Canada Downsizes Military Bootprint, in War and Peace
Canada’s military buying binge under the current Conservative government has hit a financial brick wall in these austere times, but there is no nostalgic return in sight for Ottawa’s once robust...
View ArticleIsrael and Hamas Agree to Gaza Ceasefire
The Egyptian foreign minister has announced that a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in and around the Gaza Strip will come into effect at 19:00 GMT on Wednesday. Mohamed Kamel Amr thanked all parties...
View ArticleNow Netanyahu Needs an ‘Iron Dome’
Ending Israel’s first military operation since the Arab Spring changed the Middle East depended on both the diplomatic blitz exerted on Israel and Hamas and the extent of the military blows exchanged...
View ArticleDespite “Pivot”, Obama Drawn Back into the Middle East
President Barack Obama may have lost interest in the Middle East, to paraphrase Soviet leader Leon Trotsky’s famous epigram about war, but the Middle East is interested in him. That was certainly the...
View ArticleEthiopia Throttles Rights Organisations
The world received contradictory signals about Ethiopia’s human rights record when in the same week it was elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council, a major German charity closed its...
View ArticleMaking Waste Management a Sport in India
In a country notorious for the inability to deal with the waste it generates, municipal officials in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh are now resorting to making waste management a...
View ArticlePakistan Attacks Pneumonia With Free Vaccine
Medical practitioners at the National Institute of Child Health (NICH), a leading government-run children’s hospital in Karachi, hope that this will be the last winter they have to treat a stream of...
View ArticleIsrael Targets Media in Gaza
As people anxiously wait to see if the newly-signed ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas will hold, local and international human rights groups are calling for investigations into Israeli human...
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Keeping African Roots Alive in Brazil
A Nigerian diviner dances and sings next to a Brazilian priest of the Candomblé religion, brought to this South American country by African slaves, that is now being rescued from oblivion in school...
View ArticleIndia Reaffirms Death Penalty
One day after voting against a United Nations General Assembly draft resolution seeking to abolish the death penalty, India executed Pakistani national Mohammad Ajmal Kasab for the November 2008 terror...
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Chile in the Vanguard of Monitoring AIDS Therapy
In Chile, not only do all people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS receive treatment, but the country also has advanced mechanisms for monitoring outcomes of the antiretroviral therapy. “Treatment is available...
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Africa – Calling for a GMO-Free Continent
South African smallholder farmer Motlasi Musi is not happy with the African Centre for Biosafety’s call for his country and Africa to ban the cultivation, import and export of all genetically modified...
View ArticleBombed, Wounded, and Celebrating
The ceasefire has brought extremities in Gaza. In the morning the coastal territory woke up bashed and bloody from one of Israel’s most intensive nights of bombardment since a week’s tit for tat...
View ArticleGaza Assault Shows a New Egypt
The reaction of post-revolution Egypt to Israel’s weeklong onslaught on the next-door Gaza Strip – brought to a halt temporarily at least by a Wednesday night ceasefire – has contrasted sharply with...
View ArticleNepal Unprepared for Imminent Earthquakes
Nepal now ranks 11th on a list of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, yet it remains one of the least disaster-prepared nations globally. Two major earthquakes in the last two years, one on...
View ArticleShrinking Ozone Hole, Growing Hopes
Argentine scientists agree that there are signs of recovery of the ozone layer that protects life on earth by filtering out the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation, but they are cautious about saying...
View ArticleMental Health, Another Victim of Climate Change
“The city looked as if it had been bombed. On the way to my office, I passed people who had the same shocked look on their faces as I did. We would look at each other, and even though we were...
View ArticleKyrgyzstan’s Economic Nationalism Threatens to Choke Chinese Trade
A surge of economic nationalism is making life uncomfortable for Chinese companies working in Kyrgyzstan. Faced with obstacles to trade and investment in the restive republic, Beijing is looking for...
View ArticleSecurity Council Vow on Women Lives Mostly on Paper
When the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) adopted a landmark resolution numbered 1325 back in 2000, it was supposed to integrate gender into its core mandate: the establishment and maintenance of...
View ArticleBriefly President, Now Pharaoh
When Mohamed Mursi was sworn in as president in June there were concerns that the first democratically elected president in Egyptian history would be subservient to the military council that had ruled...
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