In The News

Crisis Puts Burma Back in the Spotlight

David I. Steinberg June 11, 2003
The current flurry of interest in Burma occasioned by the arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will likely wane, as it has so often in the past, before another episode thrusts it back to the world's attention. David Steinberg, a Burma scholar, says that such sporadic focus, accompanied by sanctions, has not made any change in the Burmese situation. He maintains that current policies...

Poor Show at Evian

David Tresilian June 6, 2003
The recent G-8 meeting in Evian, France attracted particular attention because it was the first time leaders of the west met after the U.S. war on Iraq. Also, in an effort to widen the scope of dialogue, for the first time, leaders from some developing countries were invited to attend the summit. Although the original agenda included major global issues such as access to water, the fight against...

Glaxo Will Further Cut Prices of AIDS Drugs to Poor Nations

Reed Abelson April 28, 2003
A serious hurdle in the global fight against AIDS has been the price of AIDS drugs, which is unattainably high for most of the disease's victims. Since AIDS disproportionately affects people in poor countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the former price tag of US$1.70 a day for drugs was too high. GlaxoSmithKline is now promising to lower that price to 90 cents, in the hopes that...

The Administration’s Budget for Global Poverty and HIV/AIDS: How Do the Numbers Stack Up?

Lael Brainard February 24, 2003
The Bush Administration’s announcement of new funding for global poverty and HIV/AIDS has led to much rejoicing in many parts of the world, but it has also met with skepticism in some quarters. The Washington-based Brookings Institution offers an in-depth quantitative analysis of the offer and the establishment of the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). The report summary presented here says...

China’s Deadly Cover-Up

Nicholas D. Kristof November 29, 2002
Around one million people are infected with HIV in Henan Province in central China. Unlike other parts of China, where AIDS spread through drug use and prostitution ever since China opened its doors to the outside world, Henan's peasants received the virus by selling blood through government-monitored programs that pooled the blood, extracted plasma, and reinjected the blood back into the...

What AIDS Means in a Famine

Alex De Waal November 19, 2002
With 29 million Africans infected with H.I.V. and a life expectancy of under 40 for countries hit hardest by the disease, the last thing African governments need is a famine. Without assistance from resource-poor African governments, African families will have to develop new tactics to confront the dual threat of H.I.V. and famine. Prior to the outbreak of AIDS, families were experts at...

Debate on Intellectual Property

Steve Lohr October 14, 2002
Based on the economic history of the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, and other nations, the borrowing of ideas – and the making of improvements upon them – is essential to building strong domestic industries. Each of these countries owes a great deal of its economic success today to earlier eras in which foreign patents, copyrights, and trademarks received little or no protection. Now,...