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A new multimedia report worth taking the time to look at is GlobalPost’s “Life, Death, and the Taliban”, now on GlobalPost’s website. “It’s an ambitious multimedia project that brings together a team of writers, photographers and videographers reporting from on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan as the battle against the Taliban heats up on […]

New aerial photographs show at least four illegal logging camps inside the Murunahua Reserve in Peru, Survival International reported yesterday.  The Reserve is located deep in the Amazonian rainforest of Peru and was established to protect the uncontacted Murunahua Indians.  The illegal logging camps present a huge threat to the Murunahua Indians, who like their neighboring ancestors, […]

The economic news out of Asia just keeps getting better. With GDP figures for the second quarter rolling in, it is now predicted that emerging Asia will grow by more than five percent this year, compared to a contraction of 3.5 percent in the Group of Seven rich countries. So much for Asia waiting for […]

According to the ‘Fatal Neglect’ report by UK based WaterAid; the International aid community is not effectively responding to the causes child deaths. In fact the system in itself is essentially broken, or damaged, as it fails to lower the child mortality rates using sustainable and targeted approach. In fact WaterAid says the international aid system is […]

The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) released a report this week revealing Britain’s food supply vulnerabilities and strategies for combating a domestic shortage should the ongoing global crisis intensify. Although the UK is largely self-sufficient with regards to food production, the Defra plan focuses largely on increasing that productivity, perhaps through […]

In a new development in the ongoing saga of the ouster of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, the head of Honduras’s human rights commission, Ramon Custodio, publically declared Zelaya’s exile to nearby Costa Rica a mistake.  However, Custodio does not believe that the actual ouster of Zelaya to be wrong, saying that Zelaya’s violations of the […]

I’m delighted that an article I’ve done on biochar for Grist went “live” today.  If you don’t know about the extraordinary potential here, check out the article, Biochar as the new black gold.  Even if you do, I think it’s worth a visit.  It’s part of a Grist Special Series, What’s the deal with offsets? […]

Guest Blog by Gidon Belmaker—visit his blog, The Jerusalemite, here. Too much ink has been wasted in newspapers around the world about the row between Israel and the US, caused by the Shepherd hotel building permits. A permit to build 20 new housing units in East Jerusalem was issued to a Jewish-American entrepreneur, that’s the […]

The Washington Post reported on the effects of the global food crisis in Nigeria, where 38% of children under 5 years old are starving and 65% of its population is unsure of the source of their next meal. Nigeria has been unable to exploit its agricultural resources despite its wealth from having the largest oil […]

Patricia Kushlis at WhirledView has an excellent post on the end of the Global War on Terror(John Brennan, Obama’s top White House advisor for Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism, who formally declared America’s Global War on Terror over at a CSIS event) and what global engagement means as a concept and a policy in practice. I couldn’t […]

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, outlined the administration’s purpose and goal in the speech that was delivered later in the day at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, and has been termed by the Administration a ‘New Era of Engagement’ with the world.

While India is rapidly developing and modernizing, the police force is abusive and failing. Last week, Human Rights Watch released a report that “documents the failings of state police forces that operate outside the law, lack sufficient ethical and professional standards, are overstretched and outmatched by criminal elements and unable to cope with increasing demands […]