As the Olympic torch, lit in Olympia, Greece on May 10, entered Sydney to a tumultuous welcome, Nobel Laureate and former South African President Nelson Mandela told a cheering crowd: “We must recognise and respect the collective effort of all people and champion the cause of human dignity and universal peace.”
Continue readingPosts by Neena Bhandari
Sydney Calling
By Neena Bhandari
Sydney, 01.09.2000 (The Pioneer Column): On the millennium eve, watching the `river of flame’ from across the Westminster Bridge in the slush and rain, we had thought the spectacular show of fireworks in Sydney had really given London a run for its money.
Months later, as I write this, basking under the bright Sydney skies overlooking the blue waters, the city is all dolled up to host the greatest sporting festival in the world, rolling out expensive red carpets and chilling champagne for its multitude of guests pouring in each day.
Hearts of past greats and future heroes burn with pride as they carry the Olympic Games torch, for most, only once in their lifetime, through villages and cities of this vast continent country.
Ornithologists turn match-makers for Siberian Cranes
By Neena Bhandari
Bharatpur, India 10.02.1997 (IPS): Dodging rockets in Afghanistan and poachers in Pakistan, three Siberian cranes — India’s most famous winged visitors — touched down last November at their winter home here in the Ramsar Wetland Site of Bharatpur in the western Indian state of Rajasthan.
The Siberian cranes or Grus Leucogeranus were the first since 1994 to make the perilous 6,000-km long journey from south of the Arctic Circle, through Central Asia to India. In the 1960s, at least 200 Siberian cranes used to regularly winter in Bharatpur’s famed Keoladeo National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.