Taiwan’s new president Ma Ying-jeou took office on Tuesday in a handover ceremony from outgoing President Chen Shui-bian, Reuters reported. Ma, the Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate, was elected in a landslide in March after campaigning to improve relations with mainland China. As president, Ma has pledged to create new trade and transit ties with the […]
Category: Politics & Society
Over half the populations of France and Germany respectively believe their national leaders should not attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing. A poll conducted by the Financial Times and Harris Interactive found that 54% of French people and 55% of Germans are opposed to their leaders participating in the August 8 […]
About five minutes before today’s three minutes of silence, my colleague Tom and I ventured across Jinling Lu to the park surrounding the Shanghai Concert Hall. From there, we were able to see the giant screen on the side of the Lansheng Theater building, which usually broadcasts ads for BMWs and the 2010 Expo, but […]
First saw this news from Shanghaiist, which has kept up with excellent, timely news updates on the situation in Sichuan: It’s early Monday morning and the China twitterati are abuzz with the news that all major Chinese web sites have been ordered to shutdown for the three days of national mourning which begins today. Here […]
The idea that people are able to cause earthquakes seems inherently wrong. Yet, in the wake of what has happened in Sichuan, there are reports that perhaps the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) – some 660 km (we wrongly said 200 km earlier) from Wenchuan – is partly responsible for increased seismic action in the area. […]