Here’s an interesting twist on Western firms outsourcing jobs to India: British backpackers have started taking call center jobs there in order to save funds for traveling or extend their current trips.
Among the first to land in the subcontinent was Kenny Rooney, a 28-year-old from Livingston in Scotland. He had worked in a call […]
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Here’re some delightful photos of Mexico City wrestlers. My favorite of these Lucha Libre stars is either Super Porky (pictured), Super Raton, or Maximo — though Maximo could really use a longer skirt. (Sadly, La Liga Mexicana doesn’t feature any cholitas de Bolivia.)
Africans Boots of Beijing is a documentary film about an African soccer team in Beijing. The film was produced, filmed and edited by Luke Mines and Jeremy Goldkorn, long-time residents of Beijing from the USA and South Africa.
For ten years Afrika United F.C. has been a force in the amateur soccer leagues of Beijing, China. […]
“China and India, still desperately poor. Chinese children in a village pick garbage (above); An Indian child in a slum (below).”
Pranab Bardhan, writing in Yale Global Online:
The media, particularly the financial press, are all agog over the rise of China and India in the international economy. After a long period of relative stagnation, these two […]
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BBC:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has urged families not to mark Halloween, calling it a US custom alien to the South American nation.
“Families go and begin to disguise their children as witches. This is contrary to our way,” Mr Chavez said during his weekly radio and TV show.
He also said Halloween was a “game of terror”, […]
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SF Chron:
For all the criticism that Wal-Mart receives for its low wages and minimal health benefits, the retail giant says more than 11,000 people in the Bay Area are clamoring to get a job at its new Oakland store.
The country’s largest employer plans to welcome customers into its 148, 000-square-foot store on Edgewater Drive next […]
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This satirical Onion story about a guy who finally caves in and buys a cell phone reminded me of an article I saw in The Economist last month.
For all of the talk about PCs and the digital divide, mobile phones, the piece says, are crucial for economic development in the poorest parts of the […]
New York Times:
German Village, South Korea, only three years old, is an improbable creation, the product of this nation’s shifting needs. In the 1960’s and 70’s, South Korea, poor and overpopulated, sent thousands of its citizens to work as nurses or miners in West Germany. Today, they and their German spouses are being welcomed […]
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In an ongoing email thread, my Dad and I have been pondering an interesting question he raised: since Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch, did the native population ever take to wearing clogs?
He writes:
Newl-
Did you notice that the NC [Ed — he’s referring, of course, to the previously-mentioned Nap Cap] is $99.95! Your brain […]
A fantastic story from the NY Times’s Juan Forero:
EL ALTO, Bolivia - In her red multilayered skirt, white pumps and gold-laced shawl, the traditional dress of the Aymara people, Ana Polonia Choque might well be preparing for a night of folk dancing or, perhaps, a religious festival.
But as Carmen Rosa, master of the ring […]
The NY Times reports that, just as analysts had begun discussing the possibility of civil war, the situaion in Bolivia seems to have been resolved—for now:
Bolivia’s Congress accepted the resignation of President Carlos Mesa late on Thursday night and swore in the head of the Supreme Court as the new president, an appointment expected […]
Telegraph:
It is one of the most secretive regimes in the world, part of George Bush’s “axis of evil” and is believed to be close to building a nuclear arsenal. Next year, however, North Korea will open its borders to an eclectic mix of models, showbusiness personalities and captains of industry taking part in the […]