I don’t agree at all with the Economist’s leader this week, which suggests that Barack Obama’s presidency was headed for failure until his health care victory last week. The health care victory was the icing on the cake, coming fourteen months into Obama’s first term, after he rescued the planet from an economic meltdown in a cooperative […]
Earlier this month I was in Albania writing a story on the 700,000 + bunkers; artifacts of an era that most want to put behind them. And while there, I had heard that in neighboring Macedonia, hundreds of ethnic Albanians were packing it up, selling all their possessions, and buying one-way bus tickets to Brussels. […]
I was disappointed to not be able to make this important conference this past Thursday. (Too many other balls up in the air.) I went two years ago and found it a most satisfying experience. Here is Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs introducing the event, along with video of the whole conference. Panelists took part […]
With the health care debate kicked forward, various post mortems are speculating whether the bill passing makes a cap-and-trade legislation more or less likely. On the one hand, Obama’s win on contentious health reforms may have boosted the momentum to now pass what is comparatively easy. From the gang at Climate Progress: “If progressives can […]
In the movie ‘War of the Roses’ debt and finances were one of the central factors and most disruptive of issues in the relationship between the two characters, and the ensuing all-out war during their divorce, and inevitably, in their annihilation of each other. Believe it or not, nations act in the same manner toward each other.
One curious headline in yesterday’s New York Times was this: “Treaty Advances Obama’s Nuclear Vision”. The article was about START II, which Obama and Russian President Medvedev agreed to sign this week. Under START II, the number of legal strategically deployed nuclear warheads will be capped at 1,550 for each signatory. The “nuclear vision” to […]
As online games go, this one not only fills players’ free time, it fills empty stomachs too. FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) featuring a game in which users match selected words to their dictionary definitions. For each answer selected correctly, 10 grains of rice are donated […]
The key to a prosperous future lies in the lives of generations of girls and ensuring they have equal rights and access, especially in regards to healthcare and education. Education is an essential element to achieve peace and international cooperation, and to ending poverty and conflict. The promotion of lifelong education for women and girls, […]
In the continuing effort to reset relations with Russia, the Obama Administration is near agreement on a major arms control treaty to reduce long-range nuclear weapons. As this report from The Washington Post notes, the treaty is a follow-up to the expired 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and will decrease nuclear armaments but not […]
I have spent this week at the Assembly of States Parties for the International Criminal Court (ICC) in New York.* The purpose of this meeting was to give countries that are members of the court, as well as interested observers, an opportunity to prepare for an upcoming high-level meeting when they will review the progress […]
GoDaddy, home of lousy Internet hosting and scandalous Super Bowl ads, has inexplicably been a success with their cut-rate domain registration and hosting. Meanwhile, in the Middle Kingdom the Chinese government continues grasp as many levers of control over Internet users as possible. To register your own web name in the Chinese domain name space (eg, […]
At the press conference on 14 March 2010, immediately after the close of the National People’s Congress annual session (NPC, China’s legislature and highest state body), Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao discussed Hong Kong. The speech came in the wake of a stormy political debate over the slow progress towards universal suffrage that has seen clashes […]
I personally get “number fatigue” when I look at too many large numbers–it’s a professional hazard. But the numbers associated with Tuberculosis (TB) made me sit up in my chair. Shocking facts: one-third of the world’s population, or 2 billion people, are infected with the bacteria that causes Tuberculosis (TB). This translates into more than 9 […]