Don't believe the hype. New polling data shows that a strong majority of Americans have a favorable image of the United Nations. And even in the heat of an election season, warm feelings for the UN are bi-partisan.
With only days remaining until diplomats are due to arrive in Tianjin for the final round of climate negotiations before the Cancun summit, scientists have provided a grim reminder of how little progress governments have made in addressing the threat of climate change.
A few high-profile American executives shared their perspectives on sustainable business. They offered a first-hand view of government shortcomings, the powers and limitations of private sector action, and the role US citizens have played in stymieing the global climate talks.
President Obama's official agenda for the UN Summit will be released sometime on Friday. On Wednesday, at an address at Johns Hopkins School, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Esther Brimmer gave a thematic overview of the issues and messages that the United States will be pushing next week.
So John Bolton is considering a vanity run at the White House. What if he wins? Imagine, for a moment, that it is May 2013. President Bolton has been in office for 100 days. What would a John Bolton agenda look like?
Peter Slevin takes a look at the Obama administration's policy for dealing with illigal immigrants in custody and finds a sharp increase in the number of migrants the United States is deporting. From the Washington Post:
It is not often that the President of the United States weighs in directly on debates at the UN Economic and Social Council.
The UN Development Program held a panel discussion in the Millennium Development Goals at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC this afternoon. What made this gathering particularly interesting was the presence of two representatives from the USAID, Thomas Beck and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, who in their opening remarks gave the audience a peek inside the yet-to-be-released Obama administration strategy for meeting the MDGS by 2015.
Last night, the United States agreed to the passage of a Security Council "Presidential Statement" on the violence aboard a Gaza bound flotilla raided by Israeli commandos. Is this the "tipping point" in U.S.-Israel relations that Digby and other may have been predicting?
The Security Council statement on Israeli peace flotilla raid Security Council seems to say three things.
1) It condemns the raid.