English

"This is not us"
The new pop song hit in Pakistan is "Yeh Hum Naheen". It means "this is not us" in Urdu. It's a sort of "We are the World" for Pakistani Muslims written and performed by some of Pakistan's biggest music artists whose fame in Pakistan equals that of Michael Jackson and Robbie Williams in the UK or America. And everyone from grade-schoolers to grandmas is humming it. The song "Yeh Hum Naheen" aims to address what Mahmood calls the "rising radicalisation of Islam" and to tell the world that Muslims are not terrorists.

 
Economics in Zimbabwe
On 29 June, the Ministry of Industry and Industrial Trade in Zimbabwe ordered that prices be lowered by almost 50 percent.The government has threatened to seize any businesses that are not selling products. Young pro-government groups in green army fatigues, known as the 'Green Bombers', are roaming the streets intimidating shopkeepers and producers with beatings if they don't lower their prices. One Zimbabwean citizen wrote under a pseudonym for a financial newspaper about what life is like under these new regulations. The article was published in the Zimbabwean newspaper, Financial Gazette. This is his story.

• Lesotho has declared a 'food security emergency' as the African country faces its worst drought in 30 years and accompanying 40-percent drop in its maize harvest.
• In Italy, 38 black schoold children were refused free entry to an archeological site because they couldn't prove they were Italian citizens. But why were they asked about their nationality?
• In Australia, a very technical point - a missing staple - has helped two convicted murderers file an appeal against their original sentences.

Routes versus roots
The presenter of The State We're In, Jonathan Groubert, is married to a Bosnian woman whose family history in the small town of Susnjari stretches back for generations. She can physically visit her past. As an American, Jonathan has his roots in immigration. His family came from elsewhere and resettled in the States. In this week's edition focusing on homelands, Jonathan reflects on the differences between how he and his wife are able to relate to their roots, or rather routes.

Yearning for Diego Garcia
The Ilois people lived on the tiny Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean for five generations. In the late 1960s, the US and UK struck a deal to build a military base on one island ... and remove all the inhabitants. Olivier Bancoult and his family were among the deported. He talks with Jonathan about his exile and his people's current struggle to return to their homeland.

Holland's historical homeland soon to be a thing of the past
The feeling or sense of a "homeland" is often linked to a certain landscape. Familiar scenery and wildlife, smells and types of houses and roads you grew up with and remember. But nowadays, you don't have to leave your homeland to see it transformed and become unrecognisable right before your very eyes. In the last 50 years, the Netherlands has changed dramatically. Although it has always been a highly engineered country with polders and canals, it has become a country with almost no nature left at all.

  

A war requiem
The horrors of the First World War are well documented but the mental toll on the trench fighting soldiers remains unknown. Today, their traumas are compared with those inflicted by modern-day warfare.