Quicklinks 2009.11.27

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei May Be Iran’s Last Supreme Leader? (Newsweek) Emirates, K.S.A., Kuwait Push for Nuclear Power (UPI) Piracy in Full Swing and Swings Wider (New York Times) Brazil: Industrialized Nations Should Pay to Save the Amazon (Terra Editors,...

Measuring Global Happiness

How do you measure global happiness? If you go by Marcellus, who tells Horatio “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” then you would have never guessed that Danes are the happiest people on Earth. That’s according to Professor Ruut Veenhoven...

Why U.S. Counterterrorism Efforts Are Misguided

Tennessee believes Osama bin Laden will attack the Mule Day Parade. Indiana thinks its popcorn factory is a target. To fight the “war on terrorism,” the U.S. Air Force has given away US$450,000 to a group of scientists to study blogs. Early conclusions are...

Kofi Annan: ‘A Bit Envious of FIFA’

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan wishes the whole world could unite around diseases, poverty and human rights like it did around the 2006 World Cup. In a frank interview with Spiegel on wide-ranging subjects, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says he is “a bit...

Israel Caught With Its Pants Down

It’s time for Israel to eliminate Hezbollah since no one else, including the U.N. and the U.S., is willing to do it. (Photo:Courtesy Israel Defense Forces) The Israeli military let its guard down, giving Hezbollah and Hamas the perfect opportunity to test the...

South African “Taxi War”

It’s not a case of road rage. It is a real war that claimed the lives of thousands of real, innocent people. It involved hit men, Molotov cocktails, assault rifles and corrupt fat cats vying for routes. This violent war resulted from poor or lack of oversight of...