In The News

Skepticism Lingers over History Issue

Seo Hyun-jin August 24, 2004
Sometimes history does not fit neatly into a conceptualization of the nation-state. The ancient Goguryeo kingdom has been a source of contention for China and Korea. While both countries claim the region as part of their heritage, the Chinese Foreign Ministry renewed heated debates when it deleted Goguryeo references from its Korean history website. Recent diplomatic negotiations, however,...

Baby Perks for Parents

Daniel Buenas August 24, 2004
The flipside of the myriad benefits enjoyed by economically developed countries is a general decrease in birth rates. When fewer children are born, a dwindling working class must support the elderly population’s increasing healthcare costs while maintaining economic output. Singapore is combating this trend by offering women incentives for childbirth: an additional month of maternity leave and...

Coping with World Population Boom and Bust – Part II

Joseph Chamie August 24, 2004
In a growing number of countries, average fertility rates have fallen below replacement levels, the numbers necessary to ensure stable population. While concerns about shrinking populations have arisen in the past, the issue now affects almost all regions of the world. In the second installment of a two-part series, UN demographer Joseph Chamie details governments' struggles to curb the...

Fighting Over the Best and the Brightest

Carsten Germis August 20, 2004
Losing one’s intelligentsia is not just the bane of developing countries. Germany, which boasts the largest economy of Europe, has sent so many of its sons and daughters to America in academic capacities that now Germans make up the third-largest group of foreign academics in the US. In raw numbers, that puts Germany’s US academic expatriate community at 20,000, with three out of four...

Soccer “Match for Peace”

Michael A.W. Ottey August 19, 2004
Only a few months ago, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a bloody revolt and peacekeepers sanctioned by the United Nations descended upon the country to restore order. Among the international forces was a large contingent of Brazilian troops. A different group of Brazilians, however, stole Haiti’s national limelight recently when the Brazilian soccer team squared off...

Coping with World Population Boom and Bust – Part I

Joseph Chamie August 19, 2004
The world’s population - currently at 6.4 billion - has quadrupled over the past century. In the first of a two-part series, UN demographer Joseph Chamie says that the global population boom has been accompanied by revolutionary changes in life expectancy, fertility, population aging, and large-scale migration – issues that will fundamentally shape the politics of the next century. Even with...

A Question of Identity

Hasan Suroor August 17, 2004
The million-strong Indian community in Britain is expressing concerns over being lumped together with Bangladeshis and Pakistanis by media and government. The generic term “Asian,” they argue, obfuscates the facts when used to describe social problems such as honor killings or the Bradford riots, because most of the perpetrators were non-Indian. Hasan Suroor, the author of this opinion piece in...