Honour and justice require a replay
The beautiful game is tarnished. France will go to South Africa to play in next year's World Cup instead of Ireland, thanks to a goal guided by Thierry Henry's errant hand. The referee blew it, and soccer fans around the world are outraged. The fury is justified: The match must be replayed.
How to spell respect
OAs in Oprahfication. That's the term generally applied to explain how Oprah Winfrey reinvented the TV tabloid talk show. She announced this week she was bringing her own to an end after an extraordinary 25 years. Providing a forum for honest discussion of the deepest personal problems (often including hers), it became a five-day-a-week public confessional. But in the process, Oprah Oprahfied the entire culture, making her agenda - from good books to literacy to sexual abuse to weight loss to the rights of gays and lesbians - topics of North America's dinner-party, locker-room and water-cooler conversations. Not for nothing is she widely considered to be the world's single most influential woman.
A matter of weeks
President Barack Obama is right to have warned Iran of the prospect of sanctions "within weeks," now that the Iranian government has effectively rejected a draft agreement that its representatives arrived at with the United States, Russia and France on Oct. 1.
More to be seen, heard
Children should be seen but not heard: That was a common sentiment in decades past. Now, however, an entire generation of Canadians has grown up under the auspices of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted on this day in 1989. For the first time in history, the convention enshrined the right of children to give voice to their concerns: to be heard when they are being abused, to speak up when they are caught in crossfire between warring parents, to state their views about the medical and legal decisions that affect them.
Globe editorial
Torture and the paper trail
A consistent pattern of looking the other way when informed about the abuse of Afghan detainees would say something disturbing about a whole group of Canadian institutions
Globe editorial
Peace on the home front
Homework battles often say more about adult expectations than the needs of children
Give, in the downturn
How many Canadians roll up their sleeves and lend a hand to their neighbours when the times get tough? Strikingly few, according to a report released earlier this week by Statistics Canada. While Canadians tend to picture themselves as members of a compassionate society, they also tend to view this as largely the government's job, even - apparently - when it comes to very small acts of generosity. Less than a quarter of citizens earning salaries of $80,000 or more donate any of their dollars to charity, Statistics Canada reports. Those who do give shell out, on average, $250, or the rough equivalent of three new shirts from a department store.
Investing, not grabbing
There should in general be international freedom to buy and sell farmland, but where property rights are not clear, these should be formally settled, giving the benefit of the doubt to those who are actually cultivating it - such are among the principles that ought to guide standards for foreign direct investment in agricultural land, which are being drafted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, as announced at the FAO's World Summit on Food Security in Rome this week.
Globe editorial
Patchwork of policies for children
It is difficult to believe, but much of Canada puts its children at the back of the H1N1 vaccination line
Inseparable threats
The armed forces of Pakistan have had some successes against the Taliban recently, but both the West and Pakistan have to accept that security in the region depends on their mutual commitment to long-term strategies. The ISAF mission will not achieve its aims if Taliban and al-Qaeda militants continue to find sanctuary in parts of Pakistan, while the national integrity and security of Pakistan would be gravely damaged if the Taliban were to gain de facto control of large parts of Afghanistan bordering on Pakistan.
Clashing trends
Japan's odd combination of rising growth and a sharp turn toward deflation, according to the latest gross-domestic-product data released by the country's cabinet office, could have implications for other economies that are similarly reliant on exports and have aging populations.
Globe editorial
Willpower and the adaptive brain
Like Terry Fox, Captain Trevor Greene is expanding the very definition of human accomplishment
Time is running out
The Presidents of the United States and Russia, Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, were right to deplore Iran's delayed reply to the draft agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, when they met in Singapore on Sunday - a point that was heightened yesterday by a report of the International Atomic Energy Agency that raises unsettling questions.
No need for defeatism
Each week brings new pessimism on the climate-change front. Leaders at the weekend summit of Asia-Pacific leaders seemed to throw in the towel, ruling out the possibility that December's Copenhagen conference would yield an international treaty to fight greenhouse gases. This is indeed a blow. But if leaders maintain a sense of urgency, the Copenhagen meeting need not be for naught.
Globe editorials
Time for a bigger TV picture
Canadian broadcasting desperately in need of a visionary federal overhaul.
Back to the rule of law
It may be justice by increments and degrees, but the announced trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four of his alleged co-conspirators, is a significant achievement. That he was captured at all is a tribute to the NATO effort in Afghanistan and solid intelligence-gathering. That the trial will take place in a New York civilian court is a tribute to the political system. But the trial will not be smooth, and its completion does not mean that justice will have been served in full.
De-emphasizing stability
The idea that an exchange rate should be partly "based on international capital flows and movements in major currencies" is not surprising in itself, but when the phrase comes from the People's Bank of China, it communicates a welcome willingness to accommodate the international economic order. These words in the Chinese central bank's most recent monetary-policy report, released last week, verge on an admission that the renminbi, China's currency, may be overvalued.
Globe editorial
Not wise to bypass Pakistan
Prime Minister Stephen Harper should have chosen to visit Pakistan, as well as India
Local is global
The OECD's new report on the stagnant competitiveness, declining productivity and bronchitic congestion of the greater Toronto area is the sort of news that brings a smile to Canadians who view their biggest city as a self-satisfied and soulless megalopolis. But to revel in Toronto's woes is to miss the report's larger point: that if Canada wants to compete economically with other countries, our largest cities must be competitive with their largest cities. By the OECD's impartial reckoning, we as a country are failing in this vital mission.
Unappealing appeal
The last federal government lawyer to appear before the Supreme Court of Canada in defence of Ottawa's handling of Omar Khadr's imprisonment was beaten to a bloody pulp - figuratively speaking - by all nine judges. From Ottawa's standpoint, the hearing couldn't have been uglier. And the ruling was 9-0 for Mr. Khadr.