Just one week after United States President Barack Obama's convincing re-election, his faithful Vice President Joseph Biden led the White House celebration of Diwali, reflecting on the significance of festival of lights, and also acknowledging the presence of Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu American elected to the US Congress, and also Ambassador Nirupama Rao, who like Gabbard, seemed to have that gravitational pull in terms of the guests wanting to pose for pictures with them
Barack Obama's re-election reflects how much the Republican Party, held hostage by the Tea Party, has alienated minorities and women. Aziz Haniffa reports
As much as it was a thumping victory for Barack Obama, the election results were also a repudiation of the current Republican Party, held hostage by a rabid tea party, that has alienated minorities and women, who delivered for Obama despite an unemployment rate of over 7.8 percent, says Aziz Haniffa.
Democrat Tulsi Gabbard who won the race for Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District said that she hoped to play some small role in increasing people's respect, understanding, and love for one another despite differences. Aziz Haniffa reports
Aziz Haniffa speaks to the candidate from Hawaii, on course to become the first Hindu-American congresswoman
Leading IIT alumni in the United States, including former chairmen and CEOs of Fortune 500 multinational conglomerates like Raj L Gupta, expressed sadness over the Greek-like tragic fall of Rajat Gupta.
Us Congressman Meryvn M Dymally, like the late Democratic lawmaker Stephen J Solarz, was always in India's corner on capitol hill during the Cold War years when it wasn't cool to be a friend of India, and New Delhi was considered by many United States lawmakers as a surrogate of the erstwhile Soviet Union
Dr Kiran C Patel and Dr Pallavi Patel, both physicians and longtime residents of Tampa, Florida, have donated $12 million to the University of South Florida in a new endowment aimed at creating the Patel College of Global Sustainability, expanding on nearly a decade of world-leading applied research to advance sustainability around the globe and improve the lives of the world's most vulnerable people.
Dr Ami Bera, California physician, who according to conventional wisdom is the only Indian American congressional candidate this time around among all of the community's aspirants who has a good chance of winning, received a major boost when former President Bill Clinton publicly endorsed him in a public rally at the University of California.
Romney may not have scored a knock-out, but like Joe Frazier in the first of smoking Joe's fights with Ali, he was the clear winner on points, says Aziz Haniffa
Noted American experts and analysts argue that Foreign Terrorist Organisation designation of the Haqqani Network is meaningless unless Pakistan's intelligence agency is reined it. Aziz Haniffa reports
Karthick Ramakrishnan, co-author and director of the National Asian American Survey believes the Indian American community's massive shift to the Democratic Party -- which was manifest in the polling data that showed overwhelming support for President Barack Obama over Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney
Gretchen Peters, of the United States Military Academy at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center, who has since 2005, spent considerable time studying the link between organised crime and insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has told US Congress of the nexus between the criminal enterprise Dawood Ibrahim company, the Haqqani Network and the Inter-Services Intelligence.
For years, Congressman Brad Sherman, California Democrat, a senior member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the ranking Democrat on its Subcommittee on Terrorism has enjoyed the largesse of the Indian American community that has contributed generously to his campaign coffers.
Asian Americans favourability rating of Romney is considerably lower, about half of the level for Obama, says a study on the political and social attitudes of Asian Americans released in Washington DC. Aziz Haniffa reports.
Dr Rajwant Singh, an influential Sikh American community leader, met President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama to personally thank them for their deep concern and unstinted support in the wake of the horrific massacre of Sikh worshippers on August 5 at a gurudwara at Oak Creek, Wisconsin by white supremacist and neo-Nazi Wade Michael Page.
Come mid-October, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is likely to acquiesce to more than two years of pushing by the Sikh-American community and United States lawmakers and finally create a special category for Sikh Americans in the agency's hate crime monitoring form.
There has been an "enormous growth in the radical right" in the United States over the last three years, believes Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a much-respected non-profit civil rights organisation based in Montgomery, Alabama.
The Federal Bureau of Intelligence has admitted that it was fully aware that Wade Michael Page -- who killed six Sikh worshippers at a gurudwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin on August 5 -- was a racist and neo-Nazi. But, the agency said, its hands were tied as he had not committed any criminal act preceding his killing spree.
At a news conference that followed a United States Senate hearing on 'Hate Crimes and the Threat of Domestic Extremism,' representatives of several civil rights and interfaith organisations pledged to stand together to fight the unprecedented level of racial profiling, discrimination and hate violence against South Asians, Arab Americans, Sikhs and Muslims living in America ever since 9/11.
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