The Australians have come a long way since 2007 when climate change was a big factor in the change of government from Tory to Labor. A few years later, in part because the new Labor PM, Kevin Rudd, wasn’t effecting legislation fast enough to put a price on carbon, he was replaced in his party […]
After a decade of reporting, this year’s focus shifts to how to move forward. In the words of Ambassador-At-Large Lou CdeBaca, “This year’s TIP Report focuses on how governments can move toward a more targeted, purposeful approach that fully addresses the minimum standards to fight trafficking in persons… For a maturing modern approach, it is […]
Today, July 11, 2011, is World Population Day, an annual event established to raise awareness of global population issues. The day was set by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme in 1989. It was inspired by the public interest in Five Billion Day on July 11, 1987, when the world’s population was […]
The plight of Somali children, whose families are fleeing the country’s ongoing 20 year conflict and continuing drought, attempting to reach refugee camps in neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, is ringing alarm bells at the United Nations. Somali children are dying in great numbers- aid workers have begun to discover that many are unable to survive […]
I just spent my Saturday morning doing some solid nerding. By that I mean, I read two great articles about that rising behemoth, China. The first was ‘China’s Bumpy Road Ahead by international consultant and geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer. Bremmer, has a blog at Foreign Policy that features many guest writers and covers impactful global […]
Last year, the world investment in renewable energy rose to $211 billion according to the UN Environment Program, an increase of 32% over 2009. Using 2004 as a baseline, that is more than a five-fold increase. Not counting hydroelectric dams, renewable energy supplied 5% of global electricity, 30% of new electrical capacity overall. Thanks largely […]
In case you missed it, the U.S., along with the European Union and Mexico, won an important ruling at the World Trade Organization earlier this week. The parties had lodged complaints against China, whom they accused of unfairly restricting exportation of a variety of key raw materials commonly found in a wide range of manufactured […]
Original photo here, taken by NYC-MetroCard / CC BY Public Health researchers at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health released a study last month that estimates the number of deaths in the US in 2000 due to social factors such as poverty, low education, and income inequality. The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 47 studies […]
Freedom House’s 2010 edition of Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa is out and a great resource. It analyzes the status of women in the region country by country. As Queen Noor has said, “It is vital that MENA countries more urgently recognize that the status of women is the key determinant […]
According to UNICEF some 60 million children are forced to enter into marriages before they are of legal age, half of which are in South Asia. While countries in South America, Africa and Asia may have the highest numbers of early and forced marriages, more than 2 million young girls in Europe are also child […]
Evolution of violence against the state will occur in environments that do not allow for coping mechanisms, perceived political inclusion, and sufficient state propaganda. Iran and Turkey, for example, are states that can shift if the former were to experience erosion of coping mechanisms, pushing it further towards violence, and the latter could see improvement in political inclusion, pushing it further towards peace.
As you may have heard, the space shuttle Atlantis will launch tomorrow for the last time. This launch will conclude the shuttle program and quite possibly, the U.S. manned space program, at least in the way we have come to think about it. If NASA is ending the shuttle program you would think that a […]
Journalist R. Jeffrey Smith has a piece in today's Washington Post which publicizes a letter released by Abdul Quadeer Khan, Pakistani proliferation raconteur, and imaginary nuke trader (the West made it up, you see) to former British Journalist Simon Henderson which ” support(s) his claim that he personally transferred more than $3 million in payments […]
The Big Apple should not have to wait any longer: It’s time to become a center of renewable energy. We’re not talking about big solar and wind arrays as we’re going to see in the Sahara – although that’s a good thing too – but rather about distributed generation: making power where you live and […]
I hope that you had a great Independence Day holiday weekend. I’ve been thinking about what kind of patriotic post I could write that would be interesting and different from the usual 4th of July posts I’ve made in year’s past. When I saw this report from Voice of America, I knew I’d found my […]