Tuesday, April 26, 2011

News From Around the World

I have a few stories that I heard about that I wanted share with my few readers. I have a notebook that I scribble down blog posts ideas in, and I've been falling behind in putting them up on the site, so I'll squish the mostly international news stuff into one post, along with...

What's up with my mom's beloved Dodgers? MLB has taken control of the day-to-day operations of the team, and even installed a chairman to make sure the money trail is transparent. The owners, the McCourts, Frank and Jamie, are involved in a very messy divorce, and have been dragging the team through a pile for more than a year now. In the past, random checks would leave the Dodgers payroll account and get deposited into some personal account of Frank McCourt, maybe allegedly, which is why Bud Selig wanted an overseer (also los Doyers had to borrow money from Fox to make a recent payroll). (Sigh) Dark days ahead for a proud flagship franchise...

The Finnish parliament has been reshaped in the latest local elections with the emergence of the True Finn party, an ultra nationalistic party looking to divest the Finnish involvement with the EU's bailout of Greece, since it looks like Greece will have to restructure their debt. I made a comment in a post earlier (about the divorce of Belgium into Flanders and Wallonia) about how the spectre of a united Europe has brought out many groups nationalistic tendencies...here we see it again in Finland.

Those crazy Magyars...the Hungarian people call themselves Magyars, even their country is locally known as Magyarorszag. The Magyars were the last ethnic group to settle in Europe, and it was a tough forced settling...they were terrorizing marauders for a few centuries...Vlad Dracul, Vlad the Impaler, the historical basis for Dracula? Yup, Magyar...Well, they have ratified a new constitution that has angered half the country. It speaks too much about the role of religion in the state the opponents say, and will prove only temporary.

The bailout of Portugal is planned, and will be a practice run for Spain, a much larger economy and a more complicated situation.

Burkina Faso has had a military mutiny, and has been run for almost a month now by the Army.

I will put a full post up on Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist and outspoken critic of the current leadership, who's been arrested and has gone missing...

1 comment:

  1. It is very sad what has happened to my beloved Dodgers... owners wanting to run them into the ground so they can sell the land and put in condo's or something... granted the land is very valuable but come on... gutting an entire team for your greed... please MLB take care of my team... did not know about Magyars... that is very interesting... thanks for expanding my knowledge.

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