Indian-American appointed to key U.S. Treasury Department post

An Indian-American has been appointed to a key post in the U.S. Department of Treasury.

Jawahar Kaliani has been appointed as the Deputy Chief Information Officer for Application Services Delivery (ASD) at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Department of Treasury.

Taking over the job from Sunday, Mr. Kaliani will lead the development and implementation of complex applications to deliver secure business solutions that meet organisational priorities and support the agency’s mission of ensuring the safety and soundness of national banks and federal savings associations, a statement said.

“Jawahar’s experience has prepared him exceptionally well to serve in this role,” said OCC Chief Information Officer Edward Dorris.

“He is ideally suited to be part of the agency’s senior information technology (IT) team to continue our efforts toward achieving best in class productivity, efficiency and quality for the OCC employees and supervised institutions that depend on us,” Mr. Dorris said.

Mr. Kaliani joins the OCC from Amdocs Inc., where he served as vice-president of Customer Operations Management and led the development, execution and delivery of large-scale services and business IT solutions supporting major telecommunications clients who managed more than $30 billion in annual billings.

He has 20 years of demonstrated experience delivering critical applications in a managed services environment, optimising efficiency and performance to meet the goals of industry leaders.

During his career, Mr. Kaliani established, coached and mentored high-performing, cross-functional teams of more than 700 employees.

Mr. Kaliani holds an executive MBA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Bachelor of Engineering in IT and Electronics from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI) in Mumbai and a Diploma of Engineering in IT and Electronics from BIT in Mumbai.

60 militants dead after major attack on Afghan army post

 

KABUL: Afghan forces repulsed an assault by hundreds of militants, many from across the border, officials said on Wednesday, in the biggest clashes since the presidential election almost four weeks ago.
NATO air support was called in to help beat back the attack that left 60 militants and at least five Afghan soldiers dead at an army base near the porous border on Monday night. “A group of terrorists and foreign fighters numbering about 500... launched a big operation targeting army posts in Zirok district of Paktika province,” the Afghan defence ministry said in a statement.

It said the militants were trying to score a high-profile victory after failing to mount a significant attack on polling day despite threatening to target voters, election officials and security forces.

The Afghan National Directorate of Security, the country’s intelligence agency, said 300 fighters from the Haqqani network, which is allied to the Taliban, and other insurgents were involved.

“Haqqani and foreign fighters along with suicide attackers carried out an assault on the night of April 28 to capture a military base in Zirok district,” it said. “As a result of a counter-attack by government forces backed by coalition air force, 60 members of the Haqqani group and other foreign fighters were killed and a large number injured.”

The Haqqani network is blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan, including bombings of the US and Indian embassies in Kabul. A Haqqani source in Pakistan confirmed Monday’s incident to AFP. “Allied forces and the Afghan army retaliated to the assault and killed 60 fighters,” he said.

“The fighters left and took with them 40 bodies of their colleagues and 12 Afghan soldiers who were alive.” The Haqqani source said the bodies of 20 militants were with the Afghans and a message had been sent offering to exchange the captured soldiers for them. Afghan officials said only one soldier had been taken hostage

Report exposes rights abuse by Sri Lankan forces post war

Military is still waging a campaign of persecution using abduction, arbitrary detention and sexual violence’

A report by rights groups on Friday said there was enough evidence that the Sri Lankan military was still waging a war against Tamils.

The report — published by the UK Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales and the International Truth & Justice Project, Sri Lanka — is one of the first documents to detail alleged rights abuse by the Sri Lankan armed forces in the post-war context.

Five years after the brutal war ended with the defeat of the rebel Tigers, the military was still waging a campaign of persecution, resorting to abduction, arbitrary detention, torture, rape and sexual violence, the report said.

Leading South African human rights lawyer and U.N. adviser Yasmin Sooka compiled the report, based on interviews with 40 Tamils who were reportedly held in custody by Sri Lankan authorities and who later sought refuge in the U.K.

The report, ‘Unfinished War: Torture and Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka, 2009- 2014,’ comes ahead of the U.N. Human Rights Council debate in Geneva on a U.S.-led resolution, calling for an international investigation into alleged war crimes and rights abuse in Sri Lanka.

“Sworn statements, along with medical and psychiatric examinations, have been gathered from dozens of Tamil men and women who sought refuge in the U.K. after being subjected to abuses in Sri Lanka. Almost all incidents they described took place after the war, some of them as recently as February 2014,” the report said.

Their accounts, documented by nine independent lawyers from western and Asian countries, established a case to answer for post-war crimes against humanity involving torture, rape and sexual violence — including anal rape and forced oral sex — by the Sri Lankan military, the report said.

South African rights activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in his foreword, said it “gives the lie to the Sri Lankan government’s propaganda that it is reconciling with its former enemies.”

The Sri Lankan army has been denying allegations of war crimes and rights abuse, maintaining that it was part of an anti-Sri Lanka campaign by some sections of the Tamil diaspora that supported the LTTE.