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While much has been made of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's grip on Italian television - he owns three of the biggest commercial stations and in his role as Premier has influence over state broadcaster RAI - the country's printed press has its own conflicts of interest. The Fiat holding group has controlling stakes in Milan daily Corriere della Sera and Turin-based La Stampa. Daily La Repubblica is owned by Carlo De Benedetti, a business rival of Berlusconi's with interests in energy, automobiles and health care. Il Sole 24 Ore, the country's financial paper, is owned by Italy...
...hundreds of Burmese were slaughtered when troops opened fire on monks, students and other peaceful protesters. Two years later, the generals lost badly in elections to Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy; the junta ignored the results and tightened its grip on power. In 2010, the regime promises another nationwide ballot, but few expect clean elections. Particularly concerned are members of Burma's 100-plus ethnic minorities, who fear that their already limited autonomy will be erased by the polls. Fighting between the state army and a hill tribe in northern Burma erupted last month, and the monks...
...refugee crisis comes as the Burmese military regime is tightening its grip on the country ahead of the nationwide election it has announced for next year. Since taking power in 1962, the exclusively ethnic Burman, or Burmese, junta has largely tamed an unruly patchwork of 100-plus ethnic groups, in part by signing cease-fire accords and granting certain minorities a modicum of regional autonomy. But with the upcoming election, ethnic groups with standing armies - such as the Kokang, the Kachin, the Karen and the Wa - have been given until October by the junta to refashion themselves as a centrally...
...fair. Burma's last electoral exercise, in 1990, ended with the non-ethnic National League for Democracy winning the most seats in parliament, with ethnic-based political parties coming in second and third and the junta-backed party finishing fourth. However, the junta ignored the results and kept its grip on power. "Some analyses say that even a rigged election is O.K., if it leads to democracy," says Gun Maw, a high-ranking officer in the Kachin Independence Army, one of the armed ethnic groups operating on the border with China that has decided not to give up its guns...
...government with specific charges and has advanced a clear political platform, making himself a lightning rod for criticism from within the regime. And it's far from clear that Karroubi's more confrontational approach will yield results against a government willing to deploy overwhelming force to maintain its grip on power. Over the weekend, in fact, opposition activists were dismayed to hear reports that former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had called for unity and for all Iranians to follow Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei's orders to end the turmoil. Coming a little over a month after the influential...