Ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s trip to Beijing next week, Brazil announced that China surpassed the United States as the country’s largest trading partner. Trade with China totaled $3.2 billion in April, compared with $2.8 billion in imports and exports with the US. “The US has been Brazil’s principal trading partner for […]
Thanks to the new relationship between the U.S. and Russia (after hitting the proverbial reset button) it would appear that progress in being made in nuclear non-proliferation talks. According to this report from the Reuters news service: Delegates meeting on the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty struck their first agreement on the anti-nuclear arms pact in a […]
UN takes to field to play charity soccer scrimmage UN ambassadors and officials, including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, took to the field to play a game of soccer for the charitable Play31 organization. Named after Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Play31 seeks to use soccer to facilitate […]
The Japan Society of New York will be hosting an as-advertised “sold out” event tonight, May 12 with the author of The Blue Sweater, Jacqueline Novogratz. According to the Japan Society, the gist of the event’s focus is: Imagine a world where everyone has access to water, housing, health services and energy. That is the […]
The fact that government regulators are frimly in control of capital markets is true not only in the U.S., but in fact that reality is de pase in most other developed markets around the world.
The Chinese government is considering imposing a pro rata carbon tax on coal and fossil fuels such as gasoline, jet fuel, and natural gas, Finance Ministry official Su Ming has told the country’s state-run media. For the past year, 20 experts from seven different government agencies have been investigating the development and implementation of a […]
The last week and a half has brought with it all the trials and tribulations of modern conveniences and technology. First a complete phone malfunction, then our web server appeared with some hitches and glitches, then to top it off my laptop got a virus which just seems irremovable for any point of time longer […]
Among residents of the BRIC nations, Brazilians are the happiest, followed by Russians, whereas the Chinese are the least happy, followed by the Indians, according to a recent OECD report.
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) chief countered the perception put forward by development experts that the international food trade was key to the recent global food crisis. Speaking at the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council conference in Austria, Pascal Lamy, the Director General of the World Trade Organization, rebuffed the idea put forward […]
Barack Obama soon will make his second overseas trip as President, visiting Egypt, Germany and France. Although Obama differs from his predecessors in many respects, some things are true of any Presidential visit to a foreign country. The people at the White House who plan the trip want to set a theme, they want a […]
The crisis in western Pakistan has heavily dominated the news in the past week, and rightly so. But there’s a huge hole in the story–the media is not allowed to go to the wild Swat Valley region where much of this story is happening. So, the media and people paying attention to this important story […]
Enjoy Poverty is a disturbing 80 minute film that attempts to expose and lay bare the inherent viciousness of poverty’s status quo. It draws parallels between the economics of poverty and the psychology of western consumption and aid. It attempts to symbolize the perversity of our own societies, the dramas and the obscure fascination we have with death. […]
The temperature in South Asia, often sweltering, has heated up over the last week. Read a selection of news reports below. With the peace deal between the government of Pakistan and the Taliban in tatters and pressure on Pakistani President Zardari from Holbrooke and Co. getting heavy, the Pakistani armed forces launched attacks in recent days on the […]
There are many things that are wrong with the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. For one, how do Tyra Banks and Jim Cramer qualify as White House correspondents? Comedian Wanda Sykes hosted this year’s schmoozing extravaganza. She had her moments but adopted some of the tactics of Rush Limbaugh, whose kidneys she had wished to […]
Once again, comics and the artisans of comedy are the best truth-tellers. The Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart proved brialliant earlier this year in calling-out CNBC’s so-called “ahead of the curve” financial “news” personalities for their abscense of accountability in the lede up to the banking crisis and the global economic crisis that followed. Now, Saturday Night Live (SNL) deadpanned U.S. […]