The economic news out of Asia just keeps getting better. With GDP figures for the second quarter rolling in, it is now predicted that emerging Asia will grow by more than five percent this year, compared to a contraction of 3.5 percent in the Group of Seven rich countries. So much for Asia waiting for […]
In a new development in the ongoing saga of the ouster of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, the head of Honduras’s human rights commission, Ramon Custodio, publically declared Zelaya’s exile to nearby Costa Rica a mistake. However, Custodio does not believe that the actual ouster of Zelaya to be wrong, saying that Zelaya’s violations of the […]
The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) released a report this week revealing Britain’s food supply vulnerabilities and strategies for combating a domestic shortage should the ongoing global crisis intensify. Although the UK is largely self-sufficient with regards to food production, the Defra plan focuses largely on increasing that productivity, perhaps through […]
I’m delighted that an article I’ve done on biochar for Grist went “live” today. If you don’t know about the extraordinary potential here, check out the article, Biochar as the new black gold. Even if you do, I think it’s worth a visit. It’s part of a Grist Special Series, What’s the deal with offsets? […]
Guest Blog by Gidon Belmaker—visit his blog, The Jerusalemite, here. Too much ink has been wasted in newspapers around the world about the row between Israel and the US, caused by the Shepherd hotel building permits. A permit to build 20 new housing units in East Jerusalem was issued to a Jewish-American entrepreneur, that’s the […]
The Washington Post reported on the effects of the global food crisis in Nigeria, where 38% of children under 5 years old are starving and 65% of its population is unsure of the source of their next meal. Nigeria has been unable to exploit its agricultural resources despite its wealth from having the largest oil […]
Patricia Kushlis at WhirledView has an excellent post on the end of the Global War on Terror(John Brennan, Obama’s top White House advisor for Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism, who formally declared America’s Global War on Terror over at a CSIS event) and what global engagement means as a concept and a policy in practice. I couldn’t […]
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, outlined the administration’s purpose and goal in the speech that was delivered later in the day at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, and has been termed by the Administration a ‘New Era of Engagement’ with the world.
While India is rapidly developing and modernizing, the police force is abusive and failing. Last week, Human Rights Watch released a report that “documents the failings of state police forces that operate outside the law, lack sufficient ethical and professional standards, are overstretched and outmatched by criminal elements and unable to cope with increasing demands […]
As you know, the U.S. has refused to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and has made statements officially supporting the territorial integrity of Georgia after last year’s war with Russia. The news that Russia will be building up a military presence there is sure to prompt an American reaction. According to this report in The […]
Maybe you have to be Romanian to get this movie. A comedy, it focuses on two men who claim they were part of the revolution that brought down Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/AZ7MfFB14xo” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] While being interviewed by a local TV personality, the pair face callers who claim […]
The August 4 mass shooting of a women’s dance class in Collier, Pennsylvania, in which three women were killed and six others wounded, should be considered a bias motivated hate crime and should reinvigorate our work to end gender based violence. There is a tendency when hearing a story like this one—in which 48 year […]
A few facts about the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC): Numerous individual conflicts since 1996, involving up to 7 nations and 25 armed groups. Estimates of between 3.5 and 7.8 million deaths since 1998. Hundreds of thousands of refugees. Over 200,000 UN reported rapes in the last decade. Women in the […]
For you tomato lovers out there, good luck this season. According to Dan Barber’s op-ed piece in the New York Times, tomatoes have been scarce this year, especially in the Northeast United States, and we’ve already seen price increases of 20%. So what’s the problem? Late blight—the same plant disease that caused the Irish potato […]
The UACES: Exchanging ideas on Europe blog has an excellent post by Michael Siebert of the German Embassy in London (this came to my attention through John Brown’s blog on public diplomacy – a must read for anyone interested in PD). John quotes this part of Siebert’s post: “As a member of the Political Department of […]