In pictures: Charles Taylor and the Liberia and Sierra Leone wars
Author: WHES
Charles Taylor, former Liberian leader, found guilty of war crimes
THE HAGUE — Charles Taylor, the U.S.-educated guerrilla leader who fought his way to the presidency of Liberia, was convicted Thursday of war crimes and crimes against humanity — including murder, rape and slavery — for his role in assisting a bloody rebel movement in neighboring Sierra Leone.
Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai family connections–the close relatives of former Chinese Politburo member Bo Xilai and his wife, Gu Kailai, may have profited from the couple’s political influence
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As China official Bo Xilai rose, his family’s wealth grew
DALIAN, China — Just a few weeks before his dramatic fall from power, Bo Xilai wrote an inscription in calligraphy, praising the Chongqing Water Assets Management Company, and urging support for its operations.
Jim Yong Kim secures World Bank job amid criticism of US domination of role. Seoul-born Kim beats Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who said the decision was not made on merit.
The World Bank named Korean-born doctor Jim Yong Kim as its new president today amid criticism that the role had once more gone to a US-nominated candidate.
Guinea-Bissau premier, front runner, is deposed in a coup
DAKAR, Senegal — A grimly familiar sequence of gunfire in the capital, military communiqués on the radio and the arrest of government officials is repeating itself in the small coastal state of Guinea-Bissau — apparently the latest West African nation to succumb to a coup d’état.
Murder aside, China inquiry puts couple’s wealth on trial
BEIJING — What began as a scandal involving the mysterious death of Neil Heywood, the British businessman whose body was found in November in a Chongqing hotel room, appears to be evolving into a broader investigation into the wealth of a politically powerful Chinese couple, Bo Xilai and his wife, Gu Kailai, and their financial interests.
Across India, nepotism as a way of life
NEW DELHI — The Indian upper class, like royalty, is sexually transmitted. Politics, business, mainstream cinema and other occupations where talent is subordinate to lineage are dominated by family cartels, who plant their own over the rest. The Indian elite is a system where there is a 100 percent reservation for its own genetic material. And the most underrated joke in the country is when this class joins the middle class in lamenting reservations for the poorest Indians from the “backward” castes in colleges and jobs.
Republicans’ budgets imply deep cuts in programs helping the poor
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Food stamps helped reduce poverty rate, study finds
WASHINGTON — A new study by the Agriculture Department has found that food stamps, one of the country’s largest social safety net programs, reduced the poverty rate substantially during the recent recession. The food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, reduced the poverty rate by nearly 8 percent in 2009, the most recent year included in the study, a significant impact for a social program whose effects often go unnoticed by policy makers.
