RAIPUR Hundreds of people in Chhattisgarh's industrial town of Raigarh have laid siege around the dead body of a 25-year-old Hindu priest who committed suicide with the promise of regaining consciousness within 72 hours of his death, police said yesterday. "Manoj Baghel committed suicide on Saturday by consuming poison at a temple in Raigarh. He claimed that he would come back to life within 72 hours," Raigarh District Superintendent of Police J.K. Thorate said.
I have to say I'll be very impressed if he pulls it off.
The young priest was rushed to a district hospital after he consumed poison. He was then referred to a private hospital where he died. Baghelss relatives later brought his body back to the temple in Raigarh, about 200km northeast of state capital Raipur, and kept it in a locked room.
Although police have registered a case of suicide, they haven't been able to send the body for a post-mortem examination. The crowd surrounding the corpse in the hope of seeing a miracle has prevented them from taking it away. "Hundreds of people have surrounded the temple. They have put the priest's body in a locked room and are refusing to hand it over police for post-mortem, Thorate added.
No problem, we can wait a few days ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/25/2007 00:08 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Only truly holy men can do this. There is no way that UBL et. al. could do this. /end_taunt
It is thus calming to reflect on the permanence of Christmas. It was not many years ago that we regularly celebrated Christmas in the shadow of looming evil. The holidays of 1941, not three weeks after Pearl Harbor, or 1950, only weeks after Chinese forces swept across the Yalu, or 1962, with Soviet missiles barely gone from Cuba, or 1979, with Soviet paratroopers in Kabul and American hostages in Iran, were no better. Indeed, only twelve years ago we prepared for Christmas on the verge of our first war with Saddam Hussein. With the end of the Cold War, the rest of the 1990s were the first decade in half a century when the next year could be counted safely better than the last, when one could celebrate with pure joy undinted by a fearful future.
An obscure CD, cut in 1998 and sold cheaper than it was worth at a major discount store, has reminded me of this lesson in ways I did not imagine when I bought it. Amid The Worlds Favorite Christmas Carols are some old standards. A powerful chorus sings "The First Noel," "Oh Come All Ye Faithful," and "Joy to the World," including Isaac Watts moving stanza "He rules the world with truth and grace/ And makes the nations prove/ The glories of His righteousness/ And wonders of His love." I listen in amazement.
Another choir begins with "Silent Night" and moves on. "God rest ye merry gentlemen," exclaims the baritone soloist with ever so slight an accent, "let nothing you dismay. Remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas Day." The chorus launches a beautiful, haunting, minor harmony. I get a lump in my throat.
The baritone continues. "Fear not then said the Angel, Let nothing you affright; This day is born a Saviour Of a pure virgin bright; To free all those that trust in Him from Satans power and might." My eyes moisten.
"O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy; o tidings of comfort and joy." I close my eyes. I fear not.
The performers? The latter, the Moscow Boys Choir, the former, the Red Army Chorus. That is to say, the chorus of the army whose purpose for three-quarters of a century was to spread communism, who threatened the free nations of the earth on nearly every continent, whose dearest wish was to put an end to Christmas for all people everywhere. The chorus of an army that for seven decades served a regime that destroyed thousands of churches, murdered tens of thousands of priests, sent millions of believers to the camps. The chorus of an army that, to speak much within compass, was the very representation in military form of "Satans power and might."
At the end of the road, that power and might crumbled into nothingness. Christmas lived. The Party died; the church survived. Like cathedrals deliberately built over the ruins of pagan temples, the Red Army Chorus sings Christmas carols, and Marx, Lenin, and Stalin rotate in their tombs. God rest ye merry gentlemen.
Posted by: Mike ||
12/25/2007 08:17 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
. . . Her hair was the same thin shade of gray as the weather-beaten pickets of the fence around her frozen garden. She had a way with horses, and she was alone on Christmas Eve. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
12/25/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The boar proceeded to charge at police before being brought down by marksmen, officers in the French city have said.
"Marksmen" could be too complimentary a word, IIRC, it took 30 bullets to put it down; true, wild boars ARE resilient beasts (usually, when one is ran over by a car, the car goes to the junkyard, and the boar limps away grumping about those damn humans who can't drive), especially when you try to put one down with handguns, but french cops simply can't shoot.
Ice skating is enjoying a revival as a family day out - but 5,000 years ago it was invented as a means of survival, say scientists. Archaeological evidence suggests the first skates were made of animal bones in around 3000 BC to aid travel during the frozen winters in Finland.
Scientists who made the discovery say it means that ice skating is the oldest form of human-powered transport.
Constructed of trimmed horse or cow bones, and pierced at one end and strapped to the foot with leather thongs, the first skates were not powered by the classic motion known today. Instead they were used in tandem with a long stick which skaters straddled and used to propel themselves along.
In the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Dr Frederico Formenti and Professor Alberto Minetti of Oxford University lay out the evidence supporting the theory that the birth of ice skating took place in southern Finland, where the number of lakes within a given area is the highest in the world. "In central and northern Europe, 5,000 years ago people struggled to survive the severe winter conditions and it seems unlikely that ice skating developed as a hobby," said Dr Formenti. "As happened later for skis and bicycles, I am convinced that we first made ice skates in order to limit the energy required for our daily journeys."
In experiments on an ice rink by the Alps, the team showed that the use of bone skates on frozen lakes would have reduced the amount of energy required to get about by 10%.
#1
Skiing wasn't a hobby as well. Travelling on the surface of feet deep snow was important when tracing and hunting animals. The snow doesn't carry animal and so it becames slower, but the hunter becames faster. The skiing stick was also a long spear-type weapon capable to kill an elk or a bear. Low-energy veggie food wasn't popular in those days.
Posted by: Matti Kaariainen ||
12/25/2007 6:31 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Fascinating, Matti! And welcome to Rantburg. I look forward to your perspective on things. :-)
Another Sea Harrier of the Indian Navy crashed at Dabolim Air Station in Goa on Monday morning while it was attempting a vertical landing. The pilot of the aircraft, Cdr Janak Bevli ejected to safety, an Indian Navy officer said. The crash took place at 11.15 am when the pilot returning from a routine sortie was landing, the officer said.
There has been no loss of any other property or person in the accident. A Board of Inquiry has been ordered to investigate the cause, the officer said. Sources said that the pilot, Cdr Bevli, is among the most experienced fliers of the aircraft that the navy has. He was attempting a vertical landing, an official, who did not wish to be named, revealed.
With Mondays crash, the total number of Sea Harriers with the navy has come down to 13. Since 1983, seven pilots have died in 17 crashes involving the Sea Harrier. India inducted a fleet of 30 Sea Harriers in 1983, using 25 of these for operational flying and the remaining to train pilots. More than half of the fleet is now gone, lost mostly to routine sorties.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
