The giant pink wedding cake of a building stands in bold contrast to nearby houses painted polite Northwest shades of beige and taupe.

Naresh Bhatt beams as he gives a tour of this new temple in Sammamish. He chose the colors. Happy, blissful colors, he says.

Inside, as the service begins, Bhatt joins his wife, two daughters and many others — most of Indian descent — who chant exuberantly: "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare."

When Ananta-Rupa Dasa and Arudha Dasi enrolled their five-year-old son Radhika Ramana in a private school, they expected impressive results. But sitting in on his math class, Arudha noticed that although he had finished his work, his teacher was too busy with her other students to challenge him further, and he was bored with nothing to do. Most schools, Arudha realized, cater to the needs of average students – above average children were bored, and below average children were frustrated.

Tattoos have been inked permanently into modern culture. Walk down any busy city street and you'll spot a vast number of tattooees, ranging all the way from the young female professional with a butterfly on her shoulder blade to the wild punk rocker with hardly any space left for his white skin to shine. For some reason, having an unremovable image of a two-headed dragon eating its own face sprawled across their chest until their dying breath is an idea that appeals to a lot of people. National Geographic News reported in April 2000 that fifteen per cent of Americans were tattooed. That's around forty million people.

Now, surely a Hare Krsna devotee would be the last person you'd expect to see among those forty million, right?

Reincarnation, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is "rebirth in new bodies or forms of life; especially: a rebirth of a soul in a new human body." This ancient belief, a core belief of more than 800 million Hindus, has been in the news, most recently because of allegations in Andrew Morton's new book, "Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography."

PURI: Chief priest Sri Jagannath Temple Laxmi Narayan Patjoshi Mohapatra died of cardiac arrest here today triggering uncertainty over his successor as his son is a minor to be anointed to the hereditary post. Mohapatra, who was only 32, was ill for some time. He is survived by wife, daughter and son.

Bhaktivedanta Manor Krishna Temple situated in the Hertfordshire countryside will attract over 65,000 people over two days during this Bank Holiday weekend to celebrate the 5000 year-old Indian festival of Janmashtami.

The kitchens of the Temple will be working 24 hours to prepare free vegetarian meals of everyone who comes the festival.

Devotees visiting the New Raman Reti community in Alachua, Florida this Janmastami are in for a special treat.

First introduced in 2007, the Village of Vrindavana is a miniature version of the real Indian holy place. It was created by second generation devotee Raghunatha Zaldivar and his friends, who set to work when they found themselves still buzzing with creative energy after last year’s youth festival, Alachua Kuli Mela.

A new book entitled 'No Time to Slumber for the Hindu Tiger' by Mr Frank Ward, will be launched and blessed on Sunday 24th August during Bhaktivedanta Manor's famous Janmastami festival, in Aldenham near Watford, Herts.
The book is a personal and vivid account of the epic pioneering struggle against the persecution and intimidation of Bhaktivedanta Manor by its local Council, with support by the central government of the day.

Although the reaction to my newly published book on kirtan has been overwhelmingly positive, I have received several letters expressing an entirely predictable ISKCON concern. One letter in particular sums up the all-too-conservative reservation: “I love the new book but I wonder about ‘milk touched by the lips of a serpent.’ I refer, of course, to the non-ISKCON people represented in your book. Shouldn’t we only hear from authorized representatives who embody the mood of Lord Chaitanya?”

When it comes to education, ISKCON has learned a lot.

In the sixties and seventies, when our society was but a tottering toddler itself, we had young children with an undeniable need: to be educated. Not even considering outside schools as an option, we began to teach them ourselves without first educating teachers.

Religious movements are historical, sociological, philosophical, and hopefully, divine phenomenon. They are also the sum total of the contributions, influence and sacrifices of many men and women, both big and small.

In the history yet to be written of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, (ISKCON) many persons will be noted for their contributions, both positive and negative, to this great social enterprise.

Here are three different recipes for eggless mayonnaise, lifted from my first cookbook 'Great Vegetarian Dishes'.

The first recipe uses condensed milk as the base and is a sweet mayonnaise. The second recipe calls for evaporated milk, and the third is a dairy-free variety featuring pureed tofu.

Plenty of hard work and searching has paid off for ISKCON devotees in sunny Orlando, Florida with their recent acquisition of a large house and seven-acre property. Set on the east side of town, and well connected by main roads, the house has been converted into a temple with an ornate altar, large temple room, two kitchens, prasadam hall and three bedrooms for devotee accommodation.

A new tradition has been born from the desert floor like a phoenix, and the fire of devotion continues to burn as Krishna Camp once again descends on Burning Man 2008, the annual festival of all things alternative, creative, and progressive, which ensues this year, as always, from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.

Anuttama Das, a member of the Guru Services Committee, reported that the committee had been studying how to help prepare devotees to serve Srila Prabhupada as initiating and instructing spiritual masters. The committee also considered how to offer support and peer association for devotees currently serving as gurus.

Laksa is a taste sensation—a delicious one-pot soupy combination of mild, chili-hot, rich, aromatic and delicate flavours, and a tantalising combination of crunchy, soft and milky textures. There are many versions of laksa served throughout the Malaysian peninsula. This is my hearty vegetarian version.

NASA scientists are struggling to process the soil that the Phoenix Mars Lander scooped from the Red Planet's surface, finding that the Martian dirt was too clumpy to sift into the spacecraft's onboard laboratory.

The scientists called it an important day last week when the Phoenix's robotic arm scraped its first, cup-sized sample from the planet's surface, but since then have been unable to get any of the clotted soil through a screen into the lander's Thermal Evolved Gas Analyser (TEGA).

Karasai district officials brought busloads of laborers and police officers with them, indiscriminately taking crowbars and sledgehammers to the homes. They threw personal possessions out into the street, even as the horrified devotees pleaded with them and begged for mercy. Mechanical diggers then moved in, literally “crushing the houses to dust.”

His Holiness BB Govinda Swami and Anuttama Dasa are in Washington, DC this week to raise awareness about the crisis in Kazakhstan, meeting with high-ranking US officials and human rights advocates. Govinda Swami is also collecting funds for the newly displaced devotees.

Next year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On The Origin Of Species. The momentous occasion will be celebrated with new books, articles, documentaries and editorials. One commentator has called for a public holiday in Britain to honour Darwin - the "humble Shrewsbury family man who changed the world forever".