In The News

Researchers Have New Theory on Origin of AIDS Virus

Donald G. McNell, Jr. June 13, 2003
How HIV first infected humans is still a puzzle waiting to be solved. Past research has traced the virus to chimps in Africa. Now scientists have gone a step further – they have found that chimps got the virus from two kinds of monkeys that they ate, each with its own virus. The HIV virus may have been a combination of these two viruses. It is still unknown when and how the viruses merged,...

The Noble Feat of Nike

Johan Norberg June 13, 2003
What really are the pros and cons of globalization? In this article, Johan Norberg, an advocate of globalization, uses the example of Nike in Vietnam to demonstrate the benefits of globalization. According to Norberg, in Vietnam Nike pays its workers three times higher than the minimum wage earned in state-owned enterprises, provides its workers free or subsidized meals, education, and training,...

Fossil Find May Back 'Out of Africa' Theory

Guy Gugliotta June 12, 2003
Scientists now have more evidence to support the claim that modern humans arose from one common ancestor in Africa. The recent discovery of the remains of two adults and a child from 160,000 years ago in northeast Ethiopia closes "a temporal and geographical gap" in the route on which human ancestors moved north out of Africa, to the Middle East and other regions of the world. Other...

E-Mail Message Blitz Creates What May Be Fastest Fad Ever

Saul Hansell June 9, 2003
After the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency announced that they would create a deck of playing cards with the names and photos of the top Iraqi leaders to be distributed to border guards, Internet marketing companies all rushed to get reproduction rights. One company, GreatUSAflags.com, along with its partner Lionstone International, sold 1.5 million decks via email within a matter of days,...

Poor Show at Evian

David Tresilian June 6, 2003
The recent G-8 meeting in Evian, France attracted particular attention because it was the first time leaders of the west met after the U.S. war on Iraq. Also, in an effort to widen the scope of dialogue, for the first time, leaders from some developing countries were invited to attend the summit. Although the original agenda included major global issues such as access to water, the fight against...

The New Global Food Fight

Kathleen McAfee June 6, 2003
Genetically modified (GM) food offered as aid by the US is not simply manna from the heavens for people in famine-stricken countries, says Yale scholar Kathleen McAfee. African nations have refused GM food aid from the US not just because they fear losing access to the European Union market, where imported GM foods are subject to substantial restrictions. They also worry about environmental...

The Arch of Globalization

Abdel-Moneim June 5, 2003
In the first installment of a two-part essay, Abdel-Moneim, director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt, offers five possible genealogies of the US-led war in Iraq. First, he argues, the war was about opening up the Middle East to processes of globalization. Globalization has been uneven, affecting world regions and countries differently, and the Middle East is the...