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Top political and financial leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos say recent natural disasters, along with Obama’s inauguration announcement that he is making the battle against rising temperatures a pillar of his second term, could rev up the glacially slow climate pact negotiations and revive fund–raising for global action to cool the planet.
A new report on global religious identity shows that, while Christians and Muslims make up the two largest groups, those with no religious affiliation – including atheists and agnostics – are now the third–largest religious group in the world. The study, released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, found that more than 8 in 10 (84%) of the world’s 7 billion people adhere to some form of religion. Christians make up the largest group, with 2.2 billion adherents, or 32%, worldwide, followed by the Muslims, with 1.6 billion adherents, or 23%, worldwide.
A statement signed by over 60 environmental, development and farming groups calls for pension funds and other financial institutions to stop land grabbing. “Africa, Asia and Latin America are seeing an acceleration of land grabbing at a rate not seen since colonial times,” says Nyikaw Ochalla of the Anuak people from Ethiopia, whose livelihoods are threatened by land grabs of foreign companies. “Land is the lifeline of hunter–gatherers, pastoralists, fishing and farming communities in the Ethiopian lands targeted by a land grabbing policy. It is a myth that our lands are ‘wastelands,’ only suitable for commercial agricultural development.” Land grabbing by pension funds and other financial institutions must be stopped.
Families of missing activists have urged the government to immediately implement a new law that criminalizes enforced disappearances. Bayan Intise, son of a couple believed to have been abducted by state agents, said the challenge for the government is to prove that it can end abductions of people by agents of the state.
Efforts to end urban poverty are failing because policymakers in aid agencies and in governments do not always understand it, asserts a new book by experts from the International Institute for Environment and Development.
In 2010 and 2009, Kenya lost a whopping 5.8 billion Kenya shillings (US$68 million) and 6.6 billion shillings ($77 million), respectively, to deforestation, a new report released by the government and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) reveals. This is despite the fact that forestry–related commercial activities brought just 1.3 billion shillings into the national economy in the same period.
The Catholic girls’ school of the Sisters of the Presentation in Sangota, in the heart of the Swat valley (province of Khyber–Pakhtunkhwa), “reopened a few months ago. It has more than 200 enrollees and is in the process of complete reconstruction” said Sister Riffat Sadiq, part of the team of educators, formerly headmistress of the same school. The institute, founded in 1962, was forced to close in 2007 and, in 2009, was destroyed by the Taliban, who then ruled the valley. In the campaign against female education, Taliban groups forced the closure of more than 400 schools and 150 were destroyed or affected by the bombings. In the Spring of 2012, the school of the Sisters of the Presentation – whose specific charisma is to work for education – has reopened. In a few months, enrollment has risen up to 200 “but as soon as more classrooms are completed, there will be a lot more,” notes Sister Riffat, remembering that before the forced closure, the school had over 1,000 girl students.
It is a story of true holiness and manipulated documents, told by Gianni Gennari in his new book “Teresa di Lisieux, il fascino della santità. I segreti di una “dottrina” ritrovata” (Thérèse of Lisieux, The appeal of Sainthood. The secrets of a rediscovered “doctrine” – Lindau publishers). And one recounted in meticulous detail and inspired by documents that remained unpublished until now. The volume reconstructs the life of an extraordinary woman. Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus is remembered by the faithful as the “little saint” and is identified with the “spiritual infancy” described in Matthew’s Gospel: “If you do not change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” And, yet, Thérèse Françoise Marie Martin, who died in the Carmel of Lisieux at the tender age of 24 in September 1897 and was canonized by Pius XI in 1925, never used the expression “spiritual infancy” in her original writings.
The Indian Embassy in Beijing has begun stamping Chinese visas with a map showing disputed border territory between the two countries as belonging to India. The move comes in apparent retaliation to China’s newly–revised passports, which shows Arunachal Pradesh State and the Himalayan region of Aksai Chin as Chinese territories. India’s External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid has described the Chinese passport map as “unacceptable.” China is a longtime weapons supplier to Pakistan and, as such, is viewed in New Delhi with deep suspicion. While for Beijing, the presence on Indian soil of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and 120,000 other exiles from Tibet, is a source of resentment.
Israel tops the list of the world’s most militarized nations, according to the latest Global Militarization Index released by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC). At number 34, Israel’s main regional rival, Iran, is far behind. Indeed, every other Near Eastern country, with the exceptions of Yemen (37) and Qatar (43), is more heavily militarized than the Islamic Republic, according to the Index, whose research is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
