Readwrotes Blog

The Jakarta Post | Sun, 08/02/2009 7:51 PM | National Street fashion festival: A dancer performs during the Jember Fashion Carnival in Jember, East Java, on Sunday. More than 600 alternative designs were displayed along the 3.6 kilometer catwalk. JP/ID Nugroho

Dian Estey | Sun, 08/02/2009 12:36 PM | Headlines I started receiving messages about “getting rich, quick and easy” a few months ago. First, it was a one-off random message from someone I hadn’t seen for a long time and then messages started coming more often and from more people – good friends and family members. I also started receiving the message in different ways: email, SMS, Facebook message, Facebook note, blackberry messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and finally, in a more conventional way: a phone call. The phone call pushed me to do more than just say no or ignore the message. I agreed to look into it while at the same time telling the caller I was not interested for two basic reasons: I do not have good business skills, and I don’t believe in getting rich quick and easy. A quick click on the link brought me to a page wallpapered with dollar notes (I think this alone is a turn-off, but let’s not try to get personal with taste). I read the explan...

Erwida Maulia , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Wed, 07/29/2009 11:02 AM | National Indonesian vice-president-elect Boediono has asked the Singaporean coroner court trying the case of the death of Indonesian student David Hartanto Widjaya to settle it fairly. The former central bank government made the call Tuesday at the city-state, while addressing a forum at Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Boediono also expressed his condolences over David’s death in the opening of his speech before senior Singaporean government officials and NTU professors, said blogger Iwan Piliang, who has been assisting David’s family in trying to uncover the real cause behind the NTU student’s death. Iwan said David’s family had formally protested Boediono’s visit to NTU, but later rescinded the complaint after the latter promised to touch on the case in his speech. “We’d heard about Boediono’s plan to address a forum...

By VOA News 02 August 2009 A former Iranian president and a former prime minister are sharply criticizing the trials of people detained in the nation's post-election unrest, saying the detainees' confessions are invalid. Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami (file) Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, who now heads one of the largest reform parties in the country, says the mass trial that opened Saturday is unconstitutional. Mr. Khatami called the judicial proceedings a "show" trial, and he lashed out at the court's tactics Sunday. He said prosecutors are relying on confessions that were illegally obtained. Defeated presidential candidate and one-time prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi says the detainees were tortured into confessing. Iran put another 10 post-election detainees on trial Sunday, one day after beginning a mass trial for detained activists, politicians and protesters arreste...

By VOA News 02 August 2009 An image from Al-Iraqia TV station of former deputy PM Tariq Aziz in Baghdad (file) Iraq's highest court has sentenced former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz to seven years in prison for expelling Kurds from northern Iraq during former dictator Saddam Hussein's rule. The Iraqi High Tribunal handed down the sentence Sunday. Aziz was deputy prime minister when Iraq invaded Kuwait and during the 1991 Gulf War. He served as an international spokesman for the Iraqi government. Also Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki traveled to Iraq's Kurdish region to meet Kurdish politicians in an effort to resolve disputes over land and oil. Mr. Maliki met near the city of Sulaymaniyah with the Kurdish region's newly re-elected President Massoud Barzani and Iraq's President Jalal Talabani, who also is a Kurd. After the meeting, Mr. Maliki said the two sides agreed to hold furthe...

By Ayaz Gul Islamabad 02 August 2009 Afghan security man looks at burning tanker carrying fuel for NATO forces in Afghanistan on the Jalalabad-Kabul highway, east of Kabul, 01 Aug 2009 In Afghanistan, concerns are growing about security for the country's presidential election later this month amid an increase in violence. At least nine NATO troops have died in clashes with insurgents in Afghanistan over two days, and militants have stepped up attacks on election candidates and their staff. The top U.N. official in Afghanistan said any comprehensive effort to end the violence would have to include talks with top-level Taliban leaders. The killing of more than 70 foreign soldiers in July made it the deadliest month for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. But there is no let up in the bloody trend in August as the country prepares to hold its second presidential election si...

By Robert Berger Jerusalem 02 August 2009 Israeli Jews enter a house after police evicted its Palestinian residents in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, 02 Aug 2009 Israel evicted dozens of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem on Sunday. The move touches on one of the core issues of the Middle East conflict. Israeli police moved into the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in disputed East Jerusalem and forcibly removed more than 50 Palestinians from their homes. They were members of two families who have lived in the area for more than 50 years. U.N. officials say they saw Jewish settlers moving in afterwards to occupy the houses. "They [are] planning to take house by house, and they claim that they own all this neighborhood," said Maher Hannoun, one of the evicted Palestinians. Police cited a ruling by Israel's Supreme Court that the houses belong to Jews and that the Ar...