Settling differences

Asia is an area of rising giants, failing states, and unresolved disputes, some of which have gone on for centuries. In this context, it’s unlikely that the Chinese, Indians, Japanese, and South Koreans will spend hundred of billions of dollars on new ships and not use them in another monumental clash. We can probably look forward to decades of Asian turbulence. In many respects, Asia today is the Europe of a hundred years ago. For this and other reasons, Asians will not dominate this century.

Source:www.adamsmith.org/blog


Turkey has confirmed that the Parliament could discuss a motion today that would authorise cross border military incursions into northern Iraq to hunt down Kurdish PKK separatists.

Source: bbc.co.uk


UN willing


lf there had been a will on the part of the UN - suppose it had decided to enforce dozens of disregarded resolutions - the US would have been given the job of doing so that would have also been the case if the UN, for example, had decided to do anything more than nothing about Bosnia, Rwanda, or Somalia. lt would have been the US that drew the job of providing the heavy transport planes, the enforcement on the ground, the military relief, and the rest of it. This is just to restate the problem in a different way....

One of the overwhelming and positive outcomes of the international disagreement over lraq has been to expose the hollowness of the UN, and to make it evident to everybody that no one can rely upon it, at any moment, in a physical or moral crisis.

Christopher Hitchens, American lnterventions, Society; Vol 44, No 1, Nov/Dec 2006



Microfinance - bottom up approach

The great thing about microfinance is that it is based on the philosophy of the hand-up rather than the handout. As I wrote for the GI: " Microfinance is not a top-down solution to poverty, it is a bottom-up approach that aims to empower the poor, harnessing their individual aspirations and abilities and creating an environment in which they can realize the true benefits of the market economy." That's why microfinance has been so successful where traditional aid has failed to make an impact.

http://www.kiva.org/




New Malaria Vaccine Is Shown to Work in Infants Under 1 Year Old, a Study Finds
Oct 18, New York Times

The world’s most promising malaria vaccine has been shown to work in infants less than a year old, the most vulnerable group, according to a study being published today.

The study, being published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, was small, comprising only 214 babies in Mozambique, and intended to show only that the vaccine was safe at such young ages. But it also indicated that the risk of catching malaria was reduced by 65 percent after the full course of three shots.

“We’re now a step closer to the realization of a vaccine that can protect African infants,” said Dr. Pedro Alonso, the University of Barcelona professor who leads clinical trials of the GlaxoSmithKline vaccine...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/health
/18vaccine.html?_r=1&oref=slogin