In The News

China Steps Up to a Global Threat

John Gittings December 5, 2003
World AIDS Day on December 1 was marked in China by an unprecedented openness on the subject of HIV-AIDS. One of the nation's top leaders, Premier Wen Jiabao, visited patients in AIDS wards and proclaimed a new commitment to providing medical treatment for HIV-infected people and to prevention measures and education about the HIV virus. Veteran China watcher John Gittings writes that...

Goh Urges Portugal to Renew Old Ties

Tan Tarn How December 4, 2003
Seeking to build on linguistic and historical ties to Portugal, Singapore's Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, visited Lisbon to expand bilateral relations. "We welcome you in Asia, like you are welcoming us in Europe," Tong said. Singapore is already one of Portugal’s biggest investors, although trade between the countries has so far been modest. Being at the forefront of an economic...

WHO Unveils Plan to Fight HIV and AIDS

David Brown December 1, 2003
A program that was deemed "too ambitious" two years ago is set to be implemented by the World Health Organization (WHO). By providing instruction, expertise, and written documents, as well as calling for the training of 100,000 workers for 10,000 clinics, the WHO hopes to provide 3 million people with AIDS treatment by 2005. The WHO will not pay for the treatment itself, but it hopes...

Korean-Chinese Demand Citizenship

Kim So-young November 27, 2003
More than 5,000 ethnic Koreans from China have demanded citizenship in South Korea after living in the country illegally for some time. 2,200 of them have been on a 14-day hunger strike since the government in Seoul announced it would be deporting all illegal residents of the country. At least one former prime minister supports the immigrants' position, claiming a parallel with Jews wishing...

Difficult Times for Coffee Industry as Demand Falls

Tony Smith November 25, 2003
The international market for coffee is not good for the world's millions of coffee farmers. Facing prices at a 30-year low and production increases that outstrip demand, hundreds of thousands of coffee farm workers in Central America and Brazil are being forced off the land or into production of more profitable, yet harmful, coca production. Some former farmers are moving north to find work...

Seeing the Funny Side of Islamic Law, and Not Seeing It

Neil MacFarquhar November 24, 2003
For the past 11 years, a Saudi television show has aired during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan that subtly and sometimes not-so-subtly pokes fun at the Saudi regime and the religious bureaucracy. Muslim leaders call the show religious blasphemy, while the show's avid viewers consider it a light-hearted portrayal of the truth of everyday life. A particularly controversial episode...

Teochews Can Take Pride in Successes

Lee Hsien Loong November 24, 2003
Since at least the 1800s, Chinese immigrants speaking the Teochew dialect have moved to many regions of Southeast Asia in search of a better life. Many of them have become the most successful groups in their adopted countries, says Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Sometimes they seem "more than proportionately represented" in top-notch positions such as the Thai...