From the Taipei Times: Prosecutors stare death in the face

This sentenceProsecutor Lin said that prisons prepare a "last meal" for prisoners who are informed of their ultimate fate a couple of hours before their executions
can be read two ways, one of which is much more disturbing than the other. I wonder which is accurate.

So I've got a couple part-time jobs. I'm doing some freelance writing for the TT features section, which is sort of fun. It's mostly restaurant reviews and stuff like that, but I try to have a good time with it. I have a couple more serious pieces coming down the pipes, but for now it's stuff like this:
In the basement of KMall in the decidedly not ( Read more... )

The BBC has a five-minute video report about American violence against Iraqi civilians. At the end are two interviews with former US soldiers. The interviews are not graphic, but they are incredibly disturbing ( Read more... )

Of course W's Iraq War press conference is today's big news story. I thought it might be fun to look at how the front-page headlines came out (sorry, no links):
New York Times: Bush Concedes Iraq War Erodes Political Status
LA Times: Bush Says U.S. in Iraq Through 2008
International Herald Tribune: Bush sees no pullout before '09 ( Read more... )

I mentioned a while ago that my favorite Chinese blogger, "Beijing Loafer," whose writing is much more personal than political, stopped updating. Being the plucky journalistic type that I am, I started to poke around. But I didn't get far before I being told that media coverage could only be damaging to his case. The woman I talked to promised to ( Read more... )

From the BBC: "CIA renditions strain Europe goodwill"No duh, right? But it's a good story-it's short, and give both sides fairly, but also doesn't back off from analysis. I'm not familiar enough with this situation to say with confidence that the reporter didn't just make everything up, or that he's not leaving out vital pieces of information, but ( Read more... )

Particles, right? Wrong. Maybe.

The "semi-popular" publication Optics and Photonics News or OPN Trends invites its "readers to embark on an exciting adventure"-that is, thirty-five pages about photons ( Read more... )

"At any rate, President Chen's comparison with a gay relationship nuance is not appropriate. We do not think President George W. Bush will demand an apology."

Probably because everyone else is doing the hating for me. But also because, to a certain (small) degree, he's abandoned his earlier jingoism and irrationality, and he's taking heat for it from both sides ( Read more... )

This is from the AFP, via the Taipei Times. I bring it up not because it's another case of my sometime employer displaying an unnecessary (if kind of funny) bias regarding China, but because another kind of bias. Certainly this says bad things about the AFP, but even wire copy gets read by a bunch of people before it goes out, so the TT isn't off ( Read more... )