Protests Against Burqa Bans and Roma Expulsion

President Sarkozy of France has created a stir as a result of his order to expel illegal Roma immigrants from France, and for his pushing for a ban on the public wearing of Burqas. This weekend there were organized protests in several European cities supportive of the right of Romas to not be summarily tossed out of France. The French have, in fact, been publicly criticized by the European Commission for at least some aspects of this policy. However, public opinion polls in France suggest that nearly two in three French support the expulsion policy, so the French government seems to be paying little heed to the protests.

The French Senate is considering a bill that would ban not simply burqas, but the public wearing of any face veil. The bill has already passed the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, and is expected to be voted upon by the Senate this month.

Saved From the Silver Tsunami?

Oxford University demographer David Coleman has argued for years that Europe's aging population does not need to be saved by immigrants, but rather by higher productivity from its existing work force. Auto manufacturer BMW has been experimenting with this idea in its Bavarian plants. CBS News Sunday Morning featured the story as its Labor Day headliner, but the story first appeared in the Harvard Business Review last March. BMW has found that as workers reach their fifties, they slow down and experience more sick days, which lowers productivity. So, the company developed a pilot project in which it instituted a variety of assembly line adjustments, such as allowing workers to sit rather than stand, and providing opportunities for stretch breaks. The results have been impressive:

UN Responds to Food Riots

In response to the recent increase in food prices, and the food riots in Mozambique, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization has called a meeting of grain experts from around the world to assess the supply situation. The problem in Mozambique may have been unique in that the government there had kept prices artificially low in order to garner votes before last year's election, and then had to face reality this month and raise prices back up to where they should have been. But the situation is a reminder of the global jitters that exist when most countries are not food self-sufficient and, in the face of growing populations, are increasingly dependent upon supplies especially from richer nations. Into this mix comes the unknown effects on agricultural productivity of global climate change.

But the world also has to come to grips with changing weather patterns due to climate change, argued Prof. Per Pinstrup-Anderson, an expert in international agriculture at Cornell University.