Associated Press Chicago Tribune, on reforming the UN The mere mention of reform suggests cool breezes and the promise of better days ahead. Especially when the entity slated for reform is an increasingly irrelevant United Nations characterized by endless talk
Associated Press Chicago Tribune, on reforming the UN
The mere mention of reform suggests cool breezes and the promise of better days ahead. Especially when the entity slated for reform is an increasingly irrelevant United Nations characterized by endless talk and inaction.
Just one problem: It will be difficult for any reforms to build confidence in the UN until it extricates itself from an Oil-for-Food quagmire largely of its own making. While Secretary General Kofi Annan airs reform proposals from a blue-ribbon advisory panel, damning revelations continue to reveal how the Oil-for-Food scandal propped up Saddam Hussein and victimized suffering Iraqis.
So while in theory reform is appealing, it can’t be an excuse for the UN to shrink from its most urgent imperative: exposing and seeing to the punishment of every government, every company and every influential individual who illicitly profited from Oil-for-Food.
St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, on retirements at risk
President Bush seems determined to privatize part of Social Security by allowing individual workers to invest a portion of their retirement payments in the stock market. … Can individuals rely on themselves to make the best investment choices?
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that the answer may be no. …
One study of the difference in performance between professionally managed pension funds and self-directed 401(k)s found that the pension funds earned almost 0.5 percent more each year. …
This will be tricky ground for Bush to tread. If the personal account offerings under Social Security are too limited or cost too much, the effort might be seen as nothing more than a payoff to Wall Street. If too little guidance is made available, then workers could end up with a false notion that their retirements are more secure than they really are.
The Times Union, Albany, N.Y., on baseball’s steroid scandal
…Either baseball demonstrates that it understands the magnitude of the steroids scandal, or the government is going to have to intervene to save it from itself.
Baseball’s reigning slugger, Barry Bonds, has been caught, or something quite close to it, using steroids. … Jason Giambi of the New York Yankees, not so long ago a rather remarkable hitter himself, has admitted using steroids. And both of them are almost sure to get away with it.
The drug testing policy in the major leagues is a joke. It wasn’t until two years ago that steroids were banned at all. Testing didn’t begin until this year, and only occurs during the season. The first time a player is caught using steroids, it’s mandatory counseling. The next time — and remember, testing only occurs once a season — it’s a 15-day suspension. It would take five positive tests before a player could be banned for as long as a year.
Such is the recipe for the mess baseball finds itself in. …
Congress has the power, despite baseball’s partial exemption from antitrust laws, to impose a new policy on the players, the owners and the enablers in the commissioner’s office. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has taken up the cause.
A sensible policy is out there, in baseball’s minor leagues. Players are tested four times a year, and the first documented instance of using steroids means an automatic suspension. The race is on to see who first embraces it, for the good of the game.
Los Angeles Times, on the FDA
The Food and Drug Administration over the past decade has shifted its budget away from monitoring the safety of drugs on the market, focusing more and more on approving new medicines. That policy has an obvious side effect. Time after time, the agency has been slow to respond to evidence about the dangers of drugs on the market.
The FDA has wandered from its central mission. Patient safety should always come first, whether it’s a new drug or an old drug.
… It took the FDA four years to respond to evidence that Vioxx increased the risk of heart attacks. Why so long? A recent New York Times story, examining the flow of funds inside the FDA, explains it this way: Roughly a decade ago, about half of the agency’s money went to drug safety and other areas, the other half to approving new drugs. Now, nearly 80 percent of the money goes to approving new drugs.
… The FDA must show it is more than an efficient reviewer of new drugs. One way to start is to reorder priorities, and that means restoring the ranks of FDA monitors who are watchdogs for drugs already on the market.
The Guardian, London, on violence in Saudi Arabia
…Yesterday’s terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Jiddah was a grim reminder that (Osama bin Laden’s)acolytes are still able to operate at will in the kingdom. Quick responses by Saudi security forces ensured that casualties and damage were limited, though the choice of target — one of the most heavily defended in the country — was itself a signal that al-Qaida and its offshoots have not given up. In recent months, the Saudi authorities have arrested and killed many members of what they choose to call “deviant groups” — emphasizing the departure from the true path of Islam — while weapons finds have become sparser.
On another front, clergymen have been officially encouraged to preach that fighting the U.S. in Iraq … is not true jihad. The authorities have also tightened control over mosque sermons and scrapped some xenophobic school textbooks. Attempts are being made, too, to address frustrations over unemployment and the lack of representative government. …
The Saudi government … argues that it has the situation well under control. … But pessimists warn that it is only realistic to expect future attacks on the mighty Saudi oil industry, the reason for the country’s close relationship with the U.S. The gloomy lesson of recent years is that the pessimists in the Middle East are all too often proved right.
The Analyst, Monrovia, Liberia, on Ghana’s election
With 105,000 poll workers on hand to man 21,000 voting precincts across the country, today’s exercise of political franchise in West Africa’s most politically affluent country will be the largest next to the recent Nigerian elections. But unlike the Nigerian elections, so far, it promises to be more peaceful.
While we in Liberia have much to learn from the Ghanaian people with regards to streamlining political competitions in order to minimize political conflicts, we … want to congratulate the Ghanaian people for being able to redeem the image of Africa, deemed a dark continent where democracy has yet to take roots after more than a century of colonial rule and more than a half century of self-governance.
… Liberians and Ghanaians have special deep running historical ties and relationships that go beyond political boundaries and that make it impossible for one country to hurt without the other feeling the pinch.
This is why we have no doubts that electoral success in Ghana will not only be a hope for free and fair elections in Liberia under an atmosphere free of intimidation, but it will also … set an example for Liberian politicians … to follow.
