Democracy & Civics

Earthquake Parents Protest China Schools Collapse

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About 100 parents of children killed in schools by China’s recent earthquake have been turned back from a protest at a court in the Sichuan province. Approximately 7,000 classrooms collapsed in the 7.9 magnitude temblor, The Guardian reports, and in some cases were the only buildings to crumble in a given district. Some of the protesting parents called for a lawsuit, and angry questions about inadequate construction and corruption persist. Chinese officials, however, ordered news media to soften any criticism of school construction. Journalists were “dragged away” from the protest, and Zao Ming, an official in China’s foreign affairs office, told The Guardian: “This is not a good place to do interviews.

Democracy & Civics

Muslims Down Under: Bias, Sketch Comedy

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A fight over a proposed Islamic school in a small Australian town has turned nasty, with locals accusing Muslims of trying to take over their country. The disagreement reflects a larger struggle among Muslims to define their identity in the land Down Under. According to the BBC, Sydney’s Quranic Society has purchased 15 acres of land on the outskirts of Camden, New South Wales, with the idea of building a 1,200-student Islamic school. At a town council meeting last fall to discuss the proposal, one resident said, “Why hasn’t anyone got any guts? They’ve got terrorists amongst ’em,” according to the BBC.

Democracy & Civics

A Gathering Around Cluster Bombs

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Activists and diplomats from around the world are in Dublin, Ireland, this week to try to establish a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs, which they say pose unacceptable risks to civilians. The United Nations and over 100 countries have pledged their support to the ban, according to news reports, as did Pope Benedict XVI. The BBC quoted the pontiff as saying, “It is necessary to heal the errors of the past and avoid them happening again in the future. I pray for the victims of the cluster munitions, for their families and for those who will join the conference too, wishing that it will be successful.” Opposing the ban are some of the world’s leading manufacturers and users of cluster bombs, the United States, Russia, China and Britain.

Democracy & Civics

Australian Press Points to Children of Burmese Junta

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Since Cyclone Nargis ravaged Burma earlier this month, the military junta that rules the nation has been roundly condemned for its handling of the emergency, but Australian newspapers took an unusual tack; several publications revealed that children of Burmese military leaders are residing in Australia as students. Some newspapers went so far as to publish the names of some of these students. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, privacy laws prevent Australian universities from commenting to the press about individual students, but the Herald, along with the Age and other publications, found other sources who identified the Burmese students. The number is apparently small; the Australian Broadcasting Corporation cites an activist who says there are about eight such students in the country, compared to about 10,000 ordinary Burmese also in residence there. The ABC notes that there are strict limits on money transfers into Australia from members of the Burmese junta.

Democracy & Civics

Household-Name Republican Fighting for Her Political Life

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With congressional elections coming up this fall, many Republican incumbents are looking vulnerable even in states where their party previously seemed to have a lock on the vote. Perhaps the most surprising of these is North Carolina, where polls show that the well-known Elizabeth Dole is virtually tied with her Democratic challenger, North Carolina State Sen. Kay Hagan. According to North Carolina’s WRAL, a poll of 500 likely voters earlier this month found Hagan with 48 percent support and Dole with 47. Just a month earlier, before primary elections, a similar poll had found Dole ahead of Hagan by 13 points. The race will mark the first time in North Carolina that two women have competed as party nominees for a U.S. Senate seat, according to the New Burn Sun Journal.

Democracy & Civics

New Execution Inquiries

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The United States resumed executions last week after a brief moratorium, but several other nations that still carry out the death penalty have recently begun to question the practice. Japanese radio listeners were surprised last week to hear a broadcast of a condemned man’s last words and the sound of his hanging. The execution was recorded more than 50 years ago, and was used in a new documentary about the nation’s secretive death penalty practice. Details of executions are rarely released to the public, and according to The Guardian, the condemned are not told the time of their execution until minutes before they are hanged. The newspaper quoted filmmaker Tatsuya Mori as saying, “If the justice ministry masks the reality, then it is up to the media to expose it.

Democracy & Civics

For Cold War Brits, the Day After was a Tea-Time Nightmare

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A wry old anti-nuclear slogan used to say “One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day.” If you’re British, and the nuclear bomb manages to ruin your afternoon tea, well, then you’ve really got a problem. Or so one might conclude from the release last week of declassified Cold War-era documents that found British officials worrying about what a nuclear war would do to food supplies. The BBC quoted one document from 1955 as saying the government must be “completely ready to maintain supplies of food to the people of these islands, sufficient in volume to keep them in good heart and health from the onset of a thermonuclear attack on this country.” But, the document stated, the kind of rationing that existed in World War II would be “fatally deficient” in keeping the British people fed in the case of a nuclear war.

Democracy & Civics

New Wind-Power Projects Becalmed

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With oil prices setting new highs nearly every day, wind power is getting another look. But, like most weather reports, the outlook for large windmill projects is anything but predictable, plagued as they are by noise complaints, endangered species and fickle commercial backers. In the United Kingdom, a giant wind farm planned for the Thames River estuary now appears to be in jeopardy after Dutch oil giant Shell announced it would pull out of the project. The BBC reported that Shell, citing the rising cost of building materials, would sell its 33 percent stake in the London Array, a proposed wind farm that had been listed by Forbes magazine as one of the biggest clean energy projects in the world. The pullout sparked anger on the part of environmentalists and other supporters of the project.

Democracy & Civics

Yemen Steps, Uneasy, From Past to Future

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Yemen — the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, bordered by Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea — is opening up culturally as the Internet and wireless technologies knock down barriers to communication. Yet water shortages, civil war, semi-autonomous tribal militias, drug trafficking, an al Qaeda presence and state-owned media add up to an uncertain future. Most recently, the Yemen Post reported that a Pakistani ship carrying ten tons of drugs, including hashish, heroin and “pills,” was intercepted by the Yemeni Coast Guard. Yemen has become a “transit country” for drug smuggling into the Persian Gulf region, according to the newspaper. Terrorism and civil strife also abound, according to a string of articles from the Associated Press.

Democracy & Civics

Broadband: BBC calls for Market 'Intervention'

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Citing inclusion and civic participation as trumping private profit, the British Broadcasting Corporation is making a case for government “intervention” in the broadband market to ensure universal access to affordable, high-speed Internet services. In doing so, the BBC wades into the increasingly heated waters of the “Net Neutrality” debate. At issue is whether the commercial owners of the telecom networks that propagate the Internet worldwide should be able to influence what is transmitted, and charge fees for higher speeds or prioritization of certain types of online content. The BBC, as a “public service provider,” says its mission requires it to vault “all digital divides,” including social, geographic, age and ability. This would ensure delivery of broadband Internet to communities that would benefit most from it, but which currently lack access — for example, in sparsely populated regions where demand is lower, making an investment in infrastructure less profitable to a commercial operation.