Student visas are a priority for US embassies and consulates

Q&A

15.11.2021 Times Education 

Student visas are a priority for US embassies and consulates

The US embassy has cleared 62,000 visas this summer, showing American universities’ demand among Indian students, says USIEF Educational Advisor Bhavna Jolly

Priyanka.Srivastava@timesgroup.com

As per National Student Clearinghouse Research Centre (NSCRC), there is a dip in number of international students in the US due to Covid. What are the strategies introduced by the US to bring back the lost students?

This past summer, the United States embassies and consulates globally prioritised student visas. International students were exempted from the US Presidential Proclamation that restricted entry of people who had been in India in the 14 days before going to the US. Thus, Indian students could apply for visas and travel to the US. We issued over 62,000 student visas this summer, showing that the US is a top choice for Indian students.

What are basic concerns of students? How will the US address them?

Students and families in India are concerned about physical health and safety. They seek information about the measures in place at university campuses for Covid-19 prevention and testing, as well as the support that students get in case they test positive for Covid-19. Universities have collated resources and established various systems to keep students safe. Also, new Covid-19 helplines are available at many universities to support students.

The UK government has loosened their restrictive visa policies of the past several years, which has benefitted them. Is the US considering making more relaxed post-work visa policies for international students?

The US includes an opportunity for practical training options as part of the student visa process to ensure international students gain valuable work experience in their field of study during and after their degree programmes. Students can pursue internships during the degree programme called Curricular Practical Training (CPT) for up to one year. Students can gain work experience for up to one year after graduating through Optional Practical Training (OPT). STEM graduates can participate in OPT for up to three years.

International students contributed $44 billion to the US economy and India is the second-largest contributor to this. How is the US planning to hike this further?

Last year, the US mission launched a second EducationUSA student advising centre in Hyderabad at the Y-Axis Foundation. This brings the network of EducationUSA centres in India to eight, in Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. These centres offer accurate, comprehensive and current information about opportunities to study at accredited post secondary institutions in the US. Our free mobile app, ‘EducationUSA India’ offers the most recent updates on studying in the US.

Any initiatives in the form of scholarships or discounts on tuition fees?

There are more than 4,500 accredited higher education institutions (HEIs) in the US and each has its own admissions policies. HEIs recognise the challenges the pandemic has posed for international students and many have updated their admissions policies. Many universities are offering application fee waivers and announced that they would keep tuition, housing, and fees flat. Some universities have extended their application deadlines to allow students more time to apply and accept admission offers. Whatever your requirement, EducationUSA will help you look for substantive information about scholarships and finances.

67-year-old sues KSRTC for failing to pick him up from bus stop, wins ₹1k Senior Citizen Pre-Booked Ticket; Designated Spot Changed On Day Of Travel

CONSUMER IS KING

67-year-old sues KSRTC for failing to pick him up from bus stop, wins ₹1k

Senior Citizen Pre-Booked Ticket; Designated Spot Changed On Day Of Travel

Petlee.Peter@timesgroup.com

Bengaluru:15.11.2021

A 67-year-old man, who was not picked up at a designated bus stop in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu by a Karnataka State Road transport Corporation (KSRTC) bus on which he had booked a ticket to travel to Bengaluru, took the utility to a consumer court and has now won a refund and compensation of Rs 1,000.

S Sangameswaran, a resident of Banashankari 3rd Stage, had booked return tickets online on KSRTC Airavat Club Class from Bengaluru to Tiruvannamalai. As planned, he left Bengaluru on October 12, 2019 and was scheduled to return to the city the next day. He reached the designated bus stop around noon. However, despite waiting for over an hour, there was no sign of the bus.

Sangameswaran had received an SMS from the state transporter mentioning his bus details, including the conductor’s contact number. When he called the number, he was told that the bus had left Tiruvannamalai as he failed to turn up at the new temporary stop and it was 30km away on its journey towards Bengaluru.

The dejected senior citizen had no choice but to take another KSRTC bus from Tiruvannamalai and reach Hosur by paying Rs 131. From there he took another bus to Bengaluru for Rs 69. Enraged by the fact that a senior passenger like him with a pre-booked sleeper ticket for the premium service wasn’t informed about the change in bus stop, Sangameswaran approached the Bangalore 2nd Urban Additional District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission in Shantinagar with a compliant against the managing director and general manager (traffic), KSRTC.

The litigation commenced on October 30, 2019. Sangameswaran presented his case, while the KSRTC lawyer claimed the complainant wasn’t maintainable by law. The attorney also stated that the case should be dismissed by the forum as the place where the alleged incident happened was Tiruvannamalai and beyond its jurisdiction.

He further said the conductor of the bus had sent an SMS to the complainant about the local TN police temporally shifting the bus stop to an outer location to manage crowds during the full moon day and it was a mistake on the part of the complainant, who failed to be present at the spot. He also claimed that 23 other passengers had boarded the bus, but not the complainant.

The judges of the consumer forum, however, didn’t accept the state transporter’s version as it failed to provide proof to substantiate its claims. The utility also failed to produce the bus conductor before the forum.

In their verdict pronounced on October 26, 2021, the consumer court ordered the managing director and GM (traffic) of KSRTC to refund Rs 497 towards the complainant’s Airavat ticket and Rs 131 and Rs 69 for the alternative bus journey he was forced to take to return to Bengaluru. The court also ordered the officers to pay the senior citizen a compensation of Rs 1,000 for the trouble caused.

All payments to the Bengalurean must be made within 30 days of the order, the court ordered.

UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE

S Sangameswaran, a resident of Banashankari 3rd Stage, had booked return tickets online on KSRTC Airavat Club Class from Bengaluru to Tiruvannamalai. As planned, he left from Bengaluru on October 12, 2019 and was to return to the city the next day. He reached the designated bus stop around noon. But despite waiting for over an hour, there was no sign of the KSRTC bus

5 Gmail Add-ons to Boost Productivity

TECHTONIC

5 Gmail Add-ons to Boost Productivity

15.11.2021

Emails are an intrinsic part of our internet-dependent lives — for personal and official use — with Gmail being one of the most popular services around. Besides built-in spam filters and security features, you can install third-party ‘add-ons’ to extend the functionality of a Gmail inbox. They can be found at workspace.google.com/marketplace, only need to be installed once and appear in a sidebar whenever you sign in from a web browser. Ashutosh Desai recommends five such add-ons to improve productivity.

SCHEDULE MEETINGS You can set up meetings with friends, colleagues or clients from Gmail with a smart scheduling service like CalendarHero (calendarhero.com). It also integrates with Google Calendar, so you don’t end up double booking your day.

It uses AI to ‘learn’ your scheduling patterns. Here, you can create fixed time frames for video calls, voice calls, coffee meetups, etc, for a more organised day. Each meeting type has a web link so anybody can ‘self book’ appointments with you. CalendarHero lets you set a daily limit to meetings; it can also integrate with Zoom and Cisco Webex; meetings can be scheduled via Slack, MS Teams, FB Messenger, and more. You can even chat with a virtual assistant to know your schedule.

MAIL MERGE GMass (www.gmass.co),lets you send several personalised emails with just one template. When you compose a new email, click the ‘GMass’ button next to ‘Send’. Choose a template to view the syntax it uses for the recipient’s first and last name. Now use the same format when composing the email. GMass will replace it with the recipient’s first or last name, depending on what you selected in the configurations box.

This add-on also includes a scheduling feature that sends reminders after a specified interval. A free GMass account lets you send up to 50 messages per day.

SEND INVOICES If you are the proprietor of a small business or a freelancer then a free invoice generator like Bookipi (www.bookipi.com) will be a useful addition to your workflow. To use this add-on, you first need to register with Bookipi and design your invoice to include a logo, payment instructions, etc before sending them from Gmail.

When you reply to a client’s email or compose a message, you will be able generate an invoice without leaving the tab.

These invoices can be saved into categories like estimates, incidentals, arrears, etc; can include tax, discount, shipping, and a placeholder for signatures as well. Alternatively, you can also consider the Zoho Invoice add-on to email bills to customers.

ORGANISE EMAIL You can turn your inbox into Kanban-style boards to help you get more work done with Sortd (www.sortd.com), a task-oriented service that lets you assign emails to ‘buckets’ like To-Do, Planning, In Progress, Done, etc. It is ideal for project managers and event planners who need to separate important emails from all the noise.

The add-on lets you assign the email to specific boards while its Chrome extension — which also needs to be installed — toggles between the regular Gmail view and Kanban boards. When you switch to the latter, you will only see the emails you assigned to the various boards. You will see the inbox as a panel, but you can hide this as well so that you can focus on the work at hand and not get distracted by new email notifications.

TRACK EMAILS If your work has you sending several emails through the day to your customers, clients and vendors then it is necessary to know if your messages are actually being read or ignored. With the Mailtrack (mailtrack.io) add-on and its browser extension, you will receive alerts — as popups and as emails, depending on what you choose — whenever your emails are read.

You can also set your account to receive daily reports with analytics related to your read/unread emails, alerts for old emails and messages that have been opened several times over a short period of time.

Mailtrack will also notify you when an email you have received uses tracking features. Moreover, you can install this add-on on an Android handset and send tracked emails while being on the move.

Heavy rains lash Kerala, red alert issued for 3 dists

Heavy rains lash Kerala, red alert issued for 3 dists

15.11.2021

Pathanamthitta/Idukki:

With heavy rains lashing various parts of the state since Saturday night, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Sunday declared a red alert in central Kerala districts of Ernakulam, Idukki and Thrissur for the day.

Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, in a Facebook post, asked everyone to be extra vigilant in view of the risk of landslides and other hazards due to the unseasonal rainfall. Authorities and the public need to be extra vigilant in the event of heavy rains in Kerala as part of the westerly winds, he said. He said that people living in landslide and flood-prone areas will have to relocate to safer places or nearby relief camps as there is a possibility of widespread rains in the coming hours.

The cleanliness of the camps, availability of food and a screening system for diseases should be ensured, he said.

Later, in a press release, the Chief Minister said that in a meeting of district collectors and officials it has been decided to limit the number of pilgrims to Lord Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala in the next three to four days due to the heavy rains. The ritualistic bathing in the river Pampa will not be allowed as its levels were dangerously high, spot booking will be stopped for the time and changing dates of those who booked through virtual queue system will also be considered to control the flow of pilgrims, the release said. PTI

Sim cards, digital wallets, bank accounts on sale for fraudsters’ use

Sim cards, digital wallets, bank accounts on sale for fraudsters’ use

Racket Thriving In Remote Areas Of North Gujarat

Ashish.Chauhan@timesgroup.com

Ahmedabad:15.11.2021

If you are not using your sim card or your bank account has been dormant, be warned as cyber crooks may have started using your phone number of bank account for illegal activities such as cheating or digital fraud.

City crime branch recently nabbed a 22-year-old man named Vijaysinh Jhala of Aniyol village of Talod taluka of Sabarkantha for allegedly selling simcards illegally.

During his questioning, it was revealed that bank accounts, digital wallets, OTT app access credentials were also being sold illegally.

These activities are flourishing in rural areas of north Gujarat— mainly Sabarkantha, Aravalli and Banaskantha districts — where gangs steal data from telecom companies or banks using the dark web and use it for illegal activities, said a police officer.

Jhala was nabbed on October 9 after police learned that he was about to deliver a couple of sim cards to certain person. When the cops caught him and investigated further, they found that the gang for which Jhala worked as a delivery man had around 20,000 simcards.

“Such gangs work in layers so they can evade the cops. The kingpin will operate various Telegrams groups using which he offers to sell sim cards, bank accounts or digital wallets. If a person shows interest, another set of people will check his credentials and if the person passes their background checks, they will send someone to deliver the simcards,” said a police officer.

In the case of digital wallets and bank account, the end user or the customer who buys them illegally will be given the user ID or passwords by gang members in such a way that the end user will not even know their name or identity.

Not just the end user or customer, the people working in the second or third layer will also not know who the kingpin is, said a police officer.

Class III girl donates money from her savings to buy food for flood-hit people

Class III girl donates money from her savings to buy food for flood-hit people

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:15.11.2021

Seven-year-old Janani had a dream of buying a cycle with the money she had saved. Since her home in Pattalam was flooded during the rain, she decided to use her savings to buy milk packets and bread for people in her locality. She had managed to save ₹5000, and has now emptied the sum for the people in the slum.

Janani, a Class III student, of a Corporation School, lives with her grandmother at Pattalam, while her parents, R R Nagarajan and Shivarajani, live in Andhra Pradesh.

For the past four years, she used to save whatever little pocket money she got in order to buy a bicycle. Unlike other children of her age, she never bought anything for herself, and used to collect ₹5 every day. When the downpour battered the city, on seeing the tragedy of people around her and those who were suffering due to inundation, the little girl was moved and decided to buy provisions from her savings of ₹5000 for the flood-affected people.

She distributed biscuits, milk packets and bread to people at Pulianthope, Thattankulam, Sivarajpuram, Pattalam and other affected areas in North Chennai, travelling on a boat.

“I wanted to buy a bicycle for my birthday in January. I had been saving money since four years. But I decided to donate my savings to people whom I saw suffering in front of my eyes. I am happy to help these people. I can buy a cycle later,” Janani said.

“I want to help the poor and the needy, especially children. I could see them smiling after receiving the bread packets,” she said.

Janani's father introduced the concept of savings to her. She is fond of Mother Teresa. She had always helped other children in her school, her father said, The heartwarming gesture of the little girl was appreciated by many of her nieghbours.

HER BIT: Janani donates milk

When the downpour battered the city, on seeing the tragedy of people around her and those who were suffering due to inundation, the little girl was moved

The perfect bedtime for heart health

The perfect bedtime for heart health

15.11.2021

Going to sleep between 10:00 and 11:00 pm is associated with a lower risk of developing heart disease compared to earlier or later bedtimes, according to a study led by an international team of researchers.

The study was published in European Heart Journal - Digital Health, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology.

“The body has a 24-hour internal clock, called circadian rhythm, that helps regulate physical and mental functioning, while we cannot conclude causation from our study, the results suggest that early or late bedtimes may be more likely to disrupt the body clock, with adverse consequences for cardiovascular health,” said study author Dr David Plans of the University of Exeter, UK.

While numerous analyses have investigated the link between sleep duration and cardiovascular disease, the relationship between sleep timing and heart disease is underexplored. This study examined the association between objectively measured, rather than self-reported, sleep onset in a large sample of adults.

The study included 88,026 individuals in the UK Biobank recruited between 2006 and 2010. The average age was 61 years (range 43 to 79 years) and 58% were women. Data on sleep onset and waking up time were collected over seven days using a wrist-worn accelerometer. Participants completed demographic, lifestyle, health, and physical assessments and questionnaires.

They were then followed up for a new diagnosis of cardiovascular disease, which was defined as a heart attack, heart failure, chronic ischaemic heart disease, stroke, and transient ischaemic attack.

During an average follow-up of 5.7 years, 3,172 participants (3.6%) developed cardiovascular disease. Incidence was highest in those with sleep times at midnight or later and lowest in those with sleep onset from 10:00 to 10:59 pm.

The researchers analysed the association between sleep onset and cardiovascular events after adjusting for age, sex, sleep duration, sleep irregularity (defined as varied times of going to sleep and waking up), self-reported chronotype (early bird or night owl), smoking status, body mass index, diabetes, blood pressure, blood cholesterol, and socioeconomic status.

Compared to sleep onset from 10:00 to 10:59 pm, there was a 25% higher risk of cardiovascular disease with sleep onset at midnight or later, a 12% greater risk for 11:00 to 11:59 pm, and a 24% raised risk for falling asleep before 10:00 pm.

In a further analysis by sex, the association with increased cardiovascular risk was stronger in women, with only sleep onset before 10:00 pm remaining significant for men.

Dr Plans said, “Our study indicates that the optimum time to go to sleep is at a specific point in the body’s 24-hour cycle and deviations may be detrimental to health. The riskiest time was after midnight, potentially because it may reduce the likelihood of seeing morning light, which resets the body clock.”

“If our findings are confirmed in other studies, sleep timing and basic sleep hygiene could be a low-cost public health target for lowering the risk of heart disease,” he concluded. ANI

TAKE IT TO HEART: Both early and late bedtimes can disrupt body clock