Bhupen Hazarika's Ad Shoot Kicks Off a Row in Assam

Guwahati, Nov 4 : Music maestro Bhupen Hazarika and his companion Kalpana Lajmi are mired in a blazing controversy in Assam after images of the 85-year-old ailing singer being taken in a chair to the banks of the Brahmaputra river for a commercial shoot were carried in the local media.

'Bhupen Hazarika has been reduced to a commercial commodity and we are extremely saddened to see the images on TV and in newspapers of our elder brother being lifted by six people with bamboo poles placed on the side of the chair,' Bhupen Hazarika's younger brother Nripen told IANS.

The legendary singer and Dadasaheb Phalke award winner Monday acted in a commercial for a local cement brand. The frail Hazarika, who underwent a cardiac bypass surgery last year, was seen in the visuals veing carried in a chair. The entire shoot lasted for about three hours on the river bank near Chandrapur in Guwahati.

'As ardent fans and well-wishers we went to the shooting site to seek his blessings, but were rebuked and literally pushed by Kalpana Lajmi and other crew members of the shooting unit,' said Dwijen Kalita, a community leader in the Chandrapur area.

Kalita and about 300 locals gathered at the shooting site on hearing about Hazarika's arrival.

'We were shocked to hear Kalpana Lajmi swearing at us, saying to us to get lost and using words like stupid people. She (Kalpana Lajmi), in fact, twice said she was his (Bhupen Hazarika) wife,' an angry Kalita said.

Hazarika and Lajmi has been living together for the past nearly four decades, although there is no formal confirmation about the couple having got married.

'Only from newspapers and TV did we hear that Kalpana Lajmi is my brother's wife. Although I am his younger brother, I don't have any information about the two getting married formally,' Nripen said.

'We have no problems with Kalpana Lajmi and Bhupen Hazarika sharing a relationship, whether married or not, but the fact of the matter is he is our pride, and we as people of Assam have every right to see that our pride is not used as a commodity for serving someone else's business interests,' said Prasanta Phukan, a Bhupen Hazarika fan and a lawmaker from the Bharatiya Janata Party.

There was no immediate reaction from either Hazarika or Lajmi over the controversy - an issue that has hogged headlines in the local media.

Singer, lyricist, filmmaker, and one of India's best-known balladeers, Hazarika and Lajmi generally stay in Mumbai.

'Bhupso (Kalpana endearingly addresses Hazarika as Bhupso) did offer to marry me two years ago, but I said no,' Lajmi, born in 1954, told IANS in an interview in February 2009.

'Maybe he wanted to give me the status of wife, but I was not interested. For me, the relationship, the trust and the respect that we share with each other are more important than marriage.'

Lajmi, best known for her woman-oriented films like 'Rudaali', 'Daman', 'Ek Pal', 'Chingaari' and 'Darmiyaan', says she met Hazarika through her uncle.

'We have been living together for the past 38 years now, although my mother never accepted the relationship, nor did Bhupso's family members, barring Manisha (Bhupen's younger brother Jayanta's wife).

'Just about a couple of months back my mother asked me to get married to Bhupso. This is completely Indian mentality, you know,' Lajmi said during the 2009 interview.

Get Ready to Ride a Low-Cost Harley-Davidson Bike

After setting up shop, American cult bike maker Harley-Davidson is planning a low-cost model for India.

"We give inputs on the basis of market insights and consumer preferences to our global product development team to make our future product line-up relevant to our growing customer base here. Going ahead, we may look at developing a low-cost product for Indian consumers," said Anoop Prakash, managing director, Harley-Davidson India.

Harley-Davidson, which reported a two per cent drop in global revenues from motorcycles at $1.09 billion for the September quarter, is betting big on India and China. Chief Financial Officer John Olin has been reported saying, "We believe the long-term prospect (in China and India) is extra-ordinary."
The company expects to sell 200-250 bikes by the end of 2010, within six months of its launch in India. "Last year, as many as 1,000 superbikes were sold in India. The market is growing at over 20 per cent every year and strong double-digit growth rate is expected to sustain at least for the next 8-10 years," said Prakash.

To strengthen its foothold in India, the company has set up an assembly facility at Bawal in Haryana. The move would help Harley to save on import tariff and re-work pricing of its products for the Indian market. It is the company's second assembly unit outside its homebase, US, after Brazil.

Import duty and local taxes on completely built-up units amount to as much as 100 per cent of US prices of models offered by the company. Once the proposed assembly unit becomes operational in the first half of 2011, the impact of import tariff will be reduced to nearly 40 per cent. "We will announce the revised prices of our models in January. The intention is to make our bikes more accessible to people here. The potential is good and I expect India to become our largest market in Asia in the coming decade."

Worldwide retail sales fell by 7.7 per cent to 58,849 units during July-September, compared to 63,729 units in the year-ago period, on weak consumer spending in the US. The company expects 40 per cent of its revenues from motorcycle sales to come from international markets by 2014, compared to 27 per cent at present.

Harley-Davidson sells 12 models belonging to five families -- Sporster, Dyna, Softail, V-Rod, Touring -- priced between Rs 6.95 lakh and Rs 34.95 lakh, in India. The bike maker has four authorised dealerships in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Source: Indian Express

The Five Styles of Flirting

An assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, Jeffrey Hall, has identified five styles of flirting.

Hall, who recently completed study into styles of flirting among dating adults, surveyed more than 5,100 people regarding their methods of communicating romantic interest.

Five styles of flirting identified are: physical, traditional, polite, sincere and playful.

Physical

Physical flirting involves the expression of sexual interest in a potential partner. People who scored high in this form of flirting often develop relationships quickly, have more sexual chemistry and have a greater emotional connection to their partners.

Traditional

Traditional flirts think men should make the first move and women should not pursue men. Because they adopt a more passive role in dating, women with this style are likely to report trouble getting men's attention and are less likely to flirt or be flattered by flirting. Traditional men often know a potential partner for a longer time before approaching them. Both genders tend to be introverted and prefer a more intimate dating scene.

Polite

The polite style of flirting focuses on proper manners and nonsexual communication. Although they are less likely to approach a potential partner and do not find flirting flattering, they do tend to have meaningful relationships.

Sincere

Sincere flirting is based on creating emotional connections and communicating sincere interest. Although women tend to score higher in this style, it is advocated by both genders. Relationships involve strong emotional connections and sexual chemistry and are typically meaningful.

Playful
People with playful flirting styles often flirt with little interest in a long-term romance. However, they find flirting fun and enhancing to their self-esteem. They are less likely to have important and meaningful relationships.

Hall said that for the most part, there was little difference between genders within each flirting style.

Source: ANI

Burma Hit By Massive Net Attack Ahead of Election

Huge amounts of traffic easily overwhelmed Burma's links to the net

An ongoing computer attack has knocked Burma off the internet, just days ahead of its first election in 20 years.

The attack started in late October but has grown in the last few days to overwhelm the nation's link to the net, said security firm Arbor Networks.

Reports from Burma say the disruption is ongoing.

The attack, which is believed to have started on 25 October, comes ahead of closely-watched national elections on 7 November.

International observers and foreign journalists are not being allowed into the country to cover the polls - which many Western leaders have said will not be free or fair.

It will raise suspicions that Burma's military authorities could be trying to restrict the flow of information over the election period.

Cyber attack

The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, as it is known, works by flooding a target with too much data for it to handle.

The "distributed" element of it means that it involves PCs spread all over the world. These networks of enslaved computers - known as "botnets" - are typically hijacked home computers that have been compromised by a virus.

They are typically rented out by cyber criminals for various means, including web attacks. They can be called into action and controlled from across the internet.

Burma links to the wider net via cables and satellites that, at most, can support data transfers of 45 megabits of data per second.

At its height, the attack was pummelling Burma's connections to the wider net with about 10-15 gigabits of data every second.

Writing about the attack, Dr Craig Labovitz from Arbor Networks said the gigabits of traffic was "several hundred times more than enough" to swamp these links.

The result, said Dr Labovitz, had disrupted network traffic in and out of the nation.

He said the attack was sophisticated in that it rolled together several different types of DDoS attacks and traffic was coming from many different sources.

At time of writing attempts to contact IP addresses in the block owned by Burma and its telecoms firms timed out, suggesting the attack is still underway.

"Our technicians have been trying to prevent cyber attacks from other countries," a spokesperson from Yatanarpon Teleport told AFP.

"We still do not know whether access will be good on the election day."

Mr Labovitz said that he did not know the motivation for the attack but said that analysis of similar events in the past had found motives that ran the gamut "from politically motivated DDoS, government censorship, extortion and stock manipulation."

He also noted that the current wave of traffic was "significantly larger" than high profile attacks against Georgia and Estonia in 2007.

A380 Airbus Engine Fails…Quantas Passengers Lucky

Phew What Luck….on the world’s biggest commercial plane…

Passengers aboard a Qantas A380 Airbus have described their relief at landing unscathed after the plane's engine disintegrated mid-flight.

By Bonnie Malkin

Indonesian police officers carry a part of a Qantas jetliner that was found in the area, at the local police headquarters in Batam, Indonesia Photo: AP

Technicians look at the damaged engine of Qantas Airways A-380 passenger plane QF32 at Changi airport in Singapore Photo: REUTERS

Qantas A380 superjumbo after a safe emergency landing at Changi airport, Singapore, following engine problems and shedding some debris over Indonesia's Batam island Photo: EPA

Indonesian police officers inspect parts of a Qantas jetliner that were found in the area, at the local police headquarters in Batam, Indonesia Photo: AP

The flight, which originated in London and was destined for Sydney, was abandoned 15 minutes after take-off from Singapore when passengers heard a loud bang and saw smoke and sparks coming out of one engine.

The pilot then informed the cabin that the engine had been shut down and the aircraft was heading back to Changi Airport.

The A380, carrying 433 passengers and 26 crew, circled for an hour dumping fuel before it landed safely at Changi at 11.45am local time.

Once on the tarmac, it appeared that casing from the aircraft's number two engine was missing and parts of the aircraft's underside were blackened.

The incident has raised safety concerns over the world's biggest passenger jet, with Qantas suspending flights of all six of its A380s indefinitely. Models owned by Air France, Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa will continue to fly.

Lars Sandberg, a DJ from Glasgow, Scotland, who was on the plane said he was "just happy to be alive".

He told the BBC website: "Everything was going smoothly in the first 15 minutes and then there was a sharp bang. I thought some metal container fell down in the cargo area, but the carriage started to vibrate and there was a bit of smoke.

"I was sitting right next to engine two. People around me were visibly shaken and we all realised that whatever happened wasn't normal. There was a mother with two children who was quite worried."

He went on: "The landing was quite smooth, although the plane felt a bit heavy. When we landed there was fuel leaking from the plane, something ignited and blew the case of the engine.

"When we got off and saw the engine itself and the back casing burnt off, that was pretty scary. It was a nerve-wracking experience and I feel a little bit shaken up. I'm just happy to be alive and safe in the terminal building."

Singapore-based businessman Mr Waschbusch posted a message on social networking site Twitter shortly after landing which read: "Just emergency landed back in Singapore after engine blew up at take-off and parts ripped through wings. Damn."

He told Daybreak that passengers were shouting and crying with relief when the jet landed safely.

He explained: "There was immediately rapture, shouting and crying - it was an amazing sight.

"We didn't quite feel safe at the moment of touchdown because you've got rolling all the way till the end of the runway, we then parked at the end of the runway and we were still leaking fuel from the engine, so fire-fighters came and had to take care of the fuel leak.

"The (engine) one on the left hand side kept running and they weren't able to turn off that engine - so we were still half an hour or so when we were on the ground and still sceptical about what was going on and we just wanted to exit."

When the Airbus was unveiled in 2005, it was hailed as the beginning of a new era in long haul air travel. Each double-decker A380 can carry up to 500 passengers and cut travel times from London to Sydney by several hours.

There have been no fatal incidents involving A380s since they were launched as the greenest, quietest – as well as the biggest – jetliner in the world.

However, earlier this year one of the planes operated by Qantas burst two tyres when landing in Sydney, and in September 2009 an A380 was forced to turn around in mid-flight and return to Paris.

The latest incident comes just days before Qantas was due to celebrate its 90th anniversary.

Alan Joyce, the chief executive of Australia's national carrier, said the airline had opened an investigation into what went wrong but in the meantime was taking no risks.

"We have decided that we will suspend all A380 take-offs until we're fully comfortable that sufficient information has been obtained about QF32," he said in Sydney.

"The A380 is a fantastic aircraft. This issue of an engine failure is one we have not seen before. We are obviously taking this very seriously, because it was a significant engine failure."

Rolls-Royce, which manufactures the engines, would be involved in the investigation, he said.

However, Mr Joyce said the incident would not affect pending orders for the aircraft.

"We have orders for over 20 aircraft. Those aircraft will continue to arrive," he said.

There are 37 A380s in service around the world, flying 26 routes.

Aviation experts have said that despite the fact that no one was injured during the incident, it was very serious.

Péter Marosszéky, senior visiting fellow in the Department of Aviation at the University of New South Wales, said it was "a fairly massive internal failure".

"This type of incident has been seen previously but it was a long time ago and with much older planes than the A380," he said.

"This is probably the most serious incident involving the A380 since it began flying in commercial service," said aviation expert Tom Ballantyne, chief correspondent of Orient Aviation magazine.

There was initial confusion after early reports said that the A380 Airbus had crashed in a western Indonesian town.

Witnesses said that they had heard a loud explosion as a Qantas aircraft flew overhead and pieces of fuselage were found on the ground.

Pictures of metal, some the size of a door bearing the red and white of the "flying kangaroo" logo, flashed on MetroTV, with people milling around.

"I heard a big explosion at around 9:15am and saw a commercial passenger plane flying low in the distance with smoke on one of its wings," Rusdi, a local resident, told MetroTV.

"The debris started falling on my house."

However, the Australian national carrier quickly denied that any of its planes had crashed, saying that QF32 had suffered engine problems and had been forced to turn around.

Qantas has never had a fatal jetliner accident in its 90-year history.

The incident took place as it emerged that Jetstar, Qantas's budget airline, had to divert one of its aircraft into Changi Airport earlier this week.

Jetstar Flight JQ 28 from Phuket to Sydney, operated by an Airbus A330-200 aircraft, was diverted without incident into Singapore Changi because of a problem with the autopilot.

Jetstar said that the aircraft, which was carrying 288 passengers, had "a normal landing" into Singapore.

The A330-200 aircraft is undergoing inspection by Jetstar engineers based in Singapore.

A spokesman for Lufthansa said it had no plans to ground its three A380 aircraft but that it would do so if advised of any concerns by the manufacturer.

An Airbus spokesman said the company would assist Singaporean authorities with their investigation.

Bombay Bar Girls Are Back

New Delhi, Nov 4 : Five years after Mumbai clamped down on bar dancers, the women still await rehabilitation and many have been forced to join the circus or become sex workers, says San Francisco-based writer Sonia Faleiro whose latest book casts a candid look at their lives now.

"Unlike the protagonist of my book, Leela, who stayed on to fight the ban, most Mumbai bar dancers have either left for home or been informally absorbed into professions like circuses and 'tamasha' (traditional Indian street performing arts) that they had left behind," Faleiro told IANS in an interview.

"A lot of them work on their own as sex workers independent of pimps. They are attached to brothels or they offer their services at private parties in Mumbai, Madh Island and Uttar Pradesh," she said.

Her second book, "Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars", was released this week. Her first book was a work of fiction called "The Girl".

Faleiro, a former journalist, said the situation is both ridiculous and tragic at the existing dance bars in Mumbai now. "Customers come to the bars and alcohol flows. The girls just stand like ice candy," she said.

On July 22, 2005, the Maharashtra state assembly adopted a bill banning dance bars across the state. The ban was implemented across the state starting August 2005 forcing thousands of bar dancers out of jobs.

Faleiro's book is a journey into the forbidden world of Mumbai dance bars led by the protagonist Leela, a bar dancer, who stands her ground against the administration and wins.

"The idea for the book was sown in 1995," the writer said.

"I watched a television report about dance bars and called a bar owner in south Mumbai - an old source. He managed to procure three bar dancers with difficulty because they do not talk to the media. One of them was Leela. She was different from the rest - with a powerful personality and beauty in whose presence other women did not feel diminished. I was struck by her sophisticated intellect," Faleiro said.

Leela did not harbour any resentment or bitterness about her vocation, Faleiro said.

"She trusted me implicitly because I was not judgmental. I was driven by curiosity. When I told her that I wanted to write about her in some capacity, she agreed to introduce me to the world of dance - family and boyfriend Purushottam Sethi, a married man. I followed her for many months - then the ban happened. Over cups of black tea, I felt that the issue had to addressed, had to be remembered, and the best way to do it was in the form of a book," the writer recalled.

Faleiro perceives this "whole idea of morality associated with bar dancers as nebulous".

"Out of 10 people, if eight people say something is moral, the remaining two will join the gang. What the majority says becomes moral," she said.

The ban was largely a political ploy, the writer said. "Politicians require issues to attach their manes to - the issues bring them attention and keep them in the news. The ban was a clever subject...meant to trigger controversy with issues of wine, women and morality," she said.

Faleiro said the "dance bar girls worked in a more protected environment than sex workers". "No one could solicit them during shows. They indulged in occasional relationships with customers, exchanged gifts," she said.

But sex workers are vulnerable because of unprotected sex, she said. "They need to be protected," she said.

"Let us not pretend that the middle class does not patronise sex trade. A young middle class woman would rather encourage her husband to sleep with a prostitute, rather than a woman from her peer group. Brothels are mostly frequented by young middle class boys in their teens," Faleiro said.

"Not much has changed in mindsets in the last two centuries," she observed. Faleiro is working on a new non-fiction.

Source: IANS

Bru Repatriation to Mizoram Begins

Agartala/Aizawl, Nov 4 : The much-awaited repatriation of tribal refugees from Tripura to Mizoram has begun even as the uncertainty over the return of all migrants looms large, officials said Thursday.

Out of 41,600 tribal refugees, 175 refugees returned to their homes Wednesday afternoon and 90 people were repatriated Thursday.

“The Mizoram and Tripura governments and union home ministry are ready to repatriate all the tribal refugees at the earliest,” Mizoram government home department Under Secretary David Lalthangliana told IANS on phone.

“Majority of the tribal refugees are willing to come to their homes in Mizoram, but a section of leaders are misguiding the innocent migrants for their narrow personal interest,” he said.

Since October 1997, over 41,600 Reang tribal refugees, locally called Bru, have taken shelter in six camps in north Tripura’s Kanchanpur sub-division, adjacent to Mizoram. They fled western Mizoram after ethnic clashes with the majority Mizos over the killing of a Mizo forest official.

“If the refugees are keen to come to their homeland, the Mizoram government with the help of Tripura administration would take back the refugees in a phased manner,” Lalthangliana added.

The tribal refugees organised a protest rally last month to express their distress over the Mizoram government’s apathetic attitude to taking back the migrants. They also sent a memorandum to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding early solution of the ethnic imbroglio.

During his visit to Aizawl in May, Home Minister P. Chidambaram had asked the Mizoram government and the tribal leaders to help repatriate all Reang tribal refugees to their ancestral villages.

According to Mizoram government officials, the state government would provide Rs.80,000 to each repatriated refugee family for house construction and farming assistance and free rations to the displaced tribals for a period of 12 months, adequate security and financial assistance for their ‘jhum’ cultivation (slash and burn method of cultivation).

The New Delhi-based rights group Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), which has been pressurising the union home ministry to ask the Mizoram government to take back the refugees at the earliest, welcomed the resumption of the repatriation of internally displaced persons to Mizoram.

“The Mizoram government should fully implement the rehabilitation package as being provided by the central government to ensure that the repatriation process could be completed without any hindrance,” ACHR director Suhas Chakma said in a statement.

The Most Powerful Women on Earth

Power, almost indefinite source of it that comes with high offices has a rider - greater responsibilities. Men have always held such post, but women aren’t far behind.

Don’t believe us, here’s the list of women who hold the top offices in the country’s political set up. Click on to know more.

Julia Gillard
Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is seen at the Australia's Labor Party conference at Darling Harbour. She then studied at the University of Adelaide but cut short her courses in 1982 and moved to Melbourne to work with the Australian Union of Students. She graduated from the University of Melbourne with Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees in 1986. In 1987, Gillard joined the law firm Slater & Gordon at Werribee, Melbourne, working in industrial law. In 1990, at the age of 29, she was admitted as a partner.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner

Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner looks up during a ceremony at Casa Rosada Presidential Palace in Buenos Aires. She is the widow of former President Néstor Kirchner. She is Argentina's first elected female President, and the second female President ever to serve (after Isabel Martínez de Perón, 1974-1976). A Justicialist, Fernández served one term as National Deputy and three terms as National Senator for both Santa Cruz and Buenos Aires Provinces. A native of La Plata, Buenos Aires, Fernández is a graduate of the National University of La Plata. She met her husband during her studies, and they moved to Santa Cruz to work as lawyers. In May 1991, she was elected to the provincial legislature.

Pratibha Patil

President of India, Pratibha Patil, smiles before her meeting with chief of India's ruling Congress Party Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi. Pratibha Patil started her professional career as a practicing lawyer at the Jalgaon District Court. At the young age of 27 years, she successfully contested her first election to the Maharashtra State Legislature from the Jalgaon Assembly constituency. Subsequently she was continuously elected four times as MLA from the Edlabad constituency until 1985. Thereafter, she served as a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha from 1985 to 1990 and later elected as a Member of Parliament to the 10th Lok Sabha in the 1991 General Elections from the Amravati constituency. She enjoys the unique distinction of not having lost a single election that she contested to date

Laura Chinchilla

Costa Rica's President-elect Laura Chinchilla smiles before a meeting with Honduran President Porfirio Lobo inside the presidential house in Tegucigalpa. She is the first female President of Costa Rica. She was one of Óscar Arias Sánchez's two Vice-Presidents and his administration's Minister of Justice. She was the governing PLN candidate for President in the 2010 general election, where she won with 46.76% of the vote. She is the sixth woman to be elected president of a Latin American country. She was sworn as president of Costa Rica on May 8, 2010.

Mary McAleese

Ireland's President Mary McAleese inspects the honour guard during a welcoming ceremony in Riga. Mary Patricia McAleese is the eighth and current President of Ireland. Prior to becoming president she was a barrister, journalist and academic.

McAleese is Ireland's second female president and the world's first woman to succeed another woman as an elected head of state. She was first elected president in 1997 and won a second term, without a contest, in 2004. Her birth in Belfast means she is the first President to have come from Northern Ireland. She is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders. In 2009, Forbes named her among the 100 Most Powerful Women in the world.

Angela Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel smiles during a news conference following a meeting with representatives of German economic associations at the International Trade Fair in Munich. Merkel is the first female Chancellor of Germany. In 2007 she became the second woman to chair the G8, after Margaret Thatcher She played a central role in the negotiation of the Treaty of Lisbon and the Berlin Declaration. In domestic policy, health care reform and problems concerning future energy development have thus far been major issues of her tenure.

Dalia Grybauskaite

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite holds a joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt (not pictured) at Rosenbad, Prime Minister's office, in Stockholm. She is a Lithuanian politician and was previously Lithuania's Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Finance Minister, and European Commissioner for Financial Programming & the Budget. Often referred to as the "Iron Lady", Grybauskaite is Lithuania's first female head of state.

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is the current Prime Minister of Iceland. A long term politician, she was previously Iceland's Minister of Social Affairs and Social Security from 1987-1994 and 2007-2009. She has been a member of the Althing (Iceland's parliament) for Reykjavík constituencies since 1978, winning re-election on eight successive occasions. She became Iceland's first female Prime Minister on 1 February 2009, the world's first openly LGBT head of government of the modern era. Jóhanna is a social democrat and Iceland's longest-serving member of Parliament.

Jadranka Kosor

Jadranka Kosor is a Croatian politician and former journalist. She is the current Prime Minister of Croatia, having taken office on July 6, 2009, following the sudden resignation of her predecessor Ivo Sanader. She is Croatia's first female Prime Minister since independence. Kosor has published four books, two of poetry and two related to the Croatian War of Independence and also worked briefly as a correspondent for the BBC.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the 24th and current President of Liberia. She served as Minister of Finance under President William Tolbert from 1979 until the 1980 coup d'état, after which she left Liberia and held senior positions at various financial institutions. She placed a distant second in the 1997 presidential election. Later, she was elected President in the 2005 presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006. Sirleaf is the first modern, and currently the only elected, female head of state in Africa.

Tarja Halonen

Tarja Kaarina Halonen is the 11th and current President of Finland. The first female to hold the office, Halonen had previously been a member of the parliament from 1979 to 2000 when she resigned after her election to the presidency. In addition to her political career she had a long and extensive career in trade unions and different non-governmental organizations.

Halonen is a graduate of the University of Helsinki, where she studied law from 1963 to 1968. She was active in student politics and served as the Social Affairs Secretary and Organization Secretary of the National Union of Students from 1969 to 1970. In 1971 she joined the Social Democratic Party and worked as a lawyer in the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions until she was elected to parliament in 1979. Halonen served in the parliament of Finland for six terms, from 1979 to 2000, representing the constituency of Helsinki.

Doris Leuthard

Doris Leuthard is a Swiss politician and lawyer. Since 1 August 2006, she has been a member of the Swiss Federal Council and head of the Federal Department of Economic Affairs (the Swiss economics minister). She was elected President of the Confederation for 2010. Leuthard was a member of the Swiss National Council from 1999 to 2006 and President of the Christian Democratic People's Party (2004-2006). Following the resignation of Joseph Deiss from the Swiss Federal Council, Leuthard was elected as his successor on 14 June 2006. She received 133 out of 234 valid votes, and became the 109th member (and fifth woman) of the Federal Council. In 2009, Leuthard was elected Vice President of the Swiss Confederation, virtually assuring her election as president in 2010.

Dilma Rousseff

Brazilian presidential candidate from the ruling Workers Party (PT) Dilma Rousseff waves after the results of Brazil's general election in Brasilia October 3, 2010. Rousseff placed first in Brazil's presidential election on Sunday, but failed to win an outright victory in the first round. She is an economist, politician and President-elect of Brazil. She was appointed Chief of Staff by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in June 2005 becoming the first woman to assume the position. Rousseff was Lula's designated successor and the winning candidate in the 2010 presidential election.
Images - Reuters