Last weekend, Hillary Clinton traveled to Norway for two days as part of her ongoing trip to Scandinavia, the Caucuses, and Turkey. In Norway, she first went to Oslo, where she had dinner with Norwegian Foreign Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. He said to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, “I’ve spoken with her many times, but we […]
Surging tides from the Indian Ocean, linked in part to climate change, have pushed salt water into Tanzania’s Rufiji Delta, home to the world’s largest mangrove forest and where “more than 90% of households…make their living from rice farming” according to a report from Altertnet by Kizito Makoye. Due to the destruction of rice crops by the […]
Last year was the Year of the Rabbit for the Chinese – promising among other things good luck! However, China which came out of the global financial crisis almost unscathed (or at least better off than most major world economies) hit one too many ‘speed-bumps’ in 2011. Last year’s inflation is threatening a significant slow-down […]
The Foreign Policy Association just released its latest annual National Opinion Ballot Report. Many issues have been tackled in this very interesting report, from the reconstruction of Haiti to the financial crisis to multilateralism to the Horn of Africa. Interestingly, one section was dedicated to Germany and its relevance to US interests. However none dealt […]
The flagship of Canada’s aging fleet of icebreakers suffered mechanical failure to its center propeller on September 19 and has been anchored off the coast of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut since September 27. The 42-year old St-Laurent had been on a joint mission with the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy to conduct bathymetric surveys and mapping of the […]
An exceptional wildfire near Bettles, Alaska in 2007 released as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the entire Arctic tundra absorbs in a year according to a new report in the journal Nature. The Anaktuvuk River fire lasted for more than three months and burned across more than 1,000 sq km in central Alaska. […]
Scientists at the University of Bremen confirmed today that on September 8, 2011 Arctic sea ice extent reached a new all-time low, superseding the previous low set in September 2007. Arctic sea ice extent undergoes a pronounced yearly cycle, with about 15 million square kilometers in March and 5 million square kilometers in September. Since […]
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) recently released the latest figures for Arctic sea ice extent. According to the Center, the average sea ice extent for the month of August 2011 reached the second lowest level since satellite-based observations began in 1979. Mean ice extent for August was 5.52 million square kilometers, about […]
At the start of every year, we celebrate and wonder what the next 365 days will bring. We know that there will be ups and downs, things we didn’t expect, public scandals we never anticipated, tragedies of some sort that will unfold on our television sets, and a whole lot of everyday distractions in between. […]
This winter break has not been short on interesting, worrisome international developments like the new START Treaty, the latest Chinese anti-naval weapon system, the unpredictable North Korean foreign policy, the meltdown of the Eurozone, Estonia joining the Eurozone, and the Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s judicial drama among many others. Nothing, however, has been more concrete and disrupting […]
Looks like it is oil spill season. Even as the news and uproar about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is still fresh, there has been a fresh spill, albeit smaller, off the coast of Mumbai. This one was caused when two Panamanian flagged cargo ships – MSC Chitra and MV Khalijia-111 – […]
So Fidel did, in the end, appear and speak before the Cuban National Assembly—just in a separate meeting from that of his brother Raúl (though the current President Castro joined this meeting as well to hear Fidel speak). In his 12-minute speech on Saturday, Fidel repeated his recent warnings that tensions between the United States […]
A good report, from the Current Science Journal, passed over my desk this week. From 2009, the paper looks at the issue of climate change from a developing country perspective and provides a climate strategy suited to their unique priorities. The authors are in favor of opportunities that benefit both the environment and the economy […]
Finally after seven months of a senate hold on his ambassadorial confirmation, veteran diplomat Thomas Shannon goes to Brasilia to smooth out the rougher edges of U.S.-Brazil relations and steer these two nations toward greater cooperation on such pending issues as energy and climate change, bilateral commerce, the Iran nuclear program, the G-20 deliberations, and […]