Stories from 15 May 2010
Japan: Sanja Festival
Powerful images of the traditional Sanja Festival [en] (Tokyo), by Zuco.
Reactions to the Greek Financial Crisis and the IMF from the Africansphere
With the challenges facing the Greek economy and the ensuing intervention from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), reactions from African bloggers range from cautionary tales from past experiences to lessons that ought to be learned for their own regions.
Zambia: Meet the founder of Media 365
Emeka writes about Mary Tembo of Media 365: “Mary and her sisters founded Youth Media that published the TrendSetters a magazine that won numerous international awards for encouraging honest discussion...
Africa: Africa Gathering event
Bill writes about Africa Gathering event in Washington DC” “I wrapped up a month of travel last week, including a visit to Washington DC to attend Africa Gathering, a conference...
Azerbaijan: Revisiting Flower Day
Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines marks Flower Day in Baku, Azerbaijan, by looking back at the event last year when dozens of youth activists were detained. This year the blog...
Armenia: Banned TV station online
Following its removal from the airwaves by the authorities in April 2002 despite international outcry, and after already experimenting with short broadcasts via mobile, The Armenian Observer reports that A1...
Caucasus: Google Translate in Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian
The Google Translate Blog announces the addition of five new alpha languages for its online translation service, including Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian. Likely to be considered in the same way...
ICT for Development News in Japanese
“ICT for Development.JP” provides regular and comprehensive coverage of ICT4D news and project updates from around the world in Japanese. It is run by Maki and Tomonari, who started this...
Thailand: Protest blockade ends in violence
The attempt of the Thailand military to blockade the Red Shirt protest camp in Bangkok ended in violence with 16 people dead and hundreds injured. Here are liveblog and twitter reports from Bangkok.
Russia: Blogger Follows “Privileged” Car to Find Its Destination
LJ user teh-nomad posted a short video/photo report on a car with government license plates that ignored all rules of the road and turned on flashes pretending to be on...
Russia: Yet Another “Little Blue Buckets” Action
A peaceful street gathering of the representatives of the “Little Blue Buckets” (citizen organization against law nihilism on the roads – GVO was writing about it here and here) had...
Russia: First Cyrillic Domains Go Online
First Cyrillic domains officially went online on May 13 and caused different reactions among Russian Internet users. Many people still wonder what will be the consequences of this initiative.
The Aid Transparency Movement
The momentum of the aid transparency movement is palpable, but without greater coordination and aggregation, so much transparency will lead to more confusion than clarity. Raw data must be presented in ways that are easy to understand, and that tie directly to accountability initiatives at the local and national level in each country.
