Developing Countries

BIOTECHNOLOGY is surely the most powerful tool ever put in the hands of agricultural research, or medical research, for that matter. Using advanced knowledge of plant genes, it is the same tool that has provided more than 100 medical products including insulin, hepatitis vaccine and products for cardio-vascular disease.But where scientists and development organizations see better health and nutrition for hundreds of millions, others see danger. There are some genuine concerns about corporate ethics and potential impacts on health and the environment.

THE BATTLE against global warming requires balancing the cross-hatching interests of many countries: rich versus poor, the industrial world versus the Third World, those with abundant fossil fuels versus those in scarcity.Finding an equitable, enforceable plan to curb carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases," which trap heat in the Earth's upper atmosphere, remains an elusive target without a single set of binding rules for the world and without United States commitment to the goal.Nearly 160 nations agreed this month in Bonn on language for further talks on how to reduce world output of these warming gases caused by fossil-fuel combustion.

WASHINGTON -- Fifty years after Americans helped rebuild a war-torn Europe with the most successful foreign assistance program in history, the United States has become the most tight-fisted aid donor in the industrialized world. It's dead last among modern nations in the portion of its wealth that goes to help poor countries.Italy is more generous; so is Spain. Canada gives nearly four times as great a share of its economic output to developing countries as the United States doles out, and tiny Denmark gives 10 times as much.

THE INTERNATIONAL agreement on global warming represents an environmental milestone, with the first legal obligations of the industrialized world to reduce heat-trapping fossil fuel emissions.While troublesome details remain to be resolved, and ultimate ratification of the treaty by the more than 150 participating nations is uncertain, the accord gets the world moving in the right direction to address potentially serious climatic change.The United States finally committed itself to a target of 7 percent reduction of greenhouse gases from 1990 levels; other industrialized countries have similar targets under the agreement that was two years in the making.

KYOTO, Japan -- A conference that is supposed to cap more than two years of negotiations on what to do about global warming opened yesterday amid widespread concern that too many hard issues remained to allow the completion of an effective agreement.Melinda Kimble, a senior State Department official who is leading the U.S. delegation in Kyoto, hinted at some flexibility in the American position on setting targets for reducing gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.Scientists advising the negotiators say that if emissions are not reduced, the average global surface temperature will rise by 2 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.

A consumer health organization is accusing the Johns Hopkins University and other U.S. research institutions of violating international rules of ethics by withholding proven AIDS treatments from women and children in overseas experiments.Public Citizen Health Research charged that nine federally funded experiments could cause about 1,000 newborns in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean to die needlessly. Six of the studies are under Hopkins supervision."It's Tuskegee Part Two, and this time many more people will die," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the Washington-based advocacy group.

NEW DELHI -- Two faces of Asia, one modern and one traditional, are in competition as Japan and India lobby for one of the new permanent seats expected to be created on the United Nations Security Council. Which, if either, is the true face of Asia?Japan decisively won a test skirmish last October, but India had support of major countries, including Russia and China and France.Japan lays its claim on its position as an economic superpower, more weighty than China, which already owns a permanent seat and a veto on the Security Council.

NAHUEL HUAPI NATIONAL PARK, Argentina -- Framed by the Patagonian wilderness, President Carlos Saul Menem of Argentina appeared with President Clinton yesterday to endorse Clinton's call for developing nations to join the effort to restrict gases that contribute to global warming.Clinton is seeking to negotiate limits on emissions for all countries, including developing ones. Many of those countries say that industrialized countries that have benefited most from polluting should bear the costs of addressing it.Menem said, "We agree with the United States when you say that a global problem such as climate change requires a global answer, coming from all countries."

WASHINGTON -- Cancer deaths will double in many countries and heart diseases will soar worldwide over the next 25 years, the World Health Organization predicts, in part because of lethal habits spreading from the United States.The rise in these diseases will be especially troublesome for developing countries already battling infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, WHO says in its annual report, being released today.A big part of the cause of the increase, the report's author said, is that the United States has helped sell cigarette smoking and a fatty diet to the world.

Educators from developing countries around the world visited staff members at Woodside Elementary School yesterday to share ideas on how to include disabled children in regular classes and provide them with needed help."

In 1964, when the U.S. surgeon general's office published the famed report that officially confirmed the link between smoking and cancer, nearly half of American adults smoked. To understand just how smoky life was back then, watch any episode of Mad Men, the TV series set on Madison Avenue in the early 1960s. Without a second thought, almost every character lights up regularly, at the office, at home, in restaurants, bars, cars, even at the dinner table in front of the kids. Happily, those days are over.

NUSA DUA, Indonesia -- In a tumultuous final session at international climate talks in which the U.S. delegates were booed, the world's nations committed yesterday to negotiating a new deal by 2009 that would set the world on a course toward halving emissions of heat-trapping gases by 2050. The United States, diplomatically isolated and worried about being blamed for the expected collapse of the talks yesterday, was forced to join the world in agreeing that developing countries should be compensated for pushing ahead to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, a major demand of developing economic giants such as China and India.

President Bush earlier this month urged the Group of Eight to recommit to successfully concluding the Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations. Now, the United States is being blamed for the talks' collapse last weekend. The final rift among representatives from the United States, the European Union, Australia, Brazil, India and Japan was sparked by the question of agriculture - the same issue that has made the climate of the talks tense from the start. The EU, especially, but also India and Brazil - the coordinators of the Group of 20 developing countries that share common agricultural interests - held the U.S. responsible for the failure of the talks because of its refusal to cut the subsidies shelled out to American farmers.

It has pledges from 180 industrialized nations, but the effort to provide free universal primary education for all children in the developing world by 2015, which is part of the United Nations Millennium Project, is still short on a key ingredient: money. Last month, the United Kingdom pledged $1.5 billion a year for the next 10 years to the cause. The United States, which has an economy six times as large as that of the U.K., is way behind. It's time for America to step up and pay more of its fair share.

Ingrid B. Smith was a connoisseur of low-paying jobs - baby-sitting, ice cream vending, fast-food slinging -before taking a better position: CEO. The cleaning company that she and husband, Larry A. Smith, started is still in business after four years, and the East Baltimore residents say needed loans are a big part of the reason. Tiny loans: $1,500 to buy equipment; $3,000, more recently, to help them expand. Though such "microfinancing" is better known as an effort to put sewing machines and other inexpensive business tools into the hands of villagers in the developing world, advocates think it's an equally good strategy for struggling Americans trying to improve their lives.

THE FIRST real sign of the end of summer arrived when students, me included, zipped up their backpacks, organized their folders and headed back to school. For some, this year marks the beginning of a new chapter in their lives - the end of elementary school and the beginning of the dreaded middle school. For some, this year will be their first, for others, their 12th. But for more than 100 million children around the globe, this school year does not exist. Whether it is because they must work all day to bring money home to their families, because the schoolhouse is too far from home or simply because a schoolhouse does not exist, over 100 million children ages 6 to 12 are not enrolled in school.

GENEVA - The World Trade Organization's highest court issued a final ruling yesterday ordering the European Union to stop dumping subsidized sugar illegally on global markets or face punishment. The decision by the WTO's appellate court in Geneva gave the European Union up to 15 months to bring itself into compliance with global trade rules. The panel rejected calls by Brazil, Thailand and Australia, which filed the original complaint, for a 90-day deadline to comply. The verdict was nonetheless another victory for Brazil, after Washington lost a similar appeal last month over its cotton subsidies.

A Johns Hopkins-affiliated public health organization has received a $75 million federal grant to help reduce the number of childbirth-related deaths in developing countries. JHPIEGO, a Fells Point-based nonprofit that focuses on the health of women and families, is to announce today a five-year award from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The money will be used primarily to train local nurses, doctors and midwives in developing nations in low-cost lifesaving techniques ranging from infection control to preventing postpartum hemorrhage.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A Palo Alto, Calif., entrepreneur has come up with a technological fix for a problem that has dogged human-rights activists in developing countries for years: How do you keep sensitive information from the prying eyes of the authorities who could pose a threat to those offering details of abuse? Jim Fruchterman, chief executive officer of the nonprofit software firm Benetech, thinks the answer is Martus, a messaging and database product he developed that protects data with sophisticated encryption.

WASHINGTON -- The seven big industrial nations endorsed a new approach yesterday to dealing with financial problems in developing countries, saying they would work together to make it easier for governments in dire economic straits to repay debts more slowly. The initiative was the most concrete to emerge from two days of meetings here among finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 7 nations. It could produce some of the most fundamental changes in international finance since the Asian financial crisis of 1998 rocked the global economy.