Tokyo Electric Power [TEPCO], the company that operates the nuclear reactors that have partially melted down at Fukushima, has announced a plan to get the reactors to cold shutdown within 9 months. Cold shutdown is defined by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as “The term used to define a reactor coolant system at atmospheric pressure and at […]
Once again I respond to a post by FPA Israel blogger Ben Moscovitch. Not to pick on him. But because we disagree on many things and it seems worthwhile to me to discuss them. Hopefully he agrees. Ben’s most recent post criticizes Obama for drawing a parallel between the Passover story and the protest movements […]
A report from the World Health Organization indicates that some 2.6 million stillbirths occur every year globally, with more than 90% of them in low or middle income countries. With an estimated 7,000 stillbirth every day, with majority of such cases happening in Sub- Saharan African countries including Uganda. The report estimated that almost half […]
You may be entirely aware by now that the controversy over shale gas resources and their extraction by hydraulic fracturing heated up last week with the publication of an important paper in Climatic Change, a well-respected scientific journal. (Here is a great little video on what exactly the heck hydraulic fracturing is – aka hydrofracking […]
Someone broke the embargo (shame on whomever it was) on a Congressional report detailing the substances used in hydraulic fracking to produce natural gas. So, we get the news a bit early. The press release on the report starts: “Today Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman, Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Edward […]
Global conflicts intensify and new ones are seemingly erupting daily it causes one to look at the civilians, of the majority of which are women and children, who are caught in the crossfire’s. Displacement and trauma from the daily terrors of conflict leave irrefutable scars on their victims, however the increasingly violent nature of many […]
Business relationships are often directly linked to human rights violations. A UN report, “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect, and Remedy” Framework,” will be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council during the June 2011 session. The report has three pillars (page 4, item 6): The State has […]
I stand with the FPA Israel blog’s Zev Wexler, The New York Times’ Roger Cohen, and the three Goldstone Report co-authors who are not Richard Goldstone in thinking that Goldstone’s recent recantation is “bizarre,” as Cohen put it. Goldstone asserts that Israeli military investigations “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of […]
The emergence of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and now South Africa to compose the so-called BRICS Summit met in Hainan, China (Apr 14-15, 2011) to discuss global economics, trade cooperation and developments in Japan and Libya. The emergence of this economic bloc could become an alternative voice on the world stage to Western dominated world finance and politics.
As protests and civil unrest continue across North Africa and the Middle East, reports are emerging of Bahraini and Syrian security forces threatening, assaulting, and arresting protesters seeking medical treatment at hospitals. According to The New York Times, health care workers in Bahrain have been arrested, for protesting but also for treating patients, and security […]
Children are indisputably the most victimized by that of armed conflict as well as natural disasters, and the long-term impact which is has on their development is profound. It is that heavy impact that can often become a parent’s worst nightmare as they work to help their children recover from trauma. A child woken each […]
Pakistan has told the United States to halt drone strikes on Pakistani territory. Thus, the debate about the legality of the U.S. drones program has taken a new turn. (For background, see my analysis of the Wittes-O’Connell debate on this issue from last year.) How does one determine whether the United States can legally continue […]
Just as many of the children of Japan were beginning to calm from the traumatic shock and fear from the 8.9 magnitude earthquake which hit Japan’s northern coast on March 11, 2011, which also generated a thirty-foot tsunami, a second quake has now left many even more traumatized. A 7.4magnitude earthquake struck last Thursday, April […]
I had planned to blog on the subject topic last month in honor of Women’s History Month but fell behind in my planned schedule because of travel and focus on other issues. In December I participated in a Department of Defense sponsored Bloggers Roundtable on the role of Female Engagement Teams in Afghanistan; and in […]