Source: The Hindu MADURAI, INDIA, June 18, 2001: The 70-year-old she-elephant, Meenakshi, of the Meenakshi Sundereshwarar temple, which served the temple for more than five decades, died on Sunday night after a prolonged illness. Old age and its associated symptoms of illness were said to be the main reason for the death. The body was taken to the Devasthanam’s garden…
GO TO SOURCE SICILY, ITALY, JUNE 16, 2001: A search team has found what is thought to be the wreck of a ship which sank off the Italian coast five years ago with hundreds of illegal immigrants on board, including many Hindus. About 280 people, mainly from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, are believed to have drowned when the ship…
GO TO SOURCE NEW YORK, U.S.A., June 13, 2001: A whopping 1.3 million dollars was raised for the villages in Gujarat at a dinner concert held last Tuesday on Wall Street. At a US$1,000/per plate, the dinner was organized by the American India Foundation. Former President Clinton, an honorary member of the AIF, was a guest speaker at the event.The…
GO TO SOURCE KATMANDU, NEPAL, June 16, 2001: The witnesses’ interviews confirmed widely held suspicions that his parent’s opposition to his choice of bride was the provocation for Nepal’s crown prince gunning. The government released new details from its report on the June 1 mass killing that shocked this Himalayan nation. One of those present during the shooting was Paras,…
GO TO SOURCE ONTARIO, CANADA, June 14, 2001: The following item appeared on this Christian evangelical website: “Christian Aid Mission’s Nepal representative, Sarla Mahara, said there are some concerns about how the recent upheaval in Nepal could affect the church. ‘The late king was a pro-democracy guy, so he really had nothing against the Christians; but now, it’s so unstable.…
GO TO SOURCE BALI, INDONESIA, June 6, 2001: Although most of Indonesia’s provinces are predominantly Muslim, Bali is mainly Hindu. Hindus cremate their dead. In Bali a cremation is an important occasion, lavish and expensive. Sometimes, poor families that cannot afford an immediate ceremony will preserve the body and wait, sometimes for years, so that the body could be cremated…
GO TO SOURCE ENGLAND, June 15, 2001: The Church of England is in financial turmoil. It is merging parishes, chopping jobs and relying increasingly on “weekend priests” who are happy to work for nothing. It is squeezing the faithful for donations. Last autumn the Diocese of London admitted that it was raiding its reserves at the rate of US$1.6 million…
GO TO SOURCE NEW DELHI, INDIA, February 19, 2001: Ayurveda, the Indian system of medicine whose treatises date back to the first millennium, has been given a bad rap by a report from the British House of Lord Committee on Science and Technology last November, 2000. In their report, Ayurveda is grouped with other disciplines such as Chinese herbal medicine…
GO TO SOURCE NEW DELHI, INDIA, June 13, 2001: A 1998 case filed by four old men in the small town of Kollam in Kerala stresses the problems facing the elderly. The success of Kerala’s primary health programs has resulted in a life expectancy here of 70 years, while the whole of India averages 59. A high percentage of younger…
GO TO SOURCE NEW DELHI, INDIA, June 6, 2001 : Women are making strides in both India and China, living longer and are more likely to be able to read and write than ever before. Despite this progress women are making, female fetuses are being aborted at startling rates in China and across broad swaths of India, new census data…