After reading her take down of the UN Human Rights Council, I get the impression that Anne Applebaum does not know that there is a difference between the Human Rights Council and the old, UN Commission on Human Rights. These are two separate institutions, former of which replaced the latter in 2006.
The BBC is reporting a possible short-term solution that BP is cooking up to stem the oil geyser in the Gulf of Mexico -- a rusty metal box. The 40-foot-tall, 98-ton iron cap -- being built by Wild Well Control...no joke -- will be lowered onto the leaky valve and the oil will be funneled up to a ship on the surface, hopefully as soon as the end of the week.
UPDATE II: The video of Hillary Clinton's address at the NPT Revcon:
It looks like I am at ground zero of a polio outbreak. In Tajikistan, where I live, 171 cases of acute flaccid paralysis have been reported by the Ministry of Health since January. (Acute flaccid paralysis is what they call it before the tests confirm it’s polio.) 32 cases have been confirmed as polio. Twelve people have died.
Food aid is contentious. It's a field that is rife with controversy because, even though it constitutes a major cornerstone of foreign aid, designing and implementing food aid initiatives without creating negative externalities is very difficult.
For decades, organizations such as the World Food Program (WFP) have been donating millions of tons of food to populations in need.
Joseph Crowley (D-New York) and Mary Bono Mack (R-California) are asking their fellow members of congress to support a new law that would make it illegal to transport a minor outside of the United States for the purpose of female genital mutilation (FGM). According to a "Dear Colleague" letter obtained by UN Dispatch, the "Girls Protection Act of 2010" would impose the same penalties on those who transported teenage girls abroad for FGM as if the procedure occurred in the United States.
In this Bloggingheads conversation with Daryl Kimball, we preview the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty Review conference that kicks off at the United Nations today. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, discusses what is at stake, what the Obama administration is hoping will come out of the conference, and what role Iran might play as a spoiler in the negotiations.