A five-day conference to promote inter-religious dialogue between Christians and Muslims is set to begin on Wednesday in Zamboanga City, on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Entitled "Christian and Islamic Spiritualities: A Dialogue in the Face of Today’s World Longing for Peace", the conference is organised by the Silsilah Dialogue Movement, a movement for inter-religious dialogue founded by the Sicilian Jesuit priest, Father Sebastiano D’Ambra. The Islamic Institute of the University of the Philipines and the Institute of Spirituality of Asia based in Quezon City will be participating in the event.
An interreligious seminar taking place in the northeastern United States city of Rochester on Monday through tomorrow will attempt to explore the root causes of the mounting violence in the world. At the seminar, entitled 'Spiritual Dimensions underlying the crisis in violence,' the World Council of Churches (WCC) will engage with a panel of leaders of the local Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and Christian faiths.
Al Jazeera Arabic TV station will on Wednesday at 12.00 GMT launch Al Jazeera English - its English language international news and current affairs channel - to over 80 million cable and satellite households worldwide. Aiming to provide a Middle East perspective that challenges the dominance of Western media, Al Jazeera English will also be available on broadband, IPTV, ADSL, terrestrial and mobile phone platforms, the company said in a statement. The new channel will seek to rival CNN and BBC World.
School children in Gaza, cricket fans in India and African church-goers have helped set a Guinness world record for "the largest number of people to 'stand up against poverty,'" U.N. officials said on Tuesday.
The record was set when 23,542,614 people stood up as part of 11,646 organized events around the world during a 24-hour period this week, according to the official Guinness verification text, released at a U.N. news conference.
Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on Tuesday that Muslim immigrant women should not be completely "hidden" behind full veils if they want to integrate and become part of Italy's future.
Millions of children on the fringes of the Sahara desert are at risk from malnutrition even though a good end to the rainy season should help boost cereal production, the United Nations said on Monday.
Child mortality rates in West Africa's Sahel region, which stretches along the southern edge of the world's largest desert, are the highest anywhere, with over half of the deaths caused by malnutrition, according to the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP).
