Seesaw Christian
Children are not stable enough to fix their mind in one particular activity for a long time. They are used to deviate from one type of activity to another activity. The unstable character in children is depicted in a recent days children’s movie. I recently saw a movie called ‘Sherk II’ along with my children. The hero of the movie character started and ended as an Ogre. In the intermediate period, Ogre changed into a Prince to please his father-in-law -a king to get his blessings. After overcoming the wicked god mother and villain, he turned again to an Ogre to please his wife who liked him to be Ogre and not a prince.
The life of believers resembles the Ogre. They change according to the need of the situation or people. Their life is like an object floating on the sea shore. It moves and comes to the same location. Otherwise, they can be called seesaw Christian. King David sinned against God. After that his spiritual life was tossed here and there. So he penned down Psalm 51. He pleads God using three important words ‘Create’ ‘Renew’ and ‘grant’
a. Pure Heart (51:10): Man can create robots, computers etc. by using God given brains. He can also mix-up DNA and other characteristics to bring out another Photostat copy of the man by cloning. But he can’t transplant a pure heart. This can be done only by the creator. God promised to remove stone heart to give a heart of flesh. Ezek 36:26. This heart will receive the word of God gladly and provide the fruit of thirty, sixty and ninety. Let us ask God to create a pure heart in our lives. b. Steadfast Spirit (51:10): “Slow and steady wins the race” – Old statement but it is true in a Christian life. Christian’s life should be a consistent life till to the end of our life. Consistency is not in one phase of life but it should be in wholesome development. Globalization brings consistency in the quality of the product through out the world. This makes us buy the same product anywhere in the world. . Let us ask God to give us a steadfast spirit to live a consistent life in whatever situation.
c. Willing Spirit (51:12): The consistency of a Christian’s life depends upon the Spiritual nourishment. This gives sustainability and growth in our spiritual life. Let us ask God to grant a willing Spirit to know more about Him by reading the word of God, praying to God and having fellowship with fellow believers. Let us ask God to create a pure heart to make room for a steadfast and a willing Spirit to dwell in our pure heart. So that, we can live a steady life till the end.
J. Peter Daniel M.E.,
76,Living Spring Avenue
, Sanjeevipuram, Bagayam,
Vellore 632 – 002, Phone. 0416 2282741, 9443800395.email: peterpearline@yahoo.co.in http://glocalyouthvision.wordpress.com
*************** Global News854 million underfed people in the world[ 1 Nov, 2006 0025hrs IST
REUTERS ]
ROME: Ten years after political leaders pledged to halve the number of underfed people in the world, no progress has been made and the number of hungry people is rising again, a United Nations report said on Monday.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which hosted a 1996 World Food Summit where nations set the target, said there were still 854 million underfed people, and that one in three people in sub-Saharan
Africa lived in chronic hunger.
“I am deeply sorry to report that the situation remains intolerable and unacceptable, and more so because 10 years have passed,” FAO DG Jacques Diouf told a news conference where he presented the report.
At the summit, world leaders pledged to halve the number of underfed people between 1990 and 2015. At the halfway point, the latest figures showed a mere 3 million reduction, not enough to be statistically relevant, FAO said.
Diouf said if the rate of decline seen since 1990 continued, the food summit target would not be achieved before 2150. And the most recent trend pointed to a rise in the number of hungry, he said. At 23, this girl has a Rs 36-lakh job K R SREENIVAS[ 23 Oct, 2006 2337hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
BANGALORE: Here’s another reason for Bangaloreans to cheer. Shruti Chandrashekar, born and brought up in IT City, has landed a Rs 36-lakh-per-annum job with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank, as an investment analyst.
An achievement that she doesn’t consider one. Shruti, 23, who studied at Sophia High School, Bangalore, got admission to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Harvard, Wharton, Princeton and Caltech University in 2001.
She chose MIT, where she graduated in electrical engineering and management sciences. She received the distinguished scholarship of $40,000 per year for four consecutive years during 2001-05.
Shruti, daughter of P Chandrashekar and Kasturi of R T Nagar, Followed this up with academic pursuits at Harvard Business School,
MIT Sloan School and Cambridge. She was given the AT&T Leadership Award for showing higher promise. Before going to the
US, Shruti received the National Talent Search Contest national merit scholar award in 1999-2000.
She was given the Bell Labs scholarship; awarded to the five brightest high school students in southern India, in 2000; and the National Science Fellowship during 1999-2001. Beginning with a high school students’ programme at IT bellwether Infosys in Bangalore, Shruti did her internship at SurfProtect, Boston, Barclays Capital and Mercer Oliver Wyman before landing the plum job at IFC in Washington DC.
Shruti has been chosen for the Book Paradise-Chambers Academy Young Achiever award 2006. The award will be presented by governor T N Chaturvedi on Wednesday. “I am pleased to get the award and also surprised, but happy,” Shruti told The Times of India .
The search committee that chose Shruti for the award consists of top educationists, journalists and industrialists. This is the first time the Young Achiever award is being given. Another young Bangalorean has arrived. Shruti Chandrashekar will be an investment analyst with the International Finance Corporation.
She studied at Sophia High School, Bangalore, got admission to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Harvard, Wharton, Princeton and Caltech University in 2001 Before going to the
US, Shruti received the National Talent Search Contest national merit scholar award in 1999-2000
Girls take to prostitution to pay fees
[ 8 Oct, 2006 1035hrs IST PTI ]
LONDON: An increasing number of female students in the UK are resorting to prostitution or other jobs in the sex industry to pay rising university tuition fees, a study claimed on Sunday. Research by Kingston University in southwest
London suggested that there has been a 50 per cent rise in numbers over the past six years in such cases.
In a survey that asked 130 students whether they knew any friends involved in the sex industry, one in ten said that they knew of students who had stripped, lapdanced or worked at massage parlours and escort agencies to support themselves. Just over 6 per cent said that they knew students who worked as prostitutes, The Sunday Times said, quoting the survey.
The academics found that alcohol and mental problems led some women into stripping and lap-dancing. But those resorting to prostitution were simply working to earn money, it said.
University tuition fees, first introduced in 1998 at 1,000 pounds (over Rs 85,000) a year, have risen to 3,000 pounds this year at all but a few universities. The average student loan at graduation last year was 8,948 pounds, but Nat West Bank said that once private debt was factored in, students now in their first year could expect to graduate with liabilities of more than 14,700 pounds.
Dr Ron Roberts, a health psychologist who was the lead author of the study, said: “Our figures represent a 50 per cent increase in the prevalence rates for student prostitution since 2000… given the increasing financial problems experienced by students, this is in line with what we would predict.”
One in three Americans is black or AsianPosted online: Sunday, October 01, 2006 at 1316 hours ISTWashington, October 1: One third of the US population, which is set to hit the 300-million mark in October, is made up of minorities — either Hispanic, black, Asian or, less often, indigenous Native Americans. Minorities account for 33 per cent (98 million) of the population, according to US Census Bureau figures from 2005, when the US population stood at 296.4 million people. Immigrants for their part represent 12.4 per cent of the population, or 35.7 million people, compared to 2000 when they made up 11.2 per cent of the population. Minorities are set to increase in number in coming years thanks to immigration but also to the higher birth-rate among these populations who are generally younger than white non-Hispanics. Already, nearly half of American children under the age of five are from a minority group. Hispanics in the
United States have outgrown the number of blacks in the country in recent years and account for 14 per cent (42.7 million) of the population. The average age among the Hispanic population is 27 as opposed to 36 for the average American. One third of Hispanics are under the age of 18. And they are the fastest growing segment of the population — 3.3 per cent between 2004-2005, or 1.3 million more, in large part due to births (800,000) followed by immigration (500,000). At this rate, Hispanics are expected to represent 25 per cent of the US population, or 102.6 million people, by 2050, according to the Census Bureau. Woman conned of Rs 1 lakh [ 1 Nov, 2006 0211hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
MUMBAI: If you have withdrawn a lot of cash from the bank and then driving back to work, don’t stop or step out to speak to a stranger. Vile Parle resident Roshan Sane learnt this the hard way on Tuesday afternoon, as she was conned of Rs 1 lakh by four youth at Parle’s posh Hanuman Road .
After an hour spent at Punjab National Bank, Sane started off for work along with her nine-year-old daughter Paulami. But then she parked a little away from the bank and sent her daughter to the nearby grocery store. Just then, a youngster knocked on the car window and told Sane her chunni was stuck in the car door. She opened the door, only to find that wasn’t true. Before she had time to shut the door, a second youth knocked on the back window to inform her she had dropped some cash on the road.
“I wasn’t sure what he was saying, but I thought I would check it out nevertheless,” said Sane. She got out of the car clutching her purse, which contained the Rs 1 lakh she had withdrawn from the bank, as well as a bag full of documents. “I bent down to see a few Rs 10 notes scattered on the road. While the boy who had told me of the money moved on, another youngster came by, and pointed to some more Rs 10 notes lying ahead.” When Sane realised the notes did not belong to her, she turned to get into her car. She doesn’t quite remember how it happened, but she suddenly realised that she was without her purse and bag. She also remembers seeing another youth riding a bicycle, who came up from behind and collected the notes that were lying on the road.
“I panicked and shouted for help,” said a distraught Sane. By that time, she had lost sight of the youngsters. “While I was shouting, I remember seeing the boy who had told me my chunni was stuck standing at the bus-stop looking at me. By the time I pointed to him and shouted for help, he too disappeared,” she added.
In addition to the cash, she also lost three SBI credit cards, one credit card each from ICICI, American Express, HDFC and HSBC, in addition to her company seal, fixed deposit receipts, cheque books with signed cheques from Cosmos Bank as well as Punjab National Bank and some office agreements. “I don’t even know what else I lost,” she said. Sane distinctly recollects that there were four youths involved in the crime. They had crew cut hair and wore dark, checked shirts,” she added. An FIR has been filed at the Vile Parle police station.
Mukesh Chheda, store-keeper at Ruchi Stores, the shop outside which Sane’s car was parked, says he was serving customers when the incident occurred, and only came to know of the robbery when he saw Sane crying out for help. Yogesh Shetty, a panwalla on the same road, said he saw Sane bend down to look at some cash. “She then signalled frantically towards me and I rushed to the spot to see what had happened. There was a large crowd,” he added. Chheda told TOI that robberies were frequent in the area. Sane is the director of Control Automation Projects Pvt Limited, an engineering firm based in Andheri, while her husband Sanjay is the MD of the firm. While Sane drops by at the bank every day, she took longer on Tuesday as some of her staffers were to go to a site visit, for which she needed the cash.
India’s rich list: Ambanis push Premji to 3rd slotWednesday, 01 November , 2006, 20:06 Mumbai: The Indian stock market appears in love with the two Ambani brothers — Mukesh and Anil — evident from their personal wealth and that of their respective groups soaring in terms of market cap, but the younger scion is still lagging. RIL’s market value soared past Rs 1,76,000 crore on Wednesday, after the company’s share price hit a life-time high of Rs 1,268 per share, while taking Mukesh Ambani’s net worth to over Rs 74,000 crore based on his holding in three group firms — RIL, RPL and Reliance Industrial Infrastructure Ltd (RIIL). Based on their net worth derived from stockholdings in their respective group companies, Mukesh and Anil Ambani have become the country’s two richest individuals, while pushing IT czar Azim Premji to the third slot, based on data available with the stock exchanges. While Mukesh Ambani has further cemented his leadership position with a sharp jump in the market value of his group’s flagship company Reliance Industries (RIL), a scheme of reorganisation in the telecom venture has unlocked significant additional value for Anil Ambani group. Meanwhile, Anil Ambani’s net worth, based on stockholding in four group companies – Reliance Communications, Reliance Capital, Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL) and Reliance Energy (REL) – and a small stake in RIL has increased to just over Rs 65,000 crore. The sharp increase in the younger Ambani’s net worth follows a surge in Reliance Communications’ market value to nearly Rs 80,000 crore, from Rs 42,000 crore a month ago. PMC prescribes privatisation for civic hospitalsAbhijit Atre[ 1 Nov, 2006 0325hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]PUNE: Pull down old municipal hospitals, construct new ones using taxpayers money and then hand them over to private medical trusts — privatisation has finally made inroads in civic hospitals.
While three major municipal hospital plots are waiting to be handed over to private medical trusts, elected members have begun the process of privatising three newlyconstructed municipal hospitals.
Ironically, while the administration is allotting civic hospital lands and buildings to private trusts, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has demanded that the state government give the 25-acre plot in Yerwada to it for setting up a civic hospital on the lines of the Sassoon hospital.
The civic standing committee approved on Thursday the controversial proposal of handing over the newlyconstructed Dalvi municipal hospital, Shivajinagar, which is one of the oldest municipal hospitals in the city, to M/s Phadnis Clinic Pvt. Ltd. As with most other land deals, the committee’s decision was kept a secret and was not even mentioned in the official statement released to the press.
The civic health department, which was running the 70-bed hospital for the last five decades, has justified the move by saying that the Phadnis Clinic had assured to provide treatment at the prevailing ‘municipal hospital charges’.
Shortage of brides? Buy tribals, say the PatelsPress Trust of IndiaPosted online: Thursday, November 02, 2006 at 1134 hours ISTAhmedabad, November 2: The Patel community in
Gujarat, known for their entrepreneurial skill and its hold over agriculture and business, is facing an unusual sociological crisis — a skewed male-female ratio and having to “buy” tribal brides for their boys.
“Skewed male female ratio in the Patel community — specially among the Kadva Patels has created a severe sociological problem. There are not enough Patel girls to marry the Patel boys. As a result, they are forced to buy girls from tribal areas of Gujarat to get their boys married ” said Prof Gaurang Jani, a noted sociologist of Gujarat University. Among the Patels, there are two sub-castes — the Leva Patels and the Kadva Patels. Though both of these sections of Patels are enterprising and have made a name for themselves around the world as entrepreneurs and businessmen, the Leva Patels occupy a higher place in the caste hierarchy. The Leva Patels are also better off economically than the Kadva Patels because the former possess the most fertile lands of Charottar region of Gujarat in Anand and Kheda districts while the latter possess lands in Saurashtra and North Gujarat, which are less fertile and drought-prone. As a result of declining female ratio, the Patels are going to tribal areas of Vadodara, Bharuch, Panchmahals and other district of Gujarat to “buy” tribal girls by paying around Rs 50,000 to Rs One lakh. There are two main reasons why the Patels opt to get their sons marry tribal girls: Firstly, it is the absence of caste structure among the tribals and secondly it is the affinity of the tribals towards agriculture. Moreover a non-tribal cannot buy agricultural land from the tribals–so it also makes better economic sense for the Patels whose root is agriculture, according to Jani. The skewed male female ratio has also given rise to the concept of “Sata Lagna”. A boy from a Patel community, who has a marriageable sister, is more eligible than a boy who does not have one. The idea is an exchange of marriageable girls from one Patel family into another. Sata Lagna is the system of “I will marry your sister if you marry mine”. Normally, a person from Leva Patel community does not marry a person from Kadva Patel. However, this rule is now becoming flexible owing to shortage of girls. One of the main reasons for the aversion towards the female child in the Patel community is the prevalence of dowry system.
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