Foreign Policy Public Health Blog

Preparing for Olympics, Rio plans to raze favelas

Rio de Janeiro is undertaking a significant rebuilding and reconstruction effort before the 2016 Summer Olympics. The city will raze over 100 of the most "at risk" favelas and rebuild hundreds of others. According to the mayor of Rio, Eduardo...

Published Thu, Jul 29 2010 1:28 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Corruption, Drugs & Crime, Latin America, Development, Olympics

Newt Gingrich is still a big tease

Given my last experience attending an intriguingly titled Newt Gingrich talk , I should have known better. But when I heard that Newt Gingrich's address today at the American Enterprise Institute would be called, " America at Risk: Camus, National...

Published Thu, Jul 29 2010 1:10 PM by FP Passport

Tsereteli's Columbus monstrosity may finally be built

For controversial Georgian/Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli (shown left with another of his creations), who even the Associated Press feels comfortable describing as "widely disliked" and who was featured prominently on our world's ugliest...

Published Thu, Jul 29 2010 9:48 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Culture

Making water a human right might not be such a good idea

The United Nations General Assembly voted yesterday in favor of an international human right to water -- something that activists have long been calling for and a few countries (most notably, South Africa ) have already instituted. Asserting this unalienable...

Published Thu, Jul 29 2010 9:28 AM by FP Passport

Did the Gandhis snub David Cameron?

The diplomatic rumor mill is spinning after Britain's prime minister was unable to meet with either Sonia or Rahul Gandhi, key leaders of India's Congress party and standard-bearers of the country's powerful Gandhi-Nehru political dynasty...

Published Thu, Jul 29 2010 9:25 AM by FP Passport

Court in Eastern Russia bans YouTube

Despite controls on other forms of media, Internet content has always been relatively unrestricted in Russia. But a recent court ruling in Russia's far east suggests that that may be starting to change: The Komsomolsk-on-Amur City Court said Rosnet...

Published Thu, Jul 29 2010 7:35 AM by FP Passport

Morning Brief: U.S. military fears that Wikileaks may have endangered Afghan allies

U.S. military fears that Wikileaks may have endangered Afghan allies Top story : The U.S. military is digging through the over 90,000 classified documents that were released by WikiLeaks last Sunday to determine if they revealed the identity of the NATO...

Published Thu, Jul 29 2010 5:28 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Morning Brief

BlackBerrys in UAE deemed threat to national security

BlackBerry phones may be unwelcome guests at dinner parties, in class, or at the movies, but in the UAE, the smartphones have recently been labeled a "security threat." "As a result of how Blackberry data is managed and stored, in their...

Published Wed, Jul 28 2010 4:54 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Science & Technology, Security, Middle East, Intelligence

Which country produces the most hashish?

This week's quiz question: Which country produces the most hashish? a) Afghanistan b) Morocco c) Russia Answer after the jump … [[BREAK]] A, Afghanistan. Afghanistan is well known as the world's top producer of opium, but it's also the world's...

Published Wed, Jul 28 2010 4:36 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Drugs & Crime

Hard times for town called Asbestos

You'd think a town named after a substance that kills 90,000 an estimated people every year might want to rebrand itself, but Asbestos, Quebec is sticking to its guns : The mining town of Asbestos, Quebec, is finding it hard to leave its past behind;...

Published Wed, Jul 28 2010 2:40 PM by FP Passport

Xinhua chief missing in Britain?

The Telegraph reports that Wan Wuyi, director of China's main domestic news service, has gone missing after a training course at Britain's Oxford University: He is said to have gone missing after telling colleagues he was suffering a bad back...

Published Wed, Jul 28 2010 11:24 AM by FP Passport

Persian Dogs - By Cameron Abadi

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 One of the dubious accomplishments of the Islamic Republic of Iran is how much it's succeeded at making criminality utterly banal. The government has made so many prosaic things...

Published Wed, Jul 28 2010 7:24 AM by FP Passport

Morning Brief: Congress approves war funding

Congress approves war funding Top news: The U.S. House of Represenatatives approved a bill yesterday to provide an additional $37 billion to fund the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The measure, which had strong Republican support after a series of...

Published Wed, Jul 28 2010 6:00 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Morning Brief

Cameron goes overboard in Turkey

Earlier today in Ankara, David Cameron was eager to display a facility with the Turkish language: Tabii ki Tuerkiye - "of course, it's Turkey," in English - was the refrain of a speech advocating Turkey's admittance to the EU. Judging...

Published Tue, Jul 27 2010 3:51 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Europe, Turkey

You know who else had development goals? Hitler!

U.N. Dispatch 's Mark Leon Goldberg, reporting on today's House subcommittee hearings of the U.N. Millenium Development Goals, quotes a very strange argument made by California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher: Does progress on the Millennium Development...

Published Tue, Jul 27 2010 2:31 PM by FP Passport