As the world's eyes fell on Beijing during the 2008 Olympics, Chinese authorities scrambled to find a way to improve the city's notoriously low air quality. They shut down factories, closed roads down and even tried to disperse rain clouds. Now, New Delhi is facing a similar problem prior to hosting October's Commonwealth Games. But the world's fourth most polluted city is banking on some clean tech to get it done: a giant, half million dollar air purifier. This seven-ton machine, built by an Italian company, has a five-stage filtering process and can go through 10,000 cubic meters of air every hour. P.K. Sharma, health chief of New Delhi's Municipal Council spoke with Agence France-Presse:

"It is the first such project in India and if it works then we would acquire a number of them and place them at strategic locations," the health chief of the New Delhi Municipal Council, P.K. Sharma, said.

He said a state environmental agency will monitor the performance of the machine, which costs about 25 million rupees ($551,000 dollars) and works like a vacuum cleaner, sucking in air and releasing it purified form from a roof vent."

Like in the Beijing Olympics, pollution can be a major factor for the 8,000 or so competing athletes. Three months of testing will show whether the machine actually works or not, although there are already dozens of similar models installed in Spain, Switzerland and Italy. Let's just hope it's more effective than Beijing's measures.

In December 2009, just one year after his death, the corpse of former Cypriot president, Tassos Papadopoulos, was dug up from under a slab of marble and stolen from its grave. For three months now, authorities have been searching in vain and coming up with politically-charged theories of "whodunit" -- to no avail.

Then, earlier this week, an anonymous informer tipped-off the police as to the location of the body and laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of none other than Antonis Kitas, a.k.a. "Al Capone" -- an imprisoned criminal mastermind currently serving two life sentences for multiple murders. His motive? Authorities believe he wanted to use the corpse as collateral to ensure his release from prison.

If all this turns out to be true, I'm curious as to why "Al Capone" thought this was a good idea and, moreover, how he thought he could get away with it. Then again, he does seem pretty used to getting his way:

According to former inmates, Kitas enjoys a lifestyle of comparative luxury behind bars, financed by his criminal empire, which he continues to control.

Kitas escaped from custody, briefly, two years ago, giving his guards the slip while being treated for a minor illness at a private Nicosia clinic.

During his six-month stay in the clinic, despite the presence of prison guards, Kitas was frequently joined for the night by his Chinese wife, and had access to a laptop computer and several mobile phones.

A prison guard said Kitas was never handcuffed during his stay in the clinic, and warders were told not to complain about the lax security. "As ever," a retired prison official said: "Al Capone was a law unto himself."

Just to bring you up to speed on the recent antics of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, he was ousted in a 2006 military coup due to corruption and cronyism and was sentenced in absentia to two years in prison for a corrupt land deal. His assets in Thailand were frozen and he was later stripped of his Thai passport but, don't worry, he continues to be a glass-half-full kind of guy; he suavely globe-trots his way out of the grasp of authorities (allegedly holding six other passports). And, finally, his little princess made it into our list of worst-behaved daughters. Oh, and don't forget his latest business venture: a lotto service in Uganda, which he hopes will "benefit the people of Uganda." Nothing like gambling to really help people in need, eh Thaksin?

If you think all this means he's not so well liked back home, you would be wrong. In Thailand's impoverished and neglected northeast, Thaksin is seen as a champion of social equality, mostly due to his hands-on governing style, a low-interest lending program and low-cost healthcare program that he enacted as PM. In fact, his appeal has probably increased in the last few years.

And Thaksin hasn't let his money, or popularity, go to waste. He's been funneling money to supportive political parties and his grassroots supporters, called "The Reds", ever since he left Thailand. Now, as a reaction to the government's confiscation of $1.4 billion of his assets in late February, "The Reds" are planning to hold mass demonstrations in Bangkok, starting tomorrow. With an expected turnout anywhere between 100,000 and 600,000 the Thai authorities aren't messing around. They've already deployed 50,000 troops on the streets in order to stop things from getting out of hand.

Oh Thaksin, you just never cease to stir the pot.

Iran's drug squad commander pointed out in January, that narcotics forces had seized 340 tons of drugs and arrested 170,000 ‘drug dealers' in the previous nine months -- what amounted to a new record for the Islamic Republic. What Iranian officials are less likely to point out is the other record they've hit in the past few months: Iran now has the largest number of imprisoned journalists in the world. By the end of February, (a month in which 12 journalists were arrested), the number rested at 52 -- a third of the global tally and more than double China's total of 24.

The information is detailed in a new report compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists. CPJ adds that its count "does not include more than 50 other journalists in Iran who have been imprisoned and released on bail over the last several months." By arresting any who challenges the regime's authority, it seems as though Iranian officials are working overtime to usurp the 1996 record of 78 jailed journalists set by Turkey.

Although it seems to have fallen out of the news cycle ever since the disappointing Feb. 11 protests, Iran's still-alive opposition movement has yet to leave the attention of the Obama administration; an LA. Times article today reports that the administration is preparing to change the focus of its Iran policy from negotiations to greater support for the opposition as well as enforcing sanctions.

Daniel Charbonnier, co-founder of Minds in Motion, an international hospitality advisory and services company, has recently partnered with concept artists Frank and Patrik Riklin to transform the 'Zero-Star Hotel' into a worldwide business opportunity. The 'Zero Star Hotel' is an art installation, a Swiss nuclear bunker converted into an 'eco-luxury' hotel that can host 14 guests in a configuration of 6 single beds and 4 double beds. Larger groups can also be accommodated in an adjacent room highlighting original military-style bunk-beds.

The lawyer for the 10 American missionaries charged with taking 33 children out of Haiti without permission was fired earlier this week by the group's legal advisor, Jorge Puello, after being accused of trying to offer bribes to get the group out of jail.

If you think that's weird, the situation took a bizarre turn yesterday when it was revealed by the New York Times that Mr. Puello was also being investigated for allegedly leading a trafficking ring involved with Central American and Caribbean women and girls.

No wonder Mr. Puello said in an interview that he was "representing the Americans free of charge because he was a religious man who commiserated with their situation." Color me crazy but employing the services of a wanted international trafficker typically isn't the best way to convince a judge that you weren't trying to smuggle children. I can't help but think that these guys are now way up the proverbial creek.

The Toyota logo is displayed on a box of auto parts at City Toyota February 5, 2010 in Daly City, California. Toyota Motor Corp. President Akio Toyoda issued an apology today for saftey issues that have prompted the recall of nearly 4 million Toyota cars and trucks that could have accelerator pedals that can stick.

Uganda's Chief Magistrate's court dismissed a landmark case on Wednesday that had been filed by two Ugandan journalists, Angelo Izama and Charles Mwanguhya Mpagi. The file was introduced by the journalists as an attempt to use Uganda's Access to Information Act to force the Ugandan government to release the details of five oil Production Sharing Agreements that it has signed with oil companies. The government and the oil companies has resisted pressure to divulge even the smallest details to the public -- both attempting to deflect criticism by citing the other's insistence in maintaining secrecy over the deals.

Oil explorers have long been skeptical of Uganda's potential for holding large oil deposits but in the last few years oil exploration has proved wildly successful. The estimates now lie upwards of 6 billion barrels of oil -- if on the higher end, Uganda would surpass Sudan for the fifth largest oil reserves in Africa.

Observers are not optimistic at the implications of Uganda's oil finds. Although it would inject billions of dollars annually into Uganda's economy, widespread corruption (Uganda was ranked 126^th out of 179 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index) increases the risk that the country could slip into the feared "resource curse". While the government and the oil companies paint a rosy picture for the public, analysts are less sanguine. As Taimour Lay writes in The Guardian, the components for a bad situation are all there:

The ingredients for the so-called "resource curse" are all in place: contract secrecy, government corruption, commercial disinformation campaigns, with environmental protections ignored, and a simmering border dispute with the Democratic Republic of the Congo frozen rather than resolved.

Although the Chief Magistrate's reasoning behind the dismissal of the case was less than convincing (he cited "national security"), it certainly highlighted Uganda's press freedom, right? That is, until Angelo Izama was slapped with a charge of libel and driven to jail on the very next day. The complaint? A December 2009 article in which Izama suggested parallels between President Yoweri Museveni and Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Although this is not a new tactic -- typically used by the Ugandan government to intimidate journalists -- such cases have certainly picked up in the last year. In a country where press freedom is one of the most important aspects of its "partly free" rating by Freedom House, this is a disturbing trend.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports on the Ugandan government's widespread use of defamation statutes to coerce its critics:

"If anything proves that a government is authoritarian, it's jailing journalists who raise questions about the government," said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. "It's regrettable that the magistrate charged Angelo Izama and Henry Ochieng with criminal libel. It's time for Uganda to join the ranks of democracies by eliminating criminal defamation statutes."

...

Izama and Ochieng are among several Monitor journalists facing criminal charges in connection with their coverage, according to CPJ research. Sedition charges also hang over radio journalists Robert Kalundi Sserumaga and Betty Nambooze, while a government ban remains on popular debate programs and Central Broadcasting Services, the station of the traditional kingdom of the Baganda, Uganda's largest ethnic group, since last September.

Election fever for the 2011 presidential elections starts in the next few months and President Yoweri Museveni will be running for his fourth term. A potential resource curse and press intimidation are not the best of omens for a free and fair election. Ugandan journalists will play an essential role in pushing for transparency -- and I have a hunch they won't be cowed.

(Hat Tip: Michael Wilkerson)