A radio piece from Laos, where the sport of wheelchair basketball has become a source of strength for one athlete who had spent his life living in the shadows.
"I just felt like I was different from others," says Samnieng Thommavong, whose extended family shunned him when he lost the use of a leg to polio as a child. "I even felt that I was not fully a human being."
Here's a pleasant surprise: Canadian media organizations seem to be investing serious resources to produce original coverage on the ground in Cairo right now. The one notable exception, however, appears to be the publishers of Canada's largest chain of broadsheet newspapers: the former Canwest empire, now leaner and known as Postmedia.
The apparent absence of any Postmedia reporter in Cairo (please correct me if I'm wrong -- I can't find any non-wire stories on any of the papers' websites) becomes slightly awkward in this Postmedia story describing all the Canadian journalists who have been 'attacked or detained' in the Egyptian capital. The reporter, who is evidently not in Cairo, cites Twitter updates from someone who is: Sonia Verma, who works for the rival Globe & Mail newspaper and tweeted live updates as she was being arrested.
Military have comandeered us and our car.
— Sonia Verma (@soniaverma) February 3, 2011
The Postmedia story then helpfully lists several other Canadian journalists in Cairo who have been assaulted or hindered in some way. CBC Radio reporter Margaret Evans. A crew from Radio-Canada. A CTV team.
A quick check of other major Canadian media organizations shows that the Toronto Star also has a reporter in Cairo. Postmedia's former corporate cousins, Global TV, sent a couple of correspondents there as well. Even my former employers at Sun Media, who have never been particularly enthusiastic about funding foreign coverage, somehow have parliamentary correspondent David Akin blogging and tweeting from Cairo.
Postmedia, however, appears to be relying on wire reports (and evidently, rival reporters' Twitter feeds). What is a reader to think? Perhaps it's that if a Canadian is interested in on-the-ground reporting from Cairo, he should do as this Postmedia reporter did: read some other news outlet that's actually there.
More than three years after their arrests, three former Khmer Rouge leaders accused of crimes against humanity and genocide asked a United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal on Monday to release them ahead of their pending trials.
In Laos, a farmer picks through a deadly harvest while distrust stalls political action on a cluster bomb ban.
In developing countries, people with HIV rely on inexpensive anti-retroviral drugs produced in India. But critics say a new trade deal being negotiated between India and the European Union could threaten that access and put the vital drugs out of reach of many who need them the most.
