哈梅内伊：伊朗敢于与美国抗争的精神支柱

在巴列维国王时期，伊朗是美国在中东地区的最好盟友和波斯湾的宪兵。但是，1979年初，霍梅尼领导的伊斯兰革命推翻了巴列维政权以后，美伊交恶至今已近30年。伊朗先是扣留美国人质，废除1959年签订的伊美安全条约，接着又取消了美国控制伊朗石油的特权，把美国看做“大撒旦”（大魔鬼）和死对头。美国则冻结了伊朗在美的120多亿美元资产，接着又在8年的两伊战争中大力支持萨达姆进攻伊朗。“9·11”事件后，美国出于控制波斯湾地区石油和反恐的需要，大力推行“大中东民主计划”，先后打垮了阿富汗的塔利班和伊拉克的萨达姆政权。     

联合国"争常"双方严重对立

随着第60届联大的临近,国际社会就联合国安理会的改革展开了激烈的争论.特别是在"争常"问题上以德国、日本、印度和巴西组成的"四国联盟"和以意大利、韩国等为首的"团结谋共识"(即"咖啡俱乐部")之间的对抗,更加引人瞩目.     

Reframing the role of Australian mayors: an update and rejoinder to Grant,Dollery and Kortt (2016)

Recent moves for local government reform in several states of Australia have focused in part on a perceived need for more effective civic leadership, and in particular the role of mayors. Proposed legislation in New South Wales and Victoria would expand the responsibilities of mayors in several areas, such as community engagement, partnerships with key stakeholders, strategic planning and providing guidance to the chief executive officer. In 2012 the Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government (ACELG) published a discussion paper that canvassed these issues as well as the way in which mayors are elected. That paper elicited a strongly adverse critique by Grant, Dollery and Kortt, now published as an article in this issue of Local Government Studies. Regrettably their critique failed to offer a constructive contribution to the debate sought by ACELG, and the article contains a number of significant errors and misleading statements that demand a response.     

When the doctor gets infected. Medical workers who harbor the AIDS virus may face new rules

Growing public anxiety has prompted federal officials to consider a controversial shift in policy: asking medical workers to take tests for HIV infection.     

‘Sometimes fear gets in all your bones’: towards understanding the complexities of risk in development work

ABSTRACT

In the context of increasing risk for aid workers, a growing body of scholarship is focused on risk management in contexts of humanitarian assistance and development work. Much less attention, however, has been given to how staff and volunteers experience such risks. This paper adopts a feminist geographical approach to explore how development workers make meaning of risk in specific contexts. Adopting a qualitative approach, it draws upon 14 semi-structured in-depth interviews with international (7) and local (7) staff of an international educational and sporting non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Afghanistan. After exploring differences between local and foreign staff perceptions of risk, it also offers a gendered analysis of risk for women development workers in Afghanistan. In so doing, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature in ‘Aidland’ studies by revealing the complex understandings of risk and fear by both foreign and local staff in the same geographical and organisational context. For NGOs seeking to make life-saving decisions based on the calculation of risk, this paper evidences the need to also create space for the voices of local and foreign staff whose experiences of risk will be highly relational, embodied, gendered and context specific.     

Establishing a health promoting setting: an experience in an albanian polyclinic

A “health promoting polyclinic” based on the “health promoting setting concept” has been developed in Tirana, the capital of Albania. This paper discusses the implementation and intervention of the project, whereas the final evaluation results will be presented in another article. An important aspect of the whole program is the training of the administrators and staff members in the necessary skills relating to their allocated roles, such as creating a healthy environment, health education, outreach activities and total quality management. In this approach the International Relief Organization (IRO) acting as an external agent took the initiative of enabling, mediating and advocating, as well as providing support for the polyclinic's staff and its clients. The model appears to be effective in promoting health at the secondary health care level (the polyclinic). This may encourage health planners to adopt a similar concept at other settings i.e. general or specialized hospitals.