Monika’s Pensieve

The law forbidding alcohol has been around for some time in Malaysia, but this is the first time someone’s been prosecuted.

Apparently, both Abdullah and Karzai are saying the results so far have them in the lead. Here’s a short interview with Abdullah:

Little Kabul is an area in Fremont, California, which is known under that name because of its sizeable Afghan population. Below is a report on how Afghan women there feel about the elections.

Apparently, using trained rats is a much cheaper and faster way of de-mining fields *grin*

Below is a news report on a theatre group in Belarus, which has to operate in secret because of the anti-government content in their plays.

This link is courtesy of Jodi over on facebook :) Really loved the article because it touches something I’m quite sensitive about.
It’s about Filament, a UK women’s magazine that is trying to publish some visual erotica for women:
Issue 1 featured three photo sets of men, none of whom removed their trousers. While some questioned whether [...]

Abdel Basset al-Megrahi is a Libyan man jailed for the 1998 airline bombing over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. His guilt or innocence has not been proved, it probably never will be proved because he has cancer and does not have much time left.
It’s a very interesting case because it happened way before 9/11 when [...]

There’s a lot of reports now about how ethnic divides may decide results (just saw one about the Hazara community, but thought it was badly done, so I’m not linking :]). Here’s one about how Karzai is set to get the Pashtun vote:

A report about why election results are probably not going to be accurate…

Afghan elections will take place on the 20th of August, the Taliban are naturally already trying to use force to stop people from voting. I wonder if, ironically, their call to boycott elections isn’t why the two main contenders are both very moderate and eloquent people. If Taliban supporters were voting that might not be [...]