In The News

Fewer Babies Pose Difficult Challenges for Europe

Joseph Chamie October 8, 2007
Over the next few decades, Europe's population level is expected to fall by nearly 70 million people, or 10 percent of its current level, even accounting for policies that promote immigration and reproduction. Birth rates have fallen significantly below replacement levels throughout Europe, and the continent's median age steadily climbs. As Joseph Chamie of the Center for Migration...

Thanks China, Now Go Home: Buy-up of Zambia Revives Old Colonial Fears

Chris McGreal October 5, 2007
Sino-African trade has reached unprecedented levels, but the debate over its benefits for Africa rages on. Intent on acquiring natural resources to continue its blistering rate of economic growth, China turns to African nations for oil, metals and other valuables. In return, African governments, like the one in Zambia, receive huge aid and development packages and loans at below-market rates...

Venturing Into Unreported China

Dan Griffiths September 26, 2007
The job of a journalist is to discover new people and locales, reporting stories of conflict and cooperation in accurate and unbiased ways. But local officials in China fear media exposure and discourage both domestic and foreign reporters from setting out to find “scoops” – the stories not yet told by other journalists. Dan Griffiths discovered the limits to practicing journalism in rural China...

Iran’s Unlikely TV Hit

Farnaz Fassihi September 25, 2007
A popular television show reveals a big divide in Iranian society. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned the historical basis of the Holocaust. But the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei approves all programming for Iranian state television, including a well-funded show about an Iranian-Palestinian Muslim man who loves a Jewish woman: The hero rescues his love from Nazis who would send her to a death...

Burma’s Growing Dilemma

A. Lin Neumann September 25, 2007
Burma has endured harsh military rule since 1962, which has devastated the economy, making the nation, since re-named by its rulers as Myanmar, an embarrassment among the fast-growing economies throughout Southeast Asia. Over the years, pro-democracy activists participated in various protests, only to face brutal crackdowns from the authoritarian government, with protestors facing long prison...

Disowned by Mentor, Bin Laden Seeks New Pastures

Fawaz A. Gerges September 19, 2007
Just before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden released a new videotape, in which he adopts a neo-Marxist posture, suggesting that mortgage debt, global warming, growing wage inequality and other ills are a result of greed from multinational corporations and politics of the West. “The capitalist system seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations...

Japan Sweats It Out as It Wages War on Air Conditioning

Sebastian Moffett September 18, 2007
In August, Japan's three biggest banks joined the ranks of the "Cool Biz" initiative, a movement to reduce energy use and decrease carbon output. "Cool" businesses maintain building temperatures at 82 degrees Fahrenheit. Bank officials discovered that the move was good for both the environment and business. Concerned about global warming, Japanese customers avoid firms...