EVENT

IMF’s Strauss-Khan may beat Sarkozy in presidential election

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the International Monetary Fund’s Managing Director, is the most popular Socialist candidate for the French presidency in the 2012 elections, according to several public opinion polls. In a poll made at the request of the newspaper Liberation, 44 percent claimed that they would cast their votes for Strauss-Kahn, well ahead of the current Socialist party leader Martine Aubry (31 percent), and the former Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royale (25 percent). Le Nouvel Observateur reports that a poll conducted by TNS Sofres Logica shows that 59 percent of respondents are ready to vote for Strauss-Kahn in the runoff. According to the same survey, the Socialist leader Martine Aubry would also beat the current head of state by 53 percent to 47, although in the first round Nicolas Sarkozy would defeat Strauss-Kahn and Aubry by one and six percent, respectively. The polls show that the French currently prefer left-wing candidates, even though Strauss-Kahn belongs to the Socialist party’s right wing and, as far as many socioeconomic issues are concerned, he is closer to Sarkozy’s party than to his own.

Calcutta honors the memory of Mother Teresa

Celebrations were recently held in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, to mark the birth centenary of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, founder of the Missionaries of Charity Sisters congregation, Nobel Peace Prize winner. India’s Ministry of Railways launched a special exhibition train on occasion of the famous nun’s centenary. The three cars of this train comprise an exhibit on the life and deeds of Mother Teresa. The train is going to tour India for six months, stopping in various cities. Besides, Kolkata hosted a four-day film festival in honor of Mother Teresa. Events dedicated to the nun will be held in Kolkata for a year, the organizers say. Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu) was born on August 26, 1910, in sk b, Ottoman Empire (now Skopje, capital of the Republic of Macedonia), into an Albanian family of Kosovo origin. At 21 she took the veil and chose the name Teresa after Therese de Lisieux, a nun canonized in 1927 for her kindness and charity. In the late 1940s Teresa founded a monastic congregation, Missionaries of Charity, in Calcutta, India, which dealt with establishing schools, refuges, and hospitals for poor and infirm people irrespective of their ethnicity and faith. In 1979 Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress.” Mother Teresa, also known as Teresa of Calcutta, died in 1997 at age 87. She was beatified by the Catholic Church six years after her death.

Golf to be a compulsory subject in China’s schools  

Teachers in China intend to make true ladies and gentlemen out of their 6 to 12-year-old pupils by introducing golf as a compulsory subject in the country’s primary schools. Golf is considered an elitist and, at the same time, hugely popular sport among the affluent part of China’s population. There are several dozen golf clubs in Beijing’s suburbs alone, where thousands of people are employed. In recent times, many higher and secondary educational institutions in China, especially those in the better-off eastern and southern provinces, have introduced optional lessons in golf. The administration of the Era primary school in Chengdu, Sichuan, has gone further and announced the introduction of golf as a compulsory course in the coming school year. “We hope we will thus be able to make true ladies and gentlemen out of our pupils,” the Chinese media quote the school principle as saying. A golf training field has been built near the school. It cost about a million yuans (approximately 150,000 dollars).