Source: The Times Of India News Service

LUCKNOW, INDIA, March 7, 2001: UP chief minister Rajnath Singh announced that the historic Allahabad city would be renamed "Tirth Raj Prayag." Prayag is the ancient name of the city. The announcement was made at a function attended by sadhus and sants to congratulate the chief minister for the success of the recent Kumbh Mela there. The name change follows "Bombay" returning to "Mumbai," "Madras" to "Chennai" and "Calcutta" to "Kolkota."

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK, March 6, 2001: This recent article discusses the attempts of the Tibetan people to preserve their culture as new immigrants to the United States. Tibetan children enrolled in a Sunday language course in Manhattan have never seen Tibet, nor have many of their parents, exiles who were born and raised in refugee settlements in India or Nepal. Young Tibetans struggle to maintain the culture of a homeland many have never seen, while also trying to adapt to a new culture. Tibetan leaders complicate the issue by expressing mixed feelings. Many believe the culture will not survive if Tibetans scatter across the globe. In just a decade, the number of Tibetan exiles in this country has increased tenfold. It is still a small group, with the largest concentration of about 2,000 people in New York City. The Immigration and Naturalization Service considers Tibetans stateless, but it has opposed most asylum requests from those who lived for most of their lives in Nepal or India. The agency's position is that an applicant must prove that he or she suffered or fears persecution in the country of last residence. U.S. Judges generally decide that India and Nepal treat Tibetan exiles well, and few asylum applications have been granted. Canada, on the other hand, grants most asylum requests from Tibetans. Judges there feel that a Tibetan who does not have citizenship in India or Nepal runs the risk of one day being deported to China, which now controls Tibet. "If you have no status in a country, you don't have a right to remain," said a Toronto lawyer. "And the Tibetans really don't have a home."

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SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, March 11, 2001: The Hindu community in Australia's premier harbor city is up in arms after the left-wing Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) stormed the Sri Venkateswara Temple here in Helensburg, taking eight construction workers with them on the charge they were being underpaid and exploited. The Hindu Council of Australia (fax: 011 61 2 9544 4957) will hold a protest rally on March 25 against the move. The head of the temple management committee, Perumal Janarthan, denied the charges and blamed the trade union of being insensitive to Hinduism. The protesters will meet at Sydney Town Hall and march to the Parliament House. "We have made it clear that we are not constructing a five-star hotel but a Hindu temple and workers are not here to earn wages but to perform their religious duties as volunteers," Janarthan told IANS. The workers were living by the religious tenets followed by those involved in temple construction and provided all facilities, he said. "We have been spending about US$10,256 on each worker every year for meals, clothes, accommodation, airfares and other expenses," he said. The workers are believed to have been taken to Wollongong by CFMEU, who are affiliated to the opposition Labor Party, and the action has taken on political overtones. Australian Hindus are seeking support from Hindus in other countries.

Source: The Hindu

LONDON, ENGLAND, March 7, 2001: A plan to build 2,108 quake-proof houses in Gujarat, proposed by the Shree Swaminarayan Mandir -- the biggest Hindu temple outside India ---has been launched by Prince Charles, bringing instant sponsors. Swami Atmaswarupdas, temple chief, said 6,500 volunteers of the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanatha had rushed to the aid of the quake victims within hours of the devastating quake. Meals were provided daily for 20,000 victims, and 850,000 food packets, 1.5 million water pouches, 63,000 blankets and 169,000 articles of clothing had been distributed so far.

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BODH GAYA, INDIA, March 9, 2001: Authorities in eastern India have ordered an investigation after teen-age Tibetan leader Ugyen Thinley Dorje, the 17th Karmapa Lama, was accused of wearing his shoes when he visited the sanctum of the Mahabodhi Temple in the state of Bihar. The Karmapa is one of the highest-ranking monks in Tibetan Buddhism, recognized by both Beijing and the exiled Tibetan religious leader, the Dalai Lama, and is considered by his followers to be the reincarnation of his predecessor. Bhadant Anand, the general-secretary of the All India Monks' Association, demanded the Karmapa be punished for "trampling'' upon the Vajrasana, the place where the Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment. Although there is no restriction on wearing shoes inside a temple in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, a 1949 law that governs the Mahabodhi Temple bans footwear inside the complex. Those defying the law may be fined $2.20, according to the law. The Karmapa was defended by Tenzing Lama, the monk-in-charge of the Tibetan monastery in Bodh Gaya, who said: "It is the heart and not the shoes that is important.''

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KABUL, AFGHANISTAN, Sat, 23 Sep 1995 - This article in the Far Eastern Economic Review details how the National Museum of Afghanistan was first damaged by rocket fire in May, 1993, and then looted. The rockets caused a fire which melted supporting beams holding up the ornate vaulted roof, sending it crashing down on the upper galleries. The next day, Najibulla Popol, the 37-year-old museum curator, and a few staff members salvaged what they could to vaults in the museum's basement. Factional fighting had been swirling around the museum since the mujahideen captured Kabul in April 1992. In the months following the first rocket attack, mujahideen soldiers repeatedly looted their contents guided by detailed instructions from Afghan and Pakistani antiquities dealers. In January 1994, United Nations agency Habitat bricked up the museum's windows and repaired the doors, but looters broke in. Leading a party of journalists in 1995, museum director Popol showed destruction and mayhem, stacks of empty metal trays that had held one of the largest and oldest coin collections in the world-some 40,000 coins-covered the floor. Less-important artifacts were left smashed on the floor, while those too heavy to carry such as life-sized statues of Kushan warriors from 200 BC and the largest Buddhas were badly damaged. According to Sayed Delju Hussaini, Afghan minister of information and culture, 90% of the museum's collection has been looted. "It was one of the richest museums in the entire region, covering 50,000 years of history in Afghanistan and Central Asia," Hussaini laments. The breaking of all remaining statues in this museum by the Taleban in the last few weeks completes the museum's demise.

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MANCHESTER, NH, March 7, 2001: Inventor Dean Kamen's invention, called "IT" or "Ginger," is a two-wheeled hydrogen-powered scooter that is emission-free. The print publication of Inside.com says, "Ginger represents the first generation of a new mode of transportation that will compete with and possibly replace automobiles. The ramifications of a 'hydrogen economy' would be profound on everything from the environment to the energy business to global politics." IT is already generating financial support from Steve Jobs of Apple and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, who reportedly have seen the machine. Kamen, a successful inventor who has come up with innovative, stair-climbing wheelchairs and an insulin pump, created a company called ACROS to build "motorized, self-propelled, wheelchairs, scooters, and carts."

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KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA, March 11, 2001: Tension remains high in a squatter settlement on the outskirts of the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, following clashes between Muslim Malays and Hindu Indians which have left at least five people dead. More than 150 people have been arrested in the troubled squatter district of Kampung Medan since trouble first erupted on Thursday. Journalists who toured the area on Sunday morning say a heavy police presence, backed up by water cannon, remains in place. The fighting had origins in a row last weekend between an Indian funeral procession and Malays celebrating a wedding. According to stories circulating in the area, a drunken Indian man kicked over a chair at the Malay party, leading to the fighting.

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BAMIYAN, AFGHANISTAN, March, 11, 2001: The two giant Buddha statues had stood guard over the Bamiyan valley for centuries until they were destroyed by Afghanistan's ruling Taleban. Foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, told UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Pakistan that demolition was still continuing, and all the country's moveable statues had been destroyed. While the Taleban say they acted because the statues were "un-Islamic," a delegation from the world's largest Muslim body, the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) had travelled to Afghanistan to try to change their minds. The statues were once a big tourist draw and dated back to between the second and fifth centuries AD, before the coming of Islam, when Afghanistan was a centre of Buddhist learning and pilgrimage. Egypt's top religious leader, Mufti Sheikh Nasr Farid Wassel, who is travelling with the OIC delegation, said: "The proof that these statues have no negative impact on Islam is that throughout Islam's history in Afghanistan they were preserved and no Muslim doctrine has suggested their destruction."

Source: The Hindu

TIRUCHI, INDIA, March 6, 2001: During a recent renovation, the honored deity of the Srirangam temple has come under close scrutiny by the temple heritage protection committee. Asking for reassurance from the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister that a significant one centimeter image of Sri Vatsa-Lakshmi be restored to its proper place on Lord Ranganatha's chest, the committee has been questioned as to the image's validity. Supported by scriptures, the Lakshmi embossment will take its rightful place on the Lord's chest and the tantric triangle symbol that was mistakenly approved and placed there in the renovation will be removed. Further renovations will be monitored more closely. Temple devotees anxiously await the worship to commence again on March 15th.

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UNITED KINGDOM, March 7, 2001: Ethnic minorities in the U.K. are being viewed in a different light. In order to deter the negative results of an aging population and falling birth rates, Britain needs a youthful work force to fund public pensions and health care. Minorities who start their own businesses and those who work in the transport and health industry have become vital to the U.K.'s economy. As a result, it has been proposed by a study done by Dr. Vaughan Robinson, head of the Migration Unit at Swansea University, that immigration be increased by at least 20%. This increase will keep the economy viable well into the 21st century.

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LONDON, U.K, March 8, 2001: William Dowsing arrived in Cambridge in December, 1643, filled with Puritan zeal, determined to smash the lingering reminders of the old Roman Catholic faith. A similar determination inspired the Taleban in Afghanistan to destroy ancient images of the Buddha, horrifying the world. "Images, symbols, whether religious or not, always attract violence when there is conflict because religious symbols are more densely packed with meaning,'' said Carlos Eire, professor of religious studies at Yale University. Iconoclasm marked the Protestant Reformation in Europe. In the eighth century, there was conflict in the Eastern Church over the use of icons. Christian iconoclasts have drawn inspiration from parts of the Bible which condemn idols and images. Dowsing had the authority of the British Parliament which had enacted an ordinance "for demolishing ...monuments of superstition and idolatry'' regardless of value of art or history.

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AYODHYA, INDIA, March 6, 2001: In the northern Indian city of Ayodhya, a visiting Korean delegation has inaugurated a memorial to their royal ancestor, Queen Huh. More than a hundred historians and government representatives, including the North Korean ambassador to India, unveiled the memorial on the west bank of the River Saryu. Korean historians believe that Queen Huh was a princess of an ancient kingdom in Ayodhya. She went to Korea some two thousand years ago and started the Karak dynasty by marrying a local king, Suro. Today, the historians say, Queen Huh's descendants number more than six million, including the South Korean president, Kim Dae Jung. But a senior official in Ayodhya told the BBC that no information was available about Queen Huh in Indian history.

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KOZHISSERI, NEW DELHI, March 04, 2001: Holi, the Indian festival of colors, will see the use of natural colors made from the extracts of flowers and fruit this year, to the relief of those worried about hazardous chemical colors being smeared on them. "We can get yellow from the 'tesu' plant, black from husk and blue from 'neel' and many more colors that are completely natural and safe," said Vandana Shiva, a noted environmental activist speaking at the program Abir Gulal (named after the colored powder used on Holi), organized by Navdanya, a movement to protect biodiversity. The natural colors will be sold in the capital's Dilli Haat fairgrounds by Navdanya. Often industrial colors are used could cause cancer. We have always stressed toxic-free food, and it is time for toxic-free color," Shiva said. Generally, people play Holi with commercial colors, with carcinogenic properties such as aluminum bromide. "The natural colors will save health and protect nature," said Shiva.

Source: India Abroad

LONDON, ENGLAND, March 5, 2001: Foot and mouth disease that affects all cloven hoofed animals has rampaged through the countryside of the U.K. Determined to eradicate the virus, government officials have slaughtered an estimated 46,000 animals to date, many thousands of which are cows. Protesting the killing, Hindus in Britain, have spoken out about the way animals are treated in the U.K and blamed the epidemic on poor animal care.