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A hate-fueled attacker pummeled a young man for wearing a turban and a face mask on an MTA bus in Queens over the weekend, police said. “We don’t wear that in this country,” the creep snarled, adding, “And take that mask off!” before he repeatedly punched the 19-year-old man in the head, face and back. The suspect then tried, and failed, to snatch the victim’s turban off his head, cops said. The shocking attack took place at around 9 a.m. Sunday on an MTA shuttle bus near 118th Street and Liberty Avenue in the Little Guyana neighborhood, authorities said. The...

TwideoFive hikers were walking along a trail in British Columbia, Canada, when they were alerted that two men had slipped off a rock and fallen into a pool just before the rapids below.Quick thinking: On Oct. 11, Kuljinder Kinda, a Sikh electrician from Punjab, India, and his friends were hiking in Golden Ears Provincial Park when a group ahead told them to call for help, NBC News reported.The five friends didn’t have service on their phones and couldn’t find any park personnel for the 10 minutes that they searched. Instead, they came up with the idea to fashion together a...

Almost every morning for five years, 1st Lt. Sukhbir Toor has pulled on the uniform of the U.S. Marine Corps. On Thursday, he also got to put on the turban of a faithful Sikh. It was a first for the Marine Corps, which almost never allows deviations from its hallowed image, and it was a long-awaited chance for the officer to combine two of the things he holds most dear. “I finally don’t have to pick which life I want to commit to, my faith or my country,” Toor, 26, said in an interview. “I can be who I am...

New Jersey 101.5 has taken its mid-day hosts, Dennis Malloy and Judi Franco, off the air until further notice in light of comments about state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal made during Wednesday's show. "We are aware of the offensive comments made by Dennis and Judi during today’s broadcast," the station said Wednesday night. "We have taken immediate action and have taken them off the air until further notice. We are investigating the matter and will have further comment shortly."

WASHINGTON—U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) released the following statement on the tax plan released this morning by House Republicans: This plan gives massive tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest individuals while middle class families are left behind. It is based on the mistaken belief that cutting taxes for the wealthiest will benefit everybody else—an assumption that has been proven false each and every time it’s been tested. Eliminating state and local tax deductions will hit Illinois hard—resulting in double taxation for a third of the families in our state.

SHEPERDSTOWN, WV—U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Democratic Whip and Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, today issued the following statement after President Donald Trump signed executive orders cracking down on immigrant communities, that, among other things, dramatically increase the number of immigration agents and strip federal funding from communities that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.   “Creating a mass deportation force and depriving cities of millions of dollars in critical federal funding will make our communities and nation less safe,” said Senator Durbin. “After railing against the use of executive power, President Trump is bypassing Congress...

KAMLOOPS - Nicole Mulcahy and Betty Timuss were having dinner in their home along Heffley Creek Saturday evening when they heard what sounded like two animals fighting. The first time they heard it, they didn't think much of it. But then they heard it again. This time it was clearl. A girl yelling "I can't swim! Help!" Timuss got her binoculars out and spotted the girl floating in the North Thompson River, only her head visible. Mulcahy ran across her back yard onto the dirt road in front of their home, where she saw her neighbours Avtar and Paul Hothi....

A federal court ruled yesterday that a Sikh college student must be allowed to enroll in Army ROTC without shaving his beard, cutting his hair, or removing his turban. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson acted in the case of Hofstra University student Iknoor Singh, who had been barred by the U.S. Army from enrolling in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program because of his religious practices. The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) is a college-based program for training commissioned officers of the United States Armed Forces.

There's a weekly trial on the Internet about who may be stealing culture from whom. Earlier this week, the defendants were Iggy Azalea and white gay men. A while back, it was Macklemore and the Harlem Shakers. Now, we have come across a story from the Jim Crow era about cultural mimicry between people of color.In mid-20th century America, the turban was a tool that people of color used for "confounding the color lines," writes Manan Desai, board member of the South Asian American Digital Archive.At the time, ideas of race in America were quite literally black and white. In...

I value anybody working to make this country I love and honor, America, as great as it has been and so much greater than it is now. Senator Dick “Dimples” Durbin pulled the earnings gap out of the Democratic Party closet and pummeled hedge fund managers for making too much money in comparison to Navy SEALS. He feels there’s an immoral disparity between what this nation pays its warriors and what hedge fund managers earn in private industry. This proves a point: the Democratic Party leadership is composed of wealthy people saying “don’t do as I do; do as I...

New York - In the wake of the tragic Wisconsin gurdwara shooting, a senior New York City official has asked Mayor Michael Bloomberg to allow Sikh police officers to serve without forsaking their turbans and beards. In a letter to the mayor, the city's chief financial officer, Comptroller John C. Liu commended Bloomberg for his words of comfort and support to the city's Sikh community. He said now was the time for the city to make a meaningful change of inclusion of Sikh members in the New York Police Department. "Shouldn't the NYPD, providing security in one of the most...

NEW YORK: A Sikh family in America has received an anonymous letter that threatens to kill its members for being "associates of the Taliban", prompting authorities to launch a probe into it. The letter, addressed to the 'Turban Family', said the family is being closely watched and it should leave the US immediately. "Our people in the neighborhood have been closely watching your activities and figured out you are a close associate of a secret Taliban movement on the US soil. We ask you to leave the country as soon as possible otherwise one of our people is going to...

KABUL, Afghanistan -A suicide bomber hiding explosives in his turban assassinated former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who headed a government peace council trying to negotiate with Taliban insurgents. Four of Rabbani's bodyguards also died and a key presidential adviser was wounded in the attack at Rabbani's Kabul home Tuesday. The attack dealt a harsh blow to efforts to bring peace in Afghanistan after a decade of war. Rabbani's death also came days after a daytime assault by insurgents on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in the capital, deepening a sense of insecurity in the country. President Hamid Karzai cut...

Kamaljit Atwal's neighborhood seems like an unlikely place for a hate crime. His street in this Sacramento suburb seems a model of diversity. Atwal and his family are one of two Sikh families on the block from India. On Atwal's street alone, there's a Vietnamese family, a Mexican family, a black woman and a white man. But in March, Atwal's 78-year-old father Gurmej Atwal and his 67-year-old friend Surinder Singh were shot and killed while taking an afternoon stroll in the neighborhood. Atwal and his fellow Sikhs in the area wonder if the same ugliness that has brought violence to...

A diplomatic row between the U.S. and India has deepened after it emerged that a second dignitary was subjected to an invasive security search at a U.S. airport. India's UN envoy Hardeep Puri was detained for more than 30 minutes in a holding room at Houston Airport, Texas, after refusing to remove his turban. The Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna today said: 'We have taken it up with the U.S. authorities and the matter is at that stage.' Sikh men are expected to keep their heads covered in public at all times and turbans are only to be removed in...

NEW DELHI (AP) ― An Indian lawmaker from Punjab said Tuesday she had asked President Barack Obama to put a stop to the U.S. border practice of frisking Sikh turbans. Sikhs worldwide have long protested the American security measure as discriminatory and unnecessary in a world with machines for body scanning and metal detection. New U.S. guidelines put into effect two weeks ago no longer require air passengers to remove turbans if doing so makes them uncomfortable, the U.S. Transport Security Administration said.

Three national Sikh advocacy and civil rights organizations have said federal transportation officials plan to always search turbans at airport screening stations, even if wearers pass through state-of-the-art body imaging scanners. The groups are calling on their constituents to lobby Congress and the Transportation Security Administration to overturn what they said was an “unjust policy.” Officials from the Sikh Coalition, United Sikhs and the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund went public on Friday about their meeting several weeks ago with representatives of the Department of Homeland Security and the T.S.A. “All of us jointly feel there are definitely...

SNIPPET: "Some comments • I have to assume that al-Balawi was thoroughly debriefed by al-Qaida before being sent on this mission, and I'm surprised no one has sought to correlate his "infiltration" of al-Qaida with Abu Yahya al-Libi's book released over the summer: "Guidance on the Ruling of the Muslim Spy" • See also: Al Qaida: Western Spies Multiply "Like Locusts"."

Danish authorities say a Somali man has been charged with two counts of attempted murder for an attack on an artist whose cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad ignited riots and outrage across the Muslim world. Jakob Scharf, head of Denmark's intelligence agency, said the 28-year-old Somali man with ties to al-Qaida broke into Kurt Westergaard's home in Aarhus on Friday night. The 75-year-old artist pressed an alarm and fled with his 5-year-old granddaughter to a special safe room. Police say they then shot the attacker in the hand and knee when he threatened them. The suspect was charged at a...