FILMMAKER MIRA Nair will be honoured at the 17th annual Gotham Awards in New York in November for her contributions to independent cinema. She will receive a Gotham Awards Tribute on November 27 at Brooklyn’s Steiner Studios.
Her first major film, Salaam Bombay, which won several awards, is considered a classic which is often discussed in classrooms where young students are trained in the art of film making. It was nominated for Oscar in the foreign film category.
In 2003, Nair founded a film laboratory Maisha dedicated to support visionary screen writers and directors in East and South East Asia..

November 11 will be celebrated in New Jersey as Kerala Day. After the Gulf countries, the United States is the favourite destination for Malayalees. Recognising the presence of a large number of Malayalees in the state, the Assembly of New Jersey had last year proclaimed that henceforth the day would be Kerala Day.
Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula helped the community get this proclamation by moving his resolution in the General Asssembly. For the record, Chivukula is a Telugu.

An Indian journalist living in Australia has come out with a magazine to help Indian students there find jobs, accommodation and information on immigration issues.
"The magazine deals with education, job search, accommodation and migration issues, and will help the Indian students who go there for educational purposes," Thiruvallam Bhasi, the editor of the magazine called Indian Student from Melbourne said.
"Of late thousands of Indian students come to Australia every year for admission in universities here. Our magazine provides in-depth details of the new courses, universities and campuses. It also provides a forum for the overseas students to communicate," said Bhasi who worked as a journalist in Kerala a year ago.
Seeing the huge response from the students at the launch of the first issue in October, Bhasi is now getting ready to launch the magazine in New Zealand and Britain in January, where a large number of Indian students go.
According to New Zealand media report there are 93,000 foreign students enrolled in New Zealand universities and institutes. A good number of them are Indian students.

Global kerala Foundation, an umbrella organisation of Keralites the world over, will adopt 100 government schools in the state to provide necessary infrastructure facilities.
Working chairman G. Rajamohan said, three schools in Nattika, Thrissur, and one each in Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram, would benefit through the project in the next academic year.
The initiative is part of the ‘’better school-better citizens,’’ project being implemented in coordination with the Higher Education Department.

According to a recent estimate made by the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, Abu Dhabi, there are more than 33,000 establishments with a capital of less than Omani Rial 5,000 and Omani Rial 10,000 (Rs 5 lakh to Rs 11 lakh) registered in Oman. According to the study thousands of such small business establishment are run by expatriate businessmen, especially Indians and Malayalis under the sponsorship scheme. In many cases, the involvement of Arab partners is to get a share of the profit made by businesses run by expatriates. According to the rules, foreigners are not allowed to have legal right over property or assets in the GCC.

The Kerala Information Technology Alliance (KITA) has been launched to make Kerala a premier global technology hub.
Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan said in a message: "I hope KITA will provide a platform for IT professionals of Kerala origin to share best practices, ideas and thereby influence and accelerate the growth of Kerala in key industries."
A voluntary body, KITA hopes to provide the network and connections for Malayalees and IT professionals worldwide to tap their collective intelligence and to innovate.

Raja Krishnamoorthi a partner at Kirkland and Ellis LLP, a 1,000-strong global law firm based in Chicago, has been appointed Deputy Treasurer for Policy and Programmes of Illinois, making him the highest ranking South Asian to serve in the state administration.
Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias said 34-year old Raja is a leader who will bring a wealth of experience and innovation to state government and that Illinois residents are fortunate to have him working for them.

Indra Krishnamoorthi Nooyi, the first woman chief executive of food and beverages megacorp PepsiCo, has topped Fortune magazine’s most powerful businesswomen in the US for the second year in a row. Nooyi beat out competition from Xerox’s Anne Mulcahy and eBay’s Meg Whitman.
CNN Time Warner group magazine Fortune stated that the chief executive tops the list for increased revenues ($35.1 billion), operating profits ($6.4 billion) and earnings per share ($3) all rising in 2006..

The Executive Council Member (Sydney), of the Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations, V. Rajakulendran, met two important Federal Ministers and talked about the problems faced by the Tamil community in Sri Lanka and requested both of them to take appropriate actions to alleviate their problems. Rajakulendran met the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Kevin Andrews, at a community leaders’ consultation session. Rajakulendran thanked the minister for the compassion he has shown in expediting the processing of the refugee status claims by the 83 Tamil youths held in Nauru. 

Vijay Govindarajan, professor of International Business at Dartmouth Colleges Tuck School of Business, is to join General Electric as professor in residence and chief innovation consultant to assist the company advance its innovation agenda.
His area of expertise is creating breakthrough businesses while managing current business which will be his job at GE. GE has identified areas to innovate in including environment, infrastructure, demographics, emerging markets, digital technologies and financial liquidity.

S. Chandrasekaran worked as a farm supervisor at Bollywood Veggies in 1990s. In 1998 he obtained an Indian passport in his cousin’s name and brought a fake graduation certificate in Botany as per his agent’s advice.
The scam was discovered by Singapore manpower ministry and he was jailed for 2 weeks and fined S$ 6000. But instead of disappointment, his boss Ivy Singh–Lim said 
she was impressed with Shivalingam’s work and wants him back on the job.

A South African court ruled that Indian origin Sunali Pillay, 19, may wear her nose stud to school, ordering the institution to amend its rules to take into account the cultural needs of its students.
Chief Justice Pius Langa stated that the school had not considered the girl’s Tamil tradition that includes the voluntary practice that formed part of Pillay’s South Indian Tamil culture.
School authorities said the ruling will affect discipline, citing the examples of Zulu children attending school barefoot saying it’s their culture, or a Christian wearing a crucifix or a Muslim a beard. A teacher said that dress codes are linked purely to commitment, discipline, identity, and intimately connect to the principles the school stands for.

K. Rajalingam, 30, a molecular biologist working at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, has been chosen for a 1.3 million euro award from a German research Foundation.
The Foundation selects outstanding young scientists in all disciplines each year and supports them to establish independent research teams to qualify for leading positions in science and research in Germany. 
Rajalingam’s major focus of research is on understanding programmed cell death, which plays a crucial role in the normal development and homeostasis of multi cellular organisms. He will investigate how cell death signalling is orchestrated in normal and tumour cells.