After several interruptions, I’ve finally finished the best book to land on my desk this year: “It Happened On The Way To War,” by Rye Barcott, a former Marine who has devoted his life to bringing development to one of the world’s worst slums. The book (published by Bloomsbury) chronicles the creation of Carolina for Kibera (CFK), a …
Tomato Diplomacy: Is Fukushima Bringing China and Japan Together?
On Saturday, the leaders of the world’s second, third and 15th largest economies got together in Fukushima City and ate veggies to demonstrate how safe it is to do just that. I think it’s always a little embarrassing to observe politicians in orchestrated eating and/or drinking events (see Obama’s three-guys-just-having-a-beer moment …
Woes Continue in China for an Apple Parts Manufacturer
Apple products are so popular in China that a riot broke out in early May when the new iPad 2 was first sold in a Beijing store. But Foxconn, one of its biggest parts manufacturers operating in China, has suffered a far more turbulent year. In the latest of the Taiwan-run company’s ongoing labor woes, three workers were killed and 15 …
Conflict over Abyei: Why Sudan Stands “Close to the Precipice of War”
In the last year, to visit Sudan has been to undertake an exercise in schizophrenia. In the run-up to a referendum in January on whether to split Africa’s largest country in two, the mostly Christian south was – against all odds – about to pull off a peaceful and credible referendum on independence, despite medieval poverty and barely …
Obama Warns Netanyahu: It’s Not the U.S. You Have to Convince, It’s the Palestinians
Benjamin Netanyahu seemed last week to have come to Washington to party like it’s 1998. That was the year he came to the U.S. as a rejectionist Israeli prime minister elected on the promise of burying the Oslo Accords, and sought to make an end-run around President Bill Clinton by talking over his head to a joint session of both …
Paris Reacts To Strauss-Kahn: Do French Elites Deserve Different Laws?
There wasn’t anything particularly French about the enormous attention focused on the New York courtroom hearing Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s successful request for release on bail from Rikers Island imprisonment awaiting trial on charges of attempted rape. But given Strauss-Kahn’s origins and enormous (and now apparently finished) …
Facing the Threat of Piracy, China Starts to Talk Like a Superpower
On a visit to the U.S. this week, China’s top military commander Chen Bingde suggested that the international coalition patrolling the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the coast of Somalia ought to take decisive action against pirate dens on land. So far, the counter-piracy strategy has focused on the pirate “mother-ships,” usually …
Couch Potato Briefing: What to Watch While the World Ends
With the end of the world prophesied by some to begin on Saturday evening, Global Spin’s weekly guide to rental movies to brief you on world event takes on a slightly – although not exclusively – apocalyptic bent. Presented by Tony Karon and Ishaan Tharoor.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzbe0LCDMbg]
Left Behind
Okay, …
CEO of Chilean Energy Company Defends Project to Dam Patagonia
This guest post comes from TIME contributor Aaron Nelsen in Santiago
In the tumultuous days since HidroAysén – a joint project of energy companies Endesa and Colbun – won government approval to build five hydroelectric dams in Patagonia, Chief Executive Officer Daniel Fernández has been working furiously to beat back the tide of …
Fukushima: Can Japan’s Largest Power Company Survive Its Disaster?
The people running the show at Tokyo Electric Power Company, the embattled utility that is struggling to shut down its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, were probably not out enjoying the sunny, late spring Friday in Tokyo. It’s been a bad week for the Japan’s largest utility, even given the astoundingly bad couple of months …
Protester Pelts Father of China’s Online Censorship Regime
China’s “Great Firewall,” the system of online controls that keep Internet users from seeing information the Beijing government deems sensitive, was built and is maintained by unknown thousands of programmers and engineers. So it is perhaps unfair to give one man credit for creating the censorship regime. Fang Binxing, a computer …
Expect Neither Sparks, Nor Warmth When Obama Meets Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to be feeling lucky even before President Barack Obama gave him much of what he wanted in Thursday’s Middle East policy speech. There’s little love lost between the two men, of course, but political circumstance forces them to cooperate. And even if Netanyahu was annoyed by Obama’s …
Israel’s Concerns in the Jordan Valley Are Not Just About Security
When he addresses a joint session of Congress next week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is sure to mention the Jordan River Valley. He usually does when the topic is peace talks and Israel’s security. Netanyahu is among those who insist that, as a condition for withdrawing Israeli troops from the high ground that makes up …