MetaFilter posts tagged with worldnews

« C’est maintenant que les ennuis commencent »

theodolite — Sun, 06 May 2012 13:45:09 -0800

France has a new president. With 51.9% of the second-round vote, François Hollande has beaten Nicolas Sarkozy to become the first Socialist president of France since 1995. In his victory speech, Hollande declared that "austerity is not inevitable," but international business interests have already started rumbling about Hollande's plans for higher taxes on the rich and large-scale public sector investment. The change in power is to be effected in next ten days, with Hollande scheduled to appear at the G8 and NATO summits on May 19 and 20.

Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001-2013

theodolite — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:09:10 -0800

More than ten years after it began, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has announced a "mid-2013" end to combat operations in the Afghan War, the longest in US history. The announcement follows Nicolas Sarkozy's surprising declaration last week of a 2013 French withdrawal. It is unknown if the United States will continue its program of drone attacks in neighboring Pakistan.

Flooding in Uganda

mdpatrick — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:01:28 -0800

Flooding in Uganda displaces 20,000.

Heavy rains in eastern Uganda have triggered flooding that has displaced more than 20,000 people and hampered search efforts to find victims of massive landslides feared to have killed hundreds, officials said Thursday.

Rethinking aid donations

insatiablehee — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:45:30 -0800

40% of Afghan aid returns to donor countries. In today's guardian, it has been reported that 40% of the money promised/delivered to aid Afghan has been spent on "corporate profits and consultancy fees" and that "Much of the money earmarked for aid is diverted to political or military purposes." It make one think about the realities and purposes of aids especially when one considers the conditionality the aids entail, such as world bank's conventionalities which includes liberalisation and privatization of public goods etc in addition to the amount of tax deduction companies and individuals get. These problems have been addressed, such as UK charity organisation asking their government to withhold money from the world bank until it changes the conventionalities of funds, which unfortunately did not succeed. Last year UK's development secretary, Douglas Alexander handed £2bn-plus to the institutions no strings attached.