Soon after Beijing made its successful bid to host the Olympic Games, human rights organizations, academics and some publications intensified their scrutiny of the manner in which the Chinese state apparatus was dealing with dissent, media freedoms and human rights in general.

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By Liu Dsih-chi 劉子琦
In a polarized political climate, the implementation of the single district, two-vote election format has had two consequences. First, it ensures party political accountability. Second, the winner-takes-all set up has lead to a wide divergence between number of seats won and number of votes obtained, as parties won by small margins in some of the constituencies.

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By Huang Ter-yuan 黃德源
The Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) crushing loss of seats in the legislative elections has not only pushed the party back to the "Formosa era," but also wounded the nation's other pro-localization forces.

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By Kuo Chang-feng 郭長豐
The first legislative elections using the new voting system are over and, as former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) predicted in 2005, the DPP suffered a crushing loss of seats.

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The environment ministry warns it will no longer tolerate poor environmental standards that have allowed the nation to enjoy the cheapest 'dirty, coal-fired energy' in the world
By Clare Nullis
As pressure mounted on South Africa's electricity provider to stop crippling and unpredictable blackouts that cause daily misery, the environment minister said on Friday the era of cheap coal-based energy must end.

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Nigeria must address its domestic woes and win legitimacy at home before having a hope of fulfilling international ambitions
By Ike Okonta
Russia is not alone in seeing oil as a means to transform its global standing. Nowadays, the mantra of Nigerian President Umar Yar'Adua, who took power last June following controversial elections, is to transform the country into one of the world's 20 largest economies by 2020. Yar'Adua and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are struggling to stamp their authority on an unwieldy and restive country of 140 million people, and the government views rapid growth as a means to achieving that aim.

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While the typical recession since World War II has lasted 10 months on average, stocks have historically held their ground over those periods, a study shows
By Paul Lim
A few weeks ago, the big debate on Wall Street was whether or not the economy was headed for a recession.

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