In The News

Latin Blues

Ernesto Zedillo March 27, 2006
Some analysts anticipate that successful populist campaigns, with irresponsible campaign promises and unrealistic goals, could plunge Latin America into economic disaster and thus reverse democratic gains from the past 20 years. Yet former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, now director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, notes that every Latin American politician recognizes the...

Nigeria Counts 100 Deaths over Danish Caricatures

Lydia Polgreen February 27, 2006
Violence over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that has resulted in more than 100 deaths in Nigeria offers an example of global issues impinging on the country’s domestic politics. The country’s Muslims and Christians have a history of tension, and the cartoons prompted tit-for-tat violence. Political analysts suggest that, in Nigeria, the cartoon controversy functioned as a pretext...

Luxury Industry Goes Global, Knock-Offs Follow

Alessandra Galloni February 3, 2006
When Giuseppe Festa, an Italian man who owned a small store in Naples became involved in counterfeiting, he also became a global businessman. Mr. Festa imported watches from Hong Kong through Georgian and Egyptian contacts, paid for the goods through New York and Swiss bank accounts, and distributed them throughout Europe in what amounted to one of the continent’s most successful luxury-goods...

Status of WTO Protestors is Thorny Issue in Hong Kong

Keith Bradsher January 9, 2006
More than 1000 people were arrested after violent protests erupted at the WTO conference last month in Hong Kong, and most were released soon afterward. Labor and social groups describe the few who remain in custody, most from South Korea, as “political prisoners” and lobby for their release. The South Korean government insists its citizens should not take the fall for worldwide outrage....

Entr’acte: On Screen, Globalization and a Deadly Discontent

Alan Riding January 4, 2006
The Greek director Constantin Costa-Gavras has made a French film that some describe as a disturbing combination of the ludicrous and the all-too-real. “Le Couperet” is a thriller based on the 1997 novel, “The Ax,” by US author Donald Westlake. In the book, a downsized paper mill executive in his mid-fifties is unemployed for two years before he starts killing off competitors for a dream job....

Hundreds of Thousands Used ‘Lethal’ Water

Peter Goff November 28, 2005
Days after a massive chemical spill in industrial northern China, water supplies are still cut off in the major city of Harbin. Residents of Harbin must count themselves lucky, however, because their neighbors upstream learned of the contamination too late to avoid exposure to lethal levels of benezene. The authorities of Jilin and Heilonjiang provinces concealed the danger for 10 days, in...

France is Not Alone in Living Above a Volcano

Michel Rocard November 18, 2005
In the past weeks, the violent and contagious Paris riots drew the attention of the world to the presence of a large mass of unemployed minority teens in France’s urban center. Many commentators have focused their responses on the lack of social integration of the country’s predominantly North African minorities. Offering a different interpretation, former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard...