· September, 2012

Stories about Breaking News from September, 2012

Russia: Nation's Top Blogger Headed to Prison?

RuNet Echo  29 September 2012

The criminal investigation targeting Russia's most prominent oppositionist blogger, Alexey Navalny, is heating up. Viacheslav Opalev, the former director of a logging firm in Kirov, has confessed [ru] to participating in the embezzlement of 16 million rubles (over half a million U.S. dollars), and named Navalny as the scheme's mastermind.

Russia: The Kostin Report & the Trojan Horse of American ICT

RuNet Echo  28 September 2012

Earlier this week, the media got a sneak peek at a new report on the foreign penetration of the RuNet and the potential manipulation of the country's future elections. The Internet's growing popularity is transforming it into a political weapon: a weapon that is increasingly guarded by American, albeit private, media firms.

The Slap that Changed China's History

  27 September 2012

On September 24, the former police chief of Chongqing, Wang Lijun, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on four charges: bending the law for personal interest, defection, abuse of power and corruption. He is at the center of China's biggest political scandal in recent memory, the murder of a British businessman by the wife of Chongqing Communist Party high flier Bo Xilai.

Russia: Yekaterinburg Police Raid Regional Internet Publication

RuNet Echo  27 September 2012

On September 27th Yekaterinburg-based internet news portal URA.ru was raided by city police, reports [ru] Evgeny Roizman, local anti-drug campaigner. Roizman is dating the editor-in-chief of the portal, Aksana Panova, who has apparently managed to leave the country before masked operatives arrived at her apartment and scared her mother and young son [ru]....

United States: Occupy Wall Street, One Year Later

  24 September 2012

September 15-17 2012 marked the first year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Scenes that took place during the inception of the movement repeated themselves: hundreds of arrests were reported on Saturday the 15th amidst the protests that culminated on Monday the 17th in the neighborhood near the stock exchange.

Guinea: Fightings Between Peuls and Malinkes Erupt in Conakry

  21 September 2012

Guinée TV1 reports that clashes between Peuls and Malinkes [fr], two of the largest ethnic groups in Guinea erupted in Madina, a borough of Conakry. Protesters blocked Conakry’s main bridge and barricaded other roadways, according to witnesses, who said security forces were deployed but did not intervene right away.

France: Study Shows GM Corn Fed Rats Display Higher Tumors Levels

  19 September 2012

Guillaume Malaurie reports that [fr] a team of French researchers led by Pr. Gilles-Eric Séralini found that laboratory rats fed with a steady diet of Monsanto genetically modified corn displayed higher levels of tumors and multiple organ damage than those of control rats.  The researchers worked in quasi-clandestine conditions [fr] to prevent...

Bolivia: 4 Injured in Clash Between Miners

  18 September 2012

Clashes between private cooperative miners from the La Paz Departmental Federation of Mining Cooperatives (Fedecomin in Spanish) and unionised miners from the state-run Bolivian Mining Corporation (Comibol in Spanish) are reported from downtown La Paz, Bolivia's seat of Government. The confronted groups are attacking each other using dynamite. Four injured...

Russia: Religiosity & the Murdered U.S. Ambassador

RuNet Echo  15 September 2012

Responding to the attack on U.S. embassies across the Muslim world (specifically the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Libya), Russian bloggers have addressed the perceived growth of religiosity in their own country, and used the incident as an opportunity to discuss the wider consequences of political unrest.

Macedonia: Human Rights Activist Trajanoski on Trial

  13 September 2012

Today, at 13:00 CET, the Basic Court Skopje 1 will hold the main session of the trial against human rights activist Zarko Trajanoski, charged with defamation of Milenko Nedelkovski, a pro-government talk show host. Trajanoski is on trial [mk] for using the term “media charlatan” in a statement on the...