Archive for the ‘World current affairs’ Category
What is the scale of world poverty?
April 16th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Global poverty rates continued to fall in the first four years of the 21st century according to new estimates published in the “World Development Indicators 2007”, released this week by the World Bank. The proportion of people living on less than $1 a day fell to 18.4 percent in 2004, leaving an estimated 985 million […]
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Why doesn’t China stop the genocide in Darfur?
April 5th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
It is beginning to look as if only China, as Sudan’s biggest economic and diplomatic supporter and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, can stop the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan where as many as 400,000 people have been killed since 2003 and more than 3 million others may face a […]
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The kidnapping of military personnel
April 5th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Naturally we are all delighted at the release by the Iranians of the 15 British naval personnel who were detained for 13 days. But many questions remain including: Were the British really in Iraqi or Iranian waters or, to put it another way, were they in waters that the Iranians think are theirs (see this […]
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Overseas aid falls
April 4th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
On the homepage of my web site, you will see the banner of the “Make Poverty History” campaign and I featured the issue of overseas aid on this blog at the time of the 2005 Gleneagles summit which promised a dramatic increase in aid. This week, however, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) […]
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Forgotten world (75): United Arab Emirates
March 30th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
The United Arab Emirates is a Middle Eastern country situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula, comprising seven emirates: Abu Dhabi, Ajmān, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain. These emirates were once little more than oil outposts in the desert, but they are fast reinventing themselves as a cultural and recreational hub […]
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Forgotten world (74): Brazil
March 29th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Brazil is the largest and most populous country in South America – it takes up almost half the continent – and the fifth largest in the world in both area and population. The country was colonized by Portugal and it is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas. It is a multiracial nation with a […]
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Forgotten world (73): Mauritania
March 28th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Mauritania is a mineral-rich country in north-west Africa which is twice the size of France. Its 3.2 million population mixes white and black Moors and black Mauritanians of several ethnic groups. The white Moorish elite have traditionally held power and black citizens have been discriminated against. In spite of a 1981 decree outlawing slavery, a […]
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Forgotten world (72): Cambodia
March 27th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Cambodia gained full independence from the French in 1953. Following a five-year civil war in which the Americans backed General Lol Non, the Communist Khmer Rouge took power in 1975 and, over the next 3 years 8 months and 20 days, a massive collectivisation programme resulted in the death of maybe 2.5 million of the […]
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Forgotten world (71): Kosovo
March 26th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
A dominant theme of NightHawk is that we live in a wide and varied world and we should know more about other countries and other cultures and learn to respect them. Therefore, on 14 occasions now, I’ve had a week-long feature devoted to parts of the world that tend to be under-reported or even forgotten. […]
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50 years of the European Union
March 25th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
I am half English and half Italian and my wife is half Welsh and half Czech, so we like to think of ourselves as good Europeans. Certainly I have consistently supported the Eurorean Union project and voted for UK membership in the referendum of 1975. Today marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the […]
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