1. Nepal Looks For Girl To Serve as New "Living Goddess"
2. Hindu Heritage Fest in Toronto Drew Thousands
3. Daily Inspiration

1. Nepal Looks For Girl To Serve as New "Living Goddess"

in.reuters.com

KATHMANDU, NEPAL, August 12, 2008: Religious authorities in Nepal have begun the search for a girl who could be as young as three or four to serve as the new Kumari, or the virgin "living goddess", in a centuries-old tradition.

Astrologers were consulting horoscopes of candidates from Buddhist Shakya families to replace the current Kumari, Preeti Shakya, who is 11 and should retire during the annual Hindu festival of Dasain in October, temple officials said. "If we don't change her now, we'll have to wait until next year which could be late," said Deepak Bahadur Pandey, a senior official of the state-run Trust Corporation that oversees the country's cultural matters.

Under the Kumari tradition, a girl selected from a Buddhist Newar family goes through a rigorous cultural process and becomes the "living goddess". She is considered by many as an incarnation of the powerful deity Kali and is revered until she menstruates, after which she must return to the family and a new one is chosen.

Traditionally it was believed that the girl's horoscope should be in harmony with that of the king of Nepal. It is not clear how this formality will be completed now that Nepal has abolished the monarchy. In the past even the kings of Nepal sought her blessings.

2. Hindu Heritage Fest in Toronto Drew Thousands

www.southasianfocus.ca

TORONTO, CANADA, August 13 2008: An estimated 2,500 people from across the area braved the rains last weekend to attend the Hindu Heritage Festival, held at Toronto's Black Creek Pioneer Village by the Hindu Federation as announced on HPI on August 9.

The festival provided a perspective on how the first members of the community experienced life in Canada, said Pandit Roopnauth Sharma, president. The event is set to become an annual fixture on the community's calendar, federation officials added.

Advocating an Unusual Role for Trees
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/science/12prof.html?ref=science

MERRICKVILLE, ONTARIO, CANADA: Dr. Diana Beresford-Kroeger, 63, is a native of Ireland who has bachelor's degrees in medical biochemistry and botany, and has worked as a Ph.D.-level researcher at the University of Ottawa school of medicine, where she published several papers on the chemistry of artificial blood. She calls herself a renegade scientist, however, because she tries to bring together indigenous tradition and botany to advocate an unusual role for trees.

She favors what she terms a bioplan, reforesting cities and rural areas with trees according to the medicinal, environmental, nutritional, pesticidal and herbicidal properties she claims for them, which she calls ecofunctions.

Memory Elvin-Lewis, a professor of botany at Washington University, said that in India, for example, compounds from neem trees are said to have anti-inflammatory and antiviral properties and are planted around hospitals and sanitariums. "It's not implausible," Dr. Elvin-Lewis said; it simply hasn't been studied.

"Her ideas are a rare, if not entirely new approach to natural history," said Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard biologist. "The science of selecting trees for different uses around the world has not been well studied."

3. Daily Inspiration

www.hinduismtoday.com

If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.
   French scholar Romain Rolland