The Pentagon announced this week that more Marines will be heading to Afghanistan to help maintain momentum there as Obama continues with his surge policy with the long-term goal of withdrawing American forces: The United States will send more than 1,000 additional Marines to Afghanistan this month to try to solidify progress in the south […]
President Obama appointed Bill Daley as White House Chief of Staff this week. I see this as a very positive development from a trade perspective as he has a history of being pro business and pro trade. I am hoping this will mean a new pushed on trade issues that have been all but ignored […]
On New Year’s Eve, I took a look back at 2010 and a look ahead too. Jonathan Lash and the venerable World Resources Institute are pretty clued in, so you might like to have their perspective too. His presentation covers the gamut, from EPA’s authority, to food and water issues, to transportation, deforestation, and the […]
There is jubilation in the streets of what might become the world’s newest capital city. The streets are humming with crowds, marching bands, and sound trucks. Some 3.9 million people, out of a total population of 8.7 million, have signed up to vote in the week-long referendum, which begins this weekend. Independence awaits! But underneath […]
Interesting op-ed today in the Huffington Post concerning the new Congress and its plans for USAID. As an excerpt, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FLA), the incoming Republican chairwoman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, made it clear that cuts are coming in foreign aid budgets. She adds, “We must shift our foreign aid focus from […]
An astounding report from ABC news shows how the western diet has led 95% of one Pacific island nation’s population to become overweight. The island of Nauru is in the South Pacific, 400 miles away from the nearest civilization and with a population of nearly 10,000 people. According to the ABC news report, the people […]
Paris will be home to a conference of over 300 of what IFEX characterizes as “media professionals, government officials, policymakers and civil society activists” on Jan. 26 when UNESCO’s headquarters hosts an international symposium on freedom of expression. The event will be one day and will focus on the state of the free press around […]
To the surprise of probably no one, on Tuesday the Navy announced that Captain Owen Honors had been removed from command of the USS Enterprise in the wake of the furor caused by articles in the media over videos he apparently produced and starred in while serving as the Executive Officer in 2006 and 2007. […]
Among the most notable entries to the 2011 Academy Awards is a still-little known film by the name of “The Black Tulip.” The movie, a dramatic story of a middle-class Afghan family terrorized by the Taliban in modern Afghanistan, is an anomaly in many ways. For one, it’s Afghanistan’s official submission for best foreign film […]
The Meeting Lunch food security blog posted an interview with David Lobell, Stanford researcher and coauthor of a study arguing that our modern high-input, high-yielding agricultural system leads to less green house emissions than if we had a low-input, low-yielding agricultural system. The report argues that even though high-yielding agriculture requires the use of fertilizer, […]
Afghanistan will be more food insecure as 2011 dawns, according to international aid organizations working there. Already one of the most food insecure countries in the world, Afghanistan’s population may not receive needed food aid past June because of a funding shortfall to organizations like the World Food Programme. The summer floods in Pakistan have […]
Some Russians want to rehabilitate the great novelist Leo Tolstoy. (Read a NYTimes article on the subject here.) Russia’s post-Soviet regime turned a cold shoulder to the author of Anna Karenina and War and Peace because the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him in 1901 and because he was later exalted by Soviet leaders. In the late 19th century, […]
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