KIARA BRAMASCO WRITES – The worst disaster to hit Bangladesh’s garment industry happened on Wednesday, April 24th with a death toll of 344 and counting. The media regarding Bangladesh is dominated by this story and rightly so. With unapproved construction of parts of the garment factory and ignored warnings of a fragile building, several people [...]
About Kiara Bramasco
Kiara is currently studying Political Science at LMU and has plans to graduate in 2014.BANGLADESH: Full Court Press Is Next?
KIARA BRAMASCO WRITES – A top editor at Bangladesh’s Amar Desh newspaper has been arrested and at least one human rights group says he’s being tortured in police custody. The international Committee to Protect Journalists, meanwhile, has called on the government to stop its official harassment of the Dhaka daily. How’d we get it this [...]
BANGLADESH: Blasphemy No Longer Allowed
KIARA BRAMASCO WRITES – Rest easy, readers. The Bangladeshi government has been busy clearing the cyberworld of blasphemous content. The Daily Star reports a group of “Muslim Clerics” submitted a list of bloggers they believe are responsible for alleged insults to Islam made online. The list was handed to a new government committee responsible for [...]
BANGLADESH: Poverty Decrease Gets ‘Daily Star’
KIARA BRAMASCO WRITES – One of Bangladesh’s leading newspapers, The Daily Star, has reported that poverty levels are decreasing. The United Nations’ latest development report stated that there are 40 poor countries that are helping to reduce poverty levels and that “Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed [...]
BANGLADESH: Face(book) on the Moon
An amateurishly doctored picture of convicted war criminal Delwar Hossain Sayedee’s face superimposed on the moon has sparked violence by his supporters who apparently saw it as a divine omen. The photo, which was posted to the Jamaat-Shibir Facebook page Saturday night, quickly went viral, and was spread by supporters via cell phone and computers, reports [...]
BANGLADESH: Persistent Outrage Over Crusading Blogger’s Death
Bangladesh news coverage this month has been dominated by demonstrations in Dakha demanding stiffer sentences for war criminals from the country’s 1971 Liberation War. Now, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis have been gathering as they also seek justice for the killing of Ahmed Rajib Haider, a blogger who helped organize the war crimes protests. Haider [...]
BANGLADESH: Money On The Go
Mobile Money has been making its way through Bangladesh. bKash Limited company is a subsidiary of BRAC Bank (a private commercial bank in Bangladesh) that has helped launch a new service that allows Bangladeshis to transfer money through their mobile phones. According to a report in The Economist, the relatively new expansion of [...]
BANGLADESH: Death Penalty Kills a Deal
A new proposal from Bangladesh to make counterfeiting money punishable by the death penalty has alarmed the German Bundensbank (German Central Bank) who originally offered to assist Bangladesh in detecting counterfeit money. The Economist reports that Bangladesh, plagued with more than 5,000 pending cases regarding currency counterfeiting, is scheduled to meet with officials from Bundensbank [...]
BANGLADESH: Fire Sparks Questions About Safety in Bangladesh
Breaking news of a garment factory fire that broke out on November 24 in Bangladesh has rightly dominated the Bangladeshi media. The next day, the Daily Star assessed the death toll at 109 people. The fire started on Saturday night in an eight-story garment factory located in Ashulia, an industrial area north of the capital, [...]
BANGLADESH: Mortal Danger for Journalists Continues
It took a serious Spanish media outlet to shine light on the latest anti-media atrocity in this country Recently Eurasia Review: News and Analysis, an independent news outlet based in Spain, has reported that yet another Bangladeshi journalist has been killed. Talhad Ahmed Kabid was a reporter with the Bangladeshi newspaper, Dainik Narsingdi Bani, who [...]
BANGLADESH: Accurate or Bologna? Survey Reveals a Corrupt Parliamentary
So how much corruption can people handle before they call for a change? Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) is an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization whose mission is to create social movements that will lead to the reduction and eradication of corruption in Bangladesh. Recently, TIB conducted a survey among Bangladesh’s parliamentary members, revealing a dark [...]
BANGLADESH: Asia Foundation Study Raises Key Issue for Development
Despite Bangladesh’s relatively weak international recognition as a major garment manufacturer and exporter, it is in fact one of the world’s largest garment manufacturers, being only second to China. As a result, Bangladesh’s economy has been consistently improving. The economic growth, however, has come with many sacrifices and hardships for the Bangladeshi workers. Recently, The [...]
ASIA INSIGHT VIDEO NO. FOUR: STEPHANIE GARCIA AND HER VIEW ON AMERICAN JOURNALISM AND SINGAPORE
Professor Tom Plate meets with South-South News
Professor Tom Plate Goes Live With South-South News to discuss his book on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Professor Plate reveals why he decided to write a book on Ban Ki-Moon -- and how the Western media stereotypes the Korean diplomat.
Staff Writer Lauren Chen Reflects on the Death of a Journalist