Aug 15, ENGLAND, UK (RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE) — In its survey analysis of religious freedom in Uzbekistan, Forum 18 News Service has found continuing violations by the state of freedom of thought, conscience and belief. Amongst many serious violations - which breach the country's international human rights commitments - non-state registered religious activity is a criminal offence, as is the sharing of beliefs and meetings for religious purposes in private homes.

Parents may legally home-school their children in California even if they lack a teaching credential, a state appellate court ruled Friday. The decision is a reversal of the court's earlier position, which effectively prohibited most home schooling and sparked fear throughout the state's estimated 166,000 home-schoolers.

Teachers in one part of the US state of Texas are to be allowed to carry concealed firearms when the new school term opens this month.

The school superintendent in Harrold district said the move was intended to protect staff and pupils should there be any gun attacks on its sole campus.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- Ernie Long believes he has been to hell. He can even narrow it down to a particular moment.

His mother was dying of cancer. As she lay on her death bed, he swiped her last $5 and the car keys from her purse, went out and got high. When he returned, she was dead.

KATHMANDU, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Religious authorities in Nepal have begun the search for a girl who could be as young as three or four to serve as the new Kumari, or the virgin "living goddess", in a centuries-old tradition.

Astrologers were consulting horoscopes of candidates from Buddhist Shakya families to replace the current Kumari, Preeti Shakya, who is 11 and should retire during the annual Hindu festival of Dasain in October, temple officials said.

Prof K Ramasubramanian of IIT-Bombay has some interesting news. His recently released two-volume translation of the Ganita-Yukti-Bhasa by Jyesthdeva points to the fact that some subsets of calculus existed in Indian manuscripts almost two centuries before Isaac Newton published his work. And that an Indian mathematician and astronomer Nilakantha Somayaji spoke, in parts, about a planetary model, credited to Tycho Brahe almost a century later.

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore.

A farming experiment at the University of California, Davis, has found that organically grown tomatoes are richer in certain kinds of flavonoids than conventionally grown tomatoes. And one researcher is curious to determine why this may be.

New Delhi, Aug. 3: The extract of a herb used for centuries in traditional Indian medicine can reduce symptoms of osteoarthritis, the most common inflammatory joint disease, a group of Indian and American scientists has claimed.

A clinical trial conducted by Siba Raychaudhuri from the University of California, Davis, and her co-workers in India has shown that the extract of the plant, Boswellia serrata, can reduce pain and significantly improve knee joint function.

The governments of many poor nations are alarmed at the rise in food prices. There are even problems in the Indian region of Punjab, where science once seemed to have found answers for a hungry world.

The first thing Satpal Singh sees when he walks out of his bedroom door in the morning is a gleaming tractor, without a speck of mud on it.

FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist.

And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions - but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades.

In a world in which animal rights are gaining ground, barbecue season should make me feel guilty. My hunch is that in a century or two, our descendants will look back on our factory farms with uncomprehending revulsion. But in the meantime, I love a good burger.

Fasting for one day each month may reduce the risk of clogged arteries by 40 percent, according to a new study conducted by researchers from Intermountain Medical Center and the University of Utah and presented at a conference of the American Heart Association.

A 14-year-old Sikh girl has won her High Court discrimination claim against her school after it excluded her for breaking its "no jewellery" rule.

Sarika Singh, from Cwmbach, south Wales, was excluded by Aberdare Girls' School in November 2007 for refusing to take off her religious bangle.

Being single when you reach middle age could mean more than having the house to yourself - it could increase your risk of dementia.

Swedish research, presented at a US conference, found that marriage or having a partner halved the risk of developing dementia.

What do brain surgeons know about cellphone safety that the rest of us don't?

Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cellphones next to their ears. "I think the safe practice," said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, "is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away from your brain."

Everywhere I go these days, talking about the global energy predicament on the college lecture circuit or at environmental conferences, I hear an increasingly shrill cry for "solutions." This is just another symptom of the delusional thinking that now grips the nation, especially among the educated and well-intentioned.

MATHURA: Conservation efforts in this Hindu holy town - said to be the birthplace of Lord Krishna - have received a big boost, with a court banning mining operations in the area.

When pilgrims visit some of the shrines associated with Krishna-Radha lore, they will not fail to notice structural changes to restore, rejuvenate and conserve the ecology of the area.

Nicole Swift, of Yarramundi, on the Hawkesbury, has no difficulty with the idea that one day Australia's horses - so brusquely brushed aside by the motor car a century ago - may come back into their own as a source of transport and power.

Unthinkable it might seem. But with fuel prices pushing up to perhaps $8 a litre in the next 10 years, stocks drying up and alternative sources of energy problematic, an eye might well be turned to the animal that has served mankind since the dawn of civilisation.

Wouldn’t it be grand if married couples everywhere could have enduring, satisfying relationships, based on spiritual principles? Wouldn’t it be marvelous if all children could grow up in a healthy two-parent home? Such was the goal of most of the attendees of the 12th Annual SmartMarriages conference from July 2-6, 2008 in San Francisco, California.