Vietnams Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung went online Friday in a question and answer chat open to Vietnamese citizens, a first in the one party Communist State.

Some 20,000 questions were logged prior to the chat, with the Prime Minster discussing topics including corruption, privatisation and economic growth.

Reuters reports Dung saying that he “deeply and highly appreciated the attention by our comrades and by our people about the developments of our country as well as the leadership of the party and the government” and that “One of the key issues for 2007 is the administration reform. If we cannot do that the production forces will not be freed up to help with investment in the nation’s economy”.

Unfortunately he didn’t shed any light into our story earlier this week on the “Lustful Gentleman” investigation.

 

Tags: Vietnam

 

Other Asian News

Will The Vietnam War Atrocities Also Be Added To Textbooks?

MH370 Update

Originally posted on February 9, 2007 @ 7:40 pm

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has announced that he intends on keeping two bloggers on his staff who have come under fire this week following revelations that they had previously posted “anti-Catholic” commentary on their blogs.

Groups including the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights had been demanding Edwards fire the bloggers for posts that included criticism of the Catholic Church for its stance of gay rights, abortion and contraception.

Edwards said in his statement that although he was personally offended by the “provocative messages”, he intended to keep the two on staff, saying that he believed that every one deserved a “fair shake” and that the bloggers had personally assured him that under no circumstances would they denigrate any church or religion publicly again.

 

Tags: John Edwards

Originally posted on February 8, 2007 @ 6:34 pm

In a follow up story to our post Wednesday about the International Olympic Committee considering lifting a ban on athletes blogging, the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC), demonstrating that Australian athletes succeed in spite of their governing body, has stated that Australian Athletes will be totally banned from blogging at the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics because they could release “electronic missiles”. (note, I’m not kidding, I really, really wish, as an Australian, that I was)

Craig Phillips from the Australian Olympic Committee said that Blogging would erode the sanctuary of the Olympic village.

“The nature of the technology is such that if someone came off the field or the track annoyed about something, they could spout off at their competitors or their coaches. That would undermine team spirit…Blogging would allow athletes to launch missiles electronically, and it could become a real free for all.” said Mr Phillips.

The BBC reports that Mr Phillips also said there were commercial considerations.

The AOC fears that non-Olympic sponsors might use blogs to hijack the games in ambush marketing. Yep, it’s really all about the money.

 

Tags: Olympics, Australian Olympic Committee

Originally posted on February 9, 2007 @ 2:59 am

In a rather extraordinary example of begging for money, Florence Devouard, Chairwoman of the Wikimedia foundation has told an audience at the Lift07 conference that Wikipedia has the financial resources to run its servers for another 3-4 months, and that without further funding Wikipedia “might disappear”.

Could Wikipedia shut it’s doors? Tthe site alone would be worth at least $xxx million, if not a billion, after all, there’s literally no better property out there when it comes to traffic and authority than Wikipedia. And whoever bought it would not only have an amazing marketing tool, they could even control the truth, at least as most of us know it. Indeed, the likes of Microsoft wouldn’t need to hire people to edit entries, they could simply pay the new owner. Text Link sales alone across the site would more than pay for the servers the site uses, tens of thousands of times over. I smell a begging bluff on this one, but Devouard did make the claim.

(via Via Digitalis/ SEO Black Hat)

Originally posted on February 9, 2007 @ 9:44 pm