TAMIL DIASPORA

Malaysia

N. LOGESWARAN, 10, was picked up from his school by police and questioned for allegedly stealing his school teacher's purse in Kampar, Perak. His parents were not informed and he was only released by police after 10pm.
His mother Sarasvathy stated that police slapped and choked the boy, scalded his leg and tried to melt plastic on his private parts, they threatened him with a dagger and pistol, handcuffed and locked him in a dark room.
Saraswathy says the boy is traumatised by the incident and that he has injuries on the back of his head, wrists and legs after the ordeal.
He was taken to a hospital later that night after complaining of headaches and nausea.

United States

PEPSICO CHIEF Indra Nooyi has topped Forbes magazine's list of highest paid female chief executives, with her take home estimated at $12.7 million, including a $4.5 million bonus, ranking her at No 139 of 500 company chiefs overall.
Thirteen female CEOs on the list saw a pay hike average of 27 per cent last year.
Nooyi's total compensation is however just one fourteenth of the highest paid man on the list that is topped by Larry Ellison of Oracle.
Nooyi was followed on the female executives list by Avon Products' Andrea Jung and Xerox chief Anne Mulcahy.

CHENNAI-BORN Jay Kumar Sundarajan, 26, a PhD candidate in electrical engeneering and computer science at MIT was selected by the prestigious Marconi Society as a recipient of its inaugural Young Scholar Award.
Sundarajan, a student at the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems at MIT, was one of four students nationwide named for the award. 
This is the first year the Young Scholars Award has been granted by the Society, best known for its $100,000 Marconi Award and fellowship.
“I am working on the theoretical aspects of communications networks, particularly network coding. It is related to routing data through the Internet. How do you transfer data in a much faster way,” he says.
More computers are being added everyday to the Internet and so there is a big traffic management issue here. 
An IIT Chennai graduate in electrical engineering, Sundararajan received his master’s in electrical engineering and computer science in 2005 from MIT, where he won the Morris Joseph Levin Award for the best oral presentation of a master’s thesis from the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science.

KANNADIGA DIASPORA

United Kingdom

BANGALORE BORN M. Farook Sait is running for president of Federal Asian Pacific American Council. Founded in 1985, the Federal Asian Pacific American Council (FAPAC) is a nonprofit nonpartisan organisation that represents civilian and military Asian Pacific American (APA) employees in the Federal and District of Columbia governments. 
Now Sait, special counsel to assistant secretary for civil rights, US Department of Agriculture (USDA), is contending for president of the Council saying that through his advocacy two USDA agencies signed an MoU providing $10,000 annually over a five year period for the recruitment of Asian American students to serve as interns. He also champions faster promotions for qualified Asian Americans in the workforce. In 1994 the USDA selected him for the Senior Executive Fellows Training Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard U.
Farook is a frequnt host on the DC popular TV show 'Darshan' and addresses current issues. He is a grad of Columbia Union College Maryland and Howard University School of Law, Washington DC. He is a member of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the US and the State Bar of Maryland.

United States

APPARAO RAO from the University of California at San Diego has devised a way to make tiny carbon springs with shock absorbing qualities called coiled carbon nanotubes that can enable small devices like cell phones to bounce rather than crack when dropped.
Rao says the new method is unique because beds of coiled carbon nanotubes can be grown in a single step using proprietary hydrocarbon catalyst mixtures that they also envision could be used in soldiers' body armour, car bumpers and bushings, and even as cushioning elements in shoe soles.
He says till now they faced the problem of producing enough of the coiled carbon nanotubes at a reasonable cost to make a difference, but their current method produces the nanotubes fast in high yields that can be scaled up to industrial levels, as after their formation the coiled nanotubes can be peeled off and placed on other surfaces to form instant cushioning coatings.
His team has also developed a process that coaxes traditional straight carbon nanutubes to split into a "Y" shape that then behave like tiny transistors and process information.
Rao believes the carbon nanotubes have tremendous potential for the lives of everyone in the future.