Moody’s reports that, since the onset of the crisis, Latin American and Caribbean sovereigns sustained negative rating actions in only 5 out of 27 cases, versus 12 out of 21 in Eastern Europe. Similar trends can be found at the other major rating agencies (S&P and Fitch).
The U.S. Senate voted on Monday to confirm President Obama’s nominee for Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Margaret Hamburg. The FDA is the oversight agency for food production as well as prescription drugs and medical devices. Dr. Hamburg is a Harvard-trained doctor and former New York City health commissioner known for […]
This article by Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, appears in the May 2009 issue of Scientific American magazine. In his analysis, Brown argues that causal factors such as the current world order, water shortages, eroding soil, and rising global temperatures are threatening not only the global food supply, but world civilization as […]
On the eastern edge of Georgia and stretching up along the Caspian sea, the troubled Republic of Dagestan has been largely forgotten. Escalating poverty, hopelessness, and the militant Islamic Shariat Jamaat is driving many of its youth into extremism. Mixed in the fray are ordinary Salafis who are being targeted as extremists. These individuals, easily spotted by […]
According to the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Director-General Pascal Lamy, International trade helps solve food crisis, and had not been part of the problem for the increased food insecurity of the last year and the increased level of poverty. “To suggest that less trade, and greater self-sufficiency, are the solutions to food […]
Nuclear-arms talks between the United States and Russia get underway today in Moscow. The negotiating teams are discussing a replacement for the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) that expires in December. Talks will address stronger verification procedures and might also tackle the issue of reducing both deployed warheads and stockpiles held in reserve. […]
I touched on the massive oil prospecting and processing operations in Alberta here in February, and here a while back. (For a characteristically articulate and comprehensive overview, you can’t beat Betsy Kolbert’s “New Yorker” article, Unconventional Crude.) StatoilHydro, the Norwegian state oil and gas company, one of the biggest in the world, has a big […]
The Congress Party wins big, while Hindu nationalists and communists lose out in the largest democratic elections in the world. And the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty keeps going and going… BBC’s vast election coverage (beaming with post-colonial pride) is worth checking out. India’s Finance Ministry is holding a contest to see who can come up with a […]
The biggest land grab since the scramble for Africa is taking place under the sea. Last Wednesday was the ten-year deadline for most countries to submit claims over seabeds. States that have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea are able to claim extensions to their continental shelves beyond the normal […]
President Obama will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today at the White House. The Mideast peace process will be on the agenda, though as this report points out, the two leaders bring two very different agendas to the table: Israel’s new conservative prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, comes to the White House Monday set on […]
The internal power struggles in the Kremlin are still surprisingly hard to understand and predict. President Dmitry Medvedev was Vladimir Putin’s handpicked successor (Putin was constitutionally prevented from seeking a third consecutive term in office in 2008). At the time, many outside analysts and experts believed Medvedev would simply implement Putin’s desired policies and actions. […]
Thanks to my colleague Roger Scher for sending me an article from today’s New York Times concerning “Love Land” (I wrote about it yesterday: here). It turns out Chinese authorities have had enough and have ordered the park to close. Read more here.
Sri Lankan officials Monday claimed defeat over the Tamil Tigers guerrilla organization amid reports its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was killed in the latest raids. The victory puts an end to nearly a quater century of violent conflict in Sri Lanka, though the reconciliation campaign may take even longer. European Union nations called Monday for an […]
That’s how I’d paraphrase the old Bill Clinton internal campaign motto in the context of the present-day campaign to get an American law into place to combat GHGs. I’ve written about cap-and-trade and the Carbon Markets dozens of times here, including on the cap-and-trade vs. carbon tax debate. For an interesting look at the history […]
A lot is going on in the Rising Powers at the moment, so why not begin the week with a survey of key developments and important news articles?