Stories about Economics & Business from January, 2011
Venezuela: Explosions Rocked the Maracay Night
Early Sunday morning the city of Maracay was rocked with explosions from 5 government ammunition warehouses which caught fire. Some are calling it gross negligence while others suggest it might not have been accidental at all.
India: Environment, Common Sense & Social Media
Munna on the Run hopes that social media conversations will work as a gentle persuading force against the profit-at-any-cost market forces and re-ignite a common sense approach to development.
Brazil: Ministry of Culture abandons Creative Commons
Brazilian Minister of Culture's decision to remove a Creative Commons license from its website provoked all sorts of reactions on social networks and among bloggers. It is the first instance of undoing of the previous government inclusive public policies regarding Internet, digital culture and authorial rights.
China: 88% of Chinese trust government?
Edelman, one of the top five global public relations firms, released its 2011 Trust Barometer on January 26 2011. The report indicates that China ranked first, with 88% trust, in the world in terms of trust government. On the other hand, the United States fell from 46% to 40%.
Ukraine: Support “The Pickle Project”!
Linda Norris and Sarah Crow are fundraising on Kickstarter in order to be able to return to Ukraine and continue work on The Pickle Project, which “explores contemporary and traditional Ukrainian foodways, introducing fascinating people, practices and places, through photographic documentation, audio interviews and video.”
Bulgaria: Sofia's Sugar Factory Tragedy
Maya's Corner writes about Sofia's Sugar Factory, where two people died in 2009 when the neglected building collapsed, and the fate of other landmarks owned by “predator ‘investors’.”
Ukraine: The Newest Euro 2012 Scandal
Foreign Notes writes about the latest Euro 2012 controversy in Ukraine: “In other words, the Ukrainian national team could find itself banned from the Euro 2012 football tournament that the country is itself hosting…”
Vietnam: Vanishing landmarks
TW in Vietnam blogs about the vanishing landmarks in Saigon and the need to preserve historical sites in the city.
Vietnam to expel undocumented foreign workers
saigonnezumi discusses the social and economic impact if Vietnam decides to expel about 30,000 undocumented foreign workers.
Jamaica, Cuba: Bye Bye, BBC
Cambios en Cuba [ES] and Jamaica Salt both note with sadness the BBC's decision to cut parts of its Caribbean service in a bid to save money: “The expertise and the daily news that will be lost will have consequences far beyond the loss of jobs and programmes.”
Chile's “Green Revolution”: Fighting Coal Mining in Isla Riesco
Daniel Arellano [es] writes about Chile's “Green Revolution”: Environmental activists and concerned citizens are trying to raise awareness about 5 coal mining projects and the effects they would have on Isla Riesco, an island in the southernmost region of Chile.
Bahamas, D.R.: Fish Poaching
Bahama Pundit‘s Larry Smith notes that “a recent report…has confirmed that poaching by commercial fishermen from the Dominican Republic is the greatest single threat to Bahamian seafood resources.”
Wanted: More Babies Needed in Singapore
Singapore’s total fertility rate has decreased to an all-time low at 1.16 percent. To increase population, the government proposes to increase the number of foreign workers and residents in the prosperous city state. Here are some reactions from the blogosphere
Cuba: Old Age in Cuba
“Hands shaking with Parkinson’s offer sugary snacks at bus stops, wrinkled faces offer razor blades for only five pesos”: Generation Y says that the system the elderly helped to build “cannot provide them with a dignified old age.”
Russia: Internet Industry Stays at Home
Emma Barnett, digital media editor at “The Telegraph“, summarized reflections from her recent trip to Russia and explained “Why the Russian Internet doesn't need the West.” According to Barnett, the Russian Internet industry is “self-contained and self-sufficient” and it has no “ambition for the foreseeable future to expand internationally.”
Kenya: How developers can make money with Safaricom
Bankelele looks at how Kenyan developers can make money with Kenya's leading mobile phone company, Safaricom: “One of the unintended effects of Airtel’s price wars with Safaricom in Kenya is that it has made Safaricom more responsive to Kenyan developers in terms of collaboration on products, services, platforms etc.”
Taiwan: Dacheng Wetland, not a wetland?
Citizen journalist Zhu Shu-juan(朱淑娟) reports that even though all reviewers from the Wetland Review Committee of the Ministry of Interior suggested Dacheng Wetland in Changhua County to be listed as national or even international wetland, due to resistance from local politicians and consortia who support petrochemical project to be built there,...
Brazil: Neo-Colonialism in Africa
Leonardo Sakamoto refutes [pt] the statement of the foreign affairs adviser to the Brazilian presidency, Marco Aurelio Garcia, that “A neo-colonial relationship is only established if neo-colonizer and colonized are in agreement.” For him, it is necessary to examine the complicity of local elites and the situation of colonized countries...
China: P2P service down for copyright compliance
When leading Chinese P2P website VeryCD was shut down in 2009, it was back online the next day. This time, it appears the network won't be back up until all copyrighted materials are removed: ‘The days of “free” movie downloads for Chinese users,’ writes [zh] tech blogger William Long, ‘are...
Brazil: Belo Monte Dam returns to the spotlight
The Brazilian government expressed its wish to start building the controversial Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in 2011. Immediately, a virtual mobilization against the project broke out. In spite of the intense flow of information on the Internet and other media, clarifications on the socio-environmental impacts of Belo Monte are still to be provided by the government.
Bahamas: economic “Bahamianisation”?
Rick Lowe of Weblog Bahamas responds to those who argue that “all economic activity” in the Bahamas should be “reserved exclusively for Bahamians” by pointing to a 2003 paper on foreign investment.
