My attention has been turning more toward what is happening in the Pacific Basin and the countries surrounding it. I’ll be starting a site soon that is directed to the Pacific. This is practice chops.
This is BBC Pacfic News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/default.stm
The below quote is from the good ol’ BBC Asia Pacific News section: See the above link for their front page.
What makes a happy society?
Why has more money not made people happier?People in Japan and the Western world are no more happy now than they were in the 1950s, despite a massive increase in income.In fact, extra money has little impact on people’s happiness once a country has more than $15,000 (£8,000) per head.The World Happiness Survey puts Nigeria at the top of the league table of happiness and Romania at the bottom – along with several other former Communist countries.What are the key factors for a happy society? What role do politics, crime, economy and religion play? What makes Nigeria so happy, while the developed world lags behind?We’ll be discussing happiness in our global phone-in programme, Have Your Say, on Sunday 7 May. Please include a phone number with your comments if you’d like to take part.
Published: Thursday, 4 May, 2006, 08:46 GMT 09:46 UK
This is from the Bangkok Post: http://www.bangkokpost.com/
Bringing the market to the village. This is really a hot story and cutting edge sustainable economics.
The tiny village of Baan Nong Pai in rural Sakhon Nakorn (population 500) is the test bed for an ultra broadband solution to bridge the “Digital Divide”. There are no fixed line telephones in the village and mobile phones do not work unless people stand outside or on a roof, but these villagers now have a “Classroom for Life” that gives them access to email, e-commerce, video conferencing and a video-on-demand library thanks to the work of a certain Canadian-Australian by the name of John Hawker.
This is the Australian Broadcasting System Online: http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/ It has an unusual format, multi-language support as well as regional rather than international empahsis.
This below is one of their stories:
East Timor has urged the United Nations to keep international police officers in the country for another year after riots in the capital Dili.
Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta told the Security Council that with presidential and parliamentary elections due by next May, at least a company of international police is required until then because of the volatility and fragility of the situation.
Australia and New Zealand have discussed sending military reinforcements during talks in Auckland between the Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and his New Zealand counterpart Winston Peters.
Peter Lewis reports Alexander Downer says he’s monitoring the situation in East Timor closely and that a decision to extend the UN peacekpeeing mandate was imminent.
He says, “The sense we have from New York is that the UN – the members of the UN members of the Security Council feel the mandate should continue which is my view. I think it should.”
Winston Peters says New Zealand will also consider any request for additional assistance.
“Given the fact we have put our considerable support and committment behind this country I would think cabinet would treat it very sympathetically any request from the UN.”
Both countries have advised against all non-essential travel to East Timor.
This Maori News is a great resource for those interested in Pacific cultures.src=”http://maorinews.com/karere/images/tki-masthead.gif” />
This is one organizations bottom line take on it all: http://pacific.bizjournals.com/pacific/
And last but not least, this site reminds me of that old dirty joke, “what looks nasty, but feels good?” well this site has a nasty green color and the design is non-exixtent, however there are lots of good links here. Mucho hypertext product.
aloha.
also posted at European Tribune.
