Megha Murali

The migration bill presented in the Congress on February 18 by the Joe Biden organization brings uplifting news for Indians geeks working in the US. The migration change charge intends to permit more perpetual foreigner status or green cards for proficient Indians, who have the longest hang tight for movement and cut their stand by times.  The bill will dispense with green card overabundances, and increment per country green card standard, all of which could profit the Indian diaspora in the US.  The bill, named as the US Citizenship Act 2021, was presented in the Senate and House of Representatives by Senator Bob Menendez and Representative Linda Sanchez separately.  What does it bring for Indians?  For as far back as a couple of years, it has been troublesome and unsure for Indians to live in the US yet the bill tends to the issues as Indians have been one of the work-based visa classes like H-1B and L-1.  Numerous Indians have been sitting tight for the US un...

  The movie, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported. Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied territories appears to be a defensiv...

Spike Jonze's relationship comedy is set in a techno-perfect Los Angeles of the near future, a utopia. Everything tends to be lit with a dreamy, woozy kind of afternoon sunshine and lens flare, in a place where a contented, diverse population mills happily around. Her is a really distinctive piece of work, which has drawn countless adoring notices and endless gags about Siri, the voice of Apple's iPhone. I wished I liked it more. It is engagingly self-aware and excruciatingly self-conscious, wearing its hipness on its sleeve; it's ingenious and yet remarkably contrived. The film seems very new, but the sentimental ending is as old as the hills. There are some great moments. Joaquin Phoenix presents an assemblage of quirky character traits as the egregiously named Theodore Twombly, a lonely guy with an unattractive moustache and glasses who wears the high-waisted slacks that have apparently become fashionable for men in this era. He has an entirely unironic job in a company ...

  There are 54 countries and one “non-self governing territory”, the Western Sahara, in Africa. All of Africa was colonized by foreign powers during the “scramble for Africa”, except Ethiopia and Liberia. Before colonial rule Africa comprised up to 10,000 different states and autonomous groups with distinct languages and customs. Africa is the world’s poorest and most underdeveloped continent with a continental GDP that accounts for just 2.4% of global GDP.  Nigeria is the fourth largest oil exporter in the world, and Africa’s biggest oil producer with about 2.2 million barrels produced every day. Top 10 oil producers in order of total exports: Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Congo, Gabon, South Africa. The continent has the largest reserves of precious metals with over 40% of the gold reserves, over 60% of the cobalt, and 90% of the platinum reserves. Africa was formerly called the Dark Continent. Others thought it was because of ...

  Human-induced climate change is now considered one of the most prominent challenges of our time, with a warming planet being a present-day reality, rather than a potential future threat. The problem has been thrust into public consciousness ever since scientific consensus emerged that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and that "most of the observed increase in global average temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." Anyone who has experienced the increasing intensity of sizzling summer temperatures in India over the past two decades would find it hard to have any doubts as to whether our planet is warming.   It has become routine to report about the scorching heat gripping many parts of India during summer months, with the mercury shooting up to as high as 48 degrees Celsius (118.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and causing thousands of deaths of vulnerable people . In the...

 A recent Research Center report documented the highest level of government restrictions on the free practice of religion worldwide in more than a decade. The Middle East and North Africa, continues to have the highest prevalence of government restrictions, while Asia showed a sharp increase in the use of force against religious groups, including property damage, detention, displacement, other forms of abuse, and killings. While Christians were targeted in 145 countries worldwide in 2018, according to the study, Muslims came in close behind, facing harassment in 139 countries. But while Christians face serious repression in much of the world, government actions against Muslims were greater in scope and scale, impacting hundreds of millions of people.  It is clear that no other community faces as high a level of government repression as Muslims—not just in certain countries where they are a minority, such as China and India, but also in places where Islam is the state religio...