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The Newark mayor and video-site founder spent the past week hanging out with hackers, founders, and tech geeks. Here’s why.Watch out, Mike Bloomberg. There’s competition in the race to be the most pro-entrepreneurship mayor. Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, keynoted at the exclusive f.ounders conference in New York City last week, just after returning home from a few days at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, where he met with entrepreneurs, delivered a talk, and judged a hackathon.That’s where we met him–and where he was hanging out with the founders of some of the most talked-about start-ups of this year. Lady Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter, also chatted up Booker, who has lately become known for his

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Author: Sajjad Ashraf, NUS In a parallel development with the rise of Asia, bilateral relations between the region’s two largest countries, China and India, have improved remarkably since the late 1980s. Trade volume, which was about US$3 billion at the turn of the century, has soared to US$80 billion, making China India’s largest trading partner [...]

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China’s government promised to fight corruption, improve the environment and improve people’s lives as the annual National Peoples Congress began its legislative session Tuesday. Thousands of delegates from all over the country have gathered in Beijing for nearly two weeks of meetings that will oversee China’s once-in-a-decade leadership change and approve new policies. Outgoing Premier [...]

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Authors: Frank Jotzo, ANU, and Yongsheng Zhang, DRC China’s economic transformation is so rapid that around two decades from now, the country is likely to join the ranks of high-income societies, according to the joint report China 2030 by the Development Research Center and World Bank. Quality of life for most of its people is [...]

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Author: Miguel Alberto Gomez, DLSU In the wake of recent cyber attacks launched against the Republic of the Philippines, and in response to the formalisation of cyber-crime legislation, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) have recently announced plans to establish an operations centre to address the rising incidence of cyber attacks. Categorised as a [...]

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Growing numbers of Chinese go online, unafraid to say they deserve better leadership BEIJING: A recent Chinese internet meme – a catchphrase gone viral – lacerated what’s widely seen as a lame excuse for why China’s leaders have been so slow to enact political reform.

The ever-sharp social media blog Tea Leaf Nation says it all started when Professor Gong Fangbing, at China’s National Defense University, wrote an essay for a People’s Daily website, arguing that the reason the Communist Party hasn’t yet embraced democracy is “largely because of insufficient preparation of theoretical backing.” He posited that the Party, despite being in power for 63 years, hadn’t developed theories to move it from a revolutionary party to a ruling party that could, maybe, eventually, share power.   The responses, gathered by Tea Leaf Nation from Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, were scathing: “Now I get it.

The Chinese soccer team didn’t win the World Cup because of insufficient theory,” scoffed one user. “Lunch is delayed due to insufficient theory,” tweeted another. “Due to insufficient theory, constipation continues,” wrote a third.  And attorney Yuan Yulai added, “It’s only natural to conduct democratic reforms and return power to the people. If you steal something, you return it to the owner. Why does that need theoretical proof?” It’s a question that’s getting harder for the Communist Party to answer. And as the party prepares for the Nov. 8 opening of a Party Congress that will announce a new generation of leaders, a growing chorus of voices from unexpected quarters is saying political reform is long overdue.    As the party prepares for a new generation of leaders, a growing chorus of voices says that political reform is long overdue. Deng Yuwen, deputy editor a newspaper put out by the Central Party School, The Study Times, has criticized President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao for having “created more problems than achievements” – by having failed to reform the system. And that was even before The New York Times came out with its exhaustively researched investigative report about the $2.7 billion it said Wen’s family has amassed in the time he’s been a senior leader. Deng, in an essay published on the website of the business magazine Caijing and promptly taken down by censors, suggested that the Chinese people and the party seem to have increasingly divergent ideas about what reform is. Deng offered his own view. “The essence of democracy is how to restrict government power; that’s the most important reason why China needs democracy so badly,” he wrote. “Over-concentration of government power without checks and balances is the root cause of so many social problems.” Among those problems, he said, is China’s growing wealth gap, with many of the wealthiest being Communist Party officials, their relatives and close friends. The 70 wealthiest members of the National People’s Congress were found by Bloomberg News Agency last year to have an average net worth of $1.2 billion. Each.  The party’s response to growing resentment of such inequality, not to mention snide online commentary about it? Party cadres – and their families – have been ordered to reduce conspicuous consumption of luxury goods, especially in the run-up to the Party Congress.   Among those problems is China’s growing wealth gap, with many of the wealthiest being Communist Party officials, their relatives and close friends. But that’s barely a beginning, in a year when reports are coming out about the families of top leaders amassing fortunes, when one of the Communist Party’s former stars, Bo Xilai, had his spectacular fall from grace, when the son of Hu Jintao’s effective chief of staff crashed a black Ferrari in the wee hours of a March night, killing himself and badly injuring the two young women – one Tibetan, one Uighur – who were in the car with him, in various states of undress, according to the South China Morning Post. Ironically, it was just a couple of weeks before that crash that Xi Jinping, the likely next head of the party and president of China, gave a speech at the Party School, about the importance of “maintaining the purity of the Party.” “The Party’s capacity to govern, steer reform and opening up, develop the market economy and respond to the external environment will all be challenged, and we will be faced with the growing danger of losing our drive, underperforming, becoming alienated from the people, lacking in initiative, and corruption,” Xi said. Xi is still an enigma when it comes to how he really feels about political reform – how much, how fast, and what kind. He’s played the game to rise as far as he has in the party. But his father, Xi Zhongxun, has been an ally of China’s reformist leader Hu Yaobang in the 1980s, and was the only senior leader to protest when Hu was ousted by senior leader Deng Xiaoping for moving too fast with reforms.  A well-informed public, fed-up with corruption, inequality and injustice, is increasingly demanding a better deal from its government. Interestingly, Xi is said to have paid a visit over the summer to Hu’s son, Hu Deping. A Reuters report quoted sources who knew of a written summary of Xi’s remarks to Hu, circulated among some retired officials. In it, Xi was quoted as saying “the problems that China has accumulated are unprecedented” and “we must seek progress and change while remaining steady,” according to Reuters, quoting sources who knew of a written summary of Xi’s remarks circulated among some retired officials.  Even if Xi proves more open to allowing political reform than the outgoing leadership – not a high bar — there’s still the question of whether he’ll have the clout and persuasive power to push such reforms through a system whose elites have proven adept at protecting their privilege. And while an increasingly well-informed public, fed-up with corruption, inequality and injustice, is increasingly demanding a better deal from its government – the party is still trying desperately to control the conversation.

That was true even as state-run media were trumpeting the news that Chinese novelist Mo Yan had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Propaganda Department put out the following directive, says the US-based website China Digital Time. It gathers such leaked circulars from disgruntled Chinese journalists and publishes them online in a section called Directives from the Ministry of Truth: “To all websites nationwide: In light of Mo Yan winning the Nobel prize for literature, monitoring of microblogs, forums, blogs and similar key points must be strengthened. Be firm in removing all comments which disgrace the party and the government, defame cultural work, mention Nobel laureates Liu Xiaobo (serving an 11-year prison sentence for calling for a multi-party democracy in China) and Gao Xingjian (a Chinese novelist in exile), and associated harmful material. Kind of annoying for the censors, then, that Mo Yan himself had barely taken the time to bask in the party’s congratulations for his award, when he turned around and called for Liu Xiaobo to be released as soon as possible.  The party continues to scramble to keep up. The popularly acerbic blogger Han Han, in his book, This Generation, sums up the growing tension in China this way: “The main contradiction in China today is that between the growing intelligence of the population at large and the rapidly waning morality of our officials.” A growing number of Chinese people aren’t afraid to say they deserve better. Some are impatient to see if their new leaders have the vision and courage to lead the change that’s needed rather than be unwillingly pushed forward by it. Few are holding their breath.  

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See original article: New Naval app secretly recreates environments from your phone

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China is the biggest market for illegal ivory from Africa. In an effort to stop the slaughter of elephants by poachers, celebrities like basketball player Yao Ming and environmental groups are teaming up to educate the Chinese public about the costs of poaching, with the hope that reducing demand could reduce the supply. Internet and tourism campaigns target Chinese citizens and visitors to African countries like Kenya. Many Chinese surveyed by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, for example, reported not knowing that elephants were killed for their tusks, and 80 percent of those surveyed said such facts would prevent them from buying ivory in the future. Postal workers in China are trained to recognize suspect packages, and penalties for smuggling are being strengthened.

Through star power and education, animal rights advocates hope to stem the demand for ivory once and for all. – YaleGlobal Celebrities lend support to endangered elephants Mike PflanzThe Christian Science Monitor, 5 September 2012Rights:© The Christian Science Monitor. All Rights Reserved.

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