The World is Talking About…

Papua New Guinea is Talking About...Surfing

A "Last, Lost World"

Will surfing bring visitors to one of the "least-touristed countries on Earth"?

By Evan Osnos, Chicago Tribune

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea - Guarded by an iron fence, the Surfing Association of Papua New Guinea occupies the ground floor of Andy Abel's house.

Outside, shirtless children romp on streets without cars. Barefoot men hover around women sitting on the ground selling betel nut, the green seed that is Asia's answer to chewing tobacco and stains teeth the color of oxblood. It's a typical afternoon in this South Pacific capital.

Inside, Abel has the big couches and heavy air conditioning of an American McMansion. In a country where most people live in huts, his house is audaciously out of step.

Abel, head of the Surfing Association and the scion of an influential family, is a brawny father in his late 30s with a shiny shaved head. When he talks, he likes to pummel the surfer stereotype.

"Twenty years ago, people in Papua New Guinea called us surfer bums," he said. "But we are proving to our critics that, as surfers, we can build an industry that is sustainable and creating jobs."

Read more...

Kalmykia is Talking About...Chess

In Russia, a Checkerboard Field of Dreams

In the only Buddhist region in Europe, regional president built a chess kingdom and then watched them come

By Peter Finn, Washington Post

Elista, Republic of Kalmykia, Russia - The obsessive energy of one man -- Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, former car dealer, present-day multimillionaire, Buddhist impresario and president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia -- has turned this remote corner of southern Russia into the Caesars Palace of chess. Now he is hosting his dream event, a $1 million bout to determine the undisputed chess champion of the world.

The contest, which is being followed online by chess fans worldwide, has proved as controversial as its sponsor. Replete with trash-talking grandmasters, it was almost aborted by a slugfest over bathroom breaks and allegations of cheating.

But for Ilyumzhinov, who has also been president of the World Chess Federation for 11 years, the uproar has had the side benefit of attracting yet more publicity for his chess kingdom, a desolate expanse of steppe and desert that runs to the Caspian Sea. "It's a great moment for the chess world," he said in a recent late-night interview that bounced from Buddhism to the $50 million Chess City the 44-year-old president has built here in the capital, Elista, to encounters he claims he has had with UFOs and aliens. ("They wore yellow suits," he said.)

Kalmykia is the only Buddhist region of Europe, the faith having come here with Mongolian migrants. It has the continent's tallest Buddhist temple -- built, like so much here, by its president, who glides around town in a white Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit.

"Rolls-Royce is a good car," Ilyumzhinov said, calling the Silver Spirit and the five other Rollses he owns his only personal indulgence -- apart from chess, which in one of his first decrees as president he made a school subject. "It helps children study well in other subjects -- math, physics," said Ilyumzhinov, who was a regional chess champion in his teens....Read more...

 

Chennai is Talking About...Emerging Diseases

Modern Ways Open India’s Doors to Diabetes

Once the "rich man's burden," the disease is rapidly penetrating developing nations.

By N.R. Kleinfield, New York Times

Chennai (Madras), Tamil Nadu, India - There are many ways to understand diabetes in this choking city of automakers and software companies, where the disease seems as commonplace as saris. One way is through the story of P. Ganam, 50, a proper woman reduced to fake gold.

Her husband, K. Palayam, had diabetes do its corrosive job on him: ulcers bore into both feet and cost him a leg. To pay for his care in a country where health insurance is rare, P. Ganam sold all her cherished jewelry — gold, as she saw it, swapped for life.

She was asked about the necklaces and bracelets she was now wearing.

They were, as it happened, worthless impostors.

“Diabetes,” she said, “has the gold.”

And now, Ms. Ganam, the scaffolding of her hard-won middle-class existence already undone, has diabetes too." In its hushed but unrelenting manner, Type 2 diabetes is engulfing India, swallowing up the legs and jewels of those comfortable enough to put on weight in a country better known for famine. Here, juxtaposed alongside the stick-thin poverty, the malaria and the AIDS, the number of diabetics now totals around 35 million, and counting.

The future looks only more ominous as India hurtles into the present, modernizing and urbanizing at blinding speed. Even more of its 1.1 billion people seem destined to become heavier and more vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes, a disease of high blood sugar brought on by obesity, inactivity and genes, often culminating in blindness, amputations and heart failure. In 20 years, projections are that there may be a staggering 75 million Indian diabetics. A taste for sweets, like those in this bakery, and the growing popularity of fried and processed foods are contributing to diabetes in India.

Read more...

Zapallal is Talking About...Fair Trade

"Ethical fashion" Starting to Catch On

Misericordia and the people of rural Peru

By Robb Young, International Herald Tribune

Zapallal, Peru - Absolutely nothing could have prepared Aurelyen Conty for his future as a fashion designer. Not growing up in Paris, not a prestigious diploma of fine arts, not even his creative streak. For your average recruit interested in a glamorous life of catwalks and couture, this sort of background would be a textbook recipe for success. But Conty is not average - and neither is his label.

Four years ago he co-founded Misericordia, one of a growing number of cult brands that are putting the ideas of "ethical fashion" to the ultimate test. Beyond conventional fair-trade standards, which were set to achieve fairer prices and trade conditions for Third World producers, ethically minded businesses like Misericordia also consider labor rights and the overall well-being of workers.

And that means their business models can be pretty extraordinary.

Misericordia's headquarters are in Zapallal, a dusty Peruvian shantytown. It is a bumpy two-hour bus ride across the Chala Desert north from Lima, where Conty buys local fabrics in the markets.

A cheeky sign above the atelier door reads "La Cabaña de Alta Costura," or "the haute couture shack," where Conty designs retro-style sportswear. The atelier is one of the nicest buildings in town, one of only a few permanent structures made from brick or with modern conveniences like running water and electricity.

Read more...

Moscow is Talking About...Golf

They May Say, ‘Tiger Who?’ but They Like His Sport

Country Clubs, New Russian-style

By Andrew E. Krame, New York Times

Moscow , Russia - Out on the dewy grass of the Moscow Country Club on a recent morning, a cheery Russian couple, dressed to the nines in golf attire, hacked and sliced their way along the fairway of the second hole, a par 5 with a gentle swale and a sand trap guarding the hole. With loud yells of “Fore!” they sent divots flying into the air and balls slicing through the foliage of a birch grove.

While clearly adept at sports — Russia reaps a reliable crop of medals at the Olympics and churns out tennis and hockey talent — Russians have long trailed badly in golf, which was suppressed as an elitist bourgeois distraction during Soviet times. But with the country awash in oil money, that is changing rapidly

“We Russians start slow, but then we cannot be stopped,” said Maxim M. Fedoseyev, a movie producer and avid golfer here. “Golf is exploding now.”

The country club, in a birch and pine forest that is a 20-minute drive outside the city, was built by the Soviet Foreign Ministry as a lure for foreign businessmen — an idea hatched in 1974 at the dawn of the era of détente by the American oil tycoon Armand Hammer, who was an informal adviser to the Soviet leadership on business matters.

This being Russia, some things take a little getting used to. For one thing, many of the members, who pay a $32,000 entry fee and $3,773 annually, are accompanied on the course by their bodyguards.

Read more...

Beirut is Talking About...Johnnie Walker

On Advertising: An Idea with Legs

A Brash Message to a Wounded Country

By Eric Pfanner, International Herald Tribune

Beirut, Lebanon - Drivers heading north out of Beirut through the suburb of Jal el Dib have been greeted in recent days by a giant billboard for Johnnie Walker whisky stretching across the side of a multistory building and showing a drawing of a bridge with a big chunk missing.

In an allusion to the recent Israeli airstrikes, which destroyed dozens of bridges across Lebanon, the iconic Johnnie Walker character, cane in hand, strides across the bridge on the poster, which urges the Lebanese to "keep walking."

Multinational companies often go out of their way to insulate their marketing from any reference to sensitive international disputes. That makes this ad notable, since Johnnie Walker is owned by Diageo, the London-based company whose other brands include Smirnoff, Guinness and Baileys. It sells Johnnie Walker in dozens of markets, including Lebanon and Israel.

Diageo's internal marketing code prohibits the company's ads from taking political positions, said Alicia Tetlow, a spokeswoman, adding that the campaign in Lebanon had simply been intended to "capture a popular mood about moving forward...

Read more...

India is Talking About…Global Capitalism

India's Cola Revolt Taps into Old Distrust

Behind contradictory reports of pesticides in Coke and Pepsi is an underlying wariness of foreign companies.

By Mark Sappenfield, Christian Science Monitor staff writer

Bangalore - As the health minister for the Indian state of Karnataka, R. Ashok has picked a rather large fight. By banning the sale of all Coca-Cola and PepsiCo products in his state's schools, colleges, and hospitals - claiming that the drinks contain unsafe levels of pesticides - he is shaking his fist at two of the biggest names in global capitalism.

To some, it might seem a controversial stand, especially since the federal government has since refuted the allegations. Yet here, in a country where megacorporations still have the scent of modern-day British East India Companies coming to extract the nation's wealth, the decision takes a populist flavor. In fact, one-quarter of India's 28 states have now limited sales of Coke and Pepsi drinks.

It sounds a note of caution for foreign firms seeking to make India their next great frontier. Though not enough to frighten off investors eager to reach India's 1.1 billion wallets, recent weeks are a reminder that beneath the growing appetite for Western goods there remains a suspicion of foreign companies…  Read more