Blood Diamonds

Timed with the opening of Leo DiCaprio's latest Hollywood flick-with-a-message Blood Diamond, today's NYT runs a piece on the dilemma of shopping for an engagement ring when that sparkly bauble could represent the deaths of innocent men, women and children forced to mine them:

MONICA GIBSON says she is not particularly political, but when she heard about conflict diamonds on an episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” last week featuring the cast and director of the new movie “Blood Diamond,” she looked down at her engagement ring and thought not of love but of wars and violence.

Her fiancé gave her the ring last summer, she said, and she may never find out where its 24 diamonds came from. But as the couple now shops for diamond wedding bands, Ms. Gibson said she won’t buy unless the jeweler can vouch not just for the stone’s cut, clarity and color, but also for its origin.

“So many times you feel helpless when it comes to these major issues,” said Ms. Gibson, 36, an administrator with a telephone carrier in Pittsburgh. “I will feel I had some small little piece in helping people somewhere.”


So I'm not sending you off depressed and dreary into your weekend, what has more saris, elephants and dancing than a Bollywood wedding? Why, 15,000 Bollywood weddings! All on one day!