Asad Dandia was eight when he watched the September 11, 2001 attacks on television at his Pakistani-immigrant parents' home in New York. Then came the backlash -- years of Islamophobia as Americans processed attacks that had killed nearly 3,000 people. There was anger, suspicion, and worse. At 19, Dandia experienced a police informant posing as a friend to infiltrate his family home, part of a now-disgraced surveillance effort purportedly seeking to detect Islamic extremism. Today, though, the 33-year-old historian finds a New York transformed: one with its first Muslim mayor, public prayers in Times Square and new mosques rising across the city. "Twenty-five years after 9/11, we mourn, and we grieve what happened, and at the same time, we recognize that I am not responsible for what happened," he told AFP. "I don't deserve to be targeted for what happened, and I am as much of a New Yorker as anybody else in that respect," said Dandia, who leads wal...
Is climate change set for a comeback as a top European Union priority, after a deadly summer of record-breaking heatwaves across Europe? The fight against global warming is expected to feature prominently in a key policy speech by EU chief Ursula von der Leyen this month, after two years critics say were marked by major environmental rollbacks. With Europe barely emerging from a sweltering summer, climate would have been hard to ignore in the normally sprawling "State of the European Union" address - a yearly speech setting out political priorities for the next 12 months. After years as a leading EU cause, climate concerns have taken the backseat to defence and industry goals over the past couple of years - to the frustration of environmentalists. Read: Europe's hottest town says climate change is reshaping daily life The bloc has notably watered down new green rules for businesses and proposed abandoning a ban on the sale of new internal combustion eng...