According to news reports, the University of California in Los Angeles yielded to media pressure and agreed to allow a graduating student to thank Jesus in her personal statement. UCLA student Christina Popa claimed the school's Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology was denying her freedom of speech when a faculty advisor told her that she could not mention "Jesus" in her graduation remarks.

Eating a curry once or twice a week could help prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease and dementia, a US researcher suggests.

The key ingredient is curcumin, a component of the spice turmeric.

Curcumin appears to prevent the spread of amyloid protein plaques - thought to cause dementia - in the brain.

TIRUPATI: Karnataka tourism minister and Bellary mine baron Gali Janardhan Reddy will probably be better known for something else: with an offering of a diamond-studded crown worth US$8.8 million crore, he became the biggest donor to Lord Venkateswara at Tirupati since the Vijayanagara kings 400 years ago.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — The debate over the so-called Aryan invasion of India was at the core of an international conference, “The Sindhu-Sarasvati Valley Civilization: A Reappraisal,” held Feb. 21 and 21 at Loyola Marymount University here.

OAK BROOK, Ill. — Six days a week, in fair weather and foul, two-dozen door-to-door salesmen, all of whom live clustered together in an apartment complex in this suburb west of Chicago, pile into S.U.V.’s and cars and head into the big city, bent on sales of home security systems.

And on Sunday, their one day off, they drive together to the nearest house of worship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Mathura: It could be a page from history, but it turns out to be a lesson in civics. As an NGO embarks upon restoring water bodies in the area of land known as Brajbhoomi, folklore and legend form the route to some serious green activity. Centred in Mathura-Agra, Brajbhoomi, or Lord Krishna’s land, stretches to the north till Gurgaon in Haryana and Bharatpur in Rajasthan to the west.

The appointment of renowned "anti-cultists" and controversial scholars of Islam to a government body allocated sweeping powers to investigate religious organisations has provoked an unprecedented outcry from many religious representatives and human rights defenders, Forum 18 News Service notes.

Particularly striking opposition to the Justice Ministry's Expert Council for Conducting State Religious-Studies Expert Analysis has come from the Union of Old Believer Theologians, a group not directly threatened.

Reporting from Cairo -- President Obama's sweeping call Thursday for a "new beginning" between the United States and the Islamic world was greeted by Muslims of many countries as a conciliatory gesture aimed at setting aside suspicion and moving ahead on problems that include terrorism and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

A Full Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court today held that courts could enter into “religious thicket” in case of a conflict.

Comprising Justice JS Khehar, Justice Jasbir Singh and Justice Ajay Kumar Mittal, the Bench also concluded that “maintaining hair unshorn was an essential component of the Sikh religion”; and that admissions under the Sikh minority community quota could be restricted to candidates maintaining “Sikhi swarup” or keeping their hair unshorn.

The appointment of renowned "anti-cultists" and controversial scholars of Islam to a Russian government body allocated sweeping powers to investigate religious organisations may prove the heaviest blow to religious freedom in a decade, Forum 18 News Service notes.

Religious groups are to be forced to accept homosexual youth workers, secretaries and other staff, even if their faith holds same-sex relationships to be sinful.

Christian organisations fear that the tightened legislation, which is due to come into force next year, will undermine the integrity of churches and dilute their moral message.

On the bouncy play platform outside Ghent's 15th century slaughterhouse, the banana was thumping the beefsteak.

The two boys battled in the drizzle yesterday, the one in the fruity yellow costume serving up another veggie victory over his rival in bloody scarlet.

The parent onlookers laughed and munched another soya fritter.

Meditation has been practiced for centuries, as a way to calm the soul and bring about inner peace. According to a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, there is now evidence that a specific method of meditation may temporarily boost our visuospatial abilities (for example, the ability to retain an image in visual memory for a long time). That is, the meditation allows practitioners to access a heightened state of visual-spatial awareness that lasts for a limited period of time.

Salem, Massachusetts, USA - Salem and North Shore residents may be heading into summer and looking forward to some much-anticipated beach weather, but Salem Vegan Society’s director has his sights set on Thanksgiving 2009.

SVS Founder/Director Marc Delaney, now in the process of preparing for the fourth annual Salem Vegan Food Drive to benefit the Salem Mission this June, has just received a special vegan product donation from Vegan Food Drive corporate sponsor Turtle Island Foods, the makers of the vegan turkey-alternative product, Tofurky.

The Belgian city of Ghent is about to become the first in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week.

Starting this week there will be a regular weekly meatless day, in which civil servants and elected councilors will opt for vegetarian meals.

Ghent means to recognize the impact of livestock on the environment.

Developed at Rs 50 crore, Little Krishna is a first in terms of the technical and creative quality it offers.

The Indian animation industry, which has so far played the ‘low-cost talent’ as its trump card to bag execution of internationally-conceptualised projects, has reason to cheer. It’s first locally conceptualised and developed 3-D animated television series, Little Krishna, is scheduled to go on air from May 11 on Nick.

Push-ups, crunches, gyms, personal trainers -- people have many strategies for building bigger muscles and stronger bones. But what can one do to build a bigger brain? Meditate.

That's the finding from a group of researchers at UCLA who used high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of people who meditate.

A study of why people change religious affiliations, released this week by the Pew Forum for Religion & Public Life, found that more than half of Americans have changed faiths in their lifetime. Sixteen percent of the population is not affiliated with a religion, according to the study, but many respondents said they had not found the right religion.

Mrs Obama started work on the kitchen garden with a gang of schoolchildren last month. Media coverage of the first White House food plot since Eleanor Roosevelt "dug for victory" in the Second World War garnered media coverage across the world.

But to the consernation of Big Ag, Mrs Obama has said the project will not use chemical products to tackle pests or give her plants a boost, the Times reports.

There was a time when red meat was a luxury for ordinary Americans, or was at least something special: cooking a roast for Sunday dinner, ordering a steak at a restaurant. Not anymore. Meat consumption has more than doubled in the United States in the last 50 years.

Now a new study of more than 500,000 Americans has provided the best evidence yet that our affinity for red meat has exacted a hefty price on our health and limited our longevity.