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from Expert Zone:
From Bhagalpur to Boisar
(The views expressed in this column are the author's own and do not represent those of Reuters)
What is common between the movie "Gangaajal" and the television soap opera "Afsar Bitiya"? It's Bhagalpur.
This city in Bihar became infamous some decades ago because of what came to be known as the Bhagalpur blindings case of 1980.
However, its real star is its silk industry, best known for Bhagalpur silk or Tussar. Few know that Bhagalpur is equally famous for its mangoes.
from Photographers Blog:
Russia’s untouchables
By Denis Sinyakov
I don’t remember a time when Moscow hasn’t been flooded with them - migrants from Central Asia.
When I moved here in 1997 they were already here. They had started appearing more than 20 years ago, the time when the Soviet Union was falling apart. Some fled civil wars, but more often they were escaping the awful economic situation in their homelands. Not exactly an escape, but they came to make some money, leaving their families at home. The economic situation in Russia even now isn't enviable, at the beginning of the 1990’s it was woeful, but none the less better than there.
from Photographers Blog:
Jugderdem’s backyard
By Carlos Barria
Two-year-old Jugderdem Myagmarsuren opens the door of his tent to play with his plastic scooter in the backyard. He is accompanied by sheep and cows. This is not an ordinary backyard. It’s the Mongolian steppe, and his closest friends might live more than two kms (1.2 miles) away.
While the world’s population reached 7 billion on October 31st, 2011, Mongolia remains the least densely populated country on the planet, with 2.7 million people spread across an area three times the size of France. Two-fifths of Mongolians live in rural areas spread over wind swept steppes.
from FaithWorld:
Will Pew Muslim birth rate study finally silence the “Eurabia” claim?
(Photo: Muslims who could not fit into a small Paris mosque pray in the street, a practice the French far-right has compared to the Nazi occupation, December 17, 2010/Charles Platiau)
One of the most wrong-headed arguments in the debate about Muslims in Europe is the shrill "Eurabia" claim that high birth rates and immigration will make Muslims the majority on the continent within a few decades. Based on sleight-of-hand statistics, this scaremongering (as The Economist called it back in 2006) paints a picture of a triumphant Islam dominating a Europe that has lost its Christian roots and is blind to its looming cultural demise.
from FaithWorld:
250 years of integration vs debate over Muslims in Germany
Percy MacLean can call on 250 years of experience to weigh up how immigrants integrate in Germany. Since his Scottish ancestor arrived in 1753, the family has produced mayors, members of parliament and even a Nazi.
Today, the 63-year-old MacLean, a chief judge in Berlin's administrative court, says Germany risks losing the openness that allowed his family to flourish for generations because of a divisive national debate over the integration of Muslims.
from Global News Journal:
Is Kosovo ready for visa-free travel to the European Union?
Weeks before a parliamentary election in Kosovo that could decide the course of democratic reforms there, the European Union is struggling to decide whether to offer Pristina encouragement or reproach.
The country, a former breakaway province of Serbia, is the poorest and smallest in the Balkans and riddled with problems. Unemployment rates are near 50 percent, state institutions are weak and per capita income is just $2,500 -- one of the lowest in Europe. Five EU members do not even recognise it as a state. Yet it may also hold the key to stability in a region marked by decades of ethnic conflict.
from FaithWorld:
Germany holds inflamed debate on Islam and migration
Germany's inflamed public debate about Islam and integration risks serious overheating as politicians compete to make ever tougher statements criticizing Muslims immigrants they accuse of refusing to fit in here.
The escalating row, sparked off when a Bundesbank board member slammed Muslims as dim-witted welfare spongers, has mixed some social problems and some Muslim customs into a vision of Islam as a looming menace to German society.
from Environment Forum:
Climate change making U.S. forests quieter?
Add quieter U.S. forests, woods, and backyards to the list of changes our lives could face from climate change. A piece by my colleague Deborah Zabarenko explores the movement of American birds northward, sometimes hundreds of miles into Canada.
An Audubon Society study of citizen observations that took place over 40 years found that 58 percent of 305 bird species found on the continental U.S. shifted significantly to the north as temperatures warmed. Forest and feeders birds, like finches and chickadees, moved deep into the Canadian Boreal Forest.
