Washington Archive

Washington, Oct 28 – An American professor, who has lived in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh and speaks Hindi well, has won a Fulbright scholarship to teach and study at the University of Mumbai during spring semester 2010.

‘I am thrilled and excited by my selection, not only for the opportunities it allows for study, but also for the opportunity it offers to be an ambassador for Idaho State University (ISU) and American higher education,’ said Alan Johnson, ISU Associate Professor of English, who was raised in India.

Johnson’s specialty, according to the university is postcolonial literature and theory, with a focus on South Asian literature, primarily Indian.

He studies Indian writers writing in English who have become increasingly popular abroad as well as in India, such as Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai and Amitav Ghosh. He will teach classes on globalisation and literature, literary theory, and postcolonial studies.

‘It will be interesting to see how that university works and to become familiar with Indian higher education,’ said Johnson.

‘It may be useful for me to share my experience as we live in an increasingly globalised world and ISU tries to attract more international students. It is not just the subjects I teach, but the reciprocal relationships I wish to cultivate that are important.’

Johnson left India after graduating from high school. He earned his BA from Southern Illinois University, his MA from the University of Virginia and his PhD from the University of California, Riverside. All his degrees were in English.

Johnson is married and has three children, and hopes his wife and some of his children can visit him sometime during his five- to six-month stay in India.

The Fulbright Programme is the flagship international educational exchange programme sponsored by the US government and is designed to ‘increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries,’ according to the organization’s website.

Approximately 294,000 ‘Fulbrighters,’ 111,000 from the US and 183,000 from other countries, have participated in the programme since its inception more than sixty years ago.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)

Washington, Oct 28 – An Indian citizen living illegally in the United States and another person have been charged in New York with attempting to provide weapons to the Lebanese Hezbollah organisation, designated by US as a terrorist group.

Indian national Patrick Nayyar, 46, and Conrad Mulholland, 43, were charged Tuesday by federal prosecutors with agreeing to supply an FBI undercover agent with guns, ammunition, vehicles, bulletproof vests and night vision goggles.

They had already supplied a pistol, a pick-up truck and a box of ammunition to the FBI agent, whom they thought to be a Hezbollah member, believing that he would deliver the items to Hezbollah, they said.

Mulholland remains at large, the prosecutor’s office said.

Nayyar residing illegally in Queens in New York was arrested Sep 24 from his residence based on a criminal complaint charging him with possessing a firearm and ammunition as an illegal alien.

According to the indictment filed in Manhattan federal court, during a series of meetings between July 2009 and September 2009, Nayyar and Mulholland agreed to provide weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Hezbollah.

Preet Bharara, the Indian-American US attorney for the Southern District of New York, praised the investigative work of the FBI.

Washington, Oct 28 – Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), blamed for the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack, was planning to use an American national to carry out another major attack in India, the FBI said Tuesday.

The man, identified as David Coleman Headley, was arrested early this month by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Force at O’Hare International Airport before boarding a flight to Philadelphia, intending to travel on to Pakistan.

Headley, 49, along with a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin, have been arrested on charges of plotting a terror attack against the facilities and employees of a Danish newspaper which had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005, federal law enforcement officials announced Tuesday.

The Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, also known as Tahawar Rana, was also a resident of Chicago and was arrested by the FBI Oct 18.

Rana is the owner of several businesses, including First World Immigration Services, which has offices on Devon Avenue in Chicago, as well as in New York and Toronto.

According to the FBI affidavit filed in a Chicago court, Headley was in close contact with Ilyas Kashmiri and several unidentified leaders of LeT.

Kashmiri is the operational chief of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir section of Harakat-ul Jihad Islami (HUJI), a Pakistani-based terrorist organisation with links to Al Qaeda. Kashmiri, who is presently believed to be in Pakistan’s restive Waziristan tribal region, issued a statement this month that he was alive and working with Al Qaeda.

The identities of other LeT leaders, who are associated with Kashmiri, have not been revealed and are mentioned as ‘LeT member A’ and ‘LeT member B’ in the affidavit.

‘In July and August 2009, Headley exchanged a series of e-mails with LeT Member A, including an exchange in which Headley asked if the Denmark project was on hold, and whether a visit to India that LeT Member A had asked him to undertake was for the purpose of surveillance of targets for a new terrorist attack,’ the FBI said in its affidavit.

‘These e-mails reflect that LeT Member A was placing a higher priority on using Headley to assist in planning a new attack in India than on completing the planned attack in Denmark,’ it said.

After this time, Headley and LeT Member A allegedly continued focusing on the plan with Kashmiri to attack the newspaper, rather than working with LeT, the complaint alleges.

According to the affidavit, Headley stated in conversations last month that he intended to travel to Pakistan in October to meet with Individual A and Kashmiri, and he was arrested Oct 3 as he prepared to board a flight from Chicago to Philadelphia for onward travel on to Pakistan.

Washington, Oct 28 (DPA) The US will send top envoys to Honduras later this week to press the de facto government there to move to end the ongoing political crisis, the State Department said Tuesday.

It will be the first time since Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted June 28 that Washington is taking a leading role in pressuring the leaders of the de facto government to restore democratic order.

Talks aimed at resolving the country’s political standoff broke down in the capital Tegucigalpa Friday. The US decision came after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke by telephone Friday with both Zelaya and Roberto Micheletti, the former parliamentary speaker who has led Honduras since the coup.

‘It’s getting quite urgent,’ said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. ‘We’ve made this a priority and we wanted to be as helpful as we could to try and bring this to a successful resolution.’

The US delegation will include Tom Shannon, the State Department’s assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, and Dan Restrepo, the White House’s top advisor on Latin America. The US has been involved in talks in the past, but only as part of a joint negotiating team led by the Organisation of American States.

Honduras is nearing a presidential election Nov 29, which was scheduled before Zelaya’s ouster. But Zelaya and the international community, which does not recognise Micheletti’s government, have rejected the election since it is being carried under what they see as illegitimate conditions.

‘We want to see an election … enjoy the kind of international legitimacy that the people of Honduras deserve for their government,’ Kelly said.

Washington, Oct 27 – A dominant odour given off by humans and birds tempts mosquitoes to prey on both, transmitting the West Nile virus and other lethal diseases, a new study has found.

The study paves the way for key developments in mosquito and disease control.

Walter Leal, entomology professor and postdoctoral researcher Zain Syed at the University of California-Davis (UC-D), found that nonanal is the powerful semiochemical that triggers the mosquito’s keen sense of smell, directing them towards a blood meal.

A semiochemical is a chemical substance or mixture that carries a message.

‘Nonanal is how they find us,’ Leal said. ‘The antennae of the Culex quinquefasciatus are highly developed to detect even extremely low concentrations of nonanal.’ Mosquitoes detect smells with the olfactory receptor neurons of their antennae.

Birds, the main hosts of mosquitoes, serve as the reservoir for the West Nile virus, Leal said. Since 1999, the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recorded 29,397 human cases and 1,147 fatalities in the US alone.

Researchers tested hundreds of naturally occurring compounds emitted by people and birds. They collected chemical odours from adult human subjects, representing multiple races and ethnic groups.

Leal and Syed found that nonanal acts synergistically with carbon dioxide, a known mosquito attractant, an UC-D release said.

‘We baited mosquito traps with a combination of nonanal and carbon dioxide and we were drawing in as many as 2,000 a night in Yolo County, near Davis,’ Syed said.

‘Nonanal, in combination with carbon dioxide, increased trap captures by more than 50 percent, compared to traps baited with carbon dioxide alone,’ Syed added.

These findings were published this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Washington, Oct 27 – President Barack Obama’s preference for a public health insurance option as part of his proposed health care reforms received a boost with the Senate majority leader backing a bill allowing states to opt out.

Senator Harry Reid, who has been melding legislation from five different committees, announced Monday that he intends to move forward next week with a health care bill that includes the ‘opt out’ version of the public health insurance option.

While the more liberal Health Committee included a form of the public option in its bill, the more conservative Senate Finance Committee did not. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has insisted the House of Representatives will pass a health care reform bill including a public option.

Obama has indicated his preference for legislation including a public option, but has not indicated he would a veto a bill without one.

Several top Democrats have previously expressed concern that the traditionally conservative Senate would not pass a bill with a public option.

The public option is ‘not a silver bullet,’ but will ensure healthy competition and a more level playing field for consumers, Reid told reporters on Capitol Hill. Public opinion polls show that a wide majority of Americans support a public option, he said.

Reid’s health care bill, which will be given a cost assessment by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, also includes a provision from the Finance Committee bill allowing for the creation of non-profit health care cooperatives that would negotiate collective insurance coverage for members.

Reid hopes his compromise will appeal both to liberal senators insisting on a public option and to conservatives wary of a government-run plan, CNN said citing several Democratic sources.

CNN also cited unnamed sources as saying that Reid does not yet have firm commitments for the compromise from 60 senators – the number required to break a Republican-led filibuster. It is likely he would need that number for even a vote to begin Senate debate.

Washington, Oct 27 – The American College of Chest Physicians has elected Dr Kalpalatha K Guntupalli, the only woman president of the American Association of Physicians of Indian origin, as its first Asian American woman president.

Hyderabad-born Guntupalli is currently tenured full professor at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, considered one of the top 10 medical schools in the US, and also chief of pulmonary/critical care and sleep division at BCM.

She will be inaugurated as the new president of the 75-year-old ACCP Nov 1 in San Diego.

With 2010 declared ‘Year of Lung’ by the Forum of International Respiratory Societies, Guntupalli hopes the AACP will take on a leadership role in ‘contributing to celebrate lung health around the globe’.

At home, her priorities are to make the ACCP the ‘one-stop shop’ ‘for education, practice, management, performance improvement and monitoring and the advocacy needs of our membership.’

Guntupalli did her MD from the Institute of Medical Sciences, Osmania Medical College, Hydrabad, before migrating to the US in 1974 to specialise in internal medicine.

She has received numerous awards including the prestigious ‘Parker J Palmer Courage to Teach’ award for 2007 by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, making her one of just 10 program directors to receive the honour.

She has also been honoured with the World Lung Health award by the American Thoracic Society.

Her particular passion is in the field of tobacco control programmes, and over the years she has developed anti-tobacco material in seven languages besides anti-tobacco cartoons for children, inspiring more than 2,00,000 children in India to spread the message about the acute dangers of smoking and tobacco chewing.

An educational CD titled ‘Evils of Tobacco’, developed specifically for South Asia and containing a 12-minute video documentary and 186-video augmented power-point slides for medical professionals, has been translated into Telugu, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu and Gujarati and is in use in dental schools, elementary and high schools all over India and the US.

Guntupalli was also the founding director of SHARE-USA, a non-profit that undertakes several projects in India including outreach, preventive and interventional care in rural areas. She has served on the board of Pratham-USA, a non-governmental organisation that focuses on literacy projects in India for over six years

Washington, Oct 27 – A US government report gave top rating to the Indian government for doing its best to protect religious freedom, but criticised some state and local governments for imposing limits on this freedom.

‘The National Government generally respected religious freedom in practice; however, some state and local governments imposed limits on this freedom,’ the State Department said Monday in its Congressionally mandated annual report on International Religions Freedom.

‘Although the vast majority of citizens of every religious group lived in peaceful coexistence, some organized societal attacks against minority religious groups occurred,’ the report said alleging ‘the state police and enforcement agencies often did not act swiftly to effectively counter such attacks.’

Releasing the report covering 198 countries, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hoped it ‘will encourage existing religious freedom movements around the world and promote dialogue among governments and within societies.’

The report said the phrase ‘generally respected’ signifies that the government attempted to protect religious freedom in the fullest sense and was ‘thus the highest level of respect for religious freedom assigned’ by it.

Religious extremists, it noted, committed numerous terrorist attacks throughout India, including the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai that targeted luxury hotels, a crowded railway station, a Jewish centre, a hospital, and restaurants.

The report noted 40 persons died and 134 were injured as ‘violence erupted in August 2008 in Orissa after individuals affiliated with left-wing Maoist extremists killed a Hindu religious leader in Kandhamal, one of the country’s poorest districts.’

‘Although most victims were Christians, the underlying causes that led to the violence have complex ethnic, economic, religious, and political roots related to land ownership and government-reserved employment and educational benefits,’ it said.

Numerous cases were in the courts, including cases in connection with the 2002 Gujarat violence, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, and more recent attacks against Christians, the State Department report noted.

But ‘some extremists continued to view ineffective investigation and prosecution of attacks as a signal that they could commit such violence with impunity.’

‘In general, India’s democratic system, open society, independent legal institutions, vibrant civil society, and press all provided mechanisms to address violations of religious freedom when they did occur,’ the report said.

Listing ‘improvements and positive developments’ in the year ended June 30, the report said, ‘In India, ‘Government officials responded to a number of new and previous violent events, helping to prevent communal violence and providing relief and rehabilitation packages for victims and their families.’

‘Efforts at ecumenical understanding brought religious leaders together to defuse religious tensions,’ it said noting, ‘in the aftermath of the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist strikes, religious leaders of all communities condemned the attacks and issued statements to maintain communal harmony.’

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)

Washington, Oct 27 (DPA) China’s second highest-ranking military officer offered assurances that Beijing’s military build-up was entirely for peaceful purposes, at the start of a visit to the US.

Speaking at a Washington-based think-tank ahead of a private meeting with US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, General Xu Caihou said Monday that China had no intentions of regional hegemony or starting an arms race in Asia.

Xu, vice chairman of the People’s Liberation Army’s Central Military Commission, called for closer ties with the US and said both militaries were tackling similar goals: confronting terrorism, self-defence and aiding disaster relief.

‘We are now predominantly committed to peaceful development, and we will not and could not challenge or threaten any other country,’ Xu told the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, complaining of ‘suspicions and misunderstandings’ about Beijing’s intentions.

‘China’s defence policy remains defensive,’ he said.

Any Chinese offensive would be launched ‘only after the enemy has started an attack’.

But China suffers from ‘secessionist’ movements and had yet to become a ‘united’ country, Xu said, referring to long-standing tensions over Taiwan, Tibet and unrest between Muslim Uighurs and ethnic Chinese in the western province of Xinjiang.

Xu’s visit to the US is aimed at building trust between the two militaries. He will meet US defence officials and tour a number of military installations. Gates travelled to China two years ago.

The US has urged China to be more open about its military buildup and budgeting process.

China has the second-highest military budget in the world, though it is still about one-fourth that of US defence spending.

‘China will always be a staunch force for promoting world peace and common development,’ Xu said, noting the country’s participation in UN peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.

He said economic development remained China’s top priority.

Washington, Oct 27 – President Barack Obama has said he would not rush into a decision over whether to send more US troops to Afghanistan.

‘I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you in the harm’s way. I won’t risk your lives unless it’s absolutely necessary,’ Obama told a gathering of some 3,500 military personnel at a naval air station in Jacksonville, Xinhua reported Monday.

‘This is very important as we consider our next steps in Afghanistan,’ he stressed.

Stating that he ‘will never hesitate to use force to protect the American people or our vital interests’, Obama pledged that even if it’s necessary to send the US troops into war, ‘we will back you up to the hilt’.

The US troops ‘deserve the strategy, the clear mission, the defined goals and all of the equipment and support you need to get the job done’, said the president, adding that ‘we are not going to have a situation in which you are not fully supported back here at home’.

‘That is a promise that I will always make to you,’ said Obama.

The president’s remarks came as his administration faces growing pressure to decide on whether to further increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan following an eight-year war.

But the decision is so hard to make as top US officials are still split on the future direction of the Afghan strategy.

The speech was made against a backdrop of rising US casualties in Afghanistan and political turmoil surrounding a planned Nov 7 Afghan presidential election runoff.

Fourteen US troops died Monday in Afghanistan following two helicopter crashes, making it the deadliest day for US troops in Afghanistan in four years.

‘While no words can ease the ache in their hearts today, may they find some comfort in knowing this: like all those who give their lives in service to America, they were doing their duty and they were doing this nation proud,’ he said.

‘They were willing to risk their lives, in this case, to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for Al Qaeda and its extremist allies,’ Obama added.