ViewsWeek Views from around the world
When a wind turbine started spinning last year in the historic village of St Briavels on the border of England and Wales, it was a pioneering moment. For the first time, a renewable energy project had been built using the financial innovation known as debt crowdfunding. Ordinary people, many of them local residents, collectively raised £1.4m and now stand to …
October, 2013
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24 October
The Many Faces of Kayani Effect: An Indian View
Pakistan’s powerful Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has announced that he will retire after a six-year term in office on November 29. While plenty has been written about him in the Pakistani media, the Indian media has failed to assess his tenure, despite knowing that he singularly ran his country’s security policy for India. Most of what …
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24 October
Asia Steaming Towards A Debt Crisis of Its Own
For the past five years Asia’s leaders have congratulated themselves on their prudence and good judgment in avoiding the credit crisis which struck much of the developed world in 2008. But while they have been busy patting themselves on the back, worrying signs have emerged that several of the region’s main economies – together with a handful of major emerging …
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24 October
Why Saudi Arabia Rejected Seat on UN Security Council?
Saudi Arabia has grabbed the limelight by refusing its non-permanent membership at the Security Council to protest the U.N.’s inability to do anything against Bashar al-Assad. It has also let its displeasure with the U.S. over Syria and Iran be known and is reportedly on the verge of making a “major shift,” to use the words of the Saudi intelligence chief Prince …
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23 October
Violence Fear Slows Polio Immunization Drive in Nigeria
Fear and secrecy have cloaked the roll-out of a polio campaign currently underway in northern Nigeria. Vaccinators are concealing their identities, hiding vaccinations under their veils and visiting some areas only with undercover armed guards, following the February murder by Boko Haram of nine polio workers in the northern city of Kano. “The [polio] campaign is done under an atmosphere of fear …
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23 October
Obamacare Struggles But State-Run Health Care Shines
Uninsured Americans are having a hard time enrolling in private health insurance coverage through HealthCare.gov. The federal website is slow, unresponsive and at times provides inaccurate information about applicants’ eligibility for federal tax credits. Insurers, meanwhile, say they’re receiving duplicate enrollments, missing data fields, and other errors in the applications that consumers complete. State-run health care marketplaces in Kentucky, New …
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23 October
Pakistan And Global Anti-Corruption Agenda
After an inordinate delay Qamar Zaman Chaudhry has been appointed the NAB Chairman (National Accountability Bureau, Pakistan’s central accountability organization). A credible bureaucrat with an impeccable record, he has the right CV (resume). Bringing Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI lead by former cricket hero Imran Khan), the third largest party in the National Assembly (NA, the lower house of Pakistan’s parliament), into …
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22 October
Pakistani Sharif’s American Voyage
Nawaz Sharif’s team would have been relieved at the timely resolution of the fiscal impasse in US, allowing his visit to take place in somewhat normal circumstances. However, the message is clear: in the era of fiscal constraints, civilian aid and military assistance will get more limited in the future and will likely be connected to dealing with the extremists. …
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22 October
Bosnia’s Ten Years Without Alija
This October 19 marked the 10th anniversary of the death of independent Bosnia’s first democratically elected president, Alija Izetbegović. Elected to the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina in late 1990, Izetbegović remained a member of the Presidency until 2000. During the aggression on Bosnia from 1992 until 1995, Izetbegović was the president of the Presidency and the undisputed leader of …
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22 October
Backlash Fears After ‘Islamist’ Attacks in Eastern DRC
“Eight months ago no one had heard of Al-Shabab,” said Henri Ladyi, a Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) expert and director of the Conflict Resolution Centre (CRC) in Beni, a town and territory in North Kivu Province in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Ladyi is concerned that rumours about the influence of Somalia-based Islamists in Beni, whether true or …
