Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ( commonly known as the LTTE or the Tamil Tigers) is a separatist organization formerly based in northern Sri Lanka. Founded in May 1976, it waged a violent secessionist campaign that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka. This campaign evolved into the Sri Lankan Civil War, which was one of the longest running armed conflicts in Asia until the LTTE was defeated by the Sri Lankan Military in May 2009.


The Tigers, who during the height of their power possessed a well-developed militia, were notorious for recruiting child soldiers, for carrying out civilian massacres, suicide bombings and various other high profile attacks, including the assassinations of several high-ranking Sri Lankan and Indian politicians like Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993, and former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.They invented the suicide belt and pioneered the use of suicide bombing as a tactic. They also pioneered the use of women in suicide attacks,and used light aircraft in some of their attacks. They are currently proscribed as a terrorist organization by 32 countries , but have extensive support amongst the Tamil diaspora in Europe and North America, and amongst Tamils in India. Since its inception, and until his death, the LTTE was headed by its founder, Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
The official emblem of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Dates of operation	May 5, 1976 – present; Defeated as a conventional organization on May 17, 2009
Leader	Visvanathan Rudrakumaran
Motives	The creation of a separate Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka
Active region(s)	Canada[2] United Kingdom, Norway And Others
Ideology	Tamil nationalism
Notable attacks	Central Bank bombing, Palliyagodella massacre, Dehiwala train bombing and others.
Status	Proscribed as a terrorist organization by 32 countries.
Annual revenue	$300–500 Million
Means of revenue	Donations from expatriate Tamils, Sale of Narcotics, Extortion Shipping, Sales of weapons, Taxes under LTTE controlled areas, Bank of Tamileelam

                  Military

 

                                     Sea Tigers

Colonel Soosai of the Sea Tigers

The Sea Tigers is the naval force of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and is lead by Colonel Soosai. It is believed to have about 2,000 personnel and has become a potent threat to the Sri Lankan Navy at Sea. According to a 2006 publication of the Woodrow Wilson School of Politics and International Studies, the Sea Tigers have destroyed 35%-50% of the Sri Lankan Navy's coastal craft.
Following its northern offensive, the Sri Lankan military reported that it captured Sea Tiger main base in Mullaitivu and several boat yards. In early February 2009, the military reported once again that it captured the last major Sea Tiger base, killing three senior commanders in the process and thus limiting Sea Tiger operations. Several days later it was claimed that Sea Tigers leader Soosai and several top aids were killed in a Sri Lanka Air Force raid on a command center.

                                   Air Tigers

The Air Tigers was the air force of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The Air Tigers were believed to have operated five light aircraft. The organization was revealed in 2007 when it conducted its first air raid on the Sri Lankan Air Force base. It later conducted another four air raids. With the Air Tigers, LTTE became the first non-state organization to establish an air force. Although the Sri Lankan Army captured Kilinochchi on January 2, 2009, it was not able to locate the LTTE aircraft. Later, two LTTE aircraft were shot down in Colombo during a suicide attack on the Sri Lanka Air Force headquarters and the Sri Lanka Air Force base hangars in Katunayake.

                                      Black Tigers

A Suicide Commando Unit , which is known for carrying deadly attacks against the Sri Lankan Army and also, politicians who opposed their movement of a separate state for the minority Tamil. The Black Tigers are the first to assassinate major political figures and has been known to carry roughly around 100–200 missions, all concluding in a deadly aftermath. Ranging from men to women, attacks were carried out to eliminate enemies for the LTTE to advance and control territory.

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CBI rules out rape, murder in Shopian case, files chargesheet against 13

The CBI has filed a chargesheet against 13 people including six doctors and lawyers for allegedly "fabricating" evidence in the aftermath of recovery of two bodies of women in Shopian in May this year, triggering protests.
 
                     The CBI informed the Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Monday that a chargesheet had been filed before a Chief Judicial Magistrate against 13 people for allegedly creating false evidence and witnesses.
CBI did not find anything to suggest that four police officials including the then Superintendent of Police Javed Iqbal Mattoo, Deputy Superintendent of Police Rohit Basgotra, SHO Shafiq Ahmed and Sub Inspector Gazi Karim were involved in the crime.


Widespread protests were held in Shopian district after recovery of two bodies of women -- 22-year-old Neelofar and her 17-year-old sister-in-law Asiya. The protestors were claiming rape and murder of the two women by securitymen.

The CBI had been given a two-month time by a division bench of the high court on October 13 to finish the probe into the case.

The CBI has said that the doctors have not properly conducted the postmortem and even the viscera samples were not taken.
The rape theory of the doctors was blown to pieces after the exhumation of the two bodies from the grave by the CBI and team of doctors from AIIMS, who had claimed during post-mortem that one of the victim – Asiya – was a virgin, they said.

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Toronto to host Bollywood's global awards in 2011

The International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards will be held in Toronto from June 16-19, 2011.
Bollywood actors Vivek Oberoi and Celina Jaitely, in the presence of Ontario's Premier Dalton McGuinty, made the announcement here.


"To win this privilege to host the 2011 IIFA awards...you need to know that Bollywood is in Ontario, especially Toronto. I was telling our stars here that Toronto city is the city of five billion people; 52 percent or half of the people living here were born outside the country. And a big component of that comes from the Asian community, particularly from India. So this is going to be exciting," said McGuinty.


A joint release by IIFA and the Ontario government said that the awards should attract about 40,000 visitors to the city and another 350 million viewers to television screens the world over.


South Asians make up the largest visible minority in Toronto, with about 300,000, 12 per cent of the entire city's population.
Celina Jaitley told reporters that Canada is a big base for Bollywood as there is huge fan following there.
"Well, Canada is big base for tour film industry. And I am sure we are very excited to go there. And this IIFA will be really big because a large number of our fans are from Canada. So we are really looking forward to this," said Jaitley.


IIFA ceremonies have been previously hosted by Dubai, Amsterdam, Johannesburg and Bangkok. (ANI)

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List of top Business schools

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM A)

Ranked amongst the top most business schools in India and Asia. The institute offers four programmes in Management. The PGP - Post Graduate Program (equivalent to MBA), the FPM - Fellowship Program in Management(equivalent to Ph.D), the FDP - Faculty Development Program for Management teachers and Trainers and the MDP - Management Development Program - a refresher for middle and top level managers. Admission process for PGP and FPM involves taking the Common Admission Test (CAT) followed by group discussion and interviews for short listed candidates.

Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIM C)

Ranked amongst the most prestigious business schools in India and Asia. The institute offers three full time programs. The PGDM - Post Graduate Program in Management (equivalent to MBA), the FPM - Fellowship Program in Management, the PGDCM - Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Aided Management. All three programs require the candidate to take CAT. The institute also offer part time PGDBM - Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management for managers with relevant work experience. In addition, MDP - Management Development Programs are held in regular intervals for middle and top level managers

Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM B)

IIM Bangalore offers two year full time PGP - Post Graduate Program in Management (equivalent to MBA) and a FPM - Fellowship Program in Management. Both these programs require the candidate to take CAT. The institute also offers part time non residential PGSM - Post Graduate Program in Software Enterprise Management. There is a separate entrance test for this program. This business school is ranked amongst the top three business schools in the country.

Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM L)

IIM Lucknow offers a two year full time residential PGP - Post Graduate Program in Management and a four year FPM program. Both these programs require a candidate to take CAT. The institute also has an interesting student exchange program where students of this B-School go to premier B-Schools the world over and do part of their education. Students and faculty from these internationally reputed B-Schools in turn visit IIM Lucknow. It is ranked amongst the top five B-Schools in India.

XLRI - Xavier Labour Research Institute, Jamshedpur

Xavier Labour Research Institute, popularly known as XLRI was established in 1949 at Jamshedpur. The institute offers two courses at the post graduation level in management - a post graduate diploma in Business administration and a post graduate diploma in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations (PMIR). Online version of the brochure is also available. In 2001, the average salary (including foreign offers) soared by 70% (over last year) to a whopping Rs.8.06 lakhs per annum. The offers in the Business Management program averaged at an awe-inspiring Rs.9.71 lakhs and in the Personnel Management program at Rs. 6.5 lakhs. And these exclude ESOPs and other means of compensation.

ISB - Indian School of Business, Hyderabad

Indian School of Business, Hyderabad is emerging as a preferred choice for MBA aspirants who want to pack in the program into a one year course. As it gradually builds up its permanent faculty base, the ISB has created a unique and sustainable visiting faculty model with some of the world's leading academicians from Wharton, Kellogg, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Duke and Texas among others. The school offers a one year Post Graduate Program in Management.

FMS - Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi

FMS is amongst the top 10 B-Schools in the country and probably one of the two attached to a university amongst the top ten. The full time program of FMS started in 1967. The whole outgoing batch of 2002 was placed within a span of 2 days. There were 8 foreign offers including British American Tobacco (BAT), OLAM and QAI among others.

Indian Institute of Management, Indore (IIMI)

The Indian Institute of Management, Indore (IIMI) is the latest addition to the IIM community. IIMI has a two-year post graduate programme emphasizing on Experiential learning, IT orientation, and Social Sensitivity. The construction of the new campus is progressing at a rapid pace and IIMI plans to operate out of the new campus from June 2003. IIM-I offers the following programs viz., (a) The Post Graduate Programme (PGP), a two year programme (b) Management Development Programme. These are held throughout the year. (c) Faculty Development Programme (FDP) is designed to assist in the development of teachers, researchers, and trainers for management education and (d) Executive Post-Graduate Programme (Exe-PGP) a 18-months programme, designed for working executives.

Indian Institute of Management, Calicut (IIM K - Kozhikode)

Established in 1996, The Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, IIMK is the fifth Indian Institute of Management. Its academic programmes encompass a range of long term full time diploma programmes such as the Post Graduate Programme in Management, and a number of short duration executive education programmes. The institute also offers an "Interactive Distance Learning Programme"

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Indian Institutes of Technology

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), are a group of fifteen autonomous engineering and technology-oriented institutes of higher education established and declared as Institutes of National Importance by the Parliament of India.

The IITs were created to train scientists and engineers, with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to support the economic and social development of India after independence in 1947.

In order of establishment, they are located in

Kharagpur (1950; as IIT 1951),
Mumbai (1958)
Chennai (1959),
Kanpur (1959),
Delhi (1961; as IIT 1963),
Guwahati (1994),
Roorkee (1847; as IIT 2001),
Bhubaneswar (2008),
Gandhinagar (2008),
Hyderabad (2008),
Patna (2008),
Punjab (2008)
Rajasthan (2008).


The Government of India has announced plans to add three more IITs, to be established at

Indore,
Mandi
Varanasi (via conversion of the IT BHU).

IIT Muddenahalli, the first in Karnataka, is located at the birthplace of legendary engineer and statesman Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya, and will be completed by 2012 as part of the 11th Five Year Plan.


                                                           

                            

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UN climate summit opens amid calls for early action

A crucial UN climate summit opened here today amid calls for "early action" to combat the threat and with the hope that emission reductions promised by key countries had put the world closer to a global warming

control pact.

US President Barack Obama, Indian PM Manmohan Singh and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao are among the 110 heads of state and government attending the final leg of the summit raising hopes for a stronger political resolve to tackle global warming.

"This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we got a new and better one. If we ever do," conference president Connie Hedegaard said adding, key to an agreement is finding a way to channel public and private funds to poor countries to help them fight the effects of climate change.

At the beginning of the meet, a short film was screened showing children of the future facing an apocalypse if world leaders failed to act today.

"There will be hundreds of millions of refugees," R K Pachauri, the head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in the clip.

Addressing the delegates from 192 countries, Pachauri stressed that years of dedicated work by the scientific community showed that "the evidence is now overwhelming that the world would benefit greatly from early action and that delay would only lead to costs in economic and human terms that would become progressively high."

He also slammed the so-called 'climategate', or the theft of some emails from experts at a British university, which were seized on by climate sceptics as evidence that scientists distorted data to dramatise the threat of global warming.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen told the opening ceremony that the world is looking to the conference to safeguard the future of the mankind.

"For the next two weeks, Copenhagen will be Hopenhagen. By the end, we must be able to deliver back to the world what was granted us here today: hope for a better future."

Along with 15,000 delegates, more than 100 world leaders including US President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao will attend the 12-day summit for which security has been beefed up.

Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC executive secretary, said there was unprecedented political momentum to clinch an ambitious deal but countries needed to negotiate harder.

"Time is up," de Boer said. "Over the next two weeks nations have to deliver".

The first week of the conference will focus on the text of a draft treaty. Major decisions may await arrival of the environment ministers next week and the heads of state in the final days of the meet, which ends on December 18.

As the first commitment period for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, regulated by the Kyoto Protocol, would expire in 2012, the international community would endeavour to map out a plan for binding emissions cuts for the second commitment period from 2012 to 2020 at Copenhagen.

Delegates must craft a blueprint for tackling manmade "greenhouse" gases and put together a funding mechanism for helping poor nations fight climate change.

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Tragedy of a tragedy

Forget Babri Masjid, it’s an assumed shame. Think Bhopal, 3 December 1984. If the ghastly tragedy, triggered by the leakage of methyl-isocyanate (MIC) from the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal, will go down as the biggest industrial disaster in the country, then the subsequent handling of the entire catastrophe and the case in the court will remain as modern India’s biggest moment of dishonour.

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The noxious gas from the Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal killed over 3,500 people instantly.Thousands were severely affected and handicapped. NGOs estimate that the death toll rose sharply to 10,000 within 72 hours and that the number now stands at over 25,000.  Twentyfive years hence that cataclysm, the survivors are still clutching at the straws of imagined hope, while the high honchos of the company, who should have been paying a price for the callous calamity, have been let murderously scot free. Actually, the Bhopal Gas Tragedy has been lost in the collective consciousness of the nation. India is yet to extradite the main accused, American Warren Anderson, who never appeared in a court to face trail. In a case that seems to be going nowhere, India issued a fresh arrest warrant in July this year and the Ministry of External Affairs is pursuing the matter with the US administration. Anderson was chief executive officer of the Union Carbide Corp (UCC), now owned by Dow Chemical Co, when the disaster unfolded in the most poignant manner possible.  It was found during investigation that UCC was to provide safety measures to store MIC as well as its operating standards to UCIL. But due to inherent defects in the design of the UCIL plant, which were in the knowledge of the accused persons, MIC gas leaked, resulting in the death of thousands of human beings and numerous animals besides having grievous impact on many more thousands. After the disaster, a case was registered by the Madhya Pradesh police against officials of UCIL. It was transferred to the CBI on 6 December, 1984. Three years later, the CBI filed its charge sheet in the court of the additional session judge in Bhopal under Indian Penal Code sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 429 (mischief by killing, poisoning, maiming animals) against Anderson and seven other people. However, the Supreme Court later amended the charges to sections 304-A (causing death by negligence), 336 (acts endangering life or personal safety of others), 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others) and 338 (causing grievous hurt by acts endangering life or personal safety of others). To cut a long story short, not a single accused has been sentenced so far. All the Indian accused are out on bail and Anderson has not appeared before the court. And, folks, that’s the problem of modern India. No will. No strength of nerve. No sense of righteous indignation. No empathy for justice. . From Afzal Guru to Ajmal Kasab to Anderson. They all represent the same evil, to which the State acquiesces only too easily. The martyrs of Mumbai and Bhopal are the victims of the same enemy: Complacency and criminal connivance. It’s a sham. And it’s a shame, too.

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