BANGKOK – Higher than a bird, almost as high as some planes. It’s Super Tower. And it’s coming to Bangkok. A Thai property developer has announced plans to build a skyscraper in the Thai capital that will be among the 10 tallest buildings in the world when it is completed in 2019. The 125-floor tower will rise 615 metres (2,018 feet) and include a luxury hotel, offices and an observation […]
When I was 18 years old, I suffered from anxiety and stomach problems. A compassionate physician and practicing Buddhist referred me to a Taoist monk who specialized in meditation and martial arts. I ended up healing myself of anxiety and stomach issues by doing meditation, and went on a great journey of self-discovery. Here are 9 lessons I learned while studying with a monk: 1. Keep trying until you […]
Berlin: Reaching across gulfs of age, gender, faith, nationality and even international celebrity, the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the 2014 peace prize to Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and Kailash Satyarthi of India, joining a teenage Pakistani known around the world with an Indian veteran of campaigns to end child labor and free children from trafficking. Malala, 17, is the youngest recipient of the $1.1 million prize since it […]
This month, an Australian film crew led by cinematographer Abrahem Joffe was filming in southern Ethiopia They stumbled upon Ataye Eligidagne, 20, who has the largest lip disc in the world The hardened clay disc is 59.5 cm in circumference and 19.5 cm in diameter The discs are a tradition dating back further than 1896, and a way of attracting a husband The Ethiopian government has taken measures to ban […]
Remember Jay Russell’s movie The Water Horse – where a young boy gets a mysterious egg which hatches into a massive water-horse or the fabled Loch Ness monster. The boy lovingly calls it ‘Crusoe.’ But no one believes the boy until the very end of the movie when the sea monster comes to the boy’s rescue. Maybe not in the same way, but the reel story might become the truth […]
Pakistan has banned The Da Vinci Code, which has been the subject of protests from members of Pakistan’s small Christian community. Culture Minister Ghulam Jamal said the film was blasphemous. The screen adaptation of Dan Brown’s book revolves around the theory that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and their descendants survive today. A number of states in India have banned the film, although the federal censors have cleared it for release. […]
I normally don’t dwell on what I am going to wear before I go on a shoot. It’s usually something presentable, comfortable and preferably in a bright “TV” color that makes my cameraman Rajesh happy. This time, though, I was perplexed. I was about to film a story on manual scavenging. We were going to film people who clean human excreta. Knowing I would have to get close to human […]
London: The HIV pandemic began its global spread from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), says a study. Between the 1920s and 1950s, a ‘perfect storm’ of factors, including urban growth, strong railway links during Belgian colonial rule, and changes to the sex trade, combined to see HIV emerge from Kinshasa and spread across the globe. “It seems a combination of factors in Kinshasa in […]
What is the longest you have gone without a piece of food or a glass of water? A holy man in India claims that he has not eaten or drank anything for 70 years! Prahlad Jani is the 83-year old man who lives in a cave near Amba JI Temple without any kind of food or water. Why in the world would a man choose to not eat for such […]
Indian American Harvard Medical School student Sachin Jain looks beyond boundaries of direct service. Sachin Jain comes from a family of philanthropists. His India-born father, Subhash, and others funded Jain’s paternal aunt Shanti, who had committed her life to rural health care in Phalodi, Rajasthan. The family runs the HBS Trust, which, among other things, runs a non-profit hospital (Kalapurnam General Hospital) and a school (Bal Academy). He watched as […]
