China has started making moves toward liberalizing its currency market, though not fast enough for some in the U.S. government who bizarrely complain that China keeps the yuan artificially low.
In December, China announced that it approved 13 foreign and domestic banks who would be market movers for the yuan. If it follows through, this will […]
In February, UNICEF UK released a report on the current status of child labor across the globe. According to the UNICEF report, worldwide about 211 million children ages 5-14 work full-time. UNICEF estimates that 1 in 12 children work in an industry that is hazardous to their health.
Not surprisingly, the area with the highest rate […]
The Kyoto Protocol went into effect on February 16, without the world’s largest generator of greenhouse gases, the United States. In addition, the protocol exempts large greenhouse gas generating countries such as China and India from its requirements.
Under the terms of the treaty, it would be ratified once countries representing 55 percent of greenhouse gas […]
Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the New American Foundation, is the latest to jump on the “we’re not having enough babies” bandwagon with a book published last year, The Empty Cradle and an extended essay presenting his views on Foreign Affairs, “The Global Baby Bust.”
Longman repeats the litany of facts that most readers of […]
As if the worldwide HIV/AIDS epidemic isn’t bad enough, New York health officials reported in February that they had discovered what appears to be a quick progressing, drug-resistant strain of HIV dubbed 3-DCR HIV.
Drug resistant strains of HIV has become increasingly common in people with HIV as the disease adapts to various treatment therapies over […]
Despite Adam Smith’s definitive explanation of how free trade could benefit both parties engaging in trade, pretty much every society is skeptical of free trade and that other country stealing our jobs. So, today, we have the specter of some of the richest nations in the world appalled at the thought of having to compete […]
At least 129 journalist and other media workers were killed in 2004 — likely the largest number since the International Federation of Journalists kept keeping records of media killings in the 1980s. That number is expected to rise as more information about journalist deaths is collected.
According to the IJF’s annual report (emphasis added),
The IFJ casualty […]
While it calls for developing nations to open up their markets, the United States this month imposed duties of shrimp from Vietnam and China of 93 percent 112 percent respectively.
The duties will hit Vietnam especially hard as shrimp exports account for two-thirds of that country’s exports and 2 million people are employed in the industry.
The […]
The United States this month announced it would withhold $34 million allocated to the United Nations Population Fund for the third year in a row.
Under the provisions that the UN Population Fund money is allocated, it cannot be given to the agency if the State Department determines that there is a direct link between the […]
At the XV International AIDS Conference in Thailand, Population Action International released a report claiming that developing nations are only receiving about 10 percent of the condoms needed to make a serious dent in the transmission of HIV.
In its 2004 update to its Condoms Count report, Population Action International estimated that the developing world needed […]