MALAYALI

MANOJ NIGHT Shyamalan’s $57 million Hollywood film, The Happening, had the highest world gross of any movie, beating The Hulk to second spot. The sci-fi thriller, produced by UTV Motion Pictures and 20th Century Fox, took home $62 million over Friday the 13th weekend in June.
According to Shyamalan, the sci-fi movie was not planned, it just happened and is unlike his favourite genre of horror.
Shyamalan was born in Mahe, Kerala, in 1970. His parents moved to the US soon after his birth and Shyamalan is living there ever since. He rose to fame through The Sixth Sense.
UTV CEO Ronnie Screwvala said that this was the biggest and the most high-profile Asian film co-production with a US studio.
Asked about acceptability of Indian-origin filmmakers in Hollywood, Shayamalan said: “Story telling is the king. If the screenplay is good, it does not matter who you are. I feel really accepted in Hollywood.”
He added: “I live in Philadelphia which is 3000 miles from California. It is bizzare to make films without living in Hollywood.”

South Africa
THE KERALA government will issue photo IDs to non-resident Keralites and is launching the pilot scheme at Mankada Malappuram.
The village council has started distributing application forms for the IDs and confirmed application forms can be downloaded from its Norka Roots website and can be submitted to local bodies within areas they come from.
NRKs or their spouses or parents can also submit the applications which need to be endorsed by members of respective wards of the village council.
The cards will be valid for three years and card holders will receive insurance coverage and other benefits including discounts on the purchase of consumer products.

India
VS ACHUTHANANDAN, Kerala Chief Minister, said the state government is to start a new company in which NRIs from Kerala can invest.
Achuthanandan stated that details are being finalised and will be released shortly.
Chairman of Roots Norka the state government company that looks after the needs of non-resident Indians in Kerala, Sheela Thomas, said the name of the company will also be announced shortly.
The company will ensure NRIs receive healthy returns on their investment in the proposed ventures.
Kerala has over two million people working abroad, mostly in the Gulf and nearby countries.

GUJARATI DIASPORA

THE LATEST buzz in the UK is to keep pace with the new trend-setters, the cash-rich Patels. Patels are now ranked No.1 in a study by a UK-based online electrical retailer on hi-tech buys. It shows Patels are most likely to own must-have sophisticated gadgets soon after it hits the market. 
Based on 12 months of sales figures for a range of the latest digital goods, Patels topped the chart spending an average of £2,315.40 on nine items like MP3 players, flat-screen TVs and Blu-ray players.
According to Pixmania.com, the largest European consumer electronic products store on the internet, “Keeping up with the Joneses is a well-known phrase but Patels have beaten the Joneses hands down. Other families fall short of the Patels because they buy only some of the top-end products in the list or pick cheaper versions. While Patels will settle for nothing less than an iPod, other groups are likely to opt for a cheaper MP3 player.”
Study ranks Joneses (who have the second most popular surname in the UK) 16th on the list of gadget spend-a-holics, indicating that the ‘Joneses Factor’ is now the ‘Patel factor’ when it comes to owning the latest technology.

United States

SAMEER MISHRA, a 13-year-old from Indiana, won the annual US Spelling Bee, beating out other top students who grappled with strange and arcane polysyllabic words. 
Sameer, who also garnered some of the biggest laughs with his witty replies to questions, beat out other finalists with his precise spelling of guerdon, which means a reward.
Sameer won $30,000 in cash and other prizes at the competition, sponsored by E.W. Scripps Co., the Cincinnati-based broadcaster and newspaper publisher. He bested the remainder of the 288 children participating in the contest over two days from the US as well as countries including Canada, Ghana and South Korea.
Sidharth Chand, of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, came in second. The 12-year-old lost the competition when he misspelled prosopopoeia in round 15 at the Grand Hyatt in Washington. 
In all, four Indian Americans were among the last 12 who qualified for the final. Kavya Shivashankar was tied in the fourth place with four others and Janhnavi Iyer was in the 8th place. 
The youngest to qualify to participate in the championship was 8-year-old Indian American Sriram Hathwar.