Morning Coffee - 8 March 2010

Welcome to Morning Coffee, brought to you by Lindsay Beyerstein with additional links from the UN Dispatch team. Every morning we survey foreign affairs and foreign policy news so you don't have to. We begin with the "Starting Five" items of the day -- these may not always appear on A-1, but they *are* the kinds of stories that will be buzzing in foreign capitals, the UN and wherever foreign policy minds roam.
Starting Five
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY OBSERVED - Today is the 99th annual International Women's Day. Since 1911, IWD has celebrated the achievements of women around the world. At the second International Conference of Working Women, Clara Zetkin, the leader of the 'Women's Office' for the Social Democratic Party in Germany, proposed that all nations should set aside a single day to push for women's demands for liberation. Her proposal was unanimously approved, and International Women's Day was born. Link
MYANMAR FIRE SALE - Psst, buddy, wanna buy a significant stake in Myanmar Airways? That's just one of the public assets that Burma's ruling junta is auctioning off at fire sale prices. Also on the auction block are port facilities and over 100 public buildings. There's a catch, of course, the generals are selling of public property to stuff their coffers ahead of the upcoming election campaign. Link
4 OUT OF 5 AGREE: INTERNET ACCESS IS A HUMAN RIGHT - Four out of five respondents in a new global survey agree that internet access is a human right. The survey polled 27,000 adults in 26 countries on behalf of the BBC World Service. Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), told the BBC that the internet should be regarded as basic infrastructure, on par with water or telephone access. Some countries, including Finland and Estonia, already recognize internet access as a human right. Link
SPAIN EXPANDS ABORTION RIGHTS - A Spanish law gives women the right to abortion on demand during the first 14 weeks of gestation. This is the latest in a series of social reforms by the leftist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. The new law replaces a 1985 statute that criminalized abortion under most circumstances. Tens of thousands of anti-choice protesters took to the streets to denounce the expanded abortion rights. Link
KIM JONG IL'S PERSONAL SHOPPER TELLS ALL - A North Korean defector, Colonel Kim Jong-ryu, who spent 20 years running international errands for the regime in North Korea is dishing the dirt, "At the Dictator's Service." The colonel writes that he did most of his buying in Austria where he acquired everything from spy gadgets to fine carpets, circumventing international embargoes against North Korea. He became disillusioned and faked his own death in 1994 to defect to Austria Link
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