By Scott Bleiweis and Tim LaRocco Recently Scott connected with fellow FPA blogger and journalist Tim LaRocco. Tim lives in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and shares his perspective on some issues raised in Scott’s recent post about chances for democracy in Cambodia. Tim writes, “Having been a resident of Phnom Penh for awhile now, I have had […]
If you are also a fan of global opinion polling, Wednesday was an exciting day. A few weeks ago, I wrote about Gallup’s findings on world opinion of U.S. leadership. Yesterday, the Pew Global Attitudes project released new data that, with greater specificity, measures world opinion of Barack Obama, American culture and U.S. foreign policy, […]
To protect its national security, North Korea presents a strong visage to the world, but it is proving increasingly unable to provide food security for its people. North Korea’s children bear the brunt of its declining food security as, according to the Guardian, “Millions of North Korean children [nearly one-third under age 5] are not […]
The world gas market is currently dominated by gas exporting behemoths like Qatar, Russia, Algeria, and Iran. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel–compared to coal and oil–and therefore encourages an increase in power plants that run on natural gas. Many coal-fired power plants in the U.S. are being retrofitted right now because of the abundance […]
Today, many children across the globe are beginning to look forward to a break from school for summer vacations. However, for millions of children across the globe, there is no “break” and there is no classroom because they are forced to into child labor, often being denied an education all together. The term “child labor” […]
Boko Haram continued their killing on Sunday, 10 June 2012, when a suicide bomber blew up his car outside a church and gunmen opened fire on another service in Nigeria. At the same time, there is a fierce debate in Washington whether to designate the activities of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram as a Foreign […]
2012 has been the year of elections and ideological divisions. France is no exception to the rule. On May 15th, 2012, François Hollande officially became the President of France. His first action was to fly to Berlin, despite the weather, in order to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. This strategic move is important for […]
Ronald Deibert is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab and the University of Toronto. He is a cofounder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor. He is author of the Great Decisions 2012 article Cybersecurity: the new frontier. He […]
As mentioned in the post, “UN Campaign Seeks to Give all Children a Shot at Life,” one in five children does not have access to vaccines that prevent deadly diseases, like measles, pneumonia, or diarrhea. Nonetheless, some 2.5 million children under the age of 5 die every year as the result of preventable infectious disease, mostly due […]
A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that as many as one in ten cases of tuberculosis in China is multi-drug-resistant, with eight percent of those cases being extensively drug-resistant (XDR). One in four cases is resistant to at least one drug. Although China has a relatively low prevalence rate (108 […]
It’s an oft-repeated saying that, in the fashion world, “what goes around, comes around”. On a much grander scale, this is what has happened in the South Pacific in a clothing role-reversal. When missionaries ventured into the region in the early 19th century hoping to convert the various island populations to Christianity, they naturally brought […]
While the North African revolutions of the past year and a half swept away several long-serving dictators, sadly rulers with an ironclad hold on power remain in various parts of the world. In Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen has ruled the country since 1985 and shows no signs of relinquishing power. He is the longest-serving […]
As I wrote in the recent post, The Joy and Burden of Motherhood, “The greatest joy of motherhood is seen as the sheer gift of bringing a life into this world and helping to shape them from the moment of birth and then to watch them grow into a happy, productive and successful member of […]
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has announced his decision to restart two nuclear reactors in western Japan. As I noted in this blog a month ago, all of Japan’s nuclear reactors are offline. Before the Fukushima meltdown, 30% of the nation’s electricity came from uranium fission reactors. As a result of these shutdowns, there is […]
Last Friday, Stanford’s Policy Review published a feature written by global health luminaries Mark Dybul, Peter Piot, and Julio Frenk entitled Reshaping Global Health. The article reads as a call to action, urging the global health community to “give up a lot of turf” and assemble a Bretton Woods-style conversation to reshape the Global Health […]