Stories from 26 August 2005
Bolivia: Parliament's Choice For President
Miguel Centallas sees little chance of any presidential hopeful winning a straight out majority in December's election, which would leave the decision up to parliament.
Argentina: Diego Armando Maradona
Diego of Altered Argentina makes a clever and witty case for why soccer player Diego Armando Maradona symbolizes all that is Argentine.
Argentina: Alejandro Rozitchner's Weblog
Doug of all-encompassingly points us to the blog of Hora Clave co-host, Alejandro Rozitchner.
Venezuela: More Reactions to Robertson
Publius Pundit has more on the Internet's reaction to the Pat Robertson controversy with a special focus on Venezuelan bloggers.
India: Exploring democracy
India: Exploring democracy
Hong Kong: Rant TV-blog
www.faint.tv looks set to be a blog specifically to rant about Hong Kong Cable TV, observes OrdinaryGweilo. A worthy subject, but sustainability is suspect, he adds.
India: Rural India
India: Rural India
Pakistan: Nuts and Boltons
Pakistan: Nuts and Boltons
Bangladesh: All about propaganda
Bangladesh: All about propaganda
China: BloggerCon
Organisers of the Chinese Blogger Conference scheduled for November are looking for voluntary English-Chinese interpreters, and those based in Shanghai are preferred. The beta version of bloggercon schdule and preliminary list of speakers has been announced. Topics lined up include podcasting, tags/folksonomy, and blogs and education.
Nepal: Press freedom
Nepal: Press freedom
China: Bokee.com
Kevin Wen points to a Reuters story that reports on Bokee.com, which claims the biggest share of China’s blogging market with about 2 million registered users. The company set up in 2002, which provides free blogging services, says it is adding 6,000-10,000 daily. Main revenue: Advertising.
Freedom of Speech News
According to Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), and Human Rights Watch, here are the latest developments on threats to Freedom of Speech over the past week: Tunisia: Government bans new journalists’ union from holding founding congress. RSF reports that the Tunisian government has decided to ban the Union of Tunisian Journalists...
China: Newspaper circulation
While Malaysian newspapers conventionally base their advertising rates cards on readership figures, China's base it on both circulation and readership. As such, disputes often erupt with one newspaper publishes a set of quarterly figures and rival newspaper disputes them, like what happened in Malaysia. In China, the lack of reliable...
Palestine: Israeli Settlements
In case you are searching for a list of Israeli Settlements in the West Bank, Israeli Watch posts a link to download the list for anyone to print or view. A comprehensive list with information about the settlements population, location and date of establishment.
Cambodia: Jobless woes
Young college graduates are in Cambodia are finding hard to get employed while transparency is said to be lacking in employee recruitment. Blogger ThaRum says employers are now seeking talents with additional language proficiency in French, Chinese and Thai besides competency in computer.
Qatar: Disengagement Propaganda
Friends of Aljazeera reports that Arab satellite news channels Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya have been forced to fend off accusations that they served up Israeli propaganda with their coverage of the historic evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements.
Ukraine: Quality, not quantity
Dan McMinn at Orange Ukraine argues that quality is better than quantity when it comes to economic performance by the new Ukrainian government.
Egypt: 2-3 Million Egyptians In Iraq
Ritzy is reporting that there are 2-3 million egyptians living in Iraq right now, the majority of which did not report to the embassey since the occupation. She is wondering how many of those have joined the “insurgency” or are training there to inflict their own kind of “insurgency”?
Kyrgyzstan: North-south alliance shaky
The strategic north-south political alliance which won a general election in March for Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiev and prime minister Feliks Kulov may already be under threat, blogs Laurence at Registan, citing analyst Ainura Choponkulova.
Egypt: Egyptian presidential elections online polls
The Arabist Network posts a roundup of a few Internet polls on the Egyptian presidential elections. They seem to confirm that the race is indeed between Ayman Nour and Hosni Mubarak, however, one has to keep in mind that the web sites that hosted these polls are opposition web sites!