Yesterday, Stephen Blank of the US Army War College wrote at Eurasianet that U.S. aid and relations in Central Asia are likely to scale back further. Though U.S. interest in the region is high, financial constraints are appearing to dictate a lessening of aid and assistance to Central Asian states. For Central Asia watchers, there […]
Two months after taking office after a disputed election fraught with irregularities, Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua finally announced the formation of his cabinet yesterday after weeks of horse trading with the Senate, which has to approve the selections. It is difficult to discern whether this represents good news or bad in oft-troubled Nigeria. On the plus side, […]
Mohammed Zahir Shah, Afghanistan's last king, was interred today. At al-Jazeera, the obituary notes that the King, who abdicated in 1973, presided over a forty-year period of stability and peace in Afghanistan. After the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, he returned briefly to his home state as a figure of unity. Not everyone found the king to be an […]
I was so sad to hear that the Kazakhstan-sponsored cyclists at the Tour de France, Team Astana, dropped out of the race. The team was led by Kazakhstani cyclist Alexander Vinokourov, was hit with charges of steroid abuse. (This picture is not of Mr. Vinokourov, but Mr. Bazaev). It looks as if the team's investors (or perhaps […]
The International AIDS Society (IAS) conference, the biggest of its kind in the world, just closed in Australia. Its most significant conclusion is that the world must find a way to develop and deliver child-specific, side-effect-free (or limited) drugs to allow children with the disease to survive into adulthood (and perhaps to live to see […]
On Sunday former United Nations Secretary general Kofi Annan gave the fifth annual Nelson Mandela lecture at Madiba's foundation. In his talk Annan entreated African leaders to promote democracy and good governance and to disavow tyranny. It turns out that throughout much of the continent, Africans are already heeding the call for democracy and away from […]
China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has signed a 30-year natural gas import contract with Turkmenistan. 30 billion cubic meters (cum) of gas will be exported from Turkmenistan via a newly-planned natural gas pipeline. Let's hope that CNPC trains and hires local Turkmenistani workers for this multi-million dollar infrastructure project, which should begin in 2009. Almost […]
President Berdymukhamedov announced that USD one billion will be invested in a vacation resort on the Caspian, in the city of Turkmenbashi. It will contain sixty hotels, a stadium, restaurants, sports facilities, and shopping centers. This idea first surfaced in May of this year, and developed further after a meeting between Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. At the time, […]
Last Thursday, 23 South Korean aid workers, affiliated with an evangelical Christian mission, were abducted from a bus near Kandahar. Their mission was to develop hospital facilities. Fifteen of the 23 are women, and all are alive and said to be in good health. The Taliban is threatening to kill them today if some Taliban hostages are not […]
Last week, U.S. President Bush promulgated another Executive Order to contain terrorist funding for the Iraq insurgency, the “aid and support” of those who want to bring failure to the new government and reconstruction process. I have a more comprehensive, Iraq-focused post on this issue over at my other blog. Yet this Executive Order is equally relevant for […]
A triumph in the Rule of Law: Mr. Seidenfeld is acquitted on all charges!!! Over at the Save Mark Seidenfeld site, Derek Bloom has listed the findings of the court, which include: That in refutation of all allegations, Mr. Seidenfeld neither kept back money or equipment for his own personal gain. That he should be […]
Contributed by Rich Basas of FPA's Migration Blog: This past week the New York Times reporter Marc Lacey did a report on the ever-growing problem of HIV entering smaller communities in Mexico. He found that much of the problem comes from Migrant workers who earn much of their wages in the US and often come […]
There be dragons–or at least, living legends: swimming around in Scotland's Loch Ness and, as reported this week, in Lake Kanasi in Xinjiang Province. This definitely proves a theory that the initial uh, foundation for the species is somewhere in the vicinity of the, mmm, Barents Sea, but migrated south during the Ice Age–just ahead of those pesky […]
Drought has exacerbated a food shortage which in turn has been exacerbating an HIV/AIDS-fueled health crisis in the tiny Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. Maseru has declared a state of emergency. And things are probably going to get worse before they get better.
According to Business Report, South African consumer confidence, which has been ongoing for some time, either continues apace or it does not. What this somewhat frustrating contradiction tells us, I think, is that the dismal science is more dismal than science and that consumer confidence is probably a pretty vague matrix to gauge the health […]