27 February 2009

Stories from 27 February 2009

Bangladesh: Why The BDR Massacre?

Shada Kalo analyzes the motives behind the BDR (Border guards) mutiny in Bangladesh and discusses the intelligence and negotiation failures as the horror of massacre of army officers by the...

27 February 2009

Bolivia: Donations Other than Ambulances

With the recent crisis involving dengue fever throughout Bolivia, Carlos Gustavo Machicado of Guccio's [es] writes that there are more pressing health concerns in which donations other than ambulances are...

27 February 2009

GCC: Currency Dilemma for Arab Gulf Consumers

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) hopes to achieve a monetary union, with a common currency, by 2010. Bloggers from the region, which groups Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, debate the merits of the union and more importantly what name they want for their new currency.

27 February 2009

Mexico: Criticizing Wasteful Government Spending

The Mexican federal government recently updated information about its expenses and its budgets for various public institutions on their transparency portal. Using this public information, many bloggers have identified expenses for questionable recreational activities that have cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pesos.

27 February 2009

Uganda: Fire destroys Owino Market

A massive fire gutted Kampala's Owino Market early Wednesday morning, seriously injuring five people and destroying thousands of stalls. As many as 25,000 traders, mostly women, are estimated to have suffered losses.

27 February 2009

Bangladesh: Massacre Cannot be Justified

“What do you call it when a group of ‘disgruntled’ BDR soldiers [Bangladesh border guards] started their expression of grievances by open-firing on the commissioned army officers? Mutiny? Rebellion? Revolt?...

27 February 2009

Jamaica: Passion

Jamaican diaspora blogger Geoffrey Phlip republishes text from a lecture he gave about the importance of pursuing your passions.

27 February 2009

Armenia: Dollar Panic

The Armenian Observer reports that many in the country are rushing to change their local currency into dollars and limits have been introduced at currency exchanges.

27 February 2009

Japan: Bloggers on the Nakagawa affair

Over a week has passed since now-infamous footage of Japan's former finance minister Shōichi Nakagawa stumbling through a 20 minute speech at the G7 meeting in Rome made world headlines and hit the top of YouTube charts. In this post I feature a handful of responses to the speech by Japanese bloggers.

27 February 2009

Kazakhstan: Lomography

Ehot posts a collection of images taken in Almaty, Kazakhstan, with the legendary Lomo camera, which gave name to the whole trend in photo art called lomography.

27 February 2009