MillionFace

Whale hunting has been a common phenomenon for a long period of time. It is known to have existed on Iceland, in the Hebrides, and in Shetland and Orkney.

Whaling in the Faroe Islands has been practised since at least the tenth century

Many different species of whales and dolphins occur in the waters around the Faroe Islands. Of these, the small and abundant pilot whales are taken in the Faroe Islands for their meat and blubber in a whale hunt which is organised on the community level and regulated by national legislation.

This unique and traditional form of food production in the Faroe Islands has over the years successfully adapted to modern standards of resource management and animal welfare. The meat and blubber of the pilot whale has been an important part of the islanders staple diet. The blubber, in particular, has been highly valued both as food and for processing into oil, which was used for lighting fuel and other purposes. Parts of the skin of pilot whales were also used for ropes and lines, while stomachs were used as floats.

Around 950 Long-finned Pilot Whales are killed annually, mainly during the summer. The hunts, called “grindadráp” in Faroese, are non-commercial and are organised on a community level; anyone can participate. The hunters first surround the pilot whales with a wide semi-circle of boats. The boats then drive the pilot whales slowly into a bay or to the bottom of a fjord.

There is a raging debate about whether the pilot whale hunt represents a significant threat to pilot whale populations; the actual size of the Northeast Atlantic Pilot Whale population is a subject of debate between different organizations.

Animal-rights groups criticize the hunt as being cruel and unnecessary,while the hunters claim in return that most journalists do not exhibit sufficient knowledge of the catch methods or its economic significance.

Most Faroese maintain that it is their right to catch pilot whales given that they have done so for centuries. The Faroese whalers defend their actions before international organizations like Greenpeace with three arguments: one, that grindadráp is not a hunt as such, but a dráp meaning a kill (ie that they do not regularly take to sea just to hunt for pilot whales, but only kill those which are sighted swimming to close at land); two, that the pilot whale hunt does not exist for commercial reasons, but for internal food distribution among households; and three, they do not believe the pilot whale to be an endangered species.

Animal welfare campaigners say methods of killing whales are so inhumane that all whaling operations should cease. A coalition of 140 groups, Whalewatch, says many whales do not die quickly when hit, and tests to decide exactly when a whale is dead are inadequate.

The well-known UK naturalist Sir David Attenborough says in a foreword that Whalewatch’s report shows “there is no humane way to kill a whale at sea”.

But whalers say their methods are not cruel, and reject calls to end whaling.

Update:

The dust was yet to settle for the Tummala family after Soumya Reddy was found dead in Chicago - came another shocker when the authorities in Missouri found the body of Soumya’s cousin Tummala Vikram Kumar Reddy in a lake on Monday.

The body of 27-year-old Vikram surfaced from the lake on Monday. Vikram, son of Soumya’s mother’s elder sister, was working as a software engineer in Chicago. His death was expected to have taken place around the same time as Soumya’s. The St Louis County police, who said Vikram was also shot, though would not discuss the specifics but stopped short of calling the shootings a murder-suicide.

Call it sher ill luck or sad irony of fate, brilliant Indian students continue to be killed in the US

The murder brings to an end a brilliant career even before it got going. Tummala Soumya Reddy, the 23-year-old MS student in Southern Illinois University, Chicago in U.S., was killed on Sunday morning by an assailant whose colour of skin remains the only mark of identity .

The 23-year-old Tummala Soumya Reddy was pursuing her MS degree in electrical engineering from Southern Illinois University. This is the fourth incident of a student hailing from Andhra Pradesh, India being killed under suspicious circumstances in the United States in the last 10 months.

The family was informed over phone at about that an unidentified African American has shot dead Soumya near a lake, about 20 km from her residence in Chicago.

Soumya, the second of three children of late Bhupal Reddy and Hema, was said to be extremely brilliant at studies. She had completed her BE at Hyderabad’s VIF college. Her elder sister Sahaja is also an Engineering graduate while brother Rajesh is in IIT Chennai.

Soumya had joined the MS Electronics course in August 2007 soon after completing the BE.

Mr. Gajanand Reddy, who is liaisoning with officials of the International Students Federation (ISF) in Chicago, said the Chicago police had not provided information with regard to the motive of the killing. “We were just informed by an officer of the ISF named Geet that Soumya had been shot dead by an unidentified person. Some of the information we got from other sources indicates that the girl was returning to the campus after consulting one of her professors under whom she apparently worked,”

Investigations are under way to ascertain the motive behind the murder.

Soumya is the fourth student from Andhra Pradesh killed in the US in the last 10 months. While A Srinivas, a PG medical student from Karimnagar, was killed in March this year, Allam Kiran Kumar and K Chandrasekhar Reddy, both pursuing their Ph D courses, were shot dead at Louisiana University in December 2007.

Great, The Gambino Family is making news again after keeping low for a few years. Last time they got world media hype was on June 10, 2002 when  “The Dapper Don” John Gotti died of throat cancer  at the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri.

And now head of the Gambino family John A. “Junior” Gotti has been arrested on charges linking him to drug smuggling ring and 3 prior mob-hits. Gotti is the son of “Dapper Don” John Gotti, the late Gambino family boss

Gotti, was arrested by the FBI at his Long Island home. Feds in Tampa, Fla. The Feds are expected to announce a racketeering indictment, charging Gotti with murder conspiracy in connection with killings in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to the official.

A separate indictment charges five other men with racketeering. It alleges some of them were involved with Gotti in one of the three New York murders, according to the official. It also alleges a fourth killing in New York, not linked to Gotti.

Gotti has two sisters, Victoria and Angela. He also had two brothers, Frankie and Peter, though Frank was struck by a car during childhood and killed. In 1990, Gotti married Kimberly Albanese, daughter of Gambino crime family mobster Phillip Albanese. Gotti lives in Long Island.

Sixty-four-year-old Charles (Gurumukh) Sobhraj Sobhraj, a Vietnamese-Indian by birth and French national by adoption, who preyed on Western tourists throughout Southeast Asia during the 1970s. Nicknamed “the Serpent” and “the Bikini killer” for his skills at deception and evasion” has found new love in Nepal, with the ‘Bikini killer’ already planning a wedding after getting ‘engaged’ to a 20-year-old girl in the Himalayan state.
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