I went to this event several weeks ago and came away with a great feeling about where urban agriculture and the global movement for “cooler” approaches to farming and eating are heading. I’ve written any number of times here about food and agriculture, including this view into the work of one particularly amazing urban farmer. […]
A Dutch district court in the Hague has decided that it does in fact have jurisdiction to hear a case brought against Shell Nigeria (a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell) by four Nigerian farmers from the oil region and Friends of the Earth Netherlands, an environmental group. According to the Nigerian newspaper, The Daily Independent, […]
In a pre-Christmas New York Times op-ed, Alan Kuperman wrote about the potential downside to a U.S.-led preventive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities: As for knocking out its nuclear plants, admittedly, aerial bombing might not work. Some Iranian facilities are buried too deeply to destroy from the air. There may also be sites that American […]
The above infographic, from Journalism.org, depicts the site’s 2009 weekly news summaries compiled from over 55 television, print, internet and radio news sources. The bigger the story, the bigger the block. See climate change anywhere? Or even general environmental issues? On both accounts, no. (Although depending on your science, the California fires come close). For […]
Last month Vivek Wadhwa had an interesting piece on U.S. brain drain in Yale Global Online. Wadhwa outlines the enormous contribution made by international graduate students, faculty and researchers (as measured by patent filings) in science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) disciplines – and to the U.S. economy overall. In 2006, immigrants contributed to 72 […]
In 2009, the World Food Programme (WFP) shipped approximately enough food aid to feed 5.9 million people in Sudan. As food aid is shipped into the country, thousands of tons of wheat and rice are almost simultaneously exported to other nations. The paradox is that Sudan is unable to feed its domestic population, yet exports […]
Late December brought the killing of Ali Farah Amey, the chief of security of the World Food Programme (WFP) in the Hiiraan region of Somalia. Hezbal Islam militants had just one day prior issued an edict demanding the registration of all relief workers. In a direct signal to Western aid agencies, militants of the Islamic […]
It can be tough to be a migrant – but even worse should one be persecuted by the local population. By moving to a new place economic migrants – and displaced persons – leave behind well-known surroundings, and often other family members too. They may not speak the language at their new location, might have […]
Holiday hiatus is now officially over. Much happened over the past two weeks, of course – an attempted terrorist attack against a U.S. commercial airplane, a Chinese prosecution of a dissident, an Iran-Iraq border dispute, an Iranian crackdown on Ashura, the shift of U.S. public attention to Yemen which, as a New York Times op-ed […]
Last month, the Iraqi government held its second round of auctions for its oil fields. Mid-month, seven fields were awarded to international oil companies. American companies did not win any new leases in this round, but Petronas, a state-owned Malaysian company; Sonangol, of Angola; and Lukoil of Russia and Statoil of Norway did. Petronas and […]
Happy 2010, dear readers! May it be joyful and successful! We humans are impatient beings, so it is a natural that we seek crumbs about the future from East European fortune tellers in gloomily-colored headscarves, uptight Englishmen wearing purple ties and friend victims who know how to shuffle those Tarot cards. Here are some bold […]
Note: I wrote this opinion piece last week but was unable to load on the web site due to problems with my travel computer. Reflections of a retired Baby Boomer Topic: Pregnant Soldiers When I woke up the day after Christmas and checked the morning news, I was very happy to hear, […]
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