Financial Times- Editorial comment Published: December 30 2005 02:00 So that was the Year of Africa. It was billed as a breakthrough year, the best opportunity for a long time for the world to dwell on what needs doing to… Continue Reading
Gustavo Capdevila GENEVA, Dec 30 (IPS) – Without breaking stride to mull over the disappointment of Hong Kong, the developing countries will be back at work in early January striving to recover the ground lost at the 6th World Trade… Continue Reading
By Simon Divecha ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate 29 December 2005 Almost ten thousand people attended Montreal for the United Nations climate change conference in Canada. The conference occurred as carbon dioxide, the principle… Continue Reading
Analysis by Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Dec (IPS) – The Reader-in-Chief is at it again, and anti-imperialists around the world have reason to be concerned. According to the White House, U.S. President George W. Bush has taken two books with him… Continue Reading
The nation suffers from high numbers of AIDS, TB and malaria cases, but gets minimal foreign assistance because of its repressive regime. By Richard C. Paddock, Times Staff Writer YANGON, Myanmar — A growing humanitarian emergency has sparked fears that… Continue Reading
Zoltán Dujisin KIEV, Dec (IPS) – Russia is playing the energy card by raising state-owned Gazprom’s fuel prices, in what Ukraine has termed a politically charged move.
By John Feffer | December 2005 Editor: John Gershman, IRC Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org Though it would be difficult to find anyone in the United States who would praise North Korea for its dismal human rights record, this consensus… Continue Reading
Stephen Leahy BROOKLIN, Canada, Dec (IPS) – With 2005 the warmest year in modern times and new research confirming scientists’ worst fears, most experts agree that urgent and innovative international action on climate change is needed.
BY ANTHONY R. WOOD Knight Ridder Newspapers PHILADELPHIA – Hundreds of miles from any land, the waters of the North Atlantic suddenly developed an oddly deep-blue hue and turned incongruously warm. Patches of peculiar brown seaweed rode the surface, and… Continue Reading
Diego Cevallos MEXICO CITY, Dec 23 (IPS) – The United States was roundly criticised again this year for the continued hardening of its immigration policy, which is largely to blame for the death of about 300 migrants a year. But… Continue Reading
Stefania Bianchi BRUSSELS, Dec (IPS) – The year 2005 will be remembered as the ”annus horribilis” in the European Union with political wrangling, terrorist attacks, social unrest and natural disasters, and there are questions over how the bloc will progress… Continue Reading
Dec 2005 The Economist ENOS BANKS tells a cracking yarn about ketchup. One day, he spilled a splurge of it on his shirt. For fun, he persuaded his brother in law to shout angrily and shoot through the window. When… Continue Reading
Analysis by Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Dec 21 (IPS) – The strong turnout in last week’s parliamentary elections in Iraq may have been just the kind of civic demonstration that U.S. Pres. George W. Bush needed to restore some confidence in… Continue Reading
Leonardo Boff Theologian The biggest debt of Brazil’s Worker’s Party, the PT, is not financial: it is political and ethical. The events of the last few months, which included sophisticated corruption in the party’s leadership group, have had a devastating… Continue Reading
Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed BAGHDAD, Dec (IPS) – Despite the parliamentary elections last week and temporary ease in violence, Iraqis remain bitter about the outgoing year, and sceptical of 2006. ”As a doctor I usually travel daily from home… Continue Reading
By Ian Davis and Paul Ingram Editor: Miriam Pemberton, IPS Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org A Treaty in Peril Ever since the USAF let the nuclear genie out of its bottle over Hiroshima on those fateful days in August 1945,… Continue Reading
Diego Cevallos MEXICO CITY, Dec (IPS) – The election of indigenous leader Evo Morales as president of Bolivia is being hailed by native leaders from throughout the region as a “sign of hope” for all impoverished and discriminated indigenous peoples… Continue Reading
By Paul Vallely December 2005 The Independent Aid agencies praised a number of minor successes in the Hong Kong world trade deal yesterday but overall they were unimpressed with the outcome which, Oxfam said, was a “betrayal of the promises”… Continue Reading
By Mark Doyle BBC World Affairs correspondent The last United Nations troops left Sierra Leone on Thursday following a five-year mission which faced military disaster when it began, but ultimately succeeded in ending one of Africa’s most brutal wars.
Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Dec (IPS) – The world has suffered more than 200 billion dollars in economic losses as a result of weather-related natural disasters over the past year, making 2005 the costliest year on record, according to preliminary estimates… Continue Reading
