Articles in English

MundoAsia,

The rapid economic development of Asia since World War II — starting with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, then extending to Hong Kong and Singapore, and finally taking hold powerfully in India and mainland China — has forever altered the global balance of power. These countries recognize the importance of an educated work force to economic growth, and they understand that investing in research makes their economies more innovative and competitive.

Beginning in the 1960s, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan sought to provide their populations with greater access to post-secondary education, and they achieved impressive results. Today, China and India have an even more ambitious agenda.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalIglesia Católica,

Social and religious conservatives opposed the formation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) because they feared overzealous prosecutors eventually would target religious leaders such as bishops and even the pope. ICC proponents mocked such criticism and said the ICC was only for "the worst among us, war criminals like Hitler." Little did anyone know that such fears would come so close to fruition so soon after the ICC came into existence.

Geoffrey Robertson, a United Nations judge and Australian tort lawyer from London, is calling on the Brown government to arrest the pope when he comes to Britain in September and send him to trial in the ICC at The Hague for crimes against humanity.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional

Fifteen years ago today, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City claimed the lives of 168 men, women and children. It was, until 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in United States history. But what emerged in its aftermath — the compassion, caring and love that countless Americans from all walks of life extended to the victims and their families — was a powerful testament to the best of America. And its lessons are as important now as they were then.

Most of the people killed that day were employees of the federal government. They were men and women who had devoted their careers to helping the elderly and disabled, supporting our veterans and enforcing our laws.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

With Defence now in purdah, and Labour and the Tories shelving the issue by the device of a post-election review, we must not lose sight of the size of the problem facing the Armed Forces, or of the political courage needed to deal with it.

For as the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Edward Leigh, concluded in the committee’s Major Projects Report last month: “Britain’s defence budget is fundamentally unaffordable.” Even if spending on defence remains flat, the projected deficit will be some £36 billion. This is not a figure that can be willed away by “efficiency savings” or smarter procurement, or even by cancelling Trident’s replacement.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica

I spent March with a delegation of activists, entrepreneurs and policy wonks roaming western, southern and eastern Africa trying very hard to listen — always hard for a big-mouthed Irishman. With duct tape over my gob, I was able to pick up some interesting melody lines everywhere from palace to pavement ...

Despite the almost deafening roar of excitement about Africa’s hosting of soccer’s World Cup this summer, we managed to hear a surprising thing. Harmony ... flowing from two sides that in the past have often been discordant: Africa’s emerging entrepreneurial class and its civil-society activists.

It’s no secret that lefty campaigners can be cranky about business elites.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea

Rarely is personal tragedy so intertwined with the political. For Poland, the crash in Smolensk, Russia, last weekend of the Tu-154 airliner carrying the country's president, first lady and dozens of other officials is a history-changing event. It is also a personal tragedy of extraordinary proportions for former prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who lost his twin brother -- his constant collaborator and political partner -- President Lech Kaczynski. This disaster's long-term impact on the Polish right -- on its worldview, its relations with domestic opponents and its stance toward Russia -- can be shaped by the bereaved twin, if he so chooses.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

None of my responses feels adequate.

Questions such as "How was Haiti?" or "How was your trip?" make it sound as though I was on vacation. But I was not on vacation in Haiti, so the usual answers -- great, fine or even okay -- are just not appropriate. Like every other volunteer, consciously or unconsciously, I want everyone to know that I sacrificed my own well-being in an attempt to help Haiti's people recover from the horrific damage wrought by January's earthquake.

Still, I know that "horrible" is probably not the right response -- even though that is among the words that spring to mind when I am asked about my recent time in Port-au-Prince as the volunteer coordinator for Partners in Health.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalIglesia Católica

Seven years ago, while Boston shook with the early tremors of the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal, my mother shared news that made my family part of what now seems a global seismic event. Like thousands of others in more than 20 countries, she had been abused by a priest in her youth.

Forty years earlier, she had been a pious girl, so much so that she joined a religious order after high school and remained a nun for 10 years. A newspaper photo shows a priest blessing my mother's kneeling family on the eve of her departure for the convent.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea

Moments after a plane carrying President Lech Kaczynski of Poland and 95 others crashed near Smolensk, Russia, on Saturday, killing all on board, hundreds of Poles were already in front of the presidential palace, lighting candles.

Soon after the National Assembly gathered to honor the dead last week, the Archbishop of Krakow announced that on Sunday, following their funeral tomorrow, Mr. Kaczynski and his wife would be buried at Wawel Cathedral — the Polish equivalent of Westminster Abbey or the Panthéon in Paris. Mr. Kaczynski is to be the first president to be buried there, among the greatest of Polish kings, two revered romantic poets and the three great military heroes Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Jozef Pilsudski and Wladyslaw Sikorski.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea

It is hard to come to terms with the deaths of so many people, including the Polish president, from the plane crash last Saturday. And it is hard to believe the uncanny coincidence that the plane went down near the Katyn forest in Russia, the site of the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in 1940. When we heard, everything went quiet. Then people rushed to the Internet and switched on their TVs, because no event, not even the most tragic, exists beyond the media.

The next day, as people began to emerge from church, I received an anonymous text message, sure to have been sent to lots of people, like similar messages announcing candlelight vigils or encouraging people to tie black ribbons to their cars.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza

In planetary terms, it was just a tiny pinprick that opened up last month underneath the Eyjafjalla Glacier in southern Iceland, when a long-forgotten volcano started to erupt again after a quiescence of nearly 200 years. But insignificant though the rent in the planet’s fabric may have been, uncounted millions have been suddenly affected by it.

The North Atlantic winds shifted by just a few degrees, and all of a sudden commercial catastrophe has been visited on northern Europe: air traffic peremptorily shut down, the skies cleared of planes wary of flying through the high-altitude streams of the volcano’s brutally corrosive airborne silica dust.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

Last week Roza Otunbayeva led a group in Kyrgyzstan that ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev from power after protesters stormed the president's offices; at least 84 people were killed. Newsweek-Washington Post's Lally Weymouth reached Otunbayeva by phone to discuss the current situation. Excerpts:

What actually caused the outbreak of violence last week?

A number of reasons. There was a lot of corruption, and then in terms of transparency, Kyrgyzstan is 166th out of 180 countries. We are a country with such a low quality of life. But since January 1, President Bakiyev and his government started to raise the price for utilities -- for electricity, for hot water, for mobile companies, for water for agricultural needs, [and his government also increased] taxes on real estate.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica

In the midst of a wave of post-election political violence in Zimbabwe in 2008, Brian James, a white farmer who had been evicted from his property years earlier during President Robert Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned lands, found himself surrounded by a throng of black Zimbabweans in downtown Mutare, my hometown. The 50-strong crowd danced, sang and chanted political slogans for more than 20 minutes before Mr. James was finally able to raise his hand, thank them for their support and announce that he was honored to have been elected mayor of the country’s third-largest city.

This Sunday is the 30th anniversary of Zimbabwe’s independence from white rule and President Mugabe’s rise to power.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

There is a wonderful spirit in Lebanon: The people and the land never give up. Despite a fractious and multiconfessional society, plus ongoing foreign domination and invasions, the country has held together. Now, with anti-Syrian Prime Minister Saad Hariri being cajoled by Saudi Arabia to be more accepting of Syrian influence in his country, the times continue to be precarious.

Seventy percent the size of Connecticut, tiny Lebanon has been the center of turmoil and controversy for centuries. Through it all, its 4 million inhabitants have managed to reconstitute their destroyed cities and shell-shocked economy thanks to Lebanon's solid education system, national pride and extraordinary stamina.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

At 8 o’clock on Easter morning, the preacher at the Reformed Baptist church near my house was back to exhorting the young people not to have sex before marriage. He no longer brandishes the earthquake as proof that some malevolent God is angry with Haiti for its sins.

On Monday morning, school was supposed to have started again. But it was a very timid reopening. After all, most schools are still covered with debris. And most parents are afraid to let their children go inside.

Three months after the earthquake, some of the customary cadence of life has returned. People still argue and laugh, they still fight and kiss under the trees.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

The tragic death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, together with dozens of military commanders, politicians and top advisers, has fixed the spotlight on the Katyn massacre of 70 years ago and the context in which it occurred. This will have a sobering effect on Polish-Russian reconciliation unless all the facts about World War II are finally acknowledged by leaders of the Russian Federation - the legal inheritor of the Soviet Union.

While Russian leaders celebrate the 65th anniversary of World War II Victory Day in Moscow on May 9, awkward questions will be asked about the infamous Soviet-Nazi alliance that made World War II possible.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

The image came to Jerry Rosembert as he and his father wandered the dust-clouded streets downtown, where they lived, toward the Champs de Mars.

In the hours after the earthquake struck on Jan. 12, thousands of his shocked countrymen had congregated in the giant plaza, weeping and crying out for Jesus. Jerry, a 25-year-old graffiti artist, knew what to do: with a can of spray paint, he turned a map of Haiti into a person who cried and held his hands skyward in prayer. Jerry didn’t sleep that night, and after dawn broke the next day, he sprayed five more crying Haitis in a neighborhood called Bois Verna.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

On the corner of Mon Repos 46 and Rue Concorde in this seaside hamlet, the epicenter of the earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people and left 1.3 million homeless, sits the only house I own.

Low-slung and lavishly shaded by giant almond trees, it is the house my father built and lived in for more than 40 years. He never got around to finishing the second floor, which was useful when I was a boy playing hide-and-seek with my pals. We escaped one another by hopping from our roof to other roofs or to the high branches of the almond trees, and scampering on to nearby mango trees.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

President Nursultan Nazarbayev is in town for the 47-nation nuclear summit set up by the Obama administration.

Q: There is talk of the new great game in Central Asia with the West, Russia and China vying for influence and the mineral wealth of the region. Do you see such a game unfolding and what do you see as Kazakhstan's role in this game?

A: In light of its geostrategic location and large primary resources, the region draws a lot of attention. Energy companies from the United States, the EU, China and Russia actively work here in Kazakhstan. We are intent on further maintaining our cooperation with them.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública, ,

One  year ago today, a government worker in Oaxaca, Mexico, became the first person to die of swine flu. At the bedsides of other men and women struggling to stay alive in Mexican critical care units, we clinicians noticed early on that this novel H1N1 flu virus diverged from influenza’s usual pattern of activity in striking ways. It began in the Northern Hemisphere, not in Asia, and in mid-spring, not late fall or winter. It also had a worrying predilection for children and young adults, not the elderly and newborns.

In the months after those first deaths, the virus ignited a global pandemic.…  Seguir leyendo »