Voice of Asia July 19 2013 by VoiceOf Asia

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Houston Celebrates ‘Festival of Chariots’ 6th Annual Houston Rath Yatra hosted Ratha Yatra at Discovery by OCC and Shri Sitaram Foundation Green Park draws huge crowds

by Shobana Muratee he yearning and waiting is now ﬁnally over for the devotees, for they have seen the magniﬁcent chariot of Lord Jagannath (Lord of the Universe), who makes an appearance in public just this one time in the whole year. The experience is unimaginable and yet very personal as each devotee gets to touch, see and feel His presence. It is now, during the auspicious months of Asadha (usually falling in month of June or July), that Lord Jagannath - along with his beloved sister Subhadra and brother Balabhadra - is brought out in his opulent chariot to meet and bless all. On Sunday, July 14th, Houstonians witnessed this spectacle on the streets of West Belfort at the VPPS Temple (Shree Nathji Haveli) where nearly two thousand people partook in the celebrations. Under the scorching sun, to the sounds of the conch, the beats of the mridanga, and loud joyous chanting the divine Rath (chariot) with ropes held by the devotees on each side, was rolled out of Shree Nathji’s Haveli and headed on its Yatra (journey) with three deities: Jagannath, Subhadra and Balabhadra. All those who desired the Lord’s blessings tugged the rope during the procession while the Gajapati King (as

Continued on Page 5

Devotees dance before the chariots during the processions. Photos: Thejas KR by Sujata Srikanteswaran

The divine chariot (Rath) of Lord Jagannath being pulled by the devotees and it proceeds on its journey (Yatra). VOA Photo by Shobana Muratee

ver 4000 Houstonians witnessed the grand Chariot Festival of the Lord of the Universe, “Jagannath Ratha Yatra”, on Saturday, July 13, 2013 at the Discovery Green Park in Houston. The wide

eyed and beautifully smiling siblings - Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra cast Their cooling and soothing Divine glances on the Houstonians, offering them respite from the hot summer weather. Continued on Page 3

Angry protests as school meal kills 22 children in India by Imran Khan

ATNA, July 17, 2013 (AFP) - Twenty-two children have died after eating a free lunch feared to contain poisonous chemicals at an Indian primary school, ofﬁcials said Wednesday, as the tragedy sparked angry street protests.

Another 30 children are still in hospital after consuming the meal of lentils, vegetables and rice cooked at a village school in the dirt-poor state of Bihar on Tuesday. “Three children are ﬁghting for their lives but doctors say they might save them,” state education minister P.K.

Shahi told reporters, as initial investigations showed the food may have contained traces of insecticide.

“The deaths were not due to food poisoning. It is a clear-cut case of mixing poison in the food,” Shahi said.

The minister said police were probing whether the food was accidentally or possibly deliberately poisoned, adding that “the facts of the case will be established in the investigation”.

Twenty of the children, aged between four and 10, were buried near the school in the village of Masrakh on Wednesday morning.

At a hospital in Chhapra, the main town of Saran district where the school is located, there were emotional scenes as children, their limbs dangling and heads lolling, were admitted. Other children, lying listless on Continued on Page 8

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SURVEY

Most Indians choose to ignore crash victims NEW DELHI, India (AFP) - Most Indians are unlikely to help victims of road accidents due to fears of legal hassles and police questioning, a survey of people in seven cities showed Thursday. Some 74 percent of people surveyed across India were unwilling to assist victims, while the ﬁgure jumped to 96 percent in New Delhi, according to the survey by the SaveLIFE Foundation, which encourages bystanders to offer assistance. “The survey reveals that a whopping 74 percent of bystanders are unlikely to help severely injured roadside victims,” the privately-run group said. The survey comes after a shocking video in April showed passers-by ignoring the pleas of a father after his wife and daughter were killed in a road accident in northern India. Most people cited fear of the police as a major deterrent to helping victims, because anyone who stops is often dragged into the legal case, or are even implicated in the crime, the survey said. “Eighty percent of bystanders who are unlikely to help a victim felt that having to go to police stations and courts for repeated questioning are major deterrents for bringing the victims to hospital,” the survey said.

The survey of 1,027 people was carried out between January and March in the cities of New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Indore, Kanpur and Chandigarh, foundation spokesman Sanjay Pandey said. Emergency medical services are rare in most of India and the foundation said bystanders and police can “play a crucial role in saving lives”. The April CCTV footage showed the father cradling his injured son next to his overturned motorbike and calling for help from other motorists as his wife and eight-month-old daughter lay bloodied on the road. Police said the father was ignored for 40 minutes in the city of Jaipur, as a stream of cars, buses and motorbikes drove past. Public apathy in India was highlighted in December when a 23-yearold gang-rape victim was also ignored by bystanders after she had been stripped and dumped on a New Delhi street. “This survey was carried out after the Delhi gang rape and I don’t see any change in the mindset of people,” Pandey said. India has one of the world’s highest number of road deaths, with 131,834 people killed in 2011, government ﬁgures show.

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FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

Student Loans and American Skills: Different Times, Two Different Reactions By William Spriggs

n Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union shocked America with the successful launch of Sputnik I, the first manmade object launched into Earth orbit. The 20th century quickly became passé, the race was on for the 21st century and America realized the race would be won with technical skill and know-how. So, the response was quick. By September 1958, President Eisenhower and the 85th Congress, with the Senate almost evenly split between 49 Democrats and 47 Republicans voting 62-26, put in place the National Defense Student Loan program. Concerned that America could not produce enough skilled people if college was left to the wealthy, the loan program was to make sure that talented but less well-off American children could have access to a college education to make sure we would have enough teachers to keep class sizes down, scientists and engineers to meet the technical challenges and skilled linguists for a global society. The maximum loan a student could take out was $1,000 a year and $5,000 over a lifetime. That figure needs to be put in context in two ways. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $8,060 today, compared with the current program’s cap of $5,500 a year. But, to put $1,000 in the context of college tuition, in 1958

tuition to the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania was $1,050 a year for undergraduates. The loans were backed by the U.S. Treasury, so the legislation ﬁxed the payback at the cost of money to the U.S. government-3 percent. To put that 3 percent in context, in 1958, the prime rate that leading banks charged good corporate clients was 4 percent and home mortgage interest rates were running close to 5 percent. There was built-in loan forgiveness for students who entered the K-12 teaching corps. So, to summarize, in less than one year, a Republican president and a Democratic Congress put in place a program to expand college opportunity so that an American child could borrow and pay for tuition to any college in the United States, including the Ivy League, and borrow the money at a rate less than the prime rate for American corporations or home mortgage rates of the day. Now, in 2013, the 21st century is here. What policy makers understood in 1958 would happen is upon us. We live in a global economy where the success of a nation is dependent on the ability to train a highly skilled work force. And what is the reaction? Well, the Senate passed an immigration reform bill that will increase the ﬂow of highly skilled workers into the United States by estimates of

40,000 a year. And, Congress left town for district days to celebrate American Independence, letting the interest rate on college student debt double to 6.8% at a time when the prime rate is 3.25 percent and mortgages are around 4.3 percent. On Tuesday, the president met with the Congressional Black Caucus which raised the regulatory changes the Department of Education made that resulted in denying college loan access to middle income African American families by arbitrarily changing the way their creditworthiness was determined. African American families that had been receiving loans then were denied loans, throwing students out of school midway in their studies. More than 15,000 of these families had students at historically black colleges and universities-the schools that graduate almost one in three African Americans earning baccalaureates in science, technology, engineering or math; the very skills America lacks. So, does this mean the response from this president and this Congress is that facing a need to increase skilled workers, we will import them and “save” on having to do something to lift American children? As a nation we are facing the same crossroads faced in 1958, but what a difference 55 years makes in American policy response. Rather than double down our investment on Ameri-

can children and give them every advantage to pull our nation forward to meet the challenges ahead, we would rather “outsource” the skill development and “import” the talent. On Friday, July 5, right after Independence Day, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate for 18- to 19-year-olds-our current crop of high school graduates-was 22.6 percent. For those 20 to 24-including those who would have recently ﬁnished college or community college-the unemployment rate was 13.5 percent. For 18- to 19-year-olds, that is an improvement over the record level of 25.3 percent they had in December 2009, but it still is worse than any monthly unemployment rate in history before 2009, except for two months in the 1982-83 downturn, when it peaked at 22.8 percent. These numbers are not acceptable. Four years into a “recovery,” we cannot leave our young people with no jobs and turn our back on them in helping to make their investment in education affordable. Young people are not fooled. The government stepped in to bail out Wall Street when it collapsed of its own folly. The Federal Reserve stepped in to hand money at virtually zero interest to keep banks aﬂoat. So, clearly government is “not the problem” if you are a group that can pay your way to the table; government is “the answer.”

To economists, interest rates tell us the price of the future. It is called the “discount rate,” letting us know how much you would “discount” getting money in the future rather than today. When we set high interest rates on loans to students, we are saying that now is more important than their future. When we would rather give money to banks or corporations at lower rates we are betting more of our future on them than on our children. Worse, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) points out, by charging our children higher rates, the government nets $51 billion above its cost of obtaining funds. So, when we are more concerned about keeping the tax rates low for corporations that keep their money offshore and hide behind foreign tax-haven borders than in creating policies to hire our own children, it says even more. And, when our response to a skills shortage is to import people rather than develop our children, we say even more. Two different times, two different policy reactions....says a lot about us. William Spriggs serves as Chief Economist to the AFL-CIO and is a professor in, and former chair of the Department of Economics at Howard University. Bill is also former assistant secretary for the Ofﬁce of Policy at the United States Department of Labor.

India would grow faster if the retired help improve skills of the young by T K Arun, NEW DELHI: Rear Admiral (retired) HarishMalhotra is 78 years old, silver-haired and bursting with energy and strong opinions, both of which he expends with equal vigour, as he walks along the winding paths inside the Noida park beside the Okhla bird sanctuary, every morning without fail. But what makes him special is that he is a subversive. What he subverts is the conventional notion of the demographic dividend. And his prime instrument of subversion is a school he has organised in the park for the children of nearby slums and villages, the GyanShaktiVidyalaya. The Gyan Shakti Vidyalaya styles itself as a school after school and offers children, mainly from the nearby slums on the banks of the Yamuna, supplementary education. In fact, their primary enrolment in some government school or the other itself is the result of encouragement from the Gyan Shakti Vidyalaya. The Vidyalaya runs inside the park, in the open. Mats on the ground in front of a blackboard define a class. Another cluster a few metres away is another class. When it rains, all classes mingle into a milling crowd on the sheltered premises of a mazaar inside the park. The park is large, verdant, home to birds, butterflies and an occasional snake. Mayawati found it appealing enough to appropriate, to build a pink, stone memorial to historical figures of depressed caste empowerment. Domes, elephants and giant statues took over twothirds of the park, and shut out morning walkers. They still had the one-third she had spared. In that, in a large depres-

sion towards the boundary near the DND Flyway, the still-life of ﬂower patches and palm trees amidst occasionally mowed grass comes alive, mornings and afternoons, with groups of children in uniform, their chatter and laughter, songs sung in unison, the unmistakable, ringing authority of schoolteachers in ﬂow, answers shouted out in triumphant excitement and the swarming sound of children at vigorous play. The children are of all ages, threefoot, toothless toddlers to tall teenagers with pimples. They are like normal schoolchildren. Which is what is remarkable. Given their incomes and the condition of the homes they come from.

Admiral Malhotra and Sunil Razdan, now 50 and a regular morning walker, founded the school in the summer of 2006, after they found some children begging near the mazaar. Other walkers in the park chipped in with funds. Some volunteered to teach. Once the school got going, some companies came forward to sponsor uniforms, bags, milk and bananas, occasional educational tours, movie outings, theatre performance by the schoolchildren and so on. The school has been on for eight years now. Its strength has grown to 300, it employs 10 teachers and some students have passed Class 10, another, Class 12, many of them scoring well above

60%. This year, one student appeared in the Class 12 exam, and 12 in the Class 10 exam. All of them passed. Five of them got above 60%. Pinky Kumari of Class 10 got 79.8%, and four others scored above 60%. But for the Vidyalaya, arguably, many of these students might have dropped out of school. Their academic performance is likely to have been far poorer. And the odds are that they would not have acted in a play or seen movies in plush multiplexes. The school empowers them, makes them more articulate and inquisitive, gives them conﬁdence and novel exposure. But how does this all amount to subversion of the

demographic dividend? The demographic dividend is the extra boost to economic growth that comes from the proportion of dependents to active workers in a population dipping and the higher savings rate that ﬂows from it. When people start getting the beneﬁts of better healthcare and a rise in living standards, the population increases: fewer people die of disease, the old live longer and infant mortality comes down, increasing the number of children who survive into adolescence and adulthood. As living standards continue to improve, as these multitudinous cohorts enter adulthood, they tend to have fewer children as compared to their parents.

COMMUNITY

VOICE OF ASIA 4

FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

Dr. Sudha Chittaluru starts practice in Sugar Land, Texas

The People’s Lawyer www.peopleslawyer.net Richard M. Alderman Interim Dean of the Law Center

Pay your last month¹s rent! Q. I gave my landlord proper notice that I was moving out at the end of my lease. My landlord has my security deposit in the amount of one month’s rent. Today he came to say I have to pay him the last month’s rent. I told him to apply the security deposit. What are my options? A. Pay the rent! Texas law protects a tenant from a landlord who wrongfully refuses to return a security deposit, but it also protects a landlord from a tenant who tries to force the landlord to sue the deposit for rent, instead of a deposit to cover damage. Under the Texas security deposit law, a landlord who does not timely return a tenant’s security deposit may be liable for three times the deposit, plus an additional $100. Conversely, under the law a tenant who tells a landlord to use the deposit as the last month’s rent may be liable to the landlord for three times the deposit, plus any attorney’s fees. The bottom line, pay the rent and then use the Texas security deposit law if your deposit is not returned. Q. My friend has a criminal conviction in Oklahoma from 15 years ago. He still is having trouble renting an apartment. Is this legal? A. As a general rule, a landlord has the right to decide who may be a tenant. The law protects tenants against certain forms of discrimination, such as race, sex, age or religion, but in other cases it is entirely up to the landlord to determine who is an acceptable tenant. If the landlord does not want to rent to a person with a criminal conviction, the law allows the landlord to do so. I suggest you friend speak with the landlord to try and convince the landlord that he would be a good tenant. The decision, however, is entirely up to the landlord. Q. I am in college and months ago had to sign a lease for fall. Now things have changed and I want out. Please help all the parents and college kids by answering this question. A. Here is the answer to your question, but you may not find it “helpful.” A lease is a contract and nether party may terminate it unless authorized to do so by the terms of the lease. In other words, the landlord has agreed to have an apartment available for you at the agreed upon rent, and you agreed to live there and pay rent. If at the time you sign a lease you believe that you may need to break it, you should include a clause in the lease giving you that right. At this point, your only option is to speak with the landlord and work out an agreement to mutually terminate the lease.

Dr. Sudha Chittaluru, M.D

ugar Land has added another Indo-American physician to the community. Dr. Sudha Chittaluru, M.D has taken over the practice of Dr. Ayachit. Dr. Chittaluru of First Colony Primary Care started her practice in the same ofﬁce location as Dr. Ayachit in Imperial Medical Center in Sugar Land since July 1st 2013. Dr. Chittaluru is a primary care physician and is board certiﬁed in Internal Medicine. She has been in practice for over 15 years, mostly in Houston Northwest area. She had recently moved to Sugar Land and is very excited to be able to serve the medical needs of the community in Southwest

Houston and Sugar Land areas. Dr. Chittaluru went to medical school in India and she completed residency from Rush-Westlake Internal Medicine Residency Program in Chicago area, Illinois. Internal Medicine is the branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of various medical conditions/diseases in adult patients. The scope of internal medicine is wide, varying from treatment of a simple common cold to something as signiﬁcant as coronary artery disease. Some of the common conditions treated by Dr. Chittaluru are hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, arthritis, osteoporosis, asthma, bronchitis, sinusitis, seasonal allergies, abdominal pain, various infections etc. Preventive medicine includes annual physicals, adult immunizations and well woman exams. As a primary care physician, Dr. Chittaluru emphasizes on a healthy life-style, lifestyle modiﬁcations and preventive care. She encourages annual physicals which give an opportunity to detect conditions like hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol etc. so that they can be addressed

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adequately and treated. Physicals also include screening tests at appropriate ages for cancers of the prostate, colon, breast and cervix. Dr. Chittaluru enjoys educating patients about their medical conditions. She stresses on the importance of healthy diet, exercise, adequate sleep, stress management and work-life balance. She focuses on individual needs of each patient and helps them to achieve optimal health goals. She and her staff are dedicated to providing quality and compassionate care to their patients. Dr. Chittaluru is married and has a son who is in college. She enjoys traveling, watching movies, reading and spending time with her family and friends, and playing with her favorite pet, Coco. Dr. Chittaluru speaks English, Hindi and Telugu. First Colony Primary Care accepts most insurances including HMOs and PPOs, welcomes Medicare and self-pay patients. She is accepting new patients; for appointments call First Colony Primary Care at (281) 494-3460 or visit ﬁrstcolonyprimarycare.com or facebook.com/Dr.Chittaluru.

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COMMUNITY

VOICE OF ASIA 5

FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

6th Annual Houston Rath Yatra hosted by OCC and Shri Sitaram Foundation hours, presenting his choicest devotional songs but not before setting the mood with his ever popular “Aisi Lagi Lagan.” Earlier, Aditya Samal, OCC Chairman, in his address welcomed Shri Anup Jalota and members of all organizations and attendees of Houston Rath Yatra. Prior to the live concert was a cultural program with Mata ji Kalasuda Devi dasi as the emcee presenting the enchanting classical Odissi dance and other cultural items. Continued from Page 1

indicated in the scriptures) swept the path ahead. The role of the King was adorned by Vijay Pallod and he was accompanied by his wife Sushma Pallod throughout the procession. This ritual denotes that under the lordship of Jagannath there is no distinction between a king and a humble devotee. The Rath Yatra 2013 was the 6th Annual Houston Rath Yatra organized jointly by the Orissa Culture Center (OCC), Houston and Shri Sitaram Foundation. Volunteers and support was pooled from Houston’s leading religious and other organizations like: Hindus of Greater Houston, ISKCON, Gaudiya Math, Hindu Worship Society, Meenakshi Temple, Houston Namadwaar, Sai Baba Temple, HDBS, Shiv-Shakti Temple, Sringeri Vidyapeeth, Gayatri Parivar, Guruvayurappan, Sri Ashtalakshmi Temple, Saidurga Shivavishnu Mandir that stayed committed throughout. An event of this magnitude could only be made possible by committed and tireless effort of entire Houston Odiya community. Another highlight of the celebration was the live concert by Sangeet Samrat, Padma Shri, Anup Jalota who is world

Shri Anup Jalota gave a live performance and enthralled the audience with his greatest bhajans. Seen here with his troupe Bobby Rozario on guitar, Bashir Khan on Banjo, Amjad on table and singer Preeti Seth. Photo by Ananta Patel.

Houston Rath Yatra’s organizers Atasu Nayak (OCC) and Dr. Arun Verma (Shri Sitaram Foundation) carry the deities to the chariot. Photos by Ananta Patel.

acclaimed for his soulful lyrics and super hit gazals and bhakti songs. Shri Jalota was accompanied by his musical troupe Bobby Rozario on guitar, Bashir Khan on Banjo, Amjad on table and singer Preeti Seth. He performed to a packed hall of the Haveli for nearly three

The program which started during the midday was concluded with a concert at 10pm. This year’s Houston Rath Yatra included a free health checkup, booths and plenty of prasadam, not to mention the refreshing lassi (yogurt drink) that was served unlimited to

Odissi dance performance was the cultural program part of the celebration. Photo by Ananta Patel.

cool off after the procession and a Maha arti that followed

thereafter. Organizers were overwhelmed by the turnout

and hope to make it bigger next year. Jai Jagannath!

COMMUNITY

VOICE OF ASIA 7

FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

Home run, T20 style on Svetasvatara Upanisad Gurujiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s yajna in Houston The jnana yagna was thoughtprovoking and mind-stilling at the same time. Gurujiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bhajanas touched the soul; his humorous anecdotes made learning delightful and happy; his deep insights stunned the audience. His quote from the Upanisad, â&#x20AC;&#x153;â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sa no budhya subhaya samyunaktuâ&#x20AC;? was a blessing to stay inspired â&#x20AC;&#x201C; â&#x20AC;&#x153;May He (God) endow us with noble, auspicious thoughts.â&#x20AC;? Gurujiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s teaching of the Svetasvatara Upanisad at Chinmaya Prabha will be a memory to treasure, revere, and reďŹ&#x201A;ect on.

by Padmashree Rao

ith pure Grace, masterly delivery of Knowledge, and an agile sense of humor which kept the audience alert and enchanted, Pujya Guruji Swami Tejomayananda completed his seven-day (July 7 -13, 2013) Jnana yajna on Svetasvatara Upanisad at Chinmaya Prabha, Houston. Guruji introduced the rare Upanisad with a invocative game-plan of a T20 (limited-overs) cricket match which right away became a home run on the Chinmaya Smrti pitch! Young and old listened spellbound as Guruji delivered exquisite strokes of explanations for the 112 verses of the Upanisad; his yajna was an incomparable innings of three lectures everyday for a week. The subject matter of the Svetasvatara Upanisad is no mere play â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the discussion happens among the serious seekers of Brahma Vidya. Yet, Guruji let questions like â&#x20AC;&#x153;What is the Cause of Creation, its nature, and sustaining principle?â&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;What is Liberation and the vision of Oneness?â&#x20AC;? sink into the audience gently and deeply. His simple, direct approach encouraged everyone in the audience to reďŹ&#x201A;ect on the difďŹ cult existential questions with true enthusiasm.

His Holiness Swami Tejomayananda, center, the spiritual leader of worldwide Chinmaya Mission, is given a ceremonial reception at Chinmaya Prabha in Houston on July 7 where he completed a week long â&#x20AC;&#x153;Jnana Yagnaâ&#x20AC;? on Svetasvatara Upanisad. â&#x20AC;? Priest Sri Ganeshji, (left), and Acharya Gaurang Nanavaty, (right). Photo by Jayesh Mistry

After Guruji laid out the scenarios of the cause-hunting game, he called attention to how knowledge about Truth was elusive â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a game where the seekers themselves need to disappear on a meditative pitch!

The Svetasvatara Upanisad is a mesmerizing combination of supreme knowledge and pure devotion expressed in startlingly concrete imagery. When Existence is probed through intense meditation, the seekers are presented symbolic

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answers about the fabric of Creation. Guruji, a teacher par excellence, drove home many an answer while explaining Creation as a fascinating Wheel with many spokes and fasteners, all indicating cyclical aspects of life. He made the audience roar with laughter with his collection of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Indian truckâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; jokes, and then made them plunge into a great river of introspection again about the Truth. In the later chapters of the Upanisad, Guruji unfolded the vision required to untangle from the delusory web of attachments. His emphasis was on a wiser â&#x20AC;&#x153;outlook to look out,â&#x20AC;? an ability to see the Oneness that the Upanisad inspired. Guruji described how the unique beauty of the Svetasvatara Upanisad lay in blending a deep faith in God with a pure quest for knowing the Self in One and All.

On the evening of July 11th, one special feature of the yajna was Gurujiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s address to the Houston Bala Vihar children. Guruji spoke to an enthusiastic crowd which ranged from toddlers to teenagers and CHYKs. In harmony with the Upanisadic spirit of the yajna, Guruji recounted a beautiful Puranic story of a boy called Upamanyu who prayed for the â&#x20AC;&#x153;real thingâ&#x20AC;? in life and found it. So, Guruji urged every child and youth to never settle for the false and ďŹ&#x201A;eeting; Reality is everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birthright waiting to be claimed. Later that evening, Guruji also spoke to Bala Vihar teachers and conveyed the importance of teaching with deep purpose and love. The entire week of the jnana yajna was a joint offering at the feet of Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda by Chinmaya Houston families. Hosting many respected acaryas from other Mission centers, Acarya Gaurangbhai Nanavaty and Acarya Darshanaben Nanavaty energized many dedicated teams of volunteers who worked together tirelessly in pure joy for the success of the yajna. For more information on Chinmaya Mission Houston and its activities visit www.chinmayahouston.org or Jay Deshmukh 832 541 0059 or Bharati Sutaria 281-9330233.

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VOICE OF ASIA 8

Taliban letter urges Malala to return to Pakistan

ESHAWAR, July 17, 2013 (AFP) - A senior Pakistani Taliban commander has written to Malala Yousafzai, the teenage activist shot by militants, accusing her of “smearing” them and urging her to return home and join a madrassa. Gunmen from the Tehreeke-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) shot

Malala, now 16, in the head in her home town in Swat, in the country’s northwest, where she campaigned for the right of girls to go to school, last October. Malala made a powerful speech to the UN on Friday in her ﬁrst public appearance since the attack which almost killed her, vowing to continue her struggle for education and

not be silenced by the militants. In an open letter released Wednesday, Adnan Rasheed, a former air force member turned TTP cadre, said he personally wished the attack had not happened, but accused her of running a “smearing campaign” against the militants. “It is amazing that you are

Angry protests as school meal kills 22 children in India Continued from Page 1 stretchers, were placed on intravenous drips amid chaotic scenes at the hospital. Outside, inconsolable relatives wept. “My children had gone to school to study. They came back home crying, and said it hurts,” one distraught father told the NDTV network. “I took them into my arms, but they kept crying, saying their stomach hurt very badly.” Running to the school to find out what had happened, the father said he saw “many bodies of children lying on the ground”. As the death toll continued to rise, angry residents armed with poles and sticks took to the streets of Chhapra. The mob smashed windows of police buses and other vehicles and overturned a police booth. “Hundreds of angry people staged a protest in Saran since late Tuesday night, demanding stern action against government officials responsible for this shocking incident,” said district government official S.K. Mall. India runs the world’s larg-

est free school meal scheme, covering 120 million children. Educators see it as a way to increase school attendance, in a country where almost half of all young children are undernourished. But children often suffer from food poisoning due to poor hygiene in kitchens and occasionally sub-standard food.

tion of 200,000 rupees ($3,373) for each of the bereaved families. Meanwhile, some 50 children fell ill in a neighbouring district in Bihar on Wednesday after eating lunch at their school. They were given ﬁrst aid but none needed to be admitted to hospital, an ofﬁcial said.

A preliminary investigation showed the meal may have contained traces of phosphate from insecticide in the vegetables, education minister Shahi said.

“On enquiry we found a lizard in the food that was cooked in the school premises and we have already ordered an investigation,” district administrator Lokesh Kumar Singh said by phone.

“It seems poison has been used, (I) repeat used, in the food but we are yet to ﬁnd out the type of poison that has been used. Preliminary reports say it is organic phosphorous, which if consumed in excess can prove fatal,” he said.

Last year more than 130 students were taken to hospital in the western city of Pune after eating lunch at school, the Times of India reported. A probe revealed that the food was contaminated with E. coli bacteria.

Doctors were treating victims with atropine, which is effective against organophosphate poisoning, local government ofﬁcial Amarjeet Sinha said.

Food prices have soared in India over the past six years, causing increased hardship for the 455 million people estimated by the World Bank to live below the poverty line.

“Investigators are examining midday meal samples and samples of victims’ vomit. Only the ﬁnal report of enquiry will reveal the real cause,” Sinha said. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar announced compensa-

Ahead of elections next year, the government this month announced a subsidised food programme to offer grains to nearly 70 percent of the population, or 820 million people, at a small fraction of market prices.

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ArcelorMittal scraps India steel plant plan

shouting for education, you and the UNO (UN) is pretending that you were shot due to education, although this is not the reason ... not the education but your propaganda was the issue,” Rasheed wrote.

NEW DELHI, July 17, 2013 (AFP) - The world’s largest steel maker ArcelorMittal Wednesday said it has scrapped plans to build a steel plant in eastern India due to delays in acquiring land.

“What you are doing now, you are using your tongue on the behest of the others.”

The announcement comes a day after South Korean steel giant Posco scrapped a $5.3 billion deal to build a steel plant in southern India.

The letter, written in English, was sent to reporters in northwest Pakistan and its authenticity conﬁrmed to AFP by a senior Taliban cadre who is a close associate of Rasheed. It is understood Malala has not received the letter herself.

Pakistani Taliban commander has written to Malala Yousafzai, the teenage activist shot by Taliban ﬁghters [EPA]

FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

He accused Malala of seeking to promote an education system begun by the British colonialists to produce “Asians in blood but English in taste” and said students should study Islam and not what it called the “satanic or secular curriculum”. “I advise you to come back home, adopt the Islamic and Pashtun culture, join any female Islamic madrassa near your home town, study and learn the book of Allah, use your pen for Islam and plight of Muslim ummah (community),” Rasheed wrote. He said he had originally wanted to write to Malala to warn her against criticising the Taliban when she rose to prominence with a blog for the BBC Urdu service chronicling life under the militants’ 2007-9 rule in Swat.

ArcelorMittal signed an initial agreement in 2006 for the project to manufacture 12million tonnes of steel a year in Orissa state, but it has faced widespread opposition from local farmers. The company said uncertainties over iron ore supplies had also led it to scrap the plan. “ArcelorMittal has not been able to acquire the requisite land for the steel plant, nor has it been able to ensure captive iron ore security, which is a necessary requirement for the project,” the company said in a statement. “Therefore, taking into account the current economic climate, ArcelorMittal has concluded it will no longer be pursuing its plans for a steel plant in Keonjhar (in Orissa) at this stage.”

The Taliban have destroyed hundreds of schools across northwest Pakistan, an area on the frontline of the country’s bloody struggle against Islamists.

“Nobody will believe a word the Taliban say about the right of girls like Malala to go to school until they stop burning down schools and stop massacring pupils,” said Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister and now UN Special Envoy for Global Education, who has supported Malala since she was shot.

But Rasheed said the attacks were necessary because government forces used schools as hideouts and bases.

While Malala’s brave ﬁght back from her injuries and speech at the UN have inspired people around the globe

The company said the decision was conveyed to the state government earlier on Wednesday. Residents from 17 villages that would have been affected in Orissa’s tribal district of Keonjhar have been holding regular protests against the proposed purchase of their land. “The delays relating to land acquisition and allocation of captive iron ore blocks means this project is no longer viable,” said ArcelorMittal executive vice president Vijay Bhatnagar as quoted in the statement. “Nevertheless, we will continue to pursue our other two projects in Jharkhand and Karnataka, both of which are making steady progress,” he added. Industrialisation has been long championed by economists as a way to pull tens of millions of Indians out of poverty. But acquiring land for factories, roads, housing and other projects has created sometimes deadly battlegrounds with many farmers complaining they have been forced to sell at below market rate and robbed of their livelihoods.

to back her campaign for children to go to school, the response to her in Pakistan has been mixed. Many have hailed her as a national hero but others have criticised her for promoting a “Western” agenda. Rasheed was sentenced to death over a 2003 attack on Pakistan’s then military ruler General Pervez Musharraf but escaped from custody in a mass jailbreak in April last year.

VOICE OF ASIA 11

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Pakistan’s Lahore begins Ramadan fearful of violence

By Waqar Hussain

AHORE, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistanis began celebrating the holy month of Ramadan on Thursday with police on alert in Lahore and shopkeepers braced for a slump in trade after the worst bombing in the city for two years.

“The rush has gone down drastically. People have stopped coming to the market. Business is down almost by half.” Lahore saw a rash of bombings in 2010, but attacks in the city of 12 million are relatively isolated compared with the business hub Karachi and Taliban-plagued parts of the northwest.

Five people were killed and nearly 50 wounded on Saturday in the Anarkali market in Pakistan’s second largest city, which prides itself on its ﬁne cuisine, much loved during Ramadan meals at sundown.

Islamist militancy is a major challenge facing the new government but cross-party talks originally scheduled for Friday on how to crack down on the violence have been delayed indeﬁnitely.

It was the worst bombing in Lahore since a teenage suicide attacker targeted a Shiite Muslim religious procession on January 25, 2011, killing at least nine people.

Police say they have stepped up patrols for Ramadan to protect markets and shrines, with threats on the rise in the coming weeks.

The market is back at work, but has little of the normal hustle and bustle associated with Ramadan, when families shop for special food and dine out in the evenings. Instead people are scared. “We’re deﬁnitely afraid. These blasts are intended to disrupt the peace of the city,” said Wajid Hussain, who is around 50 and runs a hotel and restaurant in the same street where the bomb went off. Traders in Anarkali say business has fallen nearly 50 percent since the bombing in Lahore, the home city of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who took ofﬁce last month. “Many people died, dozens injured, they lost their eyes, their limbs, this is the biggest act of cruelty in my mind,” said Abdul Ghafoor, 50, who sells clothes in the area.

Pakistani Muslims perform a special evening prayer “Taraweeh” on the eve of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan at the grand Faisal Mosque in Islamabad on July 10, 2013. Pakistanis began celebrating the holy month of Ramadan on Thursday with police on alert in Lahore and shopkeepers braced for a slump in trade after the worst bombing in the city for two years. (AFP)

“The blast is significant in the sense that the terrorists show the world that even the peaceful and largest province in the country is not stable,” said senior Lahore officer Rai Tahir. “Three thousand police officers and men have been deployed for Ramadan duty. And an additional 2,000 are there for the markets and other security-related duties,” he told AFP. Security has also been stepped up at Lahore’s well-known Data Darbar shrine, where suicide bombers killed more than 40 people in July 2010. “The number of visitors at the shrine doubles in the month of Ramadan. Lots of people come in Ramadan, especially in the last 10 days of the month,” said its manager, Abdul Qayum. The provincial government in Punjab, which is headed by Sharif’s younger brother Shahbaz, has promised to be tough on terror.

Pakistani Muslims buy traditional food for Ramadan at a shop in Karachi on July 10, 2013. (AFP). “The government is determined to tackle terrorism seriously,” Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah told AFP. “We are focusing on an improved strategy to keep an eye on local elements and facilitators who give sup-

port to such terrorists.” But people are still determined to enjoy the month, a time for prayer and charity, as well as celebration with friends and family. “We hope that with the kind of security they give us right now, this kind of

incident will not be repeated,” said Hussain, the hotel and restaurant manager. “You know, wherever a blast occurs people start living in fear. It was thanks to God there was no incident earlier and this is the ﬁrst time this has happened in a long time.”

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Student Loan Deal Reached In Senate Threatens To Raise Future Costs By Shahien Nasiripour (huffingtonpost.com) WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of senators struck a deal late Wednesday tooverhaul the federal student loan program, tying interest rates on new loans to the U.S. government’s cost to borrow in a move that immediately reduces the cost to finance higher education, but is forecast to raise borrowing costs for millions of graduate students and parents in about three years. Rates on new student loans from the Department of Education, the dominant source of college loans, would be pegged to the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. Undergraduates would pay 1.8 percentage points above the government’s cost to borrow for 10 years. Graduate students would pay 3.8 percentage points above the rate. Parents would pay 4.5 percentage points above the benchmark, officials said. The yield on the 10-year note was 2.57 percent late Wednesday, according to Bloomberg. Assuming the measure is signed into law as is, most students starting school this fall and their parents would enjoy lower borrowing costs than the rates that prevailed during the last school year. But their savings would effectively be subsidized by future borrowers, who would pay more relative to current law as the economy improves and interest rates rise. Interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans, meant for students from moderate-income and low-income households, had been at fixed at 3.4 percent the last few years before doubling to

6.8 percent on July 1 as a result of previous legislation. Unsubsidized Stafford loans, used by other undergraduates and graduate students, are set at 6.8 percent. PLUS loans, used by parents of undergraduates and graduate students who exhaust Stafford borrowing limits, are fixed at 7.9 percent. Congress has been setting the interest rates, as opposed to allowing the rate to fluctuate with market borrowing costs. The average of three forecasts on the 10-year Treasury note, taken from a recent White House budget report, shows that graduate students are estimated to pay morebeginning around 2016. Parents of undergraduate students, who inc9reasingly have been taking out loans from the government to cover rising tuition costs for their children, are forecast to pay more beginning in 2016. The deal, driven by the July 1 doubling of interest rates on some new student loans, comes as the Obama administration is forecast to reap a record $51 billion profit off federal student loans this fiscal year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That sum tops the earnings of Exxon Mobil Corp., the nation’s most profitable publicly traded company. The CBO estimated last month that the government would generate $184 billion in profit for loans made from this fiscal year through 2023, not including $15 billion in profit the government booked this year from loans made in previous years. The federal government has booked nearly $120 billion in profit from student borrowers and their families over the past five

fiscal years, budget documents show. It’s unclear whether Wednesday’s proposal would increase the government’s profit even higher than current law. Some lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have argued that the federal government should not be generating profit off the backs of students and their families. The CBO is expected to detail its forecast on Thursday. The bill is likely to pass the Senate after securing support from two leading Democrats, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). It’s likely to be approved by the Republican-led House of Representatives, which passed a similar bill earlier this year. The White House proposed a plan earlier this year to fix borrowing costs to the 10-year note. Durbin had floated a similar deal last month, but it was quickly shot down by lawmakers concerned it would raise borrowing costs for future students. Harkin has long favored reducing borrowing costs. Representatives for the lawmakers could not be reached after normal business hours late Wednesday. Interest rates for new loans would be published every year and would be fixed for the life of the debt. The cost to borrow for undergraduates would be capped at 8.25 percent. For graduate students, interest rates would be capped at 9.25 percent. The deal was first reported by Inside Higher Ed, an online news organization. Many Senate Democrats have been reluctant to support the measures, in

part because of the possibility that future students would pay much higher rates than they do under current law. “Congress must preserve its historical commitment to protecting students from outrageous interest rates now and in the future,” Harkin, chairman of the chamber’s education committee, said last month through a spokeswoman. In recent weeks, a bipartisan group of lawmakers including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Angus King (IMaine), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) had sought to broker a compromise between Democrats and Republicans by pegging borrowing costs to the yield on the 10-year note, but setting them between the House measure and the White House plan. Students would pay more under the House-approved bill, but that proposal capped interest rates. The White House plan did not. Senate Democrats at first had rejected the bipartisan compromise. Durbin and Harkin appear to have blessed a modified version of that original plan. If the measure becomes law, policymakers’ attention is likely to turn to existing debtors, struggling under the weight of a cumulative $1.2 trillion in outstanding college loans. Policymakers increasingly have focused on skyrocketing student debt levels and record borrowing costs as a potential impediment to economic growth. Regulators and officials at agencies that include the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and

Federal Reserve Bank of New York have warned that student borrowing may reduce consumption, dampen purchases of autos and homes, depress the economy, limit credit creation, and prevent debtors from accumulating savings or building up nest eggs for retirement. In May, President Barack Obama noted that the average new college graduate carries more than $26,000 in student debt. He said: “That doesn’t just hold back our young graduates. It holds back our entire middle class.” Student loan payments “can last for years, even decades, which means young people are putting off buying their first car or their first house -- the things that grow our economy and create new jobs,” Obama added. The White House may tackle the issue, given the increasingly dire nature of the warnings from policymakers and regulators and the limited effectiveness of existing programs run by the Education Department. Democratic senators, including Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.),Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Patty Murray (Wash.) and Durbin have proposed measures that would allow existing borrowers to reduce their debt by refinancing. The CFPB has supported plans that would jump-start refinancings of existing high-rate debt and modifications of troubled loans. Leading financial groups such as Sallie Mae, the largest student loan company, may see profits crimped if such measures are adopted. Sallie Mae lately has been sparring with Warren over its business practices.

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Priyanka Chopra’s ‘Exotic’ is so wannabe Jennifer Lopez

rowned as Miss World 2000 in front of millions Priyanka Chopra had the world at awe with her beauty and intelligence. When she became an actress she invaded hearts of billion Indians.

FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

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Pran Krishan Sikand Dead: Legendary Indian Actor Pran Dies At 93

Now that she ventured into the world of music Priyanka wants to win the hip hop world. In her latest single ‘Exotic’ starring Pitbull, Chopra flaunts her figure and dark hair in the video, which was released on Thursday. After her debut international single ‘In My City’ feat. Will.i.am failed to top the charts, Priyanka roped in rapper Pitbull for her second single ‘Exotic’, hoping for a different result. Interestingly, Jennifer Lopez’s collaboration with Will.i.am. had also failed to set the charts afire, and it was none other than Pitbull who gave Lopez her top three hits on the US charts in the last decade. But sadly it doesn’t seem to be working for the Indian beauty. The hype generated on the social media about the video is just hollow. Priyanka sings in English with a few lines of Hindi thrown in to add the Indian flavour. What’s surprising is that everything about the video — right from the locales, shots, lyrics, dance steps — seems amateurish.

Pran died on June 12, 2013, at Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital. (AFP File Photo Pran is seen after he was honored with the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke award). by Ashok Sharma

ndia’s legendary actor Pran, who played some of Bollywood’s most memorable villains in a career that spanned six decades, died of pneumonia at a Mumbai hospital Friday, his doctor said. He was 93.

Priyanka is trying too hard to look hot which she might have succeed without looking so desperate.

Pran acted in more than 350 Hindi movies in a proliﬁc career dating back to the 1940s. He played a vast range of roles - a hero, villain and character actor - but was best known for his bad guys, earning the honoriﬁc “Villain of the Millennium.”

It is so wannabe Jennifer Lopez or maybe much younger Rihanna. ‘Exotic’ is the number one song on the India iTunes list, but the song is an English number and it’s nowhere in sight on the US charts. As Priyanka makes waves in the ocean wearing an almost see-through swimsuit, she looks comfortable making sultry eyes at the camera, after all she is an actress.

Pran Krishan Sikand, popularly known as Pran, was hospitalized more than two weeks ago at Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital and died Friday, said his doctor, Sanjeev Mehta. “Indian cinema has lost an icon,”” tweeted Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra’s second single ‘Exotic’ is out. (Screen grab)

In May, an ailing Pran was presented the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the Indian government’s highest honor for cinema, at his Mumbai home by Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari. Pran also received several other prestigious awards, including Filmfare magazine’s “Lifetime Achievement Award” in 1997 and the `Villain of the Millennium’ by Stardust magazine three years later.

Priyanka roped in rapper Pitbull for her second single ‘Exotic’,

As the video progresses, the actressturned-singer changes into a glittering mini dress to dance with Pitbull. She then showcases a rapid-ﬁre change of outﬁts, from a black wrap dress to tiny hot pants and day-glow high heels as she struts alongside a pool. Priyanka leads a group of scantilydressed dancers in a routine raunchy shoot. It looks like she really wanted this to work. One of Bollywood’s biggest stars who have carved a reputation for playing diverse and unconventional roles Priyanka’s ‘Exotic’ turns out to be run-of-the-mill. Courtesy: Emirates 24/7)

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Pran began acting as a hero in hit 1940s films like “Khandaan” (Family) and “Aurat”” (Woman). In a career that lasted into the 1990s, he became most famous for his roles as a villain in movies such as “Bari Behen” (Elder Sister), “Azaad” (A Free Man), “Jis Desh Men Ganga Behti Hai” (A Country Where the Ganges River Flows),” `’Half Ticket,” and “Johnny Mera Naam” (Johnny Is My Name). Pran is especially remembered for his supporting role as a villain-turned-hero in 1973’s smash hit “Zanjeer” (Shackles). The appeal of Pran, whose menacing eyes made him appear as the most dreaded villain on the Hindi cinema screen, drew audiences to “Zanjeer,” which helped a young Amitabh Bachchan become India’s biggest film star. After reportedly recommending Bachchan for the part, Pran would team with the superstar in over a dozen films. Tributes streamed over Twitter as fans and film stars remembered their favorite lines and roles by Pran, who overcame his average height to famously stand up to the six-feet-two (1.88-meter) Bachchan in “Zanjeer.” Bachchan tweeted: “A gentleman, most collaborative colleague. Another

magnificent pillar of the film industry falls.” Pran is survived by his widow, two sons and a daughter. His cremation will take place Saturday in Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment capital, the Press Trust of India news agency said. The New Delhi-born son of a civil engineer, Pran wanted to become a professional photographer. However, a chance meeting with writer Wali Mohammad Wali in Lahore, now in Pakistan, led to his first role opposite actress Ranjhana in a Punjabi film “Yamla Jat” in 1940. He acted in several films produced in Lahore before shifting to Mumbai after the partition of India in 1947 by British colonialists. He never wanted to live in Mumbai, but couldn’t return to Lahore after partition, his daughter Pinky Bhalla said in an interview with Rediff.com, an Indian portal. “He had to start all over again and it was quite a struggle,” she said. Pran persevered and a year after partition, he got a role in “Ziddi” (Haughty) with Dev Anand and Kamini Kaushal as lead actors. Pran never looked back after that. In 1960, Pran looked every inch a bandit in a beloved portrayal in “Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai,” a Raj Kapoor film about the mass surrender of bandits. Pran played a villain in several hit movies opposite Bollywood’s top actors, including Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand. Pran also earned acclaim for roles in smaller Bengali-language films. He spoke so little about his work at home that his daughter didn’t even know he was famous until she was older, Bhall said. Bhall recalled that her father did not want a party on his 90th birthday three years ago, but the family invited a large number of friends and relatives anyway. Pran relented and was overjoyed to see so many guests, she said in the interview. “He told my brother, `Now I will be 100, and then out,’” she said. Pran possessed a special kind of magic that allowed him to captivate so many filmgoers as a villain, recalled Bachchan in a foreword to the biography, “And Pran” by film journalist Bunny Reuben. “Onscreen villainy is a thankless job,” Bachchan wrote, “which Pran accepted and carried out with such a degree of perfection that he became the actor the entire nation loved to hate.”

ENTERTAINMENT

VOICE OF ASIA 16

FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

Sri Lankan film ban halts French festival, sparks anger by Leela Jacinto

Pushpakumara for dishonoring the country’s much-venerated military.

couple walks precariously on a railway track as it ploughs through the lush green ﬁelds of northeastern Sri Lanka. It’s an old childhood stunt in these parts - trying to walk as far as possible on winding railway tracks without losing balance.

In a statement issued from South Korea, where he is based, Pushpakumara denied discrediting the military and noted that he sought to depict reality “in a humane and artistic way”. Pushpakumara also denied state media reports that he had links with the LTTE.

But this couple has developed an ingenious way to stay on track. As the camera zooms out, the audience can see they’re cheating. The couple – a young village girl and a soldier - keep steady by clutching the two ends of a riﬂe across the track. As they make their wobbly way, a voice on the audio track, intones in Tamil, “What I am going to tell you is a story that is not in any textbook. It is our story. Nobody likes to put it in a book.” Nobody, it seems, in the Sri Lankan government – likes to see this story on screen. What’s more, nobody in Sri Lanka is likely to see it either.

Born in 1977 in the northeastern city of Trincomalee, Pushpakumara belongs to the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community, which makes state media allegations of his ties to the Tamil Tigers particularly disingenuous. A still from the ﬁlm Flying Fish ‘FLYING FISH’ TRAILER The festival was scheduled to run between June 18 and July 14. But a day before Sunday’s grand ﬁnale, Sri Lankan authorities halted the festival.

The scene from “Flying Fish” - an award-winning feature film directed by Sri Lankan filmmaker Sanjeewa Pushpakumara - is from one of three narratives that link the civil war-era film.

On Monday, the government announced that the ﬁlm has been banned across the country and legal action would be taken against those involved in the making of “Flying Fish” – or ‘Igilena Maaluwo’ as it’s called in the original Sinhala language.

Over the weekend, the Sri Lankan government suspended the 2013 French Film Festival in the capital of Colombo after the two-hour ﬁlm was screened before a selected, invited audience.

Speaking to reporters in Colombo, Defence Ministry ofﬁcial Lakshman Hulugalla called it “an illegal ﬁlm which insults the security forces and the government of Sri Lanka”.

Hulugalla also added that the ﬁlm uses images of the Sri Lankan military uniform without permission from the Defence Ministry, a powerful ministry headed by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the brother of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Reacting to the news of the ban, Athula Withanage, a Sri Lankan journalist living in exile in France, responded with despair – and some resignation. “I don’t think the ﬁlm is critical [of the government]. It’s just a normal story set against the backdrop of the war. The Sri Lankan government has a phobia. They think the international community, NGOs and the

Hulu owners opt to keep online video service SAN FRANCISCO - The entertainment studios behind Hulu took the online video service off the auction block Friday, opting instead to pump an additional $750 million into the Netﬂix rival. “We believe the best path forward for Hulu is a meaningful recapitalization that will further accelerate its growth under the current ownership structure,” 21st Century Fox chief operating ofﬁcer Chase Carey said in a statement. “We had meaningful conversations with a number of potential partners and buyers, each with impressive plans and offers to match, but with 21st Century Fox and Disney fully

aligned in our collective vision and goals for the business, we decided to continue to empower the Hulu team.” The list of bidders for Hulu reportedly included satellite television company DirecTV; US telecom titan AT&T, and Internet pioneer Yahoo! A Friday deadline had been set for submitting ﬁnal bids for Hulu, which was launched in 2007 in a partnership between Comcast’s NBCUniversal; 21st Century Fox, and The Walt Disney Company. While it remained unclear how high bids had climbed, DirecTV had reportedly lodged an early-round bid of more than $1 billion.

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diaspora is against them. I don’t think the government officials even saw the film, but they went ahead and halted the whole film festival.” The ban on “Flying Fish” comes amid a fierce clampdown on free speech in the South Asian island nation that has seen journalists, activists, lawyers and even top judges detained under security laws, which human rights groups have called “draconian” and “arcane”. ‘A sustained campaign’ to ‘curtail dissent’ In an excoriating summary of Sri Lanka’s human rights abuses, the New York-based Human Rights Watch noted that, “Four years after Sri Lanka’s horrific civil war ended, many Sri Lankans await justice for the victims of abuses, news of the ‘disappeared,’ and respect for their basic rights”. In 2009, Sri Lankan forces defeated the Tamil separatist LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) rebels after a brutal 26year civil war which left at least 100,000 people dead. The final military assault against the Tamil Tigers – as they are commonly known – is a subject of intense debate and rancor between the Sri Lankan government, the country’s minority Tamil ethnic group, and the international community.

In interviews to the press in recent years, Pushpakumara has repeatedly noted that his acclaimed first film draws on the stories and characters he encountered while growing up during the civil war. Reacting to the suspension of the French Film Festival, the French Embassy in Sri Lanka said the film was chosen “due to its international recognition in festivals in Asia and in France”. In a statement posted on its website, the French Embassy noted that it received screening authorisation from the Sri Lankan Public Performances Board and all the screening conditions stipulated by the authorities were met. Nevertheless, the statement went on to regret the “unfortunate incident” and the embarrassment it may have caused the public and the festival sponsors.

“The aim of the French Spring Cultural Festival is to strengthen the friendly relations between France and Sri Lanka and in no way to harm any part of the Sri Lankan diverse society,” [sic] the statement noted. But in their reactions to the ban, Sri Lankan artists and activists were not as measured as the festival organisers. On Sunday, more than 50 activists signed a statement deploring what they called the state media’s intimidation and vilification of prominent Sri Lankan writer Gamini Viyangoda in connection with the “Flying Fish” ban. The Colombo-based Free Media Movement released a statement saying the ban demonstrated the government’s desire to “even militarise arts and culture” and in an interview with the daily, Ceylon Today, respected Sri Lankan filmmaker Dharmasiri Bandaranayake noted that the latest move by the government proved that “regimented jackboots” were “crush[ing] artistic expression”. More than two years ago, when “Flying Fish” was a nominee in the main competition at the 2011 Rotterdam Film Festival, Pushpakumara noted that the international reception to the film had provided encouragement to filmmakers back home. “It’s good for me and it’s good for Sri Lankan cinema,” said the young director. It remains to be seen whether the domestic response to his film will have the reverse effect on future Sri Lankan filmmakers.

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A UN investigation put the death toll during the final months of the military assault at 40,000, but the Sri Lankan government has rejected the figure and denies allegations of war crimes. While the end of the civil war has sparked economic growth – especially in the tourism sector – clampdowns on the media continue with the authorities shutting down at least five news websites critical of the government in 2012. Last month, the government officially proposed a media code that would prohibit the publication of any content deemed to offend the “expectations of the public” and the “morality of the country”. Human rights groups have warned that media code is “part of a sustained campaign to control the media and curtail dissent”. ‘Regimented jackboots’ crushing ‘artistic expression’ The news of the latest film ban made headlines across Sri Lanka, with the official state media slamming director Sanjeewa

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LEISURE

VOICE OF ASIA 17

Coca-Cola unveils new bottle made of ice

ooking for an ice-cold Coke on a hot summer’s day? You now have to travel no further than to Colombia (yes, the country).

For the eco-minded, the

BOOK Review:

Tittle: The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund by Anita Raghavan by Pradeep Anand

knew that the book would not have a surprise ending. I knew that Raj Rajaratnam and Rajat Gupta would be found guilty and be sentenced to jail terms. Yet, I had to read the book.

Coca-Cola, in partnership Ogilvy & Mather Bogota, has rolled out a limited-edition bottle made entirely from ice. The new container--only available in Colombia-- is shaped like the traditional glass Coke bottle and has the company’s name etched into the frozen water, according to Coca Cola’s website. In case you’re wondering how you can keep hold of the icy vessel, it is wrapped with a red rubber band, which also doubles as a bracelet, that prevents frozen ﬁngers.

And when I embarked on this reading journey, Anita Raghavan’s writing was so compelling, brisk and riveting that I couldn’t put the book down. bottle melts when the drinkers are ﬁnished. But FoodBeast noted that ice bottles may not be the most sanitary as glass or cans which absorb the dirt and germs from drinkers’ hands. Also, all the water and refrigeration needed to make these

may cancel out all the environmental beneﬁts --leaving pretty much just a clever marketing gimmick. No word if this frozen experiment would be expanded to hit U.S. shores.

Bangalore’s barwomen ordered to wear ‘decent’ clothes

There were also many personal hurdles that could have prevented me from reading and ﬁnishing the book. Firstly, I am an Indian-American and I wasn’t pleased that an icon’s reputation was being dragged through the muck and destroyed. Additionally, Gupta and I had common friends, and our families had met a few times, until ﬁfteen years ago. Also, I knew many other members of the book’s cast of characters, especially those who received their undergraduate degrees, like me, from an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). I wasn’t pleased that one of them had copped a plea. Yet, The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of The Indian-American Elite and The Fall of The Galleon Hedge Fund by Anita Raghavan (512 pages) kept my attention and interest throughout the reading expedition. Ms. Raghavan has an eye for details that I enjoyed. She also avoided dime store psychology to provide “insights” into the players—she just laid out the meticulous minutiae in a “just-the-facts-ma’am” manner. The reader be the judge and the jury.

Bar waitresses prepare cocktails at a bar in Bangalore, on May 30, 2007. Women hired as bartenders in the southeastern Indian IT hub of Bangalore must wear “decent” clothes including long-sleeved shirts and trousers, according to new state government guidelines approved by a top court.

omen hired as bartenders in the southeastern Indian IT hub of Bangalore must wear “decent” clothes including long-sleeved shirts and trousers, according to new state government guidelines approved by a top court. The government of Karnataka state issued the guidelines after bar and restaurant owners took legal action to try to stop police shutting down licensed premises that employed women on the grounds of indecency. The High Court in the state capital Bangalore ordered police Tuesday to allow the hiring of women as bartenders after accepting the state government’s dress guidelines. “We have submitted to the Karnataka High Court a set of guidelines to be strictly followed by owners of bars and restaurants employing women to serve their customers,” a state home department ofﬁcial told AFP. Barwomen should be aged 21 years or above and wear full-

length trousers and full-length shirt or T-shirt with or without a blazer or a salwar kameez (a Punjabi suit) to “prevent indecent displays of their body”. The guidelines are legally binding, with police given the power to strip bars of their licences if female employees do not follow the new dress code. They are the latest example of what critics decry as moral policing in Bangalore and the state of Karnataka, home to a booming professional middle class. In 2009 Hindu extremists attacked women in a fashionable bar in the nearby city of Mangalore, accusing them of “debauched behaviour” for drinking and smoking. They followed up with a warning that any couples courting on Valentine’s Day risked being frog-marched to the nearest temple and forced to marry. The legal action or petition was taken by the Bangalore Ladies’ Working Bar and Restaurants Owners’ Association.

“The High Court has directed the city police to allow licensed bars and restaurants to hire women bartenders in accordance with the guidelines and see how they operate over the next three months,” the ofﬁcial said. A lawyer for the association, R. Gopalakrishna, said the owners would comply with the guidelines but the new rules imposed additional costs on bars and restaurants employing women. “The guidelines will add to the operational cost of running a bar and restaurant, as owners have to not only pay salary to the lady bartenders, but also provide a decent dress and arrange for their transport from home and back to ensure their safety and security,” Gopalakrishna told AFP. The guidelines also ban obscene behaviour by customers towards the women. They also prevent the hiring of men, women and transgenders for dancing or any other form of entertainment in bars and restaurants, the ofﬁcial said.

Disrobed Thai monk faces arrest for underage sex

ANGKOK (AFP) – A Thai monk who was disrobed after a videotaped private jet trip unleashed allegations of improper conduct will face arrest for sex with a minor, authorities said Monday. Wiraphon Sukphon, who is believed to be abroad, is being sought in Thailand on suspicion of having sex with an underage girl around a decade ago while he was a monk, and of fathering a child with her. “We will seek a warrant from a court Wednesday,” Department of Special Investigation chief Tarit Pengdith told AFP, adding that the woman is now seeking court action to prove that the former monk is the father of her son, who is now 11. Footage of Wiraphon, 33, and two other monks travelling in a private jet, wearing sunglasses and carrying a Louis Vuitton luxury bag, caused a scandal recently in Buddhist-majority Thailand. He has since been investigated on suspicion of an array of offences including tax evasion, drug possession and moneylaundering. Wiraphon as a cleric went by the name Luang Pu Nen Kham to bolster his claims to be the

FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

Buddhist monks hold candles in front of the Dhammakaya temple in Pathumthani province, southern Thailand, on February 25, 2013. A Thai monk who was disrobed after a videotaped private jet trip unleashed allegations of improper conduct will face arrest for sex with a minor, authorities tell AFP. (AFP/File). reincarnation of a famous miracle-performing monk. He has 41 bank accounts, according to the Department of Special Investigation. The authorities will now seek to have those accounts and other assets frozen and to have the former monk’s passport revoked after the clergy disrobed him. “The evidence shows Wiraphon violated Buddhist regulations by having sex with a woman. He ceased to be a monk at that time,” Phra Khru Wacharasittikhun of the monastic disciplinary team in the east-

ern province of Sisaket said on Saturday. “The authorities can now carry out their duties, the monks have ended their role in the issue,” he added. Thai monks have been hit by a series of scandals, with local media reporting cases of drugtaking, drinking, gambling and visiting prostitutes. More than 30 Thai monks were defrocked earlier this month for use of the illegal drug methamphetamine. An abbot was also charged with narcotics trafﬁcking over the incident in Saraburi province.

The book documented a business tragedy in a journalistic way. However, a reader, who chooses to delve, can conjure images, parallels and lessons, even a screenplay. First and foremost the book has drama. At the center is a bright but boorish seducer of Sri Lankan birth, who has an aura of financial success that makes him larger than life. His success was due in part to his Wharton/Silicon Valley/South Asian network that he “played” for insider information at publicly traded companies. On the sidelines, is a persevering star, who propels himself out of humble and orphaned beginnings, and shines and sparkles as he crosses oceans and continents, only to fall ignominiously. While reading the book, Greek and Shakespearean tragic images can be invoked. The Great Gatsby may also come to mind. However, to this IndianAmerican, the Indian Epic, The Mahabharat, was recalled. Central to that epic is Yudhishtra, the eldest of the Pandava clan, who was also known as Dharmaraj—loosely translated into the “Righteous King” or “King of Dharma”. Yudhishtra, the novice, is drawn into a game of dice by Shakuni, the expert. Dharmaraj gambles away and loses his entire kingdom in a single game. In addition, he, his brothers and family are forced to a thirteen year exile. (They do return and are victorious after a battle at Kurukshetra; but, in this context, that sequel has to come.) The book has minor characters who are very intelligent but possess a common flaw— these bright people believe that they should be richer, their net worth larger, comparable to the wealth of people of equal acumen. It was a flaw that any modern Shakuni could exploit. Add to this brew of frail human traits more ingredients: ego, greed and frayed integrity. Spark it with rising market tides and you have a dramatic crucible for schemes that go splendidly for a while, and then abruptly and explosively go awry, when the tide recedes. The persistent good guys from the SEC and the US Attorney’s office come in to clean up after the party is over.

Author, Anita Raghavan And then there is the role of chance and diligence. A pull at what seems to be a weak thread that, when pursued diligently, unravels a ball of chicanery, tied to insider information. These Modern Untouchables were dogged and meticulous in their pursuit, seeking those decisive informational pearls in a vast ocean of data. The drama ends in a courtroom battle, followed by sentencing, and the accompanying shocked agony of family and friends. There are other tugs at emotional strings: Destroying the sanctity and joy of every future Diwali (similar to Christmas) celebration, which would be remembered as the day of arrest; the deep sense of responsibility that the oldest son of an orphaned family has for his younger siblings; the empathy and sympathy for the emotionally distraught families; the immigrant’s pain in being rejected in corporate America; the humiliation of being found guilty, with the family in the gallery; the irony of Preet Bharara (US Attorney, Southern District of New York) visiting Harvard Business School to lecture on white-collar crime, with one of Gupta’s daughters in the class; and many more. Besides the human drama, this tragedy is another lesson in how much successful executives, caught in the euphoria of triumphs in the market, underestimate the role of uncontrollable factors in their achievements. Two uncontrollable factors affected Galleon, its principals and partners. The ﬁrst was growth trends in the technology sector in the 1990s. As is the nature of trends, this growth was accompanied by two abrupt decelerations--one, with the bursting of the dotcom bubble, and, two, due to the stock market meltdown that began in 2007 and persisted until 2009. Bubbles create blindness to alternate scenarios, especially to markets regressing to the mean. The second uncontrollable factor was government regulation. In 2000, the SEC passed a rule called Regulation FD. This rule required publicly traded companies to disclose material information publicly to everyone. Before Regulation FD, large investors, like hedge funds, got a competitive edge because companies could provide information to select investors and analysts. But, after Regulation FD was passed, that edge disappeared. Hedge funds—about eight thousand exist today—had a hard time in creating marketbeating strategies that could be protected from competitors and not replicated. Unsurprisingly, these funds, as a group, have underperformed the market for nine out of the past ten years. When uncontrollable factors overpower an industry, there is some backlash of illegal activities to maintain performance standards. Ponzi schemes are well known examples of such fraud—Bernie Madoff, Alan Stanford and many others have succumbed to them. Add “seeking insider information” and Rajaratnam to that list. Gupta was caught in the net of an elaborate trap set by the SEC, meant for this bigger ﬁsh named Rajaratnam. The book drove home another lesson. This one goes back to a key tenet from McKinsey’s own Waterman and Peters, In

Search of Excellence: Stick to your Knitting. In this case, many players moved out of their comfort zones, crossed legal lines of integrity, and were judged by precedence in their new environment. As Federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff said, “The annals of whitecollar crime in this district are filled with people who wanted to make themselves respected, powerful members of society by giving to charity.” In a similar situation, on familiar turfs, where “giving to charity” was not viewed with such suspicion, Gupta’s global altruism, perhaps, would have permitted more character witnesses. Finally, the majority of the pursuers and the pursued are South Asians. Therefore, the book has substantial South Asian content. To many readers, South Asia is a generic name for the subHimalayan region that includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives Nepal and Sri Lanka. For students of South Asia and the Indian Diaspora, Ms. Raghavan sprinkles ethnic and cultural insights throughout the book. For example, she highlights the appreciation of quality of education these fine people received at the best of schools and colleges in India and the US. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are engineering and management institutes whose alumni have proved to be strong innovators and highly successful executives and technologists in the corporate world, entrepreneurial ventures, academia, government and other walks of life. It is estimated that IIT graduates have created over 500,000 jobs in the U.S. and significantly more in India and the rest of the world. Almost 40% of technology start-ups in Silicon Valley, over the last 20 years, have an IIT graduate as a Founder or CEO. In 2005, the US Congress passed House Resolution 227— introduced by Congressman Tom Davis and co-sponsored by then Congressman Bobby Jindal—praising the stellar work done by IITians. Today, IIT alumni hold executive positions in many of the largest global organizations, like Gupta did at McKinsey. Finally, I was left with the question: Why do people cross that fine line that separates ethical and unethical pursuit of money and wealth? I found an insight in recent research done by Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School and Adam D. Galinsky of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School. They concluded that when people feel psychologically close to someone who behaves selfishly, they are more likely to consider the behavior to be less shame-worthy and less unethical. Like parents often warn their children: Be careful about the company you keep. Pradeep Anand is president of Seeta Resources, www.seeta. com, a consulting firm that helps business leaders cope with and manage change, resulting in accelerated growth. He is the author of An Indian in Cowboy Country: Stories from an Immigrant’s Life.

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HEALTHY LIVING HEALTH

VOICE OF ASIA 18

Friday, July 19, 2013

Section 2

Will I qualify for lower costs on monthly premiums under new Health Care Law?

FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

Email: voiceasia@aol.com

Tel: 713-774-5140

Sweden ﬁnds arsenic in Vitamin K: Chinese herbal remedy

When you get health insurance coverage in the Marketplace, you may be able to get lower costs on monthly premiums. This depends on your income and family size. By: Sudhir Mathuria Pay lower costs for premiums each month In the Health Insurance Marketplace you may be able to lower the costs of your health insurance coverage by paying lower monthly premiums. You’ll see the amount of savings you’re eligible for when you fill out your Marketplace application. Prices shown for insurance plans will reflect the lower costs. These lower costs are handled with a tax credit called the Advance Premium Tax Credit. But these tax credits can be applied directly to your monthly premiums, so you get the lower costs immediately. Savings depends on income and family size The amount you save depends on your family size and how much money your family earns. In general, people at the following income levels will qualify to save in 2014. The lower your income, the higher your savings will be. (The amounts below are based on 2013 numbers and are likely to be slightly higher in 2014.) • Up to $45,960 for

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David Jeyaraj, MD

Workers at a traditional Chinese medicine store prepare dried items at a shop in Hong Kong on December 29, 2010. Sweden’s food safety watchdog said on Tuesday it had found “extremely high” levels of arsenic in a Chinese herbal remedy, posing a “very serious health hazard.”

TOCKHOLM, July 16, 2013 (AFP) Sweden’s food safety watchdog said on Tuesday it had found “extremely high” levels of arsenic in a Chinese herbal remedy, posing a “very serious health hazard.” The toxic substance was found in a product called Niu-Huang Chieh-tu-pien, which is claimed by online vendors of traditional Chinese medicine to cure numerous conditions, including toothache, skin infections, anorexia and fever in infants. The product is also sold under the Indian names Divya Kaishore Guggul and Chandraprabha Vati. “The recommended dose

provides a daily amount of inorganic arsenic which in a worst case scenario equals half a lethal dose,” said Leif Busk, a toxicologist at the National Food Agency. “Consequently, anyone who eats it can be very seriously affected. It’s frightening to think there are companies selling these very hazardous preparations.” The product was discovered and removed from shelves in Stockholm this summer, but could still be on sale in other Swedish cities. It can also be bought on the Internet. Local authorities in Stockholm have issued a warning to other European countries through an EU alert system, according to the agency.

Use it or lose it? Delaying retirement may help prevent dementia, large French study ﬁnds

by Marilynn Marchione (The Washington Post).

active, continue to be engaged in whatever it is that’s enjoyable to you” that’s important, she said.

OSTON (AP) July 15— New research boosts the “use it or lose it” theory about brainpower and staying mentally sharp. People who delay retirement have less risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia, a study of nearly half a million people in France found. It’s by far the largest study to look at this, and researchers say the conclusion makes sense. Working tends to keep people physically active, socially connected and mentally challenged — all things known to help prevent mental decline. “For each additional year of work, the risk of getting dementia is reduced by 3.2 percent,” said Carole Dufouil, a scientist at INSERM, the French government’s health research agency. She led the study and gave results Monday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Boston. About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer’s is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer’s — 1 in 9 people aged 65 and over. What causes the mind-robbing disease isn’t known and there is no cure or any treatments that slow its progression.1 … France has had some of the best Alzheimer’s research in the world, partly because its former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, made it a priority. The country also has detailed health records on self-employed people who pay into a

“My parents are retired but they’re busier than ever. They’re taking classes at their local university, they’re continuing to attend lectures and they’re continuing to stay cognitively engaged and socially engaged in their lives.” __

June Springer, poses for a photograph, where she works at Cafﬁ Contracting Services, Friday, July 1 Medicare-like health system.

Dufouil said.

Researchers used these records on more than 429,000 workers, most of whom were shopkeepers or craftsmen such as bakers and woodworkers. They were 74 on average and had been retired for an average of 12 years.

France mandates retirement in various jobs — civil servants must retire by 65, she said. The new study suggests “people should work as long as they want” because it may have health beneﬁts, she said.

Nearly 3 percent had developed dementia but the risk of this was lower for each year of age at retirement. Someone who retired at 65 had about a 15 percent lower risk of developing dementia compared to someone retiring at 60, after other factors that affect those odds were taken into account, Dufouil said. To rule out the possibility that mental decline may have led people to retire earlier, researchers did analyses that eliminated people who developed dementia within 5 years of retirement, and within 10 years of it. “The trend is exactly the same,” suggesting that work was having an effect on cognition, not the other way around,

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner in Chicago contributed to this report

June Springer, who just turned 90, thinks it does. She was hired as a full-time receptionist at Cafﬁ Plumbing & Heating in Alexandria, Va., eight years ago.

Read Dr. Jeyaraj’s article weekly on this page

SUGAR LAND—(July 16, 2013) — Methodist Sugar Land Hospital has a new name. Effectively immediately, Fort Bend’s leading health care institution is now known as Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital. The Methodist system, now Houston Methodist, changed its name to differentiate its hospitals from approximately 80 other Methodist hospitals across the country. “The quality of Methodist’s medical care and our compassionate culture give us a unique identity, one that has signiﬁcant strength both in Houston and in Fort Bend,” says Houston Methodist Sugar Land CEO, Chris Siebenaler. “This new approach helps solidify our connection to Houston and to the legacy of excellence at The Methodist Hospital, now known as Houston Methodist Hospital. Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital is proud

to be a part of this history and we’re excited about carrying the new brand forward.” The new names of the four community hospitals will now be: • Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital • Houston West Hospital

Methodist

• Houston Methodist Willowbrook Hospital • Houston Methodist San Jacinto Hospital “While there are many other Methodist hospitals across the country this new name will establish, quickly and permanently, the fact that Houston Methodist is indeed the only one … the one that is leading medicine, and the one that is becoming a national presence,” said Marc Boom, M.D., president and CEO of Houston Methodist..

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“I’d like to give credit to the company for hiring me at that age,” she said. “It’s a joy to work, being with people and keeping up with current events. I love doing what I do. As long as God grants me the brain to use I’ll take it every day.” Heather Snyder, director of medical and scientiﬁc operations for the Alzheimer’s Association, said the study results don’t mean everyone needs to delay retirement.

itamin K is a group of 3 closely linked moleculesK1,K2 and K3. It is present in the following foods- green leafy vegetables, soybean, canola, butter and eggs. Vitamin K is also synthesized by bacteria in the intestines. Outright deficiency of Vitamin K is rare in adults, however, it may happen in special circumstances. They include • Medications including Coumadin, antibitotics and aspirin. • Poor diet. • Inflammatory bowel disease • Liver disease. Role of Vitamin K in the body: • Clotting of blood: Vitamin K makes the liver produce many of the substances required for blood clotting. • Bone health: Vitamin K is very important for the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis.

Vitamin K plays an important role in incorporating calcium in the bones. The truth is, calcium deficiency is rarely a cause of osteoporosis whereas Vitamin K deficiency frequently is. • Vascular health: Vitamin K prevents calcification of the arteries. • Cancer prevention: Vitamin K has been shown to kill certain cancer cells including leukemia, pancreatic and ovarian cancer. • Alzheimer’s disease: Vitamin K helps regulate brain biochemistry. There is an association between low Vitamin K levels and thr presence of Alzheimer’s disease. Supplements: Those taking blood thinners are cautioned against taking Vitamin K. According to the food and nutrition board, no adverse effects have been noted with supplementation in humans and animals. Dr David Jeyaraj is board certified in Internal Medicine and has been in practice for 14 years. When he faced a personal health crisis, he at first turned to conventional medicine. He exercised, ate right, took his medications regularly. He transitioned from conventional medicine to full time age management medicine . Dr Jeyaraj is certified in age management by Cengenics Institute, Las Vegas and is a member of the Age Management Medicine Group. He can be reached at: 713.271.0705 www.texasami.com

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FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

Cyberwar is reality world must Scientists power mobile phone using urine fight: UN official lines. In an increasingly connected and Internet-dependent world, cyber attacks by governments and criminal gangs alike have the potential to wreak havoc on everything from the financial sector to key public services, Toure said. That raises the spectre of huge economic losses and social chaos, and Toure said governments and business worldwide must think collectively about how to head that off. “No one single entity can do it alone. We have to change the mindset. Are we mentally prepared to work with one another?” he asked.

GENEVA - The international community must wake up to the reality of cyberwar and strive to ﬁnd ways to stem it, the head of the UN’s telecommunications agency said Monday. “There is a cyberwar going on,” Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, said during a cybersecurity debate at the Geneva Press Club. “Just like a conventional war, there are no winners, only destruction,” he warned an audience of reporters, diplomats and technology experts. While Toure declined to pin the blame on individual countries, such

attacks have become common currency. Russia was widely blamed for what has been dubbed the world’s ﬁrst cyberwar, in 2007, when state and bank websites were blocked for days in Estonia, one of the world’s most wired nations and a member of NATO and the European Union. Since then, attention has focussed on China for alleged state-run cyber attacks on targets in the United States and elsewhere. In recent weeks, pro-regime Syrian hackers and North and South Korean online warriors have also made head-

“In this arena, there’s no such thing as a superpower anymore,” he said, given that is it cheap to create viruses and launch attacks. “It’s the human brain that’s driving this. So we’re all equal in this, and we need to come together. That’s the new order. It’s not one country. It’s not like a nuclear power, where the technology, the knowledge base and the infrastructure and the funding are required for that. “We have to treat cyberspace like we treat the real world,” he added. “What’s true in the real world is true in cyberspace. Some people say we’re in a new environment where the rules are completely different. We’re not. Because humans are at the centre of this.”

A Google database Ngram helps to understand American novels better by Marc Egnal

an the technologies of Big Data, which are transforming so many areas of life, change our understanding of American novels? After conducting research with Google’s Ngram database, which tabulates the frequency of words used in over five million books, I believe the answer is yes. Consider the question of which themes and books characterise a literary era. The time-honoured approach to this problem has been for a critic or a group of scholars to select and analyse key novels. That methodology has its flaws. No one person or team of readers can do more than dip their toes into the vast sea of literary works. By the 1840s, Americans wrote more than 100 novels annually; by the 1880s, more than 1,000; by the early 21st century, more than 10,000. In addition, there is the threat of subjective bias. Not long ago, for example, critics focused their attention almost exclusively on white male authors. The Ngram database offers an alternative approach. By examining the changing frequencies of key words in books published in the US, researchers can gain new perspectives on America and its novels. There are important caveats in using this source. The “American English” subset of the Ngram database includes a broad selection of books published in the US — not just fiction or writings by American authors. It excludes the dime novels favoured by the lower class, and so has a middle-class bias. But as a guide to the works that middle-

class Americans read, it is a fruitful source of hypotheses and a healthy check on subjective opinion. In a number of instances, Ngram data suggests challenges to common assumptions. Word Processing Take the role of women in mid-19th century American novels. Scholars have argued that domesticity shaped the world of middle-class women. Women were supposed to be submissive, pious, domestic and pure. But Ngram indicates that the use of those words peaked, respectively, in 1807, 1814, 1835 and 1847. All fell off by 1950. By contrast, striking gains were recorded in the usage of woman’s rights. Virtually unknown before the 1840s, the term soared in frequency after the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Perhaps we need to invert conventional wisdom and declare as “representative” those mid-century novels criticising domesticity and celebrating independent women, like Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall (1854) and Emma Southworth’s Hidden Hand. Ngram data also provides a new perspective on the novels of the 1930s. These years are traditionally viewed as the heyday of the proletarian novel, a time of gloom and a period when business leaders were despised. John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath, is considered a quintessential novel of the decade. But according to Ngram data, the use of businessman, a term virtually unknown before 1930, surged during the decade. Of course, you might guess that those citations were negative, but trends in other

terms point to a more positive reading. Mentions of the American dream, a term rarely seen before 1930, also climbed precipitously. So instead of Steinbeck’s novel, works highlighting scrappy entrepreneurs may best mark this decade. In Their Eyes Were Watching God (1939), for example, the heroine’s first two husbands were successful businessmen who overcame racial prejudice. Similarly, Gone With the Wind (1936) details Scarlett regaining the affluence she once enjoyed. Our view of postmodern fiction might also need adjusting. Chaos, conspiracy and nihilism are thought to reign in this literary world. Word usage, however, indicates the growing attention paid to children. Among the terms whose frequency escalates after 1960 are caring, nurturing, infant, toddler and childhood. Perhaps the representative works of this era are novels like Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, all of which feature deep parent-child bonds. These hypotheses are suggestive, but as tools like Ngram improve, it should encourage scholars to revisit longstanding assumptions. (The writer is a professor of history at York University, Toronto)

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ONDON - British scientists on Tuesday reported they had harnessed the power of urine and were able to charge a mobile phone with enough electricity to send texts and surf the internet. Researchers from the University of Bristol and Bristol Robotics Laboratory in south west England said they had created a fuel cell that uses bacteria to break down urine to generate electricity, in a study published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. “No one has harnessed power from urine to do this so it’s an exciting discovery,” said engineer Ioannis Ieropoulos. “The beauty of this fuel source is that we are not relying on the erratic nature of the wind or the sun; we are actually reusing waste to create energy. “One product that we can be sure of an unending supply is our own urine,” he added. The team grew bacteria on carbon

ﬁbre anodes and placed them inside ceramic cylinders. The bacteria broke down chemicals in urine passed through the cylinders, building up a small amount of electrical charge which was stored on a capacitor. Ieropoulos hoped that the cell, which is currently the size of a car battery, could be developed for many applications. “Our aim is to have something that can be carried around easily,” he explained. “So far the microbial fuel power stack (MFC) that we have developed generates enough power to enable SMS messaging, web browsing and to make a brief phone call. “The concept has been tested and it works - it’s now for us to develop and reﬁne the process so that we can develop MFCs to fully charge a battery.” They hope the technology will eventually be used to power domestic devices.

Microsoft slashes Surface tablet price by 30%

AN FRANCISCO: Microsoft has quietly cut the price of its entry-level Surface tablet computer by some 30 percent, after surveys indicating sluggish sales. The Surface RT tablet was being sold for as low as $349 for US customers on the Microsoft website on Monday, down from the introductory price last year of $499.

while Barnes & Noble has cut the price of its Nook to as low as $129, and has announced plans to outsource production of its tablets. Microsoft introduced its Surface last year at a premium price, promoting the device as a substitute for a personal computer with an attachable keyboard.

The move comes amid a price war for tablets and a ﬂood of new devices on the market.

But a survey by the research ﬁrm IDC estimated the company sold just 900,000 units in the ﬁrst quarter, in a global market of some 49 million.

Amazon has slashed prices of its Kindle HD tablets to as low as $169 in the US and 139 pounds in Britain,

Microsoft previously cut the price of the Surface as low as $199 for education buyers.

NASA ﬁnds new moon on Neptune

ASHINGTON - A tiny new moon has been spotted circling Neptune -- the 14th known to be orbiting the faraway planet, the US space agency said on Monday. The moon is the smallest ever glimpsed around Neptune and measures just about 12 miles (19 kilometers) across, based on observations from the Hubble Space telescope, NASA said. Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun, and NASA said the moon, named S/2004 N1, is about 100 million times fainter than the dimmest star that can be seen with the naked eye. Astronomers found the moon by

tracking a white dot that appeared repeatedly in more than 150 photos taken by Hubble from 2004 to 2009. Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, found the moon July 1 while studying the faint arcs around Neptune, NASA said. “The moons and arcs orbit very quickly, so we had to devise a way to follow their motion in order to bring out the details of the system,” he said. “It’s the same reason a sports photographer tracks a running athlete -- the athlete stays in focus, but the background blurs.” The moon is believed to circle Neptune once every 23 hours.

VOICE OF ASIA 20

Friday, July 19, 2013

BUSINESS

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Chinese slowdown casts shadow over world economy - Analysis an orderly slowdown -- ie. one that does not see growth plummet sub-5.0 percent and lead to ﬁnancial and social crisis.”

by Roland JACKSON LONDON, July 16, 2013 (AFP) - China’s slowdown cast a shadow over Europe and Asia on Tuesday, sparking questions over Beijing’s ability to avoid a hard landing that would wreak havoc on the world economy, analysts said.

Gekko Markets analyst Anita Paluch added that the West had relied on booming China to help overcome a ﬁerce recession which followed the global ﬁnancial crisis.

The nation’s powerhouse economy slowed to 7.5-percent growth in the second quarter, down from 7.7 percent in the previous three months, official data showed Monday. “China is a key downside risk to the global economy. Recent data does suggest that the economy is sluggish,” VTB Capital economist Neil MacKinnon told AFP. “In addition, the authorities are concerned about the rapid rate of credit expansion and the impact it might have on inflation. This rules out any near-term monetary or fiscal stimulus.” New evidence emerged Tuesday of the impact of slowing Chinese growth in Europe, which is still struggling to recover from the eurozone’s long-running sovereign debt crisis. Investors in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, turned gloomy this month on fears over falling exports to China, in a stark illustration of the new globalised power of the Asian nation’s industry and consumers. Germany’s investor confidence index, calculated by ZEW economic institute, fell by 2.2 points to 36.3 points in July. That disappointed analysts’ forecasts for an increase to 40 points. Dark clouds’ from the East “New dark clouds have started to black out growth prospects of the German economy,” said ING DiBa economist Carsten Brzeski. “These clouds are not coming

“Slower growth will have impact on those countries who have strong trade links with China -like Australia, Brazil and (the) South East Asia region -- as demand will fall,” Paluch said.

A Chinese man (R) reads a newspaper as he rests at the entrance of a temple in Beijing on July 16, 2013. (AFP/Wang Zhao) from the South but from the East. The stuttering and now slowing Chinese economy is a clear cause of concern (and) could become a new risk factor for the German economic outlook.” China is now the ﬁfth most important single export market for German companies and accounts for some six percent of total exports. The Asian Development Bank meanwhile warned Tuesday that China’s slowing growth was weakening momentum and trimmed its outlook for developing Asia this year to 6.3 percent, from 6.6 percent. The sluggishness comes as “China is attempting to rebalance its economy away from investment towards a more consumerdriven economy,” said Currencies Direct analyst Alistair Cotton. But this rebalancing would present growth opportunities for the West, he noted. “The big winners, should they crack the market, will be con-

sumer companies with strong brand identity,” he said. “The losers are likely to be the countries supplying the raw materials for Chinese investment, conversely the ones that were doing so well in the last decade.” Daiwa Capital Markets economist Chris Scicluna added that markets were eager to see an “orderly” Chinese slowdown that would not disrupt the world economy. “China’s support for global demand has been welcome over the past couple of years as the West has had to work off the excesses of the pre-Lehman era,” Scicluna told AFP, in reference to US bank Lehman Brothers whose collapse in 2008 triggered a global slump. “A slowing of China’s growth, over the medium term, to a sub-7 .0-percent rate was always inevitable as the economy matured. Engineering a slowdown “The main concern is that the authorities there can engineer

China is vital for the smooth functioning of global economies because the Asian powerhouse nation is a major consumer of commodities, like crude oil, steel, and copper, and of manufactured products like cars and

airplanes. At the same time, China is also widely regarded as the workshop of the world, and its vast factories beneﬁt from low labour costs and high volume production. But the International Monetary Fund cut its global economic growth forecast last week, citing the increased “possibility of a longer growth slowdown” in emerging market economies like China. Scicluna added Tuesday that all nations around the world needed to return to “appropriate” levels of growth to create a balanced global economy. “Over the long run we would hope to have all economies running at their potential,” he told AFP.

The 1 Move That Could Suddenly Pull 300,000 Workers Out Of Poverty

egislation introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives could pull hundreds of thousands of the country’s working poor out of poverty, according to a new study by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The EITC brought 3.1 million children above the poverty line in 2011 and generated as much as $1.50 in additional earnings for every dollar spent on the program, according to a report by the Brookings Institute, a nonproﬁt research organization.

The legislation in question would alter the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a wage supplement for low-income families, by lowering the eligibility age to 21 for childless workers and raising the maximum credit available to all. Doing so, according to the study, would lift more than 300,000 people out of poverty.

Yet CBPP claims that the credit “entirely” misses many low-income workers and offers only partial support to others. A childless adult under the age of 25 years old, for example, doesn’t receive any EITC, even if he is working full-time at the minimum wage and earning only $14,500 per year.

As of today, all childess workers under the age of 25 are ineligible for the EITC.

Low-income young men, whose labor-force participation rates were hit hard during the recession, are among those

who stand to benefit most from a potential EITC expansion, according to the CBPP. Inflationadjusted median earnings for a male high-school dropout with a full-time job fell by 10 percent between 1991 and 2011, CBPP notes. Other organizations have argued that an increase to the minimum wage is another policy solution that would lift many Americans out of poverty. A study by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a national organization focusing on racial equity in the restaurant industry, discovered than a $10 hourly minimum wage would push more than half of the country’s working poor out of poverty. (Courtesy: The Huffington Post)

FEATURE

VOICE OF ASIA 21

FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

Your Horoscope (For week beginning Friday, July 19, 2013)

Hardik Vyas, Astrologer Cell : 832-298-9950

As per Indian Vedic Astrology the Moon sign is considered, in which every Rashi has control over certain letters, which are initials of your name. Whereas in Western system of Sun Sign, all the people born in one month belong to the same sign. For example, every year approximately around 21 of March to 20th April, the Sun is moving in the Aries Constellation. So all the people born in that month belong to the Sign of Aries. If you were born in between those two dates then you are a Aries born.

Aries (A,L,E) 21st. March to 20 April Some interesting connections will unlock new doors. You may want to reword a proposal or in some way adjust your way of communicating in order to come to a mutual agreement. A new or renewed relationship will prove to be romantic, loving and pleasing to you. You will be quite concerned with looking your best and may even behave somewhat flirtatiously. Your communication skills are especially good when discussing your feelings. Clear the air of past problems. It’ll be easier for you to be more sensitive to others inner feelings.

Taurus

(B,V,U) 21 April to 21 May

You may feel some extra tension at home. Use your sense of humor to be much more convincing than having to use heavy-handed tactics. Conﬂicts between work demands and your personal needs will need to be addressed. Unresolved emotional tangles are likely to arise unless you agree to make more compromises. Your patience and honest efforts will be your best offense. You may resent the limitations that have been set out for you but realize that they will help you to succeed. Rewards for your efforts are likely to be quick and ‘rich’ emotionally and spiritually.

Gemini

(K,CHH,GH) 22 May to 21 June

You know that you can attract what you need by allowing the world to approach you. You are more inclined to ﬂow along with situations than to forcefully try to make things happen. You will be able to communicate in a more sympathetic manner. Your imagination is very active and you need to have the patience to deal with those who cannot follow your dreams. Friends will help you to lighten your load by listening to you without judgment. Once you are able to open up without of fear criticism, you’ll be able to unburden your soul.

Cancer (D,H) 21 June to 22 July Feel the need for love and compassion. It is strong and you’ll feel romantic or sentimental towards the past. It is great to be open, but use more discrimination with your current audience. The activities you share with your loved ones may center around your intellectual interests. You may feel inclined to discuss your issues of commitment and loyalty in your relationships. You’ll be tempted to spend lavishly on special treats to make your life more comfortable. Buying art and jewelry will increase in value and be appreciated for much longer. Your stars show tons of effort poured into and almost as if each day were exponentially more demanding!

Leo (M) 23 July to 23 August Use your ability to establish more effective alliances with people who can help your career to prosper. You’ll ﬁnd new ways for your personal ambitions to be successfully completed. You may have to be stern but loving at the same time in order to keep your balance. You can discover how to set limits with others without tearing down your relationship with them. You really enjoy dealing with better methods of detail keeping but recent changes may be a real challenge for you. You know that you cannot continue to work at this hectic pace. Excellent cooperation and higher levels of appreciation are likely and it may be expressed to you or from you!

Virgo (P) 24 August to - 23 September Joyous occasion which will have a big inﬂuence your schedule. Give yourself more time to plan. You may begin to develop strong feelings for someone who needs your guidance and support. A love relationship may help you to understand yourself better. You’ll be happy to cooperative in family and work matters. Barriers to romantic bliss will be removed through compromises. You’ll be very sharp and focused in your thinking. You’ll develop some solid ideas and express them concisely. There will be many details to attend to and time will be on your side.

Libra

Your ability to concentrate and focus on your work is good. Family relations will be sensitized to your influences. The healing rays of energy you provide to others benefit everyone. A mate or loved one will be able to gain from your advice. Your support and nurturing will make the difference. Your feelings will reveal concerns you have about your relationship. You’ll feel inspired from past experiences. It’ll be easy for you to settle things down and take charge. You may have to be a little more flexible and open-minded to help with other’s needs.

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A tendency to want to indulge in some excessive pleasures and have adventuresome experiences. Simple words may stimulate your passion playfully in your love relationship. Practical concerns will dominate. Your mind is serious and you’ll be able to concentrate on work that requires attention to detail. Take action to achieve more closeness relationships. You’ll ﬁnd that you need to be more focused and disciplined. You may feel as if there is great pressure on you to perform. The key is to proceed very slowly and to prioritize yourself. Be prepared to have just about everythingfrom ‘soup to nuts’ brought, dumped, heaped or unfairly and expensively ‘dumped upon you’.

Sagittarius

(BH,F,DH,TH) 23. Nov. to 21 Dec.

The fact that regardless of your profession, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how to improve your methods. This knowledge will help you to deal with situations you encounter at work. Your close relationships may need a little boost of imagination. Relax your restless and assertive spirit and ask your partner to join up with you in pursuing your creative impulses. Some personal problems may interfere with your interaction with others. You may not be very objective when it comes to your emotions or unresolved issues from your past. Cooperation is minimal to ‘rather poor’ and demands are not only likely, but some members may be outright ‘rude’.

Capricorn

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(KH,J) 22 Dec. to 20 Jan.

Your ‘duty level’ is likely to go almost ‘unfairly on the rise’ early in the week but you can get THE best/most support for your ideas, needs, goals and ‘ﬁnancial loans, backing or permission’ easier than you think but; don’t push your luck. Most of the trends in the ‘world’ appear to slip dramatically. They improve, but remain sour for the balance. Lots of talking, solving, serving and sorting are indicated for and some of you MAY have short fuses doing it.

Aquarius (G,S,SH) 21st Jan. to 18th Feb.

The fact you’ll know what you need to do to make yourself feel first-class. Put your imagination into everything you carry out. Take this knowledge to the next level and reinvent yourself. Your immediate plans should include a little bit of rest and relaxation. Take this time to rejuvenate yourself and get started on a new regime of healthy eating and exercise. Time may be ticking, but you need to make sure you have the best plan before you commit. A chance meeting will excite you. You’ll seek people who can offer you a different perspective.

Pisces

(D,CH,Z) 19th Feb. to 20th March

Your future will be in your own hands. Push the envelope, ask questions and seek answers. You’ll find easy conversation and a comfortable setting will help you to unravel some mysteries. Your ability to keep yourself on track will enable you to reach out to new resources for solutions to nagging problems. Your past experiences will help you to see past facades to find answers. Your fuse will be SHORT and there is no getting around it. All you can do is discipline your tongue, hold your impulsive side ‘in check’ and fix anything you DO ‘screw up’ as fast as you can.

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VOICE OF ASIA 22

FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

RELIGIOUS INSTITUTES & ORGANIZATIONS OF HOUSTON - call Voice of Asia 713-774-5140 International Hindi Association (IHA) Prog: 16th Biennial Hindi National Conference on August 30, 31 and September 1 (Labor Day weekend) at VPSS Haveli, Houston. Workshops, seminars, Hasya Kavi Sammellan and music. For registration contact Sangeeta 281 7889750 or Swapan 281 3820348 or visit www.hindi. org

Indo-American Charity Foundation (IACF) Prog: Silver Jubilee Celebrations at Hilton Americas on Sept. 21st, 2013. For more information, call Gala Chair Ramesh Cherivirala at 713-8754336.

India House Prog: Free Yoga classes every Tues, Thurs, & Sat Free Dance classes every Sun Free Computer classes every Mon, Wed, & Thurs Medical Clinic every Sat Cultural Library every Sun For info call 713-929-1900 Email: info@indiahouseinc.org Website: www.indiahouseinc.org

Chinmaya Mission Prog: Location:10353 Synott Road, Sugar Land, TX77498. Phone: 832.541.0059. Website:www.chinmayahouston.org.

Hare Krishna Dham (ISKCON) Prog: Everyday, 7 Aratis and bhoga offerings daily. Sunday Festival: 5.30 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. Location: 1320 West 34th St, Houston, TX 77018. Contact:281-433-1635/E-mail harekrishnadham@gmail.com Website: www.iskconhouston. org

Hindu Temple of The Woodlands Prog: Location: 7601 S. Forest Gate

Drive at Woodlands Parkway, Spring, TX 77382. Contact: info@woodlandshindutemple.org, 832-585-0001 Website: www. woodlandshindutemple.org.

VSNA, Houston

Classes for kids and teens. Location: Katy, Hwy 249 & Sugar Land. Contact: 281.995.0930/ 281.808.2159

Vedanta Society of Greater Houston

Prog: Monthly Mahamane event. Puja, Vachana Sahithya discourses, Aarthi and Prasad Contact: vsnahouston@gmail. com/832-545-1185 (Jyoti Biradar) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VSNA.HOUSTON Website: https://sites.google. com/site/bsusorg/home

Prog: Vedanta teachings Sundays at 10:30 AM Location: at 14809 Lindita Dr. Houston, TX -77083. Website: www.vedantahouston. org

BAPS

Temple Hrs: 9 am to noon and 5 to 9 pm. Sri Astalaksmi puja: 7 pm. Sri Laksmi Archana will be performed on request all day. Location:10353 Synott Road, Sugar Land, TX77498. Phone: 832.541.0059. Website: www.saumyakasi.org;

Prog: Location: 1150 Brand Rd. Stafford, TX. Contact: 281-765-2277 Web:

Sri Meenakshi Temple Prog: Location: 17130 McLean Road Pearland, TX 77584 Contact: (281) 489-0358

Arsha Vidya Bharati Prog.:Sanskrit classes and special worship sessions for all ages Location: 2918 Renoir, Sugar Land, TX 77479 Contact: 281-606-5607 or AVB. Houston@gmail.com Web-site: https://sites.google. com/site/avbtexas/classes

Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Baitus Samee Mosque Prog: Friday Prayer - 1:30 PM Children’s Classes | Interfaith meeting | Location: 1333 Spears Rd, Houston, TX 77067 Imam - Mohammed Zafarullah Contact : Work: 281-875-3400 | Cell: 713-874-4363 Zafarullah_Hanjra@hotmail. com www.Alislam.org

Ashirwad - A Blessing Temple Prog: Regular prog :Sloka

Sri Saumyakasi Sivalaya Temple

ISSO Prog: Darshan daily from 7.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.; Aarti daily from 7.45 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Location: 10080 Synott Road, Sugar Land, TX 77478 Phone: 281-530-2565 Web:

VPSS Houston Prog: Location VPSS Vallabh Hall, 11715 Belfort Village Dr. Houston 77031. Contact:713-530-2900 Website:www.vpsshaveli.org

Shri Satyanarayan Sai Puja Darshan Prog: Daily from 10:00 a.m. to 1:p.m. and 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Every Thursday Abhishek Location: 16338 Kensington Dr, Ste 110, Sugar Land 77479. Phone: 713-933-8821 / 9359.

Shri Radha Krishna Temple Prog: Location:11625 Beechnut, Houston, TX 77072 Phone: 281-933-8100 Website: www.SRKT.org.

Gurdwara Sahib of

SW Houston Prog: Sundays Dewan 10:00 11:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. Langar Location:14811 Lindita Drive, Houston, TX 77083 Phone: 281-498-5200 Website: www.gurdwaraswh. com

Sri Ashtalakshmi Temple Prog: Sri Vishnu Sahasranama Stotra Parayanam: daily 6.30 p.m. Location:10098 Synott Road. Sugar Land, TX 77478 Phone: 281- 498-2344 Website: www.ashtalakshmi.org

Hindu Worship Society Prog: Open all days except Thursdays (by appt). Regular Puja and Prasad. Sunday Service 11:30 AM to 1:30 Location: 2223 Wirtcrest Lane Houston TX 77055.

Barsana Dham Houston Chapter Prog: Satsang every Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Location: India House, 8888 West Belfort 77031 Phone: (713) 855-9818 for details Website: www.jkphouston.org Weekly Radio Program-1460 AM Saturdays 10-11 a.m.

Shirdi Sai Jalaram Mandir Prog: Location:3845 West Bellfort, St., Sugar Land, TX 77498 Website: www.babamandir.org

Lakshmi Narayan Mandir Prog: Every Friday Satsangh from 7:30 pm to 9 pm. Bhajans and Devi Puja, Discourses. Location: 12530 Ann Louise Road, Houston, 77086. Phone: Contact Vishnu at (832) 309- 7181.

JVB Preksha Meditation Center

Accountants

Electrical Service

NARESH SETLUR, CPA

Superior One Electric

Accounting, Tax Returns, Cost Accounting, Peachtree, Sales Tax, Franchise Tax.

Visit our website www.karanika.net

Retail, Manufacturing, Construction, Franchise Accounting

(832) 620.4757 - Email: setlurn@gmail.com

BOOK-KEEPING INCOME TAX Personal and Business Tax Returns, Payroll

Sales Tax, Income Tax Audits and Representations

S. Ram and Associates

Tel: 832-877-9625 Free Consultation asu2020.com

M.D. Associates LLP A full service CPA ﬁrm

3 Locations to serve you

LEGAL SERVICE ACCESS QUALITY LEGAL ADVICE

SMALL BUSINESS: • 1-50 EMP - $75/M • 51-99 EMP - $125/M FAMILY PLAN: • $17/M to $26/M

CONTACT: J. SINGH

INDEPENDENT SALES ASSOCIATE for LEGAL SHIELD

Call 713-894-8771 Email Singh.j@sbcglobal.net

Bakery 5700A Hillcroft Ave. Houston, TX 77036 EGGLESS cakes Available

Computer Repair & Networking Home & Business, Microsoft & A+ certified, low flat rates, free estimates, pickup & delivery.

www.PCNetworkGuru.com Call Amit at 832-971-6807

Prog: Location: 3905 Arc St. Houston, TX 77063 Contact: 281-606-JAIN; Email: ecjsh@jain-houston.org Website:www.jain-houston.org

Durga Bari Society Prog: Sandhya Arati at 6:30 p.m.; Sunday: 9:00 a.m.- 7:00 p.m. Location: 13944 Schiller Road. Contact: 281-597-8100 Website:www.houstondurgabari. org

Gayatri Pariwar of Houston Prog: Sundays Satsang, BalSanskar Shala, from 11am to 1pm. Location: 5645 Hillcroft, Suite # 307, Houston, TX 77036. Website: http://www.gayatripariwarhouston.org/ “

Sri Saumyakasi Sivalaya Prog: Location: Chinmaya Prabha, 10353 Synott Road, Sugar Land -TX 77498. Contact: 281.568.1690 Website: www.saumyakasi.org

Sri Guruvayurappan Temple Prog: Bhajans: Sat.7:00 -8:00 p.m.; Sundays 9:00 a.m.-1:00 a.m.Location: 1620 Ormandy Street, Houston, TX 77035 Contact: 713-729-8994

Become a Doctor

209-830-8266; 248-419-0284

EasyMedSchool@yahoo.com www.EasyMedSchool.com

Rooﬁng 522),1* VEEDONE CONSTRUCTION, LLC. - ROOFING Roofing, Siding, Gutters and Fence WIND & HAIL INSURANCE CLAIMS SPECIALIST

Govindaji Gaudiya Math Prog:Satsang every Sunday evening from 5 - 7 p.m. Vedic heritage classes for kids 5-14. Location: 16628 Kieth Harrow blvd. Houston, TX 77084 Contact: 281-499-3347/281491-4114.

Sathya Sai Baba Centers Prog: Sundays from 3:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at two locations Locations: Contact: (North) 832-418-3842 or (South) 281-788-4786. Website:www.saicenterofhouston.org

Telugu Christian Fellowship Prog; Every third Saturday 6:30 PM. Worship is in English Location: The Triumph Church, 10555 West Airport Boulevard, Stafford, TX 77477. Contact:713-301-6444 Website:

Brahma Kumaris Meditation Center Prog: Daily classes in Raja Yoga Meditation To register call or email. Contact:832-379-8888/ Email: houston@bktexas.com Website: bktexas.com

Bethesda Houston Tamil Church Prog: Sundays Worship Tamil 5:30 pm-7:00 pm. English 10:30am-12:30pm. Location: 810 Murphy/FM 1092 suite F&G, Stafford, Tx.77477. Contact: 281-317-7331 Website:bethesdahoustontamilc hurch.org

Our Redeemer Church Prog: Sundays worship at 4:30 pm, Location: All Saints Lutheran Church 1211 West Belfort Avenue, Stafford, TX 77477. Contact: 281-686-4135 / Email: pastorvj@linchouston. org

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Prog: Free Yoga Classes every Sat/Sun from 8 am to 9:30 am Location: Arya Samaj @Schiller Road. Contact: 281-579-9433. Websites: www.pyptusa.org

KHOA TRINH, Electrical Technician Tel: 832-359-5447 Free Estimate TECL# 27099

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Houston 713-774-6533 Spring 281-251-2205 Dallas 214-722-7545

Patanjali Yogpeeth Center

Prog: Annual Family Camp “Understanding Joy & Sorrow” on March 29 - 31, 2013 (Good Friday Weekend) Bellville, TX.

QUICK REFERENCE SERVICES DIRECTORY

Certiﬁed, Quickbooks Proadvisor

Location: 14102 Schiller Road, Houston TX 77082 Phone: 281.596.9642 Website: www.jvbhouston.org

14025 Southwest Fwy. Sugarland.TX 77478 281-242-4242 www.bombaybeijing.com Indian Restaurant

Taste the difference! Cater your next event with us!

Gourmet India - Restaurant & Catering

for home and ofﬁce parties, Dine in Business Lunches, conferences & parties, On-site dining, corporate lunch packages

Ph: 281-493-5435

India’s Restaurant & Catering

for special parties and corporate events. Preferred Wine list, Authentic vegetarian & non-vegetarian dishes, ﬁnest Indian cuisine with chef’s special dishes

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Shiva Indian Restaurant & Catering specializing in North Indian cuisine, Ofﬁce and Corporate catering.

• 2514 Times Blvd. Rice Village, Ph: 713-523-4753 • 2130 Lone Star Dr. Sugar Land, Ph: 281-494-2981

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Call us today! 713-774-5140

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VOICE OF ASIA 23

FRIDAY, July 19, 2013

Franchise Opportunity! Brow Art 23 Franchise Opportunities Available Now.

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Community News

Property for Sale INDIA - 1

DDA MIG ﬂat (Ground Floor) situated in Mayur vihar Phase 1, New Delhi; approximately 990 square feet. 3/4 bed rooms, 2 baths, drawing/dining and a kitchen. Patio/ garden. Service lane and park in the back. Listed at: $200,000 Contact: 832-647-9433

Property for Sale INDIA - 2

25 acres orchards situated in the village of Kamra & Kanaiya joba in the Bariguma Tahshil of district Koraput- Odissa. Access via motorable road and around 200 meters from the National highway of Vishakapatnam - Nowrampur.

• 900 matured fruit bearing “Alphonso” + 200 other variety of Mango trees. • 120 Cashew trees • 50 goose berry trees • 50 sandal wood trees • 350 teak wood trees Average annual production of mango 10 to 15 tons. List price: Rs.1.5 crores

Contact: 832-647-9433

Broadcast Technology/Engineering Intern KTRK-TV, the ABC Owned station located in Houston, TX is accepting applications for a paid BROADCAST TECHNOLOGY/ENGINEERING INTERNSHIP for the fall semester. Internships are available to currently enrolled college students in their junior or senior year pursuing careers in the television/media field and must receive college credit for the internship. The internship program is designed to provide students with an on-site educational experience that complements their academic studies. Interns will have an opportunity to observe and participate in the daily work and operations of a major market, television station. As an intern you will gain firsthand experience in a broadcast technical environment. You will gain experience in networking and computer hardware/software troubleshooting and support as well as learning how to maintain broadcast systems such as automation, news editing systems and live news vans. Applicants must be currently enrolled in college and supply written verification of eligibility to receive academic credit for the internship at the start of the internship. Additionally, applicants must be able to work at least one day per week and the hours may vary depending on scheduling and may include some weekend and early morning and evening hours. All interested applicants must apply online at www.disneycareers. com, Job Req #118525BR. Please upload a cover letter, your resume outlining other internships, degrees earned, work experience, related clubs and organizations, current major course of study, expected graduation date and extracurricular activities. No phone calls please. Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/V/D.

Community Affairs Intern KTRK-TV, the ABC Owned station located in Houston, TX is accepting applications for a paid COMMUNITY AFFAIRS INTERNSHIP for the fall semester. Internships are available to currently enrolled college students in their junior or senior year pursuing careers in the television/media field and must receive college credit for the internship. The internship program is designed to provide students with an onsite educational experience that complements their academic studies. Interns will have an opportunity to observe and participate in the daily work and operations of a major market, television station. As an intern you will attend help in the production of community affairs shows, including scheduling of guests, help gathering and editing video, assist with community drives, forums and outreach. Each area requires significant planning, scheduling and execution. Applicants must be currently enrolled in college and supply written verification of eligibility to receive academic credit for the internship at the start of the internship. Additionally, applicants must be able to work at least one day per week and the hours may vary depending on scheduling and may include some weekend and early morning and evening hours. All interested applicants must apply online at www.disneycareers.com, Job Req #118526BR. Please upload a cover letter, your resume outlining other internships, degrees earned, work experience, related clubs and organizations, current major course of study, expected graduation date and extra curricular activities. No phone calls please. Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/V/D.

Visit us on

Manager Job Available Full time employee, manager position wanted. 66 hours a week for liquor store. Responsible individual preferred. Sunday store closed. References, Resume needed. Liquor store located in Spring, TX.

Call Ph: 281-844-7835. Part Time Positions Available

voiceofasiatvnews.com

Looking for IMMEDIATE PLACEMENT for Fast growing Home based business Seeking part time positions. Preferably stay at home moms for small product packing and computer data entry, ﬂexible hours PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE NOT NECESSARY Sugar land Area. Please call 713-584-0129

House for Sale!

Digital Content Intern KTRK-TV, the ABC Owned station located in Houston, TX is accepting applications for a paid DIGITAL CONTENT INTERNSHIP for the fall semester. Internships are available to currently enrolled college students in their junior or senior year pursuing careers in the television/media ﬁeld and must receive college credit for the internship. The internship program is designed to provide students with an on-site educational experience that complements their academic studies. Interns will have an opportunity to observe and participate in the daily work and operations of a major market, television station. As an intern, you will turn content generated from multiple sources into comprehensive stories formatted for digital display in a fast-paced environment. The intern will interact with newsroom personnel to get text, video and images onto multiple digital platforms. Intern will make have hand in keeping station’s various social media platforms active. Applicants must be currently enrolled in college and supply written veriﬁcation of eligibility to receive academic credit for the internship at the start of the internship. Additionally, applicants must be able to work at least one day per week and the hours may vary depending on scheduling and will include some weekend and early morning and evening hours. All interested applicants must apply online at www.disneycareers. com, Job Req 118524BR. Please upload a cover letter, your resume outlining other internships, degrees earned, work experience, related clubs and organizations, current major course of study, expected graduation date and extracurricular activities. No phone calls please. Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/V/D.

News Intern KTRK-TV, the ABC Owned station located in Houston, TX is accepting applications for a paid NEWS INTERNSHIP for the fall semester. Internships are available to currently enrolled college students in their junior or senior year pursuing careers in the television/media field and must receive college credit for the internship. The internship program is designed to provide students with an on-site educational experience that complements their academic studies. Interns will have an opportunity to observe and participate in the daily work and operations of a major market, television station. As an intern you will attend production meetings, assist the assignment desk, research news topics, view and log tapes, transcribe interviews and edit video along with other duties. Interns also will also have an opportunity to, on occasion, travel with reporters and field crews for stories and live remotes. Applicants must be currently enrolled in college and supply written verification of eligibility to receive academic credit for the internship at the start of the internship. Additionally, applicants must be able to work at least one day per week and the hours may vary depending on scheduling and will include some weekend and early morning and evening hours. All interested applicants must apply online at www.disneycareers.com, Job Reqs 118520BR, 118521BR, 118522BR, 118523BR. Please upload a cover letter, your resume outlining other internships, degrees earned, work experience, related clubs and organizations, current major course of study, expected graduation date and extra curricular activities. No phone calls please. Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/V/D.

The value of money is taught early! Earn Smart! Spend Wisely! A community message from Voice of Asia Group

• Immaculately Kept • Conveniently Located 2 story home, 2400 plus sq.ft, Alief ISD, 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2 car garage, great backyard, First ﬂoor - Tiles and Laminate, Second ﬂoor newly carpeted,

Roof in Good Condition, No known Defects, 1983 Built. • Great backyard • MASTER BED Downstairs!!! Master Bath has Stand-in Shower and Large Tub.

Great Restaurants, close to West Oaks Mall Shopping centers, 2 minutes to Fiesta & H-E-B

1 minute to Highway 6 • 7 minutes to Westheimer.

3 minutes to Westpark Tollway. Easy Access!

Good schools, home close to IMAM Academy (IMAM - up to High School grades available) Alief ISD - Good Elementary, Middle & High schools.

Quiet neighborhood and Clean subdivision! Many fast food locations nearby!

Serious, Pre-approved Buyers, Please contact: 832-419-7537 • $137,500/-

VOICE OF ASIA 24

FRIDAY, July 19, 2013