now, looking at the hare krishna, a lot of people thought the hare krishnas were some kind of a new age cult when they seemed to emerge on the scene in the '70s, and part of it was just their aggressive proselytizing, but it's another very ancient form of hinduism. now, from the experiential dimension, we're going to meet shankara pundit, who's president of the hare krishna temple in the chicago area. and shankara, who was a seeker - he's an american, was in a rock band, looked for answers to life, picked up some books, picked up the bhagavad gita, picked up the literature from the hare krishna movement, and he found. well, he's going to talk about his own experience as a hare krishna, and so we'll listen to identity and relationship in his comments, but also the joy, the bhakti, the pleasure, the bliss that a hare krishna devotee feels when he calls on the name of god and when he honors the name of god. so let's hear it from the voice of a believer - shankara pundit, hare krishna devotee. >> this chanting consists of three words - hare, krishna, and rama. hare represents the spiritual

krishna. lifts mountains and throws them to the ocean to create bridges. i will tell you the story about a super hero. krishna as a little boy in the village where the trees blow and the water flows and the birds fly and the grass grows, in this village there are cows. and people and they go to the river and they go to get their water. and they go to the river and what do they see? an evil demon is polluting the river. callia. and they can't get water because it's killing the cows and the people. so, they go to krishna and say, please, do something about this this is not good. he says, he thinks about it and says, okay. he takes his friends to the river to play. they play ball. they play with the ball and then by accident or may be not, the ball goes in the -- river. and callia is in the river. krishna is swimming through the dark waters and sees the ball is in the tail of the serpant demon. he sees the ball and the demon is sleeping. so guess what he does? he picksu

. >>> india's foreign minister krishna inaugurated the country's 50th passport center in new delhi on thursday. the new facility is the third in the capital and part of the government's project to open 27 more centers to expedite the process of issuing passports. the new center is designed to process about 1,000 applications every day. some of the documents can be filed online. >>> officials at japan's environment ministry are warning of air pollution by particles that cause respiratory and circulatory diseases. pm 2.5 particles are found in car exhaust fumes and factory smoke. japanese environment ministry officials checked for particles in the air across the country. they say the level was too high, near 90% of major roads and nearly 70% in residential at areas. the officials plan to test the air in more places to find out where the is a particles are coming from and what they're made of. >>> here is now your extended weather forecast. >>> that does it for now. i'm shery ahn. stay tuned for more on nhk stay tuned for more on nhk world. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com . . . .