NEW YORK — The U.N. Security Council voted to renew the peacekeeping mission to Western Sahara late last night, barely making the deadline to extend the mission to the disputed North African territory after sharp disagreements over the final text. A rift in the council hardened after the U.N. mediator in talks between the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front, a Sahrawi rebel group, said last week that independence for the territory was no longer realistically possible. The vote to renew the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (commonly referred to by the French acronym MINURSO) was [...]
SLOVAKIA LAW SEEN AS DANGER TO PRESS FREEDOM — As of June 1, anyone mentioned in a Slovak newspaper article will be entitled to a rebuttal in the same publication, according to provisions of a new law that has angered media freedom advocates and raised fears that official and self-censorship may be the law’s result. Under the law, anyone who objects to the use of their name in an article may complain to newspaper editors, who then will be responsible for printing a response by the complainer to the original reference, unless the paper can convince a court it is [...]
Though international policy analysts — past and present — have lavished attention on arms races, oil wars, blood diamonds, and other such sources of insecurity, few have spilled ink on an issue that now threatens global stability: the rising cost of grain. No surprise. Arms races have been the subject of Star Wars and James Bond movies, and conflict over diamonds carried the story in “Blood Diamond,” with the dashing Leonardo DiCaprio and the luscious Jennifer Connelly. Writing about rice and wheat is just not as sexy. But average food prices have risen 45 percent in the past nine months. [...]
