Khmer Dance

Video of a Cambodian dance troupe performing a blessing dance at the opening of the Lowell Water Festival, one of the largest Southeast Asian festivals in the US, organized jointly by the local Cambodian, Lao, Vietnamese and Thai communities.

USA: Should Public Libraries be English-Only?

In the city of Denver, Colorado, there's an ugly fight breaking out over whether public libraries should provide books and other materials in Spanish. Anti-immigration groups argue that publicly funded libraries should be English-only, while library supporters retort that curtailing Spanish-language content is discriminatory and doesn't reflect the ever-changing population demographics of the United States.

Image from Thailand

Two hilltribe girls in Mae Sai, Thailand, standing along the Thai-Myanmar border, by Andy Carvin.

Chad: Habré Henchmen Ousted

Human Rights Watch's news blog is reporting that six henchman of Chad's former dictator Hissène Habré have been ousted from positions in government. "The Chadian government’s move follows a report last month by Human Rights Watch naming these six and 35 other leading Habré-era figures, many accused of torture and killings, who still hold key posts in Chad. Those dismissed include the powerful director of the Judicial Police who was deputy director of national security under Habré; a surveillance chief who was the director of Habré’s dreaded political police, the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS); and a man described by a Chadian truth commission as one of Chad’s 'most feared torturers.' It is believed that more sackings may be forthcoming."

Trinidad & Tobago: Bombing Suspect in Custody

Taran Rampersad posts an update about this week's bombing in Trinidad. "It seems that a suspect has been held in the explosion on George St. here in Trinidad, but with so many copycats in Trinidad and Tobago, it's difficult to say that this is also a suspect for the initial bombing," he writes.

Launch of the Mobcasting Developers Forum

Because of the positive feedback I've received around the creation of a low-cost, open source strategy for recording and receiving podcasts over mobile phones, I've set up a new email list and Web community for people interested in making this happen. There are already free tools like audioblogger and audlink that will let you post podcasts from your phone, but both require a long-distance phone call to the US, and neither let you listen to podcasts from your phone. I want to develop a tool that can be installed anywhere in the world, so all of this can be done on a local phone call. To learn more about mobcasting, please visit this blog entry I wrote last January, entitled When Mobile Podcasting Leads to Mobcasting to see where this all got started. The email list will be focused solely on this project; people who join the list should be interested in mobile phone podcasting and be willing to help us make this project happen. To join the list, please send an email to mobcasting-subscribe [[at]] yahoogroups . com, with the spaces and brackets removed. Or, you can visit the Mobcasting list homepage. Meanwhile, I've also created a DDN community that we can use as a workspace. The workspace has bulletin boards, document sharing and blog posting. Group members are welcome to post web resources, blog entries or files to this public page. We can also add news, events and feature stories to the site if they become useful at some point. Looking forward to making this happen! -andy

Trinidad & Tobago: Another Bombing, Evidence All Washed Up

Taran Rampersad reports on the second bombing this summer in Trinidad & Tobago, neither of which has generally received much attention in the international press.

Speculation so far has been that nobody was injured because of the amount of rain, and the fact that it's basically an area that vagrants are supposedly found in.... Evidence is expected to be washed away with the rain (that area frequently floods), and nobody was injured. Yet, at the end of the day - who would do such a thing? And while some idiots who will try to twist the news to support their purposes (saying that it's Al Qaeda), nobody seems to have claimed responsibility again.

Ghana: Kente Weavers of Ashanti

Last night, I put together a short video about traditional kente weaving in Ghana's Ashanti region. Kente, perhaps the most famous West African textile, is brightly colored, coming in a variety of patterns, some reserved for use by Ashanti royalty. The video was shot in the historic kente weaving village of Bonwire, about an hour south of Kumasi. Three weavers are featured, each using a traditional loom to make the cloth. The video also contains music performed by Ghanaian drummer Obo Addy, used with permission from Alula Records. There are two versions of the video: high resolution (13 megs) and low resolution (two megs).

Kente Weavers of Ashanti: High res video Low res video

Mauritania: Coup d'etat

Mauritanian blogger Rauf writes about the apparent coup that has taken place in Mauritania. A rough, machine-assisted translation of what's been posted to his blog:

Shootings with heavy weapon were heard Wednesday morning in Nouakchott after the presidential guard had taken the control of several strategic points of the Mauritanian capital, where a military coup d'etat has occurred in the absence of the Head of the State, Maaouyia Ould Taya. As of 5H00 local (and GMT), soldiers of the presidential guard took the control of the buildings of the staff, the radio and national television and blocked access to the presidency and the ministries, according to this source. According to observers, they also positioned vehicles equipped with heavy weapons and anti-aircraft batteries at several strategic points of the capital. Five shootings of heavy machines resounded with 10h15 close to the center of Nouakchott, whose streets were emptied gradually, of the population. In the capital, the administrative buildings were deserted and activity was weak at the end of the morning, with only some pedestrians and vehicles in the streets.