Hindu Press International

Source: www.ndtv.com

PUNE, INDIA, December 30, 2008: An institute in Pune is offering women a one-year course to train them to become purohitas, female priests. The response so far has been quite encouraging. “Seventy per cent of our batch comprises women, most of them housewives, who are doing this course to do a job of a purohita,” said Arya Joshi, Senior Instructor, Jnana Prabodhini, Pune. Swati Divekar, a qualified teacher of Japanese and French has enrolled because she wants a change in profession. “We do all the rituals with sincerity. We also explain to them what we are doing, and we are not in a hurry,” said Swati Divekar. About 19 pujas and samsakaaras are taught as part of the course. All of them are performed as per Vedic rituals.

Source: www.nhpr.org

CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE, U.S.A., December 26, 2008: The U.S. economic recession is wreaking havoc on the lives and hopes of refugees here. In the past, a refugee in America would receive a few months of assistance, find a job with modest wages and work hard to achieve a more secure economic footing. Historically, according to government figures, about 70% succeed. But now, jobs are increasingly scarce, federal resettlement funding has been scant, and local charities are stretched thin. Many refugees, still jobless and soon to lose the assistance they had been receiving, are faced with the prospect of being homeless in a strange land.

David Siegel directs the federal office of refugee resettlement. Siegel says right now, he has no more money. He says his hands are tied by a continuing budget resolution that limits spending at last year’s level. He hopes things will be better in 2009.

Most refugees seem to agree that as difficult as things might be here, they are infinitely better than life in a refugee camp. But Bhima Acharya, who arrived in Concord five months ago with her husband and three children, thinks her friends back in the refugee camps ought to stay there until the economy improves. Although she and her husband have applied at dozens of companies, he has only found three days’ work in all that time. Their financial assistance is coming to an end, and they don’t know how they will pay the rent in January or even provide food for their children.

Source: www.hinduismtoday.com

The future is the continuing summation of all our past actions and reactions, for there is only the moment in which we live. The eternal now is the only consciousness we have when living in the higher states of mind.
   Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami