April 2007 - Foreign Policy Public Health Blog

Another Hugo Chavez in the making?

RODRIGO BUENDIA/AFP Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador, has vowed to overhaul Ecuadorian politics after receiving an overwhelming mandate to convene an assembly to rewrite the country's constitution. Correa, who has threatened to default on Ecuador's...

Published Mon, Apr 16 2007 1:58 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Latin America, Politics

Beijing 2008 and the one-ticket policy

China Photos/AFP/Getty Images I can't resist commenting about China's one-ticket policy for the opening and closing ceremonies at the Beijing '08 Olympics, which I mentioned in this morning's brief. Obviously, China's an enormous country...

Published Mon, Apr 16 2007 9:45 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: East Asia, China, Sports

A battle over the cute fuzzy heritage of the Soviet Union

Mention the Soviet Union in the West, and the images that come to mind are of Sputnik, Khrushchev banging his shoe on the podium at the U.N., or maybe boxer Ivan Drago killing Apollo Creed in the ring in Rocky IV . But the Soviet Union had children too...

Published Mon, Apr 16 2007 8:45 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Europe, Culture

Morning Brief, Monday, April 16

Middle East Breaking: The mercurial Moqtada al-Sadr has ordered his bloc to withdraw from the Iraqi government. And the southern Iraqi city of Basra is seeing rising tensions between the Sadrists and their local rivals, while 35 miles north of Baghdad...

Published Mon, Apr 16 2007 5:55 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Morning Brief

Thomas Friedman: The Power of Green

Be sure to check out Thomas Friedman's cover story in Sunday's New York Times Magazine , in which he mentions The First Law of Petropolitics , his FP cover story from last year's May/June issue. Freidman's groundbreaking essay, which details...

Published Sat, Apr 14 2007 6:47 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Foreign Policy magazine

Winners & Losers

Winners Fidel Castro: Healthy again. Lesbians: Synthetic sperm cells derived from a woman's bone marrow tissue could make male participation irrelevant for women who wish to conceive. Iraqi chauvinism: The Islamic Army in Iraq, a Sunni nationalist...

Published Fri, Apr 13 2007 5:00 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Winners & Losers

Has China changed its "see no evil stance" on Darfur?

ELIZABETH GLASSANOS/FP Original Did Hollywood's campaign to link Darfur and the Beijing Olympics work? The New York Times treats China's envoy to Sudan with kid gloves : A senior Chinese official, Zhai Jun, traveled to Sudan to push the Sudanese...

Published Fri, Apr 13 2007 4:15 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Africa, Human Rights, East Asia, China, Sudan, FP Originals

Friday Conspiracy Fun: Return of the grassy knoll

Oliver Stone may need to rush to re-edit JFK to more directly implicate LBJ in the assassination. An article by Erik Hedegaard in the new Rolling Stone centers on the claim by E. Howard Hunt's son, Saint John, that his ailing father revealed on his...

Published Fri, Apr 13 2007 2:55 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: North America, Intelligence

Fouad Ajami is making sense

I beg to differ with my colleague Henry's harsh assessment of Fouad Ajami's piece in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal . Ajami makes a very important point about anti-Shiite prejudice in the Arab world, which is about 85 percent Sunni. Allow...

Published Fri, Apr 13 2007 2:06 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Middle East, Iraq

Friday Photo: Bridge Under Troubled Waters

ALI YUSSEF/AFP/Getty Images Baghdad, IRAQ: Iraqi women use their mobile phones to take photographs of Baghdad's collapsed al-Sarrafiyah bridge where a suicide bomber blew himself up in a truck, 12 April 2007. The bombing damaged the bridge which spanned...

Published Fri, Apr 13 2007 1:37 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Friday Photo, Middle East, Iraq, Photo

The storm hasn't passed yet for Musharraf

AFP Angry protests over Pervez Musharraf's suspension of the chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court have ( mostly ) simmered down, but the move has clearly backfired against a regime that is now in damage control mode. Even assuming that President...

Published Fri, Apr 13 2007 1:09 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Pakistan, Politics, U.S. Foreign Policy, South Asia

Madrid bombers' trial sparks political bickering

AFP/Getty Images More than three years on, the Madrid bombs are still hurting Spain. Media outlets that support the conservative Popular Party opposition are denouncing the trial of 29 Islamists and petty criminals (including a former male stripper) suspected...

Published Fri, Apr 13 2007 12:02 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Terrorism, al Qaeda, Europe

The tsunami's underwater victims

Jay Directo/AFP/Getty The earthquake off the coast of Indonesia in March 2005 not only killed over 900 people, but scientists have now found that the quake lifted an island almost four feet out of the water—causing one of the biggest coral die-offs...

Published Fri, Apr 13 2007 10:10 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Environment, Southeast Asia

Fouad Ajami: Middle East scholar or Shiite partisan?

Fouad Ajami , unenthused as he must be at the prospect of conceding that he erred in fervently supporting the Iraq War , is a tad more invested in the surge than is your average academic. So, naturally, at a time when even the hint of optimism on Iraq...

Published Fri, Apr 13 2007 9:10 AM by FP Passport