Liberation (France)
Vive emotion après l’incendie d’une mosquée
Emotions run high after mosque fire

We start here in France, where the Muslim community’s malaise has been brought to the fore once again by a fire in a mosque just outside Lyon, which appears to have been arson. Libération relays President Nicolas Sarkozy’s denunciation of this fire as an Islamophic act, and describes the scene yesterday at a demonstration at the mosque - apparently thousands of people from all religious denominations turned out to condemn the arson.

 
Liberté (Algeria)
Encore un mosquée incendiée en France
Another mosque burnt down in France

Islamic leaders in Lyon blamed the portrayal in the media of Islam as an extremist and bellicose religion – but judging by the reaction of one cartoonist on the Algerian paper Liberté, promoting the religion’s moderate side makes no difference: “We love enlightened Islam”, says the arsonist in the picture, making a pun on enlightening spirits and lighting fires.

 
The Times of India (India)
Mumbai reclaims its icons

The Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels in Mumbai partially re-opened on Sunday, three weeks after they were targeted by terrorist gunmen. Naturally, this is front page news in India, with the headline “Mumbai reclaims its icons” in the Times.

The hotels themselves are icons, but beyond that, the icons of Indian capitalism were all out in force for the reopening, as the Economic Times notes under the headline “Everyone’s invited”… including of course Ratan Tata, the great-grandson of Jamshedji Tata, who founded the hotel and is regarded as the father of Indian Industry.

The Guardian (UK)
Tata leaps in to rescue Jaguar

Ratan Tata is in the news elsewhere today as well. His corporation has branched out from hotels and steel since Jamshedji’s days of course and now includes an important motoring arm, which the Guardian reports is set to save Britain the embarrassment of having to bail out its car industry. Tata Motors has apparently said it is prepared to shore up the British brands, which it now owns, by injecting tens of millions of pounds almost immediately.

The Herald (UK, Scotland)
The tears still flow in Lockerbie

Scotland marked a sad anniversary on Sunday – that of the Lockerbie bombing, when terrorists bombed Pan Am flight 103 sending it crashing down over the town of Lockerbie in southern Scotland. It was 20 years ago on Sunday. The Herald has a special two page spread on the commemoration held there, though most of those interviewed stress that Lockerbie really just wants to be a town again, rather than a name forever associated with a tragedy.

The Herald’s coverage also looks at the positive side: the links that have grown up between Lockerbie and Syracuse, New York, where many of the flight’s passengers were studying. There’s now a link-up between Syracuse University and the Lockerbie Academy, allowing two Scottish students to study in the US each year.


The Post-Standard (US, New York State)
Pan-Am 103, 20 years later

Meanwhile in Syracuse, the Post-Standard’s Sunday edition also covers the commemoration, and features a photo essay on Lockerbie by two professors from Syracuse University, a portrait of the town done over ten years.


The Times (UK)
The 75th birthday of a Loch Ness monster sighting

To finish up with, a less tragic Scottish anniversary. It’s seventy-five years, reports The Times, since a photograph appearing to show the Loch Ness monster was published. “It’s a dodgy photograph”, the journalist notes, and it by no means proves the existence of the monster – but seventy-five years ago it caught the world’s imagination, and probably, says The Times, the poor old lake would be a lot better off without it and the hundreds of tourists it attracts as a result. The papers advice to readers, however, is simply to visit out-of-season.