NRI ( Page 61 of 83 )

Indian-American Surgeon Awarded November 14, 2013 18:52

The US government has awarded Dr Rahul Jindal, an Indian-American transplant surgeon for his outstanding achievements in the country. He has been presented with the "Outstanding American by Choice" award, according to reports. Dr. Jindal is currently working with the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre as a staff transplant surgeon. He is also assocaited with the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences as a professor of surgery. The deputy director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, appreciated Dr. Jindal's work while giving him the award. Jindal had played a crucial role on the groundbreaking surgery performed by the Walter Reed AMC medical team in 2009 on Thanksgiving Day. The American Society of Nephrology and other medical journals have widely covered Jindal's work in press releases. He has also set up a monthly support group for kidney patients. In Guyana Dr. Jindal had helped to setup the first comprehensive kidney dialysis and transplant program. Till now Vivek Wadhwa, Amarpreet S Sawhney, Renu Khator and Indra Nooyi are the only Indian-Americans to be honoured by this prestigious award. (Picture Source: topnews.in) (AW: Pratima Tigga)

Indian scientist in US creates 'brain' for robots October 04, 2013 17:26

A US scientist of Indian-origin has created a new feedback system that would facilitate robots to operate with minimal supervision. In short, the scientist has developed a robot brain. His latest invention might allow robots to think for themselves, learn, adapt and use active critique to work unassisted. Dr Jagannathan Sarangapani, from Missouri University of Science and Technology has developed a new feedback system will allow a "follower" robot to take over as the "leader" robot if the original leader has a system or mechanical failure. “In a leader/follower formation, the lead robot is controlled through a nonholonomic system, meaning that the trajectory is set in advance, and the followers are tracing the same pattern that the leader takes by using sonar. When a problem occurs and roles need to change to continue, the fault tolerant control system comes into use. It uses reinforcement learning and active critique, both inspired by behaviourist psychology to show how machines act in environments to maximise work rate, to help the new, unmanned robot to estimate its new course. Without this, the follower wouldn't have a path to follow and the task would fail. "Imagine you have one operator in an office controlling 10 bulldozers remotely," said Sarangapani, the William A Rutledge - Emerson Electric Company's distinguished professor in Electrical Engineering at S&T. "In the event that the lead one suffers a mechanical problem, this hardware allows the work to continue," said Sarangapani. The innovative research will be useful for robotic security surveillance, mining and even aerial maneuvering. AW: Suchorita Dutta Choudhury

Medical Licensing for Foreign Doctors in India September 30, 2013 20:00

o acquire a medical license in India, one needs to contact the Medical Council of India. Their website should provide you with the information you require as well as appropriate forms. I am also including…

Travel Medical Insurance in India September 30, 2013 19:50

The importance of having travel medical insurance is now a well known fact by people all over the world. Indian residents today are well aware of the high costs of medical services overseas. Whether you…

Comparing Health Insurance Companies September 30, 2013 19:44

Take the time to compare not only the prices of medical insurance in India but also compare the policy documents and read the fine print. Otherwise you may be disappointed when it comes time to…

Medical Costs in India September 30, 2013 19:37

Costs cheaper than American prices! But for many Indians medical costs are becoming unaffordable. Medical costs in India may be cheaper in India when compared to America, but does it mean that medical costs are…

Medical - Health Insurance in India September 30, 2013 19:28

Health insurance though a common concept in the western countries, was not given much thought in India during the past few years until now. As medical costs soar medical treatment expenses are now becoming a…

Eastern European autocrats pose new test for democracy September 30, 2013 17:05

A 40-minute drive south-west of Budapest, Felcsut is a typical Hungarian village on the surface, its cottages strung out neatly along either side of the long main street. Untypical of the Hungarian countryside, however, is the frenzy of building activity here. Private security guards watch over armies of men in hard hats, bulldozers, and cranes toiling in the sweltering heat to complete a fancy football stadium dwarfing the pretty cottage gardens and vegetable patches. Then there are half a dozen practice pitches plus a "football academy" named after Hungary's soccer saint, Ferenc Puskás, the Real Madrid maestro of the 1960s. The village of 1,800 seems a strange location for such an investment. But Felcsút is also home to Viktor Orbán, Hungary's powerful prime minister who is a football fanatic and has changed the law to facilitate such developments. Megalomania? Vanity project? Or just another aspect of the dizzying pace of change in Hungary since Orbán and his Fidesz party won a landslide in elections three years ago? Orbán has given Hungary a new constitution and hundreds of new laws, sometimes reckoned to amount to one a day, including changes to the tax code making business investment in, and sponsorship of sports, tax-deductible. The result has been a bonanza for the village where he grew up and keeps a family house. According to two independent Hungarian media investigations, businesses donated some 6bn forints (£17m) to football projects in Hungary last year. Staggeringly, almost half of that total flowed to Orbán's village. The bounty suggests that Hungary's businessmen are very eager to please their strongman prime minister who enjoys an electoral mandate that other leaders in Europe can only dream about, but is also broadly seen to be abusing that mandate to establish a system perpetuating his power. "There is a very clear tendency of concentrating power and deciding everything on his own," says Péter Molnár, a civil rights activist and former close associate of Orbán. "They're very seriously weakening democracy in Hungary. He has changed things to concentrate power in his hands." But the Hungarian leader is not alone in eastern and southern Europe, where democratically elected populist strongmen increasingly dominate, deploying the power of the state and a battery of instruments of intimidation to crush dissent, demonise opposition, tame the media and tailor the system to their ends. In Russia and Turkey, the two big former imperial powers that bracket Europe to the east and south, president Vladimir Putin and prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan lash out aggressively at opponents, trying and jailing opposition figures and routinely resorting to violence to crush peaceful protest. They are both popular and utterly dominate their national politics. In Romania last year, the prime minister, Victor Ponta, attempted what was widely seen as an abortive constitutional coup to unseat and impeach his rival and enemy, president Traian Basescu. He failed. In Prague, president Milos Zeman has sought to exploit a government crisis to boost his power. The Czech Republic is a parliamentary democracy under cabinet government, but when the government collapsed under the weight of a corruption scandal in June, Zeman moved to appoint a close ally as a technocratic prime minister. Parliament has revolted, voting against Zeman in a confidence vote last week, and on Tuesday the cabinet resigned, clearing the way for early elections which could resolve the deadlock. With the exception of Russia, where democratic standards are far weaker, all these power-hungry leaders have been democratically elected and are careful to operate within the letter of the law. "I'm sure he believes there should be fair and free elections, but the system he's building now is working against those principles," says Ákos Maróy, an IT specialist and freedom of information campaigner at Atlatszo, of Orbán's tactics. "Orbán is really world class at doing things in a way that is, or at least looks, formally legal when often it is obvious they are abusing the law," says Molnár, who shared student rooms with Orbán as law students in the 1980s and was a co-founder of Fidesz with Orbán in 1988, a year before the collapse of communism across the region. He quit Fidesz in the 1990s. While the different countries vary hugely in their politics, the strongmen leaders tend to exhibit strikingly similar characteristics and often resort to identical tactics. Orbán, Erdoğan, and Putin head political parties or elites very much focused on and dominated by the leader. Molnár describes Orbán's approach to policymaking as follows: "There might be some very limited discussion, but I'm telling you the result, and I'm doing it for the good of my country." Like Putin and Erdoğan, Orbán also views politics as a zero sum game where the winner takes all. Opponents are reviled as extremists and traitors. Whether genuinely believed or used simply as a populist tactic, paranoia about foreign plots is regularly invoked to disarm critics. Nationalist rhetoric is used to brand opponents as unpatriotic puppets of foreign powers. "There is an anti-Hungarian campaign," says Enikő Győri, the minister for European affairs. "Foreign businesses are going to Brussels to complain about new taxes. Some in Europe say we're reducing democracy. It's not true. But the new constitution, plus the speed of reform and legislation, is seen as politically incorrect in Europe. Our critics say stupid things and that provokes anti-EU sentiment." She sees Orbán as a visionary leader bent on restoring Hungary to regional prominence and arresting a long process of national decline: "No one wants to reshape the borders in Europe, but we want to survive. The long-term vision is that the Hungarian people has to survive, and for that you need more children. "The population is declining. It's awful. It's frightening. If you want to survive in the Carpathian basin, if you want these people to remain, we maybe need more Hungarians. You need to encourage people that it's a good thing." "Crisis management needs fast, decisive action. That's exactly what our leader is doing," says Balázs Orbán, a constitutional lawyer at the pro-government thinktank, Szazadveg. "He's a role model for others in eastern Europe. He's capable of many things that other European leaders couldn't do." With a two-thirds majority and the Hungarian parliament effectively reduced to a rubber stamp for the prime minister's will, Orbán can do whatever he wants. But his antics have brought him in conflict with Brussels. The latest spat involves a highly critical and detailed report from the European parliament demanding a special EU monitoring system to scrutinise Orbán's actions. Events in Hungary have caused Berlin and other EU capitals to call for a EU system of monitoring democracy in the 28 member states, with penalties for perceived transgressions. It appears that such calls will gain traction in Brussels this year. A tone of authoritarian nationalism pervades the discourse of the Orbán government, according to critics. A Fidesz declaration after Orbán's landslide interpreted his mandate as "a new social contract" for the country. "Hungarians decided to create a new system, the national co-operation system… It is shared by every Hungarian inside or outside the country… It is not only an opportunity, but a requirement for every Hungarian," with the parliament and government "obliged by the Hungarian nation to take the helm in this endeavour". Molnár describes such language as "Orwellian, a total lie," a throwback to the language of the 1930s. Orbán's government ordered the declaration to be hung prominently in every public building. Outside parliament on the banks of the Danube in Budapest, the large park area that has frequently been the site of political protests has also been cordoned off and turned into a giant building site. Under Orbán, the site is being redeveloped into a replica of how it looked in the 1930s under the authoritarian regime of Admiral Miklos Horthy. There has been no opposition of note, in contrast to Turkey, where last month's protests, crushed by teargas and water cannon, were sparked by the prime minister's determination to destroy an Istanbul park also to build a 1930s replica of a military barracks and mosque. If Orbán, Erdoğan and others share an intolerance of dissent and an aversion to pluralism, these tendencies are most sharply felt in the media. The instruments of control range from the legal framework, regulators packed with political cronies, state media homogenisation, private media in the hands of loyal businessmen and oligarchs who depend on government contracts for their wealth and discourage critical reporting or holding policymakers to account. Orbán brought in a controversial media law that centralised and homogenised all news production for state television, radio, and the national news agency and appointed all five members of the regulatory media council. "They've succeeded in domesticating and chilling the media. You don't get jailed or shot like in Russia. But you lose your job," says Bodoky. "Censorship is internalised," adds his colleague, Maróy. "People are protecting their livelihoods, behaving as they're expected to. That's what is happening." Other instruments commonly wielded to coerce loyalty and punish dissidence include the selective use of tax inspectors to intimidate business leaders and individuals, and the awarding of government contracts and licenses. Orbán, for example, brought in a new system of tobacco sales licensing, destroying around 40,000 small family businesses then reissuing some 5,000 licences in an operation that critics and independent journalists say was used to reward cronies and buy loyalty to the government. He is also giving citizenship and the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of Hungarians outside the country. They will be able to vote for the first time in general elections next April. The expectation is they will vote for the party that gave them that right, helping Orbán to another term. Gordon Bajnai, an opposition leader and former prime minister, described the political project in Hungary last week as the building of "Orbánistan", citing the Felcsút football stadium as a typical example. Tamás Bodoky, an investigative journalist who runs the freedom of information website, Atlatszo, describes the Felcsút football project as "pure feudalism", somehow symptomatic of the new climate being wrought by Orbán in Hungary. "He is a very clever and a very authoritarian person. He's a control freak," says Bodoky. "He knows very well how the state works. He's putting all his officers in all key positions and has no respect for independent institutions that can control or limit his power." But Orbán's supporters – and he remains far ahead in the opinion polls – insist that the leader is simply daring to "deviate" from the European mainstream and put his country first. They are confident that Hungary and Orbán, who utterly dominates national politics, are winning. Others are less sure. "It's a really tragic story," says Molnár. "It's a drama of how a very talented political person is being destroyed by his own hubris. I think he's lost."

Australia's foreign aid spending September 30, 2013 17:02

Australia was once considered one of the world's most generous aid donors. More recently, Canberra has been criticised for pushing back plans to increase aid spending and for diverting money from overseas development projects to help pay for controversial asylum-seeker schemes at home and in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Oxfam has accused the government of treating the aid budget like an ATM machine and Samah Hadid, from the Global Poverty Project, has lamented that, as Australians prepare to vote in September's federal election, the country's major parties have shown "the weakest global poverty commitments in years".

Germany exporting old and sick to foreign care homes September 30, 2013 16:54

Growing numbers of elderly and sick Germans are being sent overseas for long-term care in retirement and rehabilitation centres because of rising costs and falling standards in Germany. The move, which has seen thousands of retired Germans rehoused in homes in eastern Europe and Asia, has been severely criticised by social welfare organisations who have called it "inhumane deportation". But with increasing numbers of Germans unable to afford the growing costs of retirement homes, and an ageing and shrinking population, the number expected to be sent abroad in the next few years is only likely to rise. Experts describe it as a "time bomb". Germany's chronic care crisis – the care industry suffers from lack of workers and soaring costs – has for years been mitigated by eastern Europeans migrating to Germany in growing numbers to care for the country's elderly. But the transfer of old people to eastern Europe is being seen as a new and desperate departure, indicating that even with imported, cheaper workers, the system is unworkable. Germany has one of the fastest-ageing populations in the world, and the movement here has implications for other western countries, including Britain, particularly amid fears that austerity measures and rising care costs are potentially undermining standards of residential care. The Sozialverband Deutschland (VdK), a German socio-political advisory group, said the fact that growing numbers of Germans were unable to afford the costs of a retirement home in their own country sent a huge "alarm signal". It has called for political intervention. "We simply cannot let those people who built Germany up to be what it is, who put their backbones into it all their lives, be deported," said VdK's president, Ulrike Mascher. "It is inhumane." Researchers found an estimated 7,146 German pensioners living in retirement homes in Hungary in 2011. More than 3,000 had been sent to homes in the Czech Republic, and there were more than 600 in Slovakia. There are also unknown numbers in Spain, Greece and Ukraine. Thailand and the Philippines are also attracting increasing numbers. The Guardian spoke to retired Germans and people needing long-term care living in homes in Hungary, Thailand and Greece, some of whom said that they were there out of choice, because the costs were lower – on average between a third and two-thirds of the price in Germany – and because of what they perceived as better standards of care. But others were evidently there reluctantly. The Guardian also found a variety of healthcare providers were in the process of building or just about to open homes overseas dedicated to the care of elderly Germans in what is clearly perceived in the industry to be a growing and highly profitable market. According to Germany's federal bureau of statistics, more than 400,000 senior citizens are currently unable to afford a German retirement home, a figure that is growing by around 5% a year. The reasons are rising care home costs – which average between €2,900 and €3,400 (£2,700) a month, stagnating pensions, and the fact that people are more likely to need care as they get older. As a result, the Krankenkassen or statutory insurers that make up Germany's state insurance system are openly discussing how to make care in foreign retirement homes into a long-term workable financial model. In Asia, and eastern and southern Europe, care workers' pay and other expenses such as laundry, maintenance and not least land and building costs, are often much lower. Today, European Union law prevents state insurers from signing contracts directly with overseas homes, but that is likely to change as legislators are forced to find ways to respond to Europe's ageing population. The lack of legislation has not stopped retired people or their families from opting for foreign homes if their pensions could cover the costs. But critics of the move have voiced particular worries about patients with dementia, amid concern that they are being sent abroad on the basis that they will not know the difference. Sabine Jansen, head of Germany's Alzheimer Society, said that surroundings and language were often of paramount importance to those with dementia looking to cling to their identity. "In particular, people with dementia can find it difficult to orientate themselves in a wholly other culture with a completely different language, because they're very much living in an old world consisting of their earlier memories," she said. With Germany's population expected to shrink from almost 82 million to about 69 million by 2050, one in every 15 – about 4.7 million people – are expected to be in need of care, meaning the problem of provision is only likely to worsen. Willi Zylajew, an MP with the conservative Christian Democrats and a care service specialist, said it would be increasingly necessary to consider foreign care. "Considering the imminent crisis, it would be judicious to at least start thinking about alternative forms of care for the elderly," he said. Christel Bienstein, a nursing scientist from the University of Witten/Herdecke, said many German care homes had reached breaking point due to lack of staff, and that care standards had dropped as a result. "On average each patient is given only around 53 minutes of individual care every day, including feeding them," she said. "Often there are 40 to 60 residents being looked after by just one carer." Artur Frank, the owner of Senior Palace, which finds care homes for Germans in Slovakia, said that was why it was wrong to suggest senior citizens were being "deported" abroad, as the VdK described it. "They are not being deported or expelled," he said. "Many are here of their own free will, and these are the results of sensible decisions by their families who know they will be better off." He said he had seen "plenty of examples of bad care" in German homes among the 50 pensioners for whom he had already found homes in Slovakia. "There was one woman who had hardly been given anything to eat or drink, and in Slovakia they had to teach her how to swallow again," he said. German politicians have shied away from dealing with the subject, largely due to fears of a voter backlash if Germany's state insurers are seen to be financing care workers abroad to the detriment of the domestic care industry.

Russia Energy Deals with East Asia September 30, 2013 16:44

Russia has consummated some huge energy deals with China in recent weeks. These deals are – or at least are being advertised as – major steps forward in the Russo-Chinese energy relations, Russia’s pivot to Asia – which uses big energy sales to upgrade its influence and standing – and the development of the energy base in Eastern Siberia, the Arctic and the Far East. All seen in Moscow as necessary preconditions for Russia’s return to the stage as a great, independent Asian power, and as a major energy player for years to come. In the biggest deal, worth an estimated $270 billion, Rosneft agreed to supply CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) with 365 million tons of oil over 25 years. In return, CNPC has apparently made a pre-payment to Rosneft of around 70 billion. The deal represents 15 million metric tons of crude oil annually for 25 years, at just over $10 billion each year. The oil will probably go through the existing Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline to Daqing, China Rosneft will also sell LNG (liquefied natural gas) from a terminal it is planning with Exxon Mobil on Sakhalin to Japanese trading firm Marubeni and the Sakhalin Oil and Gas Development Company, another Japanese company. Novatek, an independent gas producer, has meanwhile granted CNPC a 20% stake in its LNG project on the Yamal Peninsula in the Arctic. CNPC will become an “anchor customer” and import 3 million tons of natural gas annually. It is worth observing who got what from these deals to determine their significance. In Japan’s case, the deal with Rosneft clearly betokens a gradually improving energy and political relationship between Russia and Japan and probably presages other future deals – if a Russo-Japanese peace treaty and determination of the Kurile Islands can be signed and if Japanese concerns about Russian business can be allayed. This deal also hints at a growing Russian – or at least Rosneft – capability to sell LNG, an area where Rusia has lagged and which has cost it significantly as the international gas market changes. To the degree that it can develop an indigenous LNG capacity Russia benefits, especially in East Asia. But while Japan gains modestly and has hopes for the future, Gazprom – the leading gas company in Russia and chief rival to Rosneft and Novatek – has lost again in these recent deals. Although it says it is pivoting to Asia, there is still no gas deal with China despite constant announcements that one was forthcoming. The giant may be setting up a special-purpose company to manage development of a 15 million-ton LNG facility in the Far East, but Gazprom is clearly well behind its rivals in that region. Indeed, Gazprom’s entire record, going back a decade, has revealed a consistent stubbornness when it comes to selling gas of any kind to the Far East, a factor that has allowed its rivals to steal several marches. Just as Gazprom has lost a round, there appear – at least at first glance – to be significant advantages for Novatek and Rosneft. These companies will now be allowed to sell LNG abroad, signaling an end to Gazprom’s monopoly on gas exports. Moreover, they will clearly be active in the Arctic, the next great frontier of Russian energy, and with Chinese as well as Western companies. Rosneft in particular benefits in a number of ways. Rosneft and Transneft had already secured $25 billion from China in 2009 to build the ESPO oil pipeline and cover their very high indebtedness. With the recent acquisition of TNK-BP, Rosneft once again incurred huge debts that this prepayment will alleviate. Reportedly, it faced debt maturities between now and 2015 of $6.6 billion, $15.9 billion and $16.2 billion annually, so this new infusion greatly improves its balance sheet and allows it to show a real cash position, even though its working capital will be negative. This could attenuate future financing risks.

India sets up Gulf unit to track NRI tax evaders September 30, 2013 16:17

Government posts eight senior IRS officers abroad, including one in Abu Dhabi, as it tries to crackdown on flow of black money. India’s efforts to track down tax evaders could soon see officials monitoring the…