MITT IS IT

MITT ROMNEY'S NIGHT

MITT AND ANN ROMNEY

After the Speech Was Over

Televised from Republican National Convention

August 30, 2012, via C-Span

INTRODUCING MR. RYAN

PAUL RYAN TO THE FORE

REP. PAUL RYAN (R-Wisconsin)

At the 2012 Republican National Convention

Televised August 29, 2012 (C-Span)

RUSSIA'S HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSIONER SPEAKS OUT ON PUSSY RIOT

VLADIMIR LUKIN

ON PUSSY RIOT

VLADIMIR LUKIN

Владимир Петрович Лукин

in the Yeltsin era

(a 2011 photograph, here)

Today Vladimir Petrovich Lukin, the Human Rights Commissioner of Russia, called "excessive" the prison sentences meted out to the three members of the punk band Pussy Riot who used the main Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow as the setting for their anti-Putin performance. He asserted, according to Reuters, that as human rights ombudsman "he had the right to challenge the verdict once it entered into force if he believed human rights had been violated."

Lukin is waiting for the appeals process to take its course (it is expected to begin next week), and then he will "analyse this thoroughly."

UP IN THE AIR

THE VIEW FROM ABOVE

EN ROUTE TO

BEIJING

KOFI ANNAN QUITS. RUSSIA IS SHOCKED, SHOCKED!

KOFI ANNAN

QUITS AS

SPECIAL ENVOY

ON THE SYRIA CRISIS

KOFI ANNAN (r.)

speaks to

VLADIMIR PUTIN (l.)

at the 2006 Expanded G-8 Summit

St. Petersburg, Russia

Today former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced his resignation from the post of U.N.-Arab League Special Envoy on the Syrian crisis (see here). "In an announcement tinged with bitterness and regret," said the New York Times, Annan "said he could no longer do the job...." According to the Los Angeles Times, Annan's quitting "appeared to be an unpleasant surprise to Russian officials...." Kofi Annan himself was critical of the "finger pointing and name calling in the Security Council."

SHANGHAI & CHINESE URBAN REALITIES

CHINA THEN & NOW

KITCHEN IN A SHANGHAI

WORKERS' COMPLEX, 1981

Reporting by James T. Areddy in the Wall Street Journal today: "Despite China's explosion of new housing over the past decade, an estimated one third of China's 225 million urban households are without kitchens and plumbing, says Rosealea Yao of GK Dragonomics Research." One third of China's URBAN households. The story is here; the accompanying slide show is here.