- J. Michael Cole blogs on how the Presidential Office has decided to block Foreign Correspondents from taking part in ECFA briefings or asking questions.
- Important news from Wales with implications for Scotland and any country seeking greater autonomy and political self determination through representative elections:
The Welsh Assembly (Senedd) passed a motion which triggers the process for a referendum to be held on transferring legislative powers to the institution from Westminster. The motion, which required the support of at least 40 AMs, succeeded in garnering the support of 53 in the end, with no abstentions or votes against.This is a major event in British constitutional politics and one that has potentially huge repercussions for the SNP's desire to hold a referendum on Scottish independence.
- China jails an investigator into the deaths in the Sichuan earthquake on the flimsy pretence that he was subverting the state in comments in online articles about the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. Key quotes:
Ai Weiwei, a leading artist who has also attempted to tally the number of pupils who died in the disaster: "Tan Zuoren received such a serious punishment only for believing or writing in his [online] diaries that there were problems with the earthquake. It is ridiculous. Though China claims to the world that it is a major country, the case just shows how fragile and lacking in confidence it is.""[Tan's] arrest, unfair trial and now the guilty verdict are further disturbing examples of how the Chinese authorities use vague and over broad laws to silence and punish dissenting voices," said Roseann Rife, Asia-Pacific deputy director at Amnesty.
- Mike Turton gives us news of discontent within the KMT at their falling grassroots support and lack of viable candidates for elections.
