In the hullaballoo over China’s plan to censor Internet, the media seems to have ignored the Australian government has similar plans. Now Google and Yahoo have joined Australian organizations calling for a “rethink” of the country’s Internet filter plans. The Australian government has announced proposals to introduce a mandatory filter which would block what it calls ‘Refused Classification Content’.
The Ugandan government has charged a Catholic evangelist in the northern part of the country for giving false information to the BBC. The head of the country’s Anti Human Sacrifice and Trafficking Task Force, Moses Binoga, told the Ugandan daily New Vision that Pollino had confessed he lied about human sacrifice for monetary gains. “Pollino said the information he gave was baseless,” Binoga said.
An ancient artefact is at the centre of a diplomatic row between Iran and the UK. Iran’s national museum has threatened to cut all ties with the British Museum to protest a decision to delay the loan of an ancient Persian treasure. The Cyrus Cylinder dates back to the 6th Century BC and is regarded as the world’s first declaration of rights.
Shaking hands with Ramchandra Das is like clasping a stone. His hands are callused by 11 years of cutting a hill to build a road all by himself. Das’s only companions were a hammer and a spade.
Lakshmi Prasad brought his hands together to go around the palm-tree trunk, pulled one foot in front of the other, and smiled for the camera. His toes kept up the pressure on the trunk with an alacrity belying his 73 years and Prasad crawled up alternately moving his feet and hands.
The population of India would double over the next 20 years; almost all its cities would experience a twofold expansion during this period. No part of the world has ever seen such staggering urban growth.
In 1851, American writer Herman Melville wrote a novel that was then slammed as an apogee of American romanticism. A hundred and fifty years later, Moby Dick, the novel in question, appears wonderfully prescient. Now regarded as the Great American Novel, Moby Dic k is about the adventures of the wandering sailor Ishmael and his voyage on whaleship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab.
It is a common signboard on Indian roads: Caution, men at work. It connotes everything from a nuisance for the motorist to profit for the contractors, from infrastructure addition to government reports to seasonal employment for migrant labourers. It is a space where societies clash, build and destroy.
