Six In The Morning

It's OK You Can Tell Me I'm Hu Jintao! Really

China Leader’s Limits Come Into Focus as U.S. Visit Nears
With President Hu Jintao at the helm, China has become a $5 trillion industrial colossus, a growing military force, and, it sometimes appears, a model of authoritarian decisiveness, navigating out of the global financial crisis and sealing its position as the world’s fastest rising power.
But as Mr. Hu prepares to visit Washington this week in an attempt to defuse tensions with the United States, Obama administration officials are grappling with what they describe as a more complex reality.

Let Us Help Will'll Make Sure Your Country Remains Poor

Poor countries with IMF loans 'divert aid from public health'
Poor countries that borrow from the International Monetary Fund are spending just one cent in every dollar received in health aid on improving the medical care of their populations, according to new Oxford University-led research.

The study, published in the International Journal of Health Services, said there were signs that the tough loan conditions imposed by the IMF were leading to health aid being diverted for other uses.

In an investigation of more than 100 low and middle-income countries, the report sought to explain why increased aid spending had left many countries well off track to hit the United Nations millennium development goals (MDGs) for health, which include a two-thirds reduction in infant mortality and a three-quarter decline in maternal mortality.

Being Right Doesn't Mean Anyone Will Listen

Ike was right all along: The danger of the military-industrial complex
If you doubt, half a century on, that Dwight Eisenhower had it right, then consider the advertisements on WTOP, the Washington region's all-news radio station. Every big metro area in the US has one, where car dealerships tout their bargains, and fast food chains promote a new special offer.


WTOP has all that. But it boasts other advertisers too, with names such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.

Revolution Is Followed By The Reallity Of The Aftermath

The brutal truth about Tunisia
The end of the age of dictators in the Arab world? Certainly they are shaking in their boots across the Middle East, the well-heeled sheiks and emirs, and the kings, including one very old one in Saudi Arabia and a young one in Jordan, and presidents – another very old one in Egypt and a young one in Syria – because Tunisia wasn't meant to happen. Food price riots in Algeria, too, and demonstrations against price increases in Amman. Not to mention scores more dead in Tunisia, whose own despot sought refuge in Riyadh – exactly the same city to which a man called Idi Amin once fled.

Challenging The Mullahs On Human Rights

Jailed for 11 years for challenging state abuses
In the first of a monthly series to mark the 50th birthday of Amnesty International, a profile of human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who is at present incarcerated in an Iranian jail

NASRIN SOTOUDEH is one of Iran’s best-known human rights lawyers. Her past clients include juvenile offenders facing the death penalty, victims of domestic violence and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. She also defended men and women whose only crime was to participate in peaceful protests following the disputed Iranian presidential election in 2009.

The Iranian government is determined to silence all opposition. Detainees have been held incommunicado for days, weeks or even months while relatives are unable to find out where they are being held, or on what charges.

The Torturer Of Haiti Returns How Unlucky For Them

'Baby Doc' Duvalier returns to tense Haiti
Reporting from Port-au-Price, Haiti — Jean-Claude Duvalier, the once-reviled dictator of Haiti known as Baby Doc, made a surprise return to this country Sunday evening, ending almost a quarter-century of exile and sending out shockwaves of speculation over his motives and intentions.

He arrives at a critical moment for a country still struggling to recover from last year's catastrophic earthquake, and now locked in a political crisis that has left it unable to elect a new president.