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It has long been known that Native American Indians were in America before settlers, but that did not prevent Native American Indians from losing the land that truly belonged to them. To prevent the extinction of America Indian tribes and cultures, the federal government created reservations.

Reservations are defined as land that is set aside by the federal government for a specific group of individuals. Indian reservations are the most well-known types of reservations in the world. Native American Indian reservations are located all across the United States.

Many Native American Indian reservations are secluded from other towns and cities. This has caused many Native American Indians to suffer financial hardships. Since reservations are secluded, many tourists or other travelers rarely passed through them. This made it difficult for a large number of businesses to operate on an Indian reservation; thus, having an effect on the unemployment rate.

After years are living on the verge of poverty, hope and financial success could be seen in the future. That hope came in the form of casinos. It is a known fact that Americans love to gamble. For once, Native American Indians could rely on Americans to generate jobs, income, and financial resources for all Indian reservations.

Native American Indians living on reservations are not ruled by state governments. Since casinos and gambling are illegal in most states, Native American Indians were still able to open and operate casinos. Since most states still don’t have any other legal casinos, a large number of Americans flock to gamble on Native American Indian reservations.

Casinos have been a large source of income for many Native American Indian reservations. In fact, many are so successful that they are able to benefit the community in a number of ways. Many reservations have taken a portion of their profits to remodel or update their casinos. Many Native American casinos are now known as resorts. Adding hotel rooms, spas, restaurants, and event centers have allowed Indian reservations to profit even more from their gambling casinos.

Updating a casino to bring in additional revenue is important, but what is even more important is what the rest of the money is being spent on. Most Native American Indian reservations use their profits to improve local school systems, housing communities, libraries, and other community facilities. In addition to reservations as a whole, gambling centers have also improved individuals on a personal and professional level.

Almost all of the casinos and other gaming centers open on Native American Indian reservations are successful, so successful that many employ hundreds of workers. Casinos have helped to reduce the number of Native American Indians who are unemployed on Indian reservations all across the country. In addition to hiring local reservation residents, many casinos must also employee other individuals. This is not only beneficial to a Native American Indian community, but to others as well.

American citizens and business developers are urging the federal government to legalize gambling in the United States. Gambling on Native American Indian reservations is popular, but many individuals have to travel hours just to reach one. It is unknown what the impact of legalized gambling would mean for Native American Indians. Until gambling laws changed, American Indians are benefiting from American’s and they are putting their profits to good use.

Global Resorts Network or GRN is a company that provides a life long travel membership to its clients.

The Inner Circle choose to launch their new system, the Reverse Funnel System, with Global Resorts Network because of the one of a kind compensation plan they have for their affiliates. GRN sells a platinum membership, which gives the client a life time membership to their services for 3,000 dollars. One thousand dollars goes to you, one thousand dollars goes to your up line, and one thousand dollars goes to GRN. That is a GOOD deal for you. Better yet, when you build up your organization and have good marketers working beneath you they make one thousand dollars when they make a sale and so do you.

Global Resorts Network is just a company that the inner circle thought would be perfect to use to launch their new system, the Reverse Funnel System.

All the reverse funnel system is…is an automated sales process that closes people into your business for you automatically. Ty Coughlin and the inner circle hired VERY expensive copy writers, and web conversion experts to design the system. And after a few months of running it the results have spoke for themselves. The Reverse Funnel System is producing 30-40% conversion rates. THAT is amazing.

Get with the right team, a team who will teach you expert marketing skills and Global Resorts Network will become your cash crop, as well as a friend to help you plan and save money on all the vacations you will be taking once your work has been put in the work and have built up massive monthly income working on auto-pilot thanks to the Reverse Funnel System.

Downtown Hartford combines Yankee colonialism with a modern business atmosphere. Historic Hartford attractions include the State Capitol atop Capital Hill. With its gold dome, gray Connecticut marble walls, and soaring arches, the capitol, which opened in 1879, is considered an architectural gem. The state legislature continues to meet in the building's chambers. Inside, memorabilia of Connecticut history include Revolutionary War hero the Marquis de Lafayette's camp bed, Civil War battle flags, ships' figureheads, and tomb-stones. The Old State House, the oldest in the nation, was designed by noted architect Charles Bulfinch and has been completely restored. The homes of authors Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe have been restored and contain many original furnishings. The Butler-McCook Homestead offers a view of Victoriana, complete with paintings, silver, toys, and a backyard garden. The Isham Terry house, built in 1854 for a Hartford businessman, was designed in the Italian Vila style; its fixtures and decor have been carefully preserved. The bell in the steeple at First Church of Christ (1807) contains portions of the bell brought to Hartford by English colonists fleeing Massachusetts in 1636. Adjacent to the church is the Ancient Burying Ground, where lie the city's early leaders near Carl Andre's controversial 36-boulder "Stone Field" sculpture. Self-guided walking tours of Hartford's historic sites are available.

The home of a Hartford insurance company, The Travelers Tower, is New England's oldest skyscraper. A landmark since 1936, the tower offers a panoramic view of the Connecticut River Valley. The observation deck is open to visitors on weekdays. Aetna Insurance's headquarters on Farmington Avenue is the largest colonial brick structure in the United States. St. Joseph's Cathedral, with its huge stained-glass windows, is an example of contemporary ecclesiastical architecture. The Phoenix is housed in a boat-shaped structure thought to be the world's only two-sided building. The glass and steel structure is now connected to downtown's Riverfront Plaza. The Menczer Museum of Medicine & Dentistry displays instruments and medications used for the past two centuries. Pictures and artifacts pertaining to the 134-year history of the Police Department are on exhibit at the Hartford Police Museum.

Bushnell Park, adjacent to the state capitol, boasts a 1914 carousel with a Wurlitzer organ and 48 intricately carved and painted wooden horses. The park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, is reputed to be America's oldest public park. Within the park is the Pump House Gallery, site of many summer concerts; Veterans' Memorial Arch; Corning Fountain, celebrating the Native-American heritage; and a number of sculptural pieces. "Stegosaurus," a statute by Alexander Calder, is located between the Wadsworth Atheneum and City Hall. Elizabeth Park Rose Gardens contains thousands of common and rare plants, some in carefully landscaped beds and others in greenhouses. Another popular tourist attraction is the Connecticut River cruise aboard a restored steam-powered yacht.

Arts and Culture

Author Mark Twain's home in Hartford has been restored and is open to visitors.

The Connecticut Opera Association, based in Hartford, puts on four annual productions at Bushnell Memorial Hall and features some of the finest voices in the world. Major popular music concerts ranging from rock to country are held at the Hartford Civic Center Coliseum. In addition, Bushnell Memorial Hall hosts visiting opera troupes and symphonies, off-Broadway productions, jazz, blues, and comedy performances. The Meadows Music Theatre, which provides a venue for concerts of various genres, is New England's only indoor and outdoor performing arts center.

Professional theater in Hartford revived with the advent of the Hartford Stage Company, the city's resident company and considered one of the nation's leading regional troupes. The Hartford Stage Company often premieres contemporary works by American and international playwrights during an October-June season. The Hartford Stage Company also puts on Summerstage, a series of three summer stock performances. Other theater groups include the Producing Guild and TheaterWorks.

The Wadsworth Atheneum, the country's oldest public art museum and highly ranked nationally, features exhibits ranging from pre-history to the present. Some of its 45,000 works are displayed in a special exhibit for the sight-impaired while others appear in changing exhibits of contemporary art. Major collections include Baroque art, Hudson River School landscapes, Meissen and Sevres porcelain, and early American decorative arts. The Atheneum presents more than 15 special shows each year. The Museum of Connecticut History in the State Library and Supreme Court Building focuses on the manufacture of firearms, while the Connecticut Historical Society Museum features changing exhibitions on the state's history in a beautiful old building on Elizabeth Street. The Historical Museum of Medicine and Dentistry includes an old-time dentist's office, along with exhibits of instruments and medicines.

A visitor to the Phoenix metropolitan area will find many sights and attractions, some of them related to frontier history and the natural beauty of Salt River Valley. A principal attraction in Phoenix since 1939 is the Desert Botanical Garden on 50 acres of Papago Park, containing 10,000 desert plants that represent half of the 1,800 existing species of cactus. Also located in Papago Park is the Phoenix Zoo, a privately funded, non-profit zoo, where 1,200 animals are exhibited.

Historic Heritage Square near downtown is a city block of restored Victorian houses preserved as replicas of homes in the late 1800s and converted into museums, shops, and restaurants; a highlight is the elegant Rosson House. Also downtown is the National Native American Cooperative, which features dancers, foods and crafts, and a monthly Indian market October through May. In neighboring Scottsdale is Taliesin West, a national historic landmark built as the desert home of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Scottsdale is also the site of Rawhide, a replica of a 1880s western town that offers a variety of activities, including stagecoach and burro rides, a petting zoo, and stunt shows. Located in nearby Tempe is Big Surf, "Arizona's ocean."

Old West-style entertainment, such as stagecoach rides, covered wagon campfire circles, and simulated gunfighter shoot-outs, is available to groups by reservation through various commercial enterprises in the area. Scenic day trips to the Grand Canyon and other sights near metropolitan Phoenix are provided by several bus and airplane charter services. Encanto Park is the home of the Enchanted Island Amusement Park with a variety of rides geared for the younger set.

Arts and Culture

Phoenix has a vital performing arts community, which was enriched with the 1989 opening of the Herberger Theatre Center. Located downtown next to the Phoenix Civic Plaza Convention Center and Symphony Hall, the complex is designed to augment existing cultural facilities. The Herberger Theater is used primarily for music, dance, and dramatic performances and includes an art gallery.

The Phoenix Center Youth Theatre, CityJazz, Dance Phoenix, and the Phoenix Children's Chorus call the Phoenix Center for the Arts their home. A variety of theater and drama, including amateur, professional, children/family-oriented, and experimental productions, is offered by companies in the Phoenix area. Founded in 1920, the Phoenix Theatre Little Theater is one of the oldest continuously running companies in the country. The Arizona Theatre Company, based in Phoenix, is in residence at the Herberger Theater Center and offers about 25 weeks of performances. Other local troupes include Childsplay, Actors Theatre of Phoenix, and Centre Dance Ensemble.

Housed in Symphony Hall, the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra performs an extensive classical repertoire and presents pops concerts with well-known guest artists. Phoenix hosts the state's professional ballet company and other international dance companies. The Arizona Opera also gives regular performances for Phoenix area audiences. Touring artists perform at the America West Arena, Celebrity Theatre, Gammage Auditorium, and the Cricket Pavilion.

More than 40 museums and 150 art galleries in the Phoenix area offer a range of educational and cultural experiences. The Arizona Hall of Fame Museum, opened in 1902, honors people who have contributed to Arizona heritage. Featuring the history of central Arizona, the Arizona Historical Society Museum includes replications of old-time shops and stores. The family-oriented Shemer Art Center and Museum presents primarily local and state artists. The Arizona Science Center provides interactive exhibits for children and adults in such areas as energy, life science, and health. The Hall of Flame Fire Fighting Museum houses the world's most extensive collection of fire-fighting apparatus, equipment, and memorabilia. Anthropological exhibits, fine arts, and historic arts of Native American cultures of the Southwest are specialties at the Heard Museum, which boasts 18,000 works of art and artifacts. The Phoenix Art Museum contains a permanent collection of 17,000 objects focusing on European, American, Western American, Latin American, and Asian arts and costume design. Owned and operated by artisan members, the Craftsmen's Cooperative Gallery at Heritage Square features handmade arts and crafts.

Festivals and Holidays

Highlights from the Phoenix special events calendar include the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl Football Classic, which opens the year with a game between two of the country's best collegiate teams on New Year's Day at Sun Devil Stadium. Also held in January are the Arizona National Livestock Show (since 1948) and the Parada del Sol Parade and Rodeo.

Sports for the Spectator

Phoenix fields teams in all major league sports. The city is home to two professional basketball teams, the Phoenix Suns of the National Basketball Association, and the Phoenix Mercury of the Women's National Basketball Association, both of which play their games at the America West Arena. Professional football is represented by the National Football League's Arizona Cardinals and the Arena Football League's Rattlers while professional hockey is represented by the National Hockey League's Phoenix Coyotes and the East Coast Hockey League's Phoenix Roadrunners. In 1998 the major league baseball team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, were formed and began play at Bank One Ball Park, built especially for them. In 2001 the expansion team defeated the powerhouse New York Yankees to capture their first World Series crown.

Mel Brooks (born 1926) transformed traditional burlesque and Jewish humor into a hit-and-miss career writing and directing film parodies of traditional Hollywood genres. His biggest success came late in his career when he adapted his first film, The Producers, into a smash Broadway musical.

From Catskills to Television

Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, on June 28, 1926. He was a short and often sickly child, and his peers often ridiculed him. Reacting to this treatment, he learned how to strike back with stinging forms of abusive and satirical humor.

After serving in the U.S. Army in World War II in Europe as a combat engineer, Brooks took his talent for insults and pratfalls to the Catskills resorts, then famous for nurturing Jewish comics. For several years he performed the role of a "toomler," a kind of court jester who would stage impromptu monologues or pretend to insult the resort staff and the customers. The roots of Brooks's comedy were in vaudeville and burlesque, two dying forms of entertainment that emphasized physical humor, insults, sight gags, and outrageous lampooning. Among his many gags was leaping into the swimming pool fully clothed with a suit and tie.

Brooks's style of humor was perfectly suited to early television. In 1950, desperate to get a job writing gags and skits for pioneering TV comedian Sid Caesar, Brooks auditioned by falling to his knees before Caesar and singing a comic song about himself. Caesar hired the young comic to concoct jokes for his hit series Your Show of Shows. Among the writers Brooks worked with in Caesar's stable were Woody Allen, playwright Neil Simon, and Carl Reiner. It was during these years that Brooks honed his gift for sharp, sometimes mean satire and rapid-fire wordplay. By the time Brooks parted ways with Caesar in the mid-1950s, he was earning $2,500 per show, a substantial amount in those days.

Brooks remained in television, though without regular income, as a gag writer and script doctor. He also worked on dialogue and scripts for radio and theater and occasionally appeared as a comic on television variety shows, such as 1962's Timex All-Star Comedy Show. One of his frequent skit partners was Reiner, with whom he developed a sketch called "The 2,000-Year-Old Man," in which Brooks played a smart-alecky Jewish curmudgeon who has seen it all and has comments on everything in history. With variations and elaboration, this routine developed into a staple on television shows and the two comics eventually had a hit record album on their hands. "The 2,000-Year-Old Man" was Brooks's first big success.

In 1964 Brooks married actress Anne Bancroft, with whom he would have four children. That same year he did the voice-over on a cartoon film titled The Critic, playing the equivalent of the 2000-Year-Old Man commenting on modern art. The film won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject. In 1965 Brooks and writer Buck Henry developed the hit television show Get Smart, a comic spoof of the spy genre. Starring Don Adams as the bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart, Get Smart became one of the most popular shows of the late 1960s. After television audiences began to turn away from comedy and variety shows in favor of drama in the next decade, and as his radio work dried up, Brooks would see his income plummet.

Springtime for Hitler

Buoyed by the success of Get Smart, Brooks wrote and directed the low-budget movie The Producers, which was released in 1968. Starring Zero Mostel and including a role for Brooks, The Producers is a tall tale about a down-and-out theatrical producer named Max Bialystock (Mostel) who is persuaded by corrupt accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) to deliberately stage a money-losing play and abscond with the excess cash finagled from their naive, elderly investors. The two hire a neo-Nazi director and a drug-crazed hippie star (Dick Shawn) to stage a musical comedy called Springtime for Hitler, a light-hearted romp featuring the German Chancellor who waged war on Europe and exterminated six million Jews. When the show turns out to be a success, Bloom and Bialystock find themselves in trouble.

The Producers was an outrageous and risky venture that depended on audiences laughing at the idea of a Hitlerian musical little more than two decades after the end of the war, during a time when many older adults with firsthand experience of World War II and the Holocaust were still living. In fact, the film is the epitome of Brooks's satirical attitude, and his belief that show business knows no bounds. Despite its low budget, The Producers was hailed as something of a minor comic masterpiece. Unfortunately, it flopped at the box office and was unable to buoy Brooks's sinking income.

After getting an acting role in the black comedy Putney Swope in 1969, Brooks wrote and directed The Twelve Chairs, an adaptation of a 1928 Russian novel about a former aristocrat who has hidden his fortune in a dozen chairs. Less a satire than a straight comedy and complete with chase scenes and comic suspense—and another role for Brooks— The Twelve Chairs was also a flop, both commercially and critically.

Various Native American tribes knew the Otter Creek Valley where Rutland now stands primarily as a place to fish and hunt beaver. The first description of the creek's falls was recorded in the journal of James Cross, a fur trader, in 1730. Otter Creek served as a junction on the military road connecting the Champlain forts to the north with the Connecticut Valley during the French and Indian War, and settlement was not attempted until that hostility ceased. The first grantee of a patent to settle the territory was John Murray of Rutland, Massachusetts, who was responsible for the name of the town. The first actual settler was John Mead, who brought his wife and ten children there in 1770. Mead built a gristmill and sawmill, and Rutland soon became an active frontier community. Fort Rutland was built in 1775, and in 1778 the city became the headquarters for state troops during the American Revolution.

Among the city's early notables was the Reverend Samuel Williams, brilliant scholar, author of the first history of Vermont, and founder in 1794 of the Rutland Herald, Vermont's oldest continuously published newspaper. Between 1800 and 1880 Rutland's population grew from 2,124 to 12,149 people, surpassing for the first and only time the population of Burlington, the largest community in the state. This explosive growth is attributed to the arrival in 1849 of the railroad and the resulting boom in the marble industry, which had been operating on a small scale since the early nineteenth century. Colonel Redfield Proctor is credited with transforming the marble business into one of the country's greatest industries, bringing prosperity to Rutland and power to Proctor. In 1886 Proctor succeeded in convincing the state legislature that two new townships should be created from the original town. The new townships of Proctor and West Rutland, largely owned or controlled by the Proctor family, contained some of the richest marble deposits in the world; thus did Rutland lose its title as Marble City (in 1993 a long chapter in the city's history sadly came to a close when the Vermont Marble company closed its quarry operations in Proctor).

The city continued to prosper, however, largely due to the Howe Scales company, which moved there in 1877. The opening up of the ski industry in the 1930s added considerably to Rutland's prosperity, as did the decision in the 1960s of General Electric Corporation to build two defense contract plants in the area. City leaders have been engaged since the 1960s in the renovation of the downtown core, and the modern city exists as a retail trading and industrial center as well as the gateway to two famous ski resorts. Rutland's tree-lined streets and Victorian mansions add to the charm of this vigorous small community.

A small, progressive community with the cultural and recreational attractions of a much larger city, Rutland is the kind of city many of today's younger professional and high-technology workers seem drawn to. For that reason the city's economic picture remains bright.

Santa Fe's historic downtown plaza, once the terminus of the Santa Fe Trail, has been a center of activity in Santa Fe since the city's founding. The plaza area is full of restaurants, shops, art galleries, and museums. Also here is St. Francis Cathedral, a grand structure built in the French Romanesque style, unusual in this city of Spanish-Pueblo architecture. Santa Fe's first Roman Catholic archbishop, Jean Baptiste Lamy, started the cathedral; both the bishop and the building were the inspiration for Willa Cather's novel, Death Comes to the Archbishop. A wooden icon in the cathedral's north chapel is the oldest representation of the Madonna in the United States.

Other historical buildings include Santuario de Guadalupe, the nation's oldest shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe; built in the late 1700s, its adobe walls are three feet thick. Our Lady of Light Chapel, also known as Loretto Chapel, was built between 1873 and 1878 and is the oldest stone masonry building in the city; it is known for its spiral wooden Miraculous Staircase, apparently made without nails or a support beam. San Miguel Mission, one of the oldest mission churches in the nation, was built in 1610 by the Tlaxcala natives, who were servants of Spanish soldiers and missionaries; on display is a bell that was cast in Spain in 1356 and brought to Santa Fe in the early 19th century. The New Mexico State Capitol building, the only round capitol building in the United States, was built in the shape of a Southwestern Indian zia, which represents the circle of life. The Palace of the Governors has been home to 60 Spanish, Mexican, and American governors, among them Lew Wallace, who wrote the novel Ben Hur there during his 1877-1881 tenure. Built in 1610, it became a history museum in 1909.

Canyon Road, just north of the capitol building, was once a Native American trail and defines one of the oldest districts in the city. Just west of Canyon Road is Barrio de Analco, now called East de Vargas Street, among the oldest continuously inhabited streets in the nation; many historic homes are located here. The Cross of the Martyrs, overlooking the city, is a large white cross built in 1920 to commemorate the Franciscans killed by native Pueblos in 1680. The Commemorative Walkway leading to the monument has been the route for various religious processions, particularly in September during Fiesta, the celebration of the return of the Spanish to Santa Fe in 1692.

Santa Fe is surrounded by twelve Pueblo villages, each of which retains its own distinct culture and holds special events relating to its unique traditions; all are located within an hour's drive of the city.

The Palace of the Governors was originally built as Spain's seat of government in the early seventeenth century.

Arts and Culture

Home of more than 20 music groups, theater companies, and dance groups, Santa Fe supports one of the best and most active arts communities in the country. The famous Santa Fe Opera, which attracts audiences from throughout the world, presents its performances in a partially open-air amphitheater located on a wooded hill north of the city. It is known for its performances of the classics, obscure works by classical composers, and American premiers of modern works. Its eight-week season runs from June to August. The Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performs classical and popular works at the Lensic Performing Arts Center; the center's lavish Lensic Theater, built in 1931 as a film and vaudeville house, received an $8.2 million restoration, which was completed in 2001. The Desert Chorale choral group performs at venues throughout the city and is known for blending Renaissance melodies and avant-garde compositions.

Students at the College of Santa Fe stage their productions in the Greer Garson Theatre. Their season, which runs from October to May, consists of several presentations of four plays. Santa Fe Playhouse, established in the 1920s, performs dramas, avant-garde works, and musical comedy in a historic adobe theater.

The María Benitez Teatro Flamenco performs flamenco music and dance in a summer season at the María Benitez Theatre at the Radisson Hotel. The company is comprised of Benitez, who has been named the best flamenco dancer of her generation by Dance magazine, and flamenco dancers and musicians from throughout the United States and Spain.

Santa Fe is home to several museums specializing in a variety of fields. The Museum of New Mexico, described as the most important modern cultural institution in the state, houses the Palace of Governors, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Museum of Fine Arts, and Museum of International Folk Art. The Palace of the Governors, the nation's oldest continually used building, houses exhibits relating to Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and American frontier history. Its governor offices have been restored and preserved. The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture showcases exhibits pertaining to the history and contemporary culture of the Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache peoples, including pottery, basketry, woven fabrics, jewelry, and contemporary crafts. Opened in 1987, its massive collection has been built over the course of nearly 80 years of research and acquisition by the Laboratory of Anthropology. The Museum of Fine Arts, built in 1917, is the oldest art museum in the state; it was built in the style of the mission church at nearby Acoma Pueblo. The museum maintains a collection of more than 20,000 works, with a specialty in regional art from throughout the 20th century to the present. The Museum of International Folk Art, the largest of its kind in the world, has more than 130,000 items of folk art from around the world, including dolls and puppets, masks, textiles, ceramics, furniture, clothing, and Spanish colonial artworks.

Scottsdale is a popular winter vacation mecca in the area of Arizona known as the "Valley of the Sun." A tiny farming community of 2,000 people covering only 1 square mile in 1951, Scottsdale has become a vibrant city of more than 200,000 residents encompassing nearly 200 square miles. Its many golf courses and resorts attract visitors from around the world. Art galleries abound amid the towering palm trees, purple shadowed mountains, and pastel landscapes. The city boasts more than 300 sunny days per year. The lively restaurants, nightclubs, and cultural and sporting events add a metropolitan touch, yet cowboy ranches and Indian reservations are a brief ride away. In addition to its booming tourism industry, Scottsdale has become a diverse high technology center and is becoming recognized as a leader in health care and medical research. It offers a vast array of recreational activities including biking, hiking, white water rafting, horseback riding, and ballooning. The arts are flourishing in the city, which has its own symphony orchestra and more art showcases per capita than almost any other world city.

Today, the Royal Indian Raj International Corporation announced that it has engaged the prestigious law firm of Greenberg Traurig as its lead counsel for all of its Real Estate Operations, Land Development, Hotel, Resort and Club Operations, Corporate and Securities Compliance, Franchise Operations, Entertainment and Project and Infrastructure Finance needs.

The addition of Greenberg Traurig further entrenches RIRIC’s position of complete transparency for investors wishing to participate in the nascent Indian marketplace.

“We are delighted to be associated with a prestigious law firm of the caliber of Greenberg Traurig and we look forward to a long-term association with these first class professionals. The association with Greenberg Traurig in New York represents a significant step in first class legal representation for Royal Indian Raj International Corporation in its capital market raises and its continued, expansion of its world wide operations and its India-centric focus.” - Manoj C. Benjamin, Chairman and CEO Royal Indian Raj International Corporation

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP:

Greenberg Traurig, LLP is an international, full-service law firm with 1,675 attorneys and governmental affairs professionals in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The firm is ranked seventh on The American Lawyer’s Am Law 100 listing of the largest law firms in the U.S., based on number of lawyers.

Greenberg Traurig serves clients from offices in: Albany, NY; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Atlanta, GA; Boca Raton, FL; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Dallas, TX; Denver, CO; Fort Lauderdale, FL; Houston, TX; Las Vegas, NV; Los Angeles, CA; Miami, FL; Morristown, NJ; New York, NY; Orange County, CA; Orlando, FL; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Sacramento, CA; Silicon Valley, CA; Tallahassee, FL; Tampa, FL; Tokyo, Japan; Tysons Corner, VA; Washington, D.C.; West Palm Beach, FL; Wilmington, DE; and Zurich, Switzerland. Additionally, the firm has strategic alliances with the following independent law firms: Olswang, London and Brussels; Studio Santa Maria, Milan and Rome; and Hayabusa Kokusai Law Offices in Tokyo.

For additional information, please visit the firm’s Web site at www.gtlaw.com .

About Royal Indian Raj International Corporation:

Royal Indian Raj International Corporation, (RIRIC), incorporated in Nevada, USA, in March 1999 with offices in Vancouver, London, and Bangalore, India, maintains a country-specific, 5-sector heavy infrastructure orientation, focused on the free world’s largest emerging market, India. The company’s goal is to develop the New India by modernizing housing and businesses and realizing self-sustaining cities of the future. RIRIC implements leading-edge technologies and products in strategic alliance with world-class international corporations. Partnered with these international leaders in their respective fields, RIRIC is focused on five of India’s priority infrastructure sectors using a vertically integrated business strategy: Urban Infrastructure & Housing, Road Building & Recycling, Broadband Communications & IT Networks, eCommerce/IT & Education Applications, and Broadcast Content, Entertainment & Theme Parks.

RIRIC’s city projects, Royal Garden City - Bangalore, and the Royal Garden Marina City and Financial Harbor - Mumbai, are the first of six cities planned by the company. RGC Bangalore is a 3,000 acre sub-city development situated between downtown Bangalore and the new Bangalore International Airport. The USD $8.97 billion integrated Live/Work/Play development features over 146.36 Million Sq. Ft. of residential, commercial and industrial space to accommodate the burgeoning Bangalore market and has been planned and designed by the former Singapore Public Works Dept. The project is fifteen times the size of Canary Wharf in London, England.

Royal Garden Marina City and Financial Harbor, covering an area of 5,000 acres, is situated 16 nautical miles from the Gateway of India in downtown, Mumbai. It will be Asia’s largest real estate development and India’s first smart city, with 22.8 million square meters of high-tech retail, medical, education and housing facilities. The project comprises over 50,000 residential units, a central business district, industrial district, entertainment district, parks, restaurants, shopping, educational facilities and civic amenities. An estimated 400,000 to 600,000 people are expected to live, work and play within the city daily.

Royal Indian Raj International Corporation (RIRIC) is currently selling Phase I of its inaugural Royal Garden Villas & Resorts project in Bangalore. Phase II and III will hitting the markets in Q2 of 2007 as will its Royal Garden Villas and Resorts Hyderabad development situated on 450 acres near the new Hyderabad International Airport. RIRIC will also be launching its Royal Garden Villas and Resorts brand in Mumbai, Goa, Delhi, Chennai and Pune over the next 12-18 months.

PADANG, Indonesia — Two years after an earthquake off western Indonesia unleashed a monster tsunami, scientists expect the same fault to rupture again within the next few decades — and this town stands to take the full force of the waves.

They predict a large swath of Sumatra island’s densely populated coast just south of the tsunami-hit area will be pounded by a giant wall of water.

“All this area in red will disappear,” Padang Mayor Fauzi Bahar said, pointing at a satellite map on his office wall showing the likely reach of the waves into the town.
The low-lying town of 900,000 people has started mapping out evacuation routes and educating the public, but all the same, authorities fear up to 60,000 will die, unable to outrun the waves even if they get a speedy warning and flee.

“The people will be washed away,” Bahar said.

On the morning of Dec. 26, 2004, the most powerful earthquake in four decades lifted the seabed west of Sumatra by several yards, propelling waves up to two stories high at jetliner speeds across the Indian Ocean to smash into coastal communities, beach resorts and towns in 12 nations.

In hardest-hit Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India, the waves surged miles inland, tossing ships, swallowing entire villages and leaving behind a blasted landscape of concrete foundations and rubble littered with tens of thousands of bodies.

On Sumatra island — home to more than half the tsunami’s nearly 230,000 dead and missing — volunteers and emergency workers took three months to recover all the corpses and bury them in mass graves.
Warnings of another tsunami-spawning quake are adding urgency to efforts to establish a warning system covering the Indian Ocean rim like the network of high-tech buoys in the Pacific that alerts Japan, the United States and other nations of sudden tidal changes.

The worst-affected countries have begun installing sirens on threatened coasts and three buoys with sensors capable of detecting waves generated by seismic activity are in the water, but the network is several years from completion, officials say.

Making sure the system works from end-to-end is a “daunting task,” said Curt Barrett at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is helping set it up.

“Once the warning goes out, people have to know what to do,” he said. “All of this information is useless if it doesn’t get to the person down on the beach.”

The warnings of another tsunami are based on more than a decade of research by respected U.S. geologist Kerry Sieh and a team of scientists on a section of the fault just south of the part that ruptured in 2004.

His conclusions are shared by scientists at other universities and government research institutions.

The fault, which runs the length of the west coast of Sumatra about 125 miles offshore, is the meeting point of the Eurasian and Pacific tectonic plates that have been pushing against each other for millions of years, causing huge stresses.

Using historical accounts of earlier quakes, measurements of coral uplift and data from a network of Global Positioning System transmitters on nearby islands, Sieh, from the California Institute of Technology, has found a pattern of large earthquakes about every 230 years, with the last major ones in 1797 and in 1833.

The 2004 jolt, as well as another strong quake on the same fault three months later that killed 1,000 people on nearby Nias island, has loaded even more stress, Sieh said.

“We are not saying the quake is going to happen tomorrow or next week, but on the other hand we don’t want people to forget about it and be lax,” he said. “I’d be surprised if it were delayed much beyond 30 years.”

A small non-governmental agency funded by foreign donors is spreading the message in Padang and surrounding districts. The group has met with hundreds of village heads and religious leaders and sends volunteers to schools along the threatened coast with a simple warning:

“If the quake lasts longer than a minute, knocks you to your feet or collapses buildings, run to the nearest hills,” volunteer Riska told a class recently.

“If you can’t make it, then climb a tree. Start learning now,” she said, her voice hoarse from trying to hold the giggling children’s attention.

The group says residents and local government officials are receptive to its message, especially since a second tsunami on Indonesia’s main island of Java last July killed 600 people.

Coastal residents say land prices have fallen, a sign that people are moving inland.

But simply raising awareness isn’t enough, experts say.

The tsunami will likely crash into the shore within 20 minutes because the fault line is so close, meaning the town must make expensive infrastructure changes to enable people to flee.

Evacuation roads need widening and bridges crossing the town’s many rivers need reinforcement. Some experts say tsunami-proof towers should be built in coastal areas and emergency services and government agencies moved inland.