THIS WEEK'S GLOBAL OUTLOOK
Weekly Outlook for November 9: This week’s outlook reports on America’s lift of the HIV travel ban; Philadelphia’s transit strike ending; the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall; China’s wooing of Africa; and Japan’s philosophy of “Yuai.” Click Read More for the entire report.
The Weekly Outlook is an editorial briefing for wejetset’s online magazine. Each week we scan international news and aggregate the stories that will likely impact their respective region and possibly the world. From economic issues to politics, we strive to deliver news links that will be useful to our readers as they navigate their local and global spaces.
After two decades – a stigmatizing ban is lifted. “For 22 years America has banned HIV-positive people from entering the country without a hard-to-get waiver for fear of the virus spreading. It has not hosted a big international AIDS conference in more than a decade either, because many HIV-positive activists would not be allowed to attend. Only a dozen other countries, including China and Russia, have similar restrictions, and there is no evidence that these bans halt the spread of AIDS. Instead, many say, it makes things worse by stigmatising carriers of the virus.”
Last night the Eagles lost but at least transit is back in operation. “Philadelphia transit workers reached a deal early on Monday to end a strike that shut down bus, subway and trolley service in America’s sixth most populous city for almost a week, officials said.”
Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – signalling the beginning of the end for communism in Europe. Among the many reports and retrospectives occuring today. One of our favorites is one organized by the NY TImes. Check out their reader submitted photos in memory of the wall before and after its fall.
In an interesting report coming from Time Magazine – China woos Africa. “On Oct. 20, China announced, almost casually, that it was canceling 150 items of maturing government debt owed to it by 32 African countries. The announcement came a few days before a meeting between China’s top legislator Wu Bangguo and Kenneth Marende, the Speaker of Kenya’s National Assembly, to discuss cooperation between the two countries. Further, on Nov. 8, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was to attend the opening ceremony of the 4th Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation to be held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.”
Perhaps it’s more than a descriptive word. Many question Yukio’s philosophy. “Even before Yukio Hatoyama became Japan’s prime minister in August, people in the country and abroad have tried to grasp his personal philosophy of yuai, an idea that translates loosely into fraternal love and has been ridiculed by the press and politicians alike. The conservative Sankei Shimbun newspaper worried about the concept’s origins, tracing it back to the liberté, egalité, and fraternité of the French Revolution and comparing Yukio Hatoyama to a modern-day Robespierre, albeit sans guillotine. The moderate newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun doubted something so lofty could be understood, much less applied on a global level. And despite Hatoyama’s assertion that his brand of fraternity is combative, rooted as it is in revolution, his political opponents have derided it as impractical and as mushy as ice cream.”
GLOBAL AFFAIRS: WEEKLY OUTLOOK 11.2
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