Categories
India Journalism Tech

Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

That’s the headline on my latest exclusive, out a few weeks ago.

It generated a lot of reader interest, and was picked up by several news outlets in India and the U.S.

It began: <-- 🎁 Gift link

A U.S. visa program for skilled foreign workers has long stoked concerns over American workers losing their jobs to lower-paid foreigners. Now a group of experienced American professionals is accusing an Indian outsourcing giant of firing them on short notice and filling many of their roles with workers from India on H1-B visas.

The American workers say that India’s Tata Consultancy Services illegally discriminated against them based on their race and age, firing them and shifting some of their work to lower-paid Indian immigrants on temporary work visas.

Since late December, at least 22 workers have filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against TCS, whose clients have included dozens of the U.S.’s biggest companies.

The American former TCS employees are Caucasians, Asian-Americans and Hispanic Americans ranging in age from their 40s to their 60s and living in more than a dozen U.S. states. Many have master’s of business administration or other advanced degrees, according to the complaints, which were viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

While companies often conduct layoffs that affect workers with more seniority, the American professionals say TCS broke the law by targeting them based on protected characteristics of age and race. They say the company’s move demonstrated preferential treatment to Indian workers in the U.S. on the coveted visas.

A TCS spokeswoman said allegations that the company engages in unlawful discrimination are meritless and misleading. TCS has a strong record of being an equal opportunity employer in the U.S., acting with integrity in its operations, she said.

Click through to read the rest.

Categories
India Journalism Tech

India’s TikTok Ban Is a Cautionary Tale for the U.S.

I’m late in posting this, but that was the headline on a story my colleague Vibhuti Agarwal wrote last month.

It began: <-- 🎁 Gift link

NEW DELHI—Gayatari Mohanty always wanted to be a dancer. But her father, who washes cars for a living, and her mother, a domestic helper, didn’t have enough money for lessons. So the 19-year-old New Delhi native taught herself.

One day in 2019, Mohanty discovered TikTok. She and a friend were drawn to the platform’s lighthearted videos. They often rushed home from school to upload clips of Mohanty’s spirited dancing to retro Bollywood songs from the 1960s and 70s.

Soon Mohanty had gained some 5,000 followers. That didn’t make her a star or earn her any money, but it was enough to boost her confidence.

“My skill gave me my biggest achievement in life,” she said. “TikTok became my stage where I could show my dancing skills and get appreciated for it.”

That all ended suddenly the next year, when India’s government banned the Chinese short video-sharing titan, citing cybersecurity concerns.

“It felt like a personal loss, like someone close to me was no more,” she said.

The South Asian nation provides a case study in what happens when the wildly popular service goes away, as it might in the U.S. A bipartisan bill that sailed through the House this month would force parent company ByteDance to sell the platform’s U.S. operations or face a ban. President Biden has said he supports such legislation, which will now go to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain.

Click through to read the rest.

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN330: Pooches Peeling Out

Sent as a newsletter on April 18, 2024. Not on my list? Sign up here.

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

Image of the week, above:

☔️ Rainy Hong Kong. Snapped today.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 👉 Good news: Homicides in many American cities are falling, bringing them back to pre-Covid levels. 🎁 <– WSJ gift link

2) 🚨 An eye-opening look at how cheap and easy it is to build a ChatGPT-powered propaganda “news” website. 🎁 <– WSJ gift link

3) 🖼️ Archaeologists undertaking a new excavation at Pompeii have uncovered some dazzling frescoes.

4) 🦷 And another archeological item of note, from Reddit: “Found a mandible in the travertin floor at my parents house.” Bonus link: an archaeology professor weighs in on the post.

5) 🇭🇰 Finish photographer Mikko Takkunen has released a gorgeous Hong Kong street photography book.

6) 🧭 Is sense of direction a product of our upbringing, rather than being innate?

7) 🌌 Here’s a video demonstrating just how enormous the universe is.

8) 🥊 Brazilian MMA fighter Renato Moicano, after winning a recent contest, praised Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (NSFW: profanity).

9) 🌳 Mental health break: this website immerses you in one-minute videos of parks around the world.

10) 🐀 Please enjoy these rats driving little cars.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

His name is Ares. He runs like a cartoon character.”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN329: Diving Dogs

Sent as a newsletter on April 8, 2024. Not on my list? Sign up here.

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

Image of the week, above:

Friday March 29th marked one year since our WSJ colleague Evan Gershkovich was wrongly detained in Russia. This was our powerful page one to mark the anniversary. He should be released immediately.

My WSJ latest

I had a couple stories out recently that relate to India.

🤳 The first, with my excellent colleague Vibhuti Agarwal: India’s TikTok Ban Is a Cautionary Tale for the U.S. 🎁 <– Gift link

The lede:

NEW DELHI—Gayatari Mohanty always wanted to be a dancer. But her father, who washes cars for a living, and her mother, a domestic helper, didn’t have enough money for lessons. So the 19-year-old New Delhi native taught herself.

One day in 2019, Mohanty discovered TikTok. She and a friend were drawn to the platform’s lighthearted videos. They often rushed home from school to upload clips of Mohanty’s spirited dancing to retro Bollywood songs from the 1960s and 70s.

Soon Mohanty had gained some 5,000 followers. That didn’t make her a star or earn her any money, but it was enough to boost her confidence.

“My skill gave me my biggest achievement in life,” she said. “TikTok became my stage where I could show my dancing skills and get appreciated for it.”

That all ended suddenly the next year, when India’s government banned the Chinese short video-sharing titan, citing cybersecurity concerns.

“It felt like a personal loss, like someone close to me was no more,” she said.

The South Asian nation provides a case study in what happens when the wildly popular service goes away, as it might in the U.S.

👉 And the second, a scoop out March 29 that was widely read, commented on, and picked by other news outlets: Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders 🎁 <– Gift link

It begins:

A U.S. visa program for skilled foreign workers has long stoked concerns over American workers losing their jobs to lower-paid foreigners. Now a group of experienced American professionals is accusing an Indian outsourcing giant of firing them on short notice and filling many of their roles with workers from India on H1-B visas.

The American workers say that India’s Tata Consultancy Services illegally discriminated against them based on their race and age, firing them and shifting some of their work to lower-paid Indian immigrants on temporary work visas.

Since late December, at least 22 workers have filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against TCS, whose clients have included dozens of the U.S.’s biggest companies.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) ☀️ It’s solar eclipse day! If you’re watching from North America, here’s a real time map from NASA.

2) 🔎 Has alleged organized crime boss Christopher Kinahan been inadvertently revealing his whereabouts in Google reviews?

3) 🗣️ Author Paul Tough on his son’s unexpected obsession with learning Russian.

4) 🥾 On the rise of hiking app AllTrails.

5) 🪐 Interactive graphic: how a space elevator would work.

6) 🐐 I love these family portraits of farm animals.

7) 🐻 Also: here are photos of bears riding in a swan boat.

8) 🇧🇪 Belgium’s football association created a special version of its national team kit dedicated to cartoonist Hergé’s Tintin character.

9) 🎶 Three words: Boston Typewriter Orchestra.

10) 🎼 And four more: “The Sound of Knitting.”

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“this golden retriever is a professional at swimming”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“Remember that if you don’t prioritize your life someone else will.” — Greg Mckeown

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Misc.

NN328: Herding Hilarity

Sent as a newsletter on March 5, 2024. Not on my list? Sign up here.

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

Image of the week, above:

🇨🇳 I was delighted to participate in a Schwarzman Scholars alumni seminar panel here in Hong Kong on Friday.

📚 The program sponsors recent college graduates from around the world to get a master’s in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Alumni met here in HK over a few days.

📱On the panel, Jen Zhu Scott, Angela Huyue Zhang and I discussed AI and venture capital in China, tech regulations, and more. Lujain Ibrahim moderated.

I talked about some of our recent WSJ stories on the challenges U.S. companies are facing in the country. And we answered some interesting questions from the audience.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🍔 What the rising cost of cheeseburgers says about economic pressures on U.S. restaurants. 🎁 <– WSJ gift link

2) 🫀 Why low-intensity Zone 2 cardio is suddenly all the rage. 🎁 <– WSJ gift link

3) 🤑 How a financial advice columnist fell for a complex scam that cost her $50,000 in cash.

4) 🧠 A first-hand account of living life as a sociopath.

5) 💾 Even cooler than music on vinyl: music on floppy disk.

6) 📺 A guide to choosing video streaming services.

7) 🤳 Selfies are bad for museums.

8) 🧐 “Things Unexpectedly Named After People.”

9) 🌌 For those keen to get their celestial bearings, Galactic Compass is a new app that points to the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

10) 📕 BookPecker: “14509 books summarized in 5 bullet points.”

•••

📖 What I’ve Been Reading

I’m late in mentioning that earlier this year I read, and absolutely loved, the novel “Bangkok Wakes to Rain,” by Pitchaya Sudbanthad.

It takes place over hundreds of years, spanning multiple generations of Bangkok inhabitants, and touches on themes of love, loss, permanence and meaning.

I wrote a bit more about the book on LinkedIn here.

📖 What I’ve Been Watching

🇸🇪 If you’re understandably caught up in the “Love is Blind” series on Netflix, don’t miss “Love is Blind: Sweden“! Still plenty of interesting twists and turns, but the drama is handled more…maturely?

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

Herding the statues (_Thanks, Dad!__)

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“Patience is not passive, on the contrary, it is concentrated strength.” — Bruce Lee

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN327: Dapper Doggos

Sent as a newsletter on February 15, 2024. Not on my list? Sign up here.

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

Image of the week, above:

☀️ Sun, tree, shadows. Snapped recently here in Hong Kong.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🇸🇦 Longread of the week, by Bradley Hope in Vanity Fair: “Inside Johnny Depp’s Epic Bromance With Saudi Crown Prince MBS.”

2) 🥽 Also excellent: The great Jaron Lanier in the New Yorker on Apple’s Vision Pro headset and the future of virtual reality.

3) 📻 RIP Bob Edwards, longtime host of NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

4) 🐅 The London Natural History Museum’s wildlife photographer of the year images are out.

5) 🙇 “How to Study: a Brief Guide.”

6) 🚗 Remarkable video of a Waymo self-driving car in San Francisco that a crowd set on fire.

7) ✍️ Neal Stephenson has a new novel coming out in October, the first in a trilogy.

8) 📍NearbyWiki matches Wikipedia entries to locations on a map.

9) 🐗 Passage of the week: “Had any other animal been responsible, Austin would’ve considered it a random attack. But this was a pet he’d trusted more than any other: his lovable, five-year-old warthog, Waylon.”

10) 🐶 Dog-related, belated Valentine’s Day photo: “We snapped this photo at our doggy daycare today. 🥰

•••

📖 What I’ve Been Reading

I recently read, and loved, Pitchaya Sudbanthad’s excellent 2019 novel, “Bangkok Wakes to Rain.” I shared a few thoughts on LinkedIn:

The story spans decades and centuries. Many characters are Thais from various social backgrounds. Others are foreigners.

They are all searching for love, meaning, permanence, connection with families and friends, self knowledge.

Pitchaya includes the Thai capital as a character as well: its riverine nature, its complex history, its religious currents, and its timelessness.

The multigenerational tale jumps forward and backward in time.

There’s even a smartly done sci-fi element.

Much of the story is anchored in one specific location in Bangkok, which I won’t elaborate on so you can discover it for yourself.

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

How different breeds of dogs would dress if they were human.

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” — Haruki Murakami

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Journalism

A British Businessman Worked in China for Decades. Then, He Vanished.

That’s the headline on my newest story, an exclusive with my colleague Neil Western out Thurs.

It begins: <-- 🎁 Gift link

HONG KONG—Ian J. Stones, a British business executive, worked in China for four decades, including with big U.S. firms such as General Motors and Pfizer before setting up his own consulting firm. Then, in 2018, he disappeared from public view.

Stones has been detained in China since then with no public mention of the case from Chinese or U.K. authorities.

The quiet detention of a foreign businessman who is well known within China’s business community underscores the risks of operating in the country, which has an opaque legal system that is controlled by the ruling Communist Party.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday in response to questions from The Wall Street Journal that Stones had been sentenced to five years in prison for illegally selling intelligence to overseas parties. The ministry said he appealed his conviction but the appeal was rejected in September last year.

Informed of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s response, Stones’s daughter, Laura Stones, said neither the family nor British embassy staff had been permitted to see any of the legal documents related to the case, and therefore she couldn’t comment on the details.

“There has been no confession to the alleged crime, however my father has stoically accepted and respects that under Chinese law he must serve out the remainder of his sentence,” she said.

Click through to read the rest.

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN326: Great Dainties

Sent as a newsletter on January 29, 2024. Not on my list? Sign up here.

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley's Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

Image of the week, above:

💪 Keep on hustling, Hong Kong! (Thanks, Kinan T!)

My WSJ latest:

I had an exclusive out Thursday with my colleague Neil Western. The headline: A British Businessman Worked in China for Decades. Then, He Vanished.<– 🎁 Gift link

It began:

HONG KONG—Ian J. Stones, a British business executive, worked in China for four decades, including with big U.S. firms such as General Motors and Pfizer before setting up his own consulting firm. Then, in 2018, he disappeared from public view.

Stones has been detained in China since then with no public mention of the case from Chinese or U.K. authorities.

The quiet detention of a foreign businessman who is well known within China’s business community underscores the risks of operating in the country, which has an opaque legal system that is controlled by the ruling Communist Party.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday in response to questions from The Wall Street Journal that Stones had been sentenced to five years in prison for illegally selling intelligence to overseas parties. The ministry said he appealed his conviction but the appeal was rejected in September last year.

Informed of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s response, Stones’s daughter, Laura Stones, said neither the family nor British embassy staff had been permitted to see any of the legal documents related to the case, and therefore she couldn’t comment on the details.

“There has been no confession to the alleged crime, however my father has stoically accepted and respects that under Chinese law he must serve out the remainder of his sentence,” she said.

The story was picked up by BBC News, various UK tabloids, the AP, the Financial Times, and the New York Times, among others.

My latest at Newley.com:

📸 Earlier this month I posted My 12 Favorite Photos of 2023. They feature images I captured in Bangkok, Washington, D.C., Macau and, of course, Hong Kong.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🍿 The Oscar nominations are out and include all of the year's best-known films, though “Barbie” director director Greta Gerwig and actress Margot Robbie missed out.

2) 🤖 Japanese author Rie Kudan says she used ChatGPT to write her recently released, award-winning sci-fi novel.

3) 🧠 Members of Gen Z around the world appear to splitting along ideological lines, with women much more liberal than men.

4) ✈️ Has a Charleston, S.C. real-estate investor located Amelia Earhart's long-lost plane deep in the Pacific Ocean? 🎁 <– WSJ gift link

5) 🇪🇨 Archaeologists have uncovered details about a huge settlement that existed in Ecuador's Amazon some 2,500 years ago.

6) 🚀 Trailer of the week: “Spaceman,” an apparently trippy, very serious sci-fi film from the director of “Chernobyl” – and starring Adam Sandler.

7) 🌋 Here are some surreal photos of lava flowing into a town in Iceland.

8) 🏀 There is now a full-length basketball court in a terminal at the Indianapolis International Airport.

9) 🐶 Was Bobbi, the Rafeiro do Alentejo dog who died in October in Portugal, really 31 years old?

10) 🐀 Two words: rat selfies.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“If I fits, I sits”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.” –Nadine Gordimer

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Photos

My 12 Favorite Photos of 2023

📸 Here are my 12 favorite photos from 2023, ranging from images I snapped here in Hong Kong to others in Macau, Bangkok, and Washington, D.C.

I took most with my iPhone 12, and a few with my Fujifilm X100V — a camera I love but am still learning to make the most of.

May your 2024 be full of memorable scenes!

Bangkok morning

HK many with umbrella

Rainy HK

HK MTR

DC National Mall

Macau

Macau at night

HK building

HK street scene

Bangkok

HK skyline at night

Categories
Journalism Tech

Steamy Romances and Vampires: The Chinese-Backed App Appealing to American Moms

That’s the headline on my newest story, which I wrote with my colleague Rachel Liang. It was out Tuesday.

It begins: <– 🎁 Gift link

Joey Jia witnessed the 2020 implosion of short-form video app Quibi and thought: I can do better.

Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg’s high-profile but short-lived startup charged users $4.99 a month for slick content meant to appeal to a wide user base. Jia, a veteran of Chinese tech companies, says he saw a market in the U.S. for a cheaper streaming app with a narrower target audience.

Last year, Jia launched ReelShort targeting women, especially stay-at-home moms between the ages of 18 and 45, who he says love romance and fantasy stories. It draws on the success of similar apps in his native China, featuring dramas with episodes that last about a minute, compared with Quibi’s five to 10 minutes.

ReelShort specializes in bingeable, steamy romances, tangled family dramas, handsome billionaires, beautiful women—and vampires and werewolves. The actors are mostly Western, and the dialogue is in English.

The formula is gaining traction with American consumers. The app briefly surpassed ByteDance’s TikTok as the most downloaded entertainment app in Apple’s App Store last month. Of the 16 million global downloads the app has garnered so far, some 4.8 million are in the U.S., making it the company’s biggest market, according to mobile data and analytics provider Data.ai. More than 60% of the firm’s revenue comes from the U.S., according to Jia.

Click through to read the rest.