(Mosaic Video Alert: March 3,  2011) Dubai TV reports on the mass exodus occurring at Libya’s borders as thousands of refugees continue to flee the raging violence in the country. The UN high commissioner for refugees said that nearly 100,000 people have already crossed with thousands more expected to arrive. Most refugees endure hunger, thirst, and extreme heat on their journey across the desert only to arrive at refugee camps at the border with no shelter or food. African and Asian refugees seem to be enduring the most after being abandoned by their own governments.

(Euronews: 1157 PST, March 1, 2011) Fighting in Libya is forcing more and more people to flee, with refugee agencies now talking about a humanitarian crisis.

It is estimated up to 75,000 people have fled for neighbouring Tunisia. Most of them are Egyptian migrants who had been working in Libya. They are angry at their government for what they call its slow response in evacuating them. They say after the revolution in their country they became the target of attacks in Libya, accused of helping to inspire the Libyan demonstrators.

Thousands Fleeing Libya Stuck at Border

(Associated Press: 0624 PST, March 1, 2011) Thousands who are fleeing Libya, many of them foreign workers, remain stuck on the Tunisian side of the border as they're having trouble getting back to their home countries.

Tunisia Asks for Help in Tackling Border Chaos

(Euronews: 0000 PST, March 1, 2011) Tunisia's government has called for help in dealing with the thousands of Egyptian labourers and other foreign workers who have streamed across the border to avoid the turmoil in Libya.

With so many people to cope with, most have been given the minimum to sustain them: some milk and bread and perhaps a blanket. "The situation here is almost a catastrophe," said one man. "We call on all the organisations of the world, all governments all humanitarian associations to intervene to help these people return home with dignity."

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 the waves of the financial meltdown pound banks and governments, the human cost is easily lost in the background. From layoffs to shattered dreams, the global crisis becomes a personal crisis. Do we really see how deeply it reaches into the global community?

SOURCES: Al Jazeera English, Qatar; CNN, U.S.; Deutsche Welle, Germany; South Asia Newsline, India; Russia Today, Russia; KBS, South Korea.

This week, Global Pulse goes beyond today's front-page news of exec bonus furor and reports on human-scale examples of the economic crisis. From struggling carpet weavers in India to sober singles in Moscow and jobless college graduates in South Korea, we examine how gainful work is won in a new era of contraction.

In the U.S., the U.K., and South Korea, public service is billed as the next great wave of labor opportunity. The News Hour at PBS reports that more and more young Americans are turning to government and non-profit programs like the Peace Corps and Teach for America. Likewise, the Independent chronicles a generation of young Britons eager to jump from the boardroom to the classroom as grade school teachers. And from Seoul today comes word that the South Korean government will create up to 550,000 temporary jobs in coming months, many of them for young graduates to work in fields like education.

But a less rosy portrait of labor emerges from the European Union and Malaysia, where migrant workers have experienced devastating recent changes in status. Der Spiegel interviews Mongolians in Prague, Poles in England, and Ecuadorians in Madrid who explain that jobs are newly few and far between. Across the globe, Al Jazeera English speaks to Bangladeshis locked out of Malaysia, their visas unexpectedly revoked.  

Will these labor changes prove fundamental and long-term? Or will we soon see a return to boom-era ways of expansion, open borders, and private enterprise?