Wednesday-Night

Feeding the future (IPS news round-up)
The World Bank Group’s New Deal on Global Food Policy

August 20
Enough food aid is once more pouring in to stave off serious famine; but it will not remedy Ethiopia’s deepening aid dependency and rural despair. With a smaller — because more mobile — landowning rural population, […]

NBC coverage and Photos of venues
Reuters   New York Times
China, Beijing Olympics ; Tibet
Official website
The Official Mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games
The Olympic Emblem

China denies all 77 applications for protest
August 19
(Reuters) The locals are loving it: one man cycled 1,300km (800 miles) to tow his 98-year-old grandmother to the Games in a pedicab.
Further […]

See also Wednesday Nights 1375 ; 1376 and 1378
August 15
Eurozone edges closer to recession
(FT) The eurozone moved closer to recession on Thursday after it emerged that the economy contracted in the second quarter for the first time since the launch of the euro.
The economy shrank by 0.2 per cent in the three months to June, […]

Previous events in the sorry saga

August 14
(The Economist) Talks on power-sharing in Zimbabwe between President Robert Mugabe and opposition leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, mediated by South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, appeared to stall. One of the sticking points (Surprise!) was how much power a new prime minister, most likely […]

See also Global Treaty on Climate Change
August 13
Elephant seals join fight against climate change
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Elephant seals swimming under Antarctic ice and fitted with special sensors are providing scientists with crucial data on ice formation, ocean currents and climate change, a study released on Tuesday said.
The seals swimming under winter sea ice have overcome […]

See also: Candidates and Issues
August 13
A Cut-and-Paste Foreign Policy
By Joe Conason
(Truthdig) The discovery that John McCain’s remarks on Georgia were derived from
Wikipedia is, to put it politely, disturbing and even depressing-but not
surprising. Under the tutelage of the neoconservatives, who revealed their
superficial understanding of Iraq both before and after the invasion, he
favors bellicose grandstanding over […]

China, Beijing Olympics ; Tibet
Official website
The Official Mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games
The Olympic Emblem

August 7
Athletes pay price for IOC riches
This is the most extreme case of a longstanding phenomenon of holding Olympics just when sensible citizens (as in Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996 and Athens 2004), are heading for the hills. It […]

(The Economist) The state of the economy, though not yet as clear a challenge … is worrying China’s leaders too. They have long been trying to prevent it from growing too fast, but now they fear that growth is slowing and may slow further. National income grew by 10.1% in the year to the second […]

On the eve of the opening of the Beijing Olympics, we have some very special guests, along with the much-anticipated return of Cleo Paskal from her wanderings (who else do we know who covers the UK, Athens, Faroe Islands and India in what seems like a minute?). Cleo […]

Human Rights Watch: Crisis in Darfur

UN extends Darfur peacekeeping mandate, with U.S. exception
The United Nations Security Council voted Thursday to extend the mandate of peacekeeping troops for Sudan’s Darfur region, though Council members remained divided in their response to an International Criminal Court indictment of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. […]