The Indian government is pissing about on climate change, seeming somehow to think that because it wasn't responsible for it, that it will remain unaffected. The extent to which the Indian Government has got this very wrong is something to which the Indian press is starting, slowly, to wake up, as this article on the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers shows. The consequences of this for food production in Asia are profound, as Lester Brown notes here. With most ... read more »

Raj's blog | 2 comments

Posted on 21 November, 2008 - 20:46

Here's an interesting report on suicides in China. I'm struck most by how the solution to plainly economic problems is deemed to be psychiatry. But I'm also concerned that in this story, one never really gets a sense of where anything is, as if 'rural China' were one, large and undifferentiated lump. It's a feature of reporting on China in general that very few place names make it into the bulk of the text...

Rural China's suicide problem
By Daniel Griffiths
BBC News, Beijing

China has one of the highest rates of female suicide in the world. And the problem is most acute in poor rural areas. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 31 comments

Posted on 4 June, 2007 - 18:22

In China, a supermarket has introduced a brand new, whizzbang up to the minute supermarket format – one in which shoppers sit in an electric rollercoaster car and are whizzed around the store, slowing to pluck goodies from the aisles.

As the commentator notes at the end of this wee clip, the only disadvantage is that if you miss something, you’ll need to do the whole thing all over again. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 2 comments

Posted on 30 November, 2006 - 22:17