In The News

Natural Resources Are Fueling a New Cold War

Erich Follath August 22, 2006
The modern world depends on oil and other natural resources for survival – and the most powerful countries travel the globe, searching for supplies. China, surpassed only by the US in oil-consumption levels, has blocked UN sanctions against Sudan to secure oil shipments and increasingly becomes friendly with Iran. When it come to oil, the US and China have policy differences, leading some...

Apple Finds No Forced Labor at iPod Factory in South China

John Markoff August 19, 2006
A team of investigators sent by Apple Computer to review practices at a factory in the Chinese city of Longhua found no evidence of child or forced labor. The group conducted 100 interviews with randomly selected workers, combed through thousands of documents and investigated the factory site run by Foxconn, a Taiwan-based company. The Apple report did, however, identify several violations of...

Skills Outweigh Natural Resources – In Attracting Foreign Investment, Says Afeti

Bennnett Akuaku August 17, 2006
Africa is rich with oil, minerals and wildlife, but with adult literacy and child labor rates at just over 50 percent, the continent remains impoverished. By coincidence or not, Africa’s share of worldwide foreign direct investment in 2005 was about 3 percent, and the same percentage of the African population possesses higher education. Globalization places a premium on skills, suggests higher-...

Can Arnold Terminate Emissions?

Christa Case August 15, 2006
Some politicians view global heating as a major issue in upcoming elections – and are taking preemptive action. Europe, anticipating expiration of the Kyoto Treaty in 2012, created an emissions market: Companies buy and sell rights to emit greenhouse gases, and face fines for excess waste, in a market providing incentives to improve corporate practices. The system recognizes that the emissions...

The Coming Tsunami of Trash

Niall Ferguson August 14, 2006
Oceans provide food, transportation and beauty – and a place to hide trash. Yet the trash is more obvious, particularly plastic, which takes more than a century to degrade and piles up as small islands in some parts of the world. Ocean pollution exemplifies the “tragedy of the commons,” when a public resource gets abused by many and protected by none. The 1994 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea...

A Small Charity Takes Lead in Fighting a Disease

Stephanie Strom August 8, 2006
Diseases that are common among the world’s poor, such as black fever, are not on Big Pharma’s priority list. For the first time, with the help of the Gates Fund, a small charity is bringing a cure to market. Despite skepticism from other researchers, the non-profit Institute for OneWorld Health, based in San Francisco, tackled black fever, the second largest parasitic killer in the world after...

Economic Patriotism – Blind Alley in a Globalized World?

Patricia Wruuck August 8, 2006
The successful takeover of Europe’s biggest steel company, Arcelor, by Mittal Steel, whose owner was born in India, is a setback for economic nationalists and protectionists. Shareholders, who saw monetary and strategic worth in the Mittal-Arcelor merger, bucked a board of directors that resented any hint of foreign control. Such resistance is not limited to non-European partners. Cross-border...