It’s great they got these drug lords, but they will be replaced quickly. Law enforcement is helpless in the fight against the cartels due to their economic ability to sustain their criminal activities.
Recent elections in Colombia have resulted in reactions to its pitiful electorate process. While it is true that elections do not equal democracy, the act of freely casting a secret vote remains an enduring image and feature of democratic life...
In an increasingly interconnected world, progress in the areas of development, security and human rights must go hand in hand.
There will be no security without development and, the other way around, no development without security.
Both security and development depend on respect for human rights and the rule of law.
Mine deaths and injuries over the past decades now total in the hundreds of thousands.Every year, landmines kill 15,000 to 20,000 people and severely maim countless more. Scattered in some 78 countries, they are an ongoing reminder of conflicts which have been over for years or even decades. Yet despite this random carnage, they continue to used as weapons of war. Landmines result in significant musculoskeletal injuries throughout the world. In every conflict since 1938 antipersonnel mines have been used extensively, often resulting in death or injury to non-combatants...
People who are naturally happy appear to have a lower risk of developing heart disease or dying from heart attacks. While positive emotions have been tied to a stronger immune system, less diabetes and higher survival rates, few studies examined whether it protects the heart. The results of a study show increased levels of positive emotions are linked to a 22 percent lower risk of heart disease.
Those with positive affect may have longer periods of rest or relaxation physiologically, Davidson, the lead author of the study, said in a statement.
The recent cyberespionage attacks on Google and that company’s subsequent announcement that it would reconsider its search engine services in China gripped the world’s focus and set off a debate about China’s aggressive cybersecurity strategy. Cyberspace attacks are set to increase.
The apparent scope of the attacks took many by surprise. Some observers believe the attacks were highly sophisticated in nature, employing never-before-seen techniques. Reports concluded that the Chinese government undertook the attacks.
As Latin America's military dictatorships fell one by one in the late 20th century, incipient democracies across the region sought to stamp out caudillo caudillo culture with constitutions that limited their newly elected leaders to one term in office. No more strongmen ruling in perpetuity. But as democracies took root and civilian governments tried to implement ambitious economic and political reforms, they began to feel constrained by term limits. Soon,elected leaders from right to left sought to extend their mandates.
Problems arose, however, when Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori...
US President Barak Obama said he would accept the Nobel Peace Prize “as an affirmation of American leadership” after receiving the award just nine months into his term and without the record of achievement of past laureates and as "a call to action" for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.
In giving Obama the prize, the Nobel committee, said Obama “created a new climate in international politics.” The committee in particular looked at Obama’s vision and work toward a world without atomic weapons.
With China poised to surpass Japan as the second-largest economy, the decision by world leaders to make the Group of 20 nations the main forum for global economic coordination instead of the G-8 reflects the increasing power of emerging markets.
Simulating gross domestic product of Japan, Germany, the U.K., France, Italy and Canada against those of China and the combined output of Brazil, Russia and India, through 2014, based on data from the International Monetary Fund.
2009´s average world ocean temperature from June through August was the warmest since 1880 for any Northern Hemisphere summer. The summer ocean surface temperature was 62.5 degrees Fahrenheit (16.95 Celsius), which is 1.04 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average. The combined land and ocean surface temperature for the period was 61.2 degrees Fahrenheit, the third-warmest on record.
Climate change blamed on greenhouse-gas emissions is warming ocean and land temperatures
A U.S. plan to deploy troops and station aircraft at several Colombian military bases has generated controversy across Latin America, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez warning that it could lead to war and that he did not like the idea of an expanded U.S. presence in the region.
The plan would give the United States access to Colombian bases from which to carry out vital counter-drug surveillance flights over the Pacific, a conduit for cocaine smuggled to Mexico and on to the United States.
More than twenty years after the Chernobyl, the world again is looking at an energy source that won’t cause global warming. Rising energy prices, and especially the need to find alternatives to fossil fuels that pour out greenhouse gases, have put a fresh focus on nuclear power. There is a nuclear renaissance. Nuclear’s not the devil anymore. The devil is coal.
Today the world’s 439 nuclear plants provide about 16 percent of electricity, a percentage that has altered little over 20 years.
Corruption at high levels of President Hugo Chávez's government and state aid to Colombia's drug-trafficking guerrillas have made Venezuela a major launching pad for cocaine bound for the United States and Europe. The amount of cocaine flowing into Venezuela from Colombia, Venezuela's neighbor and the world's top producer of the drug, has skyrocketed, going from an estimated 60 metric tons in 2004 to 260 metric tons in 2007. That amounted to 17 percent of all the cocaine produced in the Andes in 2007.
Currently in dispute is the status of the dollar, its role as the world’s dominant reserve currency under threat from the $2.3 trillion debt run up by the U.S. since the start of 2008 to stem the financial crisis. The G-5 -- mainly China -- held around $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury debt in April, giving them leverage over decisions made in Washington. China endorsed the idea of a diversified and rational international reserve currency regime. The call got little traction inside the G-8 meeting, with German Chancellor saying it was of no practical relevance.
When Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner succeeded her husband Nestor Kirchner, as Argentina's president in 2007, detractors warned of a scenario in which she and her husband would endlessly rotate in and out of the executive office, creating a virtual dynasty in Argentina. In what is considered a bid to buoy the couple's sagging popularity, the former president has entered the race for a congressional seat in midterm elections, and in doing so, has turned a sleepy legislative affair into a plebiscite on the couple and one of the highest-stakes races in recent history.
In the contemporary world the language of morality is in a state of grave disorder. What informs moral judgements are fragments of a conceptual scheme parts of which lack the contexts from which their significance derived. There is a simulacra of morality while everyday use of many key expressions is common. Comprehension of morality, both theoretical and practical, has been lost.
Contemporary moral utterances are used to express disagreement whose most striking feature is its interminable character.
Overseas aid and loans are just one way China is asserting itself in its new role as a world financial leader. Chinese officials increasingly are challenging the primacy of the dollar, warning other countries about the danger of keeping reserves in just one or two currencies, such as dollars and euros.
Sandy Weill never dreamed Citigroup Inc. would end up as a ward of the government. When he merged Citicorp and Travelers Group Inc. in 1998, Weill envisioned the ultimate financial-services empire -- peddling checking accounts, stock brokerage, investment banking and commercial loans around the world. Today, five years into his retirement as chief executive officer, Citigroup has collapsed under the weight of massive bad market bets.
The world economy is deteriorating more quickly than leading economists predicted.Britain posted its worst quarterly contraction since 1980 on the heels of sharper than expected slowdowns reported from Germany to China to South Korea. The grim data underscores how the burst of the biggest credit bubble in history is seeping into the real economies around the world, silencing construction cranes, bankrupting businesses and throwing millions of people out of work.
Some 1.3 million illegal immigrants have left the United States since the summer of 2007. If the trend continues, according to a new study, the US's illegal population will drop by half in the next five years. Border crackdown and tough economic times in the US are seen as reasons.
President Medvedev visit to Venezuela as Russian nuclear warship leads joint maneuvers is kindling concerns that a resurgent Russia is aiming to revive its cold-war era presence in America's backyard. The meeting comes as the two powers announce that Russia will help Venezuela build a nuclear reactor. Both nations insist their focus is economic, but geopolitics are also at play.
What changes might an Obama administration make to US Cuba policy?
Obama represents a clear contrast with McCain who supports keeping the tight travel restrictions and limits on remittances that President Bush added to the US trade embargo with Cuba.
The UN appears to be doing what it can to ensure that climate change does not fall off the political radar. Yet, it still isn't enough. A concerted international strategy, on a par with the seriousness and scope of an UN Security Council resolution, is what's needed to counter this climate crisis.
The United States should close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. Also "flash points" in the Darfur region of Sudan and in Zimbabwe, Gaza, Iraq and Myanmar demand immediate action from world leaders.
Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti's presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country's prime minister packing.
Ecuador's new constitution would ban U.S. Military base. A United States military post in Ecuador, considered an important "drug-interdiction center", would be banned under the country's new constitution, which faces a referendum this year.
Planned long before the region's crisis erupted, a rally was organized to underscore the government's role in decades of violence and misery, to remind Colombians that it was not all the fault of rebel groups like the FARC.
Increased defense spending by Venezuela, Brazil, and Ecuador, coupled with significant arms purchases by Chile and Colombia, may mark the start of an arms race in South America – a region that hasn't seen a major war between nations in decades.
While Chávez's rhetoric revolves around the creation of a new "multipolar" world – one with multiple power centers – China is driven mostly by the need for primary products, as it devours goods from Africa to Latin America, and anywhere else it can find the raw materials it needs to fuel its rapid economic growth.
