Global Voices Online

The State Administration of Radio, Film and TV (SARFT) last month announced rules requiring China's major television stations to broadcast only “main theme” television during prime time hours. Ming Dynasty 1566 is one of the main theme.

Joel Martinsen from DANWEI translated an interview with the T.V programme director, Zhang Li, from The Economic Observer which tells the production process of the historical drama.

Pestcentric writes this about Budapest's current image: “Sure, Budapest now holds the dubious distinction of being Europe’s porn capital, (to be addressed at a later time), but its public face doesn’t need to show it.”

Pestcentric discovers that, due to the recent football scandals in Italy, Hungary (together with Croatia) may have a chance to win the bid to host Euro 2012: “Sure, Hungary has seasonal rioting, but it should be brought to the attention of those voting that there are no public holidays tied to a revolution in the summer months.”

Further Ramblings of a N.Irish Magyar points out that the Hungarian government is suggesting the wrong motivation for studying English: “[…] achieving the rather lofty (and therefore completely unmeasureable) objective of increasing the ‘mobility of upcoming Hungarian generations' and improving ‘their options on the labor market.' Think about the logic of that statement. If everybody, as the government wishes, learns English, then the mobility and options on the labour market remains exactly as they are now; we’ll just have higher qualified street-cleaners that are able to watch BBC World.”

Hungarian prime minister recently compared the Hungarian and British health care systems. Further Ramblings of a N.Irish Magyar responded with a mock comparison - and here's the first item: “In Hungary, the patients have to bring their own toilet rolls.”

“Since the riots last September, Kossuth ter - the square where parliament is situated - has been closed to the public. […] On Friday, the opposition party thought it would be a good idea to remove the barriers themselves,” writes The Hungary Years. Pestcentric also covers the initiative.

Itching for Eestimaa has moved to live in Estonia: “So we are finally here in our new home of Tartu, Estonia. I've been here many times before, but never to live. In the past my “home” in Estonia was in Tallinn. Now I will get used to living in Tartu, which is a university town, and largely devoid of the large crowds of wandering Brits in search of their next drink.” He posts two entries of observations of everyday life in Tartu and Estonia - here and here.

Itching for Eestimaa writes about the history of Estonia's Jews.

Itching for Eestimaa mentions the Estonian president's position on the Bronze Soldier scandal.

Ethel from San Salvador is now officially an economist. But where to from here? “I know I wanna make positive changes in my society, in my country, etc, etc, etc, that is why I joined and mostly why I've stayed in AIESEC. My real problem is that I haven't find what am I really good at? So how can I cause positive changes if I haven't find my biggest strength? and how do I find it?”

Ellen Fields of Mexico-in-English recommends the useful cross-cultural business blog, Business South of the Border.

After Blogger, it's Wordpress.com to be censored in Pakistan. “The heavy hand of the govt. strikes again. First they came for blogspot, but the teeming masses said nothing, and moved on to wordpress.com. Now they’ve come for wordpress - where will they go now? “

“One musician and a small production crew went to Bolivia hoping to create something that could provide help for the poor of Bolivia In the end, the warm hearts and rich culture of the Bolivian people wound up giving them more then they could ever hope to give in return.” That is the description of Bolivian Rhapsody, a massive 184 mb documentary that is freely available for download at PodShow.com.

Shirazi has a post on porters - the people who carry the load up the mountains. “The agile, tireless, hardworking people, primarily from local communities, ferry massive loads of gear on their backs. Like the more familiar Sherpa people of the Himalaya, the Pakistani porters are respected among fraternity of mountain lovers as some of the best porters in the world. T”

Ready. Shoot. Aim on why brown men can't smile. “While walking in the mall the other day I made another Indian guy completely freeze in his tracks and look at me in disbelief. I didn’t do anything outlandish. I smiled at him. “

Moving to the new Blogger platform can make circumventing censorship a little harder. Teeth Maestro has an update. “a few contacts at Google since he has been interacting very closely with them for the past year and a half, probing the option if the blogspot back-end can remain on an unencrypted platform to be accessible from Pakistan, maybe not publicized but more as an underhand tweak to enable bloggers full access to the blogspot interface.”

Lebanese blogger Leila Abu Saba links a video of a Kuwaiti singer who makes fun of Bush's war.

A bengali in TO on fun in Islam. “I asked one of my class mates, son of one muezzin, if he had watched the documentary. “We don't have TV.” He replied, “My dad says it's haram. He says the TV is evil.”"

It snowed in Amman, Jordan and the snow melted the next day, writes Black Iris. “The morning of a snow fall, when it’s really bad outside and the driving conditions are impossible and the possibility of crashing a car or being run over has never been greater: they pack supermarkets and grocery stores and purchase enough food to feed a small army or possibly survive a nuclear holocaust,” she writes.

Ad Blog Arabia gives us an insight into a wonderful campaign to provide children with better living conditions.

Israeli blogger Nathan tells us all we need to know about the different types of plagiarists out there.

Israeli blogger Allison Sommer is enjoying the public interest in a sex scandal - as “they are more entertaining, and less scary to discuss Haim Ramon and Moshe Katsav's troubles with women than growing threats from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Ahmedinejad.”

Israeli blogger Yael has come up with an ingenious way to quit smoking - by shocking herself with a 9-volt battery!

Silly Bahraini Girl encourages a blogger who is being sued in Bahrain to take the lead and sue ministers too. “By suing you, your good friend here has opened a can of worms and a door from which we can ask lots of questions about everything under the sun. If we bloggers and writers can be sued for voicing our opinions, then we too can sue them for not doing their jobs and for being the wrong people in the wrong job!” she writes.

The Armenian Libertarian-Socialist Movement is a new blog by Armenian anarchists in exile that analyzes the country's politics. Their first post explains what they are all about.

Registan.net looks at the Bush administration's proposed budget for the 2008 fiscal year and says it shows the White House is dropping the ball on Central Asia.

Cuttino's Georgian Life posts a video of Georgian folk dancing.

Armenia Blog explains that it is using advertisements on its site to help support Armenian charities.

As the lunar new year is approaching, the spring travel started. The central government announced earlier that the train ticket's price will remain the same. However, most of the tickets fall into the pocket of various ticket agents, and they sell the tickets to the black marketeers. Tianya club has a post explaining the situation (zh).

Kokaryo is one of the debates between China and Japan, and it also involves Taiwan. Mutantfrog translates an article written from a Chinese perspective on the Kokaryo issue.