Countries

Pssst! I've got a secret that can save you money. You tip too much when you travel overseas. In some cases, you hand out so much money in gratuities that people think you're crazy - and a little foolish. So please stop. Otherwise, in no time at all, the entire world will be ponying up 18 percent every time they buy pommes frites in the Caribbean or tamales de pollo in Guatemala. Anna Post, one of the etiquette mavens at the Emily Post Institute, learned this lesson the hard way while living in Italy.

Congress has sent the United Nations a long-overdue message: Don't expect America to bankroll your farce of a Human Rights Council. Last month, the Senate followed earlier House action and voted to withhold about $3 million from our annual U.N. "dues" payment. The move has nothing to do with economizing. It's a fraction of the more than $400 million we pour into U.N. headquarters every year as our portion of the U.N. regular budget. But it represents that share of our dues money that flows into the Human Rights Council's kitty each year.

This is an excerpt of a New York Times editorial published Friday.LAST YEAR, when Uganda became the first country to get some relief of its external debt under a new program of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, it used the money it saved largely to eliminate fees charged for primary school. The impact was dramatic.While two years ago 54 percent of Uganda's children attended primary school, this year 90 percent do. In contrast, neighboring Zambia, which spends five times more each year on debt service than on primary education, had to raise school fees.

NEW YORK -- "What do you think of the idea of our Peace Corps?" President Kennedy once asked Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India. A good plan, Nehru answered; young Americans can learn a lot from Indian villagers.The American was not amused; he thought the Indian arrogant. But Nehru was right, and the arrogance was ours. The major impact of sending tens of thousands of Americans abroad over the past 35 years has been to create alumni who actually have a feel for the world and America's role in far off places.

WASHINGTON -- Consider it the Olympics of the diplomatic world.When the NATO summit convenes in the nation's capital this week -- the largest gathering of world leaders in the city's history -- it will require precision planning and sophisticated event coordination. The result: Downtown will turn into The NATO Zone.Thousands of government employees will be absent from work, all District of Columbia public schools will take the day off, streets will close, hotels will cater exclusively to NATO officials.

WARFARE in Kashmir will do little harm as long as it is limited to the few square miles where insurgents hold out. It can wreak havoc if India and Pakistan allow it to spread.Both countries have nuclear warheads. Pakistan is more vulnerable for reasons of geography, population and wealth. But each country is a fragile coalition of people that could dissolve under stress.Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947, when a Hindu ruler assigned the Muslim population to India.

WASHINGTON -- With as much diplomatic delicacy as it could muster, the U.S. government advised traveling Americans yesterday that dozens of countries might not fix year 2000 computer problems in time to prevent major disruptions around Jan. 1.In its first country-by-country assessment of the "Y2K bug," the State Department said many nations are likely to suffer disruptions in energy systems, communications, health care and shipping. No foreign country is free of Y2K risk, it said.The reports range from cautiously optimistic for developed countries such as Japan and France to gloomy but hopeful for Russia and other states from the former Soviet Union.

IT HAS BEEN a year of disasters, plague, torrential rains and economic catastrophe. One might expect the United States to absorb its share of pain from harsh acts of God and misdeeds of humanity. Not so.The Asian economic crisis spread worldwide, inflicting true recession in several countries, taking in Russia, touching Brazil, depressing industries in Western Canada. Many people around the world were thrown into poverty from which they see no way out.The world banking crisis slowed the U.S. economy, making the Federal Reserve Board more lenient on interest rates.

World needs treaty's criminal court -- a Canadian viewI note that your editorial ("World Court proposal is deeply flawed," July 22) acknowledges the need for an International Criminal Court. I am disappointed, however, that you dismiss so lightly the proposed treaty to create such a court as it was adopted in Rome by 120 countries.Widespread killings of civilians in Rwanda and Bosnia -- genocide is not too strong a word -- have highlighted the need for an international criminal court. The international tribunals established in those cases are a good first step.

A UNITED NATIONS survey on Africa, framed by such morbid descriptions as "devastating mortality toll" and "extremely shocking levels of prevalence," found that AIDS will reduce the population in some countries by 25 percent in the next five to 10 years.That is a staggering prospect, with implications not only for health but politics, economics, food supplies, shelter, mental health attitudes, the elderly and youth -- every facet of existence on that continent.Worldwide, those most affected by the pandemic are between ages 10 and 24. Of some 7,000 new HIV infections daily, half are in that age group.

WASHINGTON - What kind of relationship do Americans want to build with the world's 6 billion other people in the years ahead? This question is urgent, because the past seven years have seen an unprecedented drop in our country's global favorability rating. In today's hyper-connected world, that has huge consequences for Washington's ability to protect American interests. To fix this problem, many experts - and even the presidential candidates - are promoting agendas to rebuild America's position of world leadership.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S.-led effort to choke off the financing used by al-Qaida and other terrorist groups is foundering because an array of setbacks at home and abroad has undermined the Bush administration's highly touted counterterrorism weapon, according to current and former officials and independent experts. In some cases, extremist groups have managed to blunt financial anti-terror tools by finding new ways to raise, transfer and spend their money. In other cases, the administration's campaign has stumbled because of legal difficulties and interagency infighting, officials and experts say. But the most serious problems have come from fractures and mistrust within the increasingly fragile coalition of nations that the United States admits it needs to target financiers of terrorism and to stanch the flow of funding from wealthy donors to extremist causes around the world.

From the work of celebrities such as Bono to large charities such as the Gates Foundation, unprecedented global attention has been focused recently on reducing poverty in Africa. While images of Africa are effective in raising awareness of the issue, little attention has been paid to the problems in our current efforts to alleviate poverty. It is increasingly apparent that our aid - and trade - policies are not really supporting economic growth in impoverished countries. Nor are they enhancing our own security.

Congress has sent the United Nations a long-overdue message: Don't expect America to bankroll your farce of a Human Rights Council. Last month, the Senate followed earlier House action and voted to withhold about $3 million from our annual U.N. "dues" payment. The move has nothing to do with economizing. It's a fraction of the more than $400 million we pour into U.N. headquarters every year as our portion of the U.N. regular budget. But it represents that share of our dues money that flows into the Human Rights Council's kitty each year.

World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick is bringing a touch of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to rescue the poverty-fighting agency's slumping business. The former Goldman vice chairman has concluded, after two months on the job, that the group must behave more like a Wall Street investment firm to halt a worldwide slide in lending. At stake is the bank's survival in a rising sea of private capital. At Zoellick's direction, the agency is pushing sophisticated products such as loans that hedge against the risk of a commodity-price collapse or a surge in interest rates.

Pssst! I've got a secret that can save you money. You tip too much when you travel overseas. In some cases, you hand out so much money in gratuities that people think you're crazy - and a little foolish. So please stop. Otherwise, in no time at all, the entire world will be ponying up 18 percent every time they buy pommes frites in the Caribbean or tamales de pollo in Guatemala. Anna Post, one of the etiquette mavens at the Emily Post Institute, learned this lesson the hard way while living in Italy.

Pssst! I've got a secret that can save you money. You tip too much when you travel overseas. In some cases, you hand out so much money in gratuities that people think you're crazy -- and a little foolish. So please stop. Otherwise, in no time at all, the entire world will be ponying up 18 percent every time they buy pommes frites in the Caribbean or tamales de pollo in Guatemala. Anna Post, one of the etiquette mavens at the Emily Post Institute, learned this lesson the hard way while living in Italy.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration promised yesterday to find someone quickly to succeed Paul D. Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank and bring management skills to the job of healing an institution battered by the turmoil over Wolfowitz's tenure. "We want to make sure that we are selecting the best individual for the job," said Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman. "We want someone who has a real passion for lifting people out of poverty." The administration also reiterated that the next bank president should be an American, as has been the case since it was founded in the 1940s.

Describing Afghanistan last week as a country on the brink of violent conflict, Bush exhorted NATO nations to send additional troops and allow their soldiers already there to fight in the violent south and under other dangerous circumstances. ?When our commanders on the ground say to our respective countries, ?We need additional help,? our NATO countries must provide it.? President Bush

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Now that the Democrats control the House and the Senate, it's time for our national leaders to take a bipartisan approach to globalization. Although Iraq, terrorism and corruption were "extremely important" issues among voters in this election, according to the Pew Research Center, the economy was equally important. This may seem surprising given recent record highs in the stock market and an October unemployment rate of 4.4 percent - a five-year low. But many Americans see little reason to rejoice.