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November 18: Park Bench, Portland Square, Bristol. No, this is no cute address given by some children to their favourite bench. Rather, in the latest demonstration of just how finicky the British can be to minor details, a humble park bench in the town of Bristol, is soon going to have an address. And given its own postcode to boot. This means that if someone sends a letter to the above address, it will reach the Park Bench....
Where: Pune, India February 25, 2010 : On February 13, 2010, a bomb exploded at a popular restaurant in Pune, Maharashtra. Nine people were killed on the spot. At least 40 other people were injured. Since then, seven of them have died. The latest casualty was a 21-year-old Sudanese student who died on February 24. In all five foreigners lost their lives. The German Bakery was a favourite with students and with foreign tourists from the Osho Ashram, Pune’s famous spiritual/mystic centre....
Where: Santiago, Chile April 4, 2009 : Llaima volcano, which is located in Chile’s scenic lake region, erupted on Saturday, 4 April, 2009. It is one of the most active volcanoes in South America. It emitted a river of lava more than 1,000 metres long. People could see bright red bursts of lava in the night sky during the eruptions. Explosions reaching 600 metres above the crater, and falling ash were also visible. The lava and hot gases from the eruption have melted the snow on the sides of the volcano....
October 28: The roots of the present-day education system in India lie in British attempts, more than one and a half century ago, to raise a breed of English-speaking Indians who were ‘babus’ or clerks and could manage the affairs of the British rulers. That is why the study of English has always been stressed in India, even if it is at the expense of the country’s languages. And why English is India’s first language today....
Most people have fond memories of train journeys, though some have unpleasant ones of being left behind at a station, while they waited for a steaming cup of tea or coffee. Many film directors, too, have been fond of shooting action-packed or emotional scenes at railway stations. The famous action scene at the end of the Hollywood Western ‘High Noon’ showed the cowboy hero, Gary Cooper, silencing the villain. In one Indian film after another, the hero and the heroine have rushed across a crowded station to meet each other never to be separated....
Where: Chandigarh, India February 10, 2009 : The Punjab Gold Cup, a four nation hockey tournament, was organized by the state government of Punjab in Chandigarh. Hosts India, captained by Sandeep Singh, got a chance to test their skills against New Zealand, European champions Holland, and world-cum-Olympic champions Germany. The final match went to Holland, who defeated the home team 2-1. This didn’t dampen the spectators’ enthusiasm, though. The myth that only cricket can pull crowds in India was busted....
July 27: Grooms in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district are singing a different tune these days. They are no more asking for jewels or hard cash. No, they haven’t given up on the dowry. Instead they are demanding for something more practical and useful, a wooden boat. Along with it comes the demand for a bride who can swim, says a report in Hindustan Times. The reason for this lies in the floods that hit this area last year and the people are not taking chances anymore....
Where: Copenhagen, Denmark March 12, 2009 : A scientific conference on climate change was held during the week in Copenhagen. Environmental experts there announced that sea levels are rising almost twice as fast as the United Nations had forecast just two years ago. Both the Greenland and the Antarctic ice caps have been melting at increasing rates. Scientists now say that sea levels will rise by anything between 50cm and 100cm by the year 2100. The 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had predicted that they would rise by between 18cm and 59cm by 2100....
Still Going Strong! [Illustration by Anup Singh] December 27: Something momentous happened at London’s West End theatre a few days ago on December 16. A play by famous mystery writer Agatha Christie, The Mousetrap, was staged to a standing ovation yet again. Nothing unusual in that except for one thing. It was the 20,000th stage performance of The Mousetrap. And this makes the play the longest running in the world, having premiered in the year 1952....
July 29: Ivan Vargas is only 14. But he is a messenger of peace for his country, Colombia. He and 100,000 other Colombian children have got together to start the Movement of Children for Peace. All of them want only one thing today – peace in their war-torn country — at any cost. But not having much faith in adults, they have decided to bring it about themselves. And for their efforts, the children’s movement was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize of 1999....
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