Rahul Gandhi, who addressed a gathering on artificial intelligence at a Silicon Valley incubator for startups on Wednesday, was described as a ‘living Buddha’ by the host – an Indian-American entrepreneur – news agency PTI reported. Shan Sankaran, founder of FixNix, a startup that provides a cloud-based platform to enable easy decision-making on governance, risk and compliance, said that the Congress leader had a profound knowledge about technology.

Calling Gandhi’s understanding of technology as ‘humane’, he explained that the former party president directly related it to the impact on the common man and employment. Sankaran added that the former MP was always curious without a ‘know-it-all’ attitude. “He expressed his kind of limitation on different subjects, but he always shows his appetite for the technology,” he said.

Other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs also interacted with the leader during the “AI and Human Development: A Chat with Rahul Gandhi’ event at Plug and Play.

Gandhi revealed that he tries to follow his father, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, regarding the adaptation of technology in different sectors including banking. Sankaran, who was accorded the rare O1 visa by the US meant for individuals of extraordinary capabilities, said that Gandhi also rooted for the regulation of technology instead of a blanket ban.

“Right now, what’s happening in India…TikTok, you don’t like it, Ban it. ..The US has not banned TikTok or drones. They regulate…made the CEO of TikTok come talk to all the members of the Congress,” Sankaran noted.

Referring to Gandhi’s claims of his phone being tapped by the Pegasus spyware, Sankaran said the technology is being used to silence the press, judiciary, independent institutions and the opposition, including Gandhi. At one point, Gandhi jokingly added, “Hello! Mr Modi” on his iPhone and told the audience he is not worried about it.

Calling Gandhi ‘very empathetic’, Sankaran continued, “… He’s a living Buddha… and he follows Dhamma for that matter….he’s not behind fancy designations. He could have become prime minister (twice) when they had that majority. Not a single soul in the Congress would have objected in case he wanted to…He never chose to.”

Gandhi arrived in New York after visiting Washington and San Francisco and will address a community rally at the Javits Centre in Manhattan on Sunday.

Many of us want to give back to the community that we’re living in, however, few people have the tools and motive to do so. This Indian-American couple living in the state of Texas realised the crucial need of the hour and acted on it. They summoned all their resources and tools to fight an invisible but serious, and altogether all-too-common problem that threatened permeated their community. The problem was that of hunger. Raj and Aradhana Asava have established Hunger Mitao and this is their story.

In an article recently published by The Times of India, this particular Raj Asava revealed that he was quite struck by how deep the problem of hunger and empty stomachs permeated his community, which was seemingly affluent and well-to-do.

He decided to put his years of corporate training to use and developed a model that was more than just donating money to the needy. He worked with his wife to develop Hunger Mitao, an initiative that would go on to benefit not just the Indian diaspora but also other ethnic groups as well.

The couple realised that simply donating money to charity was not going to cut it and that it was a superficial and temporary solution. They also realised that there were already organisations in place that were attempting to combat this issue. The programs launched by the North Texas Food Bank is a case in point.

They, therefore, decided that rather than starting from scratch, they could simply help the organisations already in place. Thus began Hunger Mitao, a movement launched to create awareness about the insidious problem of hunger.

Their model received a lot of attention and soon was also picked up by other ethnic communities. The Hispanic community started SinHambre which adopts the model of Hunger Mitao. NiHao is another example, started by the Chinese-American community.

Hunger Mitao provides resources, assets, contacts, etc., to such initiatives and by thus adopting the Hunger Mitao model, other communities become equipped to deal with the issue in ways best suited for it. Could there be a better real-life example of “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man fishing, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.

Dev Shah, a 14-year-old Indian-American boy from Largo, Florida, won the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, nailing the word “psammophile,” meaning an organism that thrives in sandy soils, in the 15th round of the contest’s finals.

He edged out fellow eighth-grader Charlotte Walsh, 14, from Arlington, Virginia, who finished in second-place after she misspelled “daviely,” a Scottish-rooted word for listlessly, in the 14th round.

Shah, a student at Morgan Fitzgerald Middle School, had correctly, and swiftly, spelled “bathypitotmeter” in the 14th round, but under spelling bee rules needed to land one more word to be declared winner.

Shah, who was crowned champion in a hail of confetti before being joined on stage by his parents and other relatives, takes home $50,000 cash from E.W. Scripps Co, the bee’s sponsor, plus further monetary prizes and reference works from Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster.

The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary is the official dictionary of the competition.

Dev, whose hobbies include reading, tennis, playing the cello and solving math problems, tied for 51st place in the 2019 edition of the spelling bee, and tied for 76th place in 2021.

He was among 11 contestants, aged 11 to 14, who advanced to the finals of this year’s event after beating out a field of 220 other competitors participating in the three-day contest, held in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C.

This year’s total field comprised 94 girls, 134 boys and two spellers who identify as nonbinary. One competitor did not specify a gender.

The bee is televised live. The excitement is heightened by TV commentators who describe the action as contestants wrack their brains to come up with the correct spellings for often-obscure words.

Last year, Harini Logan, 14, from San Antonio, Texas, correctly spelled 22 words during a 90-second spell-off to claim the top prize. It was the first time a spell-off decided the prestigious competition, which began in 1925.

The 2022 show was broadcast on ION and Bounce, both networks owned by a Scripps subsidiary, after 27 years on the cable sports channel ESPN. ION will again carry this year’s finals.

Taral Patel, a 29-year-old Indian-American policy expert has announced his candidacy to serve as Fort Bend County Commissioner for Precinct 3 in 2024 in the US state of Texas.

Patel, who worked as a former Chief of Staff for Fort Bend County Judge KP George, took to Twitter to announce his candidacy on Tuesday where he posted a video campaign and wrote, “I’m announcing my campaign for Fort Bend County Commissioner.” “Together, we can push past the divisive politics that we see in the news — and build a stronger, diverse, & more united Fort Bend,” he said.

Patel, a self-described “policy wonk,” is running as a candidate of the Democratic Party for the seat held by longtime Republican Commissioner Andy Meyers, the Fort Bend Star newspaper reported.

He recently completed his service at the White House, where he served in the Biden administration’s Office of the White House Liaison, working on matters related to housing, urban development, and disaster recovery and resilience, the report said.

He previously worked in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division in the public integrity section, as the deputy finance director.

Patel who grew up mostly in Fort Bend County (with brief stints in Harris County) completed his graduation from the University of Texas at Austin.

He is the son of Indian immigrants who came to the US in the 1980s, working in various small businesses while attending Texas Southern University and the University of Houston, it said.

Patel has also successfully led Fort Bend County through numerous flooding incidents, the COVID-19 pandemic, Winter Storm Uri and electric grid failure, droughts, and other major emergencies to emerge stronger and more united than ever.

The Democratic Primary Election Day is set to be held on March 5, 2024.

Republican leader and US presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy expressed concerns over Elon Musk’s discussions with Chinese ministers on the Tesla CEO’s first trip to the country in over three years. Mr Ramaswamy claimed that China was using prominent American business leaders as puppets to “advance their agenda”.
Elon Musk, during an audience with China’s Foreign Minister on Tuesday, announced that he will expand his business in the country. He also praised China’s “vitality and promise” on Wednesday.

The billionaire used his sit down with Foreign Minister Qin Gang to voice opposition to the US decoupling from China, saying the interests of the two countries were intertwined, according to a government statement.

Calling Musk’s remarks deeply concerning, Mr Ramaswamy said, “It’s deeply concerning that Elon Musk met with China’s foreign minister yesterday to oppose decoupling and referred to the U.S. & Communist China as “conjoined twins.” Tesla’s VP in China reposted that statement on Weibo in China, but curiously not here in the US.”

The Republican leader also said that prominent US businessmen driving Beijing’s agenda tilt the scales in China’s favour.

“That tilts the global scales of perception in China’s favor – and sadly, it’s working. The US needs leaders who aren’t in China’s pocket, yet Biden is just another embodiment of that same problem,” he said in a tweet.

Musk’s first visit to China in three years comes as Tesla faces intensifying competition from Chinese-made electric vehicles and some uncertainty about expansion plans for the Shanghai plant.

Musk, who has previously suggested Taiwan could be run as a special administrative zone of China, has enjoyed significant official support for his Shanghai-based Gigafactory. Tesla contributed almost one-quarter of Shanghai’s total automotive production value last year, and local authorities pledged earlier this month to boost ties with the company through autonomous driving and robot modules.

The Tesla chief’s unannounced trip is the latest by a major US CEO to China since the country reversed its zero-COVID policy and reopened its borders. Apple’s Tim Cook visited in March, while JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon and Starbucks’ Laxman Narasimhan are also in China this week.