SARTRE is a futuristic project envisioned by E.U as a part of the EU Safe Road Trains for the Environment. It comes with minimal technology and uses navigation systems that communicate with the lead vehicle and gadgets that control acceleration and steering. It is akin to carpooling and could bring order to the highways and [...]

Reconciliation between Tamils and the Sinhalese-dominated government in Sri Lanka is elusive as ever, even if the government tries to recruit Tamils into government service such as police work. ‘But such measures look paltry against an internment policy that the EU’s report calls a “novel form of unacknowledged detention”. The government justifies it by citing [...]

Climate change causes significant changes in the quality and availability of water resources, affecting many sectors including food production, where water plays a crucial role. Climate change will increasingly drive ecosystem including marine ecosystems and biodiversity loss, affecting individual species and significantly impacting ecosystems and their related services, on which society depends. It increases land [...]

Burmese Court and Burma’s military dictatorship did what the world and Aung San Suu Kyi herself had been speculating. They found her guilty of violating terms of previous house arrest and sentenced her to 18 more months of house arrest.  She had committed ‘crime’ of giving shelter to an eccentric American. Meanwhile American John Yettaw [...]

The most shocking reality of Ceausescu’s regime in Romania was discovery of thousands of children who were found locked away in some 600 notorious institutions. Who were these children? They were victims of Ceausescu’s policy against contraception. Romanian couples were forced to have more children and when they could not afford to raise them, they [...]

Central America’s political climate is not unique. Wherever there is a leader that aspired to be a dictator, there always seems to be a military coup fashioned to topple him, and whenever there is insurmountable civil oppression due to abuses of power, there always seems to be a resulting civil war. Confrontations in Central America [...]

A research study of 26 countries of the European Union, dated 1970-2007, and featured in the latest issue of The Lancet, reveals that more suicides and crimes have come about because of rises in unemployment.
The current global economic crisis portends a similar situation as investments fall, bringing about a rise in employment layoffs, thus creating [...]

After the apparent failure of political negotiations and blockade of dialogue to resolve the crisis, the European Commission announced on Monday that it is freezing $90m of aid to Honduras. “Given the circumstances, I have taken the difficult decision to suspend all budgetary support payments,” said External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. For now, the aid [...]

Designer drugs like Ecstasy and crystal meth are on the rise worldwide. On the other hand, the demand for conventional drugs such as cocaine and cannabis decreases. These are some of the conclusions presented in the recently published World Drug Report by the United Nations.
Global demand for cocaine, opiates, and cannabis is stagnant or shrinking, [...]

At the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development (June 24-26, 2009) in New York, more than 140 countries signed a global action plan that sets agreed-upon measures for the world to deal with the worst form of recession.
The conference adopts the finalized 16-page document. It reminds [...]