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Boston Globe
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Jun 25, 08 6:47 AM CDT
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A Massachusetts systems analyst covered, cut, and smashed his opponents to win the USA Rock, Paper, Scissors championship in Las Vegas. Sean Sears, 23, is now headed to China to play for the world title. He beat out 300 opponents to win the $50,000 championship purse.
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Wall Street Journal
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Jun 25, 08 2:43 AM CDT
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Nations once known for extremes of poverty—China, India and Brazil—are now producing more of the world's millionaires and super rich than ever before, according to a new study of the globe's wealthiest entrepreneurs. The US is losing ground to emerging markets when it comes to producing personal wealth, reports the Wall Street Journal .
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Associated Press
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Jun 24, 08 6:34 PM CDT
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A US aircraft carrier set sail from Hong Kong early Sunday with about 100 of its crew still on shore leave, the AP reports. The USS Ronald Reagan and its support ships left port early because Typhoon Fengshen was bearing down. Officials are scrambling to book flights to reunite the sailors and their ship—though security prevented them from saying where.
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New York Times
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Jun 24, 08 7:23 AM CDT
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The American ambassador to Albania personally endorsed a plan to disguise the origin of munitions bought by a Pentagon contractor, according to Congressional testimony. The New York Times traveled to Albania during an earlier investigation of a shady 22-year-old arms dealer operating out of Miami Beach. But the Albanian defense minister, with the ambassador's approval, had illegal Chinese ammunition removed from the site that the reporter was visiting.
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New York Times
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Jun 24, 08 6:31 AM CDT
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Heightened visa restrictions in China have shrunk tourism ahead of the Beijing Olympics, the New York Times reports. Numbers of foreign visitors to Beijing fell 14% last month when government officials tightened the rules to bolster security.
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Wall Street Journal
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Jun 23, 08 11:15 AM CDT
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It turns out revolutionizing the mobile-phone industry isn’t as easy as Google thought it would be. The first phones to bear the search giant’s much-anticipated Android platform won’t ship until the fourth quarter, the Wall Street Journal reports, because carriers are having trouble customizing the software. Many despair of having Android offerings at all in 2008.
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Guardian (UK)
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Jun 23, 08 9:29 AM CDT
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The UN Security Council today will address the struggle for power in Zimbabwe, one day after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai dropped out of the presidential race because of violent intimidation, the Guardian reports. The US, Britain, and France hope to convince China and Russia to condemn Robert Mugabe's government. The EU, meanwhile, is pushing for penalties of its own, and African countries are considering how to proceed.
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Reuters
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Jun 22, 08 5:44 PM CDT
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A policewoman has sparked debate in Beijing after breastfeeding nine orphaned babies during last month's earthquake, Reuters reports. Officials have promoted Jiang Xiaojuan, 30, calling her "hero and model police officer," but others argue that merit, not deeds, should lead to promotion. Xiaojuan left her baby at home to help with disaster relief and earned the press nickname "police mum."
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Spiked
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Jun 22, 08 5:42 AM CDT
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Though animal conservationists hail the success of India's Jim Corbett National Park in increasing populations of endangered tigers, Kirk Leech complains in Spiked that numbers continue to decline—and that expanding protected areas for tigers harms indigenous human populations. His solution: for-profit tiger farms, where selling animal parts to meet unrelenting demand can finance more farms and better breeding to prevent extinction.
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Jezebel
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Jun 21, 08 8:30 PM CDT
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A Chinese graphic novelist determined to keep the aftermath of last month's earthquake on the front burner is using her new blog to get the message out, and fellow citizen journalists on the other side of the world are catching on. "We love you, Coco Wang," a blogger at New York-based Jezebel writes to the Beijing-based artist.
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Christian Science Monitor
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Jun 21, 08 11:11 AM CDT
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Superstitious beliefs the Communists once tried to stamp out have been making a comeback in China, the Christian Science Monitor reports, especially in this troubled Olympic year. The Games are set to begin on August 8, as 8 sounds like fortune in Mandarin, making 8/8/8 an especially lucky date, but the country has been anything but lucky in recent months.
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Reuters
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Jun 21, 08 6:17 AM CDT
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Under tight security, the Olympic torch made its way through Tibet’s capital in the most controversial leg of its worldwide journey—a jaunt that ended with Chinese criticism of the Dalai Lama, Reuters reports. “We will be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique,” said the Communist party’s Tibet leader in front of Potala Palace, the exiled Tibetan leader’s traditional seat.
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Associated Press
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Jun 20, 08 8:53 AM CDT
(Newser) -
China has for the first time admitted holding an American prisoner from the Korean War on its soil, AP reports. The Vermont man, just 18 when he was captured, died in China and was buried there, officials said. China authorities, who said the prisoner was mentally ill, had previously insisted no American POWs were taken from North Korea.
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Associated Press
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Jun 20, 08 2:37 AM CDT
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The world's soaring population is expected to hit 7 billion by 2012, further straining thinly stretched natural resources, AP reports. The current population is 6.7 billion, and growing at 1.2% a year, spurred by increasing medical and nutritional advances in developing countries. But as more women in developing nations join the work force, the growth rate is expected to slow—eventually to .5% by 2050.
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New York Times
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Jun 20, 08 2:18 AM CDT
(Newser) -
China is going all-out in a sometimes destructive push to top the medal table at the Beijing Olympics, the New York Times reports. Athletes are risking their health by training while injured, and potential medal-winners are being pressed out of retirement. Olympic hopefuls are well aware that victory will bring fame and fortune—and failure a huge "loss of face" for the motherland.
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Yale Environment 360
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Jun 19, 08 6:58 PM CDT
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An "unprecedented" combination of ills is threatening the Amazon, and if nothing is done to ease the pressure on the world’s largest rainforest, more than half of it could be gone or withered in 20 years, Rhett Butler writes for Yale Environment 360 . After a three-year decline, forest clearing doubled in the latter part of 2007 to help feed the insatiable demand of the growing economies in China, India, Russia, and elsewhere.
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