EDITORIALS

Ayodhya case is over?

THE Babri Masjid demolition case is as good as over. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati has done what she perceives would serve her political interests by refusing to issue a fresh notification for the prosecution of senior Bharatiya Janata Party and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders. They were discharged by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court on the ground that the special court in Lucknow was set up without its permission. However, the court had said that the infirmity was "curable" and that the state government could issue a fresh notification, by following proper procedure, for the prosecution of senior Sangh Parivar leaders, including Mr L. K. Advani, Mr Murli Manohar Joshi and Ms Uma Bharati. Ms Mayawati evidently knows more than the judiciary itself about the legal complications of the case. The High Court said the infirmity was curable. But the Chief Minister said at a press conference in Lucknow on Tuesday that there was no need for a fresh notification. The special court in Lucknow was set up to speed up the process of trial and the case against the Babri Masjid demolition suspects was transferred to the state capital from a regular trial court in Rae Bareli. The political leadership always gets the briefing from the bureaucracy that suits its interests. It is clear that a Congress or a Samajwadi Party government would have issued a fresh notification for pleasing its political constituency in UP and not because of its commitment to the high ideal of bringing the guilty to justice. Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav is angry and his anger is justified. But Ms Mayawati did not become Chief Minister with the help of the BJP for protecting the political interests of the Congress and the Samajwadi Party.

She has refused to issue a fresh notification because she has to depend on the support of the BJP for remaining in office. The politics of principles was not abandoned by Ms Mayawati; she has merely followed the example set by others. Leaders of other political parties, including former Prime Ministers V. P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar, had re-written the rules of the game much before her advent on the political firmament of the country. Blind anti-Congress sentiments drove them to make political compromises that helped the BJP gain acceptance. Morally and politically, they were as much responsible for the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, as the members of the saffron outfits. Mr Advani, Mr Joshi and Ms Bharati were named as the main suspects because they were present in Ayodhya and, according to some accounts, egged on the kar sevaks to bring down the disputed structure. Ms Mayawati has a sharp political mind. She has not said that there is no need to pursue the case against the BJP and VHP leaders, She has cleverly put the onus of reopening the case on the CBI. She said the premier investigating agency was free to move the trial court in Faizabad or the special court in Rae Bareli for reopening the case against Mr Advani and others. Yes, indeed. Why not? The only hitch is that the CBI will have to take the permission of the Union Home Ministry. It is inconceivable that the Deputy Prime Minister, who also happens to be the Home Minister of the country, will allow the CBI to proceed against him in any court in the country. It is the tax payer who suffers the most by seeing his hard-earned money being wasted on politically purposeless pursuits like bringing the Babri Masjid demolition suspects to justice. He is getting wise. He wants to cut his losses. In the present case he can achieve this objective by insisting on the burial of the Babri Masjid demolition case.

Towards averting war

IRAQ'S decision to allow United Nations weapons inspectors to do their job on its soil unconditionally has come as a great relief to the international community. At this stage it is difficult to conclude that it will avert the threatened American military action against the beleaguered West Asian nation. But the change of heart in Baghdad has definitely set in motion a process of defusing the crisis. Already the influential world capitals, except for London, had serious differences of opinion with Washington over the use of force for dealing with the Iraqi situation. Now most of them are openly saying that the war option must be avoided in the interest of global peace. The Gulf Cooperation Council----comprising Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman----, whose members had almost agreed to allow the US military bases in the region for attacking Iraq, has expressed the hope that the new development should help ease the crisis. In its opinion, the change in the Iraqi thinking will lead to “finalising the implementation of the Security Council resolutions” and subsequently to “the lifting of the embargo imposed on Iraq, to put an end to the suffering of the brotherly Iraqi people”. Even the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) has begun to take less seriously the so-called disclosures by a rebel Iraqi nuclear scientist, which led to nuclear scare-mongering by the USA. The IAEC’s latest argument is that the Iraqi scientist had a very brief association with his country’s nuclear programme during the eighties and he left Iraq many years ago. So, what he says cannot be accepted as something demanding military action. The UN weapons inspectors will soon be on the job in Iraq, and the world will get to know the truth.

Earlier, India, Russia and China had together expressed their serious concern over the war threat issued by the super power. The truth is that war can hardly bring peace. The use of force generally aggravates a crisis. Till Tuesday, the day the world came to know of Iraq’s latest move, Russia had been dilly-dallying on the American call for a tough anti-Iraq Security Council resolution necessitating a US-led military strike. The news from Baghdad has, however, emboldened the former super power to assert that the “logic of war” should be replaced by the “logic of peace”. But the USA is unprepared to believe Iraq. Senior Bush Administration officials point out that Iraq’s letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan does not have any promise of disclosing the Saddam Hussein regime’s programme of building weapons of mass destruction. Thus, Washington is not interested in the question of inspection of weapon building facilities. It has changed its tune. it now talks of disarmament. This means it has to find a pretext to punish a regime refusing to toe its line. The letter from Baghdad appears to have no significance for the super power. The USA sees in it nothing but “a tactical step by Iraq in hopes of avoiding strong UN Security Council action...” It will be, therefore, interesting to watch who ultimately wins-----the collective conscience of the world community or a single country with its awesome military might. 

AIDS-free spouse

ANDHRA Pradesh is stealing a march over other states. The legislation proposed by state Health Minister K Siva Prasad Rao, making the AIDS test mandatory for all persons of marriageable age, is a revolutionary initiative in a nation where the threat of the AIDS epidemic has been swept under the carpet. The lack of a central authority for AIDS prevention is acutely felt. The government has a policy of allocating funds to states for implementing prevention programmes. In most states, this contributes to the neglect of the programmes. Punjab has not been able to utilise the funds given to it by the Centre and it is just one example. In India, more men are afflicted with the disease than women. However, women too are becoming victims largely through marriages or sex with infected men. The number of women who went to the PGI for treatment was 35 per cent more than last year. A large number of them blamed their husbands. While a wife is expected to look after her husband, this is seldom the case in the reverse scenario, and often women who have the disease are abandoned by their families. The worst sufferers are the children who are born to such mothers and get AIDS.

Making it mandatory for prospective marriage partners to take the AIDS test is a positive step. With four lakh HIV positive cases, half of them of a marriageable age, Andhra Pradesh has the second largest number of HIV positive patients in the nation. At the national level, the Union Cabinet had earlier cleared the National AIDS Policy which says that either party can freely ask for an AIDS-free certificate from the other before marriage. Andhra Pradesh has gone further. When such tests become routine, there will be no stigma attached to them. In fact, while the test for AIDS is done, the potential marital partners should also be tested for thalassaemia, an inherited form of anaemia caused by faulty synthesis of haemoglobin. Due to historical factors, people in northern and central India are more at risk of contracting this hereditary disease which afflicts the infants if both parents are thalassaemic minors. A simple test can save much pain later, since it occurs only if both parents are carriers. Thalassaemia has virtually been eradicated from its country of origin, Cyprus, by rigorous state-sponsored implementation of testing for all potential couples. In Cambodia, political commitment resulted in HIV rates among pregnant women in major towns dropping between 1996 and 2000. It is obvious that when governments intervene, this does make a difference. Andhra Pradesh has to be lauded for the initiative it has taken. Other states need to emulate it. The problem cannot be wished away. It needs proactive intervention. 

OPINION

Confronting Iraq, not Al-Qaida
America’s curious sense of priorities
Inder Malhotra

JUST over a year ago when, after the trauma of 9/11, the USA declared “war on terrorism”, it made its position crystal clear. Al-Qaida, along with the Taliban,was its principal target and Osama bin Laden its “Enemy Number One”. To capture him, “dead or alive”, was the mightiest nation’s paramount objective.

After all the fighting, bombing and overthrow of the Taliban regime, the sole super power is nowhere near achieving its proclaimed goal Osama, together with the Taliban chief, Mullah Umar, appears to be having a whale of a time in his sanctuary somewhere in Pakistan, probably in the tribal areas, possibly elsewhere.

The moving spirit of Al-Qaida is not alone in being in this happy position. Other senior leaders of his outfit are also hiding in Pakistan and biding their time, as the sensational arrest in Karachi of Razmi bin Al-Shibh, a close associate of the main hijacker in the 9/11 outrage, underscores. That some other Al-Qaida operatives were captured along with him evidently from a residential area in Pakistan’s largest city indicates the extent of Al-Qaida’s penetration of Pakistan.

It is also significant that a prolonged shootout between the Pakistani security forces, the CIA and the FBI on the one hand and the besieged fugitives, on the other, during which two men were killed, preceded the capture of Razmi and his associates. General Musharraf, who has been skilfully balancing his cooperation with the USA and his tolerance of Al-Qaida’s presence in his country, must have won some more brownie points with the Bush administration by agreeing to hand over Razmi to the Americans.

Under these circumstances, it would have made sense from America’s point of view to concentrate on eliminating Al-Qaida in Pakistan (and Afghanistan) first and only then turning its attention to something else. But so curious is the American notion of priorities that it has chosen to declare victory in the manifestly unfinished battle with Al-Qaida and all but decided to go to war with President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

President George Bush’s speech to the UN General Assembly has left no doubt on this score. In fact, he concentrated almost exclusively on Iraq and dealt with other issues, including those listed by the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, as major danger points, rather perfunctorily.

Mr Bush’s objectives in Iraq are as topsy-turvy as his sense of priorities. Many countries might have joined him, had he confined his demands to stripping Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But he is really insisting on a “regime change” in Iraq, a euphemism for overthrowing Mr Hussein by military action. The Iraqi President is not a very likeable man. Some of his actions during his long, dictatorial rule have been brutal and deplorable. But he is not the only such wayward despot — in West Asia or elsewhere. There are many more. Of them, quite a few enjoy America’s full support and protection. No wonder then that opposition to the “regime change”, and that, too, by unilateral American action, has been strong. It is bound to persist in all parts of the world, more particularly in West Asia. The Arabs, who are not living under a democratic dispensation anywhere, are doubly incensed. For, they are aghast that the US President also wants a “regime change” in Palestine where he wants President Arafat to go. As if this was not enough, Mr Bush has aggravated the situation by describing the most hawkish Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, of all people, as a “man of peace”.

It is small mercy that President Bush has backtracked from his unilateralism, at least for the time being, and agreed to work with and through the UN Security Council. He has good reason to demand that the world body should act quickly and effectively, and that its resolutions must be enforced. Mr Hussein’s decade-long defiance of the UN is more than enough for the USA.

Of the five permanent members of the Security Council, only Britain is wholeheartedly behind the Bush administration over Iraq. In fact, the manner in which the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has plugged the American line, despite much dissent within his own Labour Party, has evoked derisive comment. At a gathering he was waxing eloquent that Mr Hussein had used poison gas against his own people and against the Iranians in 1994 and, therefore, he was likely to use this as well as nuclear weapons, whenever he got them, against innocent people.

Someone interrupted him to ask what had Britain or America done after the use of the poison gas. He had no answer because both these countries, along with some others, had at that time fully backed Mr Saddam Hussein! Indeed, but for the wherewithal provided by Western countries, Iraq would not have been able to start its quest for nuclear capability. Today, even according to several American experts, the Iraqi President is at least three and a half years away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

Despite their best efforts, Mr Bush and Mr Blair have not been able to make their charge of a “link” between Al-Qaida and Mr Hussein stick. For the irony is that if any Al-Qaida men have slipped into Iraq, they have done so in areas that are out of the Saddam government’s control. These are regions inhabited by the Kurd and Shia minorities, in the north and the south, respectively, where the USA and Britain are enforcing “no fly zones” round the clock and round the calendar.

However, when all is said and done, there is every likelihood that the UN Security Council would has pass a strong enough resolution demanding that Iraq must readmit UN weapons inspectors and let them do their work “totally unhindered”. Up to this point most members of the Security Council, even if the General Assembly, would go along. But anything harsher than this is bound to invite resistance from countries like France, Russia, Germany and others. They are anxious to avoid the UN resolution being burdened with conditions that America might insist on but would be palpably unacceptable to Iraq. India is not a member of the Security Council. But it has made it clear that it is opposed to any precipitate action against Baghdad.

Significantly, the Foreign Ministers of India, Russia and China met in New York almost immediately after President Bush’s speech and decided to continue their consultations at an official level with a view to coordinating their policies.

Altogether, it is more than likely that the kind of apocalyptic scenario about Iraq that Mr Bush has been developing can be averted. In the first place, countries that are opposing the American policy of “turfing out Saddam” would be in a strong position to urge the Iraqi President to accept the Security Council’s firm but reasonable resolution. Indeed, Mr Hussein may also find it easier to checkmate America by accepting the UN resolution than by rejecting or defying it.

Arab League Foreign Ministers, also meeting at the UN around the time of the India-Russia-China parleys, have already advised Mr Hussein to accept and respect the resolution that the Security Council might pass on the subject of weapon inspectors.

The drafting of the resolution will surely take some days. The inspectors to be sent back to Iraq would then need at least a few months to complete the task assigned to them. This means that an American invasion of Iraq during the autumn is ruled out. Mr Bush thinks that his UN speech has won him considerable domestic support. But he cannot take risks with the November elections to the Congress.

In a world where a week is a long time, the spring is far, far away. Meanwhile, the American, and the world, economy is slowing down. Oil prices have already risen and the growing risk of war in West Asia — where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a bigger problem than Iraq is — could play havoc with them. The US President knows that his father lost the election in 1992 because of Mr Bill Clinton’s masterly slogan, “it’s the economy, stupid”.

However, hard-liners like the US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, continue to argue that Mr Saddam Hussein should either hand over his weapons of mass destruction to the UN or must be killed or captured in a massive military action. But what if, like Osama bin Laden, he gives the American forces a slip?

IN THE NEWS

Father of Indian software industry

PADMA Bhushan Fakir Chand Kohli is credited with India taking the lead in the IT revolution. He takes a well-deserved break after half a century of being at the helm of some of the country's most respected companies and institutions. Recently, The Economic Times honoured the 76-year-old Mr Kohli with a lifetime achievement award.

Indian software companies known globally must thank the foresight of Mr Kohli for opening that corridor to the information highway. Much before anyone else, Mr Kohli envisioned embedded software, outsourcing and technology education as early as in the seventies.

He graduated from Punjab University, Lahore, and took an honours in electrical engineering from Queens University, Canada, and an MS from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His first job was with the Canadian electric company way back in 1948. Subsequently, he moved over to the USA and remained there till he returned to India in 1951 to join the Tata Electric Companies. He joined Tata Consultancy Services in 1974 and became its deputy chairman two decades later.

He was the shining meteor in the TCS in guiding its phenomenal growth including developing the Permanent Account Number (PAN) for income tax payers. His compatriots and those in the IT sector describe Mr Kohli as an incomparable visionary. Today TCS services many Fortune-500 companies and he is currently on its executive committee. Mr Kohli and his wife Swaran live in Mumbai.

Reflecting women’s real strength

The story of Lijjat Papad is a reflection of the inherent strength of the Indian woman, epitomising `shakti' in all its myriad manifestations. The journey, which was started by seven women members of the Mahila Griha Udyog, is now 43-year-old. It has embraced 40,000 sister members and spread 62 branches in the country and overseas. No wonder then that Jaswanthibhen Popat, one of founder- members, who is 73, was honoured along with Arun Shourie, Kumaramangalam Birla, et al.

The honour may have come a trifle late. But it has come nonetheless. Age has never deterred Popat from maintaining a strict daily routine beginning at 5 in the morning and stretching well beyond the time dusk descends. The Mahila Griha Udyog, known more by its flagship product Lijjat Papad, is a excellent example of the success of industry achieved through basic and elementary laws of the traditional and indigenous strands of management.

Popat nor any of her sister-colleagues has deviated from the originally laid down stringent guidelines. Only women can become the members of the organisation. To impart a sense of belonging, all the members are also the owners of the organisation and are affectionately called "behn". There is a central managing committee of 21 members to manage the affairs of the organisations. They are assisted by Sanchalikas to look after the day-to-day affairs. Perhaps, some food for thought for management gurus.

India’s first institute of its kind

An entrepreneur couple — Jasbir Singh Madan and his wife Surinder Kaur — have started an institute in Noida near the national capital which they are endeavouring to position as the first complete Convergence School in India blending media management, telecom and IT.

Mr Jasbir Singh, an engineer by profession, has been actively considering for the past few years the idea of taking up social causes and putting in place a viable enterprise in either education or healthcare. Fired by the convergence exhibition in New Delhi a year ago, the Madans initiated the non-profit Guru Nanak Ginni India Educational Trust. They have done this in association with Prof Ujjwal Chowdhury, a former Director of the Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communications, Pune, and set up the Global Institute of Convergence. The Global ICON has enrolled its first batch of students this year. The Madans are Delhi-ites and have two children, a son and a daughter. While their son is an automobile engineer in the USA, their daughter lives in Canada and works with Dell Computers.

Breakfast feeds the brain
John Briffa

RESEARCH suggests that a breakfast helps feed the brain and can actually boost a child's learning at school.

The brain needs fuel to function properly, and gets the bulk of its requirements in this respect from food. The brain's principle fuel is sugar, and maintaining adequate levels in the bloodstream is critical for normal mental function. Many children may go 10 or more hours between their last meal and the next morning. With such a long gap, it is not uncommon for the blood-sugar levels to drop to sub-normal levels overnight. This can cause a child to be tired and grumpy in the morning, and can certainly take the edge off even the sharpest of minds.

One important benefit of eating breakfast is that it supplies ready fuel to the brain. A number of studies have found that when children skip the first meal of the day, memory, verbal fluency, and mathematical dexterity may suffer. By restoring blood-sugar levels after the overnight fast, eating breakfast helps ensure that a child has a productive schoolday.

However, regular breakfasting might have important long-term benefits as well. Breakfast may also supply important nutrients to a growing body and mind, thereby improving a child's general nutritional status.

To date, there have been three studies that have examined the impact of eating breakfast on children's behaviour and learning. Interestingly, these studies found that children who did not skip breakfast were less likely to skip school. All three studies also found that eating breakfast is associated with better performance in a variety of scholastic tests.

In terms of what to feed a child in the morning, my preference would be porridge or oat-based muesli. A hard-boiled or poached egg with a slice of wholemeal toast is another decent option. In addition, if a child is happy to have a piece or two of fruit, or even some freshly squeezed fruit juice, then so much the better. Getting something healthy into a child early on in the day may well enhance the chances of stuff going in up top, too. The Guardian

Girl forced to drink water, dies

A couple has been charged in the death of their adopted daughter for allegedly forcing the 4-year-old to drink so much water that she died, officials said on Tuesday.

Richard Killpack, 34, and Jennete Killpack, 26, of Springville, Utah, USA, were charged with homicide child abuse. On June 9, the Killpacks called the police, saying the girl was having trouble breathing. She was taken to a local hospital where she died the next day.

Autopsy reports showed that Cassandra Killpack died from “forced water intoxication.” “It was a punishment. The girl had done something and the parents had her drink large amounts of water,” the police said.

Two other children were in the home at the time of the incident and had since been removed as a protective measure. Reuters

OF LIFE SUBLIME

Towards happiness and harmony
J. L. Gupta

WE spend our lives trying to keep up the appearances. Pretending to be what we are not. We spend more time looking into the mirror than in the mind. We can hear the slightest sound in the car. Not the rattle in the head. We are concerned about what we eat. Not about what is eating us. Why? Is it insensitivity to the needs of the self? Or too much of stress? Let us look around.

What does the modern world look like? A concrete jungle with all the high-rise buildings. A mass of men and women. Continuously on the move. In a rush. Going to and fro. In cars, trains and planes. Up and down. In high-speed elevators. Working hard to make life easy?

What is the common sight in a busy Indian town? The screeching of an ungreased wheelbarrow. The buses, cars and trucks running at a break-neck speed. The goods train being shunted. A long queue of a variety of vehicles waiting at the railway crossing. And as the train passes, everyone begins to honk. To get ahead. To attract the attention of the tractor-trolley driver who hears nothing. But continues to block the entire traffic. A complete cacophony is an everyday experience.

What is the position at home? Come back after the day’s work. Tired. But the environment is cosmopolitan. Everyone is free. Liberated. Open and wayward. Even before you enter it is obvious that the young children are preparing for the evening. There is jangling and clashing of gongs. The Caribbean clatter. The young boys and girls dancing like the Kangaroos. Jumping about as if they have been given a dose of some alcoholic stimulus. The blank faces are untarnished by any decent thought. The ‘satanic fury’ seems to pass as art. As modern music.

Today, a majority of us do not seem to realise that even noise causes pollution. Insensitivity is symbolic of the modern times and its tensions. Any remedy? Music is the most magnificent gift of God to man on earth. In today’s life of stress and strife, a melody can be the remedy for many a malady. Music is a marvellous and mysterious medicine. It sweetens the toil. It is a sublime way to wash away the dust of the day’s drudgery from man and his mind. Music symbolises harmony. Its base is regularity and rhythm. Uniformity. Its effect is ecstatic. It gives peace. This is what the modern man needs today.

Music is not a modern discovery. It is older than Muses. In India ‘music was put into the service of religion from the earliest times. Vedic hymns are the oldest evidence of music. These stand at the beginning of the record.’ Even today, the old ‘rigid rules govern the rendition of Ragas.’ In China music has ‘traditionally been an adjunct to ceremony or narrative.’ Confucious ‘assigned an important place to music in the service of a well-ordered moral universe. He saw music and government as reflecting one another and believed that only the superior man who can understand music is equipped to govern.’ The Christians and the Muslims sing their prayers.

Music is like mirror. It reveals character. It reflects emotions. Of love, satisfaction and sorrow. It ‘restores order to the physical world through harmony.’ ‘Religious rituals.’ ‘Rites.’ Sacred singing. The martial march. Music appeals to the aesthetics in man. It can move masses. Its acceptance is universal.

Singers lend sound to simple words. In a world full of jarring noises, blowing of horns and slamming of doors, they make poetry in sound. They make scintillating music that is soothing for the soul. The learned understand it. Even the ignorant, like me, can enjoy it. Music is basically ‘an auditory phenomenon and hearing is the beginning of understanding.’ Listen to it with your eyes closed. And the mouth shut. Relax. Feel the magic of music. It takes you to the ethereal regions. Away from the stresses and strains of life.

So, find a flute or a fiddle, lute or lyre, pipe or piano, trumpet or a violin. Pick it up. Play with it. You would move the wind or produce a vibration. Soon there will be a tone. Slowly it shall begin to become smooth and soothing. There shall be some diversion for the mind. It should take you away from the worries of the world. At least for a while. And as you continue with the effort, there shall be more of happiness and harmony. Less of the stress and strain. Slowly but surely, it shall bring the rhythm back to life.

TRENDS & POINTERS

The ‘superstitious’ Health Minister

HAVING entered the Cabinet after a long wait of nearly two decades, Health Minister Shatrughan Sinha is yet to start functioning from his office in the ministry.

No, it is not due to doctor’s order, but advice from A numerologist.

The former actor, who is known to rely heavily on stars and numbers, is shifting his office from the first to the third floor, since the number 3 is considered lucky for him.

To ensure a propitious term in office, Sinha assumed charge of the Health Ministry two days after taking his oath, on July 3, at exactly three minutes after 3 p.m.

Sinha ordered a massive renovation to enable his shift to the third floor, earlier occupied by the Secretaries of health and family welfare. The two Secretaries last week shifted to the first floor office that used to be the minister’s.

While these changes were being carried out, Sinha was either out of town or, further, out of the country. Since donning the mantle of Health Minister, he has done quite a bit of globe-trotting, besides touring the country.

In July, he made it to an AIDS conference in Spain and visited Britain. In August he went to the USA. Last week he returned from a meeting of the Southeast Asian health ministers in Jakarta.

When in New Delhi, Sinha operates from his 10, Talkatora Road residence. When he needs to confer with officials, he comes to the conference room of Nirman Bhavan. IANS

She mistakes bald corpse for uncle

A mop-haired Colombian scrap dealer disappeared for 15 days and returned home to discover his family had decided he was dead and was preparing to bury a bald man’s corpse, a relative said on Tuesday.

After he went off recently without telling anyone from his home in a poor neighborhood of the Pacific Ocean port of Buenaventura, Aladino Mosquera’s relatives were asked to identify a dead body in the local morgue.

“I went to look at the dead man and he was his spitting image, so I thought it was him,” Mosquera’s niece, Emilsen Angulo, told Reuters.

She admitted she didn’t notice the dead man was bald, whereas her uncle has a full head of black hair.

Before the misidentified cadaver was buried, however, she said her uncle spotted Mosquera walking in the street.

“He asked him if he was dead, because he’d just seen his body at home. My uncle thought he was a ghost coming after him and ran away,” said Angulo. Reuters

Red clover reduces hot flashes

A new Peruvian study has claimed that Promensil, a standardised red clover supplement, reduces the frequency and severity of hot flashes in post-menopausal women.

The study, published in Female Patient, found that 40 milligrams a day of Promensil reduced hot flashes by 48.5 per cent, while a placebo offered a 10.5 per cent reduction.

The study included 30 healthy, non-vegetarian women who had been post-menopausal for more than a year. None of them had used hormone replacement therapy (HRT), soya or other estrogen-active plant products for at least 16 weeks.

Non-vegetarian women were used in the study to avoid potential biasing. Vegetarian women eat more soy and legumes, which contain isoflavones that help control hot flashes. ANI

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

I worship the ancient elephant God

who shares the misery of the poor,

the fit receptacle of all the ancient prayers,

the first son of Shiva,

the shatterer of the pride of the demons,

the fierce destroyer of the worlds,

decorated by fire and other elements and

whose elephant cheeks are flowing

with (the rut that flows from the cheeks of male elephants).

***

— Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, Loving Ganesha