2 October 2009

Stories from 2 October 2009

Puerto Rico: A Crisis with Many Names

  2 October 2009

This has been a very difficult week in Puerto Rico: The governor Luis Fortuño layed-off nearly 17,000 government employees. After the announcement, people immediately mobilized. Comments and analysis on the precarious political, social and economic situation that Puerto Rico is enduring have flooded the blogosphere.

Suriname: Tattoo Art

  2 October 2009

Paramaribo SPAN pays a visit to artist Pierre Bong A Jan, whose work “sets up a creative dialogue between…painting and tattoos, at a meeting-point of conventional ‘fine’ art and bodily adornment, folklore and science fiction, international youth culture and personal self-expression.”

Trinidad & Tobago: Monstre Sacre

  2 October 2009

Repeating Islands notes that on the heels of Roman Polanski's arrest, V.S. Naipaul has made the Washington Times‘ list of 5 “sacred monsters—artists who have misbehaved in on a grand scale.”

Bermuda: Bad Investment

  2 October 2009

“Government misses the point. Spends millions to save thousands. Shows utter inability to invest our money wisely. Again”: New Onion takes issue with the Bermuda government's subsidizing of the solar electric industry.

Armenia: Weddings

  2 October 2009

Running around Armenia post photographs and a comprehensive account of a wedding in the South Caucasus country. The blog says that in some ways an Armenian wedding is similar to those in the West, but in other ways not.

Georgia: Festival of Polish Culture

  2 October 2009

This is Tbilisi Calling announces the start of the first festival of contemporary Polish culture in Georgia. The blog notes that links between the two countries are already established and jokes that many Georgians claim to have Polish blood somewhere in their lineage even if full details are a little...

Is Japan a dying nation?

  2 October 2009

Mari writes a brief response to the BBC's article “Is Japan a dying nation?” She agrees that the population is shrinking but believes that the country will be reborn in a new and smaller form.

Japan: Panda poo power

  2 October 2009

Pink Tentacle blogs about the recent Ig Noble Biology prize winner Fumiaki Taguchi's research on Panda poo for disintegrating kitchen waste.

Typhoon Ketsana batters Southeast Asia

  2 October 2009

Typhoon Ketsana struck several Southeast Asian countries leaving hundreds dead and millions homeless. It triggered the worst flooding in the Philippines which affected 3 million people as of this writing. It displaced hundreds of thousands of villagers in central Vietnam, Cambodia and southern Laos.

Indonesia: Post quake death toll worsens

  2 October 2009

The earthquake death toll in Indonesia surged past 1,000 while thousands more are feared dead or missing. Indonesian microbloggers are using the internet to help in the relief and rescue efforts.

Morocco: From Censorship to Seizure

The Moroccan Interior Ministry has decided to sue Arabic-language daily paper Akhbar Al Youm for publishing a cartoon lampooning the newly wedded Prince Moulay Ismail. Issues of the magazine have also been seized. Bloggers react to these latest developments in this post.