Twenty-year-old Ashin Ghozhaka was walking to his mother’s village near Kyaukpadaung, central Myanmar, when a Land Rover drove past him. He waved it down and got a ride. “It was air conditioned, and the people inside didn’t speak Burmese,” he remembers. “I was confused. Much later, I realized they were from the United Nations.” That … Read more
The past few years have not been Russia’s best, at least from an international perspective. Since the reelection of Vladimir Putin for a third term as president in 2012 — but even during his role as prime-minister — the country has been known for major human rights violations that often escalated into full-blown violence. Such … Read more
On July 21, Japan went to the polls to elect a new prime minister and decide on the make-up of the Upper House of the Japanese Parliament, the National Diet. The results were not surprising, not for the Japanese, nor for the international press. Shinzo Abe, chosen for the second time to be the acting … Read more
Russia has recently returned to the headlines in the wake of the Edward Snowden odyssey, but otherwise the nation’s domestic politics have remained off the radar since the brief flurry of post-election protests in March. Since then, the general notion has been that Putin has rebuffed the political threat and continued to consolidate control over … Read more
It’s very hard to tell where the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge actually begins. A sign indicating the entrance is followed by over five miles of elevated road snaking through the partially-completed skyscrapers of downtown Qingdao, a burgeoning coastal city of eight million in China’s Northeast, before finally hitting a line of tollbooths at water’s edge. Though … Read more
Last Saturday, the day after the uprising, I left home to go to Besiktas around 1 p.m. My plan was to go help the people who were cleaning up in Besiktas, walk to Taksim to join the protestors in the square, and then move on to Gezi Park. In my backpack I had two bottles of … Read more
With a booming economy in the 2000s, it seemed like India was on the fast track to becoming a developed nation. However, recent slow growth has not only reigned in this optimism, but it has also revealed just how rampant government corruption is throughout the country. Major scandals in the telecommunications industry and the coal … Read more
As soon as the nationality of Dzhokhar and Tamarlan Tsarnaev was announced in the aftermath of the Boston bombings, misinformed statements stereotyping the Chechen people spread through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. Not only did such updates and tweets draw a connection between the suspects and Islamic extremism that has not been confirmed, but … Read more
Amidst the seasonal chatter of virulent H5N1 influenza strains and lingering concerns about H1N1 arose a new topic of interest this April: the emergence of a new flu strain, H7N9, which had previously never been seen in humans. First reported to the WHO on March 31, the new strain had already caused 77 cases and … Read more
The general perception of Buddhism in the West is one of peace, tranquility and modesty. Buddhist monks, and their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, have been a source of inspiration for celebrities and children’s cartoons alike. So it might come as a surprise to know that in the past two weeks, the Buddhist majority in Myanmar … Read more