In the post 9/11 era there is considerable opportunity for the media profession to give insight into what has compelled one side to act in a way that has enraged and empowered another side to act in a manner that further caused hostility or anger to become entrenched.
PHILIP MANGANO is credited with beginning to do what was unthinkable only years ago: eradicating homelessness in the United States. The silver-coiffed, dark-suited "Homelessness Czar" was appointed by the former president in 2002, and continues in the Obama Administration.
One of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2007, Mangano has persuaded 350 US jurisdictions to adopt 10-year plans to end homelessness, and spread his ideas to Canada and Australia.
Mangano fashions himself as an abolitionist, intentionally invoking the anti-slavery rhetoric.
The epiphany that convinced the former band manager to dedicate his life to working for the "poorest poor" came when he was watching a Franco Zeffirelli film about St Francis of Assisi. He calls homelessness a "moral, spiritual and humanitarian disgrace", a "human tragedy".
However well-meaning, he condemns attempts to simply help people survive on the streets - or to make them "prove" their fitness for housing through mental health and other programmes - as entrenching the problem.
His first targets were the hardest cases: the 10 per cent of homeless who were long term and mentally ill. Between 2005 and 2007, this group fell by 30 per cent from 176,000 on any given night to 124,000. The total number of people living on the street or in shelters fell 12 per cent to 671,888.
A report published last month by Deloitte, a consultancy, predicts that the number of Americans travelling abroad for treatment will soar from 750,000 last year to 6m by 2010 and reach 10m by 2012 (see chart). Its authors reckon that this exodus will be worth $21 billion a year to developing countries in four years’ time. Europe’s state-funded systems still give patients every reason to stay at home, but even there, private patients may start to travel more as it becomes cheaper and easier to get treated abroad.
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One motive is to save money. America’s health inflation has consistently outpaced economic growth, making it the most expensive health market in the world. The average price at good facilities abroad for a range of common medical procedures is, by Deloitte’s reckoning, barely 15% of the price a patient would have to pay in the United States (see table)
The United Nations General assembly has approved former prime minister Helen Clark as the new head of the UN Development Programme.
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The position is the third highest in the UN, behind the secretary-general and his deputy.
The former prime minister - from 1999 to 2008 - gained unanimous approval from the 192-nation General Assembly.
The UNDP oversees a global development network with an estimated US$13 billion ($23.12 billion) in resources. It operates in 166 nations.
Others in the U.S. government, including CIA officials, fear the consequences of taking a man into court who was waterboarded on largely false assumptions, because of the prospect of interrogation methods being revealed in detail and because of the chance of an acquittal that might set a legal precedent. Instead, they would prefer to send him to Jordan.
LONDON — A Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said.
MIAMI — A federal jury on Thursday convicted the son of the former president of Liberia of torturing suspected opponents of his father’s government. It was the first case brought under a 1994 law that makes it a crime for United States citizens to commit torture overseas.
A former Italian intelligence chief's testimony obtained by Reuters says that this conversation took place about 16 months before prosecutors say the C.I.A. grabbed a radical Muslim cleric in Milan and flew him to Egypt, where, he says, he was tortured.
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A court in Munich issued arrest warrants last month for 13 people suspected of being C.I.A. agents who were accused of kidnapping a German of Lebanese descent and flying him to Afghanistan, where he, too, said he was tortured.
