As Matt noted, reigning Idol champ Kris Allen traveled to Haiti last week with UN Foundation CEO Kathy Calvin to visit the relief efforts. (Recall: We posted some exclusive video of that trip.) Well, Thursday night, on Fox at 8pm EST (7 Central) you can see more from the Haiti trip when Idol airs a special episode dedicated to Haiti.
Tomorrow, the General Assembly is scheduled to vote on the Goldstone Report that criticizes both Hamas and the Israeli Defense Forces for alleged war crimes during Operation Cast Lead. The resolution that is up for a vote is partly symbolic -- it will show that the Goldstone Report (which will not be taken up by the Security Council) is not gone and forgotten. But it also gives both sides five months to implement some of the report's key findings and assures that there will be another vote on the matter this summer. This helps keep the pressure on both sides to imple
Eleven days ago, I heard a rumor that the office of President Hamid Karzai had re-written Afghanistan’s Election Law in ways that would deal a blow to the country’s beleaguered democrats. The changes had gone into force through a presidential decree, I was told. While the international press was still quiet, ripples of alarm were already spreading through Kabul-based civil society.
The story is out now, and the worst has been confirmed.
Consumers in the developing world are rapidly increasing their purchases of electronics – computers, cell phones, toys, cameras. Disposal capacity isn’t keeping pace. The UN Environmental Program just issued a new report that predicts a massive increase in e-waste in the developing world.
One of the main Darfur rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), signed a preliminary peace deal with the Sudanese government in Doha yesterday. So is this really the beginning of the end of the Darfur conflict? Over at the Enough Project's blog, Laura Heaton offers some valuable analysis:
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing USAID, the US Agency for International Development, for refusing to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests. The ACLU is seeking documents from July and September 2009 that relate to abstinence education programs supported by USAID.