Word: religion
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...last 18 months have seen a growing number of arrests, detentions, prison sentences and other measures apparently aimed at heading off greater freedom of expression, not just in the arts, but in religion, the Internet and both the foreign and state-run media. Last week, reporter Ching Cheong was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly spying for the government of Taiwan, a charge his family and lawyers say is unfounded. The Hong Kong-born journalist was working for the Singapore Straits Times when he was arrested. A few days earlier, Zhao Yan, a researcher in the New York...
...sentiments are increasingly heard throughout Asia, where mounting prosperity and changing attitudes toward charity are altering the ways the wealthy give back to society. Charitable donations in the region have traditionally tended to be a private affair, with the rich quietly giving directly to needy individuals within a family, religion or village network. Now, with tens of thousands of Asians amassing fortunes so large they can no longer responsibly give away substantial sums on a personal, ad hoc basis, professionally run philanthropic foundations like those that arose in the West in the late 19th century are coming to the fore...
...What Pakistan needs is compromise: between provinces, between religion and secularism, between the desire for growth and the imperative to check inflation, between us and our neighbors. But a government led by a President in a soldier's uniform has proven ill-suited to striking compromises. So we must try the alternative: a return to democracy, with its inherent horse trading, messiness, and false starts. Such a transition will not be without risk, and many Pakistanis are frightened by the potential for instability. But the alternative, a continuation of the status quo, in which our President lacks the legitimacy that...
...pointing to the long run when the immediate landscape seems to get ever more discouraging. This time, the President pointed more specifically to one of the larger rationales for the attack on Iraq - his "freedom agenda," which he said is rooted in Americans' belief "that every person, of every religion, on every continent, has the right to determine his or her own destiny...
DIED. Vashti McCollum, 93, Illinois housewife and humanist (a term she preferred to atheist) whose objections to religion classes at her son's school led to a landmark 1948 Supreme Court ruling protecting separation of church and state in public education; in Champaign, Ill. After her son decided he did not want to attend the Protestant-oriented classes--Jews and Catholics went off-campus for instruction--she sued the school board. McCollum, who endured threats to her family and lost her job, later said she fought because "I knew I was right...