In The News

Surveillance Disclosure Denounced

Peter Baker June 29, 2006
US President George Bush denounces “The New York Times” for publishing an article concerning the president’s secret anti-terrorism program that involves access, unapproved by US Congress or the courts, to bank records from nearly 8,000 banks in more than 20 countries. The paper also broke news earlier this year about a government telephone-surveillance program. Supporters of such surveillance...

North Korean Nuclear Conundrum

Chung Min Lee June 29, 2006
As North Korea plans to launch a long-range missile, the US threatens sanctions and military intervention. But public policy Professor Chung Min Lee asserts that it may be too late to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. Analysts suggest that the country has enough weapons-grade plutonium for a dozen nuclear weapons. Since the early 1990s, North Korea has worked with highly enriched uranium...

China May Fine News Media to Limit Coverage

Joseph Kahn June 29, 2006
The Chinese government has long held power over media, but the controls were typically informal and not written into a law. A proposal from the Standing Committee of the legislature, however, would fine media outlets for reporting “sudden events” without prior authorization from the government. The government has not yet defined “sudden event,” but analysts expect that local officials will apply...

A Bad Time for Conciliatory Gestures

Pierre Heumann June 28, 2006
On the one hand, the Palestinian governing coalition, led by the heretofore hard-line militant group Hamas, has signed a document that implicitly recognizes the existence of the Israeli state, a positive step in relations between the two entities. On the other hand, the Israeli military is massing tanks on the border and cutting off electricity into Gaza, an attempt to pressure Palestine’s Hamas...

US-Indian Deal Could Spark South Asian Arms Race, Markey Says

Jon Fox June 23, 2006
One provision of the US-Indian deal over nuclear weapons is that the US will provide India with a steady stream of nuclear fuel to power the nation’s nuclear reactors. Besides possibly being in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), this agreement could potentially fuel the arms race between India and Pakistan, neither of which has signed the treaty. The agreement would...

Holocaust Memories Hover Over Refugees

Peter Hirschberg June 20, 2006
Sudanese refugees who have illegally crossed the border into Israel are either forced back into Egypt or arrested and detained. Some of those arrested are released by the courts and taken in by kibbutzim, while others remain in prison waiting to be charged. The refugees pose a moral dilemma to the citizens and government of Israel; the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, wrote in...

Don’t Forget Those Other 27,000 Nukes

Hans Blix June 20, 2006
Hans Blix is fully acquainted with both the successes and drawbacks of the current international system for policing nuclear technology. While the former chief UN weapons inspector recognizes that the instruments of nonproliferation – the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and international inspection – failed in cases such as North Korea and Libya, he cautions against abandoning these efforts in...