In The News

Wal-Mart in Global Online Push

Jonathan Birchall February 6, 2008
For some companies, the goal is cornering the market. Wal-Mart has announced intentions to offset slowing growth in the world’s leading consumer nation, the US, by promoting internet sales and delivery of groceries and other items throughout Asia and Latin America. For now, Wal-Mart is second only to Amazon, which began selling books online and then expanded to electronics and other products....

Virus On Jet Plane

Nayan Chanda January 22, 2008
The speed and frequency of today’s travel has placed individuals at risk to the spread of many infectious diseases. As Nayan Chanda points out, governments facing these challenges should be more vigilant than ever to avoid future epidemics. Full cooperation with the WHO must also be achieved. In an interconnected world, it is important everyone recognizes that our health and well-being is...

Questions for Al Qaeda

Yassin Musharbash January 16, 2008
Perhaps the US presidential campaign has snatched too much global attention. The second in command of Al Qaeda offered to collect questions from friends and foes on four Islamic web sites for one month, starting December 16. “As it builds its Web community, al-Qaida is apparently also looking for user-generated content,” writes Yassin Musharbash for Spiegel Online. The questions will undoubtedly...

Southeast Asian Democratization in the Era of Globalization

Roy Voragen January 16, 2008
Anticipating the consequences of globalization is one way of adapting to the rapid change. Increasingly, individuals acquire wealth not so much through hard work or innovation than by predicting globalization’s intricate twisting paths. Cities and citizens in the developed nations, while they complain about globalization, are better prepared for adapting to the effects than citizens in developing...

Stop the World (and Avoid Reality)

Alan S. Blinder January 14, 2008
The US was long the most open and competitive economy in the world. But candidates for US president, both Democrats and Republicans, respond to voters’ desire for a time out from international engagement, a mood labeled “Stop the World Syndrome,” by economist Alan Blinder in an opinion essay for the New York Times. The attitude stems from frustration over the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as...

World Food Stocks Dwindling Rapidly, UN Warns

Elisabeth Rosenthal January 10, 2008
Extreme weather events, a growing population, increasing affluence adding more meat to diets and diversion of grain crops for subsidized biofuels have led to depleted food reserves and soaring prices reserves. High oil prices add to the complications of transferring food aid to the most vulnerable developing nations. Wealthy nations can compensate by reducing tariffs and importing more grain,...

Can the Midwest Regain Its Economic Clout?

Richard C. Longworth January 9, 2008
Achieving economic stability requires a strategy that does not neglect global markets or trends. In the US, the Midwest region has been devastated by companies shifting manufacturing operations first to southern states, paralyzing debt among farmers, followed by globalization with its shift of factories and jobs to low-wage countries. “Of course, an economic revolution as disruptive as...