An Ancient Culture, Bulldozed Away

KASHGAR, CHINA -- For hundreds of years, Uighur shopkeepers have been selling bread and firewood

along the edges of Kashgar's old town to families whose ancestors bought their traditional

mud-brick homes with gold coin and handed them down through the generations.

Now, this labyrinth of ancient courtyard homes and narrow, winding streets is endangered

by the latest government plan to modernize a way of life that officials consider dangerous and backward.

Left behind are piles of brick and rubble, houses without roofs and hurt feelings. It is the

most recent fault line to develop between Chinese rulers and Xinjiang province's majority

ethnic Uighur population, a Turkic-speaking people who have long chafed under Beijing's

rule and who worry that their culture is slowly disappearing.

Like Tibetans, Uighurs resent the influx of Han Chinese immigrants who dominate government and economic positions and have pushed for more autonomy and economic opportunity. Some Uighurs have waged an occasionally violent campaign calling for independence. Beijing has cracked down hard during periods of unrest and its tough line against suspected separatists has made many Uighurs reluctant to speak on the record about their objections to government policy.

2)
Red light for databases

3)
TB in Shanghai drug resistant
The WHO said yesterday that many Asian countries lacked adequate laboratory facilities
to detect multidrug-resistant TB, and only 1 percent of the estimated 150,000 people
infected with the disease in East Asia and the Pacific were receiving appropriate treatment.
"No country in the region is rushing to fight multidrug-resistant TB," Dr Pieter Van Maaren,
the WHO's Western Pacific regional adviser for tuberculosis, said.


4)

Computer Wonder Women

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day in which bloggers are asked to post about women who excel in technology.


5)
Earth Hour March 28th