Chinese famine and Mari wives at Rome Festival

An epic movie about a devastating Chinese famine has finally made it to the screen at the Rome Film Festival.

‘Back to 1942’ is a no-holds-barred telling of one of modern China’s most grim times.

It is based in Henan province where the famine had forced millions to search for food. Even Fan the wealthy landowner had to join the escape to avoid starvation.

Erzyan Activist Convicted of Extremism

An activist of the Erzyan minority in Russia’s Ulyanovsk Oblast, Vasily Bokin, has been convicted of extremism due to an article criticising the region’s educational policies.

In the article, which Mr Bokin published in his own newspaper, Nash Golos, in July 2009, he lambasted his village’s Erzyan language teachers for their “russificationist” educational methods and their unwillingness to defend their native language. The Erzya mostly reside inMordovia, which borders on the Ulyanovsk region.