The Fragile States Index, produced by The Fund for Peace, is a critical tool in highlighting not only the normal pressures that all states experience, but also in identifying when those pressures are pushing a state towards the brink of failure. By highlighting pertinent issues in weak and failing states, …
IN JANUARY, after a break of 22 years, the US once again turned its attention to the moon. This time, however, it was not NASA that launched a spacecraft, but the Ballistic Missile Defence Organization (BMDO), the successor to the Strategic Defence Initiative Organization. The spacecraft, christened Clementine, was originally …
A MAJOR, Irangate-style controversy is building up over a L1 billion framework accord on military sales that is ostensibly linked to British aid in 1988 for the Pergau dam project in Malaysia. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has taken a dim view of Britain's aid policy and …
THE US defence department plans to spend millions of dollars to buy new vaccines to inoculate troops against germ warfare and develop new bombs to incinerate chemical and biological weapon stocks. This is part of a major effort to protect US troops from poison gas, biological agents and nuclear weapons. …
THE CENTRAL Intelligence Agency of USA believes that neither India nor Pakistan "maintains assembled or deployed nuclear bombs", writes George Perkovich in an article in Foreign Policy, a publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Perkovich noted the two countries could negotiate a detailed verifiable settlement based on "non-weaponised …
What do you think went wrong with scientific progress and the scientific establishments in Europe after the Second World War? The Second World War was a period of rapid technical achievement. Radar, jet engines and nuclear energy were successfully put to use in a very short period of time. As …
INTERNATIONAL Monetary Fund statistics show military spending in the world, excluding the countries of the former Soviet Union, fell from 3.9 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) in 1986 to 3.1 per cent in 1992. The fund predicts a further decline to 2.3 per cent of global GDP …
IN BUT one example of the heady new world opening up to civilian scientists after the end of the Cold War, biologists used the US navy's formerly top secret underwater listening devices to track a blue whale for 43 days. Marine biologist Adam S Frankel said the surveillance system has …
THE US has extended its nine-month moratorium on testing of nuclear weapons that expired in July. It abandoned plans to conduct nine underground nuclear tests and says it will not resume testing unless another country first conducts tests. This marks a retreat by the Clinton administration in the face of …
IRAQ'S nuclear weapons programme has "been pounded into the ground by bombs, inspections and disruptions," says Robert Kelly, the leader of an International Atomic Energy Agency inspection team. Kelly said there was no point in keeping UN sanctions against Iraq in place solely for dismantling the country's nuclear programme because …
US TREASURY secretary Lloyd Benen said his country favoured World Bank funding of programmes to help people affected by war, civil strife and economic mismanagement, and demanded specific targets be set for the purpose. The Bank president, Lewis Preston, said poverty eradication "must be at the centre of our overall …
ALASKAN Eskimos and American Indians were fed radioactive iodine at the height of the Cold War, but the project leader denies it was to learn how well American soldiers could survive in the Arctic. US Senator Frank H Murkowski has called for a federal investigation, stating, "There was no evidence …
IT IS SAD that the World Health Assembly did not accept the suggestion of AIDS campaigner Jonathan Mann, that the candidate for the director-generalship of the World Health Organisation take part in a globally broadcast debate on health issues. Mann, a candidate himself, was interested, of course, in pursuing his …
WE ARE all conscious of the problems of the global environment. However, if we are to move beyond mere recognition of these problems and address them in unison, it is necessary to reconcile our differing perceptions on the nature of these problems, to understand them in their totality, and then …
PHOTOGRAPHS of the recent devastating tornado that swept away five villages near Kandi in West Bengal's Murshidabad district show some high walls still standing amidst surrounding debris -- mute witnesses to nature's wrath. A closer look shows the walls are made of mud and they were part of the double- …
PRETORIA's disclosure of having produced and dismantled six nuclear devices has lent weight to allegations that the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) maintain double standards on nuclear non-proliferation. In a recent televised speech to the South African parliament, President F W de Klerk disclosed his country …
SINCE US President Harry S Truman proclaimed the dawning of the Age of Development in his inaugural speech on January 20, 1949, the accepted measure of a modern society"s civilisation is the standard it has achieved in science and technology. So it is that from Kashmir to Kerala, the toothbrush …
MEDIEVAL theologians would have burned Wolfgang Sachs, the editor of The Development Dictionary, and his fellow contributors as heretics and proscribed the book. A second reading has convinced me of this. A dictionary is rarely re-read, but the explosive ideas in this one demanded it. The book debunks all human …
AS THE United Nations labours to clear the mess it has been accused of creating in providing refugee relief in Somalia and in the elections and peace process in Angola, World Health Organisation director-general Hiroshi Nakajima is attempting to pre-empt complaints of still another delay. He called on the international …
NO SOONER had the Shetland Islands oil spill been brought under control, reports came in of oil tankers running aground off Indonesia and the Nicobar islands. And it was not all that long ago, that oil wells were wrecked as a weapon of war during the fighting in the Gulf. …
