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This AP report gives the impression that Europe has taken the lead in meeting the global credit crisis and that the U.S. is merely reacting. And yet it was after this weekend's meeting of the G7 finance ministers in Washington that the major decisions being announced this week were taken. Here is the text of […]

We wrote recently about the difficulties facing the International Criminal Court's indictment of Sudanese ruler Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The Christian Science Monitor had a great article Saturday by Heba Aly, detailing continued janjaweed- and government-sponsored violence against civilians in Darfur. The Sudanese government – and many Western analysts – have asserted moving forward with the […]

The Washington-based non-profits Search for Common Ground and the Consensus Building Institute have produced a major new leadership group report on improving U.S. relations with the Muslim world. Titled “Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations with the Muslim World,” the two groups released the report last month to a packed house at the […]

The Henry L. Stimson Center and the American Academy of Diplomacy have unveiled a new report on how the next President can strengthen American diplomacy. Titled “Foreign Affairs Budget for the Future,” the report finds that: “The State Department, USAID, and related organizations lack the tools to meet today's complex global challenges. It calls for […]

Bintjbeil.org, a Hezbollah-affiliated website, has announced the formation of its own facebook group. The website is named after a town in south Lebanon (nicknamed City of the Resistance and Lady of the Galilee), which has been the site of key engagements between Hezbollah and the IDF over the past 20 years. While in a physical […]

In posts one may find that I often mention the Millennium Development Goals, and if countries are on track to meet them. Thus I wanted to provide background on the MDGs and how they came to be established, in order to give you a better understanding of what they are and what needs to be […]

There are many good questions that NBC's Tom Brokaw could have asked Senators Barack Obama and John McCain about Russia and Georgia during the second presidential debate. Instead, the candidates were instructed to give an up or down vote on an infamous Cold War phrase: Brokaw: This requires only a yes or a no. Ronald […]

These are some juicy items I've been saving up.  They probably should be savored by you and me more fully, "But at my back, I always hear, time's winged chariot hurrying near." PV Paint , This is very beautiful, as an old rugby clubmate of mine might've said:  Solar Paint on Steel Could Generate Renewable […]

Randy Cohen, American writer and humorist once said, “There is a kind of virtue that lies not in extraordinary actions, not in saving poor orphans from burning buildings, but in steadfastly working for a world where orphans are not poor and buildings comply with decent fire codes.”, and it is that reason alone for which […]

The US Agency for International Development is advancing Bush's conservative pro-life stand. Tens of thousands of Africa's poorest  will no longer receive any US funded aid nor counseling on contraception. Six African nations have been ordered to stop distributing US funded contraceptives.  Marie Stopes International (MSI), a UK charity organization with clinics in 40 countries […]

I went to an interesting confabulation yesterday up at the Earth Institute.  Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, and Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UNFCC, kicked around the relative merits of the financial architecture of the Kyoto Protocol.  In a nutshell, Sachs thought the way we've been doing business in terms of […]

From the Pew Global Attitudes Project: “Trickle-Down Global Economics: World Already Saw U.S. Influence as Negative Around the globe, people are anxiously following the U.S. financial crisis as it evolves into a worldwide meltdown. People nearly everywhere realize that what happens in the American economy can have a big impact on them. But even before […]