Tollywood Celebrities !!

American Telugu Association [ATA] rolled out yet another grand ‘Detroit ATA Day’ celebrations in Farmington Hills, Michigan drawing over 1000 guests from the Telugu community thus robustly showcasing the incremental build up towards the Mega ATA Convention in Chicago on July 1-3, 2016.

The event was organized to demonstrate the gathering momentum towards the silver jubilee convention and to excite Telugu families in Michigan State to draw their sizeable representation at the convention.

The celebrations began early in the afternoon with over 200 participants in the singing and dancing competitions and the beauty pageant.

Smt. DK Aruna, MLA from Gadwal & former Minister was the Chief Guest joined by Tollywood Actress Pranita Subhash as Celebrity Guest.

The colorful evening encompassed some exciting music, dances and singing with singers Sandeep Kurapati and Hanishka Polimera entertaining the guests with their energetic songs; while Rene Joy’s dance performance mesmerized the guests.

The Detroit ATA Day celebrations were held under the leadership of ATA Trustees Hari Prasada Reddy Lingala & Murali Bommanaveni, Regional coordinator Yugandhar Bhumireddy, ATA Consular Services Chair Kashi Kotha, and Vendor Committee co-chair Sunil Manduti.

ATA Trustees Bhuvnesh Boojala from DC & Anil Boddireddy from Atlanta, Conference team led by Palvai Chandra Sekhar Reddy (Convener), K K Reddy (Director), Krishna Mushyam (Co-convener), Ramesh Garapaty (Cultural coordinator), Mahidhar Musukula (Coordinator), Radha Krishna Reddy (Local Coordinator), Ramaraju Avadhutha (SyeATA chair), Malla Reddy Bokka (Registration Chair), Chandini Duvvuri (SyeATA co-chair), Venkat Thudi (Chicago RC), Vikram Reddy (Political co-chair), Suresh P, Naveen Manyam (reg co-chair), Sainath, Vijay Reddy Yanala (Youth Chair) – the entire ATA team took to the stage and provided the major strides being made towards the convention and the robust response coming from all across America and India.

ATA team presented mementos and honored the donors, Sri Madhav Reddy garu, Dr. Harshavardhan R Krishna, Dr. Harnath Pulicherla, Kashi Kotha, Sunny Reddy, Sreedhar Bandaru, and RSRIT (Ravi Vellam, Venkat Gone, and Sreedhar Kodati) for their generous contributions.

Detroit ATA team specially thanked SYEATA & Beauty pageant organizers and volunteers Anand Andhra, Chenchu Reddy, Jagan Konda, Kalyani  Mantripragada, Harsha Anche, Kavitha Charabuddi, Kavitha Karlapati, Krishna Chellemella, Krishna Prasad Jaligama, Nikhitha Bujala, Nishitha Lingala, Neelima Katukuri, Ram Devulapalli, Shobha Bujala, Srinivasa Chittaluri, Srinivas Vangala, Srikanth Gayam, Swapna Kalva, Venu Suraparaju, Kushal Jaligama for DJ, Jyothsna Kankatala for anchoring. For more information about ATA Convention, please visit www.ataconference.org.

HYDERABAD: Apple's Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is expected to be in Hyderabad on Thursday to announce the opening of the company's first technology development centre outside the US. There has also been a buzz that during the visit, he will take out time to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Sources in the government said official communication had only mentioned that a team of Apple executives will be here but had not specified about Tim Cook's plans to attend.

But Telangana's IT minister KT Rama Rao dropped a broad hint on Twitter.

The state government was keen to have a media buzz but Apple had wanted to keep it low-key.

The event on Thursday morning at Waverock SEZ, an IT campus, is likely to be attended also by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

The centre will be Apple's digital mapping facility, with servers in the US and all technical and support services sourced from Hyderabad, according to Telangana's IT secretary Jayesh Ranjan.

TDF, Canada is pleased to announce the grand success of its 4th Annual Cultural fest “Telangana Night 2016” held on May 07, 2016 that witnessed a huge turnout and awesome response from Telangana community.

TDF, Canada has successfully completed another event in promoting Telangana literary, cultural activities in Canada, and contribute to social & developmental activities in the state of Telangana, India.

Established in 2005, TDF, Canada is a federally registered not-for-profit organization formed by the Telangana Non Resident Indians living in Canada to preserve the cultural identity and contribute to its development.

The foundation committee expressed deep sense of gratitude to Prof.Kodandaram, chairman of the Telangana JAC, who graced the occasion as chief guest. The Inspiration and motivation of his speech will drive us and all attendees towards building “Bangaru Telangana”. Sincere thanks were extended to Dipika Damerla, Ontario province Deputy Minister for health, originally hailing from Hyderabad for being the honorable guest on the occasion.

She is the prime force behind building development bonds between Ontario province and Telangana state. Organizers also thanked Sri Lohith, Telugu actor and artist, who exhibited his multi-faceted talents and thrilled the audience throughout the programme along with TDF Global leaders, TDF USA chapter leaders and TDF, Canada city chapter leaders for being the guests of honour for the event.

The attendees included Telangana families and friends from in and around the Greater Toronto Area with more than 800 enthusiastic participants cheering the event.

The event started off with lamp lighting, Ganesh pooja dance, India & Canada National anthems, Telangana state song followed by a two minute silence in honor of the Telangana martyrs & Prof. Jayashankar sir, the ideologist of Telangana.

Noted Telangana Academician Dr. M. Kulashekhara Rao was felicitated on this occasion for his contribution to literary works. The program was filled with the unique Telangana flavor throughout the event in fest & feast in Songs, Dances as local talented artists including children enthralled the audience with a lot of folk & other song and dance programs, including a special “sammakka saralamma” procession dance. Authentic Telangana dinner with many traditional dishes was also served at the event.

Organizing committee extended its vote of thanks to several sponsors, volunteers, cultural participants and each and every one who helped in organizing the event successfully.

Contributions, efforts & dedication from everyone towards making fellow Telanganites happy and keeping the essence of Telangana alive in Canada were greatly appreciated.

The success is measured by everyone’s active participation and happiness and organizers thought they met their goal by looking at the enthusiastic participation of women and smile on children’s faces. TDF, Canada pledged to continue to organize & celebrate Telangana cultural events with everyone’s continued support in the future.

TEA's 2016 “Learn How to Profit from Growing DFW Real Estate Market” event received a very positive and enthusiastic response from the community in Dallas, Texas.

(TEA) A non-profit 501(c) volunteer based organization established in 2010 in Dallas, Texas, U.S.A.

TEA’s organizational goals, aims, and objectives are geared towards wealth creation through entrepreneurship. TEA focus is to Foster Entrepreneurship among Telugu community and with a special focus on fostering entrepreneurship among Youth and Woman Globally.

Telugu Entrepreneurs’ Association (TEA) successfully conducted seminar on “Learn How to Profit from Growing DFW Real Estate Market” in Dallas, Texas May, 08 2016 at Desi Plaza event center.

About 150 enthusiastic current and future real estate investors and promoters attended the event. Attendees felt that they learnt a lot in the 2 hours’ session than they would have learnt by themselves in few years. They commended the presenters on sharing their expertise and experiences that are much needed for investor at any level.

The purpose of the event was to discuss the various real estate opportunities in the DFW market as well as discuss the dos and don’ts of real estate investing.

The event was kicked off by founder and chairman, Mr. Gurram Srinivas Reddy, who shared with the attendees the objective of TEA and his vision. He thanked Sinu Pohar, Suresh Vuluvala and Pratap Bhimreddy the past Presidents and their teams who helped to execute his vision from 2010 to 2015.

Mrs. Pallavi Thotakura, the current Vice President played the MC role for the event.

Mr. Raja Pabba, President of TEA Dallas Chapter for the year 2016 welcomed the attendees and shared the plans for the year ahead. He emphasized the need for TEA being the platform for current and future entrepreneurs.

Specifically he laid out 5 step agenda to improve TEA’s presence and reach within the Dallas Fort Worth community.

Mr. Mahesh Gajjala, started the presentation part of the session by sharing his experiences and framework on how an investor can get into commercial development projects. He shared key elements of successful commercial development venture.

Followed by Mahesh was Mr. Shawn Goff, founder of Graham Hart Home Builders, who presented on how the stock market returns varied with the real estate sector. His presentation was filled with many golden nuggets of data and information that would help real estate investors. He also, shared the demand and supply of homes as well as profitability of different real estate players in the value chain. His presentation forced the attendees glue to their seats.

Mr. Sinu Pohar, past TEA President, and successful investor and realtor shared the market demographics and a perspective on “pre-owned” homes. He shared a model that shows how to calculate or measure investor return with a specific example. Many attendees were awe struck looking at the model and have felt that they learnt a lot from this session.

Based on active participation from the attendees a dedicated panel was setup by the presenters to answer questions from the attendees. Speakers answered multiple questions ranging different areas of real estate investments also sharing their personal experience and opinions.

The entrepreneurs and business men and women in attendance were glued to their seats throughout the presentation.  All speakers gave a call for more attendees to take advantage of the organization by involving more and volunteering their time.

Our local Telugu organization TANTEX, was represented by BOT Chair Mr. Gurram Srinivas Reddy, President Mr. Subbu Jonnalagadda, Past president Mr. Urimindi Narashima Reddy and our national Telugu organizations NATA,TANA,ATA, NATS, TATA, TDF, DATA and TPAD extended their support for this event.

The services and sacrifices of all the volunteers that helped to conduct the event successfully were acknowledged.

USA: Discover the winner in you this IPL season by using the App created by mana Telugu NRI’s. 

IPL fever is at its peak, every cricket fan is predicting and cheering for their favorite players. As the IPL teams are playing on the field, there is a big battle happening off-field too - fantasy cricket. 

The preferred venue for this seems to be the recently launched Mobile App “Supersixfantasy”, which is offering Daily fantasy cricket for IPL. An awesome cricket fantasy game that allows you to win real money! Yes, you read that correctly. 

Fantasy cricket is a game of skill where users create virtual teams and win real money based on their players’ performances in the real matches. So it gives every person a chance to be a selector, and an opportunity to demonstrate their cricket knowledge. 

Supersixfantasy app launched three weeks back and got a great response in the current on-going IPL. The daily matches and winnings made it not just any other regular fantasy app, this is edge-of-your-seat fantasy. The idea behind Supersixfantasy is to give cricket fans adrenaline shoot up right through the roof and leave them wanting more. 

All you have to do is download the Supersixfantasy app, create your amazing team, start playing one-on-one matches and voila... If your lineup scores well, you’ll win real-freakin’-money for your cricket knowledge. 

So what are you waiting for? Discover a winner in you with SuperSix! 

Supersixfantasy can be accessed on the Android mobile apps by downloading from their website at www.supersixfantasy.com. The app is only available in Android platform now but soon will be released for IPhone. 

If you are Indian resident with 18+years of age and do not live in Odissa or Assam, start playing and winning! 

Police in California (US) have arrested the husband of a 48-year-old Indian-American woman who was found shot dead.

Sonia Nallan -- a technical recruiter at Encore Semiconductors -- was allegedly shot dead by her husband James Nallan, also an Indian-American, at a home on Indigo Oak Lane, San Jose. James, 63, was arrested and booked into the Santa Clara County Jail for murder.

Officers arrived to find her with at least one gunshot wound, police said. She was rushed to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The motive behind the shooting that took place on Saturday is still under investigation, San Jose Police Department said. There are no outstanding suspects.

Sonia has left behind her two sons -- Sahil, 21, who attends UC Berkeley and Nitin, 20, who attends UC Irvine. Chris Nallan, the suspect's younger brother, visited the Nallans' two-story home and said the family is in shock. "They had a wonderful relationship," he was quoted as saying by The Mercury News.

Chris Nallan said James and Sonia who met at a technology firm, had been married for a long time. He revealed, about seven years ago, James suffered severe injuries in a fall while doing home repairs and was in a coma for three months. When he awoke, his personality had changed dramatically, his brother said. Once fun-loving and engaging, he became withdrawn, and his moods were unpredictable, Chris said.

Chris added, Sonia cared for her husband, who was unable to work. (PTI)

Bengaluru: Shreya Ukil, a 40-year-old Indian woman who was formerly a techie at the Wipro office in London, has won a landmark lawsuit in a British court against the IT major for sacking her on grounds of gender discrimination, unequal pay and victimisation.

"The Wipro leadership team, including its (then) chief executive T.K. Kurien, conspired to push Ukil out of her job and her role in Britain," her counsel Slater Gordon said in a statement from London on Wednesday.

The court observed that the direction (to sack Ukil) had come from the very top and was followed through with considerable resolve.

"Ukil was victimised by Wipro's leadership for speaking up about sex discrimination, unequal pay and a culture of sexism," the statement said.

Ukil, who worked with Wipro for almost 10 years, won multi-million-dollar contracts for the firm and received numerous performance awards, started raising concerns in 2012, which went unheeded.

Ukil sued the Bengaluru-based outsourcing firm in October 2015, seeking one million pounds compensation for gender discrimination, unequal pay and harassment.

Sacking Ukil and her superior Manoj Punja, 54, the company had then said that they were relieved from service after an internal inquiry established that they were into a relationship but did not report about it to the company as a policy.

Ukil, who was the sales and market development manager for Wipro's back office operations in London, filed the lawsuit with the central London employment tribunal, claiming she was forced into an affair by Punja, a married man, who was head of its business process outsourcing (BPO) office in London.

In early April, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that the agency received more than 236,000 petitions for H-1B visas during the annual filing period. This means, that once again the demand for high-skilled temporary foreign workers in the US is nearly three times higher than the 85,000 cap on H-1B visas mandated by the US Congress.

The fact, that demand for visas continues to be so high – despite the reinstated and increased visa fees unfairly imposed by Congress in December 2015 – certainly proves that a shortage of information technology specialists in the US persists.

In fact, the shortage is getting worse as businesses and other organisations across all sectors of the American economy seek digital strategies to gain efficiencies, improve customer service and open new markets.

According to US government data, there could be 2.4-million unfilled STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths-related) jobs in the US by 2018, with more than half of these vacancies in computer and IT-related skills.

So why do certain US “experts” and the journalists who follow them continue to claim that employees of India’s IT sector operating in the US are stealing jobs from Americans? In part, such claims reflect an election year climate in the US, when complicated issues are boiled down to simplistic slogans to attract votes. But they also reflect myths that we at Nasscom are working hard to correct.

One such myth is the mistaken notion that American workers are losing jobs to less than fullyqualified foreign workers on temporary visas and are required to “train” these workers before departing. In reality, the IT professionals coming to the US from India on temporary H-1B visas are well educated and highly trained in technical knowledge.

Another myth is that temporary high-skilled workers earn far less than their American counterparts.

This has been disproven by credible US institutions such as the Brookings Institution, whose studies have found that H-1B visa holders are paid salaries comparable to or even higher than American workers with bachelor’s degrees.

Also a myth is the notion that building a virtual wall of policies and even higher costs to keep Indian IT companies from operating, investing and recruiting in the US would somehow benefit the job prospects and quality of life of Americans. Most certainly the opposite is true. If American businesses cannot obtain skilled IT support in the US, they will have no choice but to curtail operations and cut jobs, or to move operations to overseas locations.

Besides making their US customers more efficient and competitive, Nasscom member companies also invest nearly $1 billion annually in the US, support the employment of more than 411,000 Americans and pay $6 billion in federal, state and local taxes a year.

Yet another “idea” that seems to be growing in this US election year is that foreign trade hurts Americans. Certainly the opposite is true when it comes to India, which the World Bank expects to overtake China in real GDP growth this year. A long-standing US trade deficit with India is beginning to turn around, based on 2015 data.

When increased US defence sales to India are added to the equation, that deficit is further reduced. US military sales to India have increased dramatically along with remarkable strides in military cooperation since the New Framework for Defence Cooperation in 2005.

Rather than building walls, we should remove impediments to strategic collaboration, trade, and the free exchange of intellectual talent. A strong commercial and strategic partnership between India and the US is in the interests of both of our nations. Unfairly focusing blame on India’s IT sector is not.

The US received over 2,36,000 H-1B petitions in just five days of opening up the process earlier this month for the most sought-after work visa for IT professionals, including from India, and has completed the computerised draw of lots.

This is more than thrice the Congressionally-mandated cap of 65,000 in the general category for the work visas for highly-skilled workers in the general category for Financial Year 2017.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Tuesday announced it also received more than the limit of 20,000 H-1B petitions by those foreign students who completed their higher studies from a US academic institute in subjects if science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

USCIS received over 2,36,000 H-1B petitions during the filing period, which began on April 1, including petitions filed for the advanced degree exemption, a media statement said.

It said it has completed the computerised draw of lots that would determine the successful applicants.

On April 9, USCIS used a computer-generated random selection process, or lottery, to select enough petitions to meet the 65,000 general-category cap and the 20,000 cap under the advanced degree exemption, also known as the master's cap.

The agency conducted the selection process for the advanced degree exemption first. All unselected advanced degree petitions then became part of the random selection process for the 65,000 limit, it added.

USCIS will reject and return all unselected petitions with their filing fees, unless the petition is found to be a duplicate filing, it said.

As announced on March 16, 2016, USCIS will begin premium processing for H-1B cap cases no later than May 16.

It would continue to accept and process petitions that are otherwise exempt from the cap.

H-1B visa, popular among Indian techies, is used by American companies to employ foreign workers in occupations that require highly specialised knowledge in fields such as science, engineering and computer programming. (PTI)