REUTERS
Oct. 31 “Aung San Suu Kyi to meet Myanmar's military leader for first time”
Myanmar's president and its powerful military chief will hold an unprecedented meeting today to address cracks widening in the fledgling democracy ahead of an election next year. … Despite massive popularity at home and abroad, since becoming a lawmaker Suu Kyi has been criticised for her reluctance to comment on contentious political issues, or speak out against the military.
Asked about the talks during an interview yesterday with Radio Free Asia, Suu Kyi bluntly replied: "Where did you get this information? You should ask those who were invited."
YONHAP
Oct. 30 “N. Korean visitors to China drop 6.5 pct in 2014”
The number of North Korean visitors to China fell more than 6 percent on-year in the first nine months of this year, a U.S. news report said Thursday, in an apparent sign of chilled relations between the two ideological neighbors. Some 139,800 North Koreans traveled to China between January and September this year, down 6.5 percent from the same period last year, Radio Free Asia reported, citing China's National Tourism Administration.
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES
Oct. 29 “Kim Jong-un's Sister, Kim Yeo-jong 'Gets Married' to Key North Korean Official”
In what could be perceived by many admirers as a bad news, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's beautiful sister, Kim Yeo-jong has reportedly married to a senior official within the regime. A Korean, residing in China after his North Korea visit on 10 September said that he heard the news from a high-ranking official in a trading company that the 27-year-old is now married, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported, citing a report from Radio Free Asia.
CNN
Oct. 28 “Luxury cars and cognac for...North Korea?”
Eight months after the release of a landmark U.N. Commission of Inquiry report on human rights in North Korea, the United Nations is finally deliberating how to address what were described as Pyongyang's crimes against humanity. … In 2010, according to Radio Free Asia, Kim Jong Il distributed 160 Mercedes-Benz sedans to his cronies.
YONHAP
Oct. 28 “U.N. aid program normal despite Ebola fear: report”
The U.N. aid program in North Korea remains unaffected by the country's aggressive anti-Ebola efforts, a news report said Tuesday. The North has temporarily prohibited the entry of foreign tourists in a measure to prevent the spread of the Ebola endemic into its territory, according to tour agencies doing business there. But there is no report of any problem with immigration services for staff at the World Food Program (WFP) office in Pyongyang, WFP officials were quoted as saying by Radio Free Asia (RFA).
NEW YORK TIMES (Also in WASHINGTON POST, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, NEW TANG DYNASTY TELEVISION)
Oct. 25 “Chen Ziming, Dissident in China, Is Dead at 62”
Chen Ziming, a Chinese dissident and democracy advocate who was accused by the government of fomenting the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and spent more than a decade in prison and under house arrest, died on Tuesday in Beijing. He was 62. …“I have been shunted back and forth between three departments: the police, the communications agency and the Beijing municipal news office,” he said in a 2006 interview with Radio Free Asia. “None of them will give me a straight answer about whose decision it was to close the site. They won’t give us a reason for the closure, either. They just pull the plug on you, because they can.”
NEW YORK TIMES
Oct. 23 “”
A well-known Tibetan religious leader, Khenpo Kartse, has been sentenced by Chinese officials to two and a half years in prison, according to reports from International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group, and Radio Free Asia, which is financed by the United States government. … The report by Radio Free Asia said he had been accused of harboring a fugitive monk from Chamdo in his own monastery in the Yushu area of Qinghai Province. Khenpo Kartse had been detained in Chamdo before the trial, the reports said, and he might be transferred to a prison east of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.
BBC (Also in AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, GUARDIAN, AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION)
Oct. 22 “Freed Vietnam blogger Nguyen Van Hai flies to US”
Also known by his pen name Dieu Cay, Mr Hai was sentenced to 12 years for conducting anti-state propaganda in September 2012. … Mr Hai's former wife Duong Thi Tan told Radio Free Asia that he was taken straight from jail to the airport and put on a plane to the US. She said the family was not informed prior to his release.
DIPLOMAT
Oct. 21 “Kim Jong-un: A Fashion Icon”
Reports about the popularity of Kim Jong-un’s haircut in North Korea are once again in vogue, both inside and outside the country. … In an interview with Radio Free Asia, Kang said that because Kim became the country’s leader at such a young age, North Korean youth probably want to copy his fashion just like young people around the world often copy the looks of celebrities they idolize.
NEW YORK TIMES (Also in FINANCIAL TIMES, SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, JAPAN TIMES, IRISH TIMES, TIMES OF INDIA)
Oct. 19 “At Least 22 People Are Reported Killed in Attack at a Market in Western China”
An attack on a farmers market in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang has reportedly left at least 22 people dead and dozens injured, Radio Free Asia, the news service financed by the American government, has reported. Radio Free Asia said on Saturday that the rampage, which took place Oct. 12 in Kashgar Prefecture, was carried out by four men armed with knives and explosives who attacked police officers and merchants before being shot dead by the police.
COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS
Oct. 17 “Five journalists sentenced to jail in Burma”
Three journalists and two publishers were sentenced on Thursday to two years in prison on anti-state charges in Burma, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists strongly condemns the harsh verdict and calls for their release on appeal. … The jail terms handed down on Thursday were the maximum allowed under the law. Defense lawyer Kyaw Win said they would appeal to a higher court, according to a Radio Free Asia report.
BUSINESS INSIDER
Oct. 17 “China Banned The Term '50 Cents' To Stop Discussion Of An Orwellian Propaganda Program”
The Chinese government doesn't just censor its internet. It also pays people to leave fake comments that make the country and its communist regime look good. … China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology took the party's abilities a step further in 2014, setting up a training center, according to Radio Free Asia.
KOREA HERALD (Also in KOREA TIMES)
Oct. 15 “Dress code crackdown back in N. Korea: sources”
North Korea discourages women from wearing skinny jeans or trendy-style pants while intensifying the dress code crackdown, sources said Wednesday. According to Radio Free Asia, some North Korean residents who visited China told that “women are banned from wearing pants in public from September this year.”
NEW INDIAN EXPRESS
Oct. 11 “Hong Kong Frowns on Red Line”
While the Chinese media was careful in its reporting of the protests and published no photographs, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America did slip through the firewall and reach audiences in China via TV and radio on the Telstar 18 satellite and online. According to RFA, its reports included listener feedback from Tibetan and Uyghur regions and web traffic through China and Internet anti-censorship proxies surged over 60 percent.
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES
Oct. 9 “6.0 Magnitude Quake Kills One in China, Injures 300, Displaces Hundreds”
At least one person has died after a strong and shallow 6.0 magnitude quake rattled a remote area in China's southwestern province of Yunnan on Tuesday. The temblor had injured 300 others and displaced hundreds as it damaged buildings and other infrastructure. … Radio Free Asia reported an 8-centimetre-wide (3-inch-wide) crack has been also found in a nearby reservoir dam.
YONHAP
Oct. 7 “UN food aid to N. Korea still underfunded despite some growth”
The U.N.'s food aid to North Korea has been on the rise in recent months, but its program remains seriously underfunded, a news report said Wednesday. … The World Food Program (WFP) provided North Korea with around 2,300 tons of food assistance last month, only half of its target amount, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA) based in Washington D.C.
NIKKEI ASIAN REVIEW
Oct. 7 “Uighurs' travails lost in glare of Hong Kong protests”
Amid the international media attention devoted to the student-led pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the struggle for human rights in China's western Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region is getting short shrift. … The blasts occurred simultaneously in several places, including a market and a shopping street, in Luntai on Sept. 21, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy in China. Initial reports said the explosions killed two people and injured many others. Four days later, Radio Free Asia, a private, nonprofit broadcaster in the U.S., raised the death toll to more than 100. Chinese media, including state-owned Xinhua News Agency, said 40 "rioters" were killed, along with 10 police officers and others.
WALL STREET JOURNAL-CHINA REALTIME BLOG (Also in NEW YORK TIMES-SINOSPHERE BLOG, GUARDIAN, FINANCIAL TIMES, ASSOCIATED PRESS, CHINA DIGITAL TIMES)
Oct. 5 “Bao Tong Says Time for Protesters to Rest”
The highest-ranking Chinese official jailed in the 1989 crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square says now may be the time for Hong Kong’s student protesters to pull back and rest awhile. … The 81-year-old wrote in an essay published Sunday by Radio Free Asia, a U.S.-funded radio station, that the students’ view of Hong Kong’s political system was bound to become “the consensus view of history” but that time was need to let the seeds of that view grow.
NEW YORK TIMES
Oct. 4 “Once a Draw, Restive Region in China Suffers After Unrest”
The two amateur photographers stood on a hill overlooking the sparkling river in this remote alpine park, waiting for nomads to emerge from their white yurts and herd cows across a bridge. … Radio Free Asia, financed by the United States government, said the attackers were furious over land seizures by officials. It was the deadliest burst of violence in Xinjiang in weeks, but was not atypical.
PHNOM PENH POST
Oct. 4 “Gov’t threatens to sue foreign activist”
The Ministry of Mines and Energy has accused a foreign environmental activist of defamation and is threatening to sue after he questioned how they could afford luxury cars on government salaries. … In a Radio Free Asia interview on Tuesday, Gonzales-Davidson addressed government claims that Mother Nature had paid off dam protesters by explaining that his activists were not paid at all: “Our policy is that we have no salary for our staff. It’s not like officials at the Ministry of Mines and Energy who get a salary of less than $400 but when I went to drink coffee near the ministry I saw their cars worth $200,000 or $300,000. Can we ask where they get the money to buy those cars?”
KOREA TIMES
Oct. 3 “European journalists to visit NK”
A group of European media representatives plans to visit North Korea at the end of October to study the economic situation there, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports. "Some 10 European media people are scheduled to travel to the North at the end of this month," The Washington-based radio news reported on Friday.
