Washington, May 17 - Chandigarh-born Indian-American legal luminary Srikanth 'Sri' Srinivasan has moved a step closer to making history as the first South Asian judge on the US Court of Appeals for the American capital.

Srinivasan, 46, who in August last year was named principal deputy solicitor general of the US, succeeding another Indian American, Neal Kumar Katyal, Thursday won unanimous approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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Washington, May 17 - Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrote a message on the wall of the boat in which he was captured, claiming responsibility for the April 15 bomb attack, CBS News reported.

CBS News senior correspondent John Miller, a former assistant FBI director, cited sources as saying that the 19-year-old Tsarnaev had written the message with a pen on the inside wall of the boat cabin as he hid from police, bleeding from gunshot wounds sustained in a shootout with police that killed his 26-year-old brother Tamerlan.

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Washington, May 16 - US industrial production, an indicator of the output of mines, factories and utilities, dropped 0.5 percent in April, US Federal Reserve reported.

Manufacturing output, the largest component of the overall industrial production, declined 0.4 percent last month, reported Xinhua.

Outside manufacturing, the output of mining sector rose 0.9 percent, and the output of utilities shed 3.7 percent last month.

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Washington, May 16 - International migration is projected to surpass natural increase as the principal driver of US population growth by the middle of this century, the first time in two centuries, the US Census Bureau estimates.

According the three latest series of projections, the shift in what drives US population growth is projected to occur between 2027 and 2038, depending on the future level of international migration, reported Xinhua.

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Washington, May 16 - The White House has released 100 pages of emails and documents in its latest effort to blunt the Republicans' sharp criticism of cover-up in the deadly attack on the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi last year.

These documents showed how the Obama administration's so-called "talking points" evolved about the attack, which took place Sep 11 and killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

According to the emails, references to Al Qaeda, Islamist extremists based in Libya and prior terrorist attacks around Benghazi were removed from the talking points, reported Xinhua.

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Washington, May 16 - US wholesale prices continued to fall in April for the second consecutive month, due to declines of food and energy prices, US Labor Department reported.

The Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures price changes at factory gates, dipped 0.7 percent last month on seasonally adjusted basis, reported Xinhua.

Energy prices went down 2.5 percent last month after dropping 3.4 percent in March. They were mainly dragged down by a drop of 6.0 percent in gas price last month.

Meanwhile, food costs edged down 0.8 percent last month after gaining 0.8 percent in March.

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New York, May 16 - Authorities in India and Bangladesh should take all necessary steps to protect Shukhoranjan Bali, a long-missing witness in the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

Bali, a Bangladeshi, claims he was abducted by the Bangladeshi police from the entrance to the ICT courthouse, detained, then forced by security forces across the border into India.

In India, he claims he was detained and tortured by the Border Security Force (BSF) before being held in Kolkata’s Dum Dum jail.

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New York, May 16 - Authorities in India and Bangladesh should take all necessary steps to protect Shukhoranjan Bali, a long-missing witness in the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

Bali, a Bangladeshi, claims he was abducted by the Bangladeshi police from the entrance to the ICT courthouse, detained, then forced by security forces across the border into India.

In India, he claims he was detained and tortured by the Border Security Force (BSF) before being held in Kolkata’s Dum Dum jail.

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Washington, May 16 - US President Barack Obama has said that the acting commissioner of Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which is at the centre of a scandal that subjects conservative groups to extra scrutiny, has resigned and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has accepted it.

Obama made the announcement Wednesday to reporters after meeting with senior Treasury officials at the White House, saying Lew had asked for and received the resignation of IRS chief Steven Miller, reported Xinhua.

The president also promised a new system of checks and safeguards to "make sure nothing like this ever happens again".

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Washington, May 16 - US President Barack Obama will meet his Myanmarese counterpart Thein Sein here May 20 and discuss democracy building in the Southeast Asian nation, the White House said.

"The president (Obama) looks forward to discussing with President Thein Sein the many remaining challenges to efforts to develop democracy, address communal and ethnic tensions, and bring economic opportunity to the people of his country, and to exploring how the United States can help," Xinhua quoted White House spokesman Jay Carney as saying in a statement.

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Washington, May 15 : Smithsonian, the world's largest museum and research complex here, is launching a major crowdfunding campaign May 29 to support what it calls the world's first exhibition on the visual history of

yoga.

"Yoga: The Art of Transformation" Opens Oct 19 at its Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington and would be on view through Jan 26, 2014. It will be supported by a crowdfunding campaign, "Together We're One" running from May
29 through July 1.

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Washington, May 15 - Professions of love and support for 19-year-old Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are popping up on social media websites by the thousands, driven in part by scores of US schoolgirls who insist the "brown-eyed, baby-faced teen" has been framed.

"There's nothing I believe in more than jahar's innocence," tweeted an 18-year-old from Kansas with the handle @keepitbluntedd, using the popular hashtag #freejahar, a reference to the suspect's nickname.

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Washington, May 15 - The father of a four-year-old boy in New Jersey was arrested after his son fatally shot a six-year-old neighbour in the head, CNN reported.

Anthony Senatore, 33, was charged with six counts of endangering the welfare of children and a disorderly person's offence for enabling access by minors to a loaded firearm, said prosecutor Jim McClain from the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office.

Senatore's son was playing in the yard April 8 when he went inside and retrieved his father's loaded .22-calibre rifle from the bedroom.

When he came back out, he fired a single shot that struck six-year-old Brandon Holt in the head.

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Washington, May 15 - Two wigs, a typed spy recruitment letter, a compass and an atlas of Moscow in the days of GPS and smartphones. These are some of the items Russian officials say they found when a US diplomat was caught allegedly attempting to recruit a Russian agent to spy for America's CIA.

It sounds like a 1960s' US television sitcom, some Americans said as social media and online journals lit up with news about the arrest in Moscow of US diplomat Ryan Fogle, who was allegedly caught red-handed.

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Boston, May 14 - Noted Indian American surgeon Mukesh Hariawala will discuss the business implications of President Barack Obama's second term on the Indian healthcare system at a leadership conclave in Mumbai in June.

A Harvard trained cardiac surgeon, who is also a healthcare economist, Hariawala will deliver the keynote address at the 4th annual India leadership Conclave & Indian Affairs Business Leadership Awards 2013 June 21.

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Washington, May 14 - A passenger was booted off an American Airlines flight en route from Los Angeles to New York Monday when she would not stop singing Whitney Houston's hit "I Will Always Love You".

The plane's pilot made an unscheduled stop in Kansas City about halfway through the six-hour flight after passengers and crew complained about the woman's incessant singing.

American Airlines spokesman Joe McBride told local Kansas City KCTV that the woman's behaviour was "disruptive" and that she was removed from the aircraft for "interfering with the flight crew".

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Washington, May 14 : US police are looking for a 19-year-old man identified as a suspect in the Mother's Day parade shooting in New Orleans, the largest city in Indian-American Governor Bobby Jindal's state of Louisiana, that injured 19 people.

Police are looking for one Akien Scott who has previous arrests on charges of possession of firearms, possession of narcotics and resisting arrest, New Orleans Police Chief Ronal Serpas announced Monday night.

"I would recommend strongly that Mr. Scott contact anybody who he is comfortable with to turn himself in," Serpas was quoted as saying by CNN.

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Washington, May 14 : A subsidiary of Indian generic drug-maker Ranbaxy Laboratories has pleaded guilty to federal charges of selling adulterated drugs with intent to defraud and agreed to pay $500 million to resolve false claim allegations.

The US justice department Monday described as "the largest drug safety settlement" with a generic drug-maker related to manufacture and distribution of certain adulterated drugs made at two of Ranbaxy USA Inc's manufacturing facilities at Paonta Sahib and Dewas in India.

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Washington, May 14 - Canadian astronaut and outgoing International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield has recorded the first music video in space while floating in zero gravity, strumming an acoustic guitar and crooning his own rendition of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" as a special farewell before heading back to Earth.

The lyrics - tweaked a bit here and there - are particularly fitting:

"Ground control to Major Tom Lock your Soyuz hatch and put your helmet on Ground control to Major Tom Commencing countdown, engines on Detach from station and may God's love be with you"

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Washington, May 13 : US President Barack Obama has hailed the National Assembly election in Pakistan, calling it "a significant milestone" in the country's democracy building.

"I congratulate the people of Pakistan on the successful completion of yesterday's parliamentary elections," the president said in a statement Sunday, reported Xinhua.

"The United States stands with all Pakistanis in welcoming this historic peaceful and transparent transfer of civilian power, which is a significant milestone in Pakistan's democratic progress."

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