Author: joyce

Categories
China

China declares emergency as drought bites

China has declared an emergency over a drought which could devastate crops and farmers’ incomes, official media said, threatening further hardship amid slumping economic growth. The drought gripping parts of central and northern China has sent Zhengzhou wheat futures prices up 5 percent this week but physical prices have not moved, with most investors confident the country’s reserves and last year’s big harvest can offset any fall in wheat production this spring. The drought could hurt the incomes of farmers in Henan, Anhui and other populous provinces when many have lost factory and construction jobs after China’s growth faltered in late 2008.

Categories
Central Asia Russia

Russia, Allies Offer to Assist U.S. in Afghanistan

Russia and four former Soviet republics offered to help the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan even as one, Kyrgyzstan, moved forward on a decision to cut off American access to an air base used for war supplies. The Russian president said the five countries, including the Central Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, are ready for “full-fledged and comprehensive cooperation” with NATO forces in the region.

Categories
Cambodia & Laos Culture & History

Cambodian Oil, Mineral Wealth Sold To Corrupt Elites

Cambodia’s political elite has captured the country’s oil and mineral wealth, putting its economic future at risk while international donors turn a blind eye, an environmental watchdog said. Impoverished Cambodia has enough natural wealth to wean itself off foreign aid but international donors must do more to ensure the assets are properly managed.

In the report entitled: “Country for Sale,” the group said earnings from oil, gas and minerals were being “jeopardized by high-level corruption, nepotism and patronage” in allocating and managing the assets. “The same political elite that pillaged the country’s timber resources has now gained control of its mineral and petroleum wealth,” said Global Witness Campaigns Director, Gavin Hayman.

Categories
Cuba

Castro To Obama: Change Cuba Policy

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro is again using the Internet to let the White House know just what concerns Havana.In a blog posting Wednesday evening, Castro raised a laundry list of Havana’s grievances with Washington going back five decades.

Castro asked President Obama whether he is familiar with the damage caused by U.S. policy of germ and bacteriological warfare against the island’s people, animals and plants among many other aggressions dating back decades. But the former Cuban leader was also quick to point out that he does not blame Obama for the crimes of his predecessors, many of them carried out either before Obama was born or when he was a child in Hawaii.

Categories
China Culture & History North Korea

Fears of North Korea missile launch

North Korea is planning to test fire a long-range missile that could hit the west coast of the US, South Korean officials told state media. Any such test would further inflame regional tensions and follows Pyongyang’s warnings in recent weeks that it stands on the brink of open war with Seoul. South Korean government officials told the Yonhap news agency that they had received U.S. satellite images of a train carrying a suspected Taepodong-2 missile to Dongchangri, near the Chinese border where nuclear-armed North Korea is building a launch pad.

Categories
Central Asia

Kyrgyzstan to shut U.S. military base

Kyrgyzstan said it would close a U.S. military base on its territory after Russia offered US$2bn of emergency aid.The base is located at Manas outside Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital and was built with Russia’s blessing in 2001 to support U.S. coalition forces’ campaign to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Russia has since then called for the removal of U.S. bases from central Asia, a region it considers to be in its zone of influence.

Categories
China

China to go on European spending spree

China has often tried to use high-profile purchases of overseas goods as a diplomatic tactic to overcome political opposition, especially in its dealings with the US. Chinese companies had already signed contracts totalling US$15 billion during wen Jiabao’s trip to Europe. China hopes initiatives of this kind will help shift attention away from questions about the level of its currency, which some governments believe to be undervalued.

Categories
China Culture & History

Shoe Is Thrown at Chinese Premier

in a nytimes report:

A protester threw an athletic shoe at the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, during his speech at Cambridge University’s concert hall, seven weeks after a similar incident involving President Bush in Iraq.

The shoe missed Mr. Wen by at least 30 feet, but security officials promptly escorted the protester from the hall. The police arrested the man on suspicion of a public order offense. Witnesses described him as a goateed European in his 20s or 30s speaking foreign-accented English.

They said he blew a whistle as Mr. Wen spoke, causing him to pause and look up. “You should be ashamed of yourselves,” the man said, according to witnesses. “How can you listen to the lies he’s telling?” he shouted, in a video of the incident shown on Sky News television.

Categories
Central Asia

Kazakhstan Takes Control of 2 Banks

The Kazakhstani government announced that it would take controlling stakes in two private banks as a condition of keeping them from a possible bankruptcy filing.Banks in Kazakhstan had borrowed excessively from international lenders when terms were easy, and now those lines of credit have dried up in Kazakhstan quicker than elsewhere because of of the riskier investment environment in the country, reports the nytimes.

Categories
Culture & History North Korea

NKorea may be set for long-range missile launch

North Korea appears to be preparing to test-launch an intercontinental missile amid growing tensions on the peninsula, a South Korean intelligence source was quoted as saying.