ONLY ONE LOTTERY A WEEK

New Delhi, Nov 27 (IANS) The Supreme Court Friday asked the West Bengal and Sikkim governments to ensure that their various online and other lotteries are drawn only once a week in accordance with the central law on lotteries.

A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justice B.S. Chauhan and Justice K.S.Radhakrishnan asked the two state governments to file a status report on periodicity of the draws of various lotteries in the states.

The bench asked if the two states were duly following and enforcing the Central Lottery Act, 1998, which provides that no lottery will be drawn more than once a week.

The apex court order is likely to heavily affect the lottery business in the two states, by cutting down their periodicity.

The bench's direction came on a lawsuit by a former management student Bibhash Karmakar of Bombay University, who ended up spoiling his career owing to his addiction to the lottery, which he began playing in the hope of earning some extra money to meet his expenditure.

In his lawsuit, Karmakar contended it was a social malady, as tens of thousands of poor people get hooked up to online lotteries in hope of earning millions but end up ruining themselves.

He said online lotteries are drawn virtually every hour n the two states during the day, making the players addicted to them hope that fate may smile on them the next hour.

Karmakar cited the example of a railway coolie, who would often buy lottery tickets worth Rs. 2,000 a day and end up borrowing Rs.10 from Karmakar to pay the bus fare to return home.

His addiction had led him to sell all his wife's gold jewellery worth Rs.200,000.

Arguing his case personally, Karmakar also told the court that he often found sex workers, spending their earnings, on the lottery.

STRANGE OBJECTS IN SIKKIM

SE, GANGTOK, November 25: Reports of strange objects being sighted from various locations around Sikkim in the past week have come in.
Eyewitness claim that the strange looking object appears with loud sound and leaves behind a trailing smoke. The whole incident, they said takes place within a blink of a second. One of the eyewitnesses claimed to have shot a picture of strange looking object but later found it to be totally black.
When these eyewitnesses contacted the Police, the latter responded the incident to be Indian Air force’s routine practice of fighter aircrafts.
But the people are confused over how the aircrafts could fly by in mountainous place that too in mid night. The continuous sighting of strange objects in Sikkim skies has left many wandering.
The sighting is mostly done in Southern region of Sikkim, the latest report of sighting being on November 23 when people of Rabongla witnessed followed by similar sighting in Namchi and Salghari on November 24.
A group of enthusiastic sci-fi people have put their assumption for flying objects to be some UFO’s activities while others are looking as a supernatural phenomena power of some god or goddess. There are others who correlate their assumption correlating to end of the world.
When a team of enthusiastic citizen reporters contacted astrophysicist over this issue, the said astrophysicist said that it may be a fragments of the comet which flew in close approach to Earth surface. The tiny fragments of some comets from the space on entering  earth’s atmosphere in tremendous speed gets ignited like a fireball which makes a rumbling sound, people should not get frightened since this phenomena usually takes place and is natural cosmic event, the astrophysicist said.(VoiceofSikkim) Jesuit Programme Breaks culture of ViolenceBhutanusa.com/Source:UCAN,DAMAK, Nepal : The Jesuit Refugee Service(JRS) has stepped in to break a cycle of violence, drug and sexual abuse that had been plaguing thousands of ethnic Nepali youths from Bhutan living in refugee camps in East Nepal.“All kinds of evils were plaguing the camps,” says Jesuit Father Peter Jong Lepcha, program coordinator of Youth Friendly Centres (YFC).

“We realized that there are so many programs being implemented for the refugees in general but nothing for the youth as such.” The YFC program is part of the Jesuit Refugee Service’s (JRS) Bhutanese Refugee Education Program, supported by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and Caritas Nepal.

Ganesh Pradhan 37, in charge of the YFC program in Sanischare refugee camp told UCA that the initiative has given the youths a platform to develop their skills and overall personality.

“The various programs under the YFC have changed the lives of the youths here. Instances of violence that existed earlier, the drug abuse, the sexual abuse and other problems have gone down dramatically,” he said.

The Bhutanese of Nepali origin — known as Lhotsampas — are caught in a no man’s land.

Thousands fled Bhutan fearing for their lives after new citizenship rules were introduced about two decades ago. The government says the refugees are migrants and have no right to live in Bhutan.

The refugees believe their only options are settling down in foreign countries or repatriation to the homeland they still love. Sun Maya Tamang, 39, wants to go back to her homeland in Bhutan, but she says she still has not made up her mind if she will opt for a third-country resettlement.

“I may just opt for it, I am not sure,” she said. “I still feel bad about leaving behind, 18 years ago, the home, the farmland we had, and the happy memories.”According to the JRS, there are now more than 108,000 refugees living in the seven camps in East Nepal. JRS field director Father PS Amalraj, told UCA News that young people are vital to conditions in the camps.

“The power of the youth can either build or destroy the refugee camps. Keeping this in mind, we established one youth friendly center in each camp and we now have 14,000 members,” Father Amalraj said. The YFC initiative consists of education in journalism, television presenting, sports, music and awareness of HIV/AIDS and other social issues.

An online education program has recently been added to address the growing school drop-out rate in the camps, Father Lepcha says. The UNHCR reported in September that more than 20,000 Bhutanese refugees had been resettled overseas — mostly in the US — with a further 5,000 expected to leave Nepal by the end of 2009.

Govt spends Rs 60 lakh to protect Darj tea brand

New Delhi: The government spends over Rs 60 lakh per annum on legal requirements to protect the `Darjeeling' tea brand globally, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday. This amount is spent to protect the word `Darjeeling' and the logo of the tea produced from that area, minister of state for commerce Jyotiraditya Scindia told the House in a written reply. The government has done pioneering work for the protection of Darjeeling tea, which has been registered as a geographical indication, he said. The tea, produced in the Darjeeling hills of West Bengal, was the first product to be registered in the country under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999. Geographical indication is a sign used on goods that have a specific area origin and possess qualities, reputation or characteristics that are essentially attributable to that region. Geographical indication aims at preventing non-Darjeeling tea from being passed off as Darjeeling tea. About promotion of the premium tea, Scindia said the government has sanctioned an amount of Rs 5.68 crore in the 11th Plan to upgrade the Darjeeling Tea Research and Development Centre as a Centre of Excellence. PIB No Votes for Temple-RAM WITH ROTI IE,Nov 29:Two days before the Lok Sabha discusses the report of the Liberhan Commission of Inquiry into the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Kameshwar Chaupal, who laid the foundation stone for a proposed Ram Mandir at the shilanyas site at Ayodhya in 1989, has said that the Ayodhya movement has lost its electoral appeal. And the BJP, which has to blame itself for it, should have included “roti (livelihood) with Ram.” Chaupal, a Dalit (Paswan, by caste), has been a much-feted swayamsevak in the BJP/RSS, and the Sangh Parivar has always maintained that “his shilanyas act showed that the RSS-BJP’s Hindutva was an inclusive, all-encompassing idea.” “You won’t be able to mobilise voters in the name of Ram or Ayodhya now. The politicisation of the Ram Temple movement proved to be its bane. It should have been left to the religious leaders of both communities. Ram, like Gandhi, Subhash (Chandra Bose) and Patel, is a revered symbol in the country. The symbol of Ram then should not have been reduced to the BJP when leaders from even the Congress, like Dau Dayal Khanna and Karan Singh, were also involved in it,” Chaupal told The Sunday Express today.