By Roberto Savio*
IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint | Other News
Hamas, Israel, Egypt and the Obama Administration have all emerged as triumphant heroes in the latest episode in clashes between the Hamas and Israel. Palestinian National Authority (PNA) president Mahmoud Abbas played hardly any role. As scenes unfolded in this ‘Gaza Drama’, the mainstream media offered a one-for-all menu to readers worldwide.
By R. Nastranis
IDN- InDepth NewsReport
ATHENS (IDN) – Church leaders from around the world have expressed solidarity with the much pooh-poohed and crisis-ridden Greece in a two-day visit to the country during which they met Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens and All Greece as well as the Deputy Foreign Minister Constantinos Tsiaras.
By Kalinga Seneviratne
IDN-InDepth NewsReport
SINGAPORE (IDN) – Amid reports that an internal document, made public on November 14 by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, has triggered soul-searching in the world organisation on its failure to protect non-combatants in Sri Lanka’s civil war, a visit to the country shows that the army and the people in the Northern Province are busy rebuilding the infrastructure destroyed by 30 years of a gruesome conflict.
By Bernt Berger*
IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
STOCKHOLM (IDN) – The 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party officially endorsed on November 15 the members of the new Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top leadership body. Despite the secrecy, speculation and rumours in the run-up to the announcement, the make-up of China’s fifth generation of leaders was predictable. Although it reflects the outcome of protracted behind the scenes power struggles, generally speaking the result might have little impact on the government’s political directions.
Besides Party Secretary-General (and de facto president-in-waiting) Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, who is expected to become prime minister in the official transition of power in March 2013, the five new Standing Committee members are: Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan, Wang Qishan and Zhang Gaoli. Two candidates said to have an inclination towards greater public participation, Li Yuanchao and Wang Yang, did not make it into the inner circle.
By Julio Godoy
IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
BERLIN (IDN) – Late last August, during the conference of the non-aligned countries in Tehran, the Iranian press quoted the Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi saying that the government of Bahrain, given its dismal human rights record, had lost whatever legitimacy it had. Nothing surprising in this quote: The regime of Bahrain has indeed a dismal human rights record, it latest performance being to strip opposition leaders of the Bahraini nationality, after harassing them for many months.
By Shastri Ramachandaran*
IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
COPENHAGEN (IDN) – The race for a share of the enormous reservoirs of fossil fuel – an estimated 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil alone – beneath Greenland’s ice sheet in the Arctic Circle is heating up. While the good news is that climate change, which is making the polar ice cap melt, may not be altogether bad because of the economic prospects it holds out, the bad news is that India appears to be nowhere in this emerging global game.
By Jerome Mwanda
IDN-InDepth NewsReport
NAIROBI (IDN) – Some three months after the death of Ethiopia’s strogman Meles Zenawi, uncertainty prevails over the country’s political stability and economic development under his successor Hailemariam Dessalegn, says a new study by the British Institute of Development Studes (IDS).
In particular, Ethiopia’s economic challenges are dominated by the need to find secure livelihoods for what is now the second largest population in Africa and by the acute vulnerability of its major economic sector – rainfed agriculture which is dominated by small plots that are leased by the government.
By Jerome Mwanda
IDN-InDepth NewsReport
NAIROBI (IDN) – Whether and how African countries could reduce their dependency on foreign aid – if not do without it altogether – was a major subject of debate at the African Economic Conference in Rwanda’s capital Kigali. It was the first time since the 2011 Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea, that the issue was discussed.
Convened by the Economic Commission for Africa, (ECA), the African Development Bank, (AfDB) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the four-day conference from October 30 to November 2, 2012 focussed on the theme ‘Inclusive and Sustainable Development in an Age of Economic Uncertainty’.
By Jerome Mwanda
IDN-InDepth NewsReport
NAIROBI (IDN) – Some 19 million people in West Africa’s Sahel region are living with the threat of hunger and malnutrition, though the potential to increase agricultural production in Africa is enormous. Poor people in the slums of Nairobi pay more for their maize, rice, and other staple food than wealthy people pay for the same products in local supermarkets.
Such asymmetries are surmountable – if only African leaders would agree to improve inter-regional trade so that food can move more freely between countries and from fertile areas to those where communities are suffering food shortages, says the World Bank in a new report.
By Martin Khor*
IDN-InDepthNewsAnalysis
GENEVA (IDN) – Recent government actions by Indonesia and India to issue compulsory licenses are extending the trend in Asia to increase access to cheaper medicines to treat serious ailments, especially HIV/AIDS, cancer and hepatitis B.
The supply of generic medicines, either through import or local production, has been the major method of reducing prices and making the drugs affordable to more people.
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