From a Medical Research Council report on children's health issues in South Africa: Every year almost 23,000 South African babies die in their first month of life, yet one in five of these deaths could be avoided with better education, and relatively inexpensive and easily implemented changes in healthcare, says a new study by the […]
Some of you may be familiar with the gruesome and depressing dogfighting story of NFL star Michael Vick. (See here, and, if you have the stomach, follow the many links to the right of the story.) But dogfighting is a real problem in South Africa as well, as a story in today's Cape Times revealing […]
As we all know, Uzbekistan is supposed to have elections this December. So far, not much in the way of election preparation has been noted. Actually, Uzbekistan was supposed to have elections Last December. Not much in the way of election preparation was noticed then, either. Yesterday, the International Crisis Group, a group I respect […]
Last week, President Berdymukhamedov signed an amnesty for eleven political prisoners sentenced under the Niyazov regime. Of chief importance in the list was the former Chief Mufti of Turkmenistan, Nasrullah Ibn Ibdullah. Another prisoner released was 70 years old. All of the prisoners released were implicated in the assassination attempt on Turkmenbashi in November of 2002. […]
The leaders of Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. concluded a two-day summit focusing on issues such as trade, the environment, and border security. Presidents Bush and Calderon discussed a joint plan to combat drug trafficking on both sides of the border. The leaders also met with business executives from across the continent and agreed to block […]
Hopes were high for the two-day Southern African Development Community (SADC) Summit held last week in Lusaka. The crisis in Zimbabwe would be high on the agenda. Thabo Mbeki would present his progress report on his mediation between Robert Mugabe and his opponents. Some how, some way, the region's leaders would broker a solution, or […]
The Caspian sea is one home of the sturgeon, a large, unprepossessing fish that provides the world with one of its most tasty delicacies: caviar. On August 11th, delegates met in Ashgabat in a regular meeting of the Commission on the Biological Resources of the Caspian Sea to discuss revising the quota system between the states […]
Between the news agencies and the blog posts from Tajikistan's residents, one can get a picture of Tajikistan that makes one wonder what people in Tajikistan are actually allowed to do: 1. Mosque leaders will be tested for religious capability by the state. 2. Unregistered mosques are being demolished. 3. A draft law that would regulate […]
New notes and data toward conclusions: but not conclusions. Read on and form your own. Over the weekend, I perused the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) World Drug Report 2007 that came out last month. I’m going to start in Afghanistan and then follow various trade routes. Since the opium market is a global market, this […]
Thuli Manunga, a ten year old who speaks Xhosa at home but is fluent in three languages has become the first black junior pupil to win the prestigious national Afrikanse Taal en Kultuur Vereeneging speaking competition.
In an otherwise perceptive article in The New York Times, Michael Wines seems somewhat nonplussed by the possibility that Thabo Mbeki appears to be entering a lame duck phase as the South African President. With that status comes more vocal complaints from within the ANC coalition ranks than we may have seen before, especially from […]
In the margins of the SCO conference, a bilateral agreement between China and Kazakhstan has furthered Kazakhstan's trade relations and may potentially regularize Central Asia's energy market. Here's the trade portion of the Central Asia NewsNet article, (somewhat edited here). Note that higher energy prices increased the dollar volume: A. In 2006 [China-Kazakhstani] bilateral trade volume hit […]
Africans North-to-South, East-to-West are hyper-wary of foreign encroachments. This should come as no surprise after the dual destabilizing phenomena of western imperialism and the Cold War threw Africa into paroxysms of chaos from which it has not ever fully recovered. So despite (or perhaps because of) the myriad examples of China's increased chumminess with Africa (which I have written […]
News? What news? Kazakhstan had elections this Saturday after a short campaign season. President Nazarbaev's Nur-Otan party won over 80% of the legislative seats, and handily. The OSCE sent observers, who again found the elections to be ‘not free and not fair’. The observers noted that ballot-boxes were allegedly stuffed; that the short election season put Kazakhstan's minority […]
The party's over: The SCO Summit in Bishkek this past week wrapped up with barely a stir in the Western news, and after seeking in vain for a keynote sentence to sum it up, I learned there wasn't one. Joshua Kucera at his blog Istanbul – Beijing was able to cover the summit: his first […]