Road.

At the annual conference, co-sponsored by Houston Community College and the Greater Houston Partnership, industry leaders will present digital trends and automation of tomorrow and explore the impact of technologies on workforce and economic development.

The digital age of manufacturing is transforming every link in the manufacturing chain and companies are advancing and developing strategies to adapt to this new environment.

Conference attendees will learn ways to increase profit margins while boosting the region’s competitiveness as a leader in advanced manufacturing.

Among numerous emerging technologies, additive manufacturing (3D printing) is transforming the way that complex high-performance products are conceptualized, prototyped, replicated and ultimately produced. Meanwhile, automated manufacturing processes eliminate hazards and keep out wasteful processes through consistency and continuity.

Conference registration will take place at 8:30 a.m. and a panel discussion will follow from 9 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. Luncheon registration and networking will take place from 11:15 a.m. – noon and the luncheon program is from noon – 1 p.m.

There also will be breakout sessions from 1 p.m. – 2 p.m., and attendees are invited to visit the Maker Space at West Houston Institute.

For more details, contact Sherine Farid at 713-8443682 or sfarid@houston.org.

Firstly, when preparing any sort of presentation, it is crucial to consider the amount of time you have to prepare, the purpose of your presentation, and the golden question: “what do you want your audience to remember?”

The most effective way to capture any audience’s attention and hold it long enough to get your point across is to weave stories into your presentation. Emotions and a plot line are the easiest way to get your audience to understand and connect to what you are communicating.

The most unconventional piece of advice that Chuck Hinkle gave was the suggestion to write the ending of

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Sankara Eye Foundation Dandia cancelled in Houston

S

ankara Eye Foundation (SEF) has cancelled the scheduled Dandiya event on October 6 at the NRG Center by Preetysha & Sameer due to unavoidable circumstances. Full refunds will be released to the same credit card number used to make the ticket purchase. This dandia event was planned as a fundraiser for Sankara’s new hospitals in Mumbai, Jaipur, Indore, and Hyderabad.

SEF apologizes for any inconvenience caused.

Please continue to support the noble cause of eradicating curable blindness in India. If you wish the speech first, in order to figure out the desired impact on the audience, and develop the presentation seamlessly around a main idea.

His emphasis on connecting visuals to words and emotions, along with many rhetorical tricks he exposed YLDP students to, helped drive home the idea that the main message should be crystal clear and continuous.

PowerPoint slides should have as few words as possible on the screen and images can often effectually replace bulleted points, as audience

to volunteer for the SEF Houston Chapter, please email at sef-houston@ giftofvision.org As a non-profit, Sankara Eye Foundation volunteers have been working tirelessly for two decades to eradicate curable blindness in Over 1.6 million free eye surgeries have already been performed, making SEF the largest free eye care provider in the world.

The Charity Navigator has consistently given the organization four-star rating for financial accountability and transparency.

Please visit https://www. giftofvision.org/ for details. engagement through strong eye contact, for example, is the most important piece to the puzzle of an effective presentation.

Through the implementation of his own tips and tricks that can be easily learned and successfully applied by any individual, Chuck Hinkle helped to expose a young group of future entrepreneurs, engineers, and doctors to a real-life example of a quality presentation, and his influence is sure to be noticeable in the future presentations of every YLDP member.

COMMUNITY

VOICE OF ASIA 7

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Asia Society Texas launches Mahatma IACAN congratulates Dr. Allison Gandhi Sesquicentennial ... on his Nobel Prize

H

OUSTON - October 1, 2018 - The Board of Directors of the Indian American Cancer Network, a cancer resource network in Houston, TX, today congratulated Dr. James P. Allison on being awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in the discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation. Dr. Allison was also recently awarded a Lifetime of Service Award for these accomplishments in cancer research at IACAN’s Biennial Gala on September 8, 2018.

Honorable Consul General of Bharat, Dr. Anupam Ray, giving his opening remarks at launch of yearlong (Oct 2018 to Oct 2019) Mahatma Gandhi Sesquicentennial celebrations at Asia Society.

Photograph: Courtesy of Satyajit Verma Continued from Front Page spent 3 years in India and been greatly influenced by Gandhi.

Mahatma Gandhi Library (MGL) kicked off the yearlong (October 2018 to October 2019) celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th anniversary on September 30 at the Asia Society of Texas with the screening of these documentaries which reinforced Gandhi’s moral and spiritual philosophy of nonviolence. This was followed by a panel discussion with MGL founder Atul Kothari, filmmaker Steve York and Anthony Hill, a prominent lawyer and participant in the civil rights movement.

Guest of Honor, Consul General of Bharat, Dr. Anupam Ray, lauded MGL for its tireless efforts in propagating Gandhi’s message of non-violence to the world. He also explained the lines of a bhajan, a spiritual song, endeared by Gandhiji – Vaishnava Janto… which loosely translated means that “he is a religious person who understands the sorrow of others.”

This was the core of Gandhi’s life. Further, he urged everyone to live by Gandhi ji’s talisman, ask yourself as to how does your action help uplift the most wretched person in the world.

Trustee Ajit Paralkar offered a brief outline of the several programs that will be held throughout the year, October 2018 to October 2019, to mark the 150th anniversary.

The panel discussion was moderated by Dr. Carla Brailey, a subject matter expert in social justice. Atul Kothari, who shared the fact that when he read Gandhi’s autobiography “the message went straight to his heart,” noted that Gandhi remains an eternal influence on Indians anywhere in the world.

His greatness lies in the fact that he showed the world “the way to settle conflicts like no one else has before.”

Filmmaker Steve York observed that non-violent resistance has been utilized in many instances throughout history but “no one had quite brought it to the fore like he (Gandhi) did.”

While researching this subject, he chose to make six documentaries where the non-violent movement prevailed. He described his experience of making the documentary in India as “powerful” and was thankful that he was a filmmaker. According to York, Gandhi was a brilliant person who knew the nature and sources of power and used it effectively. He also revealed the findings of a study that looked at non-violent efforts and concluded that these strategies are three times more likely to succeed than a violent approach.

When the documentaries were screened around the world, York related that he would be contacted by people in countries that are not free who would regret the fact that they did not “have a Gandhi to lead them.”

York said there are several instances where there is no charismatic leader but a unity of cause helped them succeed.

Anthony Hall, who was a college student during the civil rights movement, stressed that it is important to first change people’s mind and once their minds are changed, they will change society. On being asked about quarterback Colin Kapaernick’s “taking the knee” during the national anthem of an NFL game, he stated that it is an instance of

a non-violent protest against police brutality and aggression. Gandhi’s greatest contribution, he continued, is that he taught the world that it is possible to change an entire society with love overcoming hate.

A participant in the audience revealed how he had read Gandhi’s biography and adopted Gandhi’s practice of fasting every Monday. In this context, Atul Kothari explained that the power Gandhi achieved was through self-purification.

Fasting was a tool and so is self-reliance and each one of us must strive for that.

Trustee Dr. Manish Wani

wrapped up the program with the vote of thanks and the plans for the upcoming Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum. For more information please visit www.eternalgandhi.us.

Since its creation, MGL has been celebrating Gandhi’s birthday on October 2nd with a 5 K run which concludes with the 1000 Lights for Peace where every participant lights a candle in a collective pledge for peace. This will be held on October 14th from 5:00-8:00 pm at the Miller Outdoor Theatre.

For more information, visit www.gandhilibrary.org

Dr. Allison’s research discoveries launched a revolutionary new approach to fighting cancer, by treating the immune system rather than the tumor.

Immunotherapy is emerging as the fourth pillar to fighting cancer, along with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.

The Keynote Address for the gala was given by Dr. Patrick Hwu, Division Head of Cancer Medicine at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Hwu’s address highlighted the complex

Dr. Jagannadha K. Sastry presenting Dr. James P. Allison with IACAN’s Lifetime of Service Award. research in immunotherapies in a simplified and effective manner.

“IACAN is beyond proud of this recognition for Dr. Allison’s achievements and contributions to cancer research” says Arlene Thomas, President of IACAN. He shares the 2018 Nobel Prize with Tasuko Honjo of Japan, a professor at Kyoto

University.

About IACAN: The Indian American Cancer Network is a 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to be cancer resource network that educates and supports the Indian American community. For more information about IACAN please visit www.iacannetwork.org

COMMUNITY

VOICE OF ASIA 8

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

India House to serve as center for free food distribution to needy families

Rani Juneja (center), Vijay Dhingra and other volunteers helped organize the groceries into individual piles.

H

ouston: India House mission is to unite cultures, build bridges, and serve the community.

On Tuesday, September 25, India House achieved a major milestone on its mission to serve the community by launching food distribution to needy families in collaboration with the Houston Food Bank.

During its inaugural food distribution, India House parceled out groceries to more than 100 families. “As needy families in the nearby neighborhoods learn about this service, we expect to increase food distribution to about 400 families every month,� explained Col. Vipin Kumar (Retired), Executive Director of India House.

Rani & Harinder Juneja sponsored the September 25th food distribution session. Mrs. Juneja was at India House bright and early at 8:00 am to help with the food distribution.

Joining her were more than 25 volunteers, few of whom were participants of the Free Yoga classes which are held thrice a

Volunteers unloading groceries from the Houston Food Bank refrigerated truck.

Families lined up at the side entrance of India House to load groceries. week at India House.

Col. Kumar and India House staff members Pallavi Surana, Bhumi Parmar and Khin Chao had planned in advance to set up a token system to help streamline the distribution process. Volunteers provided one token per needy family and documented their status as per Houston Food Bank rules.

A Houston Food Bank truck arrived in the morning at 7:45

am with large boxes of cereal, vegetables such as potatoes, cabbages, limes, tomato sauce cans, and fruits such as watermelons. India House staff set up an assembly line to bring in the food and organize assorted items into plastic bags for each family.

In orderly fashion, the families came by the side entrance to India House and were helped by volunteers to load the groceries in their cars. Sev-

India House staff and volunteers pose in front of nearly empty grocery cartons. eral families did not have cars and either walked back to their neighborhood home or waited for Metro transportation for a ride home.

Many of the volunteers were gratified by their charity service and are looking forward

to the next monthly food distribution session on October 16th and 30th from 8 am to 1 pm. Many of the needy families expressed their gratitude to India House, Houston Food Bank and the volunteers.

India House Houston is a

501 (c) 3 non-profit organization located in Houston, Texas. Our mission is to united cultures, create bridges and serve the community by bringing resources, education, services and Indian culture to Houstonians.

COMMUNITY

VOICE OF ASIA 9

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Kavanaugh hearings, Texas political leaders and more

The Texas Tribune Festival highlights

The three-day Texas Tribune Festival is officially over.

We take an informed look back at some of the highlights here.

by Texas Tribune Staff

O

ver 300 speakers — and thousands of attendees — descended on downtown Austin for the three-day Texas Tribune Festival examining politics and policy issues facing Texas and the United States.

The unavoidable focus of the weekend was Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, as panelists weighed in on his and Christine Blasey Ford’s emotional testimonies before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who sparred with him during the hearing, and Michael Avenatti, the outspoken lawyer representing another one of Kavanaugh’s accusers, drew big crowds and big reactions as they expressed their concerns over the nomination process.

But panels at the eighth annual festival also addressed a wide range of policy topics, from immigration and the border to healthcare and education.

A closing keynote interview with U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke — plus interviews with political leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Eric Holder — meant there was plenty of political fodder for looking ahead to the 2018 and 2020 elections.

Aman Batheja moderated the “Hack the Vote” panel with speakers Dana DeBeauvoir, John Dickson, Joshua Geltzer, and Keith Ingram at The Texas Tribune Festival on Sept. 28, 2018. (TTF photo)

Mr. Koshy Thomas, Publsiher/CEO of Voice of Asia, a media sponsor of The Texas Tribune Festival.

Democratic nominee in 2020 — such as Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. — could be equally effective.

Later in the day, two congressmen representing Parkland and Santa Fe clashed over how to implement gun control policy.

"I think she's everything that Trump isn't, to a lot of people," Stuckey said during a panel featuring television pundits.

"Not a fresh face, but probably effective."

Congressmen, mass shooting survivors talk gun violence solutions

Keynote speaker Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic congressman from El Paso challenging U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz for Senate, reiterated to Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith that he won't be running for president in 2020 if he defeats Cruz this year. And he made another promise: He won't serve more than two terms in the U.S. Senate.

On Saturday, four survivors of mass shootings in America discussed gun laws. The two Texans on the panel — Sutherland Springs pastor Frank Pomeroy and Suzanna Gratia Hupp, whose survival of a 1991 shooting at a Luby’s restaurant in Killeen inspired her to join the Texas Legislature to fight for a concealed carry law — had similar views.

O'Rourke made a similar promise when he ran for his current House seat, saying he'd serve a maximum of four terms in the lower chamber.

“As far as the political actions taking place [after the

"Of a state of 28 million people, surely someone out there is going to do just as good — if I am honest, more likely a better job — and they are going to bring their perspective, their background, their life experience to bear on the opportunities and the problems in this country," he said.

O'Rourke was also asked to disclose how much money his campaign had raised in the third quarter of 2018, which ends today. Smith noted that Cruz predicted at a rally on Saturday that O'Rourke had raised $30 million.

O'Rourke's response coy: "It'll be a lot."

was

All four panelists, including U.S. Representative Filemon Vela, D-Brownsville, agreed that the fundamental focus moving forward should be on immigration reform. But that requires bipartisanship, a challenging feat in the current political climate.

“There’s a better chance of the Dallas Cowboys winning the Super Bowl,” Vela said.

“Maybe we have a chance to get something done, but it's hard to say.”

U.S. Reps. Will Hurd and Pete Aguilar were more optimistic at another panel Saturday afternoon, which asked: Will Congress ever come together on immigration?

Cecile Richards, the former head of Planned Parenthood, noted the similarities between this year and 1992, which was dubbed the “year of the woman” thanks to the record number of women elected to Congress.

She pointed out that Democrats still have work to do in formalizing their commitment to gender parity in the highest ranks of elected office.

“There are 80 women of color running for Congress this year — that is a record,” Richard said. "And it didn't happen because a political party said we're going to completely change what we’re doing. These are women, in large part, who are doing it on their own or who are challenging incumbents or who are challenging the system."

And even on the right, conservative blogger Allie Stuckey hinted that a female

shooting], it was more along the lines of defending what was already there,” said Pomeroy, who lost 26 members of his congregation at First Baptist Church — including his 14-year-old daughter — when a shooter fired upon his church last November. “We didn’t find anyone who wanted to pursue limiting the Second Amendment.”

Hupp said the law at the time forced her to leave her handgun in her car on the day a man executed people in the Luby's.

She was furious. “We were like fish in a barrel, and I can’t get across to you how incredibly frustrating that is,” said the former Republican state representative.

Meanwhile, Chris Grady, a recent high school graduate who survived the Parkland, Florida high school shooting this year, has pushed for redflag laws that keep guns out

of the hands of those deemed a threat. He called Saturday for government research on the causes of gun violence. And Nicole Hockley, who started an advocacy and educational organization after the death of her six-year-old son, Dylan, in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, said she aims to be part of a transformation on gun violence that came after her tragedy.

Both encouraged people to get involved and get out and vote — especially young people — if they want to make change.

“When I hear someone say, ‘That’s just the cost of living in the USA,’ how can you say that to someone who has lost a child?” Hockley said. “People talk about extreme on this side, extreme on the other side, I could care less. It’s the apathy in the middle that is the problem.”

Friday: It’s all Kavanaugh, all day As the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh in Washington, talk of the nominee dominated panels at TribFest on Friday.

A panel on gender and leadership analyzed Wednesday’s testimony before the committee from Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school. Interviews on the law got into the procedural complexities of U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake’s call to hold an FBI investigation into those allegations. Even conversations on foreign affairs were not immune — one panelist said ev-

eryone at the United Nations General Assembly couldn't stop talking about Kavanaugh.

In a discussion on the legacy of President George W. Bush, where Kavanaugh served as White House staff secretary, his former colleagues staunchly defended the nominee, fresh off a fiery testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder hailed the recently ordered FBI investigation into allegations against Kavanaugh as overdue, describing the Judiciary Committee's delay in asking the FBI to examine Ford’s allegations as “unconscionable.”

As the hearing went on in Washington, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., was vocal about his opposition to the way Senate Republicans have handled Supreme Court nominee Continued on page 10

COMMUNITY

VOICE OF ASIA 10

Medical Clinic at the Ranch (MCR) opens in Katy

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Sri Venkateswara Kalyanam at Sri Meenakshi Temple

Medical Team at MCR L to R: Courtney Zapata, Vijaya Dwibhashi MD, Rubie Gonzalez, Madhavi Prasad MD

K

aty, Fulshear and Richmond are some of the fastgrowing suburbs in greater Houston region. The need for primary care in these areas has increased due to the growth. Medical Clinic at the Ranch (MCR), a primary care clinic catering to adult patients ages 18 and older, is ready to meet that need.

The clinic is located at 9555 Spring Green Blvd, Ste H, in Katy, TX 77494 and is easily accessible to area communities.

The clinic offers in-house labs, EKG, medical nutrition therapy, diabetes self-

management education, with early and late appointments to suit your busy schedule. Medical Clinic at the Ranch offers services covering a broad spectrum of conditions from head to toe, simple to complex, as well as women’s health.

Both doctors at the clinic are board certified in internal medicine. Dr. Vijaya Dwibhashi is a resident of the Katy area and Dr. Madhavi Prasad grew up in Katy. In addition to good medical care, the doctors feel it is important to form strong relationships with their patients.

The doctors want their patients to feel welcomed, connected and well engaged in their own

care.

The staff at Medical Clinic at the Ranch is friendly and are sure to put a smile on your face. The clinic is now accepting new patients and currently has same day appointments available.

Most private insurance plans as well as Medicare and Medicaid are accepted.

Discounted self-pay pricing is available to patients without insurance.

To schedule an appointment call (281)394-0093.

For more information about the practice or physicians visit https://www.medicalclinicattheranch.com

Flu shots are available. No appointment necessary.

Get yours today.

The Texas Tribune Festival...

Continued from page 9 Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

“They literally set it up as a he said, she said,” Merkley said. “It is a shameful moment that 11 Republicans refuse to push the president to

open an investigation.”

Pundits and politicos on the right and left said the clash in Washington would fuel greater division among the American electorate.

At “Making Mr. Right,” a panel on the future of conservatism, conservative commen-

tator Bill Kristol predicted the Kavanaugh hearings would pull Republican voters to the polls in droves. “This brings out the worst in everyone,” he said. “People genuinely feel their person has been mistreated.”

Former state Sen. Wendy

Priests performing the divine wedding (Kalyanam ) of Lord Sri Venkateswara at Sri Meenakshi temple

P

EARLAND - Sri Meenakshi Temple celebrated Sri Venkateswara Kalyanam with grandeur and devotion on September 23rd. The auspicious month of Purattasi is of great importance, as it is believed that Lord Venkateswara appeared on the earth in this month. The purpose of such festivals is believed to shower all of God’s creations with health, wealth, happiness and prosperity.

The event started early morning with the Supra-

Davis said that she now feels "more committed" than ever before to check "white male privilege."

“If they ignore us, they will be held accountable,” she said.

Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman said she cried during testimony Thursday by both Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh. “America needs to go back to a place of civility, where we can disagree but not

batham and various other chantings for the divine awakening of Lord Venkateswara at the Main Temple. Devotees then carry seer bakshanams (offerings) in a procession from the Ganesh Temple to the Kalyana Mandapam to the accompaniment of the chanting of Vedic mantras.

The Kalyanam function included all the traditional rituals such as pidi sutral, raksha bandanam, kanya dhanam, homam and mangalya dharanam. One of the highlights of the event is the most auspicious Nava

be hostile about it," she said.

“Disagreement is needed for democracy.”

Attorney Michael Avenatti speaks with moderator John Heilemann at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Sept. 28, 2018.

The outspoken lawyer at the center of so much of the day’s news has remained in the orbit of the Kavanaugh drama.

Kalasa Abhishekam for the Utsava Murthies of Lord Venkateswara, Sri Devi and Bhoo Devi with the chanting of Vishnu Sahasranama. The Utsava Murthis were taken in a procession around the Temple in the silver chariot to the Main Temple for “oonjal seva” and final Aarthi. The Divine wedding concluded with a sumptuous feast, organized by Food committee and served by volunteers. Secretary Ram Reddy thanked the priests, staff, coordinators, devotees, sponsors and volunteers.

And he didn't mince words: The Supreme Court nominee is “completely full of shit,” Michael Avenatti said Friday.

“There is no question in my view that he is lying.”

Avenatti is representing Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick, as well as porn star Stormy Daniels in a lawsuit against President Donald Trump.

Full report voiceofasia.news

CENTERED LIVING

50% OFF Your Rent for 2018

LUXURY APARTMENT HOMES In the Texas Med Center

NOW OPEN 713-527-1000

TOUR TODAY

LatitudeMedCenter.com

SOUT;H ASIA

VOICE OF ASIA 11

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

India to deport Rohingya to Myanmar, UN concerned

G

UWAHATI, India | AFP | Wednesday 10/3/2018 - Indian police said Wednesday that seven Rohingya detained in the country's northeast will be deported to Myanmar, which has been accused by the UN of waging a campaign of "genocide" against the Muslim minority.

The United Nations had warned India that returning the men ignored the persecution they faced in Myanmar, and would be a "flagrant denial" of their right to protection.

But police in the northeast Indian state of Manipur, where the men have been incarcerated since 2012 for immigration violations, said the Rohingya would be deported Thursday.

"The seven Myanmarese men will be deported tomorrow," Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta, a senior state police officer, told AFP. The UN Special Rapporteur on racism, Tendayi Achiume, said she was "appalled" at the

Rohingya refugees on a truck near Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhiya, Bangladesh. (Photo: Jasmin Rumi/AFP) amount of time the men from Rakhine state in Myanmar's west had been detained.

ing its campaign was justified to root out Rohingya insurgents.

Rakhine was the epicentre of a Myanmar army offensive that over the past year has driven 700,000 Rohingya Muslims into Bangladesh.

But a UN fact-finding mission said there was enough evidence to merit prosecution of several top Myanmar military commanders for crimes against humanity and genocide against Rohingya civilians.

Myanmar's army has denied nearly all wrongdoing, insist-

Pakistan urges US to resume aid, backs Taliban outreach

by Shaun Tandon

P

akistan pledged Wednesday to support negotiations with the Taliban to end Afghanistan's 17-year war as it asked the United States to restore military aid and stop blaming Islamabad for the extremists' strengths.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi visited Washington to explain the Afghanistan strategy of new Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has long advocated talks over military action with the Taliban and other Islamist insurgents.

A month after Washington cut $300 million in military

aid, Qureshi said he found Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "ready to listen" to Pakistan and said he was returning to Islamabad "slightly more hopeful" than before.

Pakistan had been the main supporter of the Taliban regime which imposed an austere brand of Islam on much of Afghanistan until a US military campaign launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The United States has pressed for years for Pakistan to crack down on militant groups involved in Afghanistan as well as virulently antiIndian groups that operate virtually openly.

It says the insurgents have

safe havens in Pakistan's border areas and links to its shadowy military establishment, accusations which Islamabad has repeatedly denied.

Trump has accused Pakistan, where US commandos killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, of duplicity.

Qureshi said Pakistan would act "in good faith" to jumpstart diplomacy with the Taliban, whose representatives held a breakthrough meeting in July in Qatar with US representatives in a tentative bid to try to end the longest-running US war. "Pakistan is willing and Pakistan will use all its influence to do that."

- AFP

K. V. Doraiswamy Bhattar 281-489-0464 or 281-948-8368 kvdoraiswamybhattar@yahoo.com kvdoraiswamy60@gmail.com

Rituals Performed: Sreemantham, Punyahavachanam, Namakaranam, Annaprashanam, Vidyarambham, Choulam, Upanayanam, Wedding, Sathya narayana puja, and all kind of Homas (Havans) and more.

I can drive to your place.

More than 30 years of experience as Priest in major temples including Sri Meenakshi Temple Pearland, TX. Can speak 5 languages (Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and English)

US/WORLD

VOICE OF ASIA 12

Five US police shot, one fatally in coastal resort

W

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Canada: Islamic veil allowed in legal hearing

ASHINGTON | AFP | Wednesday 10/3/2018 - Five US police officers were shot -- one fatally -- during an "active shooter" incident in South Carolina on Wednesday, US media reported.

CNN cited the coroner in Florence County, inland from the coastal resort of Myrtle Beach, as saying one officer had died from his wounds.

CNN said the officer was among five -- two city officers and three Florence County Sheriff's deputies, who were wounded.

There were no immediate details on the condition of the other officers, after the latest shooting involving police in the United States.

The Florence County Emergency Management office had reported on Twitter at about 5:00 pm that an "active shooter" situation was under way in

Five officers -- two city officers and three Florence County Sheriff's deputies -- were wounded during an "active shooter" incident Florence.

One hour later it said the incident had ended with a suspect in custody.

According to preliminary data from the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, 107 officers had been killed

this year, prior to the latest case.

More than one-third of the deaths were linked to firearms.

They were among more than 30,000 deaths annually linked to guns throughout the country.

UK accuses Russian spies of global cyber attacks campaign

L

ONDON, United Kingdom | AFP | Wednesday 10/3/2018 - British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on Thursday accused Russian military intelligence of conducting a campaign of "indiscriminate and reckless" online attacks targeting political institutions, businesses, media and sport bodies around the world.

Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has identified operatives from Russia's GRU arm as being behind various high-profile computer attacks, according to the Foreign Office.

Many have been previously linked to Moscow, including the 2017 "BadRabbit" ransomware targeting of a Ukrainian

international airport and Russian media outlets, and last year's attempted hacking of the World Anti-Doping Agency in Switzerland.

"This pattern of behaviour demonstrates their desire to operate without regard to international law or established norms and to do so with a feeling of impunity and without consequences," Hunt said in a statement.

"Our message is clear: together with our allies, we will expose and respond to the GRU's attempts to undermine international stability."

The NCSC has "high confidence" that the GRU was "almost certainly" responsible for the 2017 attacks, as well as others including the infamous tar-

geting of the US Democratic Party ahead of the 2016 presidential election, according to Whitehall sources.

The British government holds the Kremlin ultimately responsible for the cyber campaign, they said.

The Foreign Office described it as a "flagrant violation of international law" that had cost national economies millions of pounds.

"These cyber attacks serve no legitimate national security interest, instead impacting the ability of people around the world to go about their daily lives free from interference, and even their ability to enjoy sport," Hunt added.

"The GRU's actions are reckless and indiscriminate: they

The Quebec Court of Appeal has unanimously ruled that a citizen may wear any religious attire, such as a headscarf, in a courtroom so long as their "religious beliefs are sincere" (Photo: Š DPA/AFP/File)

M

ONTREAL, Canada | AFP | Wednesday 10/3/2018 - A judge cannot refuse to take testimony from a woman because she is wearing an Islamic veil, a court ruled on Wednesday.

A citizen may wear any religious attire in a courtroom so long as their "religious beliefs

try to undermine and interfere in elections in other countries; they are even prepared to damage Russian companies and Russian citizens."

The hackers identified as GRU operatives by the NCSC include an entity variously called "APT28", "Pawn Storm", "Sandworm", "Fancy Bear" and the "Sofacy Group".

The Justice Department in the United States has previously blamed the group for conducting numerous hacking operations there and around the world.

They include targeting everything from American political parties and the websites of conservative US think tanks to key infrastructure industries like power grids.

are sincere" and they do not "conflict with another person's constitutional rights," the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled unanimously.

Montrealer Rania El-Alloul, a Muslim, was expelled from a courtroom in 2015 for wearing a hijab.

Judge Eliana Marengo of

the Court of Quebec had cited a court ruling that every person must be "appropriately dressed" and compared ElAlloul's headscarf "to a hat or sunglasses."

But Marengo did not take into account the right of ElAlloul "to religious expression," the three appeals judges ruled.

Iraqi women murders spark conspiracy fears

O

ver the last few weeks, four go-getting Iraqi women have separately met premature deaths -- two falling victim to men firing automatic weapons into their vehicles.

The deaths have sparked fear among women who dare to break the mould and visibly achieve in the conservative country.

The latest to die was 22-yearold social media influencer and model Tara Fares.

Her bloody demise at the wheel of a white Porsche convertible in Baghdad on Thurs-

day has sparked as much debate as her racy photos.

Fares is not the only Iraqi fashion and beauty entrepreneur to have met her death in recent weeks. In August, the managers of Baghdad's two most high profile aesthetic and plastic surgery centres died in mysterious circumstances.

The recent assassinations are threatening messages sent to activists in particular, but also to the whole of society.

Activists urge police to investigate the deaths, saying an organised network was behind the "premeditated" actions. - AFP

VOICE OF ASIA 13

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

YOUNG LIFE: HCC LAUNCHES 32 FULLY ONLINE DEGREES Page 16

www.voiceofasia.news

Business Email: voiceasia@aol.com

Section 2 Tel: 713-774-5140

A Helping Hand for the Flood Affected CEO of US drugs giant Pfizer stepping down 15 Crores Mega Project by the Joyalukkas Group 250 houses- Joy Homes- to Flood Victims!

T

hrissur: The Joyalukkas Group joins in rebuilding flood devastated Kerala with a project of constructing 250 houses for those who have lost their homes in the greatest flood of the century. A huge sum of Rupees fifteen crores has been set apart to realise this objective. This project is supported by all the employees of the Joyalukkas Group as well as a large number of well-wishers.

The Chairman of the Joyalukkas Group, Sri. Joy Alukkas as well as the Director of the Joyalukkas Foundation, Smt. Jolly Joy have stated that the Joyalukkas Foundation will see that houses costing six lakhs each will be constructed. “Our dream is to construct houses that will bring joy to the hearts of those who own them,” they said.

Each house will have a total area of 600 sq.ft. with two bedrooms, a living cum dining room, kitchen and sit out and will have a concrete roof. The Chairman Sri Joy Alukkas also said that in the worst affected areas, houses will be built in tune with the environment only after proper Joy Alukkas, Chairman of the Joyalukkas consultation with expert architects and ac- Group. cording to the plans submitted by them.

The purpose of this mega project by the Joyalukkas group is to support the Government of Kerala’s initiative in Rebuilding Kerala, thus helping the people to live through the great destruction caused by the flood. The Chairman also informed that the project had been submitted to the Chief Minister and would be carried out with the help of the self-governing bodies in each place.

Those who have lost their homes in the floods and landslides may submit their applications in person at the sales outlet of the Joyalukkas Group nearest to them. These applications will be carefully studied by a committee constituted by the Joyalukkas Foundation and in consultation with the local self-governing bodies. A list of deserving candidates would be drawn up and construction will start as soon as all governmental formalities are met. It is hoped that the houses will be quickly completed and handed over to their owners.

The Joyalukkas Foundation continues to give compassionate leadership in several social and humanitarian ventures. The services rendered by the Joyalukkas Foundation in activities like voluntary blood donation, protection of the environment, health care and many other causes, are indeed laudable.

N

ew York, United States | AFP | Monday 10/1/2018 - US drugmaker Pfizer on Monday announced that chief executive Ian Read is stepping down, handing off to chief operating officer Albert Bourla on January 1.

Read will serve in future as executive chairman of Pfizer’s board of directors, the company said in a statement.

“It’s been an honor to serve as Pfizer’s CEO for the past eight years,” Read said in the statement.

“However, now is the right time for a leadership change, and Albert is the right person to guide Pfizer through the coming era.”

Pfizer, one of the world’s biggest drugs companies, reported earnings of $3.9 billion in the second quarter, up 26 percent from the year-ago period.

But like its rivals, Pfizer is contending with the expiry of patents on some of its blockbuster drugs, which has allowed generic drugmakers to offer cheaper alternatives.

This evolution had hit earn-

She currently serves as the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and Economics at Harvard University. “Gopinath is one of the world’s outstanding economists, with impeccable academic credentials, a proven track record of intellectual leadership, and extensive international experience,” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said.

Gopinath did her Ph.D. In economics from Princeton University in 2001 after earning a B.A. From the University of Delhi and M.A. Degrees from both the Delhi School of Economics and University of Washington.

But it said a strong pipeline of new products bequeathed by the outgoing CEO meant “the company is now better positioned for success”.

Bourla, 56, became chief operating officer at the start of this year after previously over-

seeing Pfizer’s Health” unit.

“Innovative

He said he was “humbled and privileged” to be unanimously appointed by the board as Read’s successor.

“This is a dynamic time for Pfizer, and I look forward to working with our colleagues to deliver critical medicines to patients all over the globe, which remains the compass for all we do at Pfizer,” he said.

also a diamond merchant, are accused of illegally diverting loans from the bank to foreignbased companies.

Choksi is in Antigua.

India-born Gita Gopinath appointed IMF Chief Economist

I

ings to the tune of $23 billion during Read’s time at the top, Pfizer said in its statement announcing the leadership change.

London, New York property of Indian celebrity jeweller seized

For further deatils contact Joyalukkas Foundation, Thrissur : 0487 2329222

ndia-born economist Gita Gopinath Monday appointed as chief economist of International Monetary Fund, the IMF said in a statement. Gopinath will succeed Maurice (Maury) Obstfeld, who would retire at the end of 2018, the IMF said.

US drugmaker Pfizer announced that chief executive Ian Read (seen here) is stepping down, handing off to chief operating officer Albert Bourla on January 1. (AFP Photo/Carl Court)

Modi, 47, had luxury stores in several major cities and boasted celebrity customers including actresses Naomi Watts, Kate Winslet and Priyanka Chopra.

Before the Indian authorities have seized assets of fugitive billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi, case, Forbes had estimated his including overseas bank accounts and diamond jewellery. (Photo: AFP ) worth at $1.73 billion, placing him 85th on InEW DELHI, India | tion has borne fruit,” the ED dia’s rich list. He has now been removed from the ranking.

AFP | - Indian au- said in a statement. thorities Monday said In February and March, the “This has resulted in (the) they have seized assets of fugi- seizure and provisional attach- ED seized Modi’s farmhouse, tive billionaire jeweller Nirav ment of jewellery, bank ac- high-end antique jewellery, Modi worth some $87 million, counts and immovable proper- watches and rare paintings. piling pressure on one of the ties worth $87 million in India Modi is not the only Indian main suspects in a $1.8-billion as well as four foreign jurisdicbillionaire facing heat from the fraud at a major state-run bank. tions.” authorities.

The seized assets included The list of seized assets inVijay Mallya, a business tyoverseas bank accounts and clude a London property worth diamond studded jewellery to about $7.8 million and two oth- coon who owned a Formula the tune of $3.1 million that ers in New York valued at $29 One team, left India in 2016 after authorities launched monhas been brought back to India million. ey-laundering charges against from Hong Kong in 23 shipModi, last seen in Britain, him. ments, the Enforcement Direcfled India in February after torate (ED) said.

He was subsequently arrested authorities accused him of deThe jewellery had been frauding the Punjab National in Britain and released on bail as he battles extradition, livshipped out after Indian federal Bank. ing in a sprawling $15 million police registered a case of fraud (13 million euros) mansion in Modi and his uncle and busiagainst Modi in January. ness partner Mehul Choksi, southeast England.

“The international coopera-

N

VOICE OF ASIA 14

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

BOLLYWOOD - HOLLYWOOD

Section 2 www.voiceofasia.news Email: voiceasia@aol.com

The Urdu sounds that are disappearing from Bollywood songs

One year since #MeToo, Penelope Cruz remembers Weinstein as ‘complicated’

by Rizwan Ahmad

I

n Karan Johar’s 2010 Bollywood film My name is Khan, the main protagonist Rizwan Khan (played by Shah Rukh Khan) a young man suffering from Asperger syndrome, insists that the correct pronunciation of his last name is ‘Khan’, produced from the epiglottis.

The Urdu sound in kh̲ an is the same as the one in kh̲ vab, ‘dream’, produced in the throat, which is different from the sound [kh], for example in khel (sports).

Gulzar, the acclaimed poet, made a comment in The Frontline about the decline of Urdu sounds. He mentioned how the Urdu sound /kh̲ / when mispronounced in the word dawa kh̲ ana (pharmacy) as dawa khana, means something different, ‘to take medicine’.

The sound /kh̲ / in the name ‘Khan’ is one of the five sounds, namely /f/, /z/, /kh̲ /, /gh̲ /, and /q/ that distinguish Urdu from Hindi at the spoken level.

You can hear the sound [kh̲ ] enunciated as per Urdu phonetic norms by Lata Mangeshkar, whose mother tongue is Marathi, in her song ‘Kh̲ uda nigahban ho tumhara’ from the film Mughal-e-Azam.

We can understand the significance of the Urdu pronunciation from the story Nasreen Munni Kabir narrates in her book on Lata Mangeshkar.

Lata, being a Marathi speak-

A screenshot from Mughal-e-Azam (Image: YouTube) er, was initially unable to pronounce these sounds correctly.

However, she realised how critical they were and became determined to learn Urdu.

She reminisces that after finishing recording for the 1949 film Mahal, Jaddanbai, Nargis’ mother, herself a celebrated singer, complimented Lata and said that she pronounced the Urdu word baghair (without) correctly in the song ‘Aayega aane waala’.

Asha Bhonsle, another great singer who charmed many generations with her captivating voice, too laments the decline of Urdu sounds in Hindi songs and notes, “Today’s singers don’t know Hindi. As far as their knowledge of Urdu is concerned, let’s not talk about it at all”.

It was not the singers alone who took the Urdu diction seriously. Music directors made

sure that the songs they produced met the standards.

Naushad, the maestro, in a tribute to Lata on her 70th birthday mentioned: “In fact, Mehboobsaab would tell me that she is a Marathi girl, her pronunciations are not right, and I was making her sing a ghazal. I took the responsibility of making her perfect her pronunciation”.

Manna Dey, a native speaker of Bengali, in which these sounds do not exist, once noted that C. Ramchandra taught him how important pronunciation was and that he would not allow any word to be mispronounced.

The multiple factors responsible for the change may be debatable. However, what is not debatable is the fact that the shibboleth of the Bollywood diction, at whose core was Urdu, is slowly withering away.

- Dawn

Violinist Balabhaskar dies a week after car crash that killed his daughter Popular singer and violinist Balabhaskar passed away on October 2 early morning after suffering a cardiac arrest. The singer’s family met with a tragic car accident on September 25.

Actresses Salma Hayek (R) and Penelope Cruz pose for photographers during the AFI screening of Pedro Almodovar’s “Volver” in Hollywood, November 2009. (Photo: © Hector Mata / AFP)

I

n 2009, actress Penelope Cruz won an Oscar for her role in a film produced by Harvey Weinstein and directed

by Woody Allen -- two men now in the crosshairs of the #MeToo movement taking a stand against sexual abuse.

“Thank you, Harvey Weinstein,” the Spanish actress said that night as she accepted her golden best supporting actress statuette for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

Since then, Weinstein has gone from Hollywood mogul to international pariah. He is the subject of sexual harassment and assault accusations from scores of women and is facing sex crimes charges in New York. He flatly denies all of it.

Cruz says she was never personally harassed by the producer and was unaware of his behavior, which became public in October 2017, sending his career into free fall and bankrupting his company.

“Harvey was a complicated person, everyone knew that,” Cruz told AFP during a trip to Los Angeles earlier this month.

“We had discussions on a work level but never in other situations, never.”

The list of stars leveling abuse accusations against Weinstein is long: Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rose McGowan, Lea Seydoux, Rosanna Arquette, Cara Delevingne -- and Salma Hayek, one of Cruz’s close friends, to name a few.

Hayek accused the magnate of threatening to “break my kneecaps” after she spurned his advances on the set of her film “Frida.”

B Balabhaskar, Volinist-composer

by P S Gopikrishnan Unnithan

T

HIRUVANANATHAPURAM - October 2, 2018 - Renowned South Indian violinist-composer B Balabhaskar passed away at the age of 40. Balabhaskar and his wife were grievously injured in a car accident and

were being treated at a private hospital in Thiruvananthapuram.

Though Balabhaskar showed signs of recovery in the last 2 days, he suffered a cardiac arrest on Monday (October 1) late night. At 12:48 am on Tuesday (October 2), doctors confirmed his death.

The musician’s family met with a tragic car accident on September 25 in the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram.

Her searing column, published last December in The New York Times, floored the 44-year-old Cruz.

Balabhaskar along with his wife Lakshmi and 2-year-old daughter Tejaswi were returning after visiting a temple in Thrissur.

“You can never blame a friend for not telling you in the moment,” Cruz said by tele-

Courtesy: India Today

phone.

When the first accusations came out against Weinstein a year ago, Cruz said at the time that she was “shocked and profoundly sad.”

Weinstein always had been “respectful” towards her, she said in an Instagram post, adding that she had never “witnessed such behavior” as many women had described.

- ‘A long struggle’ Cruz, who catapulted to fame as a protege of Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, has shown solidarity with victims of harassment -- a phenomenon she says goes far beyond the world of Hollywood.

“I feel we must also speak on behalf of women who do not have a job in the public eye,” she said. “Housekeepers, teachers, doctors, lawyers -- women no one gives a microphone to.”

“We can’t say everything is resolved,” she said, but “everything that has come to light is so important.”

Cruz -- who was in Los Angeles for the Emmys and to promote “Loving Pablo,” in which she plays a journalist who was drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s lover, ahead of its US release

-- said the past year marks “the beginning of change.”

But she predicted “a long struggle” ahead.

“It’s not a conflict of women against men -- men and women need to fight together to reach equality,” emphasized Cruz, who was nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of Donatella Versace in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.”

In “Loving Pablo,” Javier Bardem -- her real-life husband since 2010 -- plays Escobar.

Bardem -- who, like Cruz, is Spanish and an Oscar winner -- says he considers movements fighting violence against women, including #MeToo, important, but he cautions against the risks of “media lynching.”

“We must pay attention to what we do,” he told AFP, noting that many times when charges are made public, “the person is considered guilty” without “the opportunity to defend” himself or herself.

Bardem also won his Oscar in a Weinstein-produced film -- “No Country for Old Men,” directed by the Coen brothers -one year before Cruz.

- AFP

Salma Hayek joins Tiffany Haddish & Rose Byrne in ‘Limited Partners’

L

OS ANGELES, Ca Salma Hayek will star alongside Tiffany Haddish and Rose Byrne in Limited Partners, the Paramount Pictures comedy that Miguel Arteta will direct from a script

by Sam Pitman & Adam ColeKelly.

Haddish and Byrne play two hard-charging best girlfriends who build a juggernaut company and find their relationship tested when they are made a

big buyout offer. Suddenly all the differences that made them the perfect odd-couple partners put them at war, threatening their business and personal relationships. Hayek plays the exec who makes the buyout offer, and becomes the corporate puppet master pulling the strings. .

That drives the duo into a display of a one-upsmanship fued that gives the comedy shades of Superbad meets Bridesmaids.

- Hollywood Reporter

LEGAL

VOICE OF ASIA 15

Section 2

Email: voiceasia@aol.com

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Tel: 713-774-5140

Proposed rules to limit legal immigration Federal policy change part of coordinated effort to ‘limit immigration’ could impact thousands in Houston Advocates are concerned how proposed rules could discourage families from enrolling their citizen children in benefits like CHIP.

by Tina Vasquez

U

.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began implementing a new guidance this week for funneling immigrants into deportation proceedings, a policy the federal agency’s director said is intended to carry out President Trump’s executive order on immigration.

In a policy memorandum, the agency explained that under the new guidance USCIS will give “adequate notice” to individuals denied the immigration benefits for which they are applying, such as a green card, and upon denial, if the individual is no longer authorized to remain in the United States, or never had authorization, USCIS will issue a Notice to Appear (NTA). The NTA will instruct them to appear before an immigration judge, an indication that removal proceedings are underway.

Sarah Pierce, a former immigration attorney and a current policy analyst for the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), told Rewire.News that immigrant communities “should definitely be concerned” and that USCIS’ new policy will likely hit already vulnerable, undocumented immigrants the hardest.

For example, undocumented immigrants seeking to adjust their immigration status through their U.S. citizen spouse or child must apply for a green card outside of the United States, but when they leave, it triggers either a three- or ten-year bar from the country, depending on how long they had lived in the United States without authorization. In these instances, the person seeking to adjust their status can apply for what’s called a Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver, which would essentially waive the requirement that bars them from the United States as they adjust their status. Pierce said “thousands and thousands” of people apply for this waiver each year, and under USCIS’ new policy, if the waiver request is denied, USCIS will now issue NTAs, the first step in the deportation process.

This new guidance, first announced June 28, rolled out on Monday. Pierce said it’s hard to know how many immigrants this will affect until it begins to take shape on the ground. The Migration Policy Institute told Politico Magazine that the new policy could result in as many as 260,000 notices annually.

“What I can say as a former immigration attorney is that I would not apply for any immigration benefit right now for a client unless I was absolutely sure they would get it,” Pierce said.

USCIS has had the authority to issue NTAs since 2003 when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) first formed.

But under the new guidance, USCIS officers will now issue an NTA for a wider range of cases where the individual is deemed removable and there is evidence of fraud, criminal activity, or where an applicant is denied an immigration benefit and is unlawfully present in the United States, according to USCIS. At an MPI conference Monday, USCIS director L. Francis Cissna said the agency issued 91,000 notices to appear in fiscal year 2017 and over 58,000 in the first two quarters of fiscal year 2018.

“Through the new NTA policy memo, USCIS is carrying out the president’s executive order on enhancing public safety in the interior of the United States,” Cissna said Monday.

“If you don’t have a lawful status, you should be NTA’d.”

by Elizabeth Trovall

H

OUSTON - The Trump administration is expanding the discretion immigration officers have when they decide whether or not to grant a green card or work permit, according to new rules announced this past weekend.

New standards could limit thousands of immigrants’ access to green cards and work permits in Houston.

Immigrant communities “should definitely be concerned” about a new guidance at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, one policy analyst told Rewire.News.

Pierce said that before USCIS’s new policy, the agency’s largest chunk of NTAs were issued to asylum seekers, which is a very different context for receiving a notice to appear before a judge.

ated a “denaturalization task force” after the agency announced in June a Los Angeles office specifically focused on investigating naturalized citizens suspected of lying on their immigration applications.

“When an asylum seeker passes their credible fear interview, they receive an NTA and are put into long-term removal proceedings. So in the context of asylum seekers, an NTA is a victory. It means you’re an affirmative asylum applicant,” Pierce said. “For everyone else, an NTA is not something you want to get.”

At Monday’s conference, Cissna addressed Operation Janus, and pushed back against media reports that his agency has a denaturalization task force.

This latest policy change follows on the heels of a July announcement from USCIS updating policy guidance for adjudicators. The guidance, which took effect on September 11, gives USCIS adjudicators full discretion “to deny an application, petition, or request without first issuing a Request for Evidence (RFE) or Notice of Intent to Deny (NOID) when required initial evidence was not submitted or the evidence of record fails to establish eligibility.” It applies to all applications, petitions, and requests, with the exception of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals requests as the program is being litigated.

Cissna, who has overseen USCIS since October 2017, is a Trump appointee. His priorities, which he outlined Monday at MPI’s annual immigration conference, suggest the agency is moving away from its “services” approach of previous administrations.

“My three main priorities for USCIS focus on homeland security, faithfully administering our nation’s immigration laws, and moving the agency into an electronic world,” Cissna said.

Federal immigration agencies housed within DHS generally focus on immigration enforcement, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection. USCIS has typically been thought of as the “services arm” of the immigration system, but under Cissna, the agency appears to be veering further into immigration enforcement.

As Rewire.News first reported in January, USCIS worked with the Justice Department and ICE as part of Operation Janus, a nearly decade-old counter-terrorism measure disbanded by President Obama in 2016. Under the Trump administration, it became an immigration enforcement operation that denaturalizes immigrants who allegedly “sought to circumvent criminal record and other background checks in the naturalization process.” So far, the operation has targeted South Asian men who have been in the United States for decades, some of whom may have been escaping persecution in their countries of origin.

Advocates have called Operation Janus a “McCarthy-like witch hunt” and media outlets reported that USCIS had cre-

“There is no denaturalization task force. This is a group of officers and lawyers who are looking at the cases that were identified by ICE of people who illegally entered the country, got deported, and then illegally entered again under a fake identity and then years later lied to get citizenship,” Cissna said. “It is appropriate and correct that those people be denaturalized …. We are not opening up naturalization boxes and finding people’s files and looking for missing commas or missing semicolons.

This is the population we’re going after; that’s it.”

Since January 2017, USCIS officials have identified more than 2,500 cases that require review for potential denaturalization. As of August 31, Cissna said, more than 110 cases have been referred to the DOJ for denaturalization. Six naturalized citizens have received denaturalization orders since the operation first relaunched.

According to advocates, USCIS is also increasingly reflecting the Trump administration’s anti-immigration rhetoric. In February, Cissna infamously removed “nation of immigrants” from the agency’s mission statement in order to better reflect his guiding principles for the agency, “including a focus on protecting American workers and guarding America,” the Hill reported.

“Who does the agency serve?” Cissna asked at an August event in Washington, D.C. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding of that over the years …. People kind of naturally fall into the belief that the individuals that we serve are the people that we interact with every day when we take applications or petitions. I don’t think that we serve them …. We serve the American people.”

Pierce said that Americans are seeing a “real paradigm shift,” both within USCIS and the immigration system at large. In anticipation of MPI’s conference, the analyst broke down every policy change to the immigration system under the Trump administration. It turned out to be an eight-page bulleted list, which her organization is hoping to publish on its site in the coming weeks.

Pierce said her initial list likely didn’t include every change that’s occurred.

These changes, she said, have a chilling effect on immigrant communities. With USCIS’ new policy, immigrant communities may now be unwilling to

When deciding if someone should be granted a visa, immigration officials would take into account a number of factors and determine someone’s likelihood to use an expanded list of public benefits in the future (including food stamps and Medicaid).

Factors like income, education and age would play a role in the determination.

“It brings in a lot of different discriminatory factors into what normally wasn’t part of the immigration process,” said Houston immigration lawyer Ruby Powers.

Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow with the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) said the proposed rules are a significant departure from current standards, established in 1999.

“This would give the administration tremendous discretion in making judgments to deny admissions and to deny green cards to those who couldn’t meet an income standard that many Americans couldn’t meet,” said Greenberg.

The rule could impact around 25,000 of the 35,000 people who apply for green cards and visas in Houston each year, MPI researcher Randy Capps told Houston Matters in an interview. He also said an additional 30,000 temporary visa recipients could also be impacted when they renew their visas.

A main concern among advocates is how proposed rules could discourage families from enrolling their citizen children in benefits like the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which is part of Medicaid.

“Most people (are) afraid to use any form of benefit, which can put children who are on Medicaid or SNAP (food stamps), or other benefits, it could prevent families from wanting to use those and put children in peril,” Powers said.

adjust their status because they run the risk of being deported upon denial. USCIS’ new policy also enables officers to deny an application without a request for evidence, robbing immigrants of the ability to prove they qualify for a benefit.

“The changes we’re seeing aren’t random; it’s been a huge overhaul that was thoughtful and well-coordinated among all of the [federal immigration] agencies,” Pierce said. “We are currently watching a well-coordinated effort across the United States government to limit immigration.”

- Rewire News

A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office.

In Houston and across the country, immigrants have been withdrawing from a number of public programs out of fear it could affect their legal status or lead to deportation.

Having more people drop out of public programs like Medicaid could have a major impact on public health.

“If people are more likely to be uninsured, they wait longer to get healthcare, more of them show up at hospital emergency rooms,” Capps noted.

“That could have an impact on the quality of service, the ability to provide service at public hospitals and also on

county taxpayers,” he added.

However, some groups favor proposed changes saying it will make the immigration system more equitable.

“The large number of immigrant-headed households relying on government programs is a byproduct of our failed family chain migration system. Rather than select immigrants based on objective criteria – including their likelihood to succeed economically – we primarily take people based on who they are related to,” according to a Federation for American Immigration Reform statement.

- NPR

Why we’re training the next generation of lawyers in big data

by Anne Tucker and Charlotte Alexander

A

rtificial intelligence is transforming the traditional delivery of legal services.

In general terms, the set of tools broadly called “legal analytics” promises to do two things: increase the efficiency of tasks that once required substantial time and human effort, and mine masses of data to discover new insights that were previously inaccessible.

As legal scholars, we’re excited about the promise of applying these tools to legal research questions. At Georgia State, we’re building interdisciplinary research teams with lawyers and data scientists working side by side. Students are involved too, so that we can educate the next generation of lawyers to leverage these tools in their own practices.

- Transforming legal tasks Suppose that a company wants to forecast which employee complaints lead to lawsuits. Historically, the company might assign a team of analysts and lawyers to comb through complaint records, personnel files and court documents, searching for some pattern that might signal litigation risk.

This painstaking process could take months and require an army of people to process thousands of pages of text.

Treating this task instead as a data science problem dramatically improves speed and efficiency. An algorithm could extract key text in bulk and as-

semble it for analysis. Human time and attention would then be trained only on the relevant information. The labor-intensive search process would be eliminated.

The new generation of analytics tools can do more than simply reduce labor hours.

Techniques like machine learning – a type of artificial intelligence where computers can recursively learn from a set of examples without being explicitly programmed to do so – can enable the discovery of new patterns that are beyond the reach of manual analysis. For example, in the scenario above, an algorithm might be able to predict whether any given employee complaint will result in a lawsuit.

At our lab, we are testing the application of analytics tools to a broad range of legal questions. We analyzed all employment lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for northern Georgia to understand which cases win and lose and to identify case features like judges, attorneys and motions that might influence a case’s ultimate outcome.

For example, we found that, when a motion was referred by the presiding district court judge to a magistrate judge for a preliminary report and recommendation, the magistrate judge’s recommendation was the strongest predictor of the judge’s ultimate decision. This raises interesting questions, which we are researching further, about decision-makers’ roles in resolving legal disputes. - Phys.org

VOICE OF ASIA 16

Young Life

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Half of young Americans see better financial future: poll

HCC launches new online college with 32 fully online degrees

bout half of young Americans expect to be financially better off than their parents, according to a new poll, a sign that the dream of upward mobility is alive but somewhat tempered.

HCC 3rd largest in the U.S. for online enrollments

A

The poll, by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV, found that half of 15- to 26-year-olds think they eventually will be better off than their parents in terms of household finances. About 29 percent expect to do as well as their parents, and 20 percent expect to be worse off.

Parents were slightly more optimistic: 60 percent think their children will do better than they did, a view that held true for parents across all income groups. Overall, only 12 percent of parents said that they felt their children might do worse.

A recent poll found half of 15- to 26-year-olds think they eventually will be better off than their parents in terms of household finances.

About 29 percent expect to do as well as their parents, and 20 percent expect to be worse off. (Photo: iStock) holds an undergraduate degree in biology and is planning on attending medical school to become a cardiologist.

It’s no longer a guarantee that children will achieve upward income mobility. About half of the Americans born in 1984 earned more at age 30 than their parents, down from 92 percent in 1940, according to the study by famed economist Raj Chetty and others that was released in 2016.

Narvaez is less certain about the prospects of the U.S. economy, particularly as the nation appears to be marching into a trade war with China.

Jennifer Narvaez, 23, is among those who anticipates her financial future will be a bit brighter than that of her parents. Narvaez said she expects to have more opportunities as a college graduate to get a job and own a home than her parents, who grew up in Nicaragua and immigrated to the United States. The Miami resident

Alex Barner, 20, also felt optimistic that he might fare better than his mother, who had him at age 18 and raised him as a single mother. He is attending college in New Mexico and is considering a future career in business management.

“It’s a weird time,” she said.

“I feel like it’s hard to predict what will happen because of the kind of administration we have.”

While Barner is hopeful he will do well in life, he also

has some concerns about the trajectory of the nation and its economy. Like Narvaez, he’s concerned by the trade policy of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Barner also said he feels politicians need to focus more on matters that affect people in the here and now, such as health care and student loan relief.

Respondents were divided about how they expect the nation’s economy will fare in the year ahead. About 29 percent of young people expect the economy to improve, 30 percent expect it will get worse and 41 anticipate it will stay the same. Similarly, 35 percent of parents expect improvement, 27 percent expect conditions to get worse and 38 percent expect the economy to stay as is.

- AP News

As free college programs move forward, experts agree that design matters

by Louis Serino

A

mericans are realizing that the current financial aid system doesn’t go far enough in making college affordable. Student loan debt just surpassed $1.5 trillion, and the disparities in access by race and income continue to grow. To combat these negative trends, a new wave of reform calls for college to be free—and programs across the nation have already started to make this idea a reality.

On Sept. 20, the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings hosted an event to present the results of new, original research on a free college program, followed by a discussion of the broader policy implications of college promise models. Brown Center Director Michael Hansen moderated the conversation, which featured: Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Doug Harris; New Jersey Secretary of Higher Education Zakiya Smith Ellis; Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Beth Akers; College Promise Campaign Executive Director Martha Kanter; and Robert Kelchen, a professor at Seton Hall University.

Doug Harris has spent nearly a decade designing and studying the ins and outs of The Degree Project, a Milwaukeebased college promise program that shares many similarities with others across the country.

His recently released evaluation, “The promise of free college (and its potential pitfalls),” not only provides valuable insight on the impact of The Degree Project but also on college promise programs overall and how they might be designed going forward.

Started in 2011, The Degree Project was a college promise program in which eligibility for students was determined through a randomized control trial in Milwaukee Public Schools. Of the 36 schools, half were in the test group, which offered a first-year cohort up to $12,000 (enough to complete a two-year degree) upon completing high school with a minimum 2.5 GPA and 90-percent attendance rate.

The results showed mixed effects of the free college program. For students in the test program, the availability of

HCC’s Online College counselors, advisors and tutors.

H

OUSTON (Sept. 25, 2018) – A regular ribbon and scissors just wouldn’t do for the new Houston Community College Online College. Instead, attendees held tablets and swiped their fingers across the screen for the ribbon cutting marking the launch of 32 fully online degrees and certificates. By the fall of 2019, the college will have a total of 71 fully online degrees and certificates.

“This is a defining moment in the history of HCC,” said Chancellor Cesar Maldonado.

“The students who have registered for online courses this fall are the first to have the option of completing a fully online pathway to a certificate or associate degree at HCC.” “HCC has offered remote learning options since the time they were referred to as distance learning, but the addition of a seventh college within the organization entirely dedicated to meeting the needs of online learners takes HCC’s

commitment to a whole different level,” said Margaret Ford Fisher, president of HCC’s online college. “We are providing students the option of completing their coursework anywhere, anytime.”

With more than 21,000 students taking one or more online classes, HCC is the third largest community college in the U.S. for online enrollments. There are more than 60 areas of study and more than 5,000 individual courses available online.

“It is our goal at HCC to remove roadblocks that might get in the way of obtaining an associate degree or workforce certificate,” HCC Board Chair Carolyn Evans-Shabazz said.

“The online college does just that for potential students who, for a variety of reasons, cannot conveniently take traditional classes.”

“The online college expands educational opportunities for stay-at-home moms and dads, students committed to car-

ing for elderly loved ones at home and those already in the workforce who need additional education to move up in their careers or change their careers altogether,” said Norma Perez, HCC vice chancellor, instructional services, and chief academic officer.

According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group, HCC retention rates for firsttime freshmen students were 9 to 10 percentage points higher when they took at least one fully online or mixed modality course. BCG also reported that HCC students who take a combination of digital and face-to-face courses complete their degrees at a higher rate than those who take all of their classes face to face.

HCC’s Online College provides counselors, advisors and tutors for its online students.

All HCC online classes are taught by credentialed faculty.

More information is available at hccs.edu/online.

Trump: ‘it’s a very scary time for young men in America’

by Miles Parks

W

Photo: Bard.edu money did increase motivation and steps toward college, and researchers saw a slight increase in long-term enrollment and graduation from 2-year colleges. Yet, students didn’t exhibit higher GPAs, attendance, or graduation rates, nor higher initial college entry rates. Only 21 percent of the test group actually met the standards for the money. Harris’s takeaway from this? Avoid performance requirements in college promise programs (doing so provides the benefit to students who are already likely to attend college), and use these programs as a way to catalyze change in schools and communities (widespread communication and a permanent program will be more likely to effect the cultural change college promises seek to achieve).

While the panelists held different views on the policy details of free college, they agreed on a central point: As free college programs play out at the state and local level, attention to design and implementation will be critical. As Martha Kanter put it, “Promise programs have a lot to learn.”

One idea, echoed by the panelists and the research findings, was to simplify the delivery of financial aid. Offering students the clear expectation of free college in high school may be a more efficient strategy for boosting enrollment than leaving students to navigate the complexities of the financial aid process after graduation.

Doug Harris noted this as a possible explanation as to why The Degree Project wasn’t successful in boosting immediate enrollment rate—the promised aid came late, leaving students

without a clear means of paying for college.

Promise program architects should also consider costs aside from tuition. As Robert Kelchen pointed out, free tuition only goes so far if students cannot cover their living expenses out of pocket. He explained that many colleges are wary to let students borrow money for these costs. While the concern of students defaulting on debt for living costs is valid, it is important to consider what alternatives students have.

Panelists also weighed in on who free college programs should target—a pertinent point when funds are limited. Zakiya Smith Ellis discussed her own experience implementing New Jersey’s free college pilot program, The Community College Innovation Challenge. There, the program targets students whose families make less than $45,000 a year. There’s also the question of giving funds for two-year versus-four year colleges. In Harris’s mind, that’s a decision that depends on local need; in some localities, twoyear degrees make more sense than others.

The question of college choice came up as well: Are students going to feel pressured to attend two-year and community colleges, and at what cost? Smith Ellis acknowledged the risks of funneling students away from starting a four-year degree, but supported free community college for being “open access” and readily available to students, who can always apply credits to a fouryear degree after.

- Brookings.edu

ASHINGTON, DC - President Trump continued his defense Tuesday of his Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, saying “it’s a very scary time for young men in America” because of the possibility of false accusations.

“I think that it’s a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of,” Trump said speaking to reporters outside the White House, before leaving for Philadelphia, Pa., where he was scheduled to speak with electrical workers. “This is a very difficult time.”

Kavanaugh’s nomination remains in limbo this week, as the FBI looks into allegations of sexual assault made by nu-

President Donald Trump speaks to the media before departing from the White House. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images) merous women. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed again on Tuesday to vote on the nomination by the end of the week, insisting that the results of the FBI inquiry be kept private, for senators only to see.

Late last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard from both Kavanaugh, and Christine Blasey Ford, who says Kavanaugh drunkenly pinned her down on a bed and groped her against her will at a high school gathering in 1982. - NPR

Magic

Adventure

Merriment

Saturdays, Sundays, and Thanksgiving Friday September 2 9 th through November 2 5 th TexRenFest.com

Romance

VOICE OF VOICE OFASIA ASIA17 17

FRIDAY, October 5, 5, 2018 2018 FRIDAY, October

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Section 2

Half of women at risk of dementia, Parkinson’s, stroke: study

P

Dutch researchers considered all three conditions “in order to grasp how big the problem of incurable brain diseases in late life really is,” said the study’s senior author Arfan Ikram.

For the study, published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, researchers tracked more than 12,000 healthy people over the age of 45 from 1990 to 2016.

Over the 26 years, 5,291 people died. Nearly 1,500 were diagnosed with dementia -- 80 percent with Alzheimer’s -- while 1,285 had a stroke and 263 developed Parkinson’s.

The results indicated that the likelihood of women aged 45 years or older getting the diseases was 48 percent, while it was 36 percent for men.

to strengthen Medicare! ou’ve been using technology more and more in your everyday lives. As a result, you have a growing need for fast, easy-touse, seamless, and personalized experiences online.

ARIS, France | AFP | Monday 10/1/2018 - Nearly half of women and one in three men are at risk of developing stroke or degenerative neurological diseases such as dementia and Parkinson’s during their lifetime, according to a study published Monday.

This could mean there are also overlapping ways to delay or avoid getting the diseases, and the research found that some preventative strategies may cut the risk by between 20 and 50 percent.

e-Medicare – Another step

Y

by Daniel Lawler

“We grouped these diseases together not only because they are common but also because there are indications that these often co-occur and might share some overlapping causes,” Ikram, of the Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam in the Netherlands, told AFP.

Tel: 713-774-5140

The likelihood of women aged 45 years or older getting the diseases was 48 percent, while it was 36 percent for men, the study shows. (Getty Images) The gender split is mostly due to the fact that men die earlier than women, Ikram said.

- Two percent of GDP “Our study does not show some sort of protective effect for men,” he said.

“Instead it is merely due to fewer men surviving to old age.”

Because they live longer, women have an increased risk of such diseases, and the study found women were twice as likely as men to develop both dementia and stroke.

While there are no cures for these diseases, a healthy lifestyle -- a good diet, not smoking or having diabetes -- can protect against stroke and help prevent the onset of dementia, Ikram said.

There are also indications that a healthy lifestyle can reduce the risk of Parkinson’s, he added.

The cost of the three neurological

diseases is believed to be more than two percent of the world’s annual economic productivity (GDP), the researchers said in a statement.

However while the dangers of other illnesses such as breast cancer and heart diseases are well known, “the same can’t be said of dementia, stroke and Parkinsonism”, the statement said.

The researchers noted that as the study only included people of European ancestry with a relatively long life expectancy, it “might not be applicable to other ethnicities/populations”.

Worldwide, about seven percent of people over 65 suffer from Alzheimer’s or some form of dementia, a percentage that rises to 40 percent above the age of 85.

The number afflicted is expected to triple by 2050 to 152 million, according to the World Health Organization, posing a huge challenge to healthcare systems.

Startups tackle Indian women’s toilet woes

e-Medicare is here to give you access to accurate and valuable information, presented in ways that make sense. Whether you choose to interact with Medicare online, on the phone, or through other channels, our goal is to make sure you have personalized guidance to make good decisions about your health care and coverage.

To meet these needs and provide the level of customer service that you’ve come to expect, we’re working to update and improve the Medicare resources you know and trust. We’re building these improvements based on data from millions of interactions, feedback that you give us, and targeted research. And as always, we’ll continue to ensure that your personal information is safe and secure.

We’ve already started some of these improvements – have you noticed? If you have or make a personalized account at MyMedicare.gov, and you’ve gotten your new Medicare card in the mail, you can go online anytime to log in and view or print a copy of your card. No more waiting for a replacement in the mail if your Medicare card takes an unexpected turn through the rinse cycle! Also, in your Medicare & You handbook this fall, we’ve included some new charts to give you a simple overview of the types of coverage choices available in Medicare.

These are just a couple of early changes, and there are more on the way.

Save time & help the environment— get “Medicare & You” electronically!

Here’s an easy way to reduce paper waste while getting the Medicare information you need—sign up to get your “Medicare & You” handbook electronically. The eHandbook is an

by Abhaya Srivastava

N

EW DELHI, India | AFP With her bladder fit to burst on a recent ride with an allfemale motorbike club, Vidhi Malla chugged on her 350cc “Thunderbird” into a fancy highway eatery near New Delhi and rushed to the toilet.

Sudhir Mathuria HEALTHLIFE 360 713-771-2900 online version of your trusted “Medicare & You” handbook and has all the same information as your paper copy.

The difference is it’s updated throughout the year, so you’ll never be looking at outdated information. It’s searchable, so you can find the information you need quickly and easily.

Ready to sign up for the electronic version of the “Medicare & You” handbook? Visit Medicare.gov/gopaperless and follow 3 simple steps: 1.

Enter your Medicare information.

2.

Confirm that you no longer want your paper copy of “Medicare & You” and only want the electronic version.

3.

You’ll now get the e-Handbook instead of the paper copy.

Help the environment and get your Medicare information faster. Go paperless today!

For 2019 Medicare Advantage Plan, Medicare Supplemental plan or Prescription drug plan contact Sudhir Mathuria at 713-771-2900.

Pepsico, Coca-Cola exploring cannabis soft drinks

But to her disgust, if not to her surprise, the facilities stank and the seat was splattered with urine, forcing the 34-year-old to get back on her bike and wait till she got home.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will trumpet progress in improving access to toilets at a Delhi convention starting this weekend -- but as Malla’s experience shows, there is still a long way to go.

Some help is at hand from local startups providing ways to avoid coming into contact with or clean up filthy toilet seats, which doctors warn pose a health risk to many women.

“Toilets are a huge issue. Once I caught an infection from using a loo in a big hotel,” Malla, a public relations consultant, told AFP. Malla’s friends in her bike gang recounted their own horror stories -from bins overflowing with used toilet paper to wiping the seat with the edge of their dresses.

Using a dirty toilet, not drinking enough water or holding urine for a long time puts women at a greater risk of urinary tract infections, a painful complaint that half of women report having had at least once.

Indian toilets “are a breeding ground for infections”, gynaecologist Anshu Jindal told AFP. New businesses tackling the problem are tapping into a feminine hygiene sector forecast by Euromonitor to grow to $522 million by 2020 from $340 million now as India’s middle class swells.

India’s first female urination device, the PeeBuddy, is a simple candy-green cardboard funnel laminated with water-resistant coating allowing women to keep their distance from loo seats.

PeeSafe

meanwhile,

dispensed

Prime Minister Narendra Modi says his government has made significant progress in improving access to toilets in India. (AFP photo) from a purple spray can, is a seat sanitiser.

“We have sold 750,000 units in the last 18 months and we are now present in 10 other countries,” said Vikas Bagaria, founder of PeeSafe.

Innovations like these have helped to “liberate” women like Malla, she says, meaning they don’t have to think twice before hitting the road.

- Stand-and-pee Such issues are set to figure highly at the Mahatma Gandhi International Sanitation Convention, running from Saturday to Tuesday.

The event, coinciding with Gandhi’s 150th birthday, is hosted by Modi with UN chief Antonio Guterres in attendance alongside ministers and experts.

A lack of sanitation remains a burning issue for India -- and much of the developing world -- despite an aggressive drive by Modi’s government since he came to power in 2014.

His government says it has slashed the number of people forced to defecate in the open from 550 million in 2014 to less than 150 million today.

But the state of existing toilets still shocks. The capital Delhi, for exam-

ple, a megacity teeming with 19 million people, has just a few hundred public washrooms.

A survey of 200-odd toilets by Action Aid last year found 70 percent of them unclean and without a water supply.

Entrepreneurs abroad have also created products to help women but they are often prohibitively expensive in a country where hundreds of millions of people live on less than a dollar a day.

For instance the reusable, silicone GoGirl stand-and-pee device costs $9.99 apiece in the United States, while the Shewee goes for $12.

But a pack of 10 single-use, locally produced PeeBuddy funnels costs 200 rupees ($3) and a pack of two PeeSafe 75 ml sprays 350 rupees.

Deep Bajaj, the brains behind PeeBuddy, came up with the idea during a road trip when he noticed women in his group were not drinking anything.

“Men are so blessed, we can stand and pee almost anywhere,” Bajaj told AFP, checking a consignment for dispatch at his chock-a-block warehouse.

Your OB-GYN of Choice: Dr. Rachna Bhala, M.D Obstetrics, Gynecology, Infertility, Laser and Micro Surgery

Comprehensive Care for Women and Adolescents

ARDMS Certified Ultrasounds on Premises 713-271-2708 Methodist Sugar Land

S.W Memorial Hospital

16605 S.W Freeway, Suite:365 Sugar Land, TX 77479

7777 S.W Freeway, Suite:748 Houston, TX 77074

N

EW YORK | AFP - PepsiCo on Tuesday joined the growing list of big companies to confirm potential interest in making drinks with cannabis.

Hugh Johnston, chief financial officer of the soda and snacks giant, acknowledged the company’s interest in an interview with CNBC. “We will look at it very critically,” Johnston said of cannabis on an interview with CNBC. “But I am not prepared to share any plans that we may have in the space right now.”

Johnston noted that cannabis is still illegal under federal law throughout the United States, even though some states have legalized it. But he said

the company would “turn over every stone to look for growth.”

The remarks come two weeks after PepsiCo’s archrival Coca-Cola said it was studying “wellness beverages” that could include cannabidiol, or CBD, a non-psychoactive component in cannabis that is sold in a growing variety of consumer products.

Molson Coors is also working with a Canadian company on cannabis-infused non-alcoholic beverages, while Constellation Brands has announced a hefty $4 billion investment in Canada’s Canopy Growth in exchange for a 38 percent stake in Canopy.

Cannabis-infused drinks have been seen as a potential growth area for soda and spirits companies that have had trouble boosting sales.

HEALTH

VOICE OF ASIA 18

The social stigma surrounding acne could be lowering wellbeing for sufferers

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

New study suggests the Mediterranean diet could prevent a leading cause of blindness

Researchers point out that acne is not well represented in popular culture. (© vadimguzhva / Istock.com)

L

ONDON, UK , October 1, 2018 - New Irish research has found that the negative stigma surrounding acne can lower the quality of life of sufferers, increasing psychological distress levels and causing physical symptoms such as sleep disturbance, headaches and gastrointestinal problems.

Carried out by researchers at the University of Limerick, the new study surveyed 271 acne sufferers age 18 to 51 years to investigate whether their perceptions of stigmatization negatively affects well-being, focusing on quality of life, levels of psychological distress, and physical symptoms including sleep disturbances, headaches, respiratory infections and gastrointestinal problems.

The findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, showed that participants who perceived high levels of acne stigma also reported higher levels of psychological distress, anxiety and depression as well as physical symptoms such as respiratory illness.

The researchers also found that women reported a lower quality of life and more physical symptoms than men, with the team adding that it has been suggested previously that women may face more social pressure than men to have clear skin, and so may be more concerned about the appearance of their acne.

Acne severity was also significantly correlated with health-related quality of life and psychological distress, although acne location was not significantly correlated with health-related quality of life, psychological distress or physical symptoms.

Participants who were taking medication for acne also appeared to have a lower quality of life than participants who were not taking medication, which the team say may be due to increased awareness of their condition.

“We know from previous research that many acne sufferers experience negative feelings about their condition, but we have never before been able to draw such a direct link between quality of life and perception of social stigma around acne,” said study author Dr. Aisling O’Donnell. “The findings of this study echo previous research showing that individuals with visible physical distinctions, which are viewed negatively by society, can experience impaired psychological and physical well-being as a result.”

Lead author Jamie Davern also added that the lack of representation of people with acne in society could increase the perceived stigma around the condition, thus increasing the negative impact on health.

“Like many physical attributes that are stigmatized, acne is not well represented in popular culture, advertising or social media. This can lead people with acne to feel that they are ‘not normal’ and therefore negatively viewed by others. Online campaigns like #freethepimple and the recent ‘acne-positive’ movement emerging on social media is an encouraging development for people of all ages that are affected by acne,” he explained.

Acne is most common among adolescents although the condition is also reported to affect 10.8 percent of children age 5 to 13 years and 12.7 percent of adults aged over 59.

Nobel-winning therapy weaponises immune system against cancer

A

revolutionary c a n cer treatment pioneered by the winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Medicine has been hailed as the future of fighting the disease -and it has fewer devastating side effects than chemotherapy.

pies are about destroying cells and can be quite damaging, but this is much more targeted and much more specific because it’s enabling our immune cells to come in and actually kill the tumour cells directly,” she told AFP.

Allison was one of two scientists to discover the blocking effect for one such brake -- or checkpoint inhibitor molecule -- called CTLA-4 in 1995.

Honjo discovered another, PD-1, around the same time.

The therapy has only been used on patients for a few years, and is less effective for certain cancers such as pancreatic and brain cancer.

“We neutralise these and the white blood cells can get to work on the cancer cells,” he added.

Sheena Cruickshank, an immunology lecturer at the University of Manchester in Britain, said the therapy has

Carried out by researchers at the Université de Bordeaux, France, and Erasmus University Medical Center, The Netherlands, the new study looked at nearly 5,000 participants who had participated in two previous European studies.

The sample included 4,446 adults from the Rotterdam Study, which investigated disease risk in people age 55 and older, and 550 French adults from the Alienor Study, which assessed the association between eye diseases and nutritional factors in people aged 73 and older.

Participants in the Rotterdam study were assessed every five years over a 21-year period, while those in the Alienor Study were seen every two

- Booming field -

But 800 clinical trials were in progress worldwide and more than 30 drugs under development as of June, according to the American Cancer Society.

And the pharmaceutical industry has heavily invested in research in the field.

The US Food and Drug Administration has already approved a number of immunotherapy treatments, including some targeting PD-1.

“The booming field of immunotherapy that these discoveries have precipitated is still relatively in its infancy, so it’s exciting to consider how this research will progress in the future,” said Charles Swanton, Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician.

years over a four-year period.

The findings, published in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, showed that the participants who closely followed the Mediterranean diet were 41 percent less likely to develop AMD compared with those who did not follow the diet.

In addition, the results suggested that the Mediterranean diet needs to be followed as as a complete diet plan, with the team finding that none of the individual components of the diet, such as fish, fruit, vegetables etc., lowered the risk of AMD when eaten on their own.

A Mediterranean diet encourages a high intake of fruit, vegetables, fish, pulses, olive oil and whole grains, and a low intake of meat, processed foods, and dairy products. Although previous studies have linked it to a reduced risk of heart disease, cognitive decline and cancer, and even a longer lifespan,

only a few studies have investigated its effect on AMD. The new findings now support and expand on previous research, suggesting that the Mediterranean diet is beneficial for both those already have AMD or are at risk of developing it.

AMD is a degenerative eye disease which causes loss of central vision, affecting everyday abilities such as seeing faces, driving, reading, and writing. It is also the leading cause of vision loss among people age 50 and older.

“You are what you eat,” said Emily Chew, M.D., a clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. “I believe this is a public health issue on the same scale as smoking. Chronic diseases such as AMD, dementia, obesity, and diabetes, all have roots in poor dietary habits. It’s time to take quitting a poor diet as seriously as quitting smoking.”

- AFP Relaxnews

At least 80k people died of flu last winter in US

T

he U.S. government estimates that 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter — the disease’s highest death toll in at least four decades.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rob-

“Immunotherapy is now possibly the most important recent discovery for cancer therapy in general, as an alternative to chemo,” he said.

James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan won the Nobel on Monday for identifying two different brakes on the immune system which, when turned off, allow the body’s defence system to attack cancerous cells faster and more effectively.

“The goal is to neutralise these molecules, among them CTLA-4 and PD1, and these are what the recipients of the Nobel prize have been working on,” said Pierre Goldstein, emeritus professor at the Marseille-Luminy Immunology Centre.

N

ew research has found that following the popular Mediterranean diet may reduce the risk of developing the eye disease age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness in the United States.

Goldstein, whose team first identified the CTLA-4 molecule in 1987, said the results have been very promising.

While chemotherapy destroys cancerous cells This composite image shows Tasuku Honjo (L) of Japan along with nor- and James P. Allison (R) of the US, in Taipei on September mal cells -- often 18, 2014. Honjo and Allison won the 2018 Nobel Medicine with toxic and Prize. (© Sam YEH / AFP) debilitating effects on a patient -- immunotherapy “enabled us to harness the power of unleashes the body’s immune system the body to help heal itself”. to target tumour cells.

“A lot of conventional cancer thera-

Once these brakes were identified, researchers were able to work on how to turn them off and get T-cells -- white blood cells -- to start attacking.

A Mediterranean diet may help preserve eye health.( © Lilechka75 / Istock.com)

“For example, immunotherapy can control between 20 and 50 percent of certain advanced melanomas, which is something considering that situation would have been a death sentence not too long ago.”

But it’s also not totally harmless, he added.

“Activated immune cells can cause certain auto-immune complications in certain organs, but we can control those,” he said.

A study released in June tested a form of immunotherapy against chemo for non-smallcell lung cancer, the most common lung cancer worldwide.

It found that the drug Keytruda (pembrolizumab) -- which famously helped former US president Jimmy Carter stave off advanced melanoma that had spread to his brain -- helped lung cancer patients live four to eight months longer than chemo.

-AFP Relaxnews

ert Redfield, revealed the total in an interview Tuesday night with The Associated Press.

Flu experts knew that it was a very bad season, but at least one found the estimate surprising.

“That’s huge,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert. The tally was nearly twice as much as what health officials had previously considered a bad year, he said.

In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to 56,000, according to the CDC. Last fall and winter, the U.S. went through one of the most severe flu seasons in recent memory. It was driven by a kind of flu that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths, particularly among young children and the elderly.

The season peaked in early February. It was mostly over by the end of March, although some flu virus continued to circulate.

Making a bad year worse, the flu vaccine didn’t work very well. Experts nevertheless say vaccination is still worth it, because it makes illnesses less severe and saves lives.

“I’d like to see more people get vaccinated,” Redfield told the AP at an event in New York. “We lost 80,000 people last year to the flu.”

CDC officials do not have exact counts of how many people die from flu each year. Flu is so common that not all flu cases are reported, and flu is not always listed on death certificates.

So the CDC uses statistical models, which are periodically revised, to make estimates.

It eclipses the estimates for every flu season going back to the winter of 1976-77. Estimates for many earlier seasons were not readily available.

Last winter was not the worst flu season on record, however. The 1918 flu pandemic, which lasted nearly two years, killed more than 500,000 Americans, historians estimate.

VOICE OF ASIA 19

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Home&Real Estate Ronald McDonald House Houston completes $25M expansion, renovation project

by Jen Para

R

onald McDonald House Houston recently finished its $25 million project to expand and renovate the Holcombe House.

After about three years of fundraising and over a year of construction, Ronald McDonald House Houston has officially completed its expansion project of its flagship facility, the Holcombe House.

The nonprofit hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony Sept.

27, unveiling the renovated 50,000-square-foot original building and newly built 16,000-square-foot, two-story tower at 1907 Holcombe Blvd., according to a press release.

The project cost about $24.5 million, a goal completed with the global biopharmaceutical company AbbVie Inc. (NYSE: ABBV)’s recent donation to the national organization.

The construction project, which began last summer, was split into three phases, allowing the main building to continue to operate and house families needing a home as their children are treated at the Texas Medical Center. This was important to not only serve families but also keep existing volunteers so that they didn’t move onto a different organization to donate their time, CEO Rick Noriega said.

The first phase involved constructing the new building, which added 20 bedrooms to the Holcombe House’s original 50. These rooms, which are about 400 to 500 square feet, include walk-in showers and durable hardwood floors. Thanks to the addition of a parking garage in this new building, the property only lost one parking spot. Additionally, the new structure is connected

Each room is as well-outfitted as a nice hotel room would be. to the existing building with a skywalk.

The second phase renovated the first floor of the original building. Updates were done to the the lobby, intake offices, kitchen, common area, game room, classroom, volunteer areas, toddler area and playground. The third phase renovated the existing 50 bedrooms and bathrooms to meet current ADA requirements as well as maximize storage space.

Before the renovation, Ronald McDonald House Houston housed its executive and administrative offices at the Holcombe House, but these offices have been moved to 2450 Holcombe Blvd. at the John P. McGovern Campus.

Additionally, the project involved upgrades to critical infrastructure including HVAC, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing to improve functionality, comfort and energy efficiency, per the release.

These infrastructure updates are important in case another storm like Hurricane Harvey

rolls in. With backup generators, among other features, Holcombe House will have the capability to keep its sick residents comfortable if the rest of the city is in a power outage.

Jack Bellows — president of Houston-based W.S. Bellows Construction, the general contractor for the renovations and expansion — said that this was a tricky project because of the buildings’ location to the Brays Bayou. When Hurricane Harvey was about to hit, the company came out before hand to prepare the building and construction for the storm.

And when it subsided, Bellows Construction returned and quickly got the project back on budget and its original timeline, Noriega said.

T

hough we’re great admirers of many of Japan’s urban hotels, we urge anyone who will listen to get out of the city for a bit and check into a ryokan. This is taking that advice quite literally.

All the way out in Yamaguchi Prefecture, at the extreme western end of Japan’s main island of Honshū, is where you’ll find Bettei Otozure, in the mountains near Nagato City. Like so much of rural Japan, it’s a place that’s reasonably accessible, thanks to a world-class rail network; but like all the best places in rural Japan, once you’re there it’s another world entirely.

Bettei Otozure

The ultimate rural Japan stay experience

It’s a very traditional form of hospitality, but that doesn’t mean it’s stuck in the past. The suites are a mixture of tatamistyle floor-level furnishings and some Western design classics, looking for all the world like a ryokan reconsidered for a design-conscious modern world — which is, of course, more or less exactly what it is. The presence of electronic amenities and luxury-hotel comforts is a bit of a surprise, but they do nothing to distract from the main event, which is, as always, the view of the sublime Japanese countryside, in this case seen through floor-toceiling windows. And in typi-

Photos: Tablet Hotel, Nagato, Yamaguchi Prefecture

Bellows Construction also built the original Holcombe House, which opened in 1981, Bellows said.

cal style there’s a decided emphasis on bathing — either communally, at the main baths, or privately, en suite, in the open air. - Tablet Hotels

The first family in the new building moved in during the first week of September.

- HBJ

832-869-4026

Meridiana

Sienna Plantation: Stillwater Cove

Beds: 4-6 Bath: 3-5.5 Sq Ft: 3,073-4,697 Base Pricing From: the $390,000s

Beds: 3-4 Baths: 2.5-3.5 Sq Ft: 2,431-3,554 Base Pricing From: the $350,000s

in Iowa Colony, Texas

832-869-4032

in The Missouri City, Texas

832-756-2721

Sienna Plantation: Village of Sawmill Lake in The Missouri City, Texas

Beds: 3-6 Baths: 2-4.5 Sq Ft: 2,651-3,816 Base Pricing From: the $340,000s

832-869-4024

This is not an offer of real estate for sale, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, to residents of any state or province in which registration and other legal requirements have not been fulfilled. Pricing does not include options, elevation, or lot premiums, effective date of publication and subject to change without notice. All square footages and measurements are approximate and subject to change without notice. Trademarks are property of their respective owners. Equal Housing Opportunity.

Cane Island in Katy, Texas

Beds: 3-6 Baths: 3-5.5 Sq Ft: 2,975-4,697 Base Pricing From: the $460,000s

832-869-4026

sheahomes.com

BEAUTY & STYLE

VOICE OF ASIA 20

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Spring 2019 catwalk beauty trend:

Romantic hair

A

s ‘Fashion Month’ rolls into Paris, a major beauty trend is emerging. When it comes to hairstyles, it is clear that Spring/Summer 2019 is all about romance.

Rodarte kicked things off in New York with a showstopping look that featured a series of avant-garde flower crowns made out of fresh roses that were woven into the models’ tousled hairstyles. The approach was paired with vivid eyeshadow and bright red lips for an extra sweet vibe. At Coach, the whimsical beauty look focused on tousled waves that were curled loosely at the ends for a dreamy look.

In London, Bora Aksu also adopted a floral theme, sending models down the runway in floral headpieces, teamed with natural makeup in earthy tones. Delpozo’s abstract, gauzy headdresses were accessorized with a tousled hairstyle that saw wisps of hair brushed up towards the crown of the head.

Milan put a regal spin on the trend; Dolce & Gabbana embraced the flower crown with a series of roses in sumptuous pastel hues, while at Fendi, the top knots were softened by the addition of curling tendrils pulled loose to frame the models’ faces. Armani piled soft curls high on the models’ heads, while Alberta Ferretti kept things classic with a glossy, bouncy blowout that was both feminine and elegant.

In shift to general wellness, Weight Watchers becomes ‘WW’

N

EW YORK, October 1, 2018 - Global weight loss giant Weight Watchers is changing its name to WW as it moves toward promoting healthy living in general, the company announced Monday.

Model Kaia Gerber at the Coach Spring 2019 show during New York Fashion Week at Pier 94. © Angela Weiss / AFP

Its new slogan -- “Wellness that works” -- reflects the goal of branching out beyond losing pounds and into other business areas that are seeing strong growth.

Juicy Couture breaks into beauty

Oprah Winfrey, a longtime promoter of the brand, investor and board member, said she believed in the new strategy.

“From the moment I chose to invest in the company and join the board, I have believed that the role WW can play in people’s lives goes far beyond a number on the scale,” she said in a statement.

Oprah Winfrey, a longtime promoter of the Weight Watchers brand, investor and board member.© AFP PHOTO / ROBYN BECK

CEO Mindy Grossman said the company was “becoming the world’s partner in wellness.”

“No matter what your goal is -to lose weight, eat healthier, move more, develop a positive mind-set, or all of the above -- we will deliver science-based solutions that fit into people’s lives,” she said.

WW plans to reach new markets in part through a redesigned new app to be released next month and a “WellnessWins” rewards program to encourage healthier living.

The company also has begun a partnership with Headspace, which offers guided meditation services.

To attract new customers, WW plans in January to begin offering edible products that have no artificial sugars, dyes, flavors or preservatives.

New weight loss programs also

Weight Watchers Lifestyle Centre in Reading, UK. © Weight Watchers will be available through the voicecontrolled personal assistants offered

by Amazon, Google and Apple.

Shares in the company were trading up 1.7 percent toward 1630 GMT in New York.

The ad for Juicy Couture’s Oui fragrance © Revlon Oui Juicy Couture Ad

Madonna launches new beauty roller

M

adonna is expanding her skincare offering with a new roller.

The superstar’s MDNA Skin brand is preparing to launch an ‘Onyx Black Beauty Roller’ in the US this week, reports WWD. Designed to lift, firm and ease tension in the face and body, the roller comprises two carbon balls and comes in a futuristic, silver hue.

“I’ve seen a lot of beauty rollers out there and I wasn’t happy or satisfied with the way they were made,” the star told WWD. “My Japanese company, MTG, presented the idea of the infrared carbon rollers to me and I thought they were superior, so that led to the development of the beauty roller.”

Derma rollers have seen a huge surge in popularity over the past year, with Pinterest predicting that the concept would become a major beauty trend in 2018. From jade rollers to glass rollers, the tool has become a go-to accessory for beauty fans look-

N

EW YORK - Juicy Couture has reportedly got a makeup collection up its velour tracksuit sleeve. The LA-based fashion brand has been working on its debut cosmetics line, dubbed ‘Juicy Couture Color Collection,’ according to reports from Bustle. The collection, which is set to go on sale at the department store Macy’s on October 1, features a 12-pan shimmery eyeshadow and highlighter palette, as well as a glitter velour lipstick in five vibrant shades, with further products in the pipeline for the future.

The move comes weeks after the brand unveiled its latest fragrance, ‘Oui Juicy Couture,’ which is said to be the inspiration for the makeup series. The scent, which blends tart notes of waterlemon accord and acai tea ac-

Madonna poses in the press room at the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall on August 20, 2018 in New York City ing to soothe, calm or cool their skin.

Madonna, according to WWD, uses hers to treat everything from cellulite to stiff neck muscles.

The move is the latest milestone for

MDNA Skin, which launched in Japan four years ago, but came to the US last fall. The brand, which uses fango clay from Italy’s thermal spa town of Montecatini, already offers a face wash,

serum, eye mask, clay mask and ‘skin rejuvenator’ tool.

The Onyx Black Beauty Roller will reportedly be available at mdnaskin. com, barneys.com and in select Barneys New York stores.

- AFP Relax News

cord with fruitier elements like fresh pear, and floral notes of wild tuberose, made its debut back in August, with a star-studded campaign fronted by Devon Windsor, India Graham, Gizele Oliveira, and Luping Wang.

The launch is the latest step in a major comeback for Juicy Couture, which was once synonymous with noughties-style velour tracksuit nostalgia. The brand took to the catwalk at New York Fashion Week back in February for the very first time, having teamed up with luxe streetwear brand Vetements for a Spring 2017 collaboration that put it back on the fashion map.

In breaking into makeup, Juicy Couture joins a lineup of several major fashion brands to have made their color cosmetics debut recently, including Urban Outfitters, Asos and Boohoo.

Juicy Couture was started by two friends in 1995. Gela Nash (before marrying Duran Duran’s John Taylor) and Pamela Skaist-Levy, both residing in Pacoima, California, decided to create their own fashion label, Travis Jeans, selling maternity pants.

- AFP Relax News

TRAVEL / LEISURE

VOICE OF ASIA 21

This cafe in Korea will make you feel like you just walked into a comic book

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Google Maps’ new feature to help ease stress of daily commute

G

oogle Maps is launching a new commute tab this week, aimed at helping users shave time and stress from their daily commute to work.

Instead of wolfing down your breakfast, spilling coffee on your pants, and sprinting for the train or subway only to find yourself caught in a 15-minute delay, commuters can consult the new tab to see exactly where their bus or train is on the map in real time.

The feature for transit riders will roll out across 80 regions worldwide.

Drivers will also be able to use the commute tab to see if they’ll need to budget extra travel time for accidents, heavy traffic or road construction.

by Talia Avakian

S

EOUL, Korea - Everything from the tables to the cups look like they’ve been drawn, and the result is magical.

In the case of delays, the Google Maps will offer alternative routes.

For Android users, drivers will receive notifications about delays and disruptions enroute in real-time, so that commuters can take an alternate route before getting caught up in traffic.

For those who have ever watched a cartoon and wondered what it would be like to step into that world, a recentlyopened cafe in South Korea now allows for just that.

Google has also integrated music streaming apps like Spotify, Apple Music and Google

The tiny Cafe Yeonnam-dong 239-20 (called YND239-20 in English), is located in an unassuming brick building in Mapugu in Seoul, South Korea.

The cafe’s owners created the quirky space to give customers this exact sense of walking into a cartoon and incite a sense of nostalgia, representatives from

Play Music into Google Maps, so that drivers can control their music directly from the Google Maps navigation if they do end up getting stuck in traffic.

For commuters who use all forms of transportation on their commute -- car and public transit -- they’ll be able to consult the tab on when to leave for each leg of their trip

in order to make it to work on time.

According to Google Maps data, people in North America spend the equivalent of a twoweek vacation commuting to work every year.

The commute feature will roll out globally on Android and iOS this week.

- Relaxnews

Daring death on the remote roads of Pakistan’s north

Visitors can spot the cafe by its white gate and a tiny cutout home that sits in front of it, giving a slight taste of what they’ll find once inside.

The entire shop is outfitted in black and white designs that have been carefully crafted to make customers feel as though they’ve just stepped into a drawing, with everything from the tables to the chairs outlined in black and white to maintain the theme.

Photo: Google Maps

Open throughout the week, the cafe serves specialty drinks and small bites in its cozy space. (Photos: YND239-20 Cafe) the cafe told Travel + Leisure.

The idea has worked, drawing in customers from around the world who come to photograph its one-of-a-kind design.

Named after its address, the space opened in South Korea a year-and-a-half ago and in-

cludes just eight seats inside and nine seats in its outdoor balcony area.

Even its cups are created with the same black and white design to look like someone drew them right on the spot, with the cafe’s design extended into its bathroom as well. - T&L.com

How solo travel among Asian and Western globetrotters differs The results of a new global survey reveal a big age gap when it comes solo Asian and Western travelers.

The precarious roads of northern Pakistan are a lifeline for remote populations but narrow and leave no margin for error. (AFP Photo)

by Gohar Abbas

S

HIMSHAL HUNZA , Pakistan | AFP - The jeep bumps along a sloppy mud road carved between Pakistan’s northern mountains, its tyres running with breathtaking precision along the very edge, where nothing but air lies between them and the snake-like river winding hundreds of feet below.

Solo travelers from Asia tend to be younger than solo travelers from the West, says new report. (© istock.com/twinsterphoto)

N

EW YORK, NY - According to the results of the “Family Travel Trends 2018” survey conducted

by YouGov for online booking site Agoda, solo travelers from Asia are likely to be younger than their counterparts from the West.

The findings are based on the results of a global survey that polled more than 10,784 respondents around the world between January 2018 and September 2018.

Overall, 41 percent of solo Asian travelers fell into the Millennial group (26-38) while 38 percent were Gen Zers (1825).

Those numbers are in stark contrast to the West, where solo travel was most prevalent among Baby Boomers (39 percent) and Generation Xers (24 percent).

Along with being older, solo travelers in the West tend to take longer vacations, likely because they’ve racked up more disposable income than

their younger cohorts.

2. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

While the most common trip length is four to seven nights for Western solo travelers, that’s down to one to three nights for solo travelers from Asia.

3. Tokyo, Japan

Travelers from Western countries are also twice as likely than Asian travelers to embark on trips that last 14 nights or more.

7. Manila, Philippines

According to Agoda’s internal booking data, the most popular destination for solo travelers among Asians is Bangkok, Thailand, while London tops the list for solo Western travel.

4. Singapore 5. Hong Kong 6. Ho Chi Minh City, Viet nam 8. Bali, Indonesia 9. Jakarta, Indonesia 10. Chiang Mai, Thailand Top destinations for solo Western travelers: 1. London, UK

For the purposes of the report, Asia is defined as China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

2. Tokyo, Japan

The West is defined as the UK, US and Australia.

6. Bangkok, Thailand

Here are the top destinations for solo travelers from Asia: 1. Bangkok, Thailand

3. Sydney, Australia 4. Melbourne, Australia 5. New York, USA 7. Los Angeles, USA 8. Las Vegas, USA 9. Singapore 10. Paris, France - Relaxnews

More than 3,000 metres (around 10,000 feet) above sea level the vehicle has no room for error, its other side just inches from scraping along the rock face, its passengers worriedly monitoring how anxious the driver appears.

For his part, Shahid Karim spends as much of his time watching the mountains themselves as he does gauging how close he is bringing his jeep to the edge.

“At every second death is written on this road... This whole area is notorious for landslides,” he says, adding that falling rocks have struck his vehicle many times.

The precarious roads of Pakistan’s mountainous north are lifelines for its scattered and remote population. The thoroughfare Karim is travelling is the only one connecting the 2,400 residents of the village of Shimshal to the outside world.

Drivers like Karim, a native of the region who has been navigating this particular stretch of road since 2004, are the only ones who use them, making a career out of ferrying villagers, tourists, and the handful of Westerners who make the knuckle-whitening journey each year.

They are the ones with the experience to know that landslides are as great a threat as

the road’s narrowness and lack of safety barriers.

During spring and autumn, when there is no snow or rain, an ibex walking delicately along the heights can trigger a rockfall, while a strong breeze on a summer’s day can set pebbles sliding away.

The lightest rainfall can shift rocks, while in the frozen winters even sunlight can be dangerous, melting the snow that surrounds boulders and prevents them from raining down on the road.

Sometimes rocks falling from above are less of a danger than those tumbling away beneath the car tyres, loosened by the weight of the vehicle and sent crashing down into the abyss.

The more desperate passengers are for the journey to end, the slower the driver is forced to crawl along the roads.

“We have passengers with us whose lives depend on us,” Karim says. “So it is really important to drive slowly.”

- Death is a journey This road was inaugurated in 2003 after 18 years of labour by locals in which three villagers lost their lives.

Before then, the people of Shimshal had to walk for days, crossing icy rivers and climbing deadly ridges in freezing temperatures to reach the nearest large village of Passu.

Previous rulers of Hunza, the former principality that encompasses Shimshal and now forms part of Pakistan’s northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, would banish criminals to Shimshal as punishment.

The suffering lay in the journey, which was so tough that few survived it, most slipping to their death from precarious ridges with others succumbing

to cold and pneumonia.

The road, despite causing so much fear in the hearts of tourists, is therefore seen as a blessing by residents of Shimshal, bringing education and basic amenities to their remote mountain homes.

That includes electricity: for years residents have generated power with small solar panels, though this year a hydropower plant built with materials brought in along the road is set to be completed.

- Honking horns at dawn Every morning the sound of a blaring car horn tears into the dawn serenity of Shimshal.

Its residents are not bothered by the rude awakening. So few people dare drive the road that -- barring emergencies -- those who wish to travel outside crowd into just one vehicle that leaves daily. Its driver is simply making sure no one misses the journey.

A mere six vehicles from Shimshal and four from Passu regularly make the commute.

The villagers muster at a single point with their luggage as the driver continues cruising through the village honking, sometimes for up to half an hour.

Doulat Amin, the first teacher to work in Shimshal valley, is among the people waiting one rainy dawn to get into central Hunza.

“I came here in 1966 as a teacher and there were so many difficulties back then,” the 75-year-old said.

“There was no education, because there was no road.”

Travelling its rocky way is risky -- but, Amin says, God is with the passengers.

“We plead with him every time we travel on the road.”

SMALL BUSINESSES

VOICE OF ASIA 22

B

D

BUSINESS DIRECTORY

ACCOUNTANTS BOOK-KEEPING

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

INCOME TAX

Personal and Business Tax Returns, Payroll Sales Tax, Income Tax Audits and Representations.

S. Ram and Associates

Tel: 832-877-9625 Free Consultation asu2020.com

M.D. Associates LLP A full service CPA firm

2 Locations to serve you Houston 713-774-6533 Spring 281-251-2205

visit us at: www.mdassociatescpas.com

AC & HEATING SERVICE

B&J Auto Care & Sales

Auto repair (Collision repair (all insurance), Mechanical (Brakes, Oil change, Engine and Transmission). l Used Car Sales lUsed & New Tires lGreat Service Blessy 281-323-9315 3242 5th St., Stafford, TX 77477

Quality and Integrity works with Affordable Pricing New A/C + Heating, Installation, A/C Repair, Heating Repair, Yearly System Maintenance 1 Year Warranty on all of our works!

KENNY HO, Manager Call 713-598-2737 TACLA 72152E

Offering Attractive Rates for Website listing of your service and product.

Call us at

713-774-5140

There is also a powerful focus on your sector of business, deep soul bonds, and shared assets, particularly as lovely Venus turns retrograde in this zone until mid-November.

21 April to 20 May You’re attracted to beautiful people later in the week, but there’s more to life than looks. Maybe you’ll find someone who has it all! You become aware of the subtle nuances within your current relationship.

21 May to 20 June This time is ideal for thinking about improving your working conditions.

You might want to make some dramatic changes to your workspace or the way you deal with customers.

21 June to 22 July This period is all about how to marshal the stuff of your emotions into a moneymaking venture of some kind. It may sound difficult, but you could be surprised at how easy it is.

23 July to 22 August Mental tension could be your main problem. If your mind is tense, your muscles are going to follow suit. Try to relax and get a massage. If you’re exercising, warm up first. Be good to yourself, be careful, and relax deeply!

23 August to 22 Sept Some connections that seem like a waste of time could be the first to go. But this could give you more time with those people who really matter and with whom you feel happiest.

Superior One Electric

Commercial & Residential KHOA TRINH, Electrical Technician Tel: 832-359-5447 Free Estimate TECL# 27099 *Repair / Remodeling *New Installation * Ceiling Fans * Light Fixtures *Electric Panel *Trouble Shooting * Services Upgrades

HOUSING

Networking and Computer Repair

CANAAN CARPET & FLOORING

Home & Business, on site, Microsoft MCSE & A+ certified, low flat rates, free estimates, pickup & delivery, www.PCNetworkGuru.com Call Amit at 832-971-6807

India’s Restaurant & Catering

For special parties and corporate events. Preferred Wine list, authentic vegetarian & nonvegetarian dishes, finest Indian cuisine with chef’s special dishes Ph: 713-266-0131/0805

2315 Chappell Lane, Missouri City, TX 77459 l High Quality l Huge Sale l Free Quote Installation of Carpet (Commercial & Residential) Hard wood, Laminate and Vinyl. Call/Text Dian Robinson: 832-623-8028 Email: canaancarpets@gmail.com

STATEPOINT CROSSWORD THEME: CIVICS LESSON

We cater from 10 people to 800 people for all occasions. We deliver to your venue.

Madhuram Mirch Masala 10758 FM 1960 West Houston, TX 77070

281.955.9878 216.338.3940 (cell)

Shiva Indian Restaurant & Catering Specializing in North Indian Cuisine, office & Corporate catering 2514 Times Blvd, Rice Village Ph: 713-523-4753 Visit us online: www.shivarestaurant.com

Week of OCTOBER 5, 2018 21 March to 20 April

ELECTRICAL SERVICE

COMPUTER SERVICES

RESTAURANTS

75 Degree AC

75degreeacservices@gmail.com

AUTO CARE & SALES

Astrology.com

23 September to 22 Oct There’s a big difference between finding someone to just hang out and keep things casual with and wanting someone to connect with on a lot of different levels. You can have it all, but it will take some serious searching. Good luck!

23 October to 21 Nov Someone may be confused by your natural reserve. This can be misinterpreted as arrogance. Speak up and ask friendly questions to put others at ease. The time is ideal for a serious conversation you may have been avoiding.

22 November to 21 Dec If you seek a new position or better job with benefits, you’ll be able to get connected to new employers.

A partner may need some extra help with a small business. You only need to prove yourself from there.

22 December to 20 Jan With your mind focused on your goals, you’re going to be working harder than ever. Spare a thought for your body and try to balance your days by exercising and remembering to look after yourself.

21 January to 19 Feb If a plan isn’t working, letting it go could free up your energy and enable you to get on with projects that hold more promise. You might have to overcome a desire to stay in your comfort zone.

Be more adventurous!

20 February to 20 Mar You can be shy when meeting new people, which can sometimes come across as purposely vague or mysterious. Do you even realize you’re putting out those vibes? Maybe you didn’t know you’ve been playing hard to get all this time!

ACROSS 1. Leprosy colony inhabitant 6. Pendulum’s path 9. Vegan’s protein choice 13. Friend from Mexico 14. H in HMS 15. Challenges 16. Pocket bread, pl.

17. “____ to Joy” 18. Subside 19. *____ election for choosing a party representative 21. *Alternative to electoral 23. Am is to I as ____ is to we 24. At the summit 25. ____-been 28. *One is a quarter of a Presidential term 30. Serfs of ancient Sparta 35. Lode deposits 37. Fireplace conduit 39. Stitch again 40. It’s hard to resist 41. Relating to certain Hindu philosophy 43. #33 Down, alt. sp.

44. Somer____ 46. EU money 47. “As ____ on TV” 48. Eye cover 50. What libraries do 52. Not decaf.

53. Kind of cola 55. Deborah, to friends 57. One who destroys 61. *Group of 538 electors 65. A variety show 66. ____ Baba 68. Dog-____ pages 69. Weather advisory, e.g.

70. Giant pot 71. “Give me your ____, your poor...”

72. Cremation pile 73. Lamb’s momma 74. Glorify

DOWN 1. Nordic native 2. ____ of Qatar, or Prince of Qatar 3. Rigatoni relative 4. Old World lizard 5. Prayer beads 6. Call to matey 7. *As opposed to blue 8. Moved like ivy 9. Not to be mentioned 10. *Like the citizenship Oath of Allegiance 11. Cheese on Peloponnese 12. One on drugs 15. ____ Dan, olden-day hair pomade 20. Full of corals 22. Expression of amazement 24. Salad green 25. *Lower chamber of Congress 26. Orderly arrangement 27. Smooth transition 29. Soothing plant gel 31. Classic game show “____ Make a Deal” 32. Willow twig 33. Conical dwelling 34. *____ state 36. Unload 38. Michael Collins’ country 42. Owned apartment 45. *Party’s list of candidates 49. Buck’s mate 51. “Get rid of” button 54. Desire something 56. Inflammatory swelling 57. Sandwich alternative 58. Bank on 59. At any time 60. “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me” band, The ____ 61. Give a traffic ticket 62. Makes mistakes 63. STEM enthusiast?

64. Whirlpool 67. *Rule of ____

SOLUTION: CIVICS LESSON on page 23

CLASSIFIEDS

VOICE OF ASIA 23

Sad Demise

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

RFP-C 19-01 Retail Electricity Supply Services

Sealed proposals will be received in Procurement Operations (3100 Main Street, Room No. 11B01, Houston, Texas 77002) until 2:00PM (local time) on Thursday, October 11, 2018.

Bharat Chimanlal Sanghavi, 74.

Documents can be Bharat Chimanlal Sanghavi, 74, passed away on September 26, 2018 in Mumbai, India.

Bharat and his wife Panna, moved to Houston in 1975 and have resided there ever since.

Bharat graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering from MS University of Baroda in 1966 and with a Master’s Degree from Louisiana Tech University in 1968.

In Houston, Bharat was involved in a variety of community/professional organizations including the India Culture Center (Past President), Gujarati Samaj of

Houston, Vallabh Priti Seva Samaj Haveli, and Houston Association of Realtors.

Recently, Bharat and Panna were fortunate enough to spend a significant amount of time with their family in India, creating many wonderful memories.

obtained at: www.hccs. edu/procurement.

Bharat is survived by his wife Panna; children and spouses Nehal and Reetu and Deval and Neera; and grandchildren Ayush, Laxman, Akbar, and Anamika.

The family wishes to extend their sincere thanks to the Houston community for all of their love and support.

Send classified requests to: ads@voiceofasiagroup.com Call 713-774-5140 SELL YOUR STUFF! CALL: 713-774-5140 Voice of Asia Newsweekly!

• Carry on our website in addition to print for $10 for 10 days!

Publishing for 30 years ~1987 NEED TO HIRE? HOLD A GARAGE OR ESTATE SALE!

SELL YOUR STUFF AT HOME OR OFFICE

PET SPECIAL

SELL YOUR MOTORCYCLE OR CAR

• 4 lines or 30 words - $25 • Add a photo for $10 more.

SELL YOUR HOME! Hold an Open House!

PLACE A JOB AD!

Find Qualified Candidates through a Classified ad! (Custom sizes)

STATEPOINT CROSSWORD SOLUTION Theme:

VOICE OF ASIA

CIVICS LESSON

from Page 22

Get it mailed to you!

Call to Subscribe to our newsweekly: 713-774-5140

OR Click a photo of this form, email to: ads@voiceofasiagroup.com

Name: __________________________________________ Address: ________________________________________ City: ______________ State:___________ Zip:___________ Ph: ______________ E-mail:_________________________ Credit Card No: ____________________________________ Name on the Card: _________________________________ CVV #: __________ Exp Date:___________ Amount: $______ Signature: __________________________ One Year We thank you for your support! $50 Two Years $100 We will mail 52 issues to your home or office!

Five Years $250 Visit us: 8303 SW Freeway, Suite 325, Houston, TX 77074

Best Value!!!

Read up on what’s changing in the world of health

Voice of Asia brings you the latest in medicine, medical

technology, nutrition, pharmacy, and other health related articles. Also visit www.healthlinemag.com

VOICE OF ASIA 24

FRIDAY, October 5, 2018

Announcing

www.VoiceofAsiaOnline.com

is now

www.VoiceofAsia.News (Formerly VoiceofAsiaOnline.com)

Featuring: • Community News • Local Columnists • Political & Polls • Legal Attorneys • Breaking News • Upcoming Events • Health & Wellness • Senior Health • Lifestyle & Faith • Entertainment • Photos & Videos • Recipes and more...

Mobile & Tablet user friendly design and easy to share articles with social share links.

To Advertise, call 713-774-5140

For advertising specials to reach over thousands of new clients Email us at: ads@voiceofasiagroup.com

8303 Southwest Freeway Suite 325, Houston, TX 77074 www.voiceofasia.news /VoiceofAsiaNews

/@VoAHouston

/user/voaads