Two decades after the crackdown at Tiananmen Square, 101 East looks at the impact the protests have had on China today. Was June 4 1989 just one day in history or has it had a lasting presence in China?
Reaction is generally positive except among some of the usual suspects. Two key moments, in my view, he talked about Palestine and broached the subject of American involvement in the 1953 coup in Iran.
In a historic speech from Egypt on Thursday, President Obama called for a new beginning between the United States and the Muslim world, after years of mutual and deepening anger, resentment and hostility fueled by terrorism and two wars.
People all over the the Middle East — from leaders and radical groups to students and shopkeepers — reacted to Obama’s speech.
Shibley Telhami, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the speech, its intended audience and Obama’s other efforts to reach out to the Muslim world.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ far right Freedom Party (PVV) appears to be the biggest winner of the European Union elections.
According to exit polling the PVV, which stood for the first time in EU elections, has won four seats. The Christian Democrats, which remained the biggest party, lost two of its seven seats, and the Labour Party dropped from seven to four seats. The conservative VVD party and D66 both took three seats. The Green Left, Socialist Party and the Christian Union-SGP coalition won two seats each.
There were 25 Dutch seats to be contested in the EU elections. Five years ago, the figure was 27. Turnout for the latest elections was 40 percent, a fraction higher than for the last EU elections five years ago.
The only other country to vote on Thursday was the United Kingdom. Again based on exit polling, the right of centre UK Independence Party is poised to become the second-largest party in the UK. The other 25 member states will vote in the coming three days. Most will go to the polls on Sunday. Official results will be released then.
A record 59 women will seat in the new elected Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s Parliament. Still that’s only 11% of the lower house. However, the government of Prime Minister Singh India’s new Congress-led coalition government is pushing for a new law that will reserve a third of the elected seats in parliament and in state legislatures for women.
More from the UK Guardian:
India’s new Congress-led coalition government is to press for a radical new law to reserve a third of the elected seats in parliament and in state legislatures for women.
The government has also pledged to introduce a bill which will set aside half the seats in elected village councils and city municipalities for women. At present only a third of the seats in village councils are kept exclusively for women.
India’s first woman president, Pratibha Patil, announced the ground-breaking steps at the opening session of the new parliament in Delhi today. She also promised on behalf of prime minister Manmohan Singh’s re-elected government that more women would be employed by the central government.
A National Mission on Empowerment of Women will also be set up to implement “women-centred” welfare programmes.
“My government will initiate steps within the next hundred days on these measures,” she said.
Patil delivered her address, amid repeated applause from the largely male MPs, sitting next to Meira Kumar, who has just been elected as the first woman speaker of the lower house.
Kumar, 64, a former diplomat, belongs to the Dalit caste – once known as Untouchables – and was elected on a Congress party ticket from the state of Bihar. She is part of a record 59-strong contingent of women MPs in the new parliament. But despite making history, they constitute less than 11% of the lower house.
Several of India’s political parties, including Congress, are led by women. Yet political parties favour male candidates. The proposal to reserve a third of the seats in parliament’s lower house for women has met strong opposition, mainly from leaders of caste-based parties in northern states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. They have not changed their stance, but the Congress party appears confident it can muster the required two-thirds majority in the new parliament.
Most national parties, including the BJP and the Communists, are for the bill.