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/ 18 April 2006

London: A city for the Asian century

"As so often, a momentous development creates a shorthand. The rise of ‘Bric’, as the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China are known, is, by common political currency, the biggest strategic issue facing Britain. And the implications are cultural as well as economic," writes Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London.

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/ 18 April 2006

An extremist by any other name

One would think the 21st century would be the age of reason and tolerance. Sadly, for the faithful, the era is proving to be as traumatic as the days when it was heresy to dare suggest that the Earth was not the centre of the universe. In France, Muslims are forbidden by law from wearing their scarves at schools and other public spaces, because this offends that country’s proud secular tradition.

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/ 18 April 2006

The dead sea is ‘dying’

The Dead Sea is dying, with the world’s saltiest water body threatened by a lack of fresh water and an increasingly tense political situation, environmentalists have warned. The bare, sun-baked landscape around the Dead Sea has since Biblical times been fed by the Jordan river’s fresh water.

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/ 18 April 2006

Aids kills one child every twenty minutes in Zimbabwe

The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) is embarking on an ambitious programme to improve the health, education and nutrition of vulnerable children in Zimbabwe, where one child dies of HIV/Aids and another is orphaned every 20 minutes. Unicef said it had received a British donation of £22-million (,4-million) to help children facing some of the worst hardships anywhere in the world.

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/ 18 April 2006

Islam and the path of the heart

In describing Islam to others, some Muslim scholars use the analogy of a walnut. The practical, ritual and legal dimensions of the Islamic faith are likened to the outer shell. Inside this shell one finds the animating spiritual core, also known as the Sufi path, which is signified by the inner kernel.

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/ 18 April 2006

Embrace the secular state

”In the midst of what we euphemistically call the ‘cartoon saga’ (which in fact felt like a ‘cartoon nightmare’ to me), I was very happy to live in a secular state with a Constitution enshrining not only freedom of expression, but women’s rights too,” writes the editor of the Mail & Guardian, Ferial Haffajee.

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/ 17 April 2006

Cricket Test evenly poised

A superb 97 by AB de Villiers brought South Africa back into the game on the third day of the first Castle Lager Test against New Zealand at Supersport Park on Monday. At stumps, South Africa had 280 for nine, and an overall lead of 229 runs. South Africa had a disastrous start to their second innings, losing three wickets before they had wiped out their 51 run first innings deficit.

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/ 17 April 2006

Bomber kills nine in Tel Aviv

Nine people were killed and dozens wounded in Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv on Monday when a Palestinian bomber blew himself up in the deadliest suicide attack of the last 20 months. The blast took place hours before the swearing in of the new Israeli Parliament and prompted a pledge by prime minister designate Ehud Olmert that its perpetrators would not go unpunished.