This week one of China’s former richest men, Huang Guangyu of Chinese appliance giant Gome Electronics, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for bribery and insider dealing. This follows rejection of the appeal of former Rio Tinto executives, who some believed had received unreasonably harsh sentences for bribing so-far unnamed government officials. Is China […]
Will the departure of U.S. forces derail recent development success? Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s Kurdish population faced policies of genocide, forced assimilation, and ethnic cleansing. That changed after 2003 when Kurds emerged as a leading democratic force in the new Iraq. For several years, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has been a model of successful […]
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As the New York Times reported earlier this week, the Hold-Build part of Clear-Hold-Build is not going so well for the U.S. in Marja. The local population has not been cooperating with the U.S. effort to capture Taliban forces out of fear of being on the receiving end of the Taliban’s vengeance. As a result, […]
With last week’s welcomed news of robust jobs growth, and yesterday’s announcement that consumer prices fell in April for the first time in 13 months as energy prices tumbled and high unemployment limited the private sector’s ability to raise prices.
Here, courtesy of NASA, is a look at two Gulf of Mexico dead zones: one well established, as a consequence of runoff (manure, fertilizer, wastewater treatment plant effluent, etc.) from the breadbasket of the US, and the other in the making, from BP’s disastrous well blowout.
I am currently reading the Millennium Villages 2008 Annual Report. Here’s some food for thought: The MVP (Millennium Villages Project) is highlighting the value and feasibility of integrated community-based investments, rather than the one-by-one investment strategies too often deployed in rural areas. Because of budgetary limitations, donors and NGOs too often search for a single […]
China owed the world one on Iran, for reasons explored in a previous post, and today it delivered, joining the United States, Russia, France and the UK in agreeing to draft sanctions. If adopted by the full UN Security Council, the sanctions will authorize members to board ships entering or leaving Iran, to search for […]
After apparent heavy behind the scenes maneuverings, the Iranian nuclear situation heated up again this week. Both the United States and Iran came up with separate announcements presenting new actions/solutions designed to end the nuclear standoff. Yesterday Iran announced it had signed an agreement brokered by Brazil and Turkey. According to the BBC news the […]
A synopsis of market-moving news and developments in the Emerging Markets.
As someone who follows global climate issues for a living, the past month has been a whirlwind of incremental progress, speculation and literal explosions. Following the daily – make that hourly – ticker has been valuable in understanding the current climate position of the U.S. and the direction things are heading in 2010. The Issues […]
Continuing our journey through the health systems lingo, consider these images, courtesy of World Mapper, which map the world based on the numbers. We commonly use these images at the organization where I work to underscore the disparity of human resources for health in the regions of the world where the disease burden is greatest. Total […]
Wall Street reform bill is taking that rarest of paths as it meanders through the Senate: it’s actually gaining tougher provisions against the industry as it proceeds, not being watered down to win votes as health care reform was. And that puts the president’s opponents, Republicans, in an increasingly difficult position.
So at this point I have the score, in a sane world, about ten to nothing against nuclear power. (See previous two posts below.) Here are a few more points against: Perhaps the most telling argument against nuclear power, in market economies anyway, is the failure of nuclear power to compete. Amory Lovins, in his […]
Accidents happen, but the BP mess in the Gulf was an accident waiting to happen, which is not the same thing — faulty blowout preventer, faulty shears, faulty cement job, lack of blowout plan, possible lack of required permits, definite lack of oversight by the US Mineral Management Service. At the same time, quite below […]