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USA
President
Bush continues to scrap environmentally friendly laws  and
projects dating back to the 1950s. Bush has pushed for oil companies
to exploit the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve; cancelled laws
banning new logging roads in national forests and pulled out of
the Kyoto global warming agreement. He also refuses to join the
World Criminal Court; considers the UN ineffective and irrelevant;
has pulled out of nuclear missile accords and favours developing
a new generation of nuclear bombs as well as the weaponization
of space.
CANADA
Recent moves by the government and courts to loosen marijuana
laws have raised concern here and in the U.S. Toronto police stopped
laying charges for possessing small amounts of pot while politicians
and the media debated turning pot possession into an offense punishable
only by a fine. Many argue that courts and jails and police resources
are being diverted from dealing with more serious crimes, and
lifetime criminal records for minor pot offenders were unfair.
A large majority of Canadians agree. Police forces are fighting
the new proposals.
EUROPE
As the United States shuns several international treaties and
institutions, the countries of Europe have been growing closing
together. Most recently the people of the Czech Republic overwhelmingly
voted to join the European Union (EU) and Latvia and Estonia will
vote this fall. The EU has its own currency (the Euro) its own
president and parliament and oversees many of the laws for nearly
all of Europe. Currently made up of fifteen countries the EU is
expanding eastward in May of 2004 adding 10 additional countries
including Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania.
AFRICA
AIDS continues to have a massive impact on youth in the
developing world but especially in Africa. Infection rates for
15-24 year-olds soar as high as 1 in 3 for young women in Botswana,
and there are over 11 million children orphaned by AIDS. The impact
of the disease on these societies is absolutely crushing, as it
takes away the strongest and most productive age group (15-45)
and puts a massive burden of health care costs on those free of
the disease. In a very positive move, the U.S. government has
promised $3 billion a year for five years to help fight the disease.
GERMANY
The 50-nation International Whaling Commission voted
to strengthen its ban on hunting and killing whales. It has been
called the most decisive move since the original ban on whaling
in 1986. Norway (which ignores the ban), Iceland and Japan all
wanted to have the ban dropped to allow them to kill more whales
and export whale meat and blubber. The three whaling countries
point out that the population of a common whale, the minke, has
been increasing 7% a year and that a small hunt (while avoiding
other endangered species) would barely dent their growing numbers.
ETHOPIA
Archaeologists here have discovered three 160,000 year-old skulls
that appear to be very similar to modern humans. Some scientists
claim the find supports the common theory that the human species
developed fully in Africa and then spread out around to populate
the world 200,000 to 100,000 years ago, outlasting or wiping out
other species of manlike creatures, such as the Neanderthals.
In a recent study of ancient human and Neanderthal DNA it was
found that the Neanderthals made little or no contribution to
the modern human gene pool.
MIDDLE
EAST
Bloodshed continues here with peace between Israel and the Palestinians
proving harder to achieve than Pres. Bush realized when he pushed
his “roadmap” for a free Palestinian state. The situation
is in a cycle of suicide bombs and Israeli military clamp-downs
that have killed thousands in the last three years. There have
been growing calls for UN peacekeepers as the only solution, an
idea that Israel considers an insult. Meanwhile, the American
occupation of Iraq is looking like a very similar conflict as
freedom fighters continue to attack and kill U.S. forces daily.
CHINA
After ten years of construction the largest hydroelectric dam
project has entered its final phrase. The gates of the 630-foot
high Three Gorges Dam have been closed and the mighty Yangtze
River has been blocked to form a massive reservoir lake 600 km
long. By the completion of the project in 2009 over 1.2 million
people will have been resettled as the reservoir submerges villages,
factories, farms and tombs. The Chinese plan is to create a huge
electrical generation capability while at the same time controlling
the flood-prone Yangtze River.
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