Indian-origin couple dies after private jet crashes in Ohio

Agencies
July 12, 2017

Houston, Jul 12: An Indian-origin psychiatrist couple was killed when their private plane crashed in the US state of Ohio, police officials said on Wednesday.indian

Umamaheswara Kalapatapu, 63, and his wife Sitha-Gita Kalapatapu, 61, both of Logansport, were killed in the crash, according to a media release from the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

The Piper Archer PA-28 piloted by Umamaheswara is believed to have crashed sometime between 10:36 am and 12:30 pm on Saturday, July 8, the release said.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol Aviation with the assistance of the Civil Air Patrol located the crash scene in an abandoned retention pond near the village of Beverly in southeastern Ohio.

Ohio State Highway Patrol Sgt Garic Warner said the crash occurred about 3 miles northwest of Beverly. Searchers found the wreckage on Saturday afternoon.

There was no word on what caused the crash. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.

The Bowen Centre replied to a NewsChannel 15 tweet to offer condolences to the Kalapatapu family- “It is with great sadness we have been informed about the loss of Dr Kalapatapu and his wife. We offer our condolences to friends & family”.

The Kalapatapus were psychiatrists and owned Raj Clinics, with offices in Logansport, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Lafayette and Kokomo.

Heather Geisler, Logansport, said she’s done data entry, scanning and “a little bit of everything” for the Logansport clinic for the past eight years.

“They were generous to a fault, extremely hardworking and dedicated to their patients,” Geisler said of the Kalapatapus.

Umamaheswara Kalapatapu was a talented photographer while Sitha-Gita Kalapatapu was a gifted musician and “fantastic cook,” Geisler said.

Umamaheswara Kalapatapu received multiple state, national and international awards and recognitions for his photography and had been a certified professional photographer by the Professional Photographers of America since 2005, according to Pharos-Tribune archives.

“They were just two people that were so full of life. It’s hard to imagine that they’re not there anymore. They were wonderful people, absolutely wonderful. Two of the kindest people I’ve ever known and I’m going to miss them,” Geisler said.

Raj Clinics’ Logansport location opened in 1995, she added.

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News Network
January 30,2020

New York, Jan 30: Three Indian citizens were arrested by border patrol agents here for entering the US illegally.

US Border Patrol agents stopped a vehicle near Massena in New York state along the county's northern border on January 24. During the vehicle checking, the agents found that two of the passengers were Indian citizens who entered the US illegally and not at a designated port of entry.

Both the passengers were transported to the Border Patrol Station for processing and charged.

The vehicle driver, also an Indian citizen who originally entered illegally into the US in 2012 and was ordered removed from the country in absentia last December, was charged with alien smuggling, a felony, which carries a penalty of a fine and up to five years of imprisonment for each violation.

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Agencies
February 17,2020

Islamabad, Feb 17: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday warned that Pakistan may face another refugee crisis if the international community failed to take notice of the current situation in India.

Speaking at the two-day refugee summit in Islamabad on 40 years of hosting Afghan refugees in Pakistan, he said India’s "ultranationalist ideology going unchecked could lead to destruction and the region could become a flashpoint", The Express Tribune quoted him as saying.

Khan said if the international community does not take notice of this situation, it will create another refugee crisis for Pakistan as Muslims of India will move to Pakistan.

"This is not the India of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi. The United Nations (UN) must play its role otherwise it will become a very big problem in the future," Duniya News quoted Khan as saying.

He said said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that India can destroy Pakistan in 11 days is not a responsible statement by a premier of a nuclear state with a huge population, the paper reported.

Khan made the statement in the presence of visiting UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who was also attending the summit.

He said because of the "Hindutva" ideology, Kashmiris have been lockdown for over 200 days. He alleged under the same ideology, the BJP-led government passed two discriminatory nationalistic legislations, targeting 200 million Muslims in India.

Khan was referring to India's Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the revocation of the special status to Jammu and Kashmir.

The new citizenship law passed by the Indian Parliament in December 2019 offers citizenship to non-Muslim persecuted religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

The Indian government has maintained that the CAA is an internal matter of the country and stressed that the goal is to protect the oppressed minorities of neighbouring countries.

India revoked Jammu and Kashmir's special status on August 5. Reacting to India's move, Pakistan downgraded diplomatic ties with New Delhi and expelled the Indian High Commissioner.

India has always maintained that Jammu and Kashmir is its integral part and ruled out any third party mediation, including either from the UN or the US, saying it is a bilateral issue with Pakistan.

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News Network
June 2,2020

Oakland, Jun 2: Facebook employees are using Twitter to register their frustration over CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision to leave up posts by President Donald Trump that suggested protesters in Minneapolis could be shot.

While Twitter demoted and placed a warning on a tweet about the protests that read, in part, that “when the looting starts the shooting starts,” Facebook has let it stand, with Zuckerberg laying out his reasoning in a Facebook post Friday.

“I know many people are upset that we've left the President's posts up, but our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Trump's comment evoked the civil-rights era by borrowing a phrase used in 1967 by Miami's police chief to warn of an aggressive police response to unrest in black neighborhoods.

On Monday, Facebook employees staged a virtual “walkout” to protest the company's decision not to touch the Trump posts according to a report in the New York Times, which cited anonymous senior employees at Facebook.

The Times report says “dozens” of Facebook workers “took the day off by logging into Facebook's systems and requesting time off to support protesters across the country." “I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we're showing up.

The majority of coworkers I've spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard,” tweeted Jason Toff, a director of product management at Facebook who's been at the company for a year.

Toff, who has a verified Twitter account, had 131,400 “likes” and thousands of retweets of his comment. He did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Monday.

“I don't know what to do, but I know doing nothing is not acceptable. I'm a FB employee that completely disagrees with Mark's decision to do nothing about Trump's recent posts, which clearly incite violence. I'm not alone inside of FB.

There isn't a neutral position on racism,” tweeted another employee, design manager Jason Stirman.

Stirman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. Sara Zhang, a product designer at the company, tweeted that Facebook's “decision to not act on posts that incite violence ignores other options to keep our community safe.

The policy pigeon holes us into addressing harmful user-facing content in two ways: keep content up or take it down.” “I believe that this is a self-imposed constraint and implore leadership to revisit the solution,” she continued. Zhang declined to comment to The Associated Press.

Representatives for Facebook did not immediately respond to messages for comment.

Twitter has historically taken stronger stances than its larger rival, including a complete ban on political advertisements that the company announced last November.

That's partly because Facebook, a much larger company with a broader audience,targeted by regulators over its size and power, has more to lose. And partly because the companies' CEOs don't always see eye to eye on their role in society.

Over the weekend, Twitter changed the background and logo if its main Twitter account to black from its usual blue in support of the Black Lives Matter protesters and added a #blacklivesmatter hashtag. Facebook did the same with its own logo on its site, though without the hashtag.

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