In Dubai, world’s youngest yoga teacher sets sights on training with Modi

In Dubai, world’s youngest yoga teacher sets sights on training with Modi
Praanvi Gupta, the world’s youngest yoga instructor, is seen during training outside her home in Dubai, UAE, in November 2022. (Pramod Gupta)
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Updated 18 March 2023

In Dubai, world’s youngest yoga teacher sets sights on training with Modi

In Dubai, world’s youngest yoga teacher sets sights on training with Modi
  • Praanvi Gupta, 7, is verified by Guinness World Records as the youngest yoga instructor
  • Gupta completed a 200-hour course to be certified as a teacher by Yoga Alliance

NEW DELHI: With three records in hand, including as the world’s youngest yoga instructor, a schoolgirl is setting her sights on a new feat — training with one of the most famous yogis, the Indian prime minister.
Seven-year-old Praanvi Gupta began learning yoga at the age of 3, copying her parents, who regularly practice the ancient Indian discipline at home.
When the family moved from New Delhi to Dubai four years ago, Gupta began attending yoga classes.
Last year, she completed a 200-hour course to be certified by Yoga Alliance, the largest nonprofit organization representing yoga teachers, and in late November 2022 was verified by Guinness World Records as the youngest yoga instructor.
At 7 years and 165 days old, Gupta beat Reyansh Surani, who was 9 years and 220 days old when he received his certification in 2021.
“I really feel proud and excited that nobody at this age has made it,” she told Arab News. “I know that yoga is beneficial. I want to spread this word that everyone should practice yoga and children should practice it.”
Gupta already knows her next career steps. She wants to write a yoga book for children and, encouraged by her achievements, also meet India’s leader Narendra Modi, an avid yoga practitioner, who has been promoting the discipline at home and abroad.
“I want to do yoga with him someday,” Gupta said. “I heard that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a big yoga enthusiast, and he loves yoga.”
The girl’s formal yoga education began at the Vedic Yoga Center in Dubai, under the supervision of trainer and educator Vincent Earth Kottayil, who encouraged her to enroll in a course for instructors.
“I have been teaching yoga for the past 25 years. I think she is one of the greatest students for me because she has some inborn quality for yoga,” Kottayil said.
“She was showing extra talent in yoga and showing enthusiasm to know more about yoga. I suggested that she join the yoga teachers’ training course, and she completed the course very successfully.”
Yoga is not the only discipline in which Gupta has been winning laurels. She already has several records and medals in other fields, both physical and academic.
Her father, Pramod, said that he is “super proud” of her achievements.
“She has two other world records for reciting all the countries and their capitals when she was 5 years old, and in 2021 she had a world record of telling 10 longest words in English in just 81 seconds,” he said.
At the age of 4, soon after moving to the UAE, Gupta took part in the annual Dubai Run and completed the 5 km route.
“She likes challenges. Whenever you challenge her to something, she’ll just learn that thing quickly,” Gupta’s mother, Priyanka Sengar, told Arab News.
Sengar, the founder and CEO of Women First Jobs, an organization that aims to close gender disparity in employment, is aware of her daughter’s talent for yoga and has also nurtured her interest in books.
But neither of Gupta’s parents are trying to plan the future for her.
“We just support her; whatever she dreams, we just support her,” Sengar said.
“The future will be bright for her, and we are 200 percent sure about that. Whatever she does, she will do her best and will shine in that.”


Daesh claims responsibility for suicide bombing on memorial service in northeast Afghanistan

Daesh claims responsibility for suicide bombing on memorial service in northeast Afghanistan
Updated 17 sec ago

Daesh claims responsibility for suicide bombing on memorial service in northeast Afghanistan

Daesh claims responsibility for suicide bombing on memorial service in northeast Afghanistan
  • Militant group’s statement gives higher casualty figures than those provided by the Taliban-run government
  • Daesh has increased its attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover of the country in August 2021
ISLAMABAD: The Daesh group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on a memorial service in northeast Afghanistan that killed at least 13 people and wounded 30 others.
In a statement late Friday, the Daesh regional affiliate — known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province — said the attacker targeted the service near Nabawi Mosque in the city of Faizabad in Badakhshan province on Thursday.
The militant group’s statement gave higher casualty figures than those provided by the Taliban-run government, claiming that at least 20 senior Taliban officials died and 50 others were injured.
The memorial service was being held for Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi, the deputy governor of Badakhshan killed in a car bombing on Tuesday in Faizabad. That attack, which killed the deputy governor’s driver and wounded 10 others, was also claimed by the Daesh group.
A former Taliban police official was among those killed in the memorial service explosion, said the Taliban interior ministry spokesman, Abdul Nafi Takor.
The Daesh group has increased its attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover of the country in August 2021, following the withdrawal of US and NATO troops after two decades of war. Targets have included Taliban patrols and members of Afghanistan’s Shiite minority.
Last December, a car bombing killed Badakhshan’s provincial police chief as he was on his way to work. IS claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it parked an explosive-laden car on the road and detonated it when the police chief’s car passed by.

How an expat Egyptian got elected by focusing on America

How an expat Egyptian got elected by focusing on America
Updated 10 June 2023

How an expat Egyptian got elected by focusing on America

How an expat Egyptian got elected by focusing on America
  • Egyptian-American Bolingbrook Illinois Mayor Mary Basta says connecting with local community paves the way for a better understanding of Arab immigrants with Middle Eastern roots

CHICAGO: An Egyptian-American immigrant successful in US political and activism life says that the key to countering pro-Israel propaganda is to make a direct connection with Americans and educate them on the truth about the Middle East conflict.

Mary Basta, who came to America from Egypt in the 1970s at the age of five, pursued a career in hospitality in Nashville, Tennessee, but quickly found herself rising in local politics to become the mayor of the 16th-largest city in Illinois, a state that has 1,456 cities.

Basta told Arab News on Wednesday (June 7) that she achieved her meteoric rise in American politics by focusing on “American interests” first before focusing on the interests of her former homeland Egypt — though not forgetting that heritage either.

“Egyptians and Middle Eastern in general is a little bit unique. We have a hard time because we can’t let go. We always carry the burden on our shoulders of where we are from and the issues that we face. We underwent a revolution and we changed two presidents. And you are always carrying that and you always feel like this is my home, this is my country and my culture and what can I do to help. But for us, we have lots of different issues that we encounter here. Both, one, we aren’t pure Americans so therefore you always feel you have to work harder. You have to achieve more. And then from our family, you always have to be this engineer, or doctor, dentist or this lawyer, because anything else you haven’t been successful in your life,” Basta said.

“So, there are definitely some high benchmarks that we instill in ourselves, and our families instill in us, and trying to live up to those expectations is very hard, while still trying to maintain our traditions and our cultures. Some people hold on to those like they are holding on to life, and some people are glad to get rid of them as soon as possible. So, it is hard to navigate between being true to yourself, your culture, as well as what we are thinking and where your current situation is. It’s not always when in Rome do as the Romans do. Sometimes you have to do as the Greeks do.”

Basta told Arab News that she and her family came to the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook in 2003 to find a better life, volunteering to assist the local schools and local government to help her children.

Less than 16 years later, Basta entered local politics — what she prefers to call “public service” — serving as a volunteer on several Bolingbrook commissions, including the powerful Zoning Board, which oversees community and business expansion.

She quickly was named chairwoman. Soon after, in 2019, she was named by the city’s mayor and board to fill a vacancy as one of the village’s six trustees. Within a year, after the mayor left office, in 2020, her board colleagues elected her as mayor. And the following year, in 2021, was elected by a majority of the village’s 75,000 residents to a four-year term as the mayor, which she is now serving.

Basta said that her rapid rise in politics, which dwarfs the decades-long efforts of other Arab Americans to enter politics, is different because she focused her attention first on serving the residents of Bolingbrook rather than dedicating her life to changing the politics of the Middle East more than 9,000 miles away.

“This will always be home to my children, where I can say Egypt is my home or even Nashville, but Bolingbrook will be where my kids were born and where they grew up and where they graduated from. So I want that to be a place that they are proud of to bring their kids back here, even grandkids, and say this is where I grew up, this is where I was born, this is my soccer field, this is my school. For that to be something to be proud of it takes effort and it takes work and it takes long-term planning and thinking. So, putting the right people in place, putting the right policies in place, and then watching them getting carried out from that point,” Basta said.

“It’s not about me, it is about we. It’s not what I want but it’s what is better for the community.”

Basta said that running for American political office is much like running a business. It takes “a thick skin” to withstand the criticism, as well as a local focus on the community that elected you. She said that she did face the same discrimination and stereotype “bullying” many Arabs, Christian and Muslims have faced, but she persevered.

“Today’s kids have not seen bullying until you see a little foreign girl growing up in a very white, I am going to use the term redneck, portion of Nashville, Tennessee. So, I definitely know what bullying is. I definitely felt it growing up as being someone who is different. Not just in the way that I looked but also in the culture. As you know, Middle Eastern culture is very different from that in the US, especially for females,” Basta said.

Basta made her comments during an appearance on “The Ray Hanania Radio Show,” broadcast Wednesday May 31 live in Detroit and Washington D.C. on the US Arab Radio Network and sponsored by Arab News.

You can listen to the radio show’s podcast by visiting ArabNews.com/rayradioshow.


Somalia security forces end hotel siege claimed by Al-Shabab

Somalia security forces end hotel siege claimed by Al-Shabab
Updated 10 June 2023

Somalia security forces end hotel siege claimed by Al-Shabab

Somalia security forces end hotel siege claimed by Al-Shabab
  • Rebels have been waging an insurgency against the government for more than 15 years and have often targeted hotels

MOGADISHU: Somali security forces brought to an end the siege of a hotel in the capital Mogadishu, state media said Saturday, after the Islamist Al-Shabab group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The rebels, affiliated with Al-Qaeda, have been waging an insurgency against the internationally backed federal government for more than 15 years and have often targeted hotels, which tend to host high-ranking Somali and foreign officials.
The security forces “shot and killed” rebels who carried out “the desperate terrorist attack on the Pearl Beach... in Mogadishu,” SNTV reported on Saturday.
It added that security forces had rescued “many civilians from inside the hotel” and “shot and killed” those responsible.
Security and intelligence sources confirmed the end of the attack to AFP on condition of anonymity.
Witnesses reported hearing gunfire and explosions at the hotel on Lido beach.
“I was near the Pearl Beach restaurant when (a) heavy explosion occurred in front of the building,” witness Abdirahim Ali said.
“I have managed to flee but there was heavy gunfire afterwards and the security forces rushed to the area.”
Yaasin Nur was at the restaurant and said it was “full of people as it was recently renovated.”
“I’m worried because there are several of my colleagues who went there and two of them are not responding to their phones,” he said.
Several ambulances were also parked nearby, an AFP journalist saw.
Al-Shabab has been driven out of Somalia’s main towns and cities but retains power in large swathes of rural areas, and continues to carry out attacks against security and civilian targets, including in the capital.
In August 2020, Al-Shabab launched a large-scale attack on the Elite, another hotel at Lido beach popular with officials, killing 10 civilians and a police officer.
It took security forces four hours to regain control over the site in that attack.
The latest attack at Lido beach highlights the endemic security problems in the Horn of Africa country as it struggles to emerge from decades of conflict and natural disasters.
Last year, Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud launched an “all-out war” against Al-Shabab, rallying Somalis to help flush out members of the jihadist group he described as “bedbugs.”
His pledge came after 21 people were killed and 117 others were wounded in an Al-Shabab siege on a Mogadishu hotel in August 2022 that lasted 30 hours.
The attack raised serious questions about the security forces, who failed to protect a heavily guarded administrative district.
In October 2022, twin car bombings in Mogadishu killed 121 people and injured 333, in the country’s deadliest attack in five years.
The army and militias known as “macawisley” have in recent months retaken swathes of territory in the center of the country in an operation backed by the African Union mission ATMIS and US air strikes.
But Al-Shabab fighters killed 54 Ugandan peacekeepers in an attack on an African Union base in the southern town of Bulo Marer last month.


No injuries after planes collide on ground at Tokyo’s Haneda airport – NHK

No injuries after planes collide on ground at Tokyo’s Haneda airport – NHK
Updated 10 June 2023

No injuries after planes collide on ground at Tokyo’s Haneda airport – NHK

No injuries after planes collide on ground at Tokyo’s Haneda airport – NHK
  • Incident led to the closure of one of four runways at the airport

TOKYO: Some flights were delayed at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on Saturday after two planes appeared to have collided on the ground near a taxiway, public broadcaster NHK reported, citing Japan’s transport ministry.
No injuries occurred, NHK said, but the incident led to the closure of one of four runways at the airport at about 11 a.m. (0200 GMT).
The broadcaster showed footage of Eva Airways and Thai Airways jets on the ground.
Part of the wing of the Thai Airways plane looked to be broken, and what appeared to be fragments could be seen near the runway.
Japan’s transport ministry did not respond immediately to a request for comment.


US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reschedules postponed Beijing visit for June 18

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reschedules postponed Beijing visit for June 18
Updated 10 June 2023

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reschedules postponed Beijing visit for June 18

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reschedules postponed Beijing visit for June 18
  • First trip by a top US diplomat to China since his predecessor Mike Pompeo in October 2018

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to China next week, rescheduling a visit that was canceled in February after a saga over a suspected surveillance balloon, US officials said Friday.
Blinken is expected to arrive in Beijing on June 18, the first trip by a top US diplomat to China since his predecessor Mike Pompeo in October 2018, US officials said on condition of anonymity.
The State Department has not officially announced his travel. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby recently said the United States would announce travel by senior officials “in the near future” without giving details.
Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met in Bali in November and agreed to try to stop high tensions from soaring out of control, including by sending Blinken to Beijing.
Blinken abruptly canceled a trip scheduled in early February after the United States said it detected — and later shot down — a Chinese surveillance balloon flying over the US mainland, drawing fury from US lawmakers and denials by Beijing.
But the two sides have more recently looked again to keep tensions in check including with an extensive, closed-door meeting between Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in Vienna last month.
Tensions have risen sharply between the world’s two largest economies in recent years, especially over Taiwan, the self-governing democracy that Beijing claims and has not ruled out seizing by force.
The two countries are also at odds over China’s increasingly assertive posture in the region and over trade and human rights.
Biden, however, has looked to limited areas for cooperation with China, such as climate change, in contrast with the more fully adversarial position adopted at the end of the administration of his predecessor Donald Trump.