18 October 2012

Stories from 18 October 2012

Greece: Petition to Remove Golden Dawn MP from Non-Discrimination Committee

  18 October 2012

The Golden Dawn party has become notorious for its blatant anti-Semitic and xenophobic rhetoric and has been responsible for perpetrating attacks against Jews and foreigners.” The European Union of Jewish Students have created a petition urging the Council of Europe Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination of the Parliamentary Assembly to remove...

Bermuda: Election Thoughts

  18 October 2012

Catch a fire blogs about Bermuda's elections – and offers a few predictions – while Respice Finem calls the right to vote “a right, not a privilege.”

Russia: Regional Governor Holds Twitter Q&A

RuNet Echo  18 October 2012

Two days ago Alexander Tkachev, governor of the the southern Kradnodarskiy Krai (one of Russia's 87 federal regions), announced a “twitter-conference” [ru], soliciting questions from his followers. Today he spent a few hours answering several dozen of them. The new-media-savvy public relations move met with hundreds of “trolling” questions like “how...

Ministers Caught Browsing ‘Zambia's WikiLeaks’

  18 October 2012

Zambia's Finance Deputy Minister Miles Sampa and Minister in Charge of Chiefs Nkandu Luo were recently caught on camera during a Lusaka council meeting browsing the online news website Zambian Watchdog. The online publication, known for its investigative reporting, was this month threatened with de-registration by the Registrar of Societies.

China: Basketball Grandma

  18 October 2012

To avoid medical spending and keep herself healthy, Zhu Shumei, a 76 old granny plays basketball every day for more than 20 years on a university campus in Jinhua, Zhejiang province. JIng Gao from Ministry of Tofu has translated the local feature story.

Radio Campaign to Protect Colombian Human Rights Defenders

  18 October 2012

Front Line Defenders has joined Colombian social movement ‘MOVICE‘ [es] (National Movement of Victims of State Crimes) in a campaign to develop a series of 6 radio Public Service Announcements (PSAs) to “encourage public opinion in Colombia to support greater protection for [human rights defenders].”

China: Breast Feeding

  18 October 2012

Sascha Matuszak blogs about his wife, Zhang Yushi's involvement in breast feeding campaign in China, including the organization of a flash mob breast feeding action in Chengdu.

Vietnam: Cost of Rescuing Trafficked Children

  18 October 2012

It's definitely worth stopping to count the cost of rescuing trafficked girls and boys. When we do so, we see that the cost of NOT rescuing them is even higher. Blue Dragon explains the value of helping trafficked children in Vietnam.

Myanmar to Ban Viber?

  18 October 2012

An engineer from Myanmar's Ministry of Communication has warned[my] that Viber and other VOIP services might be banned in the country because of revenue losses of the state and the absence of contracts between ministry and the users. Internet users immediately criticized the statement.

United States: Hispanic Perspective on Second Presidential Debate

  18 October 2012

The second debate which took place in New York's Hofstra University on October 16th showed a much more energetic Barack Obama than in the first debate. Twitter saw high levels of activity surrounding the debate. According to reports, more than 100,000 tweets were recorded per minute when the subject of immigration arose.