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Russia

Russia Says Siberian Meteor Field Contains "Trillions Of Carats" Of Diamonds

ITAR-TASS (Russia), CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Worldcrunch

MOSCOW – The Kremlin has authorized scientists to finally reveal what they say are “trillions of carats” of diamonds located in a field in eastern Siberia that could forever change the market of the precious gem.

The Russians have know since the 1970s of this 35-million-year-old and 62-mile wide meteor site known as Poigai, but have kept it a secret in an effort to control the market fed by their other mines and production of artificial diamonds.


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A Siberian diamond mine (Stepanova)

Different than the diamonds that typically make it onto engagement rings, these come from the high-speed impact of an asteroid with graphite deposit, making them “twice as hard” and well-suited for industry, according to ITAR-TASS.

This specific feature of the stones “expands significantly the scope of their industrial use and makes them more valuable for industrial purposes,” Nikolai Pokhilenko, director of Novosibirsk Institute of Geology and Mineralogy Director, explained last week to ITAR-TASS.

With production innovation, the resource will become more and more important in advanced scientific fields, notes the Christian Science Monitor.

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Society

A Refuge From China's Rat Race: The Young People Flocking To Buddhist Monasteries

Unemployment, stress in the workplace, economic difficulties: more and more young Chinese graduates are flocking to monasteries to find "another school of life."

Photograph of a girl praying at a temple during Chinese Lunar New Year. She is burning incense.

Feb 20, 2015 - Huaibei, China - Chinese worshippers pray at a temple during the Lunar New Yeat

CPRESSPHOTO/ZUMA
Frédéric Schaeffer

JIAXING — It's already dawn at Xianghai Temple when Lin, 26, goes to the Hall of 10,000 Buddhas for the 5:30 a.m. prayer.

Still half-asleep, the young woman joins the monks in chanting mantras and reciting sacred texts for an hour. Kneeling, she bows three times to Vairocana, also known as the Great Sun Buddha, who dominates the 42-meter-high hall representing the cosmos.

Before grabbing a vegetarian breakfast in the adjacent refectory, monks and devotees chant around the hall to the sound of drums and gongs.

"I resigned last October from the e-commerce company where I had been working for the past two years in Nanjing, and joined the temple in January, where I am now a volunteer in residence," explains the young woman, soberly dressed in black pants and a cream linen jacket.

Located in the city of Jiaxing, over a hundred kilometers from Shanghai, in eastern China, the Xianghai temple is home to some 20 permanent volunteers.

Unlike Lin, most of them only stay for a couple days or a few weeks. But for Lin, who spends most of her free time studying Buddhist texts in the temple library, the change in her life has been radical. "I used to do the same job every day, sometimes until very late at night, writing all kinds of reports for my boss. I was exhausted physically and mentally. I felt my life had no meaning," she says.

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