Millions of Hindus bathe in Ganges to cleanse sins

ALLAHABAD, India (AP) — Millions of devout Hindus led by naked ascetics with ash smeared on their bodies plunged into the frigid waters of India's holy Ganges River on Monday in a ritual they believe can wash away their sins.

The ceremony in the northern city of Allahabad took place on the most auspicious day of the Kumbh Mela, or Pitcher Festival, one of the world's largest religious gatherings that lasts 55 days. The festival continues until March 10.

Top festival official Mani Prasad Mishra said nearly 3 million people had bathed by late morning and 11 million were expected to enter the frigid water by the day's end.

Over 110 million people are expected to take a dip at the Sangam, the place where three rivers — the Ganges, the Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati — come together at the edge of this North Indian city. There are six auspicious bathing days, decided by the alignment of stars, when the Hindu devout bathe to wash away their sins and free themselves from the cycle of death and rebirth.

A sea of humanity assembled on the river bank as people waited patiently for their turn to step into the water. Men in underpants, women in saris and children — naked and clothed — chanted from Hindu scriptures as they walked into the icy-cold water.

The bathing process was initiated by religious heads of different Hindu monasteries who reached the bathing points, called ghats, riding silver chariots. Some were carried on silver palanquins, accompanied by marching bands. Applause rose from tens of thousands of pilgrims waiting behind barricades as the religious heads set off the ceremony.

The heads of the monasteries threw flowers on the devotees as they shouted "har har gangey," or Long Live Ganges.

The biggest spectacle was that of the Naga sadhus, or ascetics, who raced to the river wearing only marigold garlands in a cacophony of religious chants.

About 50,000 policemen have been deployed to keep order at the festival, fearing everything from terrorist attacks to the ever-present danger of stampedes of pilgrims. Several squads policemen on horseback regulated the flow of pilgrims to and from the bathing ghats.

According to Hindu mythology, the Kumbh Mela celebrates the victory of gods over demons in a furious battle over a nectar that would give them immortality.

As one of the gods fled with a pitcher of the nectar across the skies, it spilled on four Indian towns- Allahabad, Nasik, Ujjain and Haridwar. The Kumbh Mela is organized four times every 12 years in those towns. Hindus believe that sins accumulated in past and current lives require them to continue the cycle of death and rebirth until they are cleansed. If they bathe at Ganges on the most auspicious day of the festival, believers say they can rid themselves of their sins.

Tens of thousands of pilgrims slept the night on the vast festival grounds in more than 1 million tents — green, blue, and brown — erected all over, while many huddled together under trees. Some 20,000 makeshift toilets have been have been erected, while 10,000 sweepers have been deployed to keep this make-shift tent town clean.

• by Beth Buczynski
• January 13, 2013
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Blind Russian girl criticizes adoption ban

MOSCOW (AP) — A blind Russian high-schooler's impassioned criticism of the ban on adoption by Americans has added a new and compelling voice to the chorus of condemnation of the law.

Since her Jan. 6 blog entry complaining about the ban, written as an open letter to President Vladimir Putin, Natasha Pisarenko has attracted the wide attention of Russian media and, she fears, drawn the disapproving notice of authorities.

The adoption ban, which went into effect Jan. 1, is one of the most controversial moves of the first year of Putin's third term in the Kremlin. It was enacted as part of a bill retaliating for a new U.S. law that calls for sanctions against Russians deemed to be human rights violators.

But critics say it punishes innocent children by denying them a chance of escaping Russia's often-dismal orphanages. Around 20,000 people held a protest march against the measure in Moscow on Sunday that included banners likening Putin to King Herod, whom the Bible says ordered the massacre of Jewish male infants.

Pisarenko wrote sarcastically that by signing the law, Putin was "saving children from American evil" and said that Russians rarely adopt disabled children because the country's medical system is backward and can't take care of them.

"They die because Russia doesn't have modern medicine," she wrote.

Pisarenko, blind from birth, writes that she has painful personal experience with Russia's medical inadequacy. She says that although her father detected her blindness within days of her birth, Russian doctors were unable to diagnose it for months. But, she says, she received precise diagnosis and the hope of treatment from German and American doctors.

"For Russian doctors, I am a child with an illness of unknown etiology ... but in Germany and America I am a patient whose sight the doctors are trying to restore," she wrote.

Concluding her post, Pisarenko called on Putin to adopt five or 10 children with serious congenital disorders.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by a local radio station as saying "Of course we will pay attention to such a statement.

"This girl is well known to us, she's known by the regional authorities and by the health ministry," he said.

Pisarenko and her parents have challenged authorities before, according to Russian media, notably when her parents agitated to have her educated at a regular school in her native Rostov-on-Don, rather than sending her away to a school for the blind. She's now in 10th grade, one year short of graduation under the Russian system.

In a later post, she expressed worry that her letter would cause her parents to be called in for questioning by regional authorities.

When The Associated Press on Monday asked her father, Nikolai, if Natasha could be interviewed, he said he had been ordered not to comment to news media, but declined to say who issued the order.

"Probably, I will regret that I wrote what I think," Natasha wrote in her blog on Saturday.

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Obama to gun-control foes: Examine your conscience

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 7 hrs ago

President Barack Obama speaks about the debt limit in the East Room of the White House on Jan. 14, 2013. (Carolyn …Bringing the curtain down on his first term with a combative press conference, President Barack Obama vowed on Monday to push "vigorously" for measures to curb deadly gun violence and pressed foes of new restrictions in the aftermath of the Newtown tragedy to "examine their own conscience." Obama also admitted he faced stiff opposition from gun-rights advocates in Congress and vowed executive action when possible.

The president, due to be sworn in on Sunday and make his inaugural address from the Capitol steps a day later, also warned Republicans against refusing to raise the nation's debt limit in order to wring spending cuts from the White House. "We are not a deadbeat nation," Obama said.

And he defended himself from criticisms that his nominees to serve in his second-term Cabinet have mostly been older white men, urging Americans not to "rush to judgment" based on his picks to lead the departments of State, Defense and Treasury and the CIA.

"Until you’ve seen what my overall team looks like, it’s premature to assume that somehow we’re going backwards," he said. "We’re not going backwards."

One month to the day after the elementary school slaughter in Connecticut, the president said he had received recommendations from Vice President Joe Biden's task force for curbing a national epidemic of gun violence. Those proposals are expected to face opposition from gun-rights groups like the NRA and its allies in Congress.

The Biden task force has "presented me now with a list of sensible, common-sense steps that can be taken to make sure that the kinds of violence we saw in Newtown doesn’t happen again," he told reporters. “I’ll present the details later in the week.”

He added, “My starting point is not to worry about the politics. My starting point is to focus on what makes sense, what works, what should we be doing to make sure that our children are safe and that we’re reducing the incidence of gun violence. I think we can do that in a sensible way that comports with the Second Amendment.”

But will Congress adopt proposals like renewing the assault weapons ban? “I don’t know,” Obama acknowledged. Lawmakers opposed to such steps must "examine their own conscience." In some cases, Congress won't act but he will, the president said.

“I’m confident that there are some steps that we can take that don’t require legislation and are within my authority as president," he said. "How we are gathering data, for example, on guns that fall into the hands of criminals and how we track that more effectively.”

Asked about the surge in gun and ammunition sales, Obama blamed "a fear that's been fanned" by opponents of gun control.

“We’ve seen—for some time now—that those who oppose any common-sense gun-control or gun-safety measures have a pretty effective way of ginning up fear on the part of gun owners that somehow the federal government’s about to take all your guns away," he said. "There’s probably an economic element to that—it obviously is good for business."

He added that "responsible gun owners—people who have a gun for protection, for hunting, for sportsmanship—they don’t have anything to worry about."

Obama also warned congressional Republicans that he will not trade spending cuts for their votes to raise the country’s debt ceiling.

Obama called Republican talk of not raising the limit—of, in effect, not paying the country’s bills—“irresponsible” and “absurd.” He said the GOP will “not collect a ransom in return for not crashing the economy."

“You don’t go out to dinner and then eat all you want and then leave without paying the check—and if you do you’re breaking the law," he said. “If Congress wants to have a debate about maybe we shouldn’t go out to dinner next time, maybe we should go to a more modest restaurant, that’s fine. That’s a debate that we should have. But you don’t say, 'In order for me to control my appetites, I’m going to not pay.'"

Even as Obama spoke, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement that "the president and his allies need to get serious about spending, and the debt-limit debate is the perfect time for it."

And Republican House Speaker John Boehner warned that "the consequences of failing to increase the debt ceiling are real, but so, too, are the consequences of allowing our spending problem to go unresolved." He added: "The House will do its job and pass responsible legislation that controls spending, meets our nation’s obligations and keeps the government running."

At issue is the congressionally established debt limit, which the country is set to reach shortly. Without additional borrowing, the government will not be able to pay all of its bills, raising the prospect of a default on national debt payments or Washington being forced to stop issuing Social Security checks, pay to troops overseas and other legally required outlays, according to Obama. Either option would likely send shock waves through the fragile global economy.

Raising the debt limit was mostly a matter of routine in Washington under presidents of both parties for decades. The opposition would make a big show of wringing its hands over the nation’s finances (as a senator in 2006, Obama himself called it “a sign of leadership failure" and voted against raising it), and the majority would find a way to pass it.

Republicans broke sharply from that script in August 2011, when they demanded spending cuts equal to the amount that the limit would be raised. The ensuing standoff brought the nation to the brink of default and led to the first-ever downgrade of the country’s credit rating—but also to historic spending cuts, signed into law by Obama. Top Republican lawmakers have said publicly that this time they may be willing to partially shut down the government to secure more reductions.

“Our economy is growing and our businesses are creating new jobs, so we are poised for a good year if we make smart decisions and sound investments” and so long as Washington politics “don’t get in the way,” the president said.