Hindu Press International

Source: http://howrah.org/india_news/13058.html

LUCKNOW, INDIA, May 22, 2008: Sadhus, saints and religious leaders in Varanasi will embark on a new mission from next week. These religious leaders will perform shramdan (voluntary labour) to clean up the Ganga river in the holy city. Led by Swami Avimukteshwaranand, a representative of Shankaracharya of Jyotis and Sharda-Dwarka Peeth Swami and Swarupanand Saraswati, they will start offering shramdan in Varanasi from May 26.

“The state of the Ganga in Varanasi is bad enough to make one cry. The size of the river has been reduced to half and the pollution is almost nauseating. The Ganga is the holiest of all rivers in the world and people come to Varanasi for a holy dip because they believe that the waters of Ganga can wash away their sin and lead them to salvation. We have waited all these years for the government to do something about the pollution in the Ganga but now we will do it ourselves,” says Mahant Acharya Vignesh who has come down from Haridwar to participate in the shramdan.

Source: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/hpi/2008/5/31#2.shtml

WINTER PARK, FLORIDA, May 31, 2008: HPI was informed by Mala Pillay (bz0117@yahoo.com) of South Africa that Mahalingum Kolapen had passed away unexpectedly at his home here within the last few days. He was author of “Hindu Temples of North America,” a staunch Hindu activist in both his home country of South Africa and in America and always a friend and promoter of Hinduism Today magazine and its founder, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami.

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 11, 1951, Mahalingum Kolapen has had a long and distinguished career in the field of arts and culture. A graduate of Kalakshetra College of Fine Arts in Chennai, India, he founded in 1975 what has become South Africa’s largest Indian fine arts institute. After moving to the United States in 1997, he established Titan Graphics and Publications, and has since completed a book entitled Chinmaya Mission: Transforming Lives. He will be missed. He is survived by his son, Sanjay Kolapen.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/health/research/20brai.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

NEW YORK, USA, May 20, 2008: When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong. Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book, said “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”

For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean, older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it.

When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students. “A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what’s going on than their younger peers,” said Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. “We believe that this characteristic may play a significant role in why we think of older people as wiser.”

http://www.hinduismtoday.com/hpi/2008/5/31.shtml When looking for tax deductions stops, then true giving begins.
   Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (1927-2001)