Speaking of roofs – as we were in the last post below – here’s an item from CleanTechnica on the passage of draft legislation in the Senate Energy Committee to help drive a push toward ten million solar roofs in the US by 2020. This is an analogue to the successful California program this now […]
It’s been a tough few days for the U.S. Intelligence community. Last week the Washington Post ran a series called “Top Secret America” and this week the media is filled with stories of 92,000 classified documents released by some web site. The documents cover events in Afghanistan from 2004 – 2009. I’ve blogged before about […]
In the UK a recently released study showed that 55% of children in the United Kingdom, who have been identified as persons victimized by human trafficking and subsequently rescued will eventually become missing persons. The main reason for the high percentage rate of missing child survivors is due in direct relation to a lack of […]
A theme that I’ve been following over the last few months (ever since reading about Nigel Crisp‘s ideas in “Turning the World Upside Down”) is how innovation can transfer from developing economies to developed, particularly in the field of public health. So I was interested to read Vijay Govindarajan’s recent conversation in the Harvard Business Review about how Aravind […]
Read Gordon Brown’s speech to African leaders given in Kampala, Uganda this week: “…that the job of aid is to kick start business-led growth and not to replace it. And so I believe we need to focus not just on poverty – but on growth. Not just on providing services for the poor, but on […]
The United States and South Korea have planned joint exercises in the waters off the Korean Peninsula. The move is in response to the sinking of a South Korean navy vessel named the Cheonan, which is believed to have been sunk by a North Korean attack. While the North Koreans are criticizing the move as […]
Relations between North and South Korea (ROK) continue to simmer in the aftermath of the sinking of the South Korean warship, Chenoan, in which 46 sailors lost their lives. This week during a visit to South Korea, Secretary of State Clinton announced new sanctions against North Korea targeted at sale and purchase of arms and […]
The central theme of the International AIDS Conference was supposed to be the war on drugs. As I highlighted in my last post, criminalization has been proven to fuel the epidemic, while engaging directly with people with a higher risk for HIV significantly decreases transmission and death. The conference was in Vienna expressly to “bridge” […]
Every Friday, I’m going to try to introduce a new aid innovation/organization. This week: the Peepoo bag, somewhat predictably from the minds of the Swedes. The Peepoo bag is a one-use personal toilet, a light green, biodegradable bag lined with a coating of urea. It’s meant to be placed in a bucket, or other convenient […]
I’ve said all along that US Energy Secretary Steven Chu is a smart guy. He’s got a Nobel Prize in Physics to prove it. (That’s why I say he’s too smart to be taken in by the ongoing boondoggle that is nuclear power.) Here he is talking about a new study from DOE on white […]
(Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with Senator John Kerry and Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy Carol Browner during a media conference in Washington. Photo: AP) If you follow the climate and energy story, I’m not telling you something you don’t know – or couldn’t have predicted: the US […]
An important story as been hanging out in the news for the past couple months and it’s time I wrote about it. Barney Frank is on a serious campaign to get the U.S. to curb military spending. Earlier this year he convened a Sustainable Defense Task Force to find ways to do it. Read their […]
For the moment, please refer to my comment on Joe Romm’s tirade about President Obama’s “failed presidency” in light of the decision by the Senate Democratic leadership’s to punt on climate change and energy. If Obama had tried harder, Romm opines, we’d have cap-and-trade. I have enormous respect for Romm’s perspectives and his energy, but […]
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress on Wednesday that the outlook for the economy remains “unusually uncertain” as the US gauge of future economic activity dropped in June, the second decline in past 3 months, suggesting the economic recovery is weakening.
There is a muted but ongoing debate about whether a country can be democratic and fight corruption at the same time (see Success stories). A related debate concerns economic development. Thus, can the undemocratic Chinese government achieve the economic growth it aspires to without increasing accountability? Some people hold up China’s stellar performance as evidence […]