Girl Up tour kicks off at Atlanta girls’ school Hundreds of children gathered April 30 at the Atlanta Girls’ School to help launch the Unite for Girls Tour of the Girl Up campaign, the program of the United Nations Foundation that aims to empower American girls to help improve the lives of girls in the […]
No one ever said democracy is easy (well, if anyone did, they shouldn’t have). It offers the promise of freedom and the ability of people to choose who governs them. But constant vigilance is required to ensure democracy holds on, and prevents government from transforming into something more sinister. Democracy exists today in many parts […]
The following is a guest post from James A. Goldston, Executive Director of the Open Society Justice Initiative Strasbourg – The United States government has been trying for close to a decade to hush up what it did to Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen whose story of mistaken identity, abduction and abuse marks one of […]
Today, May 15 is International Day of Families. The day highlights the importance families play in our global world. The Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1993 with resolution A/RES/47/237 and reflects the importance the international community attaches to families. The International Day provides an opportunity to promote awareness of issues relating to […]
An advisory panel for the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (F.D.A.) voted 19-3 to recommend the use of Truvada, a combination antiretroviral drug, for the prevention of HIV among people at high risk of infection. Although this is not a full F.D.A. approval, it paves the way for a decision in mid-June. The endorsement follows a […]
The joy of motherhood has long since been praised over and over again. 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 […]
The 350.org folks and all their thousands of friends all over the world had a big event on May 5. Here’s the video:
Underwear bomber number 2 (still unnamed) isn’t the only one with his shorts in a twist over the latest attempt to bring terror to the sky over the Atlantic. The CIA, FBI, and MI6 are all scrambling to explain (or unexplain) their accounts of who did what when to take-down the would-be bomber and save a planeload of unwary infidels from mid-air incineration. US intelligence is blaming the administration for ‘leaks’ they say compromise a secret intelligence partnership, while other, perhaps less sanctioned leakers from each agency continue to spin the story in ways designed to claim victory for their team. Word is that someone at the White House leaked ‘the story’ to a national security advisor or some intel czar who then passed it on to three major networks.
The result? Alerts about the nefarious ‘underwear bomber’ have dominated the news for days, the mainstream media (getting it wrong again) rushing to attribute the just-in-time preemptive strike to the talents and skill of US intelligence. First reports indicated that the individal in charge of the entire operation was employed by the CIA, a ‘double agent’ in control of the whole operation from start to finish…
In a positive turn, the Global Fund announced on Wednesday that it has more funding to give out than it originally anticipated. To the tune of $1.6 billion. Where, you might ask, did that come from? In their “news flash” released yesterday, they write: There were many factors that piled up on the plus side of the […]
The following is a guest post by By Zeljko Jovanovic, director of Roma Initiatives at the Open Society Foundations. The United States announced earlier this year that it would become an official observer to the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015. This is an international initiative that gathers governments and international and nongovernmental organizations into a […]
The word immunizations is just a simple vocabulary word to most of us in developed nations, however for those in developing countries the word means a ‘shot at life’ for their child. One in five children does not have access to vaccines that prevent deadly diseases, like measles, pneumonia or diarrhea. Nonetheless some 2.5 million […]
Women play a vital role in providing food security in all societies, and with Mother’s Day coming up on May 13th, the World Food Program USA (WFP USA) is hosting a webcast, “Mothers Rule the World” to “discuss the critical role mothers play in improving household food security and the nutritional wellbeing of their children.” […]
A distinct sense of déjà vu has gripped the Korean peninsula, as Pyongyang now threatens to conduct a nuclear test in the forthcoming weeks, smarting from the embarrassment of its failed satellite launch to mark Kim Il-sung’s birthday in mid-April. The current sequence of events is almost a carbon copy of those that led up […]
This week, I discuss the U.S. domestic reaction to the Chen Guangcheng case. In this post, I also have the pleasure of featuring guest analysis by Atlantic fellow Helen Gao, an emerging voice on U.S.-China relations (see Gao’s story archive here). Last week, I wrote about new polling on Americans’ foreign policy views; next week, […]
Here’s a look at how the Arctic has been melting. (Click on the image to go to NASA for a full explanation of what you’re seeing here.) What we’re seeing all over the world is an accelerating rate of the thawing of permafrost, and the melting of sea ice and glaciers. I’ve written about this […]