Browsing Tag: News

An army of workers, their faces encrusted with dust, toils beside a story-high pile of unfired bricks. They are helping build a new India that appears to be leaving them behind. From sunup to sundown they spend their time pouring wet mud into molds, lugging them to the kiln, firing them and then pulling them out. For their backbreaking work, they do not receive any wages.

Eighty-odd kilometres from Delhi, past lush mustard fields, stand a few crumbling structures in village Hondh-Chillar. A dove coos plaintively and one may be tempted to soak in the rural freshness, but for the horror that unfolded at the spot in 1984. A group of Sikh men, women and villagers praying at the ruins of a gurudwara catches attention.

India's tortuously slow and corrupt legal and police investigation structure was insurance against them being caught, although since the mid 1990s a handful of convictions had occurred but under pressure from overseas authorities.

After moving to the UK in the 1960s, Mrs Kaur became well known within the city’s Sikh community, for her vast knowledge on the Sikh culture and was seen as a leading figure within the community.

Scientists are untangling how the tiniest pollution particles – which we take in with every breath we breathe – affect our health, making people more vulnerable to cardiovascular and respiratory problems. While scientists know that air pollution can aggravate heart problems, showing exactly how it does so has been challenging.

A move by farmers in developing countries to ecological agriculture, away from chemical fertilisers and pesticides, could double food production within a decade, a UN report says. Insect-trapping plants in Kenya and ducks eating weeds in Bangladesh's rice paddies are among examples of recommendations for feeding the world's 7 billion people....

According to the school board, only 30 per cent of kids who go to school in Morinville identify themselves as Catholic. That means 70 per cent of the students in the community, a significant majority, are compelled to go to a Catholic school even though they are non-Catholics. The school division does allow children to be exempted from formal religion classes, but nonetheless, Catholicism necessarily pervades the curriculum and the ethos of the school.

"Stop by our niece's place and you'll see a framed newspaper photograph of Satwender and me batting together for Tamil Nadu, in the Gopalan Trophy in Sri Lanka, in the 60s. Tamil Nadu had lost a few wickets for a low score when my brother and I got together, and we batted the team out of trouble. The piece is headlined 'When the Sikhs go marching in,'" he says, brimming with pride.

Item number three on the sign above the departure gate at Chandigarh Airport was a bit of a worry: “Note: Sikh passengers have been permitted to carry a Kirpan (up to 6-inch blade and 3-inch handle) in domestic flights only.”