In The News

Water Meet Highlights Isolation

Chiu Yu-Tzu March 25, 2003
24,000 people from almost all the world's countries met last week in Japan for the 2003 World Water Forum. The over 100 new commitments signed by attendees addressed broad issues of water management, including education and access to information, as well as cultural diversity and traditional knowledge. Local activists in Taiwan, however, criticized their government's water regulation...

Iraq War “Sideshow” in North Korea

March 23, 2003
Globalization is often associated with the flow of ideas, goods, people, and information, but in North Korea information doesn't flow so readily. Updates about the current war unfolding in Iraq have been deflected from the country’s media, only appearing as brief diatribes about US aggression. Instead, in the days since the war began, North Korean news bulletins have reported on...

Networks Plan to Offer Front-Row View of War

Charlie McCollum March 18, 2003
The first Gulf War was dubbed 'CNN's war' by some because of the US news network's minute-by-minute televised coverage of developments in Iraq. But in America's second major military engagement with Saddam Hussein's regime – expected to come any day now – CNN will face competition in the US from domestic networks that couldn't rival CNN's war coverage in...

Via Ireland, a Chapter in the Story of Black America

S. Lee Jamison March 17, 2003
Recent studies of African American names reveal interesting interactions between African Americans and Irish immigrants in the 1800s in America. According to the author of "Black Genealogy", hair and skin color of both Blacks and Irish made them subject to discrimination from mainstream Protestant society in the North before the Civil War. Although such shared discrimination created...

Vigils Are Held Around the World to Oppose Military Action

Thomas J. Lueck March 17, 2003
Anti-war protestors utilized the internet to organize vigils around the world on Sunday night. In almost 140 countries, people came together to protest an impending US-led military action against Iraq, all at 7:00pm in their local time. In major cities and small towns of the US, the mostly silent vigils provided thousands of protestors with the opportunity to protest the Bush Administration...

Top Chinese Varsities Take After US Colleges

Jason Leow March 11, 2003
Through international conferences, journals, and the internet, educational theories and models are extremely mobile. Although most of China’s universities and colleges still require high school applicants to list their three most preferred schools and a corresponding major, 3 prestigious institutions are now switching to a system modeled after US colleges. Students at Qinghua, Beijing, and...

Controversial Findings Rekindle Education Debate

Carola Schlaghec March 7, 2003
Debates over immigration policy have been tense in Germany in recent years. This week, however, findings that schools with more immigrant students do worse than schools without immigrants are fueling the discussion even further. Immigrant children, particularly those from poorer backgrounds who do not speak German, have a disadvantage entering the school system. The results of this latest study...