In The News

Push for New Tactics as War on Malaria Falters

Celia W. Dugger June 30, 2006
Malaria should be easy to control. Mosquito nets, insecticides and even medicine are inexpensive – and yet funds have tended to go toward consultants and research rather than treatment. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of children die from malaria, more than any other disease – a statistic that attracts yet more funds from major donors along with new scrutiny. In the US, Bush administration...

For Dr. Sengupta, Long-Term Visa Is a Long Way Off

June Kronholz June 30, 2006
Highly successful immigrant researchers, doctors and engineers often wait years for citizenship in the US. The US Labor Department has a backlog of 235,000 skilled-immigrant permanent-residency applications, and the Citizenship and Immigration Service has another backlog of 180,000 cases. About half of the Ph.D. engineers and scientists in the US are foreign born, according to the National...

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...

Globalization: When Cure Is Worse Than Malady

Richard Hornik June 27, 2006
The global economic transition to a post-industrial economy has increased pace since the end of the Cold War, but the dislocations caused by rapid globalization rage on. As a consequence, electorates have become deeply divided between those who benefit and those who do not. Politicians find themselves pandering to narrow constituencies with petty, irrelevant legislation to build coalitions, often...

A Shot in the Dark

Mark Tran June 27, 2006
In 2001, the United Nations created a program that aimed to reduce the “trafficking, proliferation and misuse of guns,” and delegates meet again in New York to discuss the possible implementation of an international arms trade treaty. The National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful lobby group in the US, has decried that the efforts of the action group will “strip all citizens of all nations of...

Managing Globalization: Economies Have a Stake in Where Companies Find Employees

Daniel Altman June 26, 2006
A growing interconnectedness of the global economy means companies will find skilled workers one way or another. The motives for companies to turn to outsourcing or the recruitment of immigrant labor are often similar: a domestic skills shortage, jobs that local workers will not take or the comparatively cheap cost of foreign labor. The forces driving companies’ choices to outsource or recruit...