3 March 2006

Stories from 3 March 2006

Vietnam: Cyclo

  3 March 2006

Virtual Doug chronicles the increasingly rare xích lô (cyclo, or trishaw), which has almost disappeared in Hà Nội and Sài Gòn but “is still hanging on in Huê.”

Thailand: Cracks in the Foundation

  3 March 2006

The normally apolitical thai-blogs.com gets more political. This time, vdaniel writes about a political coming of age in Thailand as protests against PM Thaksin Shinawatra continue. “The glaring problem in the “land of smiles” is the small hypocrisies that many people in Thailand are willing to overlook. It’s the small...

Diaspora: Offensive degrading adverts

  3 March 2006

Molara Wood reports on an advert for a film called “Date Movie”. She asks that “If you view the advert as offensive, degrading, or poor taste please take the time to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority which investigates complaints of taste and decency and has upheld similar complaints in...

Sudan: reject UN peacekeepers

  3 March 2006

Sudan Reeves reports that Darfur is held hostage as Sudan rejects UN peace keeping forces.……..”Khartoum’s overwhelmingly dominant National Islamic Front (NIF) has, with growing confidence, aggressively rejected a UN peacekeeping force (itself only a distant and almost certainly inadequate means of protection)

Kenya: Footage of raid on press

  3 March 2006

Mental Acrobatics posts CCTV footage of the raid on the Kenyan newspaper, the Standard by agents of the Kenyan Government. …..The raid were carried out by a rapid response unit code-named the Kanga Squad, detectives from Nairobi provincial CID headquarters and officers from the General Service Unit. They are wearing...

Ghana: Debt Relief

  3 March 2006

The Trials and Tribulations of a Freshly Arrived Denzian writes that he is sick of the arguments on debt relief in Africa referring to an article on “Make Poverty History“.

Immigrants in France

  3 March 2006

France Watcher posts a response to their blog by a reader from France. The person strongly disagrees with the motives and facts of France Watcher – interesting read.

Russia: American Adoption of Children From Russia

W. Shedd of The Accidental Russophile writes about American foreign adoptions and the excessive coverage of the 12 tragic deaths of Russian children at the hands of their American adopted parents (0.03% of approximately 40,000 children adopted since 1996) in the Russian media.

Belarus: Pre-Election Violations and Violence

br23 blog reports on a politically eventful – and alarming – day in Belarus: an opposition candidate gets beaten, detained and charged with criminal offense after tearing the president's posters off the police station walls, thus endangering his chances to run in the upcoming election; several journalists get beaten; police...

China: Death penalty to a purse thief?

  3 March 2006

Amnesty International calls on the Chinese authorities to review an announcement by the government in the southern province of Guangdong recently, which warned that drive-by handbag snatchers could face the death penalty.

China: The Party is predictable

  3 March 2006

“An authoritarian China has been highly predictable. A more open and democratic China could produce new uncertainties about both domestic policy and international relations,” says a new report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, entitled In the Balance: China's unprecedented growth and implications for the Asia-Pacific, picked up by China...

China: To peg, or not to peg

  3 March 2006

Sun Bin summarizes a commentary written by Stephen Cheung in the Hong Kong Chinese-language Apple Daily newspaper, which suggests that the Chinese yuan should not be pegged to any foreign currency, but instead to a basket of commodities.

Hong Kong: Who killed Dai Fei?

  3 March 2006

Glutter takes a deep breath and dives in to embrace a conspiracy theory surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in that fateful car chase in Paris. “You will never hear me talk about anything to do with aliens, crop circles, princess grace, how Courtney Love Hired a hit...

China: Freezing Point fallout

  3 March 2006

ESWN weighs up the points made by Guangdong-based academic Yuan Weishi in his article on the official view of China's recent imperial history, and those made in a critique of his view published in the first issue of Freezing Point to hit the newsstands since its suspension ended. The cutting-edge...