The cost of war
Yesterday, I wrote about the brief life and presumed death of Rep. David Obey's "war tax," also known as the "Share the Sacrifice Act of 2010." Obey and his cosponsors hoped to make the Afghan war...
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China: We just gave Cambodia $1.2 billion because we're nice
China is denying that the $1.2 billion in aid that Vice President Xi Jinping pledged during a visit to Cambodia yesterday had anything to do with the fact that just hours earlier, the country deported...
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Bill Gates owns Silvio Berlusconi
Not every day does Bill Gates lay the smack down on a sitting premier, but that was the case when the Microsoft founder slammed Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's foreign aid policy....
View ArticleForget debt, let's talk rice
David Roodman of the Center for Global Development has a thoughtful response to my blog post (responding in turn to his initial post) on the growing calls to cancel Haiti's debt. To summarize, David...
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Qaddafi "adopts" Italian mountain town
Muammar Qaddafi has eradicated and restructured the Libyan calendar, publicly supported international terrorism and then called the Security Council the "terror council," ordered an entourage of...
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What the heck is Gerald Posner doing in Afghanistan?
Maybe it was all the excitement with the Russian spies last week, but somehow we missed one of the more intriguing things to grace the Wall Street Journal's letters page in a while: A full-throated...
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Study: The end of poverty starts at the bottom
Imagine for a moment that you're a government minister in a poor or fairly poor country. You've got a limited budget and you've also got a lot of work to do -- children are undernourished, you need to...
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Study: Australians and New Zealanders are the world's most generous people
The Charities Aid Foundation has launched the World Giving Index, an interesting tool for measuring generosity. The index uses Gallup survey data on the percentage of a population that has given money...
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Iraq paying U.S. citizens $400 million for Saddam-era ‘traumatizing’
Iraq is still paying the world back for Saddam's actions -- literally. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Iraqi government has agreed to pay $400 million to American citizens who claimed...
View ArticleJapan sends China $1.2 billion in aid every year
It's a not-very-well-known fact that China, the world's second largest economy which holds $2.5 trillion in foreign reserves, still gets about $2.5 billion in foreign government aid every year. (Jack...
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China ups donations to HIV/AIDS
Writing in FP earlier this summer, former U.S. ambassador on global HIV/AIDS, Jack Chow, offered a glimpse into China's policy on the epidemic: When it comes to aid money, give a bit, recieve lots and...
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Haitians take up Senegal's offer
Back in January, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade offered free land to Haitians displaced by their country's disastrous earthquake. The plan was eventually scaled back to free housing and today,...
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Haitians are getting sick (of waiting)
People are taking to the streets in the Haitian city of Saint Marc to protest the construction of a cholera clinic by Doctors Without Borders. Around 300 students and other people gathered to complain...
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Oxfam to Bill Clinton: You're Failing Haiti
A year after an earthquake shook the small island-nation of Haiti, a mere 5 percent of the rubble has been cleared. Not even half of the donor money pledged has arrived. The government has failed to...
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'The Global Farms Race' and the quest for food security
As climate talks continue to grind along in Doha, food security would seem to be a major concern (especially as the U.N. issues warnings about the increasingly desperate food situation in Syria)....
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Now China Is Keeping Its State-of-the-Art Hospital Ship Away From the...
In October, China's massive, state-of-the-art hospital ship, the Peace Ark, completed a four-month deployment to eight countries, coordinating goodwill medical missions and running emergency response...
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Why It Took a Superstorm to Expose the Seedy Underbelly of Philippine Politics
More than a week after Super Typhoon Haiyan killed nearly 4,000 people and displaced another 4 million, relief efforts remain hampered by poor roadways, congested airports, and a host of other...
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Is the White House so Scared of Turkey That it Won't Even Hang a Rug?
In 1926, Vartoohi Galezian -- a 15-year-old refugee from the genocide in Armenia -- arrived at the White House to pay a visit to President Calvin Coolidge. She had come to view the rug she and 1,400...
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Can the World Still Make a Difference in the Central African Republic?
Things have gone from bad to worse in the Central African Republic. Nine months after a rebel alliance known as Seleka seized control of Bangui, the country's riverside capital, and forced President...
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Davos Wants You to Know It Really, Really Cares About Inequality
Pope Francis would like the international business mandarins assembled at Davos for the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum to know that they really ought to be doing something about economic...
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