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BOSTON: The heroic response by employees of Mumbai's landmark Taj Hotel during the 26/11 terror attacks is now a case study at Harvard Business School that focuses on the staff's selfless service for its customers and how they went beyond their call of duty to save lives. The multimedia case study 'Terror at the Taj Bombay: Customer-Centric Leadership' by HBS professor Rohit Deshpande documents "the bravery and resourcefulness shown by rank-and-file employees" during the attack. The study focuses on "why the Taj employees stayed at their posts (during the attacks), jeopardising their safety in order to save hotel guests" and...

* The Obamas are staying at the Taj Hotel to show unity against terror * $200million trip cost denied but the President and First Lady will have huge entourage and massive security precautions * The First Lady made a solo visit to students and played barefoot hopscotch President Barack Obama opened his 10-day Asia trip with a tribute to the victims of the devastating terror attacks that tore through Mumbai two years ago. 'We'll never forget,' he said. The president said he intended to send a signal by making Mumbai the first stop on four-country Asia trip and by staying...

Terming the choice of Mumbai and the Taj Mahal Hotel to launch his maiden India trip as a “strong message” against terrorism, US President Barack Obama said on Saturday in his first official statement in the country that he was looking forward to discussing with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh how India and the US could deepen their partnership in counter-terrorism efforts. While the President made no mention of state-sponsored terrorism, he demanded that the perpetrators of the 26/11 attack be brought to justice. “Mumbai is a symbol of energy and optimism,” he said, adding that the Taj and its staff...

Just an observation here. Any other comparisons welcome, but this is just ridic. What a toolbox this twit is.

Mr. Obama's trip to India may not be the great diplomatic success that the administration was hoping for. Our friends in the world's most populous democracy are getting steamed over the state department's heavy handed tactics. High ranking officials from the state of Maharashtra were invited to an event at the Taj Mahal hotel with Mr. Obama, but were told that they would have to show their papers to get in. According to The Times of India: Miffed by the US consulate demanding personal details like birth date, nationality and passport number, Maharashtra's top politicians and bureaucrats have decided to...

The Taj is shutting its doors to other guests as it readies itself for its most important one. But the arrival of Barack Obama doesn’t have the hotel’s staff excited. Reason? For the two days the US president and his entourage will be at the Taj, the staff will be under virtual house arrest. Worse, they can’t keep their mobile phones with them... all 570 rooms in the hotel have been booked for the duration of Obama’s visit... The rooms adjacent, above and below the presidential suit will be occupied by FBI agents — 700 of whom will accompany the...

Elaborate security arrangements The presidential entourage will have 40 aircraft, including the Air Force One that will ferry the president. There will be six armoured cars, including four Barack Mobiles and a Cadillac.

President Obama's aides have booked the entire Taj Mahal hotel ahead of the president's high-profile visit to the Indian city rocked by a terrorist attack two years ago, The Economic Times reports. The newspaper reported that the Obama administration has reserved all 570 rooms, as well as the hotel's restaurants, to ensure airtight security when the president and first lady Michelle Obama visit Mumbai early next month. Dozens of other rooms have been booked elsewhere in the city. The Times reported that downtown Mumbai will be under heavy security while the president is in town

The manager of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai, Karambir Singh Kang, had no idea that a fraught conversation with his wife Niti in the early hours of November 27 last year would be the couple’s last. Niti was barricaded with their sons Uday, 14, and Samar, 5, in the bathroom of the family’s sixth-floor suite at the hotel in Mumbai as terrorists rampaged through its corridors with guns and grenades. Kang was pinned down under heavy fire in the ornate ground floor lobby as he tried to evacuate panic-stricken guests and keep in touch with his family by...

t is the stories woven into its history that make a truly great hotel, according to Karambir Singh Kang, the general manager of the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower. A year ago, the hotel became the focus of the world when Islamist gunmen brought terror to its guests and staff. “The Taj was always iconic,” Mr Kang, 41, told The Times, sitting in one of the hotel’s grand cafés overlooking the Gateway of India and the Arabian Sea. “Now, it has transcended to a different level... Each corridor, each corner, has a story.” Few are sadder, or more extraordinary, than...

Bush shows appetite for humour & food SAMYABRATA RAY GOSWAMI Mumbai, Nov. 1: Manmohan Singh once told him the “people of India love you deeply”. But an out-of-office George W. Bush, finally getting a first-hand feel of how he fares on the popularity meter back home, was a bit wary in Mumbai. Tongue firmly in cheek, he told a top business leader here yesterday: “I am no more the President, you guys can go ahead and tell me on my face now what you really think of me.” The former US President was at a dinner meeting of the Indo-US...

Three men have been jailed for an arson attack at the home of a publisher days before his novel about the Prophet Mohammed was due to be published. Martin Rynja's home in Lonsdale Square, Islington, north London, was targeted on 27 September last year. Abbas Taj, 30, Ali Beheshti, 41, and Abrar Mirza, 23, from east London, were each jailed for four-and-a-half years. They were convicted of conspiracy to commit arson, being reckless as to whether life was endangered. The attack took place as the Jewel of Medina, a novel about the Prophet's child bride A'isha, was to be published...

Note: 3 photos included. # A radical Muslim who dressed his baby daughter in a hat with “I love al-Qaeda” on it tried to firebomb the home of the publisher of a controversial novel about the Prophet Mohammed. Ali Beheshti, 40, along with Abrar Mirza, 22, have admitted conspiracy to recklessly damage property and endanger life after they poured diesel through the letterbox of a publishing house in Islington, North London. Abbas Taj, 30, a mini-cab driver, was found guilty at Croydon Crown court of conspiracy to firebomb the home of Martin Rynja, the publisher of The Jewel Of Medina....

Taj fire spreading. They would love to take this hotel down for the finale. Who knows what booby traps are in that hotel.

The arrest of three Pakistani nationals hailing from Multan in connection with Mumbai siege has once again revealed the role of Lashkar-e-Tayiba in terror strikes in India after the Akshardham attack in 2002. Police and central security personnel have arrested at least three Pakistanis, including Ajmal Amir Kamal, a resident of Faridkot near Multan in Pakistan's Punjab province. All the three belong to the suicide squad of Lashkar-e-Tayiba. The terrorists told interrogators that 12 of them had left in a merchant vessel from the port city of Karachi, which was on its way to Vietnam, from which they got down...

Federal Judge in Los Angeles Dismisses Terrorism Fund-Raising Case Against Seven Iranians The Associated PressPublished: Jun 22, 2002 LOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal judge dismissed charges Friday against seven Iranians accused of using a charity scam to solicit $1 million for a terrorist group. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Takasugi said that unconstitutional measures were used to put the case together. In throwing out the 59-count indictment, Takasugi wrote that the government's system for designating a group as a terrorist organization violated the defendants' rights to due process. The designation thus cannot be used in the criminal prosecution, the...