Obama Girls, Malala, Lorde Make Time's 'Influential Teens' List

Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, in Birmingham. (Reuters)

Los Angeles:  The daughters of US President Barack Obama, entertainers, a Nobel laureate and a girl baseball player all made Time's annual list of most influential teenagers, the magazine said on Monday.

First daughters Malia, 16, and Sasha, 13; Grammy-winning New Zealand singer Lorde, 17; and Nobel Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai, 17, the Pakistani education activist winner, were all on the unranked list dominated by 20 females.

Time said it compiled its list of 25 teens - 29, counting accolades shared by siblings and partners - by analyzing their social media following, business successes and cultural importance.

The youngest were Sasha Obama and fellow 13-year-old Mo'ne Davis, a pitching sensation who led her Philadelphia boys' baseball team to the Little League World Series and landed a spot on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Tavi Gevinson, the 18-year-old fashion writer and founder of popular online magazine Rookie, was noted as emblematic of the contemporary teen in the Internet age, while transgender activist Jazz Jennings, 14, and Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, 18, also made the list.

The dominant categories were athletes, actors and singers.

Actors taking center stage were Kiernan Shipka, 14, of "Mad Men," Rico Rodriguez, 16, of "Modern Family" and "The Equalizer's" Chloe Grace Moretz, 17.

Pop singers Becky G, 17, and Austin Mahone, 18, earned plaudits as did New Zealand pro golfer Lydia Ko, 17, and Afghan National Cycling Team member Salma Kakar, 17.

Teens noted for business success include 15-year-old Erik Finman, founder of the online tutoring site Botangle.com; YouTube fashion star Bethany Mota, 18, and actress-turned-stockpicker Rachel Fox, 18.

Irish trio Ciara Judge, 16, Emer Hickey, 17, and Sophie Healy-Thow, 17, were noted for their discovery of bacteria that deposits nitrogen from the atmosphere into soil.

Los Angeles teen chef Flynn McGarry, 15, joined stars of Twitter's Vine short-form video service, Nash Grier, and singer Shawn Mendes, both 16.

Jaden Smith, 16, son of actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, was recognised for acting and his Twitter following, while reality TV stars the Jenner sisters Kendall, 18, and Kylie, 17, were noted for their burgeoning Hollywood and merchandising careers.

Also in the spotlight were 19-year-olds Megan Grassell, founded of the Yellowberry clothing company that makes bras for teens, and South African-Australian YouTube star and actor-musician Troye Sivan.

© Thomson Reuters 2014

Should White Mom be Paid for Brown Baby Mistake?

It's an unusual question, arising from an Ohio woman's unusual lawsuit prompted by an insemination gone wrong. And it has set off an extraordinary discussion touching on sensitive issues of race, motherhood, sexuality and justice, though the debate begins with one basic premise: You should get what you pay for.

Jennifer Cramblett and her wife, Amanda Zinkon, wanted a white baby. They went to the Midwest Sperm Bank near Chicago and chose blond, blue-eyed donor No. 380, who looked like he could have been related to Zinkon. When Cramblett was five months pregnant, they found out that she had been inseminated by donor No. 330 - a black man.

"The couple did not get what they asked for, which was a particular donor. The company made a mistake, and it should have to pay for that," says Jessica Barrow, an information technology professional.

Barrow is black and lesbian, with a white partner. They considered insemination of the white partner before choosing to adopt. When looking at donors, they wanted sperm from a black donor, to create a biracial baby that would have shared some physical characteristics with both of them.

"They're not saying anything racist, they're not saying we don't want a black baby," Barrow said of Cramblett and Zinkon, who profess their love for their now 2-year-old daughter. "They're saying, we asked for something, you gave us something different, and now we have to adjust to that."

That "adjustment" is a major justification for Cramblett's lawsuit. It cites the stress and anxiety of raising a brown girl in predominantly white Uniontown, Ohio, which Cramblett describes as intolerant. Some of her own family members have unconscious racial biases, the lawsuit says.

That leads some to believe that Cramblett is asking to be paid for the difficulties that many black folks - and white parents of adopted black children - deal with for free.

"I don't think I deserve anything more being the white parent of a black child than any parent of a black child does," says Rory Mullen, who adopted her daughter.

Strangers have asked Mullen why she didn't adopt a white baby. One remarked in front of her white then-husband that Mullen must have cheated with a black man. Too many white people to count have pawed her daughter's hair.

"It's hard, but being a parent is hard," says Mullen, who is author of "Chocolate Hair Vanilla Care: A Parent's Guide to Beginning Natural Hair Styling."

"Being a parent is going to throw things at you that you never expected, and we make a decision that we're going to roll with it, because we love our kids and they deserve it," she says.

Mullen agrees that a company should be held liable for promising one thing and doing another. But she thinks the fact Cramblett waited more than two years to sue indicates that the experience of raising a black child is her real problem.

"When you say this is too hard, I didn't deserve this, this is too much for me to handle, then the child internalises it and it affects their self-esteem," she says. "It's my job to pour self-esteem into my daughter, not tear it down."

From the days of American slavery through the 1960s, white men fathering children with black women was commonplace and tacitly accepted - yet there were few things as scandalous as a white woman with a brown baby.

That history makes Denene Millner, author of the MyBrownBaby.com blog, say that the lawsuit is "rooted in fear ... stuck in the muck and mire of racism and the purity of white lineage."

"She simply cannot fathom dealing with what it means to, in essence, be a Black mom, having to navigate and negotiate a racist world on behalf of a human she bore, in an environment of which she is a product," Millner wrote.

Darron Smith, co-author of "White Parents, Black Children: Experiencing Transracial Adoption," says that the lawsuit reflects America's unexamined racist attitudes and Cramblett's angst over having a biracial child.

He notes that due to supply and demand, it costs about half as much to adopt a black child as a white one, and many black boys in foster care are never adopted.

"This lawsuit demonstrates quite nicely the value of skin colour," says Smith, a professor at Wichita State University.

Yet Cramblett's defenders say she should not be held responsible for being unprepared.

"White people who aren't affiliated with black people don't necessarily understand the challenges that black people face in all facets of their life. This couple wasn't expecting that, and now they have to deal with it," says Rachel Dube, who owns a youth sports business in New York.

"She didn't ask for a biracial baby. She was given one, she loves it, she adores it, now she's facing challenges and admits it. That doesn't make her a racist," Dube says.

"You can't fault her for what she was not exposed to," she says. "Her only obligation is to love and raise her child in the best environment possible. And if the money will help her do that, then good for her."

Story First Published: October 14, 2014 01:34 IST

The Gandhi Embraced By Modi is An Edited Version: Foreign Media

New Delhi: Watching Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the past month, as he began to carve out an image for himself beyond India's borders, one might have gotten the impression that Mohandas K. Gandhi was his ideological progenitor, or his running mate.

Gandhi is everywhere in Delhi these days. A stylized drawing of his steel-rimmed, circular glasses is the logo of Modi's new cleanliness drive, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, introduced with great fanfare on the anniversary of Gandhi's birth. He is posed with a broom and basket on the cover of Organiser, the magazine of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the right-wing Hindu organization connected to Modi's party. When the president of China, Xi Jinping, visited, Modi received him at Gandhi's ashram. Then Modi visited President Barack Obama in the United States and presented him with a copy of Gandhi's translation of the Bhagavad Gita.

Gandhi, of course, is an unlikely avatar for the ascendant right wing in India. For most of the last century, Gandhi has been the symbolic leader of the Indian National Congress party, which Modi drove from power this year. Gandhi's economic vision was fundamentally anti-capitalist: He extolled rural over urban life and called industrialization "a curse for mankind." During his lifetime, Gandhi was excoriated by right-wing activists - including the man who assassinated him - for acquiescing to the creation of Pakistan and advocating for the rights of India's Muslim minority.

Though Modi has always spoken of Gandhi with respect, he has echoed the criticism that Congress leaders gave preferential treatment to India's minorities. Modi's reputation as a Hindu hard-liner was defined in 2002, when bloody sectarian riots broke out under his watch as chief minister of the state of Gujarat. No Indian court has found him responsible for the riots, which left more than 1,200 dead, most of them Muslims.

So the Gandhi now embraced by Modi is an edited version. First and foremost, he is a preacher of cleanliness - a fair depiction, since he was passionate on the subject, known for seizing brooms and for insisting that even highborn followers, like his wife, empty their own chamber pots.

Modi has endorsed some elements of Gandhi's economic thinking, urging consumers to buy homespun cloth instead of imported products. But his Gandhi hardly believes that "the future of India lies in its villages." To a prosperous crowd of mainly Indian-Americans at Madison Square Garden in New York last month, Modi described Gandhi as a character remarkably like them, a man who "went abroad, became a barrister, had opportunities," but "came back to serve the nation."

Tushar A. Gandhi, the great-grandson of the independence leader, has watched this process from his home in Mumbai with curiosity and, at times, satisfaction.

He noted, however, that during his 12 years as a state leader, Modi had never invoked Gandhi with such enthusiasm.

"In this short period of 100 days that he has been the prime minister of India, it seems everything he does is guided by Bapu," he said, using an affectionate term meaning father. "It is a bit of a surprise. The only thing I can say at the moment is, I hope it is sincere."
 
While preparing to seek the post of prime minister, Modi set out to create political space for himself outside the Hindu right wing, in part by laying claim to beloved figures associated with the Congress party.

The most obvious was the independence fighter Sardar Patel, known  as "the Iron Man of India," whom Modi so admires that he has begun a project to build a 597-foot Patel monument, tall enough for recognition by Guinness World Records. There is little mystery in why Modi identifies with Patel. He was a rival to India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and unlike the secular, Anglophile Nehru, Patel was an ascetic Hindu, far less sympathetic to the demands of India's Muslims and more to the right on economic matters.

Outside India, however, Patel's name provokes only a dive for an encyclopedia, whereas Gandhi's prompts hushed reverence. More surprising, perhaps, is Modi's effort to associate himself with Nehru, a leader whom he has publicly criticized in the past as weak. Last week, Modi called him "Chacha Nehru," or "Uncle Nehru," and proposed that his Nov. 14 birthday become a nationwide celebration of - you guessed it - hygiene and cleanliness.

With the adoption of Nehru, Modi has "got the whole packet" of Congress' heroes, said Shiv Visvanathan, a social scientist and self-described liberal. "Congress is left with very little," he said. "It's literally a stealing of intellectual property."
 
Tushar Gandhi declared last week that Modi's rollout of the cleanliness campaign, which required top officials to go out and clean neighborhoods, was the only celebration in decades "which would have gotten Bapu's seal of approval."

Whether it represents an ideological shift toward the center is still unclear. Modi has a knack, unique among recent Indian leaders, for broadcasting political signals in all directions at once. Prabhu Chawla, editorial director of The New Indian Express, ticked off a long list of gestures aimed at proving Modi's credentials as a Hindu nationalist. When he visited Nepal on a two-day trip, he stopped to make an offering at a famous Hindu temple. At the White House, he stuck to a religious fast and refused to eat or drink anything except hot water.

"His idea of India is Hindi Hindu - people who speak Hindi and those who are Hindu," Chawla said. "He is wearing his Hinduism on his sleeve, and saying, 'You take it or leave it.'"

Modi's invocations of Gandhi may simply be an acknowledgment that one cannot rule India without allegiance to him. More than two decades have passed since Atal Vajpayee, the last prime minister to rise out of India's right wing, began to praise Gandhi in public, opening the door for the Bharatiya Janata Party to interlace his name and image with Hindu nationalism, said Ashutosh Varshney, a professor of political science at Brown University.

Elements of Gandhi's thinking fell by the wayside, he said, such as the love he professed for India's Muslims and his vision of a "feminized," less aggressive Hinduism. Varshney added that there was nothing unusual in that.

"No one in India, not even Congress, has fully embraced Gandhi," he said. "Gandhi is the father of the nation, no doubt. But Gandhi is also a difficult father."

Cleanliness, in any case, is a proposition that no one can dispute.

Rajmohan Gandhi, the independence leader's grandson, certainly could not, though he called it "an incomplete representation of Gandhian thought." Asked whether the prime minister was moving in that direction, Rajmohan Gandhi said he was skeptical.

"Time will tell," he said. "Gandhi is available to all to use or misuse. My complaining will make no difference. But Gandhi may spring back and create problems for those who misuse him."

© 2014, The New York Times News Service

Dallas Nurse Is Infected With Ebola, Elevating Response and Anxiety

 

Dallas:  A nurse here became the first person to contract Ebola within the United States, prompting local, state and federal officials who had settled into a choreographed response to scramble Sunday to solve the mystery of how she became infected despite wearing protective gear and to monitor additional people possibly at risk.

The news further stoked fears of health care workers across the country, many of whom have grown increasingly anxious about having to handle Ebola cases. The confirmation Sunday of the second Ebola case in Dallas - four days after the death Wednesday of the first patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, 42, a Liberian who arrived in this country in September - opened a new and more frightening chapter in the unfolding public health drama.

While the new Ebola patient was not publicly identified, officials said that she was a nurse who had helped treat Duncan at a hospital here and that she may have violated safety protocols. It was the first confirmed instance of Ebola being transmitted in this country. Officials expanded the pool of people they had been monitoring, because the nurse had not been among the 48 health care workers, relatives of Duncan and others whom they were evaluating daily.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that health officials look more closely at the protective gear that nurses, doctors and hospital assistants use when treating Ebola patients. It also, for the first time, was considering the idea that patients with the virus should be transferred to hospitals with special containment units and experience in treating the disease. The Dallas hospital at the center of the two Ebola cases - Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, which sent Duncan home on Sept. 25 under the mistaken belief he had a sinus infection, only to have him return Sept. 28 when his conditions worsened - was facing renewed scrutiny over whether it had properly trained its workers.

The CDC said it would conduct a nationwide training conference call Tuesday for thousands of health care workers to ensure they would be fully prepared to treat a patient with Ebola.

"The care of Ebola patients can be done safely, but it's hard to do it safely," Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the CDC, told reporters Sunday. "Even a single, inadvertent innocent slip can result in contamination."

The stricken nurse reported a low-grade fever overnight Friday, officials said. It appeared that she drove herself to the emergency room of Presbyterian Hospital, where she worked, and was admitted and put in isolation 90 minutes later, the officials said.

She had extensive contact with Duncan on multiple occasions after his second visit and admission to the hospital on Sept. 28, Frieden said.

The nurse had been monitoring herself for symptoms of Ebola, under a regimen prescribed by the CDC. Health officials will now investigate who had been in contact with Duncan after he was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 28 and while he was in isolation, Frieden said.

Before her trip to the emergency room, officials said, the nurse had not been at work for two days. A preliminary blood test was done at the state public health lab in Austin and the positive result was received late Saturday evening, officials said. Late Sunday afternoon, the CDC confirmed that she had Ebola after completing its own tests.

The woman was in stable condition on Sunday. Dr. Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer of Texas Health Resources, which oversees Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, told reporters on Sunday that the worker had worn protective gear when coming in contact with Duncan, although he did not detail the type of contact.

"This individual was following full CDC precautions," Varga said, adding, "Gown, glove, mask and shield." Asked how concerned he was that the worker tested positive despite the precautions, he replied, "We're very concerned."

Despite Varga's reassurances about CDC precautions having been followed, Frieden said it appeared the woman had breached safety protocol at the hospital, possibly when removing the protective gear. Speaking on the CBS program "Face the Nation" and later at a news conference, he said that questioning of the worker had not identified precisely how a breach occurred and that the cause of her infection was not known. Frieden said everyone who treated Duncan was now considered to be potentially exposed and that other cases of Ebola were possible.
"We're deeply concerned about this new development," he said on the talk show.

The CDC has said that for health workers in the United States gloves, gowns, masks and face shields or goggles would be protection enough. But many health workers across the country, seeing images of people in Africa completely encased in full-body hazardous-material suits, have requested similar protection.

"A lot of us are starting to get worried," said Debra Buccellato, an emergency room nurse in Santa Rosa, California. "I'm a single mom, so if I got sick there'd be a huge void."

Buccellato, 38, said supervisors at her hospital had distributed information about CDC guidelines, but added, "I have not seen any active training or practice drills, and I haven't seen any new or upgraded personal protective equipment."

She said she had emailed her manager to ask for more training, but said she was not sure that hazardous material suits were the best option for her 90-bed facility, Sutter Santa Rosa Hospital.

"I don't know how realistic it is to go to that level when you have X amount of patients to take care of and time issues," Buccellato said. For now, she said she plans to start wearing a face mask for her entire shift.

On Sunday, National Nurses United, the country's largest union and professional association of nurses, continued to sound the alarm and call for hazardous material suits at all hospitals.

"I'm angry about this," said RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director. "We want the first line of defense to be the most prepared. Our hospitals are resisting us. The CDC doesn't say that we need hazmat suits. If this doesn't change dramatically, we will picket every hospital in this country if we have to."

Dr. Ken Anderson, the chief operating officer of the American Hospital Association's research arm, said his organization was recommending that hospitals follow CDC guidelines and was not providing suggestions of its own.

"We rely on the policies and procedures that are found at every hospital," he said. "Their own best internal education is what's going to make that most effective."

President Barack Obama on Sunday directed the CDC to expedite its investigation into how the health care worker contracted the deadly virus, according to a White House statement.

In an indication that the White House was taking steps in advance of any possible spread of the disease, Obama also directed federal officials to make sure that hospitals and health workers across the nation "are prepared to follow protocols should they encounter an Ebola patient," the statement said. Obama was briefed by Lisa Monaco, the president's assistant for homeland security, and then spoke by telephone with Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services.

While there have been other patients with Ebola treated in the United States in recent weeks, the nurse is only the second person - after Duncan - whose condition was diagnosed in the United States. All of the other patients - including medical personnel, relief workers and journalists - received a diagnosis while working in West Africa near Ebola victims and were brought to this country for treatment.

Four hospitals in the United States - Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Montana - have high-containment units for isolating patients with dangerous infectious diseases, and medical teams at those facilities have conducted extensive training and drills for dealing with pathogens like Ebola.

But in Dallas on Sunday, officials were trying to persuade residents to remain calm and reminded them that their risk of exposure was low.

"You cannot contract Ebola other than from the bodily fluids of a symptomatic Ebola victim," said County Judge Clay Jenkins, Dallas County's chief executive, who himself has had close contact with those who lived with Duncan. "You cannot contract Ebola by walking by people on the street or by being around contacts who are not symptomatic. There's nothing about this case that changes that basic premise of science."

City officials moved swiftly to clean and decontaminate many of the places where the nurse had been or had even briefly touched, including her apartment in a complex on Marquita Avenue, the complex's common areas and the car she took to the hospital. Police officers were prohibiting access to her apartment. Officials believe the woman's pet dog was inside the apartment but was doing fine.

"We have a plan in place to take care of the pet, and we do not believe that pet has any signs, and we'll move accordingly later today," Mayor Mike Rawlings of Dallas said.

Remaining calm was easier said than done for many of the woman's neighbors. Early Sunday, city officials knocked on the doors of nearby homes and called residences in the four blocks surrounding the complex to inform people that someone who lived in the neighborhood had tested positive for Ebola.

"It's a little creepy," said Kara Lutley, 25, who lives across the street from the nurse's apartment building. "It's been in Dallas, but it hasn't been this close."

At the hospital, the car the woman arrived in was decontaminated and secured so no one could go near it, officials said.

"We decontaminated hand-railings, everything in the parking lot, so everybody can feel comfortable that the exterior was taken care of," Rawlings said.

The hospital also took the unusual step Sunday of prohibiting ambulances from bringing new patients into its emergency room. Officials said the hospital was open, but said they had decided to put the emergency room on so-called diversion status because of staff limitations.

"While we are on diversion we are also using this time to further expand the margin of safety by triple-checking our full compliance with updated CDC guidelines," hospital officials said in a statement. "We are also continuing to monitor all staff who had some relation to Mr. Duncan's care even if they are not assumed to be at significant risk of infection." 

© 2014, The New York Times News Service

Sebi Bars DLF, 6 Top Executives From Capital Markets For 3 Years

Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India or Sebi on Monday barred property developer DLF Ltd and some of its executives from accessing capital markets for three years, citing non-disclosure violations related to its 2007 initial public offering.

Sebi was investigating whether the property developer disclosed in its IPO (initial public offering) documents the names of all of its subsidiaries and the legal cases pending against those companies.

In a 43-page order, Sebi said it will bar DLF and its chairman KP Singh along with five other company executives from accessing India's capital markets for three years.
"...In order to protect the interest of investors and the integrity of the securities market... (I) hereby restrain the following entities from accessing the securities market and prohibit them from buying, selling or otherwise dealing in securities, directly or indirectly, in any manner, whatsoever, for the period of three years," Sebi said in its order.

Shares in DLF, India's biggest realty developer, ended 3.8 per cent lower at Rs. 146.90 on the National Stock Exchange. The stock was the top loser on the 50-share Nifty and underperformed the broader realty sub-index on the NSE, which closed 1.7 per cent lower. (Track stock)

A DLF spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
With inputs from Reuters

Shashi Tharoor Dropped As Congress Spokesperson For Praising PM Modi

New Delhi:  Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has been dropped as party spokesperson on the charge that he has praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi once too often.

Sonia Gandhi reportedly agrees that Mr Tharoor has embarrassed and hurt the party with his "unnecessary adulation of PM Modi" in columns on ndtv.com and other sites.

"As a loyal worker of the Congress, I accept the decision of the party president," said Shashi Tharoor.

The action against him telegraphs Mrs Gandhi's stern message that any deviation from the party's line on PM Modi is unacceptable.

Kerala Congress leaders had alleged that the 58-year-old Mr Tharoor had repeatedly been appreciative of the Prime Minister.

The two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram incensed his party by saying he was "honoured" to be among nine prominent Indians tagged by the Prime Minister when he launched his five-year Clean India campaign on Mahatma Gandhi's October 2 birth anniversary.

In his column on ndtv.com, Mr Tharoor wrote, "Which Indian worthy of the name would not be humbled to be tapped by his PM for a national cause?"

The former union minister also commented that Mr Modi "had been effective in using his Prime Ministerial position" to drive change from the top.

A Congress publication in Kerala tore into Mr Tharoor for writing "love songs" for PM Modi and compared him to "Siberian migratory birds who come looking for optimum climate."

The action against Mr Tharoor comes at a time questions connected to the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar at her hotel room in January have resurfaced. The Delhi Police are yet to pinpoint how she died; a team of doctors from AIIMS has said the 52-year-old died of poisoning.

Congress spokesperson Shobha Oza said, "Tharoor's statements were not received well by the (Kerala Congress). This has nothing to do with Sunanda Pushkar's case."

Criticising the action against Mr Tharoor, the BJP's Siddharth Nath Singh said, "If a PM does good work praise should be accepted as natural but the Congress has not learnt any lesson."

Hyderabad Horror Story: Woman College Student Hit With Sickle, Attacker Then Drank Poison

Hyderabad:  An engineering student in Hyderabad was about to enter her college this morning when a man tried to slash her neck with a sickle. He then drank poison and died in hospital.

The victim who he assaulted is recovering in hospital, said senior police officers, and was able to give a detailed account of the gruesome attacks to them.

The woman student, named Ravali, had known the man, Pradeep, who was enrolled at another college, for four years, said senior police officer MA Bari to NDTV. Though they were initially friendly, he began stalking her and she multiple police complaints against him, most recently last month. The man then went missing.

This morning's grizzly encounter was filmed by the security cameras at the entrance to the Aurora Engineering College in South West Hyderabad, where Ravali enrolled just 20 days ago. College principal Srilatha said the security camera footage has been shared with the police.

"In front of all our college students, bus drivers, and security guards, an unknown person came of all a sudden and attacked our B Tech 1st year student," said Srilatha. "By the time we came to know he had attacked her, she was grievously injured and as soon as he attacked her, he consumed poison. Our faculty tried to stop him but couldn't," she said.