Author: Priya Saha

Banks are resisting the Byden administration’s push to offer $ 4 billion in debt relief programs to minority farmers, saying government initiatives to repay borrower loans will hurt financial institutions’ interests and investors. .. The American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, and the National Rural Lenders Association, three of the largest banking groups in the United States, say the program will repay loans early and lose interest that can be collected from farmers. The New York Times reports. Their dissatisfaction comes after a white farmer who claimed they were a victim of reverse discrimination sued the USDA.…

A mob attacked Christian villagers in Okara over an allegation against young kids Inclusivity and tolerance are concepts that are admired by many but practiced by few. Contrary to the promise of making a plural Pakistani society that would have welcomed and respected people from different religious backgrounds, religious minorities in the country continue to face discrimination and persecution to this date. While we continue to highlight the atrocities committed to Muslims in other parts of the world, incidents like these suggest that we also need to put our house in order.   A group of people physically tortured the…

US House speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for a US diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, criticising China for human rights abuses and saying global leaders who attend would lose their moral authority.US lawmakers have been increasingly vocal about an Olympic boycott or venue change, and have lashed out at American corporations, arguing their silence about what the State Department has deemed a genocide of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China was abetting the Chinese government.Pelosi, a Democrat, told a bipartisan congressional hearing on the issue on Tuesday that heads of state around the world should…

Children take part in a bamboo dance at the New Residents Festival held in August 2020 in Fuxi subdistrict of Deqing in East China’s Zhejiang Province. Photo: Courtesy of Fuxi subdistrict Yang Wenxue, a 46-year-old member of the Miao ethnic minority living in Deqing’s Fuxi subdistrict in East China’s Zhejiang Province, has been rehearsing a chorus recently after work to prepare for the “New Residents Festival,” an annual local event to welcome people who come to live and work in Fuxi from other cities.”There are 60 people in our chorus group, who come from different ethnic groups,” Yang told the Global…

Road traffic collisions kill around 1.35-million people every year worldwide, with 93 percent of these occurring in low- and middle-income countries – despite those nations having lower rates of vehicle use. Why then, is the majority of road safety research undertaken in high-income countries? These were among the questions pondered by an international research team led by the University of Southampton in the UK. Whereas traditionally research into collisions has focussed on the road users’ immediate environments, the STARS (SocioTechnical Approach to Road Safety) project has taken a broader perspective, looking into the wider social, cultural, economic and regulatory factors…

Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent. 1. Patients undergoing dialysis shown to maintain antibody response for at least 6 months following SARS-CoV-2 infection Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-0256 URL goes live when…

Bangladesh on Monday observed that the recently-published report by the United States government on religious freedom did not reflect the country’s ground scenario on the matter. ‘The recently-published report by the US Government on religious freedom in Bangladesh did not well reflect the ground scenario,’ state minister for foreign affairs M Shahriar Alam told US ambassador Earl Miller, according to a press release of the foreign ministry. The instances regarding violations of religious freedom mentioned in the report ‘are discrete incidents’ and action were taken against the perpetrators, Alam said as the ambassador called on him at the foreign ministry…

Some voices rise from Asia calling for a stop to the conflict between the Israeli army and Hamas. Pakistan Archbishop Benny Mario Travas calls for an end to “the loss of innocent lives”. The President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Bangladesh, Archbishop Bejoy Nicephorus D’Cruze urges help “to achieve a fair solution”. Karachi (AsiaNews) – The Catholic Churches in Pakistan and Bangladesh have been praying for peace in Gaza and Israel, hit by death and destruction over  the past few days. Like Pope Francis, they appeal to political leaders to stop the violence and follow the path of dialogue. …

It was May 14 in 1971, when residents of Demra village and traders of Demrahaat (one of the leading rural markets during that time) were closing their daily works in the evening, suddenly Pakistani occupation troops cordoned off Demra and adjoining villages Rupshi and Baushgari in Pabna and started firing on unarmed villagers. Demra, a remote Hindu majority village, during liberation war where many people from different areas came for taking shelter, but occupation army along with their local collaborators launched a brutal attack on the villages killing unarmed people, pillaging their houses and then burning them down. For all…

Raley’s O-N-E Market/Grocery Store, Wedge Parkway, Reno Nevada – photo: Shelley Buchanan Earlier this month Raley’s in South Reno reopened with a fanfare celebrating their new O-N-E concept. Focusing on organic foods, Raley’s proclaimed, “We are driven by our vision of infusing life with health and happiness by changing the way the world eats, one plate at a time.”  Residents from the well-to-do South Reno neighborhood can now purchase gluten free hamburger buns while enjoying wheat grass smoothies all the time knowing that what they purchase will be “fresh, nutritious, organic when possible, minimally processed, sustainably sourced and free from ingredients on the brand’s banned ingredients…

The natural history and distribution of Doria’s foam-nesting treefrog, last recorded in India in 1912, is virtually unknown  A virtually unknown treefrog with known traits such as changing skin shade and whipping up foam to protect its eggs has resurfaced in India after 108 years.A team of zoologists from Mizoram University’s Developmental Biology and Herpetological Laboratory spotted Doria’s foam-nesting treefrog during a nocturnal survey in the buffer area of Mizoram’s Pualreng Wildlife Sanctuary in June 2020.The only previous record of this treefrog in India was south of Arunachal Pradesh’s Tenga Valley in 1912. This frog belongs to the genus Chirixalus,…

A new report had warned against the use of Uyghur forced labour by China in the global supply chain of solar panel manufacturing which is also central to US President Joe Biden’s plans to transition the US to a more environment-friendly energy grid. The report published on May 14 titled “In Broad Daylight: Uyghur Forced Labor and Global Solar Supply Chains” by UK’s Sheffield Hallam University said that Chinese “labour transfers” in the northwest Xinjiang region, where hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been subjected to persecution and internment, is deployed in “an environment of unprecedented coercion, undergirded by the…