9 June 2006

Stories from 9 June 2006

Belarus: Homophobia

TOL's Belarus Blog highlights homophobic attitudes that seem to be prevalent in the country and are even shared by the otherwise progressive politicians: [Artur Finkievich, a leading “Youth Front” activist] said that if his organization comes to power, they will treat those who has non-traditional sexual orientation as monsters. They...

Poland: Equality Parade to Take Place Saturday

Poland's Equality Parade will take place Saturday; Becca of Boo writes on her plans to participate and also muses about the importance of “standing up for fundamental rights in what should be a modern, European state” at p3. The beatroot and p3 report that the All-Polish Youth decided to cancel...

Cambodia: Buddhist Monks and Football

  9 June 2006

Vutha in a post titled Reaction to watching World Cup 2006 compares the reaction of various people on monks watching the World Cup matches. “Meanwhile, there are different reactions to Buddist monks watching football match because they think that it is against the Buddisht faith and monks are required to...

Cambodia: Book on Cambodian History

  9 June 2006

Andy in his blog talks about a new book on Cambodian history “A book arrived through my letterbox today for review, namely John Tully's A Short History of Cambodia : From Empire To Survival, courtesy of Australian publishers Allen & Unwin. Thanks guys. Its a 270-page book intended for tourists,...

Latin America: World Cup Weblogs

  9 June 2006

In addition to José Luis Orihuela's list of weblogs in Spanish dedicated solely to the World Cup, Colombian blogger Blue Elephant will be writing contributing to the football poetry at fulbo.net. Finally, from El Salvador, “Hunnapuh” took a look at site statistics to find that page views were extraordinarily low...

60th Anniversary of King Bhumibol Adulyadej

  9 June 2006

People in Thailand are celebrating King Bhumibol Adulyadej's 60th anniversary of his accession to the throne. Royalty Originally uploaded by elbisreverri. Andrew Biggs describes the celebrations, part of which is a procession by royal barges on the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok. Personally, I had my own amazing experience. Yesterday...

China: Desperate football housewives

  9 June 2006

“Everyone has their own way of celebrating or dealing with the inconveniences of the World Cup,” writes Shanghaiist blogger Peijin Chen of pregnant Chinese women who have painted soccer balls on their bellies in ‘Desperate football housewives.’

China: University entrance exam

  9 June 2006

China's nightmarish university entrance exams wrapped up today. Seen in a post from Danwei‘s Joel Martinsen are rumors that ‘full-mark’ essays from the composition section are already being collected for publishers with response anthologies in the works. “In the days following the exam each year,” Martinsen writes of Gao Kao...

South Korea: World Cup consciousness

  9 June 2006

NGOs in South Korea have banded together, writes Kotaji blogger Kotajihwal, to prevent World Cup fever from drawing attention away from pressing social and political issues.

Hong Kong: Chinese author porn

  9 June 2006

Roland Soong at EastSouthWestNorth translates an essay making waves on a Chinese BBS recently written by a woman calling herself the Franz Kafka of China. In a bid to draw readers to her works, Daiqin (黛秦) provided some illustrations: photos of her naked and in a bra. Readership rocketed.

China: Yahoo and the law

  9 June 2006

Chinablawger Kevin Fisher blogs in response to an article from a journalist advocacy group which condemns internet company Yahoo for cooperating with Chinese authorities in imprisoning Chinese journalists: “These Chinese reporters were guilty of things like forwarding a governmental email to foreign reporters. In the case of one Chinese journalist,...

Oil Wars: Auding the Voters’ Registry

  9 June 2006

Oil Wars writes that Venezuela's voters’ registry “was thoroughly audited in late 2005 by an independent outside agency which found that it was a largely accurate and was completely appropriate to serve as the basis for elections.” Miguel Octavio, however, is skeptical, calling the audit “Simply one more fraud.” Daniel...

Venzuela: Metro Price Change

  9 June 2006

Qtpd describes the change in pricing (ES) at the Carcas metro. Rather than charging per segment, each journey will now have the same price (US $0.30) regardless of distance or the amount of transfers. Three commenters agree with the policy change, though one believes that it will spark protests.

Kenya: Perils of coffee picking

  9 June 2006

For the coffee addicts of the world, Cock and Bull Stories posts on the harzards of picking coffee – “When they tell you; ‘Finish you food, there are kids starving in India’, they should also add, ‘Drink up you coffee, there’s probably a boy in Kenya whose genitals are hanging...