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/ 24 December 2007
Uzbekistan’s autocratic ruler Islam Karimov on Sunday tightened his grip on power, when he was re-elected president in an election condemned by opposition activists as illegal and a ”farce”. Karimov won an overwhelming victory despite being ineligible to stand as a candidate.
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/ 19 December 2007
The hardest part is yet to come for Beijing Olympic organisers, heading into 2008 with all plans in place but potential pitfalls aplenty in the run-up to the event in August. Traffic congestion, closely linked to air quality, food security, media freedom and human rights as well as boycott calls are issues likely to flare up again over the coming months.
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/ 18 December 2007
Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who has not been seen in public for 16 months, suggested on Monday he might give up his formal leadership posts — the first time he has spoken of his possible retirement since he fell ill. Castro, who took power in a 1959 revolution, handed over temporarily to his brother Raul Castro in July 2006.
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/ 16 December 2007
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African National Congress (ANC) secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe’s organisational report, delivered on Sunday at the party’s national conference in Polokwane — was the first comprehensive admission from a party leader that the factionalism in the party was a result of a power struggle between two personalities: Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma.
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/ 3 December 2007
President Vladimir Putin appeared to be heading for a landslide victory in Russia’s parliamentary elections on Sunday night amid widespread reports that millions of citizens were coerced into voting for his party, United Russia. Early results from the Central Election Commission indicated the party was leading with 63% of votes.
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/ 2 December 2007
Russians voted on Sunday in a parliamentary election expected to hand President Vladimir Putin’s party a crushing majority and boost his bid to retain authority after leaving the Kremlin. Polling stations opened in a wave across the world’s biggest country, starting on the Pacific coast.
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/ 1 December 2007
Final preparations were under way in Russia on Saturday for parliamentary elections expected to hand a sweeping victory to President Vladimir Putin’s party, just three months before presidential polls. From Kamchatka to Kaliningrad, 109-million voters are eligible to cast ballots on Sunday in Russia’s fifth parliamentary elections since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
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/ 28 November 2007
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Prominent businessman Tokyo Sexwale, seen as a possible African National Congress presidential candidate, said on Wednesday Jacob Zuma was likely to win the contest to lead the ruling party. He also denied in a radio interview media reports that he had offered to fund Zuma’s campaign.
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/ 26 November 2007
President Vladimir Putin accused Washington on Monday of plotting to undermine December parliamentary elections seen widely as a demonstration of his enduring power in Russia. Putin, drawing on resurgent nationalist sentiment ahead of Sunday’s poll, also said Russia must maintain its defences to discourage others from ”poking their snotty noses” in its affairs.
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/ 26 November 2007
Chinese leaders hailed images sent back from from the country’s first lunar satellite on Monday, saying they showed their nation had thrust itself into the front ranks of global technological powers. Premier Wen Jiabao, visiting the scientists who have guided the probe Chang’e 1 into space and around the moon, proclaimed the mission a complete success.
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/ 26 November 2007
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African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Jacob Zuma leads the race for nominations for the post of party president with five provinces supporting him, to President Thabo Mbeki’s four, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Sunday.
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/ 2 November 2007
China warned on Thursday that unauthorised protests will not be tolerated during the Olympics next year, raising the prospect of detentions for civil rights campaigners and religious activists during the two-week event. The warning came as the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Olympic truce resolution for the 2008 Beijing Games.
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/ 24 October 2007
Asia’s space race heated up on Wednesday as China launched its first lunar orbiter, an event hailed in the world’s most populous nation as a milestone event in its global rise. China’s year-long expedition kicks off a programme that aims to land an unmanned rover on the moon’s surface by 2012 and put a man on the moon by about 2020.
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/ 23 October 2007
It is remote, virtually surrounded by desert, and its only claim to fame is as a fleeting player in the founding of Communist China — but Ulanhot wants its slice of the multibillion-dollar ”red tourism” pie. Trouble is, for all the lovingly restored old buildings and spic new exhibitions, the masses just aren’t yet coming to this far-flung Inner Mongolian settlement, whose name literally means ”red city” in Mongolian due to its Communist connections.
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/ 22 October 2007
Chinese President Hu Jintao’s most powerful rival in the politburo has been pushed into retirement in a reshuffle of the communist party’s inner sanctum. Zeng Qinghong, the Vice-President, was among three of the party’s most senior cadres who lost their places on the new central committee unveiled on Sunday.
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/ 17 October 2007
Vietnam’s Communist Party plans to switch its 20 000 desktop computers nationwide to open-source software next year, avoiding problems with copyright infringement, state media said on Friday. In Vietnam, an industry group has estimated more than 90% of all software is counterfeit.
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/ 17 October 2007
President George Bush hosted the Dalai Lama on Tuesday despite China’s warning that US plans to honour the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader could damage relations between Beijing and Washington. Beijing has bitterly denounced plans for the Dalai Lama to receive the Congressional Gold Medal on Wednesday.
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/ 11 October 2007
Russia’s latest outburst of passive-aggressive paranoia, aimed at Britain in particular, may reflect a realisation in the Kremlin that Western resistance to its perceived bullying of neighbours, disdain for civil and human rights, and cut-throat energy policy is growing after years of blind eyes, held noses and wishful thinking.
Communist Cuba paid tribute on Monday to its poster boy, Ernesto ”Che” Guevara, 40 years after the guerrilla fighter was captured and executed in Bolivia. The man he helped to power in Cuba’s 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro, was too ill to attend a memorial rally at the mausoleum where Guevara’s remains were placed when they were dug up from an unmarked Bolivian grave in 1997.
Workers rebuilding a 19th-century Moscow house unearthed the remains of nearly three dozen people apparently dating back to the era of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s political purges nearly 70 years ago, police officials said on Thursday. Police also found a rusted pistol on the estate where the remains of an estimated 34 people were discovered.
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/ 26 September 2007
Tear gas billowed down the street every day as rioters battled police. Enraged protesters believed that even the Communist Party had turned its back on them. One evening, amid the debris of street barricades, I spotted two party officials — famed for their underground resistance — pleading with a group of rioters to renounce violent protest. This was in Rome exactly 30 years ago.
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/ 26 September 2007
China’s huge Three Gorges Dam hydropower project could spark environmental catastrophe unless accumulating threats are quickly defused, senior officials and experts have warned. Dam officials warn that areas around the dam are paying a heavy, potentially calamitous environmental cost.
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/ 15 September 2007
A Chinese journalist jailed while working for the New York Times was released on Saturday, ending a controversial prison term that highlighted the country’s tough media controls. Zhao Yan, looking noticeably thinner, was greeted by a small group of family and friends, including his daughter and sister, when he emerged from prison.
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/ 11 September 2007
Chinese officials straining to stifle protest ahead of a key Communist Party congress have been paying to have troublesome petitioners held in violent squalor in a secretive Beijing prison, many complainants said. Eight petitioners told Reuters of being held in the prison with dozens of others who had come to the capital to press grievances.
Police in China’s capital said they will start patrolling the web using animated beat officers that pop up on a user’s browser and walk, bike or drive across the screen warning them to stay away from illegal internet content. Starting on September 1, the cartoon alerts will appear every half hour on 13 of China’s top web portals.
Sharon Farr’s documentary <i>Bram Fischer’s Story</i> is an absorbing and often poignant account of a remarkable life, writes Drew Forrest.
A motivational essay by Sharon Farr gives the filmmaker’s reasons for making a documentary about Bram Fischer. Here is an extract.