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Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov speaks before the state of the nation address at the Kremlin in Moscow in this 2011 photo. Surkov, who was once Russian President Vladimir Putin's chief political strategist and dubbed the Kremlin's puppet master, resigned on May 8. (Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters)

'Puppet-master' Putin advisor is shown the Kremlin door

By Fred Weir, Correspondent / 05.08.13

Vladislav Surkov, the former theater arts major who took on the job of stage-managing Russian democracy on behalf of Vladimir Putin, was abruptly shown the Kremlin door Wednesday. Most analysts see the move as a sign that an increasingly heavy-handed Mr. Putin has no further use for Mr. Surkov's elaborate and relatively gentle methods of manipulating the political landscape.

Surkov, an influential Putin advisor who helped sculpt Russia's so-called "sovereign democracy" system, told the Moscow daily Kommersant that he had tendered his resignation on April 26, but will only discuss the reasons for his departure "when it is appropriate."

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, suggested to the Kommersant FM radio station that he had been pushed out the door due to poor job performance. 

"[His resignation] is related to the high-priority task of implementing presidential decrees," Mr. Peskov said.

Often referred to as the "grey cardinal" of the Kremlin, Surkov's star had been falling since a massive protest movement hit Moscow streets in December 2011. It had been triggered by the near-universal allegations of electoral fraud committed by Surkov's own brainchild – the pro-Kremlin United Russia party – in parliamentary polls.

He was subsequently eased out of his role as Putin's deputy chief of staff and given the thankless-by-definition job of deputy prime minister in charge of modernizing Russia's economy.

"His resignation testifies to the fact that there is a real political crisis in the country. Different bureaucratic structures are at war with each other, and Russia is becoming increasingly ungovernable," says Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the independent Institute of Globalization and Social Movement Studies in Moscow.  

"Surkov had his own vision. He tried to control the process, to reconcile different structures, and he lost," he adds.

Surkov had been a Kremlin fixture since Putin's first presidential term and is widely regarded as the chief architect of the Putin-era system of "sovereign democracy," whose basic idea is that the political system headed by Putin is the direct outgrowth of Russia's own history and public dynamics – not an import from anywhere else – and is therefore democracy.

Critics, and even many independent analysts, quickly substituted the more descriptive term "managed democracy." The phrase evoked the Kremlin's aggressive role in landscaping Russia's political garden – weeding out pesky opposition parties and independent politicians, concentrating official resources and state media attention behind the ruling United Russia party, and generally altering rules of the game to favor pro-Kremlin outcomes. 

In addition to fathering United Russia, Surkov created a bouquet of pro-Kremlin public organizations, such as the youth movement Nashi and a state-supported assembly of tame civil society groups called the Public Chamber.

Even critics were often admiring of Surkov's deft behind-the-scenes manipulation of Russian politics, which produced massive pro-Putin majorities in several elections and generally eschewed the application of crude police methods and – until the 2011 Duma polls – blatant mass electoral fraud.

The curtain dropped briefly on Surkov's almost spider-like role in September 2011, when tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov angrily quit as head of the pro-Kremlin Right Cause Party, and publicly accused Surkov of acting like a "puppet-master" and trying to micromanage all his key decisions, including party program and candidate lists.

Analysts say Surkov's fall from Kremlin grace was largely propelled by his failure to prevent or even predict the emergence of the street protest movement. When it first appeared, he made the mistake of describing the mainly-youthful, educated, and middle-class demonstrators as "the best part of society."

Many analysts say Surkov has since moved into the camp of former president and current prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, who appears to be under increasingly furious attack from Russia's pro-Putin conservatives, because he is perceived as the head of the more liberal, pro-Western wing of Russia's bureaucracy and business community.

In recent weeks Surkov had been engaged in a war of words with the powerful head of the Kremlin's Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin. Mr. Bastrykin's agency, the most powerful police body in Russia, has been investigating the alleged misappropriation of funds at Skolkovo, a futuristic Kremlin-funded technopark near Moscow that was championed by then-President Medvedev. Surkov is a supervisory board member.

"The energy with which the investigative committee publishes their suppositions evokes the feeling among normal people that a crime took place," Surkov said in a public speech in Britain last week.

"But it is just the investigative committee’s style. It is their energy. Let them prove it," he said.

It seems fairly apparent that it is no longer Surkov, but the more blunt-edged Mr. Bastrikin who is tasked with managing Russia's political outcomes these days.

Over the past year there has been a major crackdown on foreign-funded NGOs and a wave of arrests of protest leaders, who are charged with participating in elaborate, foreign-backed conspiracies aimed at fomenting violent revolution in Russia.

"Surkov is no longer needed to regulate the system in his way, because Putin has switched to much tougher measures," says Nikolai Petrov, a political science professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

"His departure bespeaks tectonic shifts in the foundations of Russia's political system. It was probably triggered by something more immediate, such as the Skolkovo business, but it is a sign that we are going down a very different road from the past," he adds.

As for Surkov's future intentions, he told the Russky Pioner magazine this week that he might write a novel.

"I have a plot for a political comedy based on real events," he said. 

Supporters of Pakistan's cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan pray for their leader's health in Karachi, Pakistan on Tuesday. One of Pakistan's most prominent politicians, Khan, is recovering in a hospital after falling some 15 feet from a forklift during a campaign rally Tuesday in Lahore, just days before historical elections in Pakistan. (Shakil Adil/AP)

Imran Khan falls from forklift at a political rally. Will it hurt his campaign? (+video)

By Taha Siddiqui, Correspondent, Jenna Fisher, Staff Writer / 05.08.13

Popular cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan is recovering in a hospital after falling some 15 feet from a forklift during a campaign rally Tuesday in Lahore, just days before historical elections in Pakistan.

The fall, captured on live television, showed Mr. Khan and five others being lifted up to a stage on the improvised elevator, when Khan and three or four of his bodyguards tumbled off. Khan was rushed to a hospital where he was treated for broken bones and given a number of stitches. Doctors say he is expected to make a full recovery but estimate that he will be bedridden for anywhere from several days to weeks, according to reports.

The incident immediately raised questions about the future of his party's campaign as Pakistan makes its first uninterrupted civilian-to-civilian transition of government. But despite having to end his campaign two days early, Khan gave no indication to reporters from his hospital bed that he was giving up. And given all the media attention, some observers say he could even benefit from the event. 

"This really resonates because people like the image of a fighter, of a warrior," Mohammad Malick, a prominent Pakistani journalist, told The Guardian. "He took this terrible fall and he's recovering quickly – that's a powerful image."

Khan was an early favorite for prime minister with the youth of Pakistan, and many from the urban educated population, who saw him as a symbol for change. His campaign had lost momentum but has recently seen renewed energy among voters disenchanted with government corruption. 

After winning the World Cup for Pakistan in 1992, he quit his role as the national cricket team captain and focused his efforts on philanthropy, which won him even more goodwill. In fact, the hospital where Khan is recovering is one he arranged to have built in his mother’s name. It’s one of the largest charity-based cancer treatment hospitals in the country. He also established a modern university near his hometown – and it was just as well received. 

Then, in 1996 Khan formed a centrist, nationalist political party called Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which means "the movement for justice."

He has campaigned based on a promise to abolish corruption "in 90 days" and stop US drone strikes. But his party – one of the only mainstream political parties in Pakistan that is not family-based – has struggled to gain seats in Parliament.

Khan’s star power may have helped elect him to Parliament in 2002 under Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s regime – still the only seat his party has ever gained in Parliament (172 are required to form a majority). He stayed mainly in the background until late in 2011, when he surprised everyone by holding a major public gathering in which tens of thousands of people showed up to support him.

Observers say that gathering was a game changer for Khan, as he started to attract local and international attention. Many big stalwarts of traditional parties like Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the then-foreign minister of Pakistan, quit his party and the Parliament to join Khan. 

Khan has been criticized as a Taliban sympathizer for his antiwar policies and calls to have talks with the Taliban, and many think the Pakistani military may be behind his rise to prominence to create a third party in the race in a country where two traditional parties have historically dominated the Parliament. He dismisses both as labels by the opposition. 

His biggest hurdle to getting his party seats in the Parliament and then getting elected will be breaking the ruling elites’ hold in the rural areas, which make up more than 70 percent of Pakistan and where he is not popular. Nevertheless, observers feel he may have a good chance at becoming a significant third force to watch. The added press and request for interviews following Khan's fall could also help get sympathy for his party and boost voter turnout, which The Guardian reports could benefit Khan more than Nawaz Sharif, the head of his faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and front-runner.

A poll published by the political magazine Herald on Wednesday showed the PTI and PML-N were virtually tied, with the latter leading by less than a percentage point among the 1,285 people surveyed.

Khan could have a shot at becoming prime minister, Jonah Blank of the think tank RAND Corp. told a press conference recently, as a figure most parties could find least objectionable. 

Khan’s hospitalization came the same day multiple blasts targeting election rallies killed at least 20 people. Since April more than 70 have been killed in election-related violence.   

Baggage carts make their way past a Helvetic Airways aircraft from which millions' of dollars worth of diamonds were stolen on the tarmac of Brussels international airport, in February. Police on Wednesday arrested 31 people in three countries in a Europe-wide manhunt, after $50 million in uncut gems were stolen in a daring assault at the Brussels airport this February. (Yves Logghe/AP/File)

Arrests in Belgian diamond heist are a jeweler's best friend (+video)

By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / 05.08.13

Finally, the denouement of one of the world’s largest diamond heists.

Police have netted 31 people in three countries in the past 24 hours in a Europe-wide manhunt, after $50 million in uncut gems were stolen in a daring assault at the Brussels airport this February.

It’s a plotline that is worthy of a movie (it is probably being written at this very moment). And it gripped the Belgian public. Perhaps no group more so than the jewelers across town who always face a certain vulnerability, simply because of the value of the goods behind their glass counters.

“Everyone was fascinated, but of course the jewelry workers are the most interested,” says a woman at an antique jewelry shop in a famous covered gallery in historic Brussels who wished not to share her name.

The Belgian prosecutor’s office said that on Tuesday that seven were arrested, including six people in Switzerland and one man in France, who could be a mastermind of the robbery. And in the early dawn today, some 200 police fanned across Belgium and detained two dozen more suspects, many of them criminals known to the Belgian justice system.

"We believe the man arrested in France is one of the authors of the robbery," said Jean-Marc Meilleur of the Brussels prosecutor's office.  "It's the only person that we can say at this stage they could have participated in the events on the tarmac. Among those arrested in Belgium, at least 10 are known to the court, including for armed attacks. They are part of the Brussels criminal underworld." 

Smooth operation

The robbery occurred on the evening of Feb. 18, 2013. As passengers buckled up and the plane got ready for takeoff, eight men in police uniform in two cars drove through the fence of the Brussels airport and raced, with police lights flashing, across the runway.

Driving up to the plane, which had just been loaded with the gems, they held up the crew and forced open the cargo hold, loaded their vehicles with 120 packages totaling an estimated $50 million, and sped through the fence. No one was hurt. And it was so fast and precise that passengers are said to have not even been aware of what happened until it was over – and their flight was cancelled.

This isn't the first time Belgium has been the scene of a diamond heist. Antwerp, a diamond capital, is just a thirty minute drive away from Brussels. But the events of this one captivated the globe. When a security guard was asked at a higher-end Brussels jewelry store – where customers are attended to one by one and treated to champagne as they peruse fine jewels – if he had followed the news, he said “of course,” surprised by the question. He wasn’t authorized to share his name – or to even talk (instead he was busy looking at the customers filing in).

Back at the antique store, the owner says her store has been held up twice in 20 years; the diamond store just in front of them was held up six months ago, she says. “We are relieved they were caught,” she says, “to know [the thieves] aren’t out there and ... the police are working and are not involved in it.”

A protester at an ‘Occupy Denver’ rally in Denver, Colo., in November 2011. (Nathan W. Armes/Reuters/File)

Good Reads: Oil's future, wealth in Africa, 'Occupy' failure, progress in Mexico, and the Tsarnaevs

By Marshall Ingwerson, Managing editor / 05.07.13

It’s increasingly possible that the world may never run out of fossil fuel. The cheap and plentiful natural gas that fracking has brought to your local pipelines may be just a precursor to a much larger and more global reserve stored as methane hydrate – basically frozen natural gas – in vast volumes in the world’s seabeds.

The cover story of the latest Atlantic magazine asks, “What if we never run out of oil?” By which it mainly means natural gas. Ten years ago, author Charles Mann notes, mainstream analysts dismissed the potential of fracking (short for hydraulic fracturing) to unlock new stores of gas. How wrong they were. Now the promise of methane hydrate, he suggests, could be vastly greater, and that scenario is a mixed bag: long-sought energy independence for nations such as Japan; cleaner emissions from countries such as coal-burning China; curtailing of the power of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries; some greater instability as fewer countries around the world need to trade for energy; perhaps even sea-bottom territorial disputes. But the biggest downside pointed to by Mr. Mann is that plentiful natural gas, while relatively clean, could delay moving to a post-carbon world altogether.

Wealth doesn’t always end poverty

Oil and gas often lead to the so-called resource curse, whereby countries blessed by the revenue that comes out of their ground – whether oil, diamonds, or manganese – find both their economies and politics stunted and narrowed by the single-source wealth. A World Bank study of Africa adds a couple of new brush strokes to that picture. Not surprisingly, resource-rich countries such as Nigeria and Gabon have grown 2.2 times faster than resource-poor countries since 1996. Yet, counterintuitively, poverty declined by 16 percentage points in resource-poor countries such as Rwanda and Ethiopia, compared with only seven percentage points in resource-rich ones. The upshot: Oil and mineral wealth brings growth, but doesn’t spread it very far.

What ‘Occupy Wall Street’ missed

Speaking of spreading the wealth, whatever happened to the “Occupy” movement that caught such a wave of anti-Wall Street sentiment in 2011? Several books on the movement have come out recently, and Financial Times economics writer Martin Sandbu reviews them together. At one point, polls showed far more popular support among Americans for Occupy Wall Street – and its argument that the economic and political systems were run for the benefit of the “1 percent” – than for the tea party movement on the right. But the tea party was action-oriented, elected its own activists to Congress, and still has a powerful influence on the Republican Party. Occupy Wall Street is a memory, its legacy mostly defined by establishing a line in Western minds between the 99 percent and the empowered 1. Mr. Sandbu’s take is that Occupy Wall Street was clear about what it was against, but not at all clear about what to do about it. The leaders of the self-consciously leaderless movement refused to engage the existing political system at all. “A sympathetic reader of these books will end up with the slightly exasperated feeling that Occupy wasted its chance as a political movement,” he writes.

Removing ‘obstacles to growth’

Mexico has long been plagued by crony capitalism, in which political power too often is used to enrich an elite few rather than promote economic growth for many. So Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and James Robinson, a Harvard political scientist, view new Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s first months in office with some optimism. In their Why Nations Fail blog, they note that Mr. Peña Nieto has made a national priority of reforming Mexico’s “terrible” education system. He has further removed what the authors call a major obstacle to reform: the head of the teachers union, Elba Esther Gordillo. Known as La Maestra, she had used the union “like a personal fiefdom for two decades, enriching herself and blatantly intervening in elections.” Peña Nieto has had her arrested on charges of embezzling some $200 million. The test, the authors say, will be whether Peña Nieto proves to be truly trying to reform the system or is merely doing what earlier Mexican presidents have done: change out one elite for another.

Who are the Tsarnaevs?

The story of the Tsarnaev family, whose sons are accused of the Boston Marathon bombings, has many interesting parts. Perhaps the best overview so far is in The Washington Post, written by Marc Fisher and reported by legions.

Things started well for the immigrant family. “But over the past four years, even as members of their extended family found their piece of the American dream, the Cambridge Tsarnaevs’ experience in their new land curdled. Money grew scarce, and the family went on welfare. Zubeidat was accused of stealing from a department store. Anzor’s business, never prosperous, faded,” writes Mr. Fisher. As the family fell apart, older son Tamerlan grew increasingly radical in his religion under the influence of an Armenian-American friend who was a recent convert. “The change in Dzhokhar, now a college sophomore, became apparent only in the past few weeks, and even then seemed to be tacked on to his existing lifestyle rather than displacing it,” he writes.

An undated image shows the main gate of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland, which was liberated by the Russians in January 1945. Hans Lipschis, who is 93, was taken into custody Monday after police announced they had 'compelling evidence' that he was complicitous in the mass murder that took place at the camp, the BBC reports. (AP/File)

Slew of new investigations leads to Germany's arrest of alleged Auschwitz guard

By Ryan Lenora Brown, Correspondent / 05.07.13

German authorities have arrested a man who they say was a longtime guard at the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland, reopening old questions around how the country should deal with its last living participants in the Holocaust.

Hans Lipschis, who is 93, was taken into custody Monday after police announced they had “compelling evidence” that he was complicitous in the mass murder that took place at the camp, the BBC reports.

The arrest is the first to emerge from new investigations by Germany into 50 former Auschwitz guards.

"The arrest of Lipschis is a welcome first step in what we hope will be a large number of successful legal measures taken by the German judicial authorities against death camp personnel and those who served in the Einsatzgruppen [mobile killing units]," said Efraim Zuroff, Israeli head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is known for tracking Nazi war criminals, in a statement to Reuters.

The new cases are propelled by a new legal precedent set during the trial of John Demjanjuk, a Nazi guard convicted in 2011 of serving as an accessory to murder despite the fact that no evidence existed of a particular crime or victim.

In that case, a court ruled that in such cases it was unnecessary to provide a specific list of criminal acts – the generalities of the work were enough to call the defendant guilty.

As the Monitor reported at the time, the case provided a boon for Germans who would like to see a larger number of former Nazis prosecuted for their crimes. 

Germany is perhaps unique in that its legal system does not provide a statute of limitation for murder, stemming from a ruling in the 1960s made explicitly to help German prosecutors bring Nazi war criminals to account….

Critics say that while memories are long here, and Germans have done much to own up to their country's past, legally speaking, Germany has not shown the same determination in prosecuting Nazi war criminals.

According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, the 90,000 indictments brought against accused Nazi criminals between 1949 and 1985 in Germany brought only 7,000 convictions. "Just because the people were not [Heinrich] Himmler doesn't mean they should not be brought to justice," said Efraim Zuroff, the center's chief Nazi hunter.

Mr. Demjanjuk’s case, however, also opened old questions into the culpability of mid-level guards in the Nazi system, who have frequently argued they were merely following orders during their work at the death camps.

As for Mr. Lipschis, prosecutors say they believe he served as a guard at Auschwitz, the largest and most notorious of the Third Reich’s extermination camps, between 1941 and 1945. Lipschis admits that he worked at the camp, but says he was only a cook.

Lipschis was born in 1919 in what is now Lithuania. In 1956, he moved to Chicago, but was expelled from the United States in 1983 for concealing his Nazi past.

He is currently fourth on the list of “Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals” published by the Simon Weisenthal Center. 

Children walk past a huge red ball which is installed outside a cafe near the Centre Pompidou modern art museum, also known as Beaubourg, in Paris last month. The ball is part of an art project by artist Kurt Perschke. (Charles Platiau/Reuters)

Maternal worries about France's 'maternelle' schools

By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / 05.06.13

Yes, images of fresh baguettes and varieties of cheese I could never conceive of filled my head as I contemplated relocating to Paris. But I’ve been most thrilled about French school.

This is clearly not scientific. But I’ve envied “European education” since my first game of Trivial Pursuit with my husband, a Spaniard. I’ll spare myself from revealing too much and just say that he smoked me.

The French people I know continuously confirm the hunch that they just simply know more, or at least more about the world in which we live. One friend told me high school was the most demanding time period of her life, even though she has a master's degree and has lived in three foreign countries.

I have a daughter who will eventually be attending French school.  And I’ve imagined what that means for her education. I’ve also formed notions of the social aspects, mostly from the book “Bringing up Bebe” by Pamela Druckerman, an American journalist and mother in France. Granted, her book focuses on one upper-socio-economic bracket and it’s anecdotal, just like this blog. But she paints a picture of little tots who eat beets and blue cheese and – having continuously received tough love from their parents and caretakers – never throw food in restaurants. “Imagine that,” I said to my husband, almost giddy.

So it was with a certain sinking feeling that I stumbled upon a study by French economist Claudia Senik, who seeks to understand why the French are among the world’s gloomiest pessimists. One of her theories is that the French are taught to be unhappy in a school system that is overly rigorous and rigid. “I knew it was too good to be true,” I told my husband.

As early as this fall, my daughter will be starting the “maternelle,” the all-day public preschool for kids between the ages of 3 and 6 in France. They are raved about, not just for the support they give to working parents but for the social skills they instill, and for providing the building blocks of a French public school education.

And yet, I had wondered about the hours: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. That’s a long day. And how strict are they anyway?

I met Ms. Senik in her office. She certainly didn’t look gloomy. Wearing a cheerful, peach top, she smiled often. I asked her if she herself was a pessimist. She said no, but she happened to excel at the subjects that are prioritized in the French education system. Then, after the main interview was over, I asked if I’d be creating a pessimist by enrolling my child in school.

“How old is she?” she asked, and when I told her she’ll be turning 3 this year, she said, “no, you’ll be fine, she’ll be in the maternelle.” Apparently the gloom-inducing demands of school begin later – at elementary school.

It’s hard to believe on the face of things, since what I’ve loved most about Paris so far is how stimulating it is for kids. There are parks at every corner, it seems. There are open fields to play in and gardens with flowers to smell. There are play centers for when it rains. There are amazing public pools. And all of these places are full of happy kids. I feel like my daughter has experienced more in the past month than she has her entire life. And she seems to be loving it too.

I’ve signed her up for school, knowing that it will be a long day in a foreign language and that it will be far more structured – and thus demanding – than anything she’s yet experienced. But I remain thrilled about it, about the exposure to French, to peers who eat whatever their parents are eating as a norm, and about the prospect of an ace Trivial Pursuit partner later in life.

Leopards found extinct in Taiwan as public begins to growl

By Ralph Jennings, Correspondent / 05.06.13

The news that the clouded leopards that once prowled the lowlands of Taiwan have become extinct here has prompted expressions of concern among an increasingly conservationist public.

The Formosan clouded leopard, a subspecies of large cats, probably died out here some 100 years ago, Taiwan university researchers determined after a four-year study found no photos, fur, or paw prints in a preserve considered their most likely home.

The news has led many Taiwanese to question the side-effects of the island’s economic development. In turn, animal advocates say this examination has fueled conservation movements.  

“A lot of people have said they are disappointed and find our discovery quite regrettable,” says Kurtis Pei, a study leader from National Pingtung University of Science and Technology’s Institute of Wildlife Conservation. “Some say they hope not just to feel regret but to do something to save other animals.”

Mr. Pei and five other researchers set up cameras and catnip-baited hair traps, and trolled the jungle for the Formosan clouded leopards from 2000 to 2004, spending the time since then to analyze data in an area that was later made impassable by typhoons. The team took 16,000 photos in 400 spots, Pei says. They also looked for paw prints and fur. Still, despite their efforts, they found no trace of the meter-long cats named for their large cloudlike spots.

“There hasn’t been any evidence of their continued existence,” he says. 

The results announced last week confirm a 1985 study that also found no traces of the animal, which is indigenous to Taiwan. Pei says urbanization, farming, poaching, and industry pushed the species from its native lowland hills into poorer habitat in the mountains. The last piece of evidence of their existence here was a picture in a Japanese colonist’s diary dated 1910.

Researchers had held out hope that the species, which is still found in other parts of Asia, could still exist here, too.

The main species of clouded leopards is considered vulnerable to extinction in the Himalayas. The Bornean clouded leopard, another species, lives on Borneo and Sumatra in Indonesia and is also considered vulnerable.

As much of Taiwan’s public places priority in urban economic successes, few saw animals as relevant to their lives until this news, activists in Taipei say. 

“Awareness of conservation is better than before but still lacking,” says Chu Tseng-hung, executive director of the conservationist group Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan. Reaction often comes down to exposure, he adds. “With clouded leopards, if you have never seen one, you won’t have any reaction now,” he says. 

Activists hope the clouded leopard case will be an incentive to help save other species here.

Wild animals such as the leopard and Formosan black bear are now threatened by poaching plus development that dominates all but the east coast and high interior mountains. Taiwan, at 634 people per square kilometer, has one of the world’s densest populations. (It’s about the size of the state of Maryland, but has a population of 23 million.) Leopard cats number about 500 and the bears closer to 1,000. 

Whether a groundswell of people will be able to save other species depends on whether activists take this opportunity to get the word out, says Sean McCormack, cofounder of the Taiwan SPCA. “When the Taiwanese are aware of issues, they get behind them 100 percent,” he says. 

The clouded leopard research team may need support for reintroducing clouded leopards by bringing in a starter population from elsewhere in Asia, Pei says. He hopes to stir up more popular enthusiasm, as the government would need to sign off as well. “Just for scholars to discuss the issue isn’t that helpful,” Pei says.

Why a Chinese cold case has landed on the White House's doorstep

By Peter Ford, Staff Writer / 05.06.13

Chinese citizens dubious about their country’s legal system are seeking justice in an unusual place for the victim of an alleged attempted murder in China. They are taking the case to the White House.

More than 100,000 people have signed a petition on a White House website urging the US to deport the chief suspect in a 19-year-old unsolved case of poisoning that continues to excite strong emotions here. Adding piquancy to the case: The suspect is very well-connected politically in China.

In 1994, a chemistry student at one of China’s top universities, Tsinghua, called Zhu Ling was poisoned with Thallium, a chemical often used in rat poison. She did not die, but was left nearly blind, paralyzed, and brain-damaged, needing constant care from her increasingly aged parents.

Her fate has not been forgotten, says Wu Hongfei, a former journalist who has followed Ms. Zhu’s case closely, partly because she was pretty and smart and partly because Tsinghua is so prestigious. But the main reason, says Ms. Wu, is that the only real suspect in the case “had close ties to high ranking officials.”

Sun Wei, Zhu’s roommate at Tsinghua, was investigated by the police at the time of the incident, but was never charged, though reports at the time said she had access to Thallium. The police said there was not enough evidence to pursue the case; many ordinary citizens believe that evidence was covered up because Ms. Sun’s father's cousin had been deputy mayor of Beijing and her grandfather was reputedly a friend of then President Jiang Zemin. 

“Because of her family background … she avoided punishment,” complained one netizen, posting as “@Jinse Guniang” on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform.

Sun changed her name and is believed to now be living in the United States.

The case has erupted again into the public consciousness in the wake of last month’s arrest of a student for fatally poisoning his roommate at another prestigious university, Fudan, in Shanghai. The suspect in that case has confessed to putting poison in his dorm-mate’s water dispenser, saying he did it for a joke.

Zhu's case continues to rankle. On Monday, after just three days on the White House website, the petition concerning Sun had drawn more than the 100,000 signatures required for the US administration to offer a response. On Sina Weibo, terms relating to the case accounted for three of the top five search words.

Journalist Wu has little hope that the White House petition will do any good. Dissident artist Ai Weiwei “attracted a lot of international attention but he is still not allowed to leave China,” she points out. But as public pressure mounts at home, the authorities appear to be listening. Over the weekend, social media posts including such words as “Thallium” or “Zhu Ling” were being scrubbed from the Internet by Chinese censors, apparently afraid of criticism of the Chinese judicial system.

By Monday, the censors had lifted their search blocks. And even the state owned media have joined in the chorus of demands.

The online version of Peoples’ Daily, organ of the ruling Communist Party and Xinhua, the official news agency, shared a headline: “China, Ruled by Law, Should Seek Justice.” At long last, the victim of that unsolved poisoning seems to have friends in high places, too.

Bangladeshi protesters throw stones at policemen during a protest in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday. Police in Bangladesh's capital fired rubber bullets to disperse Islamic activists during a protest to demand that the government enact an anti-blasphemy law. (Ashraful Alam Tito/AP)

Rioting and rubble: What's behind the turbulent times in Bangladesh?

By Ben Arnoldy, Staff writer / 05.05.13

Islamists rampaged in the streets of Bangladesh’s capital today, wielding sticks, stones, and crude explosives to protest the government’s refusal to institute an anti-blasphemy law.

The street violence is the latest pushback by some Islamists against a secularist mass movement that began earlier this year and threatens to sideline conservative forms of political Islam in Bangladesh.

Against this dramatic fight for the political and religious soul of the nation, the foundations of Bangladesh’s recent economic successes are suddenly facing international scrutiny. More than 700 people have died in the past half year in two horrific garment factory disasters, both caused by the lax regulation and oversight that helped fuel Bangladesh’s rapid rise as a garment exporter.

For decades, Bangladesh was regarded internationally as a quiet basket case, then as a quiet turnaround story on the fringes of the Muslim world. But the world is starting to listen more to the noises coming out of Bangladesh over the past six months. A LexisNexis search reveals that “major newspapers” in the company’s archives have increased mention of the country during this time by 25 percent over the previous six months, and 31 percent over the same time period a year prior.

Some reasons for Bangladesh's ferment include the country's women-driven economic growth and a younger generation's secular view on the country's war for independence. At the moment, upcoming elections due to be held by January are also stirring the pot. 

The country is currently headed by a center-left party with a secularist bent known as the Bangladesh Awami League. The opposition is led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), a center-right party that emphasizes Islamic identity. The recent events grabbing global headlines have been amplified within Bangladesh by the competing factions.

Bangladesh’s political turbulence began in February with street protests over a court decision drawing hundreds of thousands. A war crimes tribunal handed a life sentence to a leader of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party for crimes he committed during Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan. Crowds that gathered to call for the man to be put to death touched off something much bigger, the Monitor reported at the time:

This soon galvanized a vibrant protest movement against the ongoing influence of conservative, politicized Islam in one of the world's most populous Muslim nations. 

“The current movement is aimed very explicitly at the Jamaat's role in 1971,” says Zafar Sobhan, editor of the Dhaka Tribune. But “it was clear that the future that the youths protesting ... envision is one without Islamist politics, returning to Bangladesh's secular roots, and recognition that religion-based politics had poisoned the society."

The secularist spirit of what would become known as the Shahbag movement this spring seemed to redound to the ruling party’s benefit and posed a challenge to the opposition BNP and fringe Islamists further to the right.

At first, Jamaat-e-Islami supporters rioted. Then, a new radical religious party named Hifazat-e-Islam gained prominence as it pushed back against the Shahbag movement and the atheist bloggers at its forefront. The group demanded the government implement 13 demands, including an anti-blasphemy law and a ban on men and women mixing freely. The secular government did not oblige. Tens of thousands of Hifazat-e-Islam supporters blocked Dhaka’s roads today and battled with police.

The ruling Awami League also faces criticism for presiding over the two garment factory disasters and its ties to the owner of the building that collapsed last month. The New York Times describes how Sohel Rana capitalized on his past as a minor official in the Awami League’s student wing to become a wealthy industrialist above the law and “the most hated Bangladeshi.” 

The loose regulation and attendant catastrophes have worried Western clothing companies contracting labor there about the risk to their reputations. Disney announced last week that it will not source apparel from the South Asian nation. If others followed suit, rather than staying and stepping up oversight, the upward mobility of Bangladesh – and the revolutionary gains made by its women in particular – could be jeopardized. 

For a brief moment a week ago, all the political turmoil and uncertainty seemed to be set aside. The ultimately failed effort to rescue a survivor named Shahinur from the rubble of Mr. Rana’s building had transfixed the nation and brought people together, reported Saad Hammadi for the Monitor:

Bangladesh is passing through one of its gloomiest national moments. Civilians extending help in the rescue effort were anxiously looking forward to Shahinur’s rescue, as were those away from the site, who remained glued to television and mobile phones.…

For now, [political] tensions have receded. Bangladeshis from all walks of life, besides extending their support to the rescue efforts, are largely united in calling for the maximum punishment for the owner of the building and the factory owners – for what many call a “mass murder.”

A week later, the death toll from the building collapse now stands at 620 dead, and the streets are filling again with partisans fighting to define this young nation’s future.