ISLAMIC WORLD:  Source:  International Herald Tribune:  "When Khaled gives lectures in Jordan or Yemen or Germany, he fills stadiums.  Khaled's unique blend of conservative Islamic belief and Western style has become popular at a moment when governments and scholars from Washington to Cairo are wrestling with the question of whether religious Islam is compatible with democracy and Western culture.  Read more...

Comment:   Some view the rising tensions between Islam and the West as the first of the modern Culture Wars that have been a long time coming.  Others have more hope that reason will prevail.  Others fervently hope and work for the destruction of one side or the other.  History indicates that the likely result will be a series of crises with ever broadening impact and narrowing geography.  Whatever happens it is increasingly important to understand both participating cultures, and their meeting points.   Khaled seems to be trying to work on these meeting points, in a reasonably rational manner consistent with his conservative Islamic beliefs.  A very important article.

'Living and working in areas of street sex work'

In the light of debates about managing the 'street scene', this study looks at whether residents and street sex workers can share residential areas.  

TECHNOLOGY:  Source:  New Scientist:  "Take an online map of a city, throw in some information on local house prices or crime levels, and you have the recipe for a "mashup" website.  Mashups, so-called because they are created by merging data from two or more websites, have been steadily growing in popularity thanks to the useful way they present local information."  Read more…

URBAN GROWTH:  LA Times:  After a 1969 explosion beneath a Union Oil platform off Santa Barbara, stark images of dead birds and an oil-scarred coastline helped spark the nation's environmental movement.  Protecting this picturesque stretch of California's coast became a rallying cry, and it wasn't long before this new commitment to conservation gave rise to a steely determination to keep residential developers at bay.  Three and a half decades later, the south coast of Santa Barbara County is still spectacular, a monument to the successful efforts of those who fought to control growth and its effects.  Preserving "our environment and our quality of life … is like a mantra," said Susan Rose, chairwoman of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, who represents a district stretching from the edge of Santa Barbara to Goleta.  But now this bastion of "slow growth" is learning that it comes with some steep economic, social and even environmental costs:  Soaring housing prices;  Traffic congestion, energy consumption and air pollution;  An exodus of big employers;  Altered communities;  and, Spillover growth.  Many of these ripple effects could not have been foreseen 30 years ago.  READ MORE…

AFFORDABLE HOUSING:  Expat Telegraph:  With names such as iPad and i-Life, the next generation of starter homes aims to be cutting edge as well as compact. But will it solve the problem of affordable housing?  Read more…  Related article below:  iPad targets first-time buyers

SUSTAINABLE BUILDING:  Irish Times:  Buildings eat up 60 per cent of the country's electricity - that's why we have to build sustainably, says the head of building service engineers.  "People are going to have to face up to the fact that either we have to put in wind farms and wave generation, and so on, or we will have no choice but to go down the nuclear route.  Read more…

POLICING:  Source:  CS Monitor:  "Rio authorities are rolling out a crime-fighting plan that mirrors policies Rudy Giuliani used in New York and Mexico City.  Following Giuliani's assumption that public disorder leads to serious crime, Rio's new Zero Tolerance program targets the city's petty criminals."  Read more…