Addressing the annual gala of the Asian Pacific American Institute for American Studies, US President Obama said the first Indian-American Congressman Dalip Singh Saund is among early trailblazers for the Asian American community who must henceforth be treated as the model minority.

Obama recalled the Asian American immigrants who "did not have a much, but an unshakeable belief in America as a place where anybody can make it if they try. Now many are faced with hardship, ridicule and racism. Many were treated as second class citizens, who did not belong. But they did not give up, they kept forging ahead."

"They were trailblazers, like Dalip Singh Saund, a man from India who, in 1920, came to study agriculture, stayed to become a farmer and took on the cause of citizenship for all people of South Asian descent. He stepped up to serve America and became the first Asian American elected to Congress".

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The Labour party's Dr Onkar Singh Sahota scored a major upset after narrowly wining the Ealing and Hillingdon seat, beating out Richard Barnes the former Conservative party Deputy Mayor of London in the Assembly elections.

Sahota said his election win was a clear message to the Conservative led government that the policies they have adopted are not acceptable to the people. Being a doctor Sahota made the NHS a big issue in his campaign as also the Ealing Hospital, and hopes his victory will be the first step to ensuring it is saved.

Julian Bell, Leader of the Labour Party called it a great victory.

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9 Indian Americans are on Forbes list of 100 deal makers with the 'Midas Touch', that comprises venture capitalists who made investments in start-up companies then sold their stakes with handsome gains.

Of these Aneel Bhusri the co-CEO of Workday a cloud-based financials and human resources software company was ranked 25th. Bhusri is accompanied by Navin Chaddha at 46th rank, an IIT graduate who heads Indian investments of Mayfield Fund, and Vinod Khosla the well-known venture capitalist at 35th rank.

Others on the list are Rob Chandra 28th, Sameer Gandhi 33rd, Neeraj Agrawal 36th, Ajay Agarwal 95th, Asheem Chandna 96th and Subrata Mitra 99th.

Chandra had a string of IPOs on India public markets. His current investments include Avnera, Tilera and Applied Solar Technologies.

Gandhi's investment include Spotify, BeachMint, StumbleUpon, Flipkart and Bonobos.

Agrawal's investments include Marketo, Wayfair, Brightree, Glassdoor and Sprinklr.

Agarwal invested in Kiva Systems that sold to Amazon for $775 million recently.

Chandna's investments include Aquantia, AppDynamics, Delhpix, Sumo Logic, TechProcess, Xsigo Systems and Zenprise.

Kitra invested in Filkartm.

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Manu Raju 32, was among the White House Correspondents journalism award winners for 2012, honoured at the association's traditional annual dinner with US President Barack Obama.

Raju who with three colleagues works at Politco, an influential Washington news site focusing on presidential politics, was named winner of the Merriman Smith Award for Excellence in Presidential Coverage in the print category.

After he graduated he worked briefly on the assignment desk at the NBC affiliate in Wisconsin. He has been reporting in Washington for 10 years at other publications, before joining Politico.

Raju and his wife Archana live in upper Northwest Washington.

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According to the annual Sunday Times Rich List, at this time when most Britons' earnings and savings are squeezed by inflation and low interest rates, its 1000 wealthiest people saw their fortunes swell by almost five percent to over $670 billion, the highest recorded by the survey in 24 years.

This good fortune contrasts with many Britons who face years of austerity aimed at wiping out a record budget deficit as the economy struggles to recover from the 2008 financial crises.

Lakshmi Mittal the India born steel magnate is Britain's richest man. Uzbek born Alisher Usmanov was in second place followed by Roman Abramovich in third.

The richest British born billionaire is the Duke of Westminster.

The annual list is based on identifiable wealth, including land, property and other items such as art, racehorses or significant shares in publicly quoted companies, but does not include bank accounts.

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