A teenaged deaf and dumb patient whose family complained that their daughter had been raped at the Bankura Sammilani Medical College Hospital was today taken to Kolkata by police and Health department doctors for forensic tests, police said.  read more »

By Kancha Ilaiah http://www.asianage.com/print/129807

Whether the concept “spiritual democracy” is tenable and has the potential to reform the spiritual systems that are locked up in caste cultures is being debated in certain intellectual circles in India of late. In my view this debate has global implications as well.  read more »

Kanyakumari, Tami Nadu: In an order dated 6 January 2012, the District Collector, Kanyakumari district, has prohibited an Assemblies of God church from conducting services or conventions in their own premises between 13 to 15 of January every year. The Assemblies of God church is located in Attoor, Pallikulivilai, Kalkulam Taluk, Kanyakumari District and has been functioning for the last 46 years. Since 2002 a man named R. Selvaraj has sought to disrupt church services by holding a Kaavu pooja 60 feet from the church using loudspeakers. The District Collector’s unconstitutional and illegal order was passed in order to accommodate this pooja.  read more »

New York, Feb 27, 2012 (PTI)
A US court has convicted three members of an Indian family here on charges of sexually abusing their daughter-in-law who came to America after an arranged marriage and was threatened to work as a slave.  read more »

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/world/africa/jos-nigeria-bomb-kills-3....
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: February 26, 2012
JOS, Nigeria (AP) — A suicide car bomber killed three people and wounded 38 near a church on Sunday in this central Nigerian city where hundreds have been killed in religious and ethnic violence.

The radical Islamist sect Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attack on the main headquarters of the Church of Christ in Nigeria that hit as worshipers took part in an early morning service. The attack followed other assaults the sect has claimed against Christians in Nigeria’s north, widening distrust between members of the two main faiths in Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people.  read more »

Mangalore, Feb 27, 2012,

Bishop of Bellary and Sandesha Foundation Chairman Rev Dr Henry D’Souza said that on one hand, there are great achievers like the 10 who received Sandesha Awards and institutions recognising their services.Unfortunately, on the other hand, we as society are posed with a question as to ‘where are we going and what are we becoming?’  read more »