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World News Once a Week |
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| Published Thursday, May 8, 2008 |
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| Reuters/Stephanie McGehee : Pigeons fly during a dust storm in Kuwait City, Kuwait. |
Issue 98
You say Burma, they say Myanmar. Nomenclature aside, the country sandwiched between the Indian Ocean and Thailand has seen
its share of tragedy in recent months. Still sore from last year's violent crackdown on the Saffron Revolution, the citizenry now face a crisis in the form of Cyclone Nargis.
Spring came in like a lion, and went out like a lamb. Now if only Hillary Clinton took a page from that playbook. Dem leaders — and even Clinton supporters — are urging the New York Senator to pack it in gracefully. Not a chance, she said, pressing on in West Virginia. If you've
been following the polls on the Internet (by reading this email, natch), you are likely a willing participant in a political
paradigm shift. This week's Q&A goes behind the curtain with one computer programmer who's pushing for political transparency. Speaking of politics, Washington
DC has been up to its usual antics — stories from the Beltway came off as both black comedy and classic tragedy.
Check out our new Flickr page, where you can drop your two cents about this week's photos in the news.
- Catherine New |
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 A Note on
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| The Activate Q&A |
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Keeping tabs on Capitol Hill
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| Reuters/Jim Young |
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Politics and the Internet share an uneasy alliance. But the "character" issues and PR minutiae that dominate this year's US
election coverage inspired Aaron Swartz to forge a new kind of connection between the message and the medium. It's called
Watchdog.net.
Swartz is a computer programmer and former adviser to Creative Commons, an organization that is rewriting copyright laws and source transparency for the information age. He helped develop the
first RSS reader in 2000, when he was 14. Today, the Watchdog team integrates multiple sources of public data about politicians
with myriad communication tools. It wants voters to be more politically active and to escape the sound-bite culture of mainstream
media.
"It's just one small thing I could do to put the discussion back on issues and things that really matter," says Swartz. As
he and a team of volunteers continue to refine and expand the site, we spoke with him about his mission, Obama's mashup of
politics and technology, and Lawrence Lessig's short-lived run for Congress.
AT: How do you envision Watchdog.net becoming a tool that encourages political engagement?
AS: We're trying to use figures and graphs so people can really understand what's going on in a useful way. We want people to
be able to pull out key facts and see that, for example, their congressman is one of the top ten recipients of earmarks, or
he's one of the people who received money from drug companies and votes in their favor 90% of the time.
Keep reading the Q&A »
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Myanmar struggling with cyclone aftermath
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A powerful cyclone ripped across the Irrawaddy Delta of lowland Myanmar (also known as Burma) over the weekend, killing more than 50,000 and displacing hundreds of thousands more. As grim preliminary reports
trickle out from the country's tight-lipped ruling junta, aid workers are calling the disaster the worst to strike the region
since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
The full impact of the cyclone may take weeks to reveal itself. Neighboring countries and international agencies are scrambling to avert a humanitarian crisis, as untold masses of survivors await food and shelter. Meanwhile, Myanmar's
military regime faces renewed anger for failing to warn to citizens and for stalling relief workers at the border. (ED)
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After setback, Hillary continues on quixotic journey
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During the witching hour of Tuesday night's television primary coverage — after Barack Obama trounced Hillary Clinton in North
Carolina and lost a squeaker to her in Indiana — Tim Russert and other Beltway insiders proclaimed the Democratic race effectively over. Obama won North Carolina by 16 points and came within 20,000 votes in Indiana, proving that his trickiest month has not wounded him badly.
With the delegate math looking more hopeless than ever for Clinton, and a prominent backer abandoning her, it seems the only person who hasn't gotten the memo to drop out is the candidate herself. Wednesday, the Clinton campaign
announced that it would fight on — and she gave her flagging campaign another cash infusion. (BH)
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Bolivia's wealthiest want out
A referendum in Bolivia is pitting South America's most impoverished nation against its own richest region. Powerful landowners
and their political allies in the energy-producing department of Santa Cruz are seeking autonomy from the leftist central government. (ED)
| Guardian | New Statesman |
Tory Boris is new London mayor
Eccentric MP Boris Johnson was elected mayor of London last Thursday, becoming the first Conservative party member to hold the eight-year-old office. Johnson defeated two-term incumbent Ken Livingstone by appealing to voters in suburban boroughs and promising a crackdown
on crime. (ED)
| BBC | Guardian |
A man among Turkmen
Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan's president, has ordered a golden statue of Saparmurat Niyazov — his late, ultra-megalomaniacal predecessor — to be relocated from the capital city's center. It's one of several moves to diminish Niyazov's cult of personality. (BH)
| Times, UK | Al Jazeera |
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Yahoo! still single in Silicon Valley soap opera
Search-engine company Yahoo! incensed shareholders but delighted Google after weeks of merger negotiations with Microsoft came to naught on Monday. CEO Jerry Yang said the offer of $33 per
share was too low, but neither side would budge. (CN)
| Computer World | New York Times |
Chubby chasing the science of fat
A Swedish study says it's not the size of fat cells that predicts obesity, but the quantity. A person's fat-cell count is determined in childhood and remains constant throughout
life. The takeaway: dieters may shrink fat but not remove it. (CN)
| ABC News | WebMD |
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Madame's suicide, or government cover-up?
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who faced prison for running a DC prostitution ring, apparently killed herself. Authorities released her final notes, stirring debate over whether she was pushed to suicide
or her death was a murder designed to bury her titillating client list. (CN)
| Wonkette | Prison Planet |
The happiest Green Zone on Earth
Bloggers blew the whistle on a Pentagon plan for a $5 billion resort complex to be built around the US embassy in Baghdad. Contracts for this "zone of influence" will line the pockets of several US corporations, including a firm that
developed Disneyland. (ED)
| Think Progress | Carpetbagger Report |
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| The Week in Pictures |
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Click to see the full-size image and caption.
 Andres Stapff
 Gopal Chitrakar
 Federico Lynam
 Brian Snyder
 Marko Djurica
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*Unless otherwise noted, all photos are courtesy of Reuters.
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| Local Stories |
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Uranium mines open near Grand Canyon
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Arizona uranium miners are clashing with preservationists as nuclear-power revitalization projects stoke a fresh demand for fuel. More than 1,000 new drilling claims have been staked near the Grand Canyon since
2003. Critics say the mines threaten the natural wonder. (CN)
| Los Angeles Times | Christian Science Monitor |
African queen: Namibia uncovers historic wreck
Namibia's state-run diamond company uncovered what researchers think is a 16th-century ship — the oldest sub-Saharan wreck
ever found. Authorities recovered cannons, elephant tusks, and gold coins from the ship, which may have carried the Portuguese
explorer Bartolomeu Dias. (BH)
| Namibian | BBC |
Virus fears sweep China
A variation of hand-foot-mouth disease killed more than 20 children in the Chinese city of Fuyang, raising fears of an epidemic ahead of Beijing's Olympics. Health
officials have resisted comparisons to SARS, the disease the Chinese government mishandled in 2003. (BH)
| Times, UK | China Daily |
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Editors
Anna Balkrishna
Eli Dvorkin
Benjamin Hart
Doug Levy
Catherine New
Contributors
Mark Mangan
Patrick Sisson
Production
Morgan Croney
Andrew Steinmetz
Design
Nicholas Feldman
Jessica Bauer-Greene
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A Note on Our Sources
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