Global Voices · Citizen media stories from 2008 May 05

5 May 2008

Daily archive · 4 posts

Stories from 5 May 2008

Myanmar: The perfect storm

More than 4,000 people are dead after Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar last weekend. It was the world’s deadliest storm in ten years. The cyclone could also worsen the food crisis in the world. Relief is arriving but the ruling Junta is putting restrictions on foreign aid teams.

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Haiti: finding relief for hunger in children

Written by Juliana Rincón Parra · Caribbean

Reasons not to Overeat by BreezeDebris The international food shortage and crisis is doing its rounds on the blogosphere, and videos are no exception. From Haiti: people eating dirt to...

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Arabeyes: Freedom for Fouad Al Farhan

Written by Amira Al Hussaini · Middle East & North Africa

Saudi blogger Fouad Al Farhan is now a free man, after spending 137 days in detention in Jeddah. While bloggers have all along speculated why he has been held by the authorities for this long, Arab bloggers are unanimously excited over his release. And they also share their hopes for the release of other jailed bloggers.

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Taiwan: What can a baseball do?

Written by I-fan Lin · East Asia

There are some Taiwanese playing in Major League Baseball: Chin-Feng Chen in Dodgers from 2002-2005, Chin-Lung Hu in Dodgers, Hong-Chih Kuo in Dodgers, Chin-Hui Tsao in Royals, and Chien-Ming Wang...

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Updates from 5 May 2008

Nepal

Jwalanta Shrestha of OLPC Nepal Blog writes about the first ever pilot distribution of OLPC laptops in Nepal, codenamed “Sunrise” and posts photographs.

• Rezwan

Sri Lanka

ICT for Peacebuilding Blog points us to Vikalpa, a citizen journalism initiative in Sri Lanka, where “reports via SMS from citizens at the grassroots are being used to provide perspectives from the Eastern Province in the lead up to and on the day of the elections (10th May 2008).” Check their micro-blogging site on twitter which displays election violence and malpractices reports sent by the citizen journalists.

• Rezwan

Pakistan

Atif’s blogworld visits Lahore Book Fair and comments that this is probably Pakistan’s largest book fair to be held this year.

• Rezwan

Bangladesh

Ahmed Sharif posts some beautiful pictures of the nature of Bangladesh during summer in his photo blog Desher Chobi (Images of Homeland).

• Rezwan

India

Aparna Ray replies to US President Geoge Bush's remark that the growing prosperity of India's large middle class is contributing to rising food prices around the world, with an apt limerick:
“It seems we have hurled,
The rest of the world,
Into crisis by not chewing grass!“

• Rezwan

Cape Verde

João Branco [pt] quotes an Universal McCanns global research into the impact of social media that advocates that Internet should be free and reflects the situation in Cape Verde: “This is why I believe that in Cape Verde we still have a long way to go to get a decent Emerging and Developing Economies country index. And move to a radical drop in prices for access the Internet content would be a first (and crucial) step to get there.”

• Paula Góes

East Timor

On May 5th 1999, Portugal and Indonesia signed a document agreeing to hold a UN-supervised referendum. Ângela Carrascalão [pt] reminds the date: “We all believed our destiny would be brilliant! Was it a long time ago? Not really. There have been only 9 years. And yet, although a historic day, who still remembers it in these troubled days in which we live? Who gets relieved in the goodwill spirit that back then cheered the leaders of the Timorese Resistance? And hope, where does it live?”

• Paula Góes