Bengaluru (Karnataka) , July 19,2021: All the professional courses including engineering will be taught in Kannada across the state starting from the next academic year, said Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister CN Ashwatha Narayana, who is also the state minister for higher education, on Sunday.
The government has initiated all the respective translation works of the curriculum.
Speaking at a webinar organised by All Languages Faculty Association of Karnataka University on the topic — ‘New Education Policy- Study of Indian Languages’, he said, “Regional language (mother tongue) will be further strengthened after the implementation of National Education Policy and let there be no apprehensions in this regard.”
New Education Policy (NEP) lays emphasis on providing professional education in regional languages and accordingly, governments will encourage measures to realise the ambition of the policy, Narayana opined.
Underscoring that regional language Kannada should also flourish correspondingly as technology and innovation progress and it should exist in all spheres, he said: “The NEP will not allow outsiders to enforce other languages on us. The courses and curriculum will be designed by our own universities and subject experts.”
Professor Timme Gowda, Vice-Chairman, State Higher Education Council, Prof SG Siddaramaiah, Former Chairperson, Kannada Pustaka Pradhikara, Prof TV Kattimani, Member, Draft Committee member of NEP, and others were also present at the webinar.
Patna (Bihar) , July 17,2021: Bihar government has decided to set up three separate universities to regulate the functioning and academic activities of engineering, medical and sports streams.
This was among the 21 policy-related issues discussed and approved by chief minister Nitish Kumar at the Cabinet meeting here on Friday.
In another important decision, the state government has decided to reduce the powers of Block Development Officers (BDO) and District Development Commissioner (DDC). The powers of BDO and DDC have been distributed among executive officers of Panchayati Raj or officers of the rank of deputy secretary level.
Washington, Jul 17,2021: A rare case of a person infected with the monkeypox virus has been detected in the US state of Texas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a press release.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Texas Department of State Health Services confirmed on July 15 a case of human monkeypox in a US resident who recently traveled from Nigeria to the United States,” the release said on Friday.
The infected individual is currently hospitalized in the city of Dallas, the release said.
The individual traveled from Lagos, Nigeria, to Dallas with a layover stop in Atlanta, and health officials are working to contact airline passengers and others who may have had contact with the infected individual, the release said.
The CDC believes the spread of monkeypox through respiratory droplets to others on airplanes and in airports is low, the release added.
Most monkeypox infections last two to four weeks and has flu-like illness that causes swelling of the lymph nodes and widespread rash on the body.
Tel Aviv [Israel], July 16,2021: Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday signed a cooperation agreement in the fields of environment and climate.
The agreement aims to promote cooperation on the common environmental issues facing the two countries, including the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems, protection of the marine and coastal environment, waste management, sustainable consumption and production, and air quality, Xinhua reported citing Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a statement.
The agreement was signed a day after the UAE opened an embassy in Israel.
The collaboration also includes the setup of a center to deal with climate challenges in the arid environment, R&D of environmental technologies, educational and awareness activities, joint projects, conferences and training courses, it added.
Last month, Israel Foreign Minister Yair Lapid visited the UAE on the first official trip by an Israeli minister to the Gulf state, where he inaugurated the Israeli embassy in Abu Dhabi and a consulate in Dubai.
Israel and the UAE announced in August 2020 that they would normalise diplomatic relations, bringing over a decade of covert ties into the open.
Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco later also joined the US-brokered Abraham Accords, and other countries were also rumoured to be in talks.
Kabul [Afghanistan], July 16,2021: The United Nations on Thursday said it is witnessing “very intensive movements” of internally displaced Afghans towards the country’s borders as violence escalates.
“We are also seeing very intensive movements of the population to the areas, adjusting to the orders, where Iranian and Pakistan borders are now largely closed, and the people are using the illegal border crossing trying to move through those borders,” UN Deputy Special Representative Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan Ramiz Alakbarov said.
Alakbarov said the drought, the increased military activities, and the gradual takeover by the Taliban opposition movement of Afghanistan’s territory have contributed to these displacements, Sputnik reported.
In the past few weeks, Afghanistan has witnessed a surge in violence as the Taliban has intensified their offensive against civilians and Afghan security forces with the complete pullback of foreign forces just a few weeks away.
Last week, the Afghanistan government had said that the fall of key dry ports has disrupted exports and imports, imposing negative impacts on the country’s economic activities.
He also noted that the United Nations is reporting deportations and removal mostly from Iran of Afghan nationals returning to the country.
Within Afghanistan, some 270,000 have already been internally displaced, leaving rural areas to seek shelter in urban and regional centers, Alakbarov said.
The total number of uprooted people in Afghanistan had reached 3.5 million this year. Pakistan hosts about three million Afghan nationals and had warned its limit to take in new refugees is exhausted.
Washington [US], July 16,2021: US President Joe Biden said his administration will not ease restrictions on remittances sent from US residents to relatives in Cuba because the Cuban government will likely confiscate the money.
On Sunday, thousands of Cubans took part in the biggest anti-government protest in Cuba in recent years to express dissatisfaction with what they believe to be a lack of freedom and a degrading economic situation in the country. Some protesters demanded that free elections be held.
“There are a number of things that we would consider doing to help the people of Cuba but it would require a different circumstance or guarantee that they would not be taken advantage of by the government,” Biden said on Thursday. “For example, the ability to send remittances back to Cuba. I would not do that now because the fact is it is highly likely the regime would confiscate those remittances or big chunks of it.”
US media reported on Wednesday that the Biden administration planned to ease the ban on remittances to Cuba.
In 2019, the Trump administration imposed restrictions on remittances sent from the United States to Cuba in order to deny the Cuban government access to hard currency.
US restrictions on trade with Cuba date back to the island nation’s communist revolution in the late 1950s and involve at least a half dozen different US laws. President Barack Obama took steps to normalize bilateral relations with the island, but many of those steps were reversed by the Trump administration.
Jul 15,2021:The much sought-after Indian talent is now getting attracted towards Canada in large numbers, away from the United States because of its outdated H-1B visa policy, immigration and policy experts have told US lawmakers.
This is mainly because of the per-country quota on issuing employment-based green card or permanent residency, the experts said on Tuesday, urging the Congress to act fast to prevent the Indian talent from moving to Canada from the United States.
Without Congressional action, the total backlog for all three employment-based categories for Indians would increase from an estimated 9,15,497 individuals currently to an estimated 21,95,795 individuals by fiscal 2030, executive director of National Foundation for American Policy Stuart Anderson said.
”We should let that number sink in: Within a decade, more than 2 million people will be waiting in line for years or even decades for employment-based green cards,” he submitted in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee-Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship.
Testifying before the panel on ”Oh, Canada! How Outdated US Immigration Policies Push Top Talent to Other Countries,” Anderson said that highly skilled foreign nationals, including international students, are choosing Canada over America.
”This has happened in response to how difficult it is to work in the United States in H-1B status or gain permanent residence, and the comparative ease of international students and foreign nationals working in temporary status and then acquiring permanent residence in Canada,” he said.
The number of international students from India enrolled in graduate-level computer science and engineering at US universities declined by more than 25 per cent between 2016-17 and 2018-19 academic years, according to an analysis of US government data by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP).
To place the significance of the decline in context, international students represent approximately 75 per cent of the full-time graduate students at US universities in computer science, and in the 2016-17 academic year, two-thirds of the international students at the graduate level in computer science at US universities were from India.
At the same time fewer Indian students were coming to America, the number of Indian students attending Canadian universities rose from 76,075 in 2016 to 1,72,625 in 2018, an increase of 127 per cent, according to the Canadian Bureau for International Education, he said.
”In sum, Canada’s immigration policies are much better than America’s for facilitating the entry of talented individuals. Congress established America’s policies in 1990, before smartphones, e-commerce, social media, cloud computing and the daily use of the internet exploded the demand for high-skilled technical labor. The world has changed since 1990. U.S. immigration policy has not,” Anderson said.
The Canadian government has made it increasingly easy for employers to attract and retain talent. On the other hand, numerical restrictions on high-skilled temporary visas block the vast majority of foreign-born applicants from working in America in a given year, Anderson said.
In March 2021, employers filed 3,08,613 H-1B registrations for cap selection for FY 2022 for only 85,000 H-1B petitions. ”That means over 72% of H-1B registrations for high-skilled foreign nationals were rejected even before an adjudicator evaluated the application,” he said.
Jennifer Young, CEO, Technology Councils of North America, said that fast-growing Canadian companies are permitted to hire highly-skilled foreign talent, or people with skillsets most commonly found among H-1B applicants in the United States, in as little as four weeks, pre-pandemic. By comparison, the United States immigration system is paper-based, causing nearly all applicants significant delays in processing, she said.
Young said that a former colleague of her, Ketaki Desai, and her husband were both educated in the United States, on student visas. They were fortunate to obtain H-1B status upon graduation and were strong contributors to the US economy. After 18 years and realising their path to permanent residency was looking very bleak, they left the United States for Toronto, Canada. They bought a house and are actively recruiting and helping individuals leave the US workforce and join them in Canada, she told the lawmakers.
“With more than 1,00,000 H-1B cap submissions denied annually, the United States has turned away millions of qualified, highly-skilled, and often US-educated individuals who are going to other countries to contribute to their economy,” Young said, noting that the matter of raising or eliminating H-1B visa and per country immigrant visa caps have often fallen victim to incorporation into an overall immigration reform bill.
Sudip Parikh, CEO and Executive Publisher, Science Journals, American Association for the Advancement of Science, told lawmakers that it is critical that US immigration policies reflect a 21st century approach in the same way that the Congress is now working on legislation to advance research and innovation in critical technologies to compete with China.
Parikh urged the Congress to expand dual intent visas to include foreign student visas (e.g., F-1 visas) to allow them the option to apply for permanent residency and adjust post-graduation immigration law to ease entry to work for skilled graduates.
”Some organisations have recommended proposals to ‘staple a green card’ to international students graduating with a diploma in specific, targeted fields of study to meet US demands,” he said, urging the Congress to continue to exempt higher education and research institutions from the H-1B visa caps.
Jul 15,2021:Lebanese politician Saad al-Hariri abandoned his effort to form a new government on Thursday, dimming the chances of a cabinet being agreed any time soon to start rescuing the country from financial meltdown. Hariri announced his decision after meeting President Michel Aoun, saying it was clear they could not agree, underscoring the political squabbling that has blocked the cabinet formation even as Lebanon sinks deeper into crisis.
Hariri, a former prime minister and Lebanon’s leading Sunni Muslim politician, was designated in October to assemble a government following the resignation of Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s cabinet in the wake of the Beirut port explosion. Protesters blocked some roads near predominantly Sunni areas of Beirut after his announcement, setting fire to trash and tyres. Army troops deployed, firing in the air to disperse protesters who pelted the soldiers with missiles, live TV footage showed.
The World Bank has described Lebanon’s depression as one of the sharpest in modern history. The currency has lost more than 90% in two years, poverty has spread and Lebanon has been crippled by fuel shortages. Fears of social unrest are growing. Hariri’s decision marks the culmination of months of conflict over cabinet posts between him and Aoun, the Maronite Christian head of state who is allied to the Iran-backed Shi’ite Muslim group Hezbollah.
Washington DC [US], July 15,2021: US State Secretary Antony Blinken and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called for joint US-European efforts to stand up to Russia and China, US State Department has said.
A State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Thursday the meeting took place on Wednesday in Washington.
“They agreed on the need for joint US-European efforts to stand up to Russian aggression and to address the People’s Republic of China’s human rights abuses, coercive trade practices, and aggressive foreign policy,” Price said.
They also reviewed ongoing efforts to return to mutual compliance with the JCPOA. The officials also discussed the situation around the recent assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, as well as France’s troop reconfiguration in the Sahel region of western Africa and the situation in Lebanon.
“The Secretary and Foreign Minister discussed how to build on 60 years of close partnership in space. The Secretary invited France to join the United States in applying longstanding principles for the peaceful uses of outer space to advance safe and responsible space exploration activities on the moon and Mars through the Artemis Accords,” the statement said.
Secretary Blinken further welcomed France’s Villa Albertine initiative, which will establish French cultural centres throughout the United States, strengthening our close ties and sense of shared values, it added.