France's anti-terrorism prosecutor says about 40 convicted terrorists are due to be released from French prisons this year and next, calling the entry back into society of the unrepentant ones a 'major risk.'Francois Molins said on BFM television today that France still faces a significant threat from homegrown supporters of the struggling Islamic State group. Molins estimated that 600 to 700 French extremists are unaccounted for in the areas of Iraq and Syria claimed by IS, though many have probably been killed.
He says authorities think some organisers of the November 2015 attacks in Paris are among the dead in the Mideast. Molins says the investigation of the simultaneous attacks at the Bataclan concert hall, Paris cafes and the national stadium that killed 130 people should conclude next year.
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Even in a "runaway Artificial Intelligence (AI)" scenario, robots will not render people completely jobless, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told The Sunday Telegraph in an interview.
People will always want a job as it gives them "dignity", Nadella said, adding that the focus should instead be on applying AI technology ethically.
"What I think needs to be done in 2018 is more dialogue around the ethics, the principles that we can use for the engineers and companies that are building AI so that the choices we make don't cause us to create systems with bias … that's the tangible thing we should be working on," he was quoted as saying.
According to a report in MIT Technology Review on May 25, Microsoft is building a tool to automate the identification of bias in a range of different AI algorithms.
The Microsoft tool has the potential to help businesses make use of AI without inadvertently discriminating against certain groups of people.
Although Microsoft's new tool may not eliminate the problem of bias that may creep into Machine-Learning models altogether, it will help AI researchers catch more instances of unfairness, Rich Caruna, a senior researcher at Microsoft who is working on the bias-detection dashboard, was quoted as saying by MIT Technology Review.
"Of course, we can't expect perfection -- there's always going to be some bias undetected or that can't be eliminated -- the goal is to do as well as we can," he said.
In the interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Nadella also said that as Microsoft's business model was based on customers paying for services, he believed the company was on "the right side of history".
"Our business model is based on our customers being successful, and if they are successful they will pay us. So we are not one of these transaction-driven or ad-driven or marketplace-driven economies," the Microsoft chief was quoted as saying.
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Coca-Cola launched its first alcoholic drink, a lemon flavoured alcopop, in Japan on Monday in an attempt to tap new markets and consumers. In a global first for the US drinks giant, three new "Lemon-Do" drinks -- containing three, five and seven per cent alcohol -- went on sale. The drinks are modelled on the country's popular "Chu-Hi" drinks, usually a mix of local spirit and a range of fruit flavours.
Described by Coca-Cola as "unique" in the company's 125-year history, the product aims at a growing market of young drinkers -- especially women, the BBC reported.
Chu-Hi -- an abbreviation for shochu highball -- has been marketed as an alternative to beer, proving especially popular with female drinkers.
Coca-Cola said there were no plans to bring the new drinks range to markets outside Japan.
Alcopop drinks boomed in Europe and the UK in the 1990s with the likes of Smirnoff Ice and Bacardi Breezer becoming hugely popular. However, they were controversial, with concerns that they encouraged young people to drink more alcohol because of a soft drink-like taste.
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Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Monday said that he will drop the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High-Speed Rail (KL-SG HSR) project, as part of his efforts to restore the financial health of the country.
Mahathir made the remarks at a press conference, saying it was "a final decision" to cancel the project, but Malaysia still had to talk to Singapore over a penalty concerning the withdrawal, Xinhua news agency reported.
Mahathir said the penalty was around 500 million ringgit ($126 million). In an interview with the Financial Times earlier, he called KL-SG HSR as one of the "unnecessary projects".
To control public spending, he also introduced a 10 per cent pay cut for his Cabinet ministers, abolished some organisations and vowed to terminate the contracts of some 17,000 public employees.
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China has invited Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to take part in the forthcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), in an apparent rebuff to US President Donald Trump's move to withdraw from Iran nuclear deal with threats to impose sanctions against Tehran.
Rouhani will pay a working visit to China during which he is also expected to attend the SCO summit being held in the Chinese city of Qingdao, Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi told media.
The SCO summit is due to be held on June 9-10 in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due to take part. Leaders of SCO member states and observer states, as well as chiefs of various international organizations, will attend the summit, Wang said.
Rouhani's presence at the summit, as well as his bilateral visit, coincides with Trump withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal and issuing threats of unilateral US sanctions. China, a large importer of the Iranian oil, has made it clear that it will not implement any unilateral sanctions other than UN sanctions.
Elaborating on China's stand, Deputy Foreign Minister Zhang Hanhui said that the Iranian nuclear deal would continue to be implemented.
China was in touch with European Union as well as with Russia.
"We hope China and Iran avoid major disruption to the cooperation projects between the two sides," Zhang said.
On the sidelines of the SCO summit, Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Russian President Vladimir Putin will pay a state visit to China at the invitation of Xi, he said.
The SCO in which China plays an influential role is comprised of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan.
India and Pakistan were admitted to the organisation last year. Iran along with Afghanistan, Belarus and Mongolia is an observer in the SCO.
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French President Emmanuel Macron praised his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella on Monday, saying he was fulfilling his role as the guarantor of the country's institutions with "courage and responsibility."
"I reiterate my friendship and support for President Mattarella who has an essential task to undertake, (ensuring) the institutional and democratic stability of his country, which he is doing with a lot of courage and responsibility," Macron said.
The Italian leader rejected a eurosceptic nominee for the economy minister on Sunday which led to the collapse of a government put forward by a populist alliance comprising the far-right League and anti-establishment Five Star Movement.
Despite facing calls for impeachment, Mattarella named a caretaker prime minister on Monday, Carlo Cottarelli, putting the country on course for new elections.
Macron, a pro-Europe centrist, is watching Italy's unfolding political crisis closely, aware that his plans for deepening the European Union depend largely on a stable and like-minded government emerging in Rome.
"Italy is an important partner for France at every level: a historic partner, a present partner and a future partner, that we respect and that we need for our European projects, as well as our bilateral relationship which is fundamental," Macron added.
He was speaking at a press conference with Angolan President Joao Lourenco who was making his first official visit to France.
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Ivanka Trump is facing an online backlash for tweeting a "tone deaf" photo of herself cuddling her son as outrage grows over a federal government policy to separate the children of undocumented migrants from their parents.
The eldest daughter of President Donald Trump, who serves as an advisor to her father, posted the picture of her with her infant son on Sunday, with the caption: "My <3! #SundayMorning." Critics were quick to point to a "zero tolerance" policy announced earlier this month by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that authorizes border security agents to take away the children of people who enter the United States unlawfully.
The government places such children in foster homes, but Steven Wagner, a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services told a Congressional committee last month the government was "unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475" minors after attempting to contact their sponsors in the last three months of 2017.
"Isn't it the just the best to snuggle your little one -- knowing exactly where they are, safe in your arms? It's the best. The BEST. Right, Ivanka? Right?" tweeted comedian Patton Oswalt.
"If there were a Tone-Deaf Olympics, you would be its Michael Phelps," added John Pavlovitz, a writer. Many others tweeted using the #WhereAreTheChildren hashtag.
Donald Trump, for his part, blamed opposition Democrats for the "horrible law" in a tweet on Saturday -- though there is no law mandating the policy and it was not immediately clear what he may have meant.
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*Screengrab from the video that has surfaced online*
In a video that has gone viral, a Malian migrant scaled a front of a building in Paris to save a child hanging from a fourth-floor balcony. The incident took place on Saturday evening.
A video of the 22-year-old Mamoudou Gassama's spectacular rescue went viral on social media on Sunday. In less than a minute, he pulls himself from balcony to balcony and grabs the four-year-old as a neighbour tries to hold the child from an adjoining flat.
Mamoudou Gassama said he saw the child after onlookers were shouting, and leapt into action immediately. "I did it because it was a child. I climbed … thank God I saved him." Gassama reached the boy within minutes, prompting a loud cheer from the crowd below, reported ABC online.
Gassama was hailed a hero after his rescue.
President Emmanuel Macron has invited Gassama to the Elysee Palace on Monday to thank him personally.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo also praised Gassama's heroism and said she had called him to thank him. She referred to him as the "Spiderman of the 18th", referring to the Paris district where the rescue took place.
Watch video here...
Meet #MamoudouGassama the ð²ð± Malian immigrant who entered France illegally in September but now a hero in France after he saved a child from falling in Paris . He is called #spiderman In France . ðªð¾ðªð¾ðÂÂÂð¾ðÂÂÂð¾ pic.twitter.com/5va1EFUBlU
— I.AM. Kariss (@kariss_m) May 27, 2018
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*Kathmandu*: Over 6 million Nepalis are still living under the poverty line, which is 21.6 per cent of the Himalayan nation's total population, a new report has revealed. Unveiling the Economic Survey 2017-18 at parliament on Sunday, Nepal's Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada said despite reduction in poverty over the years, there has not been achievement in the area as expected, reports Xinhua news agency.
Nepal has taken a number of measures, including targeted programmes to alleviate poverty and create employment opportunities.
Nepal has been running various income generating activities and small community infrastructure targeting the poor households through Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF), an institution formed to run targeted programmes.
According to the Economic Survey, as many as 984,421 poor households have been benefited from the programmes launched by PAF in 60 out of 77 districts of the country.
Likewise, 44,810 youths were self-employed in the first eight months of the current fiscal year that began in mid-July 2017 under the Youth and Small Entrepreneur Self Employment Fund.
However, due to limited employment opportunities at home, around 4.3 million Nepalis have gone for foreign employment through formal or informal channels, stated the Economic Survey.
According to the Economic Survey, Nepal's economy is expected to grow by 5.9 per cent in the current fiscal year ending in mid-July. Nepal's average economic growth over the last one decade stood at 4.3 per cent.
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The grieving father of Savita Halappanavar, the 31-year-old Indian dentist who died of sepsis in 2012 after being denied an abortion during a miscarriage, has welcomed the result.
Savita's death was a catalyst for the movement to repeal the Eighth. Hundreds chanted her name soon after the outcome of the referendum was announced. Andanappa Yalagi said, "We've got justice for Savita, and what happened to her will not happen to any other family now. I have no words to express my gratitude to the people of Ireland..."
An inquiry into Savita's treatment found an "over-emphasis on the need not to intervene until the foetal heart had stopped". Savita's husband Praveen had said they had repeatedly asked for the pregnancy to be terminated, but they had been told "This is a Catholic country".
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Ireland voted overwhelmingly on Friday to overturn the country's abortion ban, after counting on Saturday revealed a landslide victory for the yes vote — 66.4 per cent — to repeal the stringent Eighth Amendment in a landmark referendum. Until now, abortion was only allowed when a woman's life was at risk, but not in cases of rape, incest or fatal foetal abnormality, the BBC reported.
Ireland's Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the referendum result marked "the day Ireland stepped out from under the last of our shadows and into the light". It was "the day we came of age as a country" and "the day we took our place among the nations of the world".*Leo Varadkar*
Referencing poet Maya Angelou's words that history "cannot be unlived" but "if faced with courage, need not be lived again", Varadkar said: "The wrenching pain of decades of mistreatment of Irish women cannot be unlived. However, today we have ensured that it does not have to be lived again."
A large crowd gathered in the courtyard of Dublin Castle, where the official result was announced, to celebrate. The only constituency to vote against repealing was Donegal. While the two main parties of Ireland, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, did not take official positions on the referendum, politicians were permitted to campaign on a personal basis and Varadkar had been campaigning in favour of a yes vote.
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Google has rewarded a Uruguayan teenager a "bug bounty" of more than $36,000 for disclosing a severe security flaw. Ezequiel Pereira's sporadic poking around has finally paid off in a big way: Google just awarded him $36,337 for finding a vulnerability that would have allowed him to make changes to internal company systems, CNBC reported.
"I found something almost immediately that was worth $500 and it felt so amazing. So I decided to keep trying," Pereira was quoted as saying. "It feels really good; I'm glad that I found something that was so important."
Although Pereira found the bug earlier this year, he only just got the nod to write about how he discovered it, after Google confirmed that it had fixed the issue, the report said. It marks Pereira's fifth accepted bug, but it's by far his most lucrative. Pereira was a month shy of 17 when he first got paid for exposing a Google security flaw through its bug bounty programme.
Pereira got his first computer when he was 10, took an initial programming class when he was 11 and then spent years teaching himself different coding languages and techniques. In 2016, Google flew him to its California headquarters after he won a coding contest.
*USD 36k*
Reward the teenager got from Google
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At least 23 people were killed and over 1.66 lakh affected due to heavy monsoon rains in Sri Lanka over the last 10 days, official figures indicated on Sunday. Over 75,013 of the affected have been evacuated from flooded areas, whereas 13 have been reported missing, the Disaster Management Centre said. The displaced have been put up in 339 camps and shelters.
Rain and strong winds have lashed around 20 districts, especially in the southern half of the country, for more than a week now, Efe news reported. At least 1,359 members of the armed forces have been deployed in rescue operations, and another 6,264 are on standby, the centre said.
The government has allocated Rs 33.8 million to provide relief to those affected and displaced by the floods and landslides. The National Disaster Relief Services Centre has also allocated Rs 38.66 million. The Department of Meteorology forecasts more rain in the south-western part of the island. The DMC said red alerts issued to the districts will still be in effect. Last June, monsoon rain and cyclone Mora had caused 212 deaths. As many as 79 were reported missing.
*339*
Number of shelters set up
*20*
Number of districts affected
*Rs 33.8mn*
Amount allocated by the government for relief to the affected
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Ethiopia's state-affiliated broadcaster reports that a landslide triggered by heavy rains has killed 23 people in the country's Oromia region. Fana Broadcasting Corporation reported that the landslide happened Saturday evening after hours of heavy rains in the area.
The report said 16 of the fatalities were women. It said six others were injured and taken to health centers after sustaining heavy bodily injuries.
Ethiopia is receiving heavy seasonal rains which sometimes cause severe landslides in some parts of the country. Close to 50 people died in a similar landslide in May 2016 after heavy rains caused flooding and landslides.
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Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might be willing to swap a life in politics to lead the world's largest social-networking company, a media report said.
On being asked by Attorney General Maura Healey, a democrat from Massachusetts, which company she would want to be the CEO of, Clinton didn't pause before quickly answering "Facebook", CNET reported on Friday.
"It's the biggest news platform in the world. Most people in our country get their news -- true or not from Facebook," Clinton was quoted as saying.
The former US presidential candidate was at Harvard on Friday receiving the Radcliffe Medal, which honours people who have "had a transformative impact on society".
Facebook is working to win back its users' trust following a series of recent controversies, including the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which data from as many as 87 million Facebook users was improperly shared with the political consultancy.
In a bid to prevent foreign interference into elections, Facebook has also begun labelling all political and issue ads in the US -- including a "Paid for by" disclosure from the advertiser at the top of the advertisement.
Advertisers wanting to run ads with political content in the US will also need to verify their identity and location.
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A top lawyer for Donald Trump on Sunday resumed the president's all-out attack on the investigation into possible collusion with Russia as being "illegitimate," while acknowledging a concerted effort to turn public opinion against the probe.
The comments from former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani came as Trump lashed out again at what he called "the phony Russia Collusion Witch Hunt." For months, Trump has attacked the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller as politically motivated and without foundation.
His latest line of attack, which Giuliani emphasized, was the assertion that a confidential FBI informant, who met with some Trump campaign advisers in 2016 while the bureau was investigating their possible Russia contacts, was a "spy" intent on subverting the Trump campaign.
Those meetings took place during the Obama administration. Asked on "Fox News Sunday" what was wrong with the FBI "trying to figure out what Russia was up to," Giuliani replied: "Nothing wrong with the government doing that. Everything wrong with the government spying on a candidate of the opposition party.""That's a Watergate, spygate."
"I'm not saying Mueller is illegitimate," he said on CNN's "State of the Union.""I'm saying the basis on which he was appointed was illegitimate." Democrats have pushed back hard at the attacks on the Mueller inquiry, which began several months after the informant's involvement. They said it had already produced real results.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, tweeted: "I hate repeating myself President, but let me remind you again: Special Counsel Mueller's investigation has either indicted or secured guilty pleas from 19 people and three companies - that we know of."
And a Republican senator, Marco Rubio of Florida, told CBS that while spying on a political campaign would be wrong, "if there are people operating in this country trying to influence American politics on behalf of a foreign power, it is the FBI's job to investigate."
But what Democrats describe as a blunt and concerted effort by the president to delegitimize the Mueller inquiry may be having an effect, to judge by recent polls.
A Monmouth University poll released early this month said the number of Americans who favor Mueller's probe continuing had dropped from 60 percent in March to 54 percent.
Other polls show many Americans are unaware of the indictments and guilty pleas secured by Mueller's team.
Giuliani effectively admitted that the frequent attacks on the probe were designed to influence public opinion and take the air out of any push for impeachment.
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At least four Russian servicemen, including two military advisers, were killed in Syria after they were shelled by militants, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Sunday.
Several groups of militants attacked the Syrian army's artillery battery in the province of Deir al-Zour on Saturday night, killing two Russian military advisers on the spot and wounding another five soldiers.
The injured were immediately taken to a Russian military hospital, but two of them died there, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Russian Defence Ministry.
The Syrian and Russian troops fought the militants for about one hour and killed 43 militants and destroyed six cross-country vehicles armed with large-calibre weapons, according to the ministry.
Russia has been participating in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) and insurgent groups in Syria since September 2015 at the request of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
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A team of officials from the US, headed by former US Ambassador to South Korea Sung Kim, on Sunday crossed into North Korea to talk about the preparations for a summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, media reported.
Sung Kim, an ex-nuclear negotiator, was summoned from his present posting as US Ambassador to the Philippines to talk with North's Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, the Washington Post reported.
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South Korean President Moon Jae-in said today that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un committed in their surprise meeting to sitting down with President Donald Trump and to a "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."
The Korean leaders' second summit in a month saw bear hugs and broad smiles, but their quickly arranged meeting Saturday appears to highlight a sense of urgency on both sides of the world's most heavily armed border.
At the White House, Trump said negotiations over a potential June 12 summit with Kim that he had earlier cancelled were "going along very well."
Trump told reporters that they are still considering Singapore as the venue for their talks. He said there is a "lot of good will," and that denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula would be "a great thing."
The Koreas' talks, which Moon said Kim requested, capped a whirlwind 24 hours of diplomatic back-and-forth. They allowed Moon to push for a US-North Korean summit that he sees as the best way to ease animosity that had some fearing a war last year.
Kim may see the sit-down with Trump as necessary to easing pressure from crushing sanctions and to winning security assurances in a region surrounded by enemies.
Moon told reporters Sunday that Kim "again made clear his commitment to a complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," and that he told the South Korean leader he's willing to cooperate to end confrontation and work toward peace for the sake of the successful North Korea-US summit.
Moon said he told Kim that Trump has a "firm resolve" to end hostile relations with North Korea and initiate economic cooperation if Kim implements "complete denuclearization."
"What Kim is unclear about is that he has concerns about whether his country can surely trust the United States over its promise to end hostile relations (with North Korea) and provide a security guarantee if they do denuclearization," Moon said.
"During the South Korea-US summit, President Trump said the US is willing to clearly put an end to hostile relations (between the US and North Korea) and help (the North) achieve economic prosperity if North Korea conducts denuclearization," he said.
Moon said North Korea and the United States will soon start working-level talks to prepare for the Kim-Trump summit. He said he expects the talks to go smoothly because Pyongyang and Washington both know what they want from each other.
Kim, in a telling line from a dispatch issued by the North's state-run news service earlier Sunday, "expressed his fixed will on the historic (North Korea)-US summit talks." During Saturday's inter-Korean summit, the Korean leaders agreed to "positively cooperate with each other as ever to improve (North Korea)-US relations and establish (a) mechanism for permanent and durable peace."
They agreed to have their top officials meet again June 1. Moon said military generals and Red Cross officials from the Koreas will also meet separately to discuss how to ease military tensions and resume reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.
Saturday's Korean summit came hours after South Korea expressed relief over revived talks for a Trump-Kim meeting.
Despite repeated references to "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" by the North, it remains unclear whether Kim will ever agree to fully abandon his nuclear arsenal.
The North has previously used the term to demand the United States pulls out its 28,500 troops in South Korea and withdraw its so-called "nuclear umbrella" security commitment to South Korea and Japan. The North hasn't openly repeated those same demands after Kim's sudden outreach to Seoul and Washington.
Moon has insisted Kim can be persuaded to abandon his nuclear facilities, materials and bombs in a verifiable and irreversible way in exchange for credible security and economic guarantees. Moon said Sunday that the North's disarmament could still be a difficult process even if Pyongyang, Washington and Seoul don't differ over what "complete denuclearization" of the peninsula means.
Moon, who brokered the summit between Washington and Pyongyang, likely used Saturday's meeting to confirm Kim's willingness to enter nuclear negotiations with Trump and clarify what steps Kim has in mind in the process of denuclearization, said Hong Min, a senior analyst at Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification.
"While Washington and Pyongyang have expressed their hopes for a summit through published statements, Moon has to step up as the mediator because the surest way to set the meeting in stone would be an official confirmation of intent between heads of states," Hong said.
Some US officials have talked about a comprehensive one-shot deal in which North Korea fully eliminates its nukes first and receives rewards later. But Kim, through two summits with Chinese President Xi Jinping in March and May, has called for a phased and synchronized process in which every action he takes is met with a reciprocal reward from the United States.
Before he cancelled the summit, Trump did not rule out an incremental approach that would provide incentives along the way to the North.
Following an unusually provocative 2017 in which his engineers tested a purported thermonuclear warhead and three long-range missiles theoretically capable of striking mainland US cities, Kim has engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent months. In addition to his summits with Moon and Xi, Kim also has had two meetings with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
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Six militants, involved in the killing of a Brigadier of Pakistan's spy agency ISI and several deadly blasts, were shot dead on Sunday during an encounter with the security forces in Punjab, a media report said.
According to the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), the suspects were also involved in the blast near the residence-cum-office of Punjab province Chief Minister Shahbaz Shari last year that claimed 26 lives including eight policemen.
The CTD had tracked the militants near Gujrat in Punjab where a gunbattle broke out between them, Geo News reported. The suspects, eight or nine in number, had opened fire on the CTD team.
The team killed six suspects in retaliatory fire, while three of them managed to escape, an official said. A CTD spokesperson said the suspects were involved in the killing of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Brigadier Zahoor Fazal Qadri and his brother in Sargodha in 2004.
Those killed in the shootout have been identified as Abdul Muqeem, Faisal, Usman, Azeem, Rauf and Sohaib, whose name was included in the red book, according to the report.
The militants wanted to target sensitive installations, the spokesman said and added that suicide jackets, electronic devices and hand grenades were seized from the possession of the terrorists.
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Amid the Donald Trump administration's heightened scrutiny of H1B work visas and uncertainty among IT professionals, Nasscom Chairman Rishad Premji has said it is important to "separate the sentiment from the fact" regarding the visas.
The H1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. The technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
"I think it is important to separate the sentiment from the fact," Premji told PTI in an interview here. He asserted that of the 65,000 H1B visas issued every year, the Indian IT industry uses less than 10,000, adding that 70 percent of visas go to Indians but they do not go to Indian companies. "This is very, very important to appreciate."
He said it is also a fact that by 2020 there will be a shortage of 2.4 million people, according to data from the Department of Labour, in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) talent in the US, and half of these will be in the computer and IT related services.
Premji stressed that it is important to keep in mind that there is a base of seven million people in the technology space in the US.
"We are talking about 10,000 people on a seven million strong base."
"We have got to put things in context and separate the sentiment from the fact," he said.
Premji, the Chief Strategy Officer and Member of the Board at Indian IT services giant Wipro, was in the city to address the NASSCOM C-Summit.
When asked about the H1B visas and the Trump administration's increased scrutiny over the temporary work visas most sought by Indian IT workers, Premji said that "fundamentally from a trade perspective, we have got to address more holistically the mobility of services as we address the mobility of products, which we have historically thought about in terms of trade. The mobility of services is as important a component."
He said that legislatively, nothing has changed regarding the H1B visas. While there are a lot of legislation being proposed, "our sense is that it is difficult to predict them going through. But there is a strong enough conviction that they will not go through in their current avatar. It is difficult to get the both the Senate and the House to pass off on these," he said referring to various legislations proposing changes and amendments to the H1B visa rules and processes.
He, however, added that the ¿administrative interpretation¿ of some of the existing legislation is creating some level of anxiety, including through more demand for Request for Evidence (RFE) or more scrutiny when the visa comes up for renewal, without considering the fact that it was approved in the first place.
"Those kinds of things create a lot of administrative overhead and cost and that we have got to find a way of addressing."
He said that while these issues are "universal" and not for Indian IT companies only, "we have got to try and find a way to help the administration appreciate the value that these technical skills help to make organizations here more competitive."
Premji said there is a huge dearth and shortage of technical talent in the US. "I m quite hopeful that we will continue to work as an industry body to address that."
As an industry body, Nasscom is driving a lot of effort in terms of having strong spokespeople, working with research agencies and media outlets to make sure a "very fact-based and unemotional view" of the challenges and opportunity is presented.
Since taking office, Trump has ordered an overhaul of the H1B visa programme to check visa fraud and abuse, and his administration has taken steps to tighten scrutiny of applications, adding to the uncertainty and anxiety of thousands of IT workers on the visas over their future.
The National Foundation for American Policy in a report said that the 8,468 new H-1B visas for Indian-based companies in the financial year 2017 equalled only 0.006 percent of the 160 million in the US labour force.
The top seven Indian-based companies received only 8,468 approved H-1B petitions for initial employment in FY 2017, a decline of 43 percent for these companies since FY 2015 when it received 14,792 H-1B visas.
The data indicate the problem is not which companies are receiving H-1B visas, but that the 85,000-annual limit is too low for an economy of the size of the United States, it argued.
Based on the H-1B visa data obtained from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the foundation said that the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) received 2,312 H-1B visas in 2017 as against 4,674 in 2015, registering a drop of 51 percent.
Infosys, during the same period, saw a whopping drop of 57 percent from 2,830 in 2015 to 1,218 in 2017. Wipro received 1,210 H-1B visas in 2017 as against 3,079 in 2015. Among the seven Indian-based companies the H-1B approval of Tech Mahindra went up from 1,576 in 2015 to 2233 in 2017.
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*Dublin*: Thousands of people in Ireland voted for a change in the Constitution on Friday, in order to legalise abortion in a Catholic-dominated republic. With a high turnout of 64.13 percent in total; 1,429,98, or 66.4 percent, voted for the amendment and 723,632, or 33.6 percent, against, according to the country's Referendum Commission, CNN reported.
The results, which were announced on Saturday, defied earlier projections which said that it would be a tight race.
Further, only one county voted no -- the rural and religiously conservative Donegal in the northwest region.
"Today is a historic day for Ireland. A quiet revolution has taken place, and today is a great act of democracy," CNN quoted Leo Varadkar, the Prime Minister, or Taoiseach as the office is called in Ireland, as saying.
"A hundred years since women gained the right to vote, today we as a people have spoken. And we say that we trust women and respect women to make their own decisions and their own choices," he added.
Meanwhile, chants of "Yes we did" rose from the crowd as the Referendum Commission's Returning Officer Barry Ryan announced the final results.
The Eighth Amendment, which was added to the Ireland Constitution following a referendum in 1983, had banned abortion in the country unless there was a "real and substantial risk" to the mother's life.
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*Islamabad:* Pakistan will hold general elections on July 25, a presidential spokesman has said even as the deadlock between ruling PML-N and the opposition persisted over picking up an interim prime minister. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in a letter to the president on May 21 had proposed to hold elections for the National Assembly and four provincial assemblies between July 25 and 27.
President Hussain yesterday approved July 25 as the polling date for general and provincial elections, officials in the President Office said.
Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf is expected to be the main challenger to the ruling party in the general elections.The present government will complete the tenure on May 31 and the caretaker government will take over form June 1 and remain in office until a new government is set up through elections.
The country experienced its first democratic transition of power in 2013, when the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) came out on top as the biggest party. Since the term of the assemblies would be expiring next week, a caretaker set-up will be installed at the Centre and the provinces to run day-to-day affairs of the government till the time new assemblies are elected.
Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and opposition leader Khursheed Shah have yet to agree on who will be the caretaker prime minister. The two had held half a dozen meetings but have so far failed to come up with a consensus name. Earlier, the ECP announced that a total of 105.95 million voters will use their right of vote to elect the new government. Among them are 59.2 million male and 46.7 million female voters, showing A gender gap of over 12.5 million.
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A single pair of premium melons yesterday fetched a record 3.2 million yen (Rs 19.8 lakh) at auction in Japan, where the fruit is regarded as a status symbol.
Seasonal fruit offerings in Japan routinely attract massive sums from buyers seeking social prestige, or from shop owners wanting to attract customers to "ooh and aah" over the extravagant edibles.
The winning bid was placed by a local fruit packing firm for the first Yubari melons to go under the hammer this year at the Sapporo Central Wholesale Market in northern Hokkaido, officials said.
Yubari melons are considered a status symbol in Japan — like a fine wine — with many being bought as a gift for friends and colleagues. The best-quality Yubari melons are perfect spheres with a smooth, evenly patterned rind. A T-shaped stalk is left on the fruit, which is usually sold in an ornate box. Even ordinary fruit is comparatively expensive in Japan and it is not unusual for a single apple to cost as much as $3.
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Cyclone Mekunu blew into the Arabian Peninsula yesterday, drenching arid Oman and Yemen, cutting off power lines and leaving at least five dead and 40 missing, officials said.
Portions of Salalah, Oman's third-largest city, lost electricity as the cyclone made landfall. The Arabian Sea churned on Saturday, sending mounds of sea foam into the air.
Five people, including a 12-year-old girl, died in Oman, and 40 others are missing from the Yemeni island of Socotra, which earlier took the storm's brunt, police said. Yemenis, Indians and Sudanese were among those missing on the Arabian Sea isle and officials feared some may be dead. India's Meteorological Department said the storm packed maximum sustained winds of 170-180 kilometers per hour with gusts of up to 200 kph. It called the cyclone "extremely severe."
Across Salalah, branches and leaves littered the streets. Several underpasses became standing lakes. Electrical workers began trying to repair lines in the city while police and soldiers in SUVs patrolled the streets.
Omani forecasters warned Salalah and the surrounding area would get at least 200 millimeters of rain, over twice the city's annual downfall. Authorities remained worried about flash flooding in the area's valleys and potential mudslides down its nearby cloud-shrouded mountains.
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South Korea said President Moon Jae-in met with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un inside the Demilitarised Zone dividing the two nations, a day after US President Donald Trump said his summit with Pyongyang could still go ahead.
The Blue House, South Korea's presidential office, said the two leaders held talks for two hours in the truce village of Panmunjom. "They exchanged views and discussed ways to implement the Panmunjom Declaration and to ensure a successful US North Korea summit," the Blue House said in a statement.
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The US treats Pakistan according to its needs and "ditches" when it does not require Islamabad, former military ruler Pervez Musharraf has said as he accused America of aligning with India against his country.
The former president and chief of All Pakistan Muslim League (APML) in an interview with Voice of America said that Pak-US relations have suffered quite a blow and are currently at "the lowest ebb", the Express Tribune reported.
The 74-year-old retired general, who is facing high treason charges, has been living in Dubai since last year when he was allowed to leave Pakistan for medical treatment.
He said that there is an absolute requirement to sit with the US and resolve whatever tiff the countries are facing. Musharraf said, "US has supported India very openly from the Cold War era. And now again, the US is aligning itself with India against Pakistan, this affects us directly. We would like the UN to examine India's role in Afghanistan. A one-sided approach to the problem is negative."
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US President Donald Trump yesterday said his summit with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un could still happen on June 12 after officials on both sides started talking, a day after he cancelled it, citing Pyongyang's "open hostility".
"We'll see what happens. We are talking to them now," Trump said at the White House before boarding Marine One for a commencement address in Annapolis. "They very much want to do it. We'd like to do it. We will see what happens," he said. Trump appeared to be optimistic even about the cancelled June 12 summit in Singapore. "It could be even on June 12," he said.
North Korea said yesterday it is willing to talk to the US "at any time" after President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled a summit. In a personal letter to Kim, Trump announced on Thursday he would not go ahead with the June 12 summit in Singapore, following what the White House called a "trail of broken promises" by the North. Pyongyang's immediate reaction to the sudden U-turn was conciliatory.
First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan called Trump's decision "unexpected" and "regrettable". But, he left the door open, saying officials were willing "to sit face-to-face at any time."
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Counting begins in Ireland's historic referendum on abortion as exit polls showed an overwhelming vote in favour of liberalising some of the strictest laws in Europe. Friday's vote to repeal a ban in this traditionally Catholic country was predicted to win by a two-thirds majority.
An Irish Times poll of 4,000 said the "Yes" camp was leading by 68 per cent to 32 per cent. Another poll by national broadcaster RTE suggested an even bigger victory, with 69 per cent to 30 per cent backing reforms.
"Democracy in action. It's looking like we will make history tomorrow," Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who backs the reform, said in a tweet. People over 65, however, voted mostly against overhauling the current legislation, which only allows terminations in cases where the mother's life is in danger.
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Someone opened fire at a suburban Indianapolis middle school yesterday, injuring an adult and a child before the suspect was taken into custody, authorities said.
The victims in the attack at Noblesville West Middle School were taken to hospitals in Indianapolis and their families were notified, Bryant Orem, a spokesman for the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office said. The suspect is believed to have acted alone and was taken into custody, he said.
Indiana University spokeswoman Danielle Sirilla said an adult victim was taken to IU Health Methodist Hospital and child was taken to Riley Hospital for Children. She had no information on the victims' ages or seriousness of their injuries. The attack comes a week after an attack at a high school in Santa Fe that killed eight students and two teachers.
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Film producer Harvey Weinstein turned himself into police in New York City yesterday to face rape and sexual misconduct charges, before being released on $1 million cash bail and fitted with a GPS tracking device.
He was arrested, processed and charged with rape, criminal sex act, sex abuse and sexual misconduct for alleged incidents involving two separate women, police said. More than 70 women have accused the co-founder of the Miramax film studio and Weinstein Co of sexual misconduct, including rape, with some allegations dating back decades.
The accusations, first reported by the New York Times and the New Yorker last year, gave rise to the #MeToo movement in which hundreds of women have publicly accused powerful men in business, government and entertainment of misconduct. Weinstein has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone. He was released on a $1mn bail bond. His lawyer Ben Brafman said the disgraced mogul would enter a not guilty plea.
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After directing NASA to return humans to the Moon, US President Donald Trump has now signed a new policy directive aimed at reforming America's commercial space regulatory framework.
Under the Space Policy Directive-2, signed on Thursday, Secretary of Transportation will have to work on transforming the licensing of commercial space flight launch and re-entry.
The directive prescribes a single license for all types of commercial space flight launch and re-entry operations and replacing prescriptive requirements in the process with performance-based criteria.
On December 11, 2017, Trump signed Space Policy Directive-1, instructing NASA to return American astronauts to the Moon, followed by human missions to Mars.
In a statement on Friday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the Space Policy Directive-2 is another step towards bolstering America's dedication to uncovering new knowledge and developing breakthrough technologies.
"A light but focused regulatory touch will help our industry partners provide the best and safest services for our nation and expedite their work. There are many innovative companies across this nation working hard to build a bright future in space, and our policies should help ensure their success on all fronts," Bridenstine said.
NASA said that as it shifts human exploration back to the Moon, US commercial partnerships will be a key to expediting missions and building a sustainable presence on the lunar surface.
The agency is orchestrating a robotic lunar campaign with a focus on growing commercial base of partnerships and activity that can support US science, technology, and exploration objectives.
NASA on Thursday said it is planning a series of robotic commercial delivery missions as early as 2019 ahead of a human return to the Moon.
These missions will deliver NASA instruments and technology to the surface of the Moon to conduct scientific experiments and prepare for human exploration.
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An emergency meeting of the National Security Committee (NSC) should be held over a book written by two top ex-spies of India and Pakistan, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Friday.
Sharif said that the content of the book should be discussed at the NSC meeting, implying that it should be treated just the way the NSC met after his statement on the 2008 Mumbai terror attack.
According to Sharif, former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Asad Durrani, through the book, had made public some classified information. Durrani authored the book jointly with A.S. Dulat, a former head of the Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).
In similar vein, Senator Raza Rabbani told Parliament on Friday that if a politician in Pakistan had teamed up with an Indian counterpart to write a book like this, he or she would have been branded a traitor.
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US President Donald Trump said on Friday that a nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un could still take place as scheduled on June 12, just one day after he canceled it blaming Pyongyang's "open hostility".
"We'll see what happens. It could even be the 12th," Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before leaving for the US Naval Academy to deliver a commencement address.
"They very much want to do it. We'd like to do it. We're going to see what happens," he was quoted as saying by the US media.
Earlier, North Korea issued a conciliatory statement in response to Trump's decision to scrap his meeting with Kim.
"We reiterate to the US that there is a willingness to sit down at any time, in any way, to solve the problem," said a top official at the North Korean Foreign Ministry.
Trump, in a morning tweet, hailed Pyongyang's statement, saying: "Very good news to receive the warm and productive statement from North Korea."
"We will soon see where it will lead, hopefully to long and enduring prosperity and peace. Only time (and talent) will tell!"
Asked earlier whether the North Koreans were playing games, the US President acknowledged they were -- and suggested he was too, CNN reported.
"Everybody plays games. You know that," he said when asked about the ongoing talks. "You know that better than anybody."
Minutes before his Friday tweet, Trump claimed Democrats were "rooting" against his administration in its negotiations with North Korea.
"Democrats are so obviously rooting against us in our negotiations with North Korea... Dems have lost touch!"
He wrote a letter on Thursday to Kim informing him that their June 12 meeting in Singapore was off due to Pyongyang's "open hostility" towards Washington.
After the news the summit was called off, Democrats criticized Trump for the decision. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters that the cancelled summit was "a good thing for Kim Jong-un".
Republicans, however, hailed the President's action as a tough negotiating move.
Trump's comments fuelled the uncertainty and confusion surrounding his attempts to broker a nuclear agreement with North Korea.
A senior White House official said that it would be extremely difficult to hold the summit on the original date, especially because North Korea cut off contact with the US regarding planning and logistics.
"June 12 is in 10 minutes," the of Reported by Mid-Day 1 day ago.