Police on Wednesday also said the incident was not connected to a case involving a reputed gang killing in India, The Fresno Bee newspaper reported.

The move comes amid a nationwide civil rights movement, led mostly by South Asian Americans who come from caste-oppressed backgrounds, NBC reported on Friday.

The family, originally from Harsi Pind in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, was kidnapped at a business in Merced County, California, on Monday.

A treat for bird lovers! The National Audubon Society announced the winners of the 2020 Audubon Photography Awards. Known the for highlighting some of the most spectacular bird photography in the world, this year's contest winners did not disappoint. This year's winners were selected from over 6,000 submissions that came in from photographers across all 50 United States, Washington DC, and seven Canadian Provinces. The goal of the awards is to highlight images that "evoke the ingenuity, resilience, and beauty of birds small and large, terrestrial and aquatic." We'll let you decide if they succeeded.

Jasser reportedly hid behind the cash counter but was shot by one of the four robbers while they were leaving the service station after looting cash and goods, the report said.

For the 13th consecutive year, a desi child has won the Scripps National Spelling Bee. But what's domination without some swag, right?

The sixth grader spelt 'marocain' correctly to win.

The family vacation comes a week after the oldest daughter, Malia, graduated from the private Sidwell Friends School at an outdoor ceremony that the family attended.

Hundreds of Donald Trump supporters and protestors clashed outside an election rally of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in San Diego.

17-year-old Alexis Mendoza was charged with beating and running over 68-year-old Amrik Singh Bal.

Sikhs have been mistaken for terrorists and radicals and continue to suffer after 9/11 terror attacks in the US, community members feel following the latest attack on an elderly Sikh man in California which is being probed by police as a hate crime.

An American man has been sentenced to 13 years in prison on charges of hate crime for brutally hitting an 82-year-old Sikh with a steel rod outside a gurdwara in California two years ago.

Here's your weekly digest of the craziest stories from around the world.

Kiel broke his leg last week and died in St Agnes Medical Center in Fresno, California, last afternoon, confirmed his agent Steven Stevens Sr.

It's jobs and not more welfare that people want, says Republican gubernatorial challenger Neel Tushar Kashkari, who posed as a homeless job seeker for 7 days. Aziz Haniffa reports

Indian American banker and politician Neel Kashkari, running for the post of California governor, spent a week posing as a penniless vagabond looking for a job, in an attempt to highlight the importance of jobs in the key US state's weak economy.

Activists and rights groups set out in a caravan called 'El Paso 37' from Fresno, California to El Paso, Texas, April 26, to express solidarity with 37 Punjabi migrants who are on a hunger strike at the El Paso federal immigration detention center.

For the third time in a row the California state legislature passed a resolution to declare November as Sikh Awareness and Appreciation month. This year the resolution was proposed by Assembly Member Bob Wieckowski (Democrat, Fremont).

A man accused of brutally attacking an 82-year-old Sikh with a steel rod outside a Gurdwara in a suspected hate crime this month has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and abusing an elderly.

Bera's revised statement, three days after he publicly announced to join the Caucus, is considered to allay concerns of the Indian Government that the newly-made Caucus in the United States carries some individuals and groups, who in the past had indulged in anti-India activities including the separatist Khalistan movement.

The police say the attack could be classified as a hate-crime. Ritu Jha reports

"The time has come for common sense, comprehensive immigration reform," said United States President Barack Obama in his opening remarks at a high school in Las Vegas, Nevada, a day after a bipartisan group of senators said the time was right for reform.

Much as we journalists try, it is sometimes difficult to 'switch off' the personal from the professional, says Ritu Jha.

"I have never seen five bodies from one family at a funeral service," Rajbir Singh Pannu, president of the Sikh Center of Pacific Coast, in Selma, Fresno, told rediff.com. He added that the whole of Selma was in mourning. "People are sad. Nothing like this has ever happened earlier, especially the killing of children," said Pannu.

Major Avtar Singh, a 47-year-old fugitive and a former Indian Army officer wanted in the killing of a lawyer in India who on Saturday, June 9 killed his family members before turning the gun on himself was on a removal proceeding. Ritu Jha reports.

"Avtar Singh hardly visited the gurdwara and was depressed," Rajbir Singh Pannu, president of the Sikh Center of Pacific Coast, in Selma, Fresno, told rediff.com, and that he hardly saw any of Singh's relatives or family at the gurdwara

A former Indian army officer, Major Avtar Singh, who was wanted in India for the murder of a prominent Kashmiri lawyer, has killed himself along with his wife and two children in his California home.

The 46-count indictment alleged that between July 2010 and June 2011, Kaur and Singh owned and operated several companies based in Fresno for the sole purpose of defrauding hundreds of customers throughout the US.

Despite the Tri Valley University case and hate crimes, the Indian-American community gained ground in California, says Ritu Jha.

Two police officers from Punjab, S K Sharma, additional director general of police, and Gurpreet Kaur Deo, inspector general of police (non-resident Indian affairs), were in the San Francisco Bay Area December 13 to address the grievances of the community.

The middle-aged man, whose name has not been released by the police, was treated for a quarter-inch stab wound in the upper torso at Fresno Yosemite International Airport, and chose to continue the first leg of his flight to India, a local newspaper reported on Monday.

Sikhs in the US will be allowed to serve in uniform with their beards and turbans under a legal settlement reached with the US Department of Homeland Security, a Sikh advocacy group claimed on Wednesday.

The counties and metro areas with the nation's poorest air quality.

Three students of Indian descent Narendra Tallapragada, Preya Shah were among the ten winners of the Intel Science Talent Search, America's oldest pre-college science competition.

Reader writes in from the US on the presidential election

India is only interested in its Diaspora in a crude and grasping manner: It remembers the 20-million-strong overseas Indian community only to beg them for their money. This is hypocritical and unbecoming.

Reader Harjinder Singh sent us this picture from California.

Three Indian-Americans face up to 15 years in prison if they are convicted in a bribery case in the United States, a website has reported. The case is said to be the largest in the US involving bribery in a revenue office.

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