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Rampant government interference with press freedom threatens editorial independence and access to unbiased news in seven Latin American countries, according to a groundbreaking new report. The study uncatalogued abuses in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Peru, and Uruguay, including the widespread use of public funds to reward or punish news coverage. Millions of dollars are tossed around by government officials trying to buy favorable coverage—a situation made worse by low salaries and lack of job security for many journalists," said Darian Pavli, one of the report's authors and an attorney with the Open Society Justice Initiative. Authorities in Latin America have long used violence, legal harassment, and intimidation to silence outspoken journalists. The report uncovers a less obvious but growing trend of officials using financial incentives and regulatory powers to control the press.
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Dr. Mikhail Chester and Professor Arpad Horvath have completed an environmental life-cycle inventory of passenger transportation modes in the United States. This analysis is the first comprehensive environmental life-cycle assessment of automobiles, buses, trains, and aircraft in the United States. The study inventories energy consumption and emissions (greenhouse gas, criteria air pollutants, and volatile organic compounds) for vehicle, infrastructure, and fuel components from material extraction and processing through use and maintenance.
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The poster that won the 1979 general election was a fake. The "Labour isn't working" dole queue was ac tually composed of 20 fully employed Hendon Conservatives, photo graphed by Saatchi & Saatchi. But there was nothing synthetic about the impact that the poster had on the Labour government of James Callaghan. Never again, Labour resolved, could the party afford to go to the country when the country was out of work. Yet that is what Gordon Brown risks doing, if you believe the spin about him delaying the next general election until 2010. This was a year of financial panic as oil prices spiked, banks collapsed and stock markets tumbled. But it is likely that 2009 will be the year of the dole. Unemployment, already higher than at any time since Labour came to office in 1997, is expected to climb to almost three million by 2010, according to the Confederation of British Industry. The turnaround in the UK employment market has been astonishing.
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US Central Command, working with national and international partners, promotes development and cooperation among nations, responds to crises, and deters or defeats state and transnational aggression in order to establish regional security and stability.
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Let us begin with an apology to our readers in Asia. Unless they are online, they will not see this editorial. For legal reasons, we are refraining from publishing it in The Wall Street Journal Asia, which circulates in Singapore. Our subject is free speech and the rule of law in the Southeast Asian city-state — something on which the international press and Singapore's government have often clashed. We can't say which side would prevail if the Singapore public could hear an open debate, but the fact is that we know of no foreign publication that has ever won in a Singapore court of law. Virtually every Western publication that circulates in the city-state has faced a lawsuit, or the threat of one. Which brings us to the ruling against us this week in Singapore's High Court. Dow Jones Publishing (Asia) was found guilty of contempt of court for two editorials and a letter to the editor published in The Wall Street Journal Asia in June and July. The Attorney General, who personally…
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Launched in 2005, the Centre represents a joint initiative of the International Bar Association (IBA) and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA). It is also supported by DLA Piper, one of the three largest law firms in the world. Based in Johannesburg, the Centre promotes Human Rights and the Rule of Law and operates in the following Southern African countries: Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
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A report on the trial observation of the criminal prosecution of Serge NIBIZI (Editor-in-Chief of Radio Publique Africaine), Domitile KIRAMVU (Presenter at Radio Publique Africaine), Mathias MANIRAKIZA (Director of Radio Isanganiro), Corneille Nibaruta (Director of Bonesha FM), held before the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Bujumbura before Presiding Judge Remy NTACO, on Thursday, 14 December 2006. Appeal held before the Appeal Court of Bujumbura before Presiding Appeal
Court Judge Marcel Ntakarutimana on Monday, 24 March 2008 adjourned to Wednesday, 30 April 2008
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Climate change, water supply limits, and continued population growth have intensified the search for measures to conserve water in irrigated agriculture, the world’s largest water user. Policy measures that encourage adoption of water-conserving irrigation technologies are widely believed to make more water available for cities and the environment. However, little integrated analysis has been conducted to test this hypothesis. This article presents results of an integrated basin-scale analysis linking biophysical, hydrologic, agronomic, economic, policy, and institutional dimensions of the Upper Rio Grande Basin of North America. It analyzes a series of water conservation policies for their effect on water used in irrigation and on water conserved. In contrast to widely-held beliefs, our results show that water conservation subsidies are unlikely to reduce water use under conditions that occur in many river basins. Adoption of more efficient irrigation technologies reduces valuable…
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After the workshop on categorical groups in Barcelona, I went to Granada - the world capital of categorical groups! Pilar Carrasco, an expert on this subject, had kindly invited me to spend a week there and give some talks. Even more kindly, she put me in a hotel right next to the Alhambra.
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According to conventional wisdom, the economic well-being of all but the wealthiest Americans has stagnated or declined over the past twenty-five years. In Prices, Poverty, and Inequality: Why Americans Are Better Off Than You Think, Christian Broda and David E. Weinstein argue that this idea is based upon misleading measurements of wealth and poverty. The consumer price index used to compute official measures of real wages and poverty ignores two key sources of increased prosperity: the introduction of new and better products and consumers' ability to substitute between goods. Deflating nominal wages by a cost-of-living index that adjusts for these previously unconsidered factors of prosperity suggests that the real wages of the poor have actually risen by 30 percent since the late 1970s–and that the poverty rate in America has fallen dramatically over the last forty years. How can we account for the discrepancy between standard measures of economic well-being…
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Behind the scenes of the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies' Hatfield Hotdog Launcher (…kinda).
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!["Four Bad Bear Markets" [Calculated Risk]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/SSSevkxwNtI/AAAAAAAADzE/V_BMgbRML4E/s1600/four-bears-large.gif){kind=link}