(January 5, 2006) Some predict that the anti-corruption campaign will be a watershed in the history of the Cuban Revolution.
China launches site to report corruption
(January 5, 2006) China is putting its marathon anti-graft crackdown online, launching a Web site for the public to report corrupt officials.
Floods ravage north-western China
At least 205 people are dead, and hundreds more are missing, in catastrophic floods in north-western China that local reports describe as the worst in the area for more than a century.
Odious debt: the terms of the debate
(January 1, 2006) View report
Bono aid is making Africa sick
(January 1, 2006) Andrew Mwenda’s position echoes the concerns of an opinion piece written earlier this year by href=”http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1964947,00.html”, the travel writer and novelist. Theroux, who worked as a Peace Corps teacher in Malawi during the early 1960s, maintains that despite years of foreign aid the once promising country of Malawi is now a failed state.
Congress should investigate the United Nations tsunami relief effort
(December 30, 2005) A recent investigation by the Financial Times has raised serious questions regarding the U.N.’s handling of the tsunami relief effort, in particular the way in which it has spent the first $590 million of its $1.1 billion disaster.
Only white dolphin in captivity dies
Qiqi, the only captive example of the world’s most endangered dolphin species, died yesterday, Xinhua reports. Yangtze River pollution and development projects, including dams, have been blamed for the species’ decline.
Cultural relics face submersion in central China
(December 26, 2005) As with the Three Gorges project, China’s south-north water transfer scheme would endanger a vast number of cultural relics. Sites to be submerged contain dinosaur-egg fossils dating back 60 million years and human skeletons from the Stone Age.
China detains 40 farmers on protests ahead of dam project
40 migrant farmers, forced from their villages by construction of the Three Gorges Dam, have been detained by police after protesting discrimination and hardship in their new homes in Qingdao, reports the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
Little clarity on how aid gets spent
(December 23, 2005) When Jan Egeland, the United Nations top disaster official, announced in March that PwC, the professional services firm, would help monitor the expenditure of funds collected under the UN’s $1.1-billion tsunami “flash appeal” he offered a simple gauge for what would result.
Iraq wins crucial IMF accord, $14 bln debt swap
(December 23, 2005) The $685 million IMF standby credit arrangement was the fund’s first ever with Iraq and is designed to support the nation’s economic program over the next 15 months.
Where has all the tsunami money gone?
(December 23, 2005) A lack of transparency doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything untoward happening with tsunami funds, or that the administrative costs are unduly high. What it does suggest, however, is that the UN’s accountability standards remain unacceptably low.
China sacrifices towns to a new god
Villagers along the Yangtze are reluctantly leaving home, John Schauble reports from Fengdu. No one is under any illusions that life will be the same, let alone any better.
Third of tsunami funds go on overheads
(December 22, 2005) A year after the Indian Ocean tsunami, up to a third of the $590 million so far spent under the United Nations’ $1.1 billion disaster flash appeal appears to have gone on administration, staff and related costs.
Switzerland cancels 80% of its Iraqi debt
(December 22, 2005) Switzerland has announced it has cancelled the equivalent of $US230 million of Iraqi debt, amounting to 80% of its claims towards Iraq.
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