Stories from 19 September 2010
Russia: Intellectual Property Rights as NGO Prosecution Tool?
Rebecca MacKinnon calls for revising software copyright policy following the story in Irkutsk, where local authorities used the excuse of struggling against illegal software to confiscate local NGO's computers. Irkutsk case represents a wider problem of using intellectual property protection as a justification for prosecution of human rights activists all...
Indonesia: Local government closes church defying court order
A Christian protestant church, GKI Taman Yasmin in the regency of Bogor, Indonesia was forced to cease activities by Bogor's regency on Sunday night. The police and Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) surrounded the church, disbanded a church meeting, then sealed the building by the city's order.
Armenia: The British Ambassador blogs
Charles Lonsdale, the British Ambassador to Armenia, has started up an official blog on the web site of the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In his second post, the diplomatic blogger compares British and Armenian art against the background of the seventh Biennale in the country's second largest city...
Japan, China fishing boat row: a war of words
Just as the Diaoyu Islands row between Japan and China intensifies over the detention of a Chinese fishing captain, whose detention has just been extended by a further 10 days, a war of words has broken out between prominent bloggers Yoshikazu Kato and Zhang Wen. Yoshikazu Kato, bilingual in Japanese...
Japan: A new cabinet, again
Tobias Harris at observingjapan comments [en] on the new cabinet that was formed after Prime Minister Kan won the DPJ party leadership election last week.
Australia: Muslim Dress Code Backlash
Residents of a Melbourne suburb in Australia were asked by the mayor to cover-up in a pool event to avoid offending Muslims. This order has sparked an online debate
USA and Ghana: The most powerful black men on twitter
Abena links to a list of the “100 Most Powerful Black Men on Twitter“, but is disappointed that so many of the names come from the entertainment industry. “Are black men with the most impact on the planet likely to be rappers and sportsmen?” she asks.
Bangladesh: Digitizing Land Records to Combat Corruption
There is a lot of hope riding on the effective use of ICT in the Land Management System of Bangladesh to usher in modernization, user-friendliness, transparency and accountability in this very important sector. Aparna Ray explains.
In Destino Cuba [ES], blogger Carlos Manuel Álvarez Rodríguez writes about the concert Cuban singer and songwriter Silvio Rodríguez offered in Havana dedicated to the bicentennial of Chile's independence: “Something is always absent in concerts. There is a desire to capture everything, but this is impossible in a theater with...
Peru: Mayoral Candidates, Twitter and an Intercepted Phone Call
"Lourdes" became a Twitter Trending Topic for a couple of hours. The story behind what looks like a trivial Trending Topic is the release of a conversation where Lourdes Flores, a candidate for mayor of Lima, uses unreserved remarks about the mayorship. Bloggers and Twitter users reacted to the audio and the politics behind it.
Argentina: Boca Juniors, Passion for Football
One of many football (soccer) fans' dreams is to attend one of the Argentinian Boca Juniors' matches in their famous stadium, “La Bombonera“. Find out why football fans from all over the world share this dream.
