In The News

Butterflies Make Partial Comeback in Mexico

Mark Stevenson February 16, 2011
Year after year, generations of monarch butterflies migrate the stretch of North America from Mexico to Canada and back again. No single animal makes the entire trip, but descendents follow the trail. Every year, hundreds of volunteers create way stations, report sightings and even tag the vivid copper and black insects. Butterflies east of the Rockies head to Mexico, and “This winter, there are...

Brazilians Making an Economic Mark

Mimi Whitefield February 15, 2011
“Bem-vindo” – or welcome in Portuguese – is the new greeting for South Florida. The struggling state was hit hard by the property bubble collapse and the sub-prime crisis, so now its real estate, tourism and shopping centers are a bargain for neighbors to the south - Brazilians. Brazil, poised to become the world’s fifth largest economy, has a low unemployment rate, reports Mimi Whitefield for...

Hungry for Votes

February 11, 2011
In 2008, in the face of rising food prices, G20 leaders founded the Global Agriculture and Food Programme to support research leading to a second Green Revolution and elimination of world hunger. But as food prices rise, pledges to support the program go unfulfilled. Activists and scientists urge sustained attention, yet their pleas fall on deaf ears. Governments slash funds for food research,...

Obama's Pressure on Mubarak Could Cost US Regional Influence

Howard LaFranchi February 8, 2011
It’s no secret that the US values democracy, free speech and representative government – and that the regimes ruling Arab nations in the Middle East resist those values. “The Obama administration has so far followed a bifurcated approach of supporting both the popular uprisings sweeping across the region and friendly regimes moving to implement reforms,” writes Howard LaFranchi for the Christian...

More in US Grow Wary of Globalization

Jon Cohen, Peyton M. Craighill February 4, 2011
The US was a leading proponent of globalization throughout the 20th century, and most Americans approved of the phenomenon in 2001. Just a decade later, about two-thirds of Americans polled report disapproval of globalization’s acceleration, particularly if it threatens US status as the globe’s leading economy. At the same time, Americans are aware that “durability of an interconnected world...

IMF Raises Spectre of Civil Wars as Global Inequalities Worsen

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard February 3, 2011
Reports of global economic recovery could be misleading. Indicators showing steady rises – in income, trade, stock markets or employment – focus on averages and mask growing divides between rich and poor both between and inside nations. Recovery built on “unstable foundations” could “sow the seeds of the next crisis,” warns Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary...

Anger Divides America Blocking New Thinking

Lewis M. Simons January 31, 2011
In a vibrant democracy, citizens press fervently for many causes, and US presidents must frequently remind their nation, as Abraham Lincoln once did before he became president and before the Civil War, that "A house divided against itself cannot stand." As during the Civil War, today’s anger spilling out in the United States focuses inward, seeking to lay blame for the nation’s decline...