5 April 2006

Stories from 5 April 2006

Hungary: Budapest Prepares For Flood

Timbo of The Hungary Years posts pictures of how Budapest is preparing for the flood. Pestiside.hu writes about disaster tourism and media attention: “The English-speaker of unidentified origin […] speculated that the Danube would have to rise another meter for the story to be big enough for the BBC.”

High cost of health

  5 April 2006

Dr. Emer, a practising physician, observes that in the Philippines, the high price of medicine can be fatal to your health. In Cambodia, “medical corruption punishes the poorest of the poor” by depriving them access to basic health care.

Man-made eggs

  5 April 2006

At Talkin’ Tech, BernieJ has photos of unique eggs from China. They almost look like chicken eggs but they are a hundred per cent man-made.

Podcast ban is politcally motivated

  5 April 2006

Relative to the prohibition against using podcasts for political campaigns, Singapore Election Watch reproduces a statement from the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) Secretary-General that says this is not the first time that the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) has arbitrarily thwarted its efforts– the PAP banned videos in 1996 when...

Kids in the kitchen

  5 April 2006

Children’s kitchen, cooking by children!, the 8th edition of Lasang Pinoy, a monthly project of Filipino food bloggers from all over the world, culminates with the round-up of participating blogs by Beijing-based Iska Montero. It is the first time that some of the participants posted videos in lieu of text...

Indonesian links

  5 April 2006

Indonesian tech blogs Daily babblings! and Enda Quicklinks have links to an article on online identity and anonymity, a blog on parenting and fashion and a blog where you can calculate how much you've spent on cigarettes from the day you started smoking.

CSI help criminals escape?

  5 April 2006

The Sensintrovert has screenshots of media reports that say the Police Deputy Inspector-General surmises that the success in Malaysia of the TV series CSI might be making criminals smarter by teaching them how to remove traces of their crimes.

Kissing and hugging in public indecent?

  5 April 2006

A couple kissing and hugging in a public park were arrested and charged with indecent behavior but The Saidicious Blog says although the Constitution does not explicitly allow public kissing and hugging, neither does it prohibit them.

Sri Lanka: Difference between UK and SL

  5 April 2006

London, Lanka and Drums on the difference in attitudes in Sri Lanka and the UK – “I think many of the major differences are caused by the relative labour costs. Even taking cost of living into account manual labour is far more expensive here in the UK than in Sri...

Sri Lanka: LTTE faked abduction

  5 April 2006

Transcurrents.com on what appears to be further political intrigue in Sri Lanka – “The University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) has alleged that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) organization has faked the alleged abduction of seven Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) personnel at Welikande on the Batticaloa – Polonnaruwa...

India: Youtube and Data

  5 April 2006

Propeller reflects on Youtube.com as a data warehouse – “If there were to be an video archive along the lines of archive.org, snapshots of life all across the world can be recorded in a giant knowledge database making it probably the first system in the world which has knowledge of...

China: Chinese law

  5 April 2006

The Chinese Law Prof links to the 2005 bibliography of German-, French- and English-language works on Chinese law compiled by Knut Pissler of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Private International Law in Hamburg.

Japan: Penis festival

  5 April 2006

“Is anything illegal in Japan?” asks one reader in response to MasaManiA‘s photo essay on the country's Shinto penis festival. [Contains nudity and explicit language]

South Korea: Cultural exchange

  5 April 2006

Occidentalism‘s Matt blogs on the resumption of a teacher exchange program between Japan and South Korea suspended a year ago with the escalation of a territorial dispute between the two countries.

Hong Kong: Drug mules

  5 April 2006

Would you go easy on a drug smuggler? “For the number of people whose deaths they would most likely have contributed to by bringing that stuff in they got off damn light in my book,” writes the flagrant harbour blogger about three Australians convicted yesterday in Hong Kong for smuggling...

China: Spying computers

  5 April 2006

The Angry Chinese Blogger takes an in-depth look at the possibility raised earlier this week of Chinese-made Lenovo computers being installed with eavesdropping technology and used to spy on Americans.

China: Death compensation

  5 April 2006

Are the lives of urban Chinese worth more than those of their rural counterparts? chinablawger tells us what the Chinese government's current stance is and how that might change.