US President-elect Joe Biden has selected two former Obama administration officials for senior roles to help fight COVID-19, including the appointment of Jeff Zients as White House coronavirus coordinator, Politico reported on Thursday. Biden adviser Vivek Murthy will return to his role as Surgeon General but with a broader portfolio as the pandemic rages through...
Former US Ambassador to India Richard Verma has joined leading financial services company Mastercard as its executive vice-president for global public policy and regulatory affairs. In this capacity, Richard Verma will oversee the company's public policy, regulatory affairs and litigation teams around the world, Mastercard said in a statement. Verma joins Mastercard from capital advisory firm...
Indian-American Gitanjali Rao was selected from among 5000 nominees as TIME magazine’s first-ever ‘Kid of the Year’. A "brilliant" young scientist and inventor, Gitanjali, 15, was chosen for her "astonishing work" using technology to tackle issues ranging from contaminated drinking water to opioid addiction and cyberbullying. "The world belongs to those who shape it. And however...
Washington: “Help is on the way,” President-elect Joe Biden said while announcing Tuesday his advisers who he hopes can guide the United States back to solid economic footing. The six-person economic team Biden has tapped includes veterans from Democratic administrations. The most important of them being Janet Yellen, who was Fed Reserve chair in the Obama...
New Delhi: Minimum Support Price (MSP) will not be touched, said Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar during a meeting here Thursday with leaders of farmers’ unions protesting against the recently enacted farm laws. Tomar said, “No changes will be made to it.” Yet, the talks remained deadlocked as the union leaders stuck to their demand...
By The SATimes Team New York: A virtual meeting was held to remember the horror of the Nov. 26, 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai where the metropolis was held hostage for four days and 174 people were killed, including 6 Americans and some 300 wounded. The Lashkar-e-Taiba operating with leaders of the group in Pakistan are...
Washington: Top U.S. health officials announced plans on Tuesday to begin vaccinating Americans against the coronavirus as early as mid-December, as nationwide cases, hospitalizations and deaths continued to rise post-Thanksgiving holiday, reported Reuters. Some 20 million people could be inoculated against COVID-19 by the end of 2020 after the FDA approval and most Americans will have...
Washington: The US Senate has unanimously passed a bill (referred to as S.386) or the ‘Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act’, raising the hopes of thousands of Indians stuck for decades in a green card backlog. The bill eliminates the 7% country cap for employment-based immigrant visas (green cards), which will help ease the massive backlog faced...
Democratic District Leader Neeta Jain has picked up an endorsement from Rep. Carolyn Maloney in her bid to win an open City Council seat in Central Queens. Jain, a practicing psychologist, is one of 11 candidates who have filed petitions to run in the February special election to replace ex-Councilmember Rory Lancman in District 24. The district includes...
