In Our Circles

American Base Town in Northern Japan

According to the 2006 report, 14 of the 38 most valuable large bases in the world are concentrated in Japan. This includes the top three: the Navy base at Yokosuka, home port for a nuclear aircraft carrier ($3.88 billion); the Air Force base at Kadena, the largest air terminal in Asia ($3.82 billion); and the airbase at Misawa ($3.71 billion).

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Standing Up for Democracy in Ecuador

The uprising in Ecuador that occurred on September 30 shook the world and sparked a debate about the reason for the unrest. Groups of police and members of the armed forces, disgruntled over a law that, among other aspects, eliminates police bonuses, took to the streets in protest. When President Rafael Correa went out to talk to the police, he was attacked with tear gas and later held captive in the police hospital as police officers continued to attack unarmed citizens.

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The Spectacle of the Disappeared

Translating a play usually involves only translating the source text’s language while retaining details of periods, characters, names, settings, etc. In the Philippines, a concerted nationalistic effort begun in the late 1960s saw classics of world theater translated into Tagalog.

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U.S. Scrambles to Save Peace Talks

With a key Arab League meeting delayed until Friday, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is scrambling to keep one-month-old direct Israeli- Palestinian peace talks alive.

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The War Addicts

On Monday, The Washington Post ran the first of three pieces adapted from Bob Woodward’s new book Obama’s Wars, a vivid account of the way the U.S. high command boxed the Commander-in-Chief into the smallest of Afghan corners.

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Rekindling China-Japan Conflict: The Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands Clash

Why did the Japan Coast Guard, on September 7th, arrest a Chinese fishing boat captain and detain his ship, setting off the most serious China-Japan conflict in decades? Investigative journalist Tanaka Sakai offers no definitive answer in the following historically-and geopolitically-informed analysis of the roots of the conflict. He does show, definitively, that the Japanese action marked a striking departure from policies that have been in effect since at least 1978 when China and Japan resumed diplomatic relations and Deng Xiaoping crafted an agreement to defer action on competing claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands.

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MDGs: How Far We’ve Come and What Still Has to be Done

Thanks to the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), standards world leaders agreed on in 2000 to lift the poor, the sick and the hungry by 2015, professionally-attended births are at an all-time high in Africa. Benin is most improved, and even war-scarred DRC and Angola have risen to the challenge, with Angola halving maternal deaths.

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2010: Year of the Nini

If Time magazine had any inkling of sense, it would name the Nini the person of the year for 2010. Just what, you might ask, is a Nini? Adopted in Mexico during the crisis, the slang word means a young person who does not work or study.

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