Jorgo Riss was born and raised in Germany: He has a weakness for bratwurst and a thoroughly Germanic seriousness about issues like solar power. But he also has an Italian casualness about punctuality and loves his 5 o’clock tea, a habit he picked up in London.

“I feel European rather than German,” said Riss, 34, who has lived in five European countries, speaks five languages and now runs Greenpeace’s office in Brussels. “I feel at home anywhere in Europe.”

A year after 10 new members joined the European Union, euroskepticism and doubts about the new European constitution may be dominating headlines. But beyond politics and institutional battles, the everyday reality of Europe’s open borders is quietly forging a European identity.

A growing number of young Europeans like Riss study, work and date across the Continent. Unlike their parents, who grew up within the confines of nationhood, they are multilingual and multicultural.

Most of the EU citizens who say they feel “European” still rank their national identity higher than their European one, opinion polls show. But among those aged 21 to 35, almost a third say they feel more European than German, French or Italian, according to a survey by Time magazine in 2001.

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This book is a translation in Tamil of Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow (1905-72), which made him world famous. An American journalist, who went to China in 1928, Snow worked as a correspondent to a number of journals and also as a lecturer in Peking University.

In 1936 he journeyed to Northwest China where the communists had set up the Soviet Government. He was the first westerner to set foot there.

During his stay he travelled all over and saw for himself how the communists lived and worked. He interviewed Mao Tse Tung, Chou En Lai, Lin Biao Chu Teh and numerous other leaders, cadres and ordinary people.

Based on what he saw and heard he wrote this classic of an oral history in 1937. This translation is of the 1972 Pelican edition without the index.

Besides the 1937 text condensed suitably to exclude tedious accounts the revised edition has chronology of the Chinese revolutions from the opium war to 1971, an epilogue written in 1944, chapter notes, further interviews with Mao, biographical notes on 100 leading communists updated up to 1971 and an extensive bibliography.

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Public Radio Stations Nationwide Will Broadcast Documentaries, Features, Commentaries, Global Call-Ins and Public Forums on Topics Ranging from the Environment and Economics to Migration and MusicMay 16-22 On the Air; http://www.thinkglobal2005.org Online

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A London Business School survey of over 100 CEOs found strong demand for MBA graduates with global awareness and experience. “For our end-users,” the report found, “global business is more than a political discussion point, marketing mantra, or corporate aspiration; it is a burgeoning day-to-day reality.” In response to this market demand and increased interest by its students, American Graduate School of Management (AGSM) is introducing an International Option to its Executive MBA Program.

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New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman has a brilliant–and very helpful–ability to identify the patterns at the heart of the most complex world situations, without losing the human voices of the people involved. Over a dozen years after its publication, From Beirut to Jerusalem remains one of the most valuable accounts of Arab-Israeli relations, and in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he redefined how we thought about the new forces of globalization and the old ties of nation and tradition (and, along the way, introduced the “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention,” which pointed out that no countries that both had a McDonald’s had ever gone to war with each other). Like most of us, he spent the first years of the new millennium focused again on the Middle East, where it seemed as though the main drama of the age was being played out. But a visit to Bangalore, India, in early 2004 made him suddenly aware that the real story was happening on the other side of the globe, as the vast and ambitious populations of India and China began to enter the global marketplace as full-fledged participants, taking advantage of systems of communications, production, and distribution that can connect the entire globe instantaneously. “The world is flat,” he realized, and he immediately knew he had to write about it. In an email and phone exchange between Seattle and the various stops on Friedman’s travels, Amazon.com senior editor Tom Nissley asked him to explain just what has made our world flat, and what that might lead to.

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Tom’s done it again! If you’ve read The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, you know all about the keen insights of Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas L. Friedman. In The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, Tom once again brings to light the plain truth about globalization. Read it and discover for yourself where we’re headed. Overlook it at peril of obsolescence.

Also by Thomas L. Friedman: From Beirut to Jerusalem (winner of the National Book Award) and Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism.

The idea of promoting cultural diversity around the world sounds reasonable enough. It recognizes that everyone profits from the free flow of ideas, words and images. It encourages preservation of, say, indigenous traditions and minority languages. It treats the cultures of rich and poor countries as equals. And, most topically, it offers a healthy antidote to cultural homogeneity.

Try turning this seemingly straightforward idea into an international treaty, however, and things soon become complicated. Since October 2003, the 190 members of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization have been working on what is provisionally called the Convention on the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expression. It is meant to be approved by consensus this fall, but don’t count on it. There is still no agreement on the convention’s final name.

That, though, is a minor issue compared with more fundamental differences. Led by France and Canada, a majority of countries are asserting the right of governments to safeguard, promote and even protect their cultures from outside competition. Opposing them, a smaller group led by the United States argues that cultural diversity would best flourish in the freedom of the globalized economy.

A fresh bid to break the deadlock is under way at the headquarters of Unesco in Paris, where delegates and experts are wrestling with hundreds of proposed amendments to the convention’s first draft. Yet the more they advance toward concrete definitions, some delegates believe, the less likely they are to reach consensus.

The reason is simple: Behind the idealistic screen of cultural diversity, weighty economic and political issues are at stake.

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International cultures: Globalization and the offshoring of jobs to foreign countries require that we learn to work with and understand international cultures. The “American way” won’t always bring success in how we run our business or in how we develop and nurture our relationships.

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The pace of change in China during the last 15 years has been extraordinarily fast; the pace at which its literature reaches us in translation, shamefully slow. Chinese dissident writer Ma Jian is known in the English-speaking world for his award-winning travel memoir of rural China in the 1980s, Red Dust.

Since the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong in 1997, he has been living with his partner and translator in London. The Noodle Maker, the first of Jian’s novels to appear in English, is set soon after the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, already ancient history to today’s young entrepreneurs, artists and university students.

Reading The Noodle Maker has some of the blurred effect of a time-lapse photograph — it is a hard-hitting satire of a cultural moment that has come and gone. Only a reviewer intimate with today’s China could judge to what extent its critique is still sharp.

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A strong trend toward globalization of major museums is emerging as the 21st century unfolds with institutions establishing branches in their home countries and abroad or planning to do so in the near future.

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It’s a novel of sex, romance, power and religion.

And in a post-September 11 world looking for a window on the Middle East, it is significant that Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building is also a novel of Egypt that has just been translated into English.

Increasingly, writers, readers and publishers are turning to literature as a bridge between cultures, particularly Western and Arab societies estranged since Muslim extremists from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Recent years have seen the arrival of a Web site devoted to translating fiction and new grants for literary translations. Last year, the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest of its kind in the world, chose the Arab world as its “guest of honor,” giving several hundred Arab writers and intellectuals an unprecedented chance to exchange ideas with their Western counterparts and meet publishers and agents.

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When senior Jose Kafie lived in El Salvador, his parents were actively involved in his education. They hosted a parent reunion, met with his teachers regularly and made time to talk with Kafie about school. However, once his family moved to Silver Spring in search of more opportunities, everything changed.

Now, Kafie’s parents must work long hours at several jobs to support the family and are rarely available to talk with Kafie or his teachers about his schoolwork as they once could in El Salvador. The language barrier between Kafie’s family and the school makes active parental participation nearly impossible. “It was like there was this huge wall, and they couldn’t do anything. They couldn’t express themselves to my teachers like they used to,” Kafie says.

Students all over the county must deal with this lack of communication between their parents and their teachers. MCPS has over 16,000 international students representing 154 countries and 120 languages. More than 74 percent of these families speak a primary language other than English, according to a 1999 issue of MCPS’ The Bulletin. Although MCPS has made attempts to make translations available to families who need them, their efforts have not been effective enough to prevent the alienation of non-English speaking families. As a result, these families know very little of what goes on at school and in their children’s education.

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In the eyes of foreign visitors and residents, Taiwan is a friendly and democratic country and visitors are most impressed with Taiwan’s culture, people’s friendliness and beautiful scenery, according to a survey released by the Government Information Office (GIO) yesterday.

The poll also found that visitors are least impressed with the nation’s environmental protection, internationalization and tourism facilities.

The survey, conducted between Oct. 26 and Dec. 31 last year, questioned about 1,000 foreign visitors and over 500 foreign residents, found that the dominant impression of Taiwanese people was of their friendliness, followed by diligence, politeness, reliability, openness, flexibility and high quality of life.

Foreign tourists and residents agreed that Taiwanese society is family-centered. The tourists also stressed Taiwanese society’s competitiveness, safety, fast-pace, ethics, modernization, internationalization, efficiency, freedom, order and diversity.

When asked about their impressions concerning Taiwan’s government, more than 55 percent of the foreign residents said that they were most impressed with the freedom of the media and about 53 percent cited democratic development.

More than 80 percent of foreign visitors and 85 percent of foreign residents agreed that Taiwan is better than China in terms of its democratic development and economic, cultural, social and technological development, as well as in terms of internationalization and quality of life.

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Eagan resident Maureen White Eagle watched a conversation without words dissolve all language barriers during a trip last year to Mexico.

“Neither woman spoke the other’s language but they were communicating and laughing,” White Eagle said. “They managed to make a connection through gestures and it was just amazing to see that.”

When White Eagle made her trip in October 2004, she didn’t visit the usual tourist destinations such as Cancun or Mazatlan, but instead took an opportunity to get a taste of the lifestyle of one native Mexican community.

White Eagle made the trip with Global Citizens Network, a St. Paul-based nonprofit organization. She spent more than a week working with the Totonac people of the east-central Mexico state of Puebla.

It’s those types of cross-cultural experiences like White Eagle described that GCN wants to foster through its one-to-three-week trips to 10 indigenous communities across the world.

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Known as Exam Hell, school entrance exams are notoriously stressful in Japan, but students in their droves are turning to what they believe is one very lucky charm -– a bar of Kit Kat.

As well as being a favourite lunchtime snack, students are now bringing the Nestlé chocolate bar into the exam room because the phrase “kitto katsu” means, “If I try, I will win.”

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