Word: newes
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...advisory body, told the official government news agency Xinhua that this year people ought to splash water in a symbolic manner, as was done "in the traditional way," when water-splashing was limited to the last day of the festival. In fact, the Dai do not refer to the New Year's holiday as the "water-splashing festival"; that moniker was introduced by foreigners...
...Calmer celebrations might bring back to memory the real reason for all the splashing: the promise of rain. Chinese scholars often trace the Songkran festival back to India. Classic Hindu texts describe water-splashing as a means of washing away sin on the occasion of the New Year, when deities would visit the land of the living. Since at this time the gods are so close, it is also an opportune moment to ask for precipitation; splashing therefore becomes a way of praying for plenty. By sprinkling water, the Dai, like the Indians before them, should be attempting to entice...
...after a violent uprising ran him out of the capital, Kurmanbek Bakiyev had been refusing to concede the presidency of Kyrgyzstan, holing up with his family and hundreds of bodyguards in the south of the country - specifically, in his native province of Dzhalalabad. Special-forces units loyal to the new government have reportedly been dispatched to arrest Bakiyev, who, with members of his inner circle, has been charged with ordering riot police to open fire on protesters on April 7, littering the streets around the presidential palace with bodies. Bakiyev declared that any attempt to capture and kill him would...
...belligerent words, Paul Quinn-Judge, the International Crisis Group's director in Central Asia and a former Moscow bureau chief for TIME, says a civil war between the north and south of the country is very unlikely, even if Bakiyev has resources at his disposal to resist the new government. "Bakiyev may be bluffing. He may be trying to increase pressure on the government to make some concessions. But if he does decide to cause problems, his biggest weapon is not public sympathy - he has very little of that - but a very large amount of money, which...
...Bishkek, and several other cities around the country. They then used the weapons to storm and loot government buildings in a day of upheaval that claimed some 80 lives and left hundreds wounded. By the following day, Bakiyev had fled to his power base in the south, and a new government had claimed power and restored a level of calm. (Could the U.S. lose its base in Kyrgyzstan...