Jesus ‘bleeds’ in Mumbai church

Christians, Hindus and Muslims from across Maharashtra continue to descend on St Michael's Church in Mahim to witness — what they believe — is a miracle.

The dark red patch around the heart on a painting of Jesus Christ has grown since it was discovered on Friday afternoon, and so has the queue around Mahim's packed streets. Hundreds of people visited the church by Saturday night.

Almost euphoric, people queued for up to six hours to spend just two seconds in front of the painting. They were allowed to touch and kiss the protective glass before being moved along. Many broke down after seeing the 'miracle', some wept and several fainted.

However, the Catholic Church in India denied this miracle. “The Church is cautious about declaring something a miracle," said Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Mumbai. “God can work miracles, but it is too early to say that this is a miracle. It’s probably due to climate conditions from the monsoon. People should not get euphoric about this, but if it brings them closer to God, it is a good thing. I’ll visit the church soon to see it for myself.”

Clearly flustered by the unprecedented attention and a sleepless night, Parish Priest Father Raphael, stated that this was no miracle. “People can interpret it as they want to, but the picture is not bleeding and this is no miracle,” he said. Despite early chaos — when a stampede entered the church after the mark was first discovered — volunteers and police controlled the crowd and 500 metres long queue was formed. Ambulance crews were also on hand.

News of the ‘miracle’ spread fast and believers from Goa, Karnataka and Gujarat have made the pilgrimage to see the 3 by 4 foot painting. Several local schools gave children the day off to visit the church.

“It is a sign from God that Jesus has returned in this time of violence, sin and evil to give the message that he is dying for us again,” said David Serrao, a pastor at St Michael’s. “The blood started as a small red drop and was discovered by children playing in the church. It has now spread as Christ’s heart bleeds.” It is not just Christians that are flocking to Mahim. Large numbers of Hindus and Muslims are also coming to witness the image.

Maryam Shah travelled with her husband and three children from Malad. “I cried when I saw the blood,” she said. “We are Muslims but that does not matter when something like this happens. People of all faiths should appreciate the message.”

How even fallen trees help curb global warming

A 14,000-year-old oak tree has provided evidence that submerged trees store carbon far longer than trees that fall in forests.

Researchers came across the tree in Missouri in the US, possibly the oldest discovered in the world, when they were studying the ability of trees to store carbon.

While a tree is alive, it has a great ability to store carbon, thus keeping it out of the atmosphere. When it begins to decay, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere.

Discovering that certain conditions slow this process reveals the importance of proper tree disposal as well as the benefits of riparian forests, or forests through which water flows.

“If a tree falls in a forest, that number is reduced to an average of 20 years. In firewood, carbon is only stored for a year,” said Richard Guyette of Missouri University who led the study. “Carbon plays a huge role in climate change, and information about where it goes will be very important someday soon,” said Michael C Stambaugh, a co-author of the study. Findings of the study have been published in the latest issue of the journal Ecosystems.

Girl in hospital after TV reality show

The hospitalisation of a teenage girl, who had fallen ill after participating in a dance show on television, has sparked a fierce debate about reality shows and their impact on a young impressionable mind.

The 16-year-old Shinjini Sengupta is now at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, (NIMHANS) Bangalore, where she was shifted from a city private hospital after she seemingly lost her ability to speak or move her limbs freely.

According to family sources, she developed these symptoms once she got eliminated after dancing her way to the hearts of the three judges in two earlier rounds. The comments made by the judges, which included celebrities, were being linked as possible triggers along with rising parental aspirations, which were always pushing the single-child to become achievers in every field.

While doctors attending on her here made an early diagnosis of an infection in her nervous system, she was shifted to NIMHANS for more detailed tests . The doe-eyed high-school girl participated in two rounds of the dance show on a TV channel and started showing first signs of depression in a tele-serial where she had won an audition.

Gear up for polls, Sonia tells party

Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Saturday asked party office-bearers to prepare for elections. She set a deadline of August 31 for them to come up with specific programmes, strategies and a proposed list of candidates.

At a meeting with party leaders here, Ms. Gandhi took feedback from general secretaries in charge of the poll-going States on their preparedness for elections and asked them to involve State, district and block-level functionaries in setting in place organisation structures. She wanted simultaneous preparation for Lok Sabha elections as part of an aggressive strategy to re-energise the party in the run-up to the polls.

In answer to a question, chairman of the AICC media committee M. Veerappa Moily who attended the meeting said, “Yes, there was a sense of urgency to the meeting.”

The States scheduled to go to the polls in November-December include Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Mizoram and the National Capital Region of Delhi.

Ms. Gandhi told the meeting that she had received the A.K. Antony panel’s report on revitalising the party and sought the views of the leaders on it.

Passports under Tatkal service to be ready in a day

The project, launched in December last year and to be completed within 19 months, will also ensure that an applicant gets his passport within three days of application if police verification is not required.

Highlighting these aspects of the new passport issuance system in Amritsar, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Saturday the steps are being taken to make the system applicant-friendly while balancing the needs of security.

Mukerjee said verification will be expedited through electronic linkage of the Passport Facilitation Centres with the police authorities in state capitals.

The minister, who inaugurated a Passport Centre, also said that e-passports with biometric information will be issued to the general public beginning September next year.

He said ''about 50 lakh passports were issued last year all over India by the Central Passport Organisation, compared to 22 lakh seven years ago. The total demand for passports is expected to grow to over 80 lakhs in 2010.

India hits the spend button

With rising incomes, working Indians are spending more on housing, education, healthcare, transport and communication than they did previously.

While the average monthly income has risen from Rs 810, in 1982, to Rs 1,486, in 1999-2000, the average family expenditure, at constant prices, has increased to Rs 1,138 in 1999-2000, against Rs 778 a decade ago.

Constant prices are based on prices and conditions of 1981-82 and are used to analyse real growth or change in living conditions.

According to a survey by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, as much as 41 per cent of working class families live in independent houses. The expenditure on housing has risen to 16.01 per cent as against 9.84 per cent, at constant prices, in 1981-82.

“A lot of credit for growth in working class housing goes to the Centre’s tax incentives given over the last seven to eight years,” said Renu Sud Karnad, joint managing director, HDFC.

The survey also found that between 1982 and 1999-2000, the average size of a family has decreased (from 4.5 to 4.46), while the number of earning dependants has increased (0.18 to 0.32) and non-earning dependants has decreased (3.1 to 3).

Food continued to remain the biggest expense for families but now consumes a lesser amount of the total expenditure. From 56.95 per cent in the last decade, it now forms 47.48 per cent of total expenses.

Medical expenses have increased from 2.54 per cent to 4.54 per cent, while education costs have risen from 3.15 per cent to 6.19 per cent. Medical expenses have risen from 2.54 per cent to 4.54 per cent and education from 3.15 per cent to 6.19 per cent.

Clothing expenses have seen a sharp drop — from 10.03 per cent to 4.99 per cent — with more demand for readymade garments. The percentage of families with debts has dropped from 50.17 per cent in 1982 to 38.11 per cent.

Obama talks tough on outsourcing

Taking a tough stand against outsourcing, the presumptive Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama said that the choice is between giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas or give benefit to those corporations that keep jobs domestically.

“We can keep giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, or we can give tax benefits to companies that invest right here in New Hampshire,” Senator Obama said at a joint appearance with Senator Hillary Clinton in Unity, New Hampshire.

“We can have a tax code that rewards wealth and hands out billions of dollars more to big corporations and multimillionaires. Or we can provide a $1,000 tax cut to 95 per cent of families in America, start rewarding work and not just wealth, and eliminate income taxes for seniors making $50,000 a year or less,” Obama said, adding that's an agenda for change that we can believe in. That's the choice that we can make in this election.

“We can allow millions of Americans to work full-time but still not make enough to support their families, or we can raise the minimum wage, index it to inflation, and ensure that hard work pays off in America,” the Illinois Senator said.

“I don't care black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, young, old, rich, poor. It doesn't matter. There's this sense of what this country is fundamentally about, a fundamental goodness, and that if we tap into that, I am absolutely convinced that we can lift this country up to new and greater heights.

“This is one of those moments in our history when we have to tap the decency of the American people. This is our chance to turn the page on the policies of the last seven and a half years. This is our chance to bring a new energy policy to America and new ideas to America,”Obama said at a historic moment during the campaign trail.

“So here's the choice in this election. If you like the direction America is going, then vote for Senator McCain, because you'll definitely get more of the same. But if you think we need a new course, a new agenda, then vote for Barack Obama and you will get the change that you and we need and deserve,” Senator Clinton said in her opening comments

Law panel backs mercy killing for terminally ill

Taking the first step towards legalizing euthanasia or mercy killing, the Law Commission has decided to recommend to the government to allow terminally ill to end their lives to relieve them of long suffering.

Euthanasia, literally meaning 'good death’ in ancient Greek but popularly referred to as mercy killing, had been a taboo word in India though it is allowed in some western countries under the assistance of physicians. It allows those whose death is virtually certain to avoid their painful journey to the end.

The core of the recommendation to make euthanasia legal stems from several SC judgments which ruled that 'life does not mean animal existence’. "If a person is unable to take normal care of his body or has lost all the senses and if his real desire is to quit the world, he cannot be compelled to continue with torture and painful life. In such cases, it will indeed be cruel not to permit him to die," says the report, receiving final touches from Commission chairman Justice A R Lakshmanan.

"Hence, a terminally ill man or man in a persistent vegetative state can be permitted to terminate it by premature extinction of life," says the report which is likely to be submitted to the government in the next couple of weeks.

Explaining the step towards legalizing euthanasia in India, Commission sources say the majority of its members feel that permission to prematurely end an extremely painful life would only accelerate the process of death which has already commenced. "In such cases, causing death would result in end of his sufferings," the sources said. Aware that premature end of life would not be approved by Indian society, the panel explained: "When an individual is suffering from incurable disease or severe pain, mercy killing should be permitted to see that his agony comes to an end."

The Commission also proposes another radical reform — decriminalize attempt to suicide. This means the panel is recommending deletion of Section 309 of the IPC, which punishes a person who survives an attempt to end life with one year imprisonment and a fine.

Justice Lakshmanan and other members of the Commission feel that it is of no gain to punish a person, who under extreme duress decides to end his life but survives in the attempt. The recommendation to repeal Section 309 was earlier made by the Law Commission in 1971, which was accepted by the government. Steps were initiated to amend the IPC, but the move fell through in 1972.

In 1994, a two-judge bench of SC termed the provision unconstitutional, but two years later a five-judge constitution bench upheld its validity making attempt to suicide an offence. "Those who attempt suicide are distressed and in psychological pain and for them to face the ignominy of police interrogation heightens the distress, shame, guilt and further suicide attempt," he feels.