sports// Football fans all over the world had been waiting anxiously for 2014. And the wait, like they say, was completely worth it. For every football lover completely enjoyed the 20th FIFA World Cup. The month-long extravaganza that began on June 12 with the group stage, concluded on July 13 with the championship match. A total of 64 matches were played in 12 cities across Brazil in either new or redeveloped stadiums. Germany won the tournament and took its fourth title after it beat Argentina with a 1-0 score. The national teams of 31 countries advanced through qualification competitions to participate with the host nation Brazil in the final tournament. For the first time at World Cup finals, match officials used goal-line technology, as well as vanishing foam for free kicks.

During the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the FIFA Fan Fest in the host cities in Brazil received 5 million people, and the country received 1 million guests from 202 countries around the world.

epideMic// This is one virus that caused massive panic. The 2014 Ebola epidemic is the largest in history, affecting multiple countries in West Africa. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the worst since the virus was first discovered four decades ago, has killed more than 5444, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Two imported cases, including one death, and two locally acquired cases in healthcare workers have been reported in the United States.

Scientists have found how the deadly Ebola virus blocks and disables the body’s natural immune response, a discovery that may guide the development of potential cures or vaccines. Dr Gaya Amarasinghe and colleagues from Washington University School of Medicine along with collaborators from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas found how the Ebola protein VP24 disrupts the cell's innate immune response, a crucial early step on the virus's path to causing deadly disease. According to the researchers, VP24 works by preventing the transcription factor STAT1, which carries interferon's antiviral message, from entering the nucleus and initiating an immune response. There is currently no available cure or vaccine for Ebola, which the WHO has declared a global public health emergency. The virus may be acquired upon contact with blood or bodily fluids of an infected person. Symptoms include fever, sore throat, muscle pain, and headaches. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea follow, along with decreased functioning of the liver and kidneys.

diploMacy// It is not Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping or Shinzo Abe or Angela Merkel — leaders of the five most powerful countries of the world — who was the most sought after at the East Asia and G-20 Summits. Instead, it was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, elected to the high office only six months ago, who has received maximum requests for bilateral meetings from his counterparts and heads of state on the sidelines of East Asia, ASEAN and G-20 Summits in Myanmar and Australia in November.

This was also Modi’s first outing in both East Asia and the G20 Summit. Understandably there was interest among other leaders to interact with him, sources claimed. “The interest was also due to the fact that these countries want to step up economic engagement with India and they sense an opportunity under the Modi government to increase trade and investments,” an official indicated.

awards// Indian and Pakistani relations certainly affect international political dynamics across the world. Another clear picture of this view emerged when an Indo-Pak and Hindu-Muslim combination of Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai shared the Nobel Peace Prize honours for 2014 for their work on promoting child rights in the troubled sub-continent. The Committee said it “regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the ward was given “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education,” the jury said. Satyarthi, who runs NGO Bachpan Bachao Aandolan (Save Childhood Movement), has been “focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain,” the Nobel committee said.

Satyarthi’s Bachpan Bachao Andolan has rescued 0ver 80,000 children from trafficking and slavery. He has also been involved with the ‘Global March Against Child Labour’ and has been credited for enactment of national, international legislations on child labour and education.

Satyarthi told PTI he was extremely delighted with being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and called it a “recognition of our fight for child rights”. “I am thankful to Nobel committee for recognising the plight of millions of children who are suffering in this modern age,” Satyarthi said.

Malala, the 17-year-old Pakistani girl of Pashtun origin who was shot by the Taliban for advocating women rights and education in Pakistan has stunned her critics and attackers with her strong stance on education for women. Malala survived the attempted homicide and was transferred to the UK with her family, where she got the treatment and went to school, and has since become a worldwide symbol for the fight against oppression of women and the right to education.

She has become the youngest Nobel laureate.

calaMity// Normalcy is slowly trickling back to the lives of people in Jammu and Kashmir (J &K). Called a ‘national disaster’ by MP Narendra Modi, the worst flood, the worst to hit the state in the past 60 years, has so far claimed 277 lives. The constant rains and landslides wreaked havoc in the ‘paradise on earth’. The deluge brought life to a standstill in the beautiful state. What makes the entire situation worse is the fact that winters are fast approaching and the cold could make the situation worse for the thousands who have lost their homes to the calamity.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who held a high-level meeting with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and top officials soon after arriving in Jammu on Sunday, announced an additional special assistance of Rs 1,000 crore for the state.

The PM and CM later conducted an aerial survey of the flood-affected areas in the Valley. In Srinagar, Modi said Rs 5 crore would be provided from the PM’s relief fund for the flood-affected people.

Help is slowly coming from a few celebrities, corporate and the NGOs in a big way.

disaster// It was March 8, 2014, a Saturday, when a Malaysia Airlines flight 370 went missing, leaving the entire world in shock. The flight took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing Capital International Airport, People’s Republic of China. The aircraft sent its last message to Air Craft Control almost an hour after its take-off on March 7, 2014. The next day, Malaysia Airlines declared the flight missing. It was carrying 239 people, including 12 crew members. Several search operations have been conducted on a multinational level to locate the flight but there’s no clue about it so far.

One would have called it the deadliest event in the history of aviation if another Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, Flight 17 hadn’t been shot down over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, which killed all the 298 people aboard. The intelligence agencies call it an attack by pro-Russian separatists. On the other hand, Russia shifted the blame to Ukraine for the tragic incident.

calaMity// The strongest tropical cyclone of 2014 within the North Indian Ocean, as well as the most destructive tropical cyclone to ever hit India, HUD HUd left behind a trail of devastation.

At least 96 deaths have been confirmed, a majority of them from Andhra Pradesh and Nepal, with the latter experiencing an avalanche due to the cyclone.

Hudhud caused extensive damage to the city of Visakhapatnam and the neighboring districts of Vizianagaram and Srikakulam of Andhra Pradesh. Damages are estimated to be between 60000 crore (US$9.7 billion) and 70000 crore (US$11 billion), with assessments still underway.

Images from INSAT-3D, which became operational in January this year, played an important role while tracking Cyclone Hudhud which hit the east coast of India on October 12, according to Indian Meteorological Department.

Hudhud originated from a low pressure are over Tenasserim coast and adjoining North Andaman Sea on 6th October 2014. It concentrated into a depression over North Andaman Sea the next day morning over the North Andaman Sea while moving westnorthwestwards. On the same day the region and associated wind speed was about 25-30 knots. The wind speed was relatively higher in northern sector of the system. According to satellite observation, intense to very intense convection was seen over Andaman Sea and adjoining area on October 7. It made landfall on the coast on October 12 inflicting maximum damage to Visakhapatnam district.

An open letter to the white American male on why an Indian woman abroad fears him

My dearest lover,

I fear you. I fear that even though you are kind and generous and conscious and even conscientious, you will one day put me in my place. You won’t be able to help it or even know that you’ve done it, for this is, although not fully, your world. It is your world because you happened to be born in a place that understands you as male and white: white, something that has been venerated in our society and beyond for the past many hundreds of years; male, the object and subject of veneration for many thousands of years more.

While we have traveled different paths, yours being many more times treacherous than mine, we have some things in common. None of our parents were born here in the United States, nor do we come from money. We grew up in communities in which we were different and we tried in our various ways to be a little less different.

The thing that has brought us together for, perhaps, only a moment, is that we have been able to take advantage of a mobility that landed us at, what some like to call, the best university in the world. Many consider this an achievement and attribute it to our sheer talent, wit, and hard work. While this may be true to some small degree, it cannot possibly be anywhere near the full story.

You and I are both keenly aware that this university was never made for us, and the mobility that got us here is foreclosed for the vast majority of peoples at home and around the world. Not only is it foreclosed, but we also know that such mobility has been and remains predicated on the immobility of others, and the actual annihilation of generations of peoples before us. We also passionately hold the view that those for whom such mobility is not an aspiration should be left alone to live and love, to be in the world, to be in their worlds, be as they wish.

At the same time, we ardently honour our elders who made this mobility possible for us through their struggles, the shedding of their tears and blood — that is, by people of color, women, workers, queer people and civil rights agitators. Who, for decades, fought and continue to fight to ameliorate and innovate our collective ways of living.

But what is my point, you may be asking by now.

Here’s the thing. As an “Indian woman abroad”, I was asked if women of South Asian descent, born or living outside South Asia, are more empowered than their sisters in Jalandhar, Kanpur, Quetta, Colombo, and Chittagong.

How do I possibly answer this? Especially when I just finished telling you that I fear you, that I fear being put in my place? Could it be that the question doesn’t pose itself as one of more or less empowered?

It may be obvious to say that we are all products of history. And history has a way of making life too complicated, for us to fit neatly into easy categories and hierarchies that can be compared on a scale of more or less. But more importantly, as you well know, I refuse to participate in a discourse that conscripts women into a pernicious liberal politics. That allows women in the West and of the upper classes to look outward and downward at the bodies of poor and brown women, in order to posit themselves as saviours, and historically as civilizers. And all this as a means of escape, as a way to forget and never deal with the sources of violence and oppression that operate within their own lives and societies. So, perhaps, the best we can say is that the majority of people in the world live within particular conditions of what some call patriarchy and others male supremacy.

What if you asked me where I would rather be, here in Cambridge or in my maternal or paternal villages in Punjab? The only honest answer is right here — where I am, because this is the place I know. But also because here I can have you as my lover without ever having to marry you — you could even be a female — without most of my neighbours, family members, or friends ever batting an eye at such a prospect.

Not because I am in America, some supposed or essential land of the free, but because my mother risked and struggled within our family to make sure that she, my sister, and I have as much control over our bodies as possible, because my elders in the women’s and queer movements struggled to make sure they and I and future generations can simply be as we need and want to be.

As we have discussed and argued so many times, having control over our bodies, reproduction, and sexuality is no small matter, nor is it a privilege -- it is one of the central political issues of our times. But while we contend with the problems of gender and sexuality, we simultaneously confront the problems of class — in India the problems of upper-caste domination, and in the US the issues of white supremacy.

Since I was a girl I’ve felt the rage and injustice of my place as second after boys and men, as not quite American because of my allegedly difficult-to-pronounce name and the colour of my skin. I am also not quite Indian enough because of my manners and accent. But as my own life experience, and fights and conversations with you have taught me, the only way to deal with this rage is to be politically engaged, to work for social justice, to seek and figure out ways to put into action radical solutions to problems, and to act with empathy and compassion, in whatever place I call home. For, to keep our hearts and minds open, despite the layers of pain and hurt and cruelty to each other is a tremendously difficult but truly courageous, radical, and life affirming act.

Among the many ways to stand out on social media is to ensure your communication is authentic and can influence perceptions, for which it is imperative to get your social media voice and tone right

Modern-day businesses seem to flirt with social media without truly understanding the rules of the dating game. What most people/ brands seem to overlook or underestimate is the level of creativity involved in the communication put forth by these multiple channels that are constantly being seen/ used by potential buyers or even repeat customers.

Social media today, has the power to make people like your business if you are a new kid on the block, or even help solidify your marketshare if you have been in the fray for a while now. In fact, social media has the inbuilt potential to take your brand from mediocre to simply amazing and sought-after. But it all hinges on one thing and one alone — the voice of communication that the people associate with your brand.

A social media voice can be hip, communal, playful, educational, sophisticated, fun, irreverent, inspirational, cynical, helpful, or any other adjective you choose. The point is to get it absolutely right so that it can make your brand attractive and also endear you to just about everyone you hope to make a customer.

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA VOICE?

Maya Angelou once said, “People don’t always remember what you say or even what you do, but they always remember how you made them feel.” It’s often the way we say something that breeds a certain feeling. People can be extremely sensitive to language, forming impressions of people as soon as they begin to hear or read their words.

Similarly, when one talks about social media voice, it is imperative to touch upon what is also the tone of your communication. To put it simply, Voice is your brand personality as described by an adjective, for instance, playful, funny, cynical or purely professional. Tone, on the other hand, adds specific flavor to your voice based on audience, situation, context or channel. Essentially, there is one voice for your brand and many tones that can refine your voice and its communications.

Your brand voice will help customers understand what you want to do for them and with them. It’s the way in which your business communicates: the language it uses and the tone sets the internal culture, personality and values of your brand, and those of your workers. Are you working to educate your user base? Do you want to delight them, and get them to visit your store or website just because they’re taken in by the clever writing that you have showcased on your social media page? Most importantly, what can you give people to help them become engaged to your brand?

Once you’ve found the answer to the “purpose” of your brand voice, develop a roadmap for your brand’s voice, which you can share with everyone who is involved in writing for, or speaking on behalf of, your brand in social media. Add buzzwords — words that describe your brand and that you want to have used when appropriate; for instance, if you’re Disney, your buzzwords are something like magical, family, experience, and fun. Then add some “dos and don’ts” guidelines for your engagers so they can get a feel for the types of language and content you expect them to create.

DEVELOPING A BRAND VOICE

The starting point to developing a brand voice is to determine your customers so you can identify the persona of your brand that will resonate with your target audience. What do you stand for? What do you talk about? What makes you stand out? This is your organisation’s personality. Make those elements the inspiration for your online voice. If you have multiple audiences, you will need to be slightly flexible about your brand voice and then rely on various channels to disseminate information to the varied subsets of customers.

Another key element is the language of your communication. If you come off sounding more knowledgeable than your customer even if your brand is a leader in its space, it can be a major put off. Instead, be careful of the slang, jargon and words used in your communication, since you don’t want to be seen as trying too hard or not at all. A fine balance is required while meshing terminology or jargon while still remaining hip and understandable.

The sale of beauty products tends to feature specific types of language, depending on the values of the brand. Take Lush and L’Oreal, for instance; both sell skincare products. Yet while Lush is concerned with being eco-friendly, L’Oreal alludes to notions of science and advancement.

To successfully build rapport and trust between your brand and your consumers, all of your communications need to be consistent and familiar from one message to the next. The result of this is that you will inevitably strengthen the perceptions that people have of your business, whilst taking the necessary steps to influence and persuade them to choose you.

When pitted against competitors, the way in which your messaging comes across needs to distinguish and separate you from opposition. With every organization, we have our own ideas about who we are as a company. We have our own panache and our own eccentricities to exploit — capitalise on these and relay them to your customers when you are communicating with them.

Last but not the least, your social media voice is your unique method to reach out to your audiences, both old and new. What better way to set the tone than to let them become a part of the conversation? Let them express their problems and concerns while you learn to assuage them without strong-arming or hard-selling — just talking in a way that’s comfortable, conversational and relatable.

While the men get more cynical about love and romance, novels with pink covers continue to appeal to the target audience - read women

THE ARGUMENTS started when I wrote my first novel — a true-blue bodice-ripper. Seriously, to hear the husband and the son go on about it after I showed them the first draft, you’d have thought I’d killed someone, rather than written a romantic novel.

“OMG!” said the husband, who was making his presence felt on Facebook.

“What am I going to tell my friends?” moaned the son. “My mother writes porn?”

“It’s not porn,” I defended my baby — the newly-born one, that is — spiritedly. “It’s a romance!” “That’s just porn for women!” said the son. The spirited gene does find its way forward.

“It’s wishful thinking,” said the husband more sedately. He has not been brought up by a mother who has the bodice-ripper gene in her. ‘Women are not like those you find in those novels, neither are the men. Mere fairy tales!”

“Every woman needs a fairy tale — if not in real life, then between the pages of a book,” I retorted.

“But why would a tycoon marry his cook?” asked the husband, hitting below the belt in direct reference to the above-mentioned bodice-ripper.

“Because she’s different from all the women he’s met until now.” I tried to be patient. After all, these were mere men. “She’s traditional at heart. And she’s beautiful and perky and full of life.”

“Aha, redundancy!’ said the son the lawyer at once. “Perky implies full of life.”

to think I had nurtured this, this parasite inside me for nine months and an extra week!

“And she’s not his cook — she merely works in his office canteen. And that’s also because she loves cooking and really needs a job to look after her family.”

“Well, what does she see in him?” asked the son, on a trot now. “He seems such an ass.”

“He’s strong and masterful. And rich, too.”

“And that’s what women want?”

“Yes!”

“Even those of my generation?”

My antennae had begun quivering. This conversation seemed to be taking a turn towards an argument that would soon include phrases such as habeas corpus and locus standi and much worse. But the argumentative Mallu gene in me, so carefully nurtured in my flesh and blood sitting in the chair before me, was not ready to give up yet.

“Yes,” I said, “A woman wants her man to be handsome, witty, charming, but she also wants a man who will pamper her, who will take care of her every need, who will protect her and love her — and for most of that, the man needs to be rich.”

“I would call that mercenary,” said the son. “I knew it! All women are mercenary!”

I had no immediate answer. The son may be grown up, but no parent is seriously convinced their child is not still impressionable, and the argument I was taking up was not travelling along a track conducive to producing a happily-ever-after scenario for the young man in the room.

“It’s not quite as mercenary as I’ve made it sound, perhaps,” I began slowly, belatedly trying to make amends. ‘See, it’s about biology (when in trouble, turn to Mother Nature!). A girl will automatically be attracted to a man who is not only attractive, but also able to provide for her and her children. So, a rich man is attractive biologically, too. But when a man is attracted to a girl, he looks at her body — breasts, hips, legs — again because those are the signs of fecundity; signs that she will be able to continue his lineage, propagate his genes further.”

The son gave me one of his famed “Really Ma?” looks. The husband stopped himself from also doing so just in time. But he stepped in husbandfully to divert the argument and asked, “So what’s in it for the men then? It seems to me like a lot of giving and very little getting.”

But the son has never been one to be diverted easily. Besides, he’s so used to parental diversionary tactics he can probably bat them away in his sleep. “So what you are trying to say is that it’s okay for men to ogle women,” he said, stressing each syllable in an exaggerated drawl. “They’re merely checking them out for, what did you say, fecundity?”

The husband and I choked. Good lord, that one was straight out of left field.

Memories of equally tangentially drawn conclusions — and their extremely disastrous results — from the son’s childhood flashed before our eyes.

I bravely tried to change the subject. “Well, my little book has been accepted by an e-book publisher,” I announced. “It will be out soon.”

“I suppose you’ll have a pink cover,” said the son. I paled, imperceptibly I hoped. I had just approved the cover and it was, well, pink! (Note to self: request colour change asap.) My complexion change did not go unnoticed, however.

“Ha!” said the son in his best trying-notto- say “I told you so” voice. “I knew it! Well, I must say it would probably suit your hero to a T. He even needs his grandmom to tell him he’s in love.”

“He’s a typical man,” I retorted, stung to the quick now. “He’s a typical man who can’t see what’s under his nose,” I said with a straight face. Both men were ominously silent.

The son was the first to recover. “Okay,’ he said, “So your hero is rich and handsome — every woman’s dream come true, right? So how come your heroine hates him till at least half-way through your book? And what makes her suddenly change her mind?”

I sighed.

Sometimes, it’s a tough job being a woman among so many men.