PEOPLE RESCUED FROM NEPAL EARTHQUAKE

NEPAL: AMAZING RESCUE STORIES
TRAPPED IN EARTHQUAKE RUBBLE

www.people.com - As the death toll in the Nepal earthquake continues to climb, more amazing stories of survivors are emerging. A 4-month-old baby was rescued from the disaster – 22 hours after the earthquake struck, the Nepal newspaper Kathmandu Today reports (via The Independent). Soldiers searched the wreckage of the infant's collapsed home, but were unable to reach him and eventually left the site, believing him to be dead.
However, when they returned hours later, they heard the baby boy's cries and he was finally pulled from the rubble, covered in dust, but free of any serious injuries. Meanwhile, another man, Rishi Khanal, 27, was rescued from a collapsed hotel after being trapped for 82 hours.

"There was no sound going out, or coming in," he said. "I kept banging against the rubble and finally someone responded and came to help. I hadn't eaten or had anything to drink so I drank my own urine. "My nails went all white and my lips cracked," he added. "I was sure no one was coming for me. I was certain I was going to die." He was eventually saved by a French rescue team that was able to extract him from the rubble. "I am thankful," he said. 
Additionally, a 15-year-old boy was rescued five days after the quake. Pemba Lama, who was trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building, told the BBC he stayed alive by eating clarified butter and drinking water off wet clothes.

The final death toll could reach 10,000 as rescue efforts continued after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that devastated Nepal. However,  after almost a week of heartbreaking news from earthquake-hit Nepal, there were rare moments of joy for rescue teams five days . A baby boy has been rescued from the rubble of the Nepal earthquake after being buried under a collapsed building for 22 hours. Then, a disaster team, pulled a 15-year-old boy from the debris of a seven-storey structure, five days after the earthquake. It was miraculous, and there are more cases of astonishing rescues. Our concept about life and death is always shaken when we face world events like this. In the most unexpected moments comes death, and when all is death around inexplicably life continues. We should remember that so long as there is birth there will also be death in this world. Unfortunately, whatever happiness we hope to attain from this material plane of existence is not real happiness. Our spiritual masters have taught us that we should inquire about these topics, “Who are you?” “Where were you before coming to this world?” “For what purpose have you come here?” “What activities have you performed in your life so far and have they made you happy?” “What activities will truly make you happy?” “Where you will go after death?" No doubt, in the holy lips of our spiritual guides we can get all the answers. Therefore, we must go to them with a humble spirit and ask them for enlightenment about the scriptures in order to understand the right purpose in this life. (Editor's note).

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

In this world, we are flanked by birth and death, and whatever we do in between these two is temporary. One poet has therefore written, "We are but actors on the stage of this world." [...] Therefore, in the scriptures on sanātana-dharma, the ārya-rsis have said:  “In childhood one is engrossed in playing, in youth he becomes captivated by the opposite sex, and in  age he becomes immersed in anxiety; thus he never  becomes absorbed in thoughts of the Supreme Truth.  In this world we pass our time eating, sleeping, defending and so on; rather, we should consider that the time allotted to us in this body is fixed.” - (Śrī Śankarācārya).

Śrīla Bhaktivedānta Vāmana Mahārāja :
“Sanātana-dharma: The Solution to World Conflict”
Speech at Śrī Meghalaya Gaudīya Matha, Tura, India - 1/9/1983
Bhaktivedanta Memorial Library - http://www.bvml.org/SBVM/

Published by dasavatara das - “Vedic Views on World News”
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FLOODS WREAK HAVOC IN GERMANY

FLOOD MISERY AS SURGING ELBE
BREACHES DEFENSES IN GERMANY

http://edition.cnn.com - Soldiers dropped huge sandbags from army helicopters Tuesday as part of efforts to stem devastating flooding in northern Germany after the swollen Elbe River breached flood defenses. A sea of muddy brown water has flowed through two broken dikes in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes. The situation is stabilizing in the flooded village of Fischbeck, near the town of Stendal, which was left largely submerged after a dike there broke Sunday, officials said.
The flow of water pouring through a gaping breach nearly 50 meters (160 feet) across is now slowing, and water levels have dropped slightly across the state, Interior Minister said. 

The water level around Stendal has dropped about half a meter (20 inches) since its peak Monday morning, and should drop another 20 inches in the next 24 to 48 hours. The peak surpassed 8.2 meters (26.9 feet), breaking the 2002 record of 7.68 meters (25.2 feet). Police shut down the center of Wittenberg on Tuesday, a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited to meet volunteers and see flood prevention efforts for herself. About 4,000 German soldiers have been deployed in Saxony-Anhalt, with some dispatched to drop the huge bags of sand from the air.
Three people died in the state last week in connection with the flooding. Another five deaths have been reported across the country.

Tens of  thousands of people were being forced to evacuate their homes across swathes of Germany and Hungary these days as further dramatic rises in the levels of the swollen Elbe and Danube rivers continued to cause some of the most devastating floods ever experienced in Central Europe. In the east German city of Magdeburg, some 23,000 residents were  forced to flee their homes as soldiers, rescue workers and volunteers battled furiously to shore up leaking dykes. Meteorologists says heavy rain was forecast for southern Germany and that further flooding in the region could not be ruled out. Global meat consumption, affects the whole planet without distinction between rich and poor countries.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

The environmental community rightly recognizes global warming as one of the gravest threats to the planet. The expected consequences include coastal flooding, increases in extreme weather, spreading disease, and mass extinctions. Yet by focusing entirely on carbon dioxide emissions, major environmental organizations have failed to account for published data showing that other gases are the main culprits behind the global warming we see today. ... Animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tons of methane a year ... and the collective effect on the environment of the hundreds of millions of livestock animals worldwide is enormous. ... Simply by going vegetarian we can eliminate one of the major sources of emissions of methane, the greenhouse gas responsible for almost half of the global warming impacting the planet today. 

Dr. Noam Mohr :
“What They Didn’t Tell You In Copenhagen”
VINA - Vaishnava Internet News Agency
http://wadcconference.com/bio_mohr.aspx
http://kirbymtn.blogspot.com/2007/01/noam-mohr-on-meat-eating-and.html
http://www.vina.cc/news/index.php/General/What-They-Didn-t-Tell-You-In-Copenhagen.html

Published by dasavatara das - "Vedic Views on World News"
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TORNADO IN OKLAHOMA, USA

OKLAHOMA TORNADO FATALITIES
2 INFANTS, 10 CHILDREN IN ALL

www.washingtonpost.com - Two of the 24 people known to have been killed in the tornado that pulverized a suburb of Oklahoma City on Monday were infants. Seven of the dead were 8- and 9-year-old youngsters, the medical examiner’s office said, apparently students at the Plaza Towers Elementary School. The school was among hundreds of buildings reduced to rubble by the storm that devastated Moore, Okla., a city of 55,000 about 11 miles south of downtown Oklahoma City. 
Fourteen storm victims were adults. One of those adults has yet to be identified, said Amy Elliott, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office. The names of seven others were withheld because family members have not yet been informed of their deaths.

Rescue crews are still searching through the remains of collapsed buildings, and officials have said repeatedly that the death toll from the tornado could rise. But Elliott said the number of bodies transported to the medical examiner’s office - and the “official number of confirmed deaths” - remained at 24 as of Wednesday morning. Most of the people died from blunt-force trauma. A few were asphyxiated. More than 200 people were injured by the tornado, and hundreds of homes, businesses and other buildings were destroyed. Preliminary damage estimates are running as high as $1 billion. 
Hundreds of other children at the school survived the tornado, huddling with their teachers in bathrooms, fleeing the building with frantic parents or seeking safety by pressing against interior walls.

In Moore, near Oklahoma, USA, search and rescue operations were winding down Wednesday as this battered, exhausted city mourned its dead and turned its attention to rebuilding for the future. "When the winds died down and the debris settled following Monday’s tornado in Oklahoma, residents began scrambling to find loved ones amid the rubble of homes and businesses and at least two schools. For some, that search ended in searing grief," published Jennifer Preston at The Lede blog. Why do so terrible tornadoes occur, while sometimes they are just strong winds? Why should we endure these calamities? Why are we here?

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appeared in the mood of a devotee. In the form of Radharani, the Highest Guru, Nandanandana Krishna Himself appeared. Sanatana Goswami asked Him questions such as, "Who and what am I? Why am I burning from the three-fold afflictions [miseries caused by one's own body and mind, miseries caused by other living entities and miseries caused by the demigods in the form of natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and so on]? What is the ultimate object and how are we to get it?" When we put these questions to a sadguru, then the time for emancipation from the entanglement of this non-eternal sphere has come. It was declared by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to Srila Sanatana Goswami. You must have these types of questions in mind.

Śrīla Bhakti Ballabh Tirtha Mahārāja :
"The Glories Of HDG Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaj"
Boston Common, Boston, Massachusetts: 23 August 2002
http://bvml.org/SBBTM/tgohdgsacbsm.htm
Sree Chaitanya Gaudiya Math (SCGM)

Published by dasavatara das - "Vedic Views on World News"
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CHINA RACES TO AID QUAKE VICTIMS

EARTHQUAKE STRUCK SICHUAN

PROVINCE IN SOUTHWEST CHINA

www.theaustralian.com.au - A powerful earthquake has ripped through China's Sichuan province, killing nearly 200 people near the site of one of the country's worst natural disasters. The 7.0-magnitude quake shook the region in China's southwest early on Saturday and left more than 6000 people injured. Thousands more could be left homeless as the quake demolished houses, buildings and offices. The government mobilized thousands of People's Liberation Army troops as part of the massive rescue effort. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang toured the Ya'an region in the province, the epicenter of the quake, and promised government support for victims.
The event has striking similarities to the 2008 quake that killed nearly 90,000 people in the Wenchuan area of Sichuan. "The current most urgent issue is seizing the first 24 hours after the quake, the golden time for saving lives, and to take scientific rescue measures and save people's lives," Mr Li said.

"Life is the most important thing - the top priority is saving lives. No minute or even second should be delayed during the first 72 hours after the strike." Mr Li said rescuers and emergency service workers needed to ensure there was no further damage from aftershocks. China's cabinet, the State Council, held an emergency meeting and put in place a "first grade" response to the quake. "We once underwent catastrophes and have experience in dealing with them," Mr Li said.
"Under the strong leadership of the (Communist) Party and the government and as long as we unite as one conducting rescue work scientifically, we are able to minimize the losses and overcome the disaster." Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged an "all-out" response to ensure people were rescued and Sichuan province recovered from the earthquake.

A magnitude 7 quake occurred Saturday in the southwestern part of China's Sichuan province. Although  the scene was not one of massive destruction as seen in the 2008 quake - which measured 7.9 on the Richter scale - nearly 200 people have been killed, and about 12,000 injured. Today, rescue teams continue to search for survivors, despite heavy rainstorms that have hampered the effort to reach victims.  In this material world we are always suffering because of one or a combination of these three kinds of miseries: (1.) adhyatmika klesha; (2.) adhibhautika klesha and (3.) adhidaivika klesha.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

"Being unable to protect himself from the threefold miseries of material existence, the conditioned soul becomes very morose and lives a life of lamentation. These threefold miseries are miseries suffered by mental calamity at the hands of the demigods [such as freezing wind and scorching heat], miseries offered by other living entities, and miseries arising from the mind and body themselves." ... Actually no one can counteract these threefold miseries. All three may assail one at one time, or one misery may be absent and the other present. Thus the living entity is full of anxiety, fearing misery from one side or the other. The conditioned soul must be disturbed by at least one of these three miseries. There is no escape. 

Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda :
Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 5.14.25
Canto 5: "The Creative Impetus
Ch. 14: "The Material World as the Great Forest of Enjoyment"
Verse 25  -  Bhaktivedanta VedaBase

Published by dasavatara das - "Vedic Views on World News"
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WARMING TEMPERATURES MELT GLACIAL ICE

GLOBAL WARMING: 1,600 YEARS OF

ICE IN ANDES MELTED IN 25 YEARS

www.nytimes.com - Glacial ice in the Peruvian Andes that took at least 1,600 years to form has melted in just 25 years, scientists reported Thursday, the latest indication that the recent spike in global temperatures has thrown the natural world out of balance. The evidence comes from a remarkable find at the margins of the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru, the world’s largest tropical ice sheet. Rapid melting there in the modern era is uncovering plants that were locked in a deep freeze when the glacier advanced many thousands of years ago. 
Dating of those plants, using a radioactive form of carbon in the plant tissues that decays at a known rate, has given scientists an unusually precise method of determining the history of the ice sheet’s margins. Lonnie G. Thompson, the Ohio State University glaciologist whose team has worked intermittently on the Quelccaya ice cap for decades, reported the findings in a paper released by the journal Science.

The paper includes a long-awaited analysis of chemical tracers in ice cylinders the team recovered by drilling deep into Quelccaya, a record that will aid scientists worldwide in reconstructing past climatic variations. The weather presumably contributed to the food shortages that exacerbated that upheaval. Of greater immediate interest, Dr. Thompson and his team have expanded on previous research involving long-dead plants emerging from the melting ice at the edge of Quelccaya, a huge, flat ice cap sitting on a volcanic plain 18,000 feet above sea level. 
In the new research, a thousand feet of additional melting has exposed plants that laboratory analysis shows to be about 6,300 years old. "Ice that accumulated over approximately 1,600 years melted back in no more than 25 years," Dr. Thompson said.

Glacial ice that took 1,600 years to form in the Peruvian Andes took only 25 years to disappear due to earth’s increasingly warmer temperatures. The ice in South America has melted drastically leaving behind a large pool of water framed by exposed rock and diminished beds of ice. As the ice melts, plants that were trapped within it are exposed, and it is these materials that are being used to analyze the glacial area’s history. While greenhouse gas emissions from human sources of pollution, such as coal and gas, are reaching new peaks, the Vedic solution to environmental pollution is to change our consciousness from the selfish exploitation to protection and service to others.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

We create so many things but what we are doing to the environment? That’s one of the biggest conflicts in the world today. ... The oceans are becoming polluted. Over the years there is big oil ship just leak and the oil fell on ocean and millions of fish die and pollute so much of waters. Lakes are polluted. ... Now the ozone and the global warming it is an international problem. If we do not give up this type of polluting of the atmosphere this global warming is going to cause the solar ice caps to melt ... The pollutions are not created by simple people who are farming by natural ways. It is due to industries, chemicals. ... But if they are not in harmony with nature and harmony with God, they may create a nice thing now but destruction in the future.

Śrīla Radhanath Swami Mahārāja :

Lecture: "Conflict Resolution" (in IIT Powai)
http://www.radhanathmaharaj.net/content/conflict-resolution-iit-powai-radhanath-swami
http://www.radhanath-swami.net/ -  http://radhanathswami.info

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ARGENTINA RAINS DEATH TOLL UP TO 51

ARGENTINA FLOODS 'CATASTROPHE'
FOR LA PLATA CITY, BUENOS AIRES

www.bbc.co.uk - Emergency workers in Argentina continue to try to rescue residents stranded by flooding in Buenos Aires and La Plata. More than 50 people are known to have died after one of the heaviest storms recorded caused flash floods. Thousands were evacuated from their homes and dozens are still stranded on rooftops, treetops and the roofs of city buses, local media report. High water encircled part of the town, cutting off roads and preventing authorities from rescuing stranded motorists and passengers. "We've never seen anything like it," provincial governor Daniel Scioli said. The government has declared three days of national mourning after what it called "an unprecedented catastrophe." Provincial officials said 40cm (16in) of rain fell on the city of La Plata in the space of two hours late on Tuesday night.

Earlier, the storm had dumped 15cm of rainfall on the capital, Buenos Aires. Local officials said at least 48 people were killed in La Plata, six in Buenos Aires and two in its suburbs. The Red Cross said most of the victims had been elderly people who drowned in their homes. So far, only half of the bodies have been identified and rescue workers fear the number of dead may rise as more bodies are found as the flood waters recede. More than 3,000 people had to leave their homes and 80,000 still do not have electricity, with two of La Plata's hospitals also affected by the power cuts. 
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner on Wednesday visited Tolosa, the worst affected neighbourhood of La Plata, where she grew up and where her mother still lives. Pope Francis, an Argentine, has called on the authorities to step up their assistance to those left homeless by the storm.

Heavy flooding in Argentina, provoked by torrents of rain, has led to the deaths of at least 51 people in the city of La Plata, where flooding submerged cars and sent people scrambling to rooftops for safety. Flood waters reached two metres in some places, turning roadways in La Plata into a raging river. Authorities said around 2500 people were still unable to return home as they wait for flood waters to subside, and have taken refuge in emergency shelters. "People were taken by surprise, and some didn't have time to escape this deadly trap," Mr Scioli, the provincial governor, said, referring to the speed with which the waters rose. "They were taken by surprise" ... we should ask ourselves why we are always tormented by the changes in the weather such as untimely rains. 

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

Despite all this advancement, at every moment everyone is suffering due to at least one of the following threefold miseries: (1) Miseries caused by one's own mind and body (adhyatmika klesha). (2) Miseries caused by other living entities (adhibhautika klesha). (3) Miseries caused by nature (adhidaivika klesha): Floods, droughts, famines, earthquakes, hurricanes etc. ... Each person spends every moment preserving their life, belongings, kith and kin, job or post, reputation etc. But the world we live in, takes all these away eventually despite our efforts to hold on to them. Thus a wise person should ponder, "Why should our lives be ridden with the anxiety of facing and tackling one problem after another? Is this all that life is meant for? Or is there a life of eternal joy that is never inhibited by sufferings?" 

Śrīpad Radheshyam Das Prabhu :
“Discover Your Self”
‘Vedic Wisdom’ - ‘Cause of Suffering’
Director, ISKCON Youth Forum, Pune President, ISKCON, Pune.
http://nitaaiveda.com/Soul_Science_God_Philosophy/Discover_Your_Self.htm

Published by dasavatara das - "Vedic Views on World News"
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