SOME TIME IN APRIL! KAMPALA IS BURNING
http://www.GOANET.org

By Dominic Fernandes
dominic.fernandes@gmail.com

Widespread riots have broken out in Kampala - the capital of Uganda. Indians and Indian property have been targeted on a unprecedented scale.

Two Indians have been reported killed by violent mobs, while two Ugandans have been shot by security forces trying their best to control the violence.

Increasing resentment against the very prosperous Hindu Indian community seems to have finally burst out -- with frustrated unemployed youth going on a rampage against Indian property. This resentment has been building up from the last few years with Indians controlling a large part of the post-Obote II Ugandan economy with many people seeing the Indians as greedy businessmen eager to line their pockets at any cost!

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Christians Angered By Easter-Time Promotions
www.ctv.ca

This photo released by Israel's Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem, shows a burial box discovered during excavations of a cave in Jerusalem bearing the name Mariamene, a version of the name Mary. (AP / Israeli Antiquities Authority, Mariana Salzberger)


Updated: Fri. Apr. 6 2007 10:42 AM ET

NEW YORK - The Easter season has an odd, new tradition: The period of reflection on the Crucifixion and Resurrection has become a popular time for marketers to roll out works -- from the scholarly to the sensational -- that challenge Christianity's core beliefs.
In the last several years, churchgoers have been hit with a steady stream of claims that Jesus Christ didn't die on the cross, that he had a wife and kids, and that the Bible is a fraud.
Christians across a broad spectrum of belief are angered by the trend. They accept the freedom to question religion, but wonder why the assaults come during their faith's most sacred days.
"Why are they doing it now and why are they doing it in such a provocative way?'' asked Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit writer and author of "My Life With the Saints.''
"We have nothing to fear from serious scientific inquiry, but when it's slanted and leaves out the religious point of view, it's very misleading. It can all be tied together in a slick package that can be very compelling.''

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Secularism losing hold on campus –says Father Raymond de Souza
http://www.wcr.ab.ca/news/2007/0409/campus040907.shtml
By Canadian Catholic News
Ottawa

Father Raymond de Souza says secularism's hold on the university, the media and the Church has lessened since he attended university in 1989.

"It's quite clear to me the Christian presence at Queen's is bolder and more confident," said de Souza, a National Post columnist and Queen's University Newman House chaplain.

He spoke at a fundraising dinner for Catholic Christian Outreach (CCO) March 24.

Fifteen years ago, students were "largely indifferent," de Souza said. "That ideological edge I discovered 15 years ago is no longer there."

He spoke of the "great hope on campus" and how the CCO program of "touching individual souls" is active on the "most exotic mission field we have."

He said he has found more openness to the Gospel on the university campus than in local parishes.

There is "no better cause than the evangelization of our campuses" because of the resulting fruit of happy families, and new seminarians, de Souza said.

*Father Raymond J. de Souza is a chaplain at Queen's University in Ontario

First edition of South Asian Focus launched

The first edition of South Asian Focus, a community newspaper published by The Brampton Guardian, was launched on April 12, 2007. It is meant to be the voice of Brampton residents who have their roots in the Subcontinent.
The Paper notes

“South Asian Focus will mirror the achievements, hopes, aspirations-- and, yes, the challenges and concerns-- of the resilient South Asian community, which continues to grow and thrive in ever larger numbers right through the region. The timing of its launch, during Baisakhi, signifies the dawn of a new, more exciting and prosperous era ahead.

Our primary reason for launching this newspaper is to reflect the immense contributions of the hard-working South Asian community towards Canada's overall growth and development.”

New arrivals to Canada are advised to pickup at free copy of the publication from their local store, as it contains information for job-seekers and skills training.

See www.southasianfocus.com 

Brave, new world is not that far off

BY JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
catholicregister.org

When I first read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in 1960, this ironic novel from 1932 about the distant future had been around for a little over 25 years. But already its predictions seemed to be coming true, at least in the affluent North American society in which I lived as a young man.

You may recall what Huxley prophesied. He foresaw a world in which all social contradictions had been overcome, in which everyone enjoyed a self-satisfied, healthy, happy existence of endless consumption, pleasure and (when they felt the slightest twinge of anxiety) sedation. But everything was wrong. The family had disappeared, and all fornicated at will, with whomever and whenever they liked. Philosophy and religion, likewise, had vanished, replaced by a simple-minded worship of industrialization. Becoming pregnant was considered primitive and disgusting. Instead, new people in this society were created in hatcheries, where they were custom-made to fit the culture's current needs. In Huxley's brave, new world, people may have been infinitely bored, but they did not have to put up with surprises.

The swinging '60s - what with the Pill, the vogue for sedatives and narcotics such as marijuana, the steep decline in churchgoing and belief, rampant consumerism - looked eerily like Huxley's future. Viewed from the perspective of our current culture, however, we now see that the '60s was merely the beginning of an era that's gradually become altogether too much like Huxley's brave, new world.

A news dispatch from Rome reminded me, a couple of weeks ago, of just how far along this path our hedonistic consumer society has gone. In a speech at the Vatican to Catholic medical professionals, Pope Benedict XVI denounced the "obsessive quest for the 'perfect child' " through genetic manipulation. The Pope also said the engineering of so-called "designer embryos" represented "an attack on human life."

We are accustomed to hearing papal pronouncements of this kind, but this one, I think, bears especially close attention.

The Pope is inveighing against a specific abuse of advanced medical technology: the transformation of laboratories into hatcheries for making embryos. The medical scientists who are involved in this research have been lately at pains to reassure the public that the resulting embryos will not be used for the Frankensteinian ends many people fear - the harvesting of replacement organs and tissue, for example. But the genie is out of the bottle, and nobody can ever be entirely sure that fantastic and deeply inhumane experiments will never be attempted in the name of science.

Solemnity Marks Good Friday Celebrations
BY HERALD REPORTER

PANJIM, APRIL 6 - Thousands of devotees thronged churches in Goa today as special prayer services were held throughout the state with readings from the Gospel giving accounts of the events leading up to the crucifixion.

For Catholics in Goa, Good Friday is a day of sincere reverence among Goan Catholics. It is the culmination of Lent, an important observance in the lives of devout Catholics.

In Panjim, hundreds of devout Catholics gather in the Panjim Church of Mary Immaculate Conception to listen to mass and participate in the procession.

During the service, the priests narrated the sufferings that Jesus Christ took upon himself for the sake of humanity. The mass attracted large crowd with many of the faithful standing outside and on the streets adjoining the church, dressed in formal clothes with somber countenance. After the mass, the crucifix, which until this time has been kept from view, was uncovered before the crowd for veneration. A very somber ceremony, "the Way of the Cross" is a reenactment of the path Jesus took on Mount Calvary before the Crucifixion.

In Panjim, a large cross carried by an image of Jesus is taken from the church, down the steps, and through the streets of the town. It is carried by the clergymen while the crowd follows in two parallel lines in front of and in back of the statue.

Mumbai's Global Finance Hub Dream Now Has A Script
Publish Date: Sunday,8 April, 2007, at 08:47 AM Doha Time
By Andy Mukherjee… Excerpts

Singapore: The city of a million Bollywood dreams now has a powerful reverie of its own. A committee, set up by the Indian government to propose a strategy for turning Mumbai into an international financial centre, has devised a truly bold road map.

All that's needed now is an influential champion of the cause, someone who would keep up the pressure on short-sighted politicians and phlegmatic bureaucrats until every single recommendation of the report has been implemented.

It would be a huge blunder if the country, so tantalizingly close to realising the full benefits of financial globalisation, got scared by the risks and walked away from the prize.

The basic premise of the committee's report, which was unveiled on Monday, is that if India can boost the growth rate of its gross domestic product to 10%, it would have a $10tn economy by 2025, the same size as today's euro area. By then, Indian households and firms will need $120bn of international financial intermediation annually.

A failure to turn Mumbai into a global financial centre "will simply oblige Indian customers to do increasing business abroad," the report notes, citing the $12.3bn purchase of UK's Corus Group by India's Tata Steel Ltd, which generated fees for bankers in Singapore and London.

* The author is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own  gulftimes.com

See Joel’s Goa Pictures

To View Joel's Picture Click here

EASTER FIESTA in Mumbai

MUMBAI, Apr 8: An Easter Fiesta was celebrated at the lawns of Good Shepherd Church, Andheri, this evening. The programme comprised English and Konkani songs rendered by Cyanara Santa Maria, M Kumar, Titta Pretto, Rico Rod, C D'Silva and Kenny. Besides the songs the audience danced to the tunes of Konkani music provided by Day Breakers band with sweet-voiced crooner Carol Khurshed, a Parsi, rendering popular songs beautifully. On the occasion, Life Time Achievement Awards were conferred by F C Global Music on tiatrists - Prem Kumar at the hands of Rita Rose, to C D'Silva by Fr Joe Rodricks and to Lawrence de Tiracol by Felix Correia. Lorna's new album "One and Only Lorna" was also released at the hands of Pune-based Konkani enthusiast Isidore Dantas. The programme was ably compered by Zigler Colaco. [GoaNewsClips]
 

Goan movie mogul remembered

PANJIM, Apr 10: A condolence meet was held at Institute Menezes Braganza hall, by the Dalgado Konkani Akademi, this evening, to mourn the passing away of one of Goa's most prominent musicmaker Frank Fernand. Cyriaco Dias, one of the actors in "Amchem Noxib", a classic Konkani film produced by Frank, talked at length about his contact with the Goan movie mogul. Representatives of DKA, KBM, RLAF, and RLC and Director of TSKK also addressed the small gathering, while Pravin Sabnis made a power point presentation of the highpoints of Frank Fernand's life. Fr. Pratap Naik said that we normally "eulogise the dead but do nothing to acknowledge the living legends of the Konkani" world. Tomazinho Cardozo proposed that "we publish a book on artistes and artists who contribute to the wealth of Konkani today". Joel D'Souza, Isidore Dantas, Pravin Sabnis and Willy Goes would begin work on this immediately. Purnanand Chari, President of KBM, aptly put it, "Frank Fernand contributed much to Konkani through music ...without ever needing to make a speech". Fr Conceicao D'Silva presided over the condolence meeting.

The epic Konkani film "Amchem Noxib" will be screened at the Thomas Stephens Konknni Kendr (next to XCHR, off O Coqueiro junction) at 6.30 P.M. on today - 11 April. There is no entry fee and the film is open to all. [miguelbraganza@yahoo.co.in]

Simplify Konkani standardidsation

"Although a lot of Devnagri literature is written, not all of it is up to the mark. Likewise, not all Roman Konkani literature is of good quality... The process of standardisation should be inclusive of all sections of the society. It should be simple so that Konkani can be understood by all," says Konknni Bhasha Mandal president Purnanand Chari in an interview with Nilesh Khandeparkar. [GT]

India poised to become third largest economy: Montek

HYDERABAD, Apr 7 (UNI): India is poised to become the third largest economy after US and China by 8.35 pm in the rapidly globalised economy. Planning Commission vice chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said today. Making a transition to rapid strides, the country had registered 8.4 per cent growth in the last four years and set to increase 9-10 per cent during the 11th Plan period, he said while delivering the sixth convocation address at the prestigious Indian School of Business here. [H]

 TORONTO EAST GOAN SENIORS ASSOCIATION (T E G S A) - 2007 Events
 

Please mark you calendars for the following exciting events:
All events will be held at Commander Hall Arena, unless otherwise advised.

Click to download form to join TEGSA or renew membership for 2007
 

55 PLUS GOAN ASSOCIATION – West GTA

• Our Second Anniversary Dance: Saturday, June 09, 2007, @ 6.30 p.m.
  at the Renaissance Convention Centre Click for Flier.
  You can reserve your table by sending E-mail to 55PGA@goanseniors.net
   
• Summer Picnic in the Park - Sunday July 15, 2007
  East (TEGSA) meets West (55PGA) Picnic.
  Erindale Park., at Dundas and Mississauga Road.
  Picnic Coordinator: Juliet Rebello 55PGA@goanseniors.net
  Click for Flier
   
• Our Popular Christmas Dance. Once again a sit-down dinner dance at the Oasis Convention Centre. Details to follow.
  Our Monthly Socials will take place every 3rd Tuesday per month.
   
• We have a new venue for our monthly socials !!
  The Gateway Centre for New Canadians,
  3450 Wolfdale Road, Mississauga, ON L5C 2V6
  (Just south of Burnhamthorpe Rd)
  See location and directions at: http://www.gcnc.ca/index.php?page=contact
  The first event “Getting To Know You “
  will take place on April 17, 2006 @ 6.30 p.m.
  This include a “Rice & Curry” Dinner – Tickets $10.00
  Members Only – Send request for reservation to 55PGA@goanseniros.net
   
• Further Events will take place – same venue – same time May 15, 2007 & June 19, 2007.
  Details to follow.