GO TO SOURCE SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, August 5, 2001: Temples in South Korea have begun offering special ceremonies for women to pray for the foetuses they have aborted. The ritual, called naktae chondoje or offering ceremony for aborted foetuses, lasts for 49 days, the usual duration of a Buddhist funeral ceremony. Besides fruit and sweets, the women also make offerings…
GO TO SOURCE COLOMBO, SRI LANKA, August 5, 2001: Sri Lanka’s influential Buddhist clergy have called for laws to ban Christian conversions, which are spreading in poverty-stricken rural villages, and vowed collective action against the practice. They have adopted an 11-point plan to fight proselytizers, active in several districts of the island, and called on the authorities to immediately pass…
GO TO SOURCE LONDON, ENGLAND, August 5, 2001: Broadcasters in the United Kingdom want to a fight digital license ban, despite fears that opening the gates to U.S.-style evangelism will hit the weak and vulnerable. The BBC might just have appointed its first agnostic head of religion and ethics, and ITV may have already attracted doubts over whether it will…
Source: Sandhya Times (Hindi) RISHIKESH, INDIA, August 2, 2001: In the pilgrimage city of Rishikesh, use of polyethylene bags have been banned from August 1, 2001. According to the chief of the Nagar Palika Parishad Srimati Snehlata Sharma, a committee of citizens will keep an eye on the use of polyethylene bags, and five officials will be looking after the…
Source: Sandhya Times (Hindi) JAIPUR, INDIA, August 2, 2001: In England’s 2,500 beauty parlors, Indian traditional cosmetics are frequently used. According to information received from World Communication Centre in Jaipur, in these beauty parlors cream, shampoos and other synthetic materials are out of favor. In the place of these, turmeric, honey, lemon, etc. are being used. India shampoos such as…
GO TO SOURCE BHILWARA, INDIA, August,1, 2001: The tension that was brewing in the Rajasthan town of Asind after a group of Gujjars allegedly razed an ancient mosque and installed a Hindu icon at the site, was defused after a marathon five-hour discussion between leaders of the Hindu and Muslim communities, where authorities managed to persuade the former to remove…
GO TO SOURCE TRIPURA, INDIA, August 2, 2001: Tribal Hindus in Tripura have formed vigilante groups to thwart attempts by separatist militants to convert people to Christianity at gunpoint, community leaders said on Thursday. “It is a very serious threat to Hinduism with armed militants of the outlawed National Liberation Front of Tripura forcibly converting tribal villagers to Christianity,” said…
GO TO SOURCE TAIWAN, August 2, 2001: Researchers in Taiwan found that the smoke produced by burning incense is laden with cancer-causing chemicals. Levels of one chemical believed to cause lung cancer were 40 times higher in a badly ventilated temple in Taiwan than in houses where people smoke tobacco. Incense burning also creates more pollution than road traffic at…
GO TO SOURCE LONDON, ENGLAND, August 2, 2001: Researchers say the world’s population could stop growing sooner than expected. They suggest it could peak within the next 70 years, and then decline. By the end of the century, they believe, the number of people alive could be 8.4 billion — about one billion fewer than the United Nations has predicted.…
GO TO SOURCE CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, August 1, 2001: In an interview with J.V. Lakshmana Rao of the India Tribune, Sri Chinna Jeeyar Swami, an eminent Sanskrit scholar, of Jeeyar Educational Trust and Vedic University, located in Sitanagaram in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, said the “Aryan invasion is a cock and bull story. It is the creation of Western invaders.…