30 March 2006

Stories from 30 March 2006

Costa Rica: Global IT Ranking

  30 March 2006

Uri Ridelman notes that Costa Rica lost eight places in global IT ranking according to the World Economic Forum. Costa Rica was ranked below El Salvador and Panama, but above Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

Bolivia: “Battle at the Cochabamba Airport”

  30 March 2006

Eduardo Ávila is covering a developing story at Jorge Wilstermann airport in Cochabamba, where workers of the airline Lloyd Aereo Boliviano are demanding that the indebted airline be nationalized. Writing from Cochabamba, Jim Shultz describes LAB as “one more lab rat in that great IMF-induced economic experiment of privatizing all...

Argentina: Indie Online Radio

  30 March 2006

unaRadio is an online radio station based in Argentina which describes itself as “a free medium to distribute the work of independent artists in Spanish and other languages.” You can listen to it in any media player by clicking here.

Mongolia: Reporter in Court

  30 March 2006

Luke Distelhorst writes about the case of a journalist in Mongolia being taken to court for slander by the country's president and says that the country would greatly benefit from more skilled investigative journalists and greater access to government documents.

Belarus: Prison Journal

  30 March 2006

Ivan Lenin at Rush-Mush links to an English translation of a Belarusian protestor's jail journal. (Written by LJ user forion in Belarusian, translated by LJ user kapitan-tanaka.)

Poland: Singer Turned Politician Tired of Politics

  30 March 2006

The beatroot writes about a 56-year-old Polish rock musician turned politician and the problems he's facing. “After making a lot of money over the years, he must have got bored – like ageing rock stars do – and thought that he would represent the very un-rock and roll Law and...

Morocco: Moroccan Saffron – As precious as gold dust

Know anything about Moroccan saffron? Several hundred hectares of flowers grown on light chalky hillsides at an altitude of between 1200 and 2000 metres (4000 – 6500 feet). Each September the bulbs are planted and come into flower towards the end of October when the harvesting takes place. Harvesting is...

Jordan: Stereotypes in the media

The image of a certain society as perceived by other societies is never the same, as human perceptions differ on an individual level, this is one cause of stereotypes, since each human or society have different levels of knowledge and concepts about a certain object applied whenever trying to percieve...

Israel: Sinuses and elections

Apart from the dentist and her really low sinuses story, the elections day ends and Jerusalemgypsy goes home: Back home, my Good Daughter told me her new boyfriend voted for Jewish right-wing extremist Baruch Marzel. “WHAT!!!!???” shrieked I. “Don't worry mom. I'll change him.” said she.

Iraq: Impossible dreams of Arabs

IraqiPundit wonders what NYT is talking about here. Arab influence in Iraq? What influence are these supposed analysts operating under? Arab countries traditionally sided with Saddam against the Iraqi people. And since the removal of Saddam, Arab countries have (unofficially) influenced Iraq only by sending suicide killers into our midst....