Indian temple protesters block women for second day

sabarimala (Kerala) — Protesters blocked intersections, threatened drivers, threw stones at buses and ordered a 12-hour strike on Thursday to successfully bar women from one of India’s holiest temples for a second day.

The Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala in Kerala was meant to allow women of all ages — and not just those under 10 and over 50 as before — from Wednesday following an order by India’s Supreme Court last month.

But hundreds of traditionalists, throwing stones at batonwielding police, defied the order — blocking the path, surrounding and shouting at any woman attempting to make it to the hilltop site.

Angry young men also surrounded and smashed the car windows of female television reporters and threatened others, including an AFP reporter.

washington — The Trump administration is planning to revoke a rule that makes spouses of thousands of immigrant workers eligible to work while in the US, a move that could impact tens of thousands of Indians.

Abandoning this Obama-era rule of granting work permits to H-4 visa holders — who are spouses of professionals holding H-1B visas, mostly Indians — will benefit some US workers, the Department of Homeland Security believes.

H-4 visa is issued to the spouse of H-1B visa holders, a significantly large number of whom are highskilled professionals from India. They had obtained work permits under a special order issued by the previous Obama administration in 2015.

The move to end the rule could have an impact on more than 70,000 H-4 visas holders, who have work permits.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in its Unified Fall

Agenda released on Wednesday said it believed that abandoning the current practice of granting employment authorisation to H-4 dependent spouses would benefit some US workers.

The DHS said the proposed rule would no longer allow H-4 workers

to enter the labour market early.

The DHS, which has already delayed three times this year issuing of the necessary notification, said in its agenda that it was on its way to remove H-4 dependent spouses from getting work authorisation. —