US President Barack Obama took the podium in a White House press conference and stood with an all-embellished confidence that often accompanies new presidents. He was flanked by two leaders whose apparent grandeur barely reflected their embattled situations on the ground: Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari. Karzai and Obama
The climate crisis won't be solved by changing light bulbs and inflating your tires more, planting a tree and driving a little less. It's going to require a truly fundamental shift in how we build our cities and live in them. The key to changing our cities involves the car. Cars dominate cities in the rich countries, and they are increasingly swamping poor countries as well.
In the bloody War of the Pacific in 1879, Chile took away Bolivia's only access to the sea. Over a century later, demands from Bolivia for the recuperation of this land are louder than ever. The most recently proposed solution to this diplomatic crisis seems to be straight out of a science fiction novel: the construction of 150 kilometer tunnel from Bolivia to an artificial island in the Pacific Ocean. Bachelet and Morales
It's an oil spill. Only solid, and far more deadly. The average liquid spill of petroleum will kill marine life for a year, maybe 10. But it could take 400 years for that petroleum-based six-pack ring holding your beer to break down. Each year, undegraded plastic chokes to death some 100,000 whales, dolphins, seals, manatees, plus an unknown number of sea turtles and about 2 million birds. And once it has broken down, it becomes deadlier still.
In the year since Egypt outlawed female genital mutilation the government hasn't prosecuted a single case. "It's no longer on the government's agenda, they've moved on," Seham Abdul Salam, a medical doctor turned anthropologist, said in a recent interview. Nonetheless, some activists say the law is a tool, among others, for gradually dismantling an ancient tradition.
Workers and activists gathered in the central plaza of Asunción, Paraguay on May 1st to commemorate International Workers Day. Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo marked the day by raising the minimum wage by 5%, half of what many of the unions present were demanding. But another piece of news set the tone for this annual gathering: the return to Paraguay of an ex-minister from the dictatorship who orchestrated the murder and torture of thousands of political dissidents.Protesting Montanaro
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