MEMO FROM NEW DELHI
Rival Economists in Public Battle Over Cure for India’s Poverty
By GARDINER HARRISNEW DELHI — She is 7 years old, covered in dirt and spends her days asking for food from pedestrians and drivers in one of this city’s central business districts.
Her name is Rohini, and other than pleading for bread, she had little to say when asked about her life. Instead, she threaded her way through thick traffic to her mother, Kamlesh, who on a recent rainy day was carrying one of Rohini’s sisters, a toddler with a cloudy eye and a disturbingly quiet demeanor.
“We don’t have the money to send the kids to school,” Kamlesh said simply.
India’s inability to pull Kamlesh and hundreds of millions of others out of desperate poverty despite decades of robust economic growth has been one of history’s great governance failures and economic mysteries.
Disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai goes on trial to face charges of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power
Disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai went on trial today to face charges of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power, in one of the decades most lurid political scandals.
Former Communist Party secretary Bo entered the courthouse flanked by police in the eastern city of Jinan, the court said.
Court proceedings were held amid extremely tight security, with foreign journalists completely denied access to the courtroom.
Five of Bo's relatives attended the trial, the Jinan Intermediate People's Court said in a stream of posts on its Sina Weibo microblog. They were not identified.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Support for Muslim Brotherhood isolates Turkey
Turkey risks endangering ties with the international community because of its support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. But an Erdogan aide says Ankara faces not isolation but a "precious loneliness."
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's criticism of the July 3 coup and the bloody crackdown in Egypt has sparked an angry diplomatic row between Ankara and Cairo.
Egypt accused Turkey's Islamic-conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) government for interfering in its internal affairs. Extending strong support to the Muslim Brotherhood, members of the AKP government accused the military-backed regime in Egypt of committing crimes against humanity.
22 August 2013 Last updated at 00:38 GMT
Harare diary: Worries for the future
A 33-year-old professional living and working in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, has been writing an occasional diary for the BBC about life in the city over the election period - and how it has changed over the past four years since the period of record hyperinflation.
In her last entry, Esther (not her real name) spoke of the shock many Harare residents felt about the election results, which saw the re-election of Robert Mugabe as president and gave his Zanu-PF party a majority in parliament. The poll also ended the power-sharing government between Zanu-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change, whose candidate Morgan Tsvangirai took 34% of the presidential vote.
Here she gives her reaction to the forthcoming inauguration of President Mugabe.
Assange's Wikileaks runs into Australian election troubles
James Grubel 1 hour ago
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's plans to capture a seat at Australia's September 7 elections were in disarray on Thursday after his top local candidate quit due to an internal fight over party organization.
Assange, who remains holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, accepted responsibility for the divisions, saying he had been too busy helping fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia.
"I made a decision two months ago to spend a lot of my time on dealing with the Edward Snowden asylum situation, and trying to save the life of a young man. The result is over delegation," Assange told Australian television on Thursday.
Cuban police shift tactics against dissidents
By JUAN O. TAMAYO | El Nuevo Herald
Cuban dissident Ana Celia Rodriguez Torres says police arrested her, punched her and kept her all day in a scorching hot bus, then freed her the next morning in a remote farming area 20 miles from her home.
Another dissident in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba reports similar treatment. Yasnay Ferrer Santos says she was yanked violently out of a car, held in a patrol car all day and all night and then freed on a rural road 10 miles from her home.
Dissidents and human rights leaders say those incidents are part of a recent shift in tactics that Cuban security forces are using against domestic opponents. Increasingly, they are resorting to physical force and dumping dissidents in isolated areas to harass and intimidate them, say human rights leaders.
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