Archive for January 9th, 2008

Eastern Europe’s first gurdwara in Poland

Posted in Religion on 01/09/2008 05:37 pm by Colrama

Eastern Europe’s first gurdwara in Poland
Warsaw:
     A gurdwara, said to be the first in Eastern Europe, will come up in this Polish capital as the authorities here have finally given their green signal.
     The proposed gurdwara has been registered as a religious institution. Respecting the religious identity of the Sikh community here, the authorities have also allowed them to wear turbans and keep a kirpan.
     “This is a glorious day for the Indian community in Poland,” Singh Sabha chief administrative officer J.J. Singh said.
“Unlike France, where the Sikh community is facing many difficulties in maintaining its identity, the Polish authorities have given us what we had asked for. The rights of a minority community are being respected, which is most gratifying,” Singh told IANS.
     “Now our job is to collect funds not only in Poland but from other European countries to construct a beautiful gurdwara. Incidentally, it will be the first gurdwara in Eastern Europe,” he added.
     For the past three years, the Singh Sabha community organisation has been using a rented house in the Warsaw suburb of Rashyn to perform religious ceremonies. It has been bringing religious teachers and singers from the Amritsar-headquartered Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), a mini parliament of the community in India, for religious activities.
      In Poland, apart from a small number of Sikhs, there are 1,200 Sindhis who too have faith in the teachings of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, and the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy text.
     Janusz Krzyzowski, president of the India-Polish Cultural Committee, said: “This was a long cherished demand which has been accepted very gracefully by a largely Catholic country.
      In the era of globalisation people everywhere should have the right to practise their religion.”
 

NRI: Richmond: FBI to Probe Case

Posted in Miscellaneous on 01/09/2008 05:18 pm by Colrama
New York:
     Police have sought the help of FBI’s hate crime investigators to probe the December killing of two Sikh brothers who ran a restaurant in California.
     Ra
vinder Kalsi, 30, and his brother, Paramjit, 42, were shot down just when they were closing their Sahib Indian Restaurant in Richmond, San Francisco, on the evening of Dec 27.
      The FBI has been asked to look into the hate crime angle because the restaurant was not robbed and police are still groping for a motive.
      “The surveillance camera footage of the suspects has generated a lot of calls and tips,” detective Mitch Peixoto said. “But so far, nothing has panned out.”
     Richmond police has offered a reward of $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killers. An anonymous benefactor has offered an additional $10,000.
   
     The Kalsi brothers were from Patiala in Punjab and had worked their way up, acquiring the restaurant in 2002.
Source: IANS
 

900,000, Birds Visit Chilika Lake

Posted in Environment on 01/09/2008 05:10 pm by Colrama

900,000, Birds Visit Chilika Lake

Bhubaneswar: You could call it a bird lover’s paradise. Nearly 900,000 migratory birds of 158 different species have been sighted this winter in Orissa’s Chilika Lake in this eastern Indian coastal state.

“Of the 900,000 birds, 450,000 birds were sighted in Nalabana, an island in the lake,” Abhimanyu Behera, divisional forest officer of Chilika Lake, told IANS.

“In 2007 nearly 840,000 birds visited the lake, of which 198,000 were spotted in Nalabana,” he said.

On Jan 5, a bird census for 2008 involving 85 wildlife officials was conducted in the 1,000 sq km lake, which is said to be Asia’s largest salt water lake. The Chilika, nearly 100 km from here, is spread over Puri, Khordha and Ganjam districts of Orissa.  “We removed the weeds from the sanctuary and that might be the reason why the lagoon has attracted more birds this year,” he said.

Chilika offers the largest congregations of migratory birds in the country. It was declared one of the six wetlands of international importance at the Ramsar Convention on Migratory Species of Arctic and Central Asian Waterfowl.

Besides Chilika, migratory birds also flock to three other spots in the state – the Hirakud dam in Sambalpur district, the Nandankanan biological park and the Bhitarkanika national park in Kendrapada district.

“The migratory birds, mostly from Siberia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and from the Himalayas arrived here early this winter,” Behera said.

 

Man’s best friend: Dog saves boy from fire

Posted in Miscellaneous on 01/09/2008 04:58 pm by Colrama

Man’s best friend: Dog saves boy from fire by biting foot

     Portage, Indiana: A black Labrador that bit a 13-year-old boy’s foot repeatedly, waking him up, is being credited with saving the boy and two of his friends from a house fire. Christopher Peebles said he woke up on Friday morning to feel his dog Laney biting his foot repeatedly in the basement of his family’s home, where he and two friends spent the night.

        “I thought she had to go to the bathroom, but she never bites me,” Peebles said. He and his friends walked upstairs and noticed smoke everywhere in the home. “We came up the stairs and thought it was a dream, but it was cold when we opened the door — then we knew it wasn’t a dream,” Pebbles said.

        Firefighters arrived about 10 am and found the home’s garage on fire. Assistant fire chief Mike Bucy said the damage was mostly in the attached one-car garage of the ranch home. Fire chief Bill Lundy said the fire, which caused an estimated $25,000 in damage to the home, appeared to have started in an electrical heating unit in the garage.

   Peebles’ parents, Dave and Vicky Peebles, were both at work at the time of the fire. They said they were relieved that their son and his friends were not injured. Dave Peebles said that one point after Laney had ushered Christopher and his friends out of the house the dog ran back inside and wouldn’t come out until he went in to get her. AP