After the global narcotics trade, sport is the world's most globalized and profitable business. With a television audience spanning 200 countries, the NBA boasts a larger global footprint than the United Nations. The crown jewel in the basketball league's push to lure international talent...
The NBA understands the power of an icon. When Michael Jordan retired from basketball, the league's ratings began to fall. To bounce back, the NBA expanded overseas and lured foreign talent to the game. And there is no...
The aim of foreign aid is to alleviate poverty, while improving economies, services and governance and minimizing conflict. “Official development aid, which includes grants, loans, technical advice and debt forgiveness, is worth about $130 billion a year,” explains the Economist. Such aid...
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Studies confirm that inequality continues in the United States as income rises for the very rich but stagnates or even declines for the majority. Economist Joseph Stiglitz describes a study from the UN Development Programme for an essay for Project Syndicate: “America ranks fifth according to HDI,...
Click here for the article in Project Syndicate.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, was Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice...
Burma’s President Thein Sein, while visiting Europe, announced that the government’s fighting against ethnic resistance forces has ended – even as the government moves more troops into the troubled areas. Meanwhile, the United States and China are scrambling for influence by brokering peace to end...
Border diplomacy: Chinese Special Envoy Fu Ying delivers a tough message to Burmese President Thein Sein on Jan 19, 2013 (top); Burmese Minister of the President's Office Aung Min (3rd Left) and other government officials held talks with...
Intervention and war are a way of life in the Middle East. With intervention fueling conflict, sectarian tensions reemerge and leaders restrict basic rights and freedoms and even resort to using force to restrain their own citizens. A recent example is the Iraqi government kicking out Arab...
Spreading embers of civil war: A car bomb explodes in Diwaniya, Iraq (top); Syrian security officers protest in front of a bomb-damaged military intelligence building in Damascus
EAST LANSING: Last week the Iraqi government, which had once welcomed...
A major success in a poverty-reduction goal for the new millennium – halving the proportion of people whose income is less than $1.25 per day – largely went unnoticed. The World Bank estimates poverty levels, but the most recent data is from 2005. By combining the recent country survey data of...
Road to growth: Millions of Chinese have been lifted out of poverty, thanks to trade
WASHINGTON: It is customary to bemoan the intractability of global poverty and the lack of progress against the Millennium Development Goals. But the stunning fact...
China opened up a new frontier in space by successfully landing its Chang’e-4 lunar probe on the side of the Moon not seen from Earth. Previous missions by the United States and the Soviet Union photographed the far side. Because the Moon offers a shield against multiple radio signals from Earth,...
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic and the US presidential election, world leaders must also focus on arms control and nuclear non-proliferation and prepare for expiration of the New Start Treaty in February 2021, less than a year away. Russia and the United States remain divided. “The priority should...
Disruptive force: The USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier must stop in Guam after crew members test positive for Covid-19, left, and the pandemic forces cancellation of the 2020 review of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons;...
