In The News

India Eyes Riches at Poor's Expense

Amelia Gentleman February 19, 2007
India presents a triumphant stance as it boasts growing financial success in the global sphere. While skyscrapers loom and information-technology professionals prosper in Dehli and Mumbai, hundreds of millions of others live in poverty, perform backbreaking labor and struggling to provide adequate nutrition for their children. This contradiction troubles Indian Health Minister Ambumani Ramadoss...

Internet Users Transformed Into News Reporters

February 16, 2007
Cell-phone cameras and digital cameras are ubiquitous tools that provide immediate images of any news happening. Websites like NowPublic and YouWitnessNews now offer a public platform for news reports, videos, photos and commentary supplied by amateurs all over the world. NowPublic.com claims more than 60,000 contributors in more than 140 countries. The new websites work with traditional news...

China’s Neo-Colonial Slavery in PNG

Rowan Callick February 15, 2007
China’s growing worldwide investment in natural resources is not a new story and just one of many results of a well-chronicled booming economy. What is new is the phenomenon of Chinese corporations dealing with the people and governments of countries supplying them with these mineral riches. A large-scale nickel extraction scheme in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one such endeavor, in which conflicts...

A Radical Step to Preserve a Species: Assisted Migration

Carl Zimmer February 14, 2007
Species of life already threatened by human overdevelopment and disappearing habitats face a new danger, and traditional conservation techniques may not be enough to save them. Global warming is already altering ecosystems and threatening some species, like the Bay checkerspot butterfly, with extinction. In response, conservation biologists try a radical technique that has never been used for...

China Says Rich Countries Should Take Lead on Global Warming

Jim Yardley February 9, 2007
China is taking steps to fight global warming, but demands that developed countries take primary responsibility. Currently the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, China is set to bypass the US by 2009, but points out that Chinese per-capita emission rates are lower than those of many rich countries. Chinese officials argue that long-term industrial development in the West caused...

America’s China Worries – Part II

Bruce Stokes February 8, 2007
China has emerged as both mammoth producer and consumer, and that means more countries, including key US allies, depend on China for their economic well-being. The second article in this three-part series on worries besetting China-US relations explores how one nation’s expanding influence over global trade policy diminishes the other’s influence and flexibility. As the US trade imbalance with...

US Exporters Feel Favorable Trade Winds

Peter S. Goodman February 5, 2007
Many politicians running for office lash out at global competition, blaming it for a host of domestic problems during election campaigns. Yet trade is a two-way street, and firms with international trade links can succeed. Examples in the US include MTS Systems, which makes tire testers, and Caterpillar, which manufactures construction and mining equipment. A sagging US dollar, the rapid...