Source: www.indianexpress.com INDIA, August 13, 2010: The Pune police will deport five South Koreans, including three women, who had been propagating Christianity while on student and tourist visas. The police said the five had gone from door to door distributing pamphlets in Pimpri-Chinchwad on Wednesday, leading to a brawl with a group of local Hindu activists. The Koreans have not…
Source: www.washingtonpost.com CHENNAI, INDIA, June 21, 2010: Even in India’s most traditional cities, a powerful new profession has arrived: the divorce lawyer. Divorce rates are rising in India as the fast-growing economy unleashes unprecedented financial freedoms and mobility, especially among women and young city dwellers. But divorce cases often drag on for years, clogging already backlogged courts and causing painful…
Source: www.nytimes.com PAKISTAN, August 19, 2010: The Indus Valley is going through the worst flood on record for the Indus River. When the water recedes, the people will, if they are lucky enough to have any, sell their cattle and their wives’ ornaments, their dowry gold, to rebuild the watercourses and to level the fields. Some will plant winter wheat,…
Source: www.hinduismtoday.com O Mother! Let all my speech be your prayer; let all my crafts and technology be your worship and be the mystic gestures of my hand, adorning you. May all my movements become your devotional circumambulations. May everything I eat or drink be oblations to you. Let my lying down in rest and sleep be prostrations to you.…
Source: www.hindustantimes.com MUMBAI, INDIA, August 14, 2010: Half the men who shape the Ganesha murtis in the city have been struck down by malaria. The clay and plaster of Paris strewn around and inevitable pools of stagnant water around the workshops, make them ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes. This year, a number of murti makers are suffering its effects. Ganapati…
Source: Religion News Service UNITED STATES, July 21, 2010: A proposed bill aims to put a stop to teacher-administered spanking, making corporal punishment illegal in any school — including private religious ones — that receives even a trickle of federal funding. Religious school groups, usually quick to guard against government encroachment, have few worries about the bill because officials said…
Source: www.laht.com RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL, July 30, 2010: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will send a bill to Congress that would ban the corporal punishment that parents and teachers inflict on children, including slaps and spankings, a Cabinet member said Tuesday. The bill will be an amendment to the Child and Adolescent Law, an ambitious piece of…
Source: www.nytimes.com NEW YORK, July 19, 2010: John Friend is the founder of Anusara, one of the world’s fastest-growing styles of yoga. For the past several months he has given his workshops in Tokyo, Taipei, Bali and Morrisville, N.C., and is on his way to teach more workshops in Copenhagen, Munich, Paris and Park City, Utah. These are stops on…
Source: Religion News Services (RNS) THE AMHERST, NY, USA: The atheist group Center for Inquiry has changed the name of its “International Blasphemy Day” to “International Blasphemy Rights Day” in a bid to show that organizers are not interested in “mocking religion” for its own sake. Center for Inquiry representatives said the name change better describes the purpose of the…
Source: www.hinduismtoday.com People who take themselves too seriously are seldom known for any good sense of humor. Sita Ram Goel in “How I Became Hindu”