Link is proud to be home to two programs, both from Qatar-based channel Al Jazeera English, that have been nominated for International Emmy Awards this year! An Al Jazeera English News Hour segment on the Russia-Georgia war picked up a nomination in the News category for superb on-the-ground journalistic coverage. And Al Jazeera English's Witness documentary series, airing weekly on Link TV, was nominated in the Current Affairs category for the special Return to Nablus. Part of that special, Two Schools in Nablus, aired on Link, and is available to watch online now. International Emmy Award winners will be announced on September 21, 2009, and we'll keep you updated on the results.

If you haven't already, be sure to catch these fantastic, internationally-recognized programs on Link! The Al Jazeera English News Hour has been airing every weekday on Link since June, part of Link's Global News Hour with Mosaic: World News From the Middle East. Daily online news bulletins from AJE are also available online. Al Jazeera English - Witness airs Mondays at 8pm Pacific and Wednesdays at 7pm Eastern, and most episodes are available to watch online.

Congratulations to our partners at Al Jazeera English for their second consecutive International Emmy Award nomination in a row! We'll have our fingers crossed for an AJE awards sweep in September.

Link's Mosaic and the Mosaic Intelligence Report are on vacation this week, but intrepid Mosaic Producer Jamal Dajani has not been slacking. Dajani has been reporting from Paris on the burqa controversy, where French president Nicolas Sarkozy inflamed his country's Muslim population with recent comments stating that the burqa would "not be welcome" in France.

It wasn't easy, but Dajani was able to interview a French woman dressed in burqa for his latest article in the Huffington Post, and it sounds like Sarkozy isn't winning any friends in France's Muslim communities. You can follow Dajani's interesting updates on this story on Twitter.

For more background, this Al Jazeera English piece gives the "inside story" on the call for a burqa ban in France:

Is this anti-burqa campaign really a question of women's rights? (This, of course, coming from the same man caught opening oogling the female form in these photos. Don't you worry -- Obama's wandering eye has apparently been exonerated, according to this ABC News video analysis.) Can France reconcile its values as a secular nation with its growing Muslim immigrant population? We know what Dajani and Sarkozy think -- what about you?

As you may know, Al Jazeera English World News is airing as part of Link TV's Global News Hour, together with Mosaic: World News From the Middle East. To supplement the daily broadcast, we'll be posting short Al Jazeera English Mobile Bulletins - short video updates about current events - on a regular basis:

Check out the conclusion of Super 30, a documentary about the Ramamujan Academy in Bihar, India. Bihar is India’s poorest state. Fewer than half its 90 million inhabitants can sign their own name. Yet this extraordinary academy takes a small number of impoverished Bihari children each year and prepares them to seek admission to one of the toughest universities in the world, the Indian Institutes of Technology.

This program premieres TONIGHT at 11PM Eastern/8PM Pacific, and is available to watch online in its entirety here.