Rose Mapendo, the Congolese refugee for whom Mapendo International draws its name, enthralled an audience of more than 200 people at Temple Beth Avodah in Newton with her personal story of suffering, survival and renewal in America.

I went along to hear Rose Mapendo speak, having written an article in the Globe earlier this year about Rose and Mapendo International founder Sasha Chanoff and his work rescuing refugees. I also wrote on Saturday about Kitty Dukakis, the former Bay State first lady who has quietly worked for refugees for 30 years, and has been a key adviser to Chanoff since he launched Mapendo in 2003.

Dukakis offered an opening tribute to Rose Mapendo and to Chanoff, a Marlborough native who founded Mapendo International in Cambridge in 2003 to rescue the forgotten refugees who have fallen between the cracks of the United Nations and other major refugee organizations. Mapendo has rescued nearly 5,000 refugees since then and helped them resettle in the United States.

Often tearful, Mapendo recounted in heart-wrenching detail how she and her husband and children were arrested in 1998 in her Tutsi village in eastern Congo, how her husband was taken out and killed, and how she bore his twins on the cement floor of her cell. She and her nine children made it to a holding center, and Chanoff -- defying orders from his bosses -- helped her escape to a new life in Arizona. She was named humanitarian of the year by the US branch of the UN refugee agency this year.

She and other refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo sang a haunting song, and she said more than once: "God has been faithful to me."

Rabbi Keith Stern, welcoming the Mapendo team, noted the parallels of modern refugees with Europe's Jews who escaped the Holocaust or were consumed by it. "All of us understand that our roots are deeply connected to refugees who struggled, who suffered. And all too often, there was no one to extend a hand. If we, in this beautiful city of Newton, do not lend a hand, then we really cannot say that we learned anything."

Associate Professor Matthew Bunn of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government offers a stark dose of realism in a new policy paper assessing the prospects for reaching a deal with Iran over its nuclear program.

Bunn, an expert on nuclear security and proliferation issues, argues that a new round of negotiations with Iran has virtually zero chance of getting Iran to stop all enrichment of uranium, however tough the sanctions become. Iran already has 8,000 centrifuges in place, after all. So insisting on zero centrifuges would all but ensure there is no deal -- a dangerous outcome that could raise the chances of a military showdown.

Bunn says the best alternative for the United States and its European partners is to reach a deal that would allow Iran very limited enrichment in exchange for full transparency and strict controls on Iran's nuclear program. That would fulfill the ultimate Western goal of ensuring Iran does not pursue a nuclear weapons program.

Here's a link to the report, titled Beyond Zero Enrichment: Suggestions for an Iranian Nuclear Deal.

Bunn is a lead investigator for the Managing the Atom program in the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, one of the country's leading academic research institutes on nuclear and defense policy issues.

A Newton-based organization that promotes global learning and health programs has received a helping hand from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for an innovative book fair program in the Philippines.

During her visit to the Philippines on Thursday, Clinton cut the ribbon at a book fair organized by Education Development Center's Philippines branch. The event was at Malanday National High School in Marikina City, near the capital, Manila. The school was heavily damaged during recent flooding, and Clinton pledged additional US support for the recovery effort.

The EDC project, called Education Quality and Access to Learning and Livelihood Skills Project, has organized book fairs around the country. The events "let teachers use pre-paid vouchers to choose the books they and their students need most, increasing the likelihood of high-impact, creative teaching and learning in the classroom."

Clinton joined 66 teachers and 2,000 students who used their vouchers to select from the 50,000 English, science, and math books that were made available during the marketplace event and take them back to their school classrooms. The books come from Brothers' Brother Foundation, a Pittsburgh--based group that has collected and distributed more than 80 million books since 1958.

The EDC and Brothers' Brother Foundation both have major operations in the Philippines. A current EDC initiative is distributing nearly 50,000 free copies of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to more than 700 elementary schools in Mindanao, a war-torn Muslim island in the south of the archipelago.

Yvette Tan, an EDC staffer in the Philippines, says teachers identified dictionaries as critical tools to get students more interested in reading and preparing them to grapple with subjects taught in English, including science and math. The US Agency for International Development is funding the dictionary project, which is cosponsored by the National Bookstore Foundation.

For decades, Mexico City's 18 million people choked in the fumes of thousands of "peseros," the privately owned minibuses that clogged the avenues criss-crossing the capital city.

Harvard's Kennedy School of Government today is honoring the creators of an innovative bus system that has dramatically reduced traffic congestion and pollution in the city -- and that could be a model for similar innovation elsewhere in the world.

At a ceremony this evening, the 2009 Roy Family Award will be presented to the Mexico City Metrobus project, and to its major partners who made it a reality through an unusual collaboration:
EMBARQ - The World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport, and a major Mexican environmental non-profit group called CEIBA worked with the Mexico City government to help plan and build the express bus line right through the heart of the city.

The dedicated Metrobus route opened in 2005 along a 12-mile stretch of the massive Insurgentes Avenue, a principal north-south boulevard that is often called the longest urban avenue in the world. In 2008, the route grew by about 20 more miles, including a new southern corridor. Together, the lines have more than 80 stations.

I lived in Mexico City from 1997 to 2002, and I can attest to the nightmarish traffic conditions fueled by the peseros (named for their ancestors, smaller private taxis that charged one peso for a ride). But already by the late 1990s, Mexico City was making steady progress in reducing pollution, through a relentless focus on reducing vehicle emissions. It helped that as the economy improved, more people were able to replace polluting ancient gas guzzlers.

The new Metrobus is a quantum leap toward better quality of air and life.

The Harvard announcement of the award in September noted: "Metrobus has reduced carbon dioxide emissions from Mexico City traffic by an estimated 80,000 tons a year. The new buses, which operate on clean-burning ultra low sulfur diesel fuel, make more than 450,000 trips per day.
Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has applauded the Metrobus system, saying he wants to extend the system to 10 bus lines."

Ebrard came to Cambridge for the ceremony tonight and for a Harvard seminar on how Mexico City managed to pull its notoriously fractious political players together to make the bus system happen.

Harvard noted that the groups set up the Center for Sustainable Transport in Mexico, a not-for-profit providing technical support for the Metrobus system from day one. The World Bank, Global Environment Facility and the Shell, Caterpillar and Hewlett Foundations offered financial support.

To make it work, the Metrobus leaders partnered with the owners of the polluting minibuses. After a year of talks, a consortium was set up including about 350 bus owners and drivers. In all, the award notes, "a total of 839 polluting mini-buses have been permanently removed from the roads."

Nancy Kete, director of EMBARQ, said in a statement, “We always knew that creating a public-private partnership model was necessary to overcome the political challenges that often impede sustainable transportation.” She added: “Our goal was to pull the disparate groups together and help them find compromises. We wanted to show that cooperation was a better strategy than competition.”

Ten months into his administration, President Obama has finally chosen a nominee to run the US Agency for International Development. The delay had prompted growing complaints from development specialists that the administration was failing to live up to its pledge to make global health and development a priority and a pillar of its foreign policy.

Obama today nominated Dr. Rajiv Shah, a 36-year-old former official with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Shah is a medical doctor and was confirmed by the Senate earlier this year for his current role as a senior official at the Agriculture Department dealing with food security, so he has already been vetted and should easily win approval for the USAID job.

Shah's nomination also formally puts an end to speculation that Obama would tap Dr. Paul Farmer, the global health pioneer and co-founder of Boston-based Partners in Health. Farmer was said to be a front-runner for the USAID position earlier this year, but his candidacy apparently became bogged down in the Obama Administration's onerous vetting procedures, prompting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to howl publicly about how "ridiculous" the nominating process had become.

During the summer, Capitol Hill staffers said that Farmer was no longer under consideration, either because he had withdrawn from consideration or was ruled out for some reason. Farmer declined public comment all along, and pressed ahead with his many health and development projects in countries including Haiti and Rwanda, in addition to his work at Partners and as chairman of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

In August, former President Bill Clinton, who is the UN special envoy to Haiti, named Farmer his deputy envoy, recognizing Farmer's 25 years of work there building up the nation's health services.

A number of legislators have joined non-governmental organizations in calling on the administration to revitalize its aid strategy, and to give more prominence to development assistance as a core element of foreign policy, along with diplomacy and military muscle.

Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Boston-based Oxfam America, welcomed the appointment of Shah, citing his "solid experience in international agriculture and health."

Offenheiser said Shah will take over "at a crucial moment in history. For many years, USAID has been under-resourced and politically marginalized. But today’s international challenges – from the financial crisis to climate change -- make it more important than ever to rebuild USAID from a compliance agency for NGOs and contractors to what it once was: the world's most prestigious development agency."

“US development efforts have become diffuse and USAID’s development objectives unclear, with the Pentagon and more than 20 other federal agencies increasingly engaged in development activities," Offenheiser said in a statement. "There is a need to reassert the leadership role of USAID in managing US overseas development assistance, and strengthen its ability to deliver concrete results that will enhance USAID’s standing and credibility. Most importantly, there is a need for a national global development strategy to guide the US government's efforts to fight global poverty."

Conflict Management Group, a non-profit based in Cambridge, has been training Iraqis in negotiation skills since 2006, with promising results. The Iraqi mediators have helped people address disputes ranging from small arguments between neighbors to potentially deadly political battles and kidnappings.

I wrote in the Globe today about this Iraq mediation project, and about the broader mediation industry that has mushroomed in the last 40 or so years in the Boston area.

There wasn't space for these images of one negotiation in progress, in Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad, in the summer of 2008. The photos were taken by Sa'ad al-Khalidy, the mediation program coordinator in Iraq for Mercy Corps, which merged with CMG four years ago. They give a clear sense of the interplay between the locak sheiks and tribal officials as they tackle a dispute over a plot of inherited land.

The caption for the main picture illustrating the story omits the nice detail that the current coordinator for the Iraq program at CMG, Arthur Martirosyan, is shown in front of a portrait of Roger Fisher, taken in the stately Roger Fisher House in Cambridge. Fisher is the lengendary Harvard Law School professor who wrote "Getting to Yes" in 1981, the best-selling, user-friendly manual on managing conflict that captured the essence of years of his scholarly thinking. Fisher went on to found CMG in 1984, and has taken part in mediating many global conflicts around the world, from Northern Ireland to Latin America and South Africa.

The Israeli media have extensive coverage today of the forum at Brandeis University last night in which South African Justice Richard Goldstone defended his United Nations report on Israel's invasion of Gaza -- and former Israeli diplomat Dore Gold sharply challenged Goldstone's methods and findings.

Brandeis promises to post a link to the archived video of the debate either today or Monday at the website of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, which cosponsored the debate with the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life.

And here's a link to the article I wrote about the forum in today's Globe.

Several Israeli correspondents based in Washington came to Waltham for the event. Some of the online accounts include:

An article by Yitzhak Benhorin on YNetnews.com, the website of the largest Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, goes into more detail on Goldstone's explanation of why he believes Israel adopted a strategy that was designed to inflict widespread destruction in Gaza.

An account on the site of Ahrutz Sheva, israelnationalnews.com, notes that the UN General Assembly adopted an Arab-backed resolution on the Goldstone report just hours before the debate took place. The United States and several other Western countries voted no.

And the Brandeis Hoot student newspaper wonders in an editorial whether Goldstone and Gold -- and those in the audience -- were really listening to each other or just defending their own viewpoints.

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish made stops at several Boston-area synagogues and other venues last week to describe the terrible loss he suffered in Gaza in January and to find in it a reason to push forward with reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis.

During Israel's invasion of Gaza, two Israeli tank shells struck Abuelaish's house and killed three of his daughters. The Palestinian doctor spoke of that personal loss, but he sought to focus more on the need for both sides to look at their own failings, and find ways to break through the cycle of finger-pointing and suffering. I spoke with Abuelaish between stops and wrote an article about his life and work in the Sunday Globe.

The real impact comes in Abuelaish's interaction with his varied audiences as they wrestle with his message. My former Globe colleague, Charlie Radin, who is now at Brandeis, wrote a moving column in the Jewish Advocate describing one such exchange at a Brandeis talk.

The Advocate, sensibly, does not give away its content, but here's a link to the intro.

Radin recounts an exchange between Abuelaish and an Israeli "refusenik" who has refused military service and blames her own government for the deadlock. She criticized Abuelaish for an apparent lack of Palestinian nationalism. Radin recounts the doctor's reply: those involved need to look at themselves, and examine their own conduct, before they aim the blame at others. He criticizes Palestinians for launching rockets at Israeli civilians -- and he asks Israelis to look at their own conduct in a self-critical light.

Radin writes:

"Abuelaish has put his finger on something important. We must first look in the mirror.

"This does not mean weeping and expressing outrage at the casualties on one side while speaking politically correct platitudes about regretting the deaths of noncombatant women and children on the other - wherever those deaths occur.

"I have been to Gaza and to Jerusalem in the immediate aftermath of horrors, and while there is no equivalency in ways, means or intentions, it is a fact that many, on both sides, have become emotionally calloused. And it is a fact that this callousing of the heart and soul has become, in itself, an obstacle to peace."

Worth the price of the latest issue.

The Obama Administration's Cuba policy will get some high-level scrutiny at Boston University on Friday, from leading political players as well as prominent academics. The timing is excellent: policy makers are debating whether to lift the US ban on travel to Cuba and whether to ease the trade embargo.

Senator John Kerry, chairman of the influential Foreign Relations Committee, will deliver an opening address, followed by Massachusetts Congressman Bill Delahunt, who has a longstanding involvement with Latin American issues through his seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The event, open to the public but with limited seating, runs from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Trustees Ballroom, 9th Floor, 1 Silber Way (formerly 1 Sherborn Street) in Boston. More details are at the site of the co-sponsoring Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer Range Future.

Congress is considering legislation to lift the 46-year-old travel ban. Growing numbers of Cuban-Americans, who had long supported it, now favor lifting the measure, thinking that more American travel to Cuba would help persuade the country to embrace change. But the Cuban-American delegation in Congress still supports the ban as necessary to isolate Cuba and pressure it to embrace reforms. There appears to be less support to lift the economic embargo, but its usefulness is also being debated intensely.

Delahunt introduced the House bill to lift the US travel ban to Cuba, noting that Americans have the right to travel to Vietnam, Iran and North Korea, but not to Cuba. He frames it more as a matter of freedom to travel than of US-Cuba relations. In September, Obama lifted restrictions on Cuban-Americans traveling back to their native country, but other Americans still may not travel to Cuba.

Academics at the conference include Harvard Professor Jorge Dominguez, a Cuban-born expert in Latin American politics and economics who visited Cuba earlier this year. In a recent article in Harvard magazine, Dominguez offers vivid impressions of the changes in Cuba since Raul Castro succeeded his brother Fidel as president in February 2008.

The conference will be cochaired by BU Professor Paul Hare, a former British diplomat who was ambassador to Cuba from 2001 to 2004, and BU Professor Susan Eckstein, who has written extensively on Cuba.

Arun Gandhi, the grandson of India's famed leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, will speak at events in the Boston area this weekend to promote a campaign for women to lead a new non-violent world peace campaign.

Arun Gandhi, 75, was born in South Africa and was raised partly in India by his grandfather in the years leading up to Mahatma Gandhi's assassination in 1948. The grandson spent much of his career as a writer for the Times of India, and moved to the United States in 1987. He set up a peace institute, the M.K. Gandhi Non-Violence Institute, now based at the University of Rochester. He has taught and lectured widely.

He will speak at a fundraiser on Friday evening, Nov. 6, in Brookline, and at free events on Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, 138 Tremont St., Boston, and at 7 p.m. Saturday at All Saints Parish, 1773 Beacon Street, Brookline.

For details check out the website of the Global Strategy of Non-Violence, an organization created by Newton peace activist Andre Sheldon.

Arun Gandhi has long espoused non-violence in the spirit of his grandfather, and has given talks and courses in many countries. He has weathered controversy, particularly over remarks in a Washington Post blog entry about Jewish identity that were widely criticized as anti-Semitic and dismissive of the Holocaust. He apologized, but he has defended his criticism of Israel's government for denying rights to Palestinians.

He blogs regularly for the Washington Post's On Faith blog on religion.

Fatemeh Haghighatjoo is one of Iran's most prominent dissidents. She'll be speaking at a dinner Thursday night hosted by Boston International, the organization of young professionals interested in global issues. The dinner is at 7 p.m. at Maggiano's in the Back Bay, at 4 Columbus Avenue in Boston. The cost of the dinner is $38.00, and RSVP is required.

I wrote a profile of Haghighatjoo in the Globe in July, at the height of the protests in Iran over the presidential election results. A former member of Iran's Parliament, she resigned in 2004 after she was charged and convicted for her outspoken criticism of the ruling Islamist leadership. She has lived in the Boston area since 2005, when she became a visiting fellow at MIT's Center for International Studies. She is currently a visiting fellow at the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at UMass Boston's McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies.

In the G section of today's Globe, Bella English writes about Elizabeth Sheehan, and her imaginative effort to transform old cargo containers into clinics for poor Third World countries.

A former physician's assistant who has lived and worked in many developing countries, Sheehan created Containers2Clinics, a non-profit, to turn the idea into reality. The first clinic will be delivered to Bani in the Dominican Republic in January. Sheehan, who grew up in Plymouth and lives in Dover, hopes that will be the first of 50 such clinics in five years.

The Dominican clinic will be run by Waltham-based Infante Sano, (Spanish for "Healthy Infant"), another impressive non-profit in the Boston area. Infante Sano was founded by Bill Haney, a filmmaker and biotech entrepreneur, and since 2006 has set up training programs in three Dominican communities to improve the skills and resources available to doctors and nurses to treat mothers and infants. Infante Sano works with Children's Hospital and other partners.

Haney describes the work done so far on the Infante Sano website: "In Bani, San Cristobal and La Romana we've now trained hundreds of doctors and nurses in neonatal resuscitation, emergency obstetric care, and care for newborn babies - reaching over 35,000 mothers and infants. We've remodeled and re-equipped three hospitals' infant and maternal care facilities, shipping almost $2 million dollars of supplies and equipment for a mere investment of $50k. We've opened two clinics for impoverished mothers and children and had more than 5,500 visits annual from them. Our local staff numbers 14 and we've built critical partnerships with the Dominican Ministry of Health and clinical partners across the country. We are confident that our programs are improving the health and wellbeing of women and children and we are poised to spread our model across the DR and build partnerships to implement in other countries."

Since 2005, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies has produced user-friendly "audits of the convention wisdom" that boil down some extremely complex problems into a few pages of print.

This year MIT is also making the audits even more accessible to a television-attuned generation. Some audits are now being presented in video format.

Don't tune in looking for a global version of Jon Stewart. These are more akin to brief televised academic lectures. But they live up to the basic goals of the audits when they were launched -- to challenge the conventional wisdom, the easy (and sometimes false) assumptions that often inform foreign policy-making. In the first audit in 2005, for example, Professor Richard J. Samuels, an Asia expert who is director of the center, and MIT political science Professor M. Taylor Fravel took on the conventional view that the United States commanded unchallenged influence in Asia when in fact US influence had been steadily waning in several key aspects.

The initial video audits come from Jim Walsh, a research associate at the center and an international security specialist, assessing the current standoff between Iran and the West over its nuclear program (and not acscepting the conventional wisdom that Iran is definitely trying to build a nuclear weapon); and from Fotini Christia, an assistant professor of political science, on the political wrangling in Afghanistan and its implications going forward.

Another is from Anat Biletzki, analyzing President Obama's speech in Cairo and its view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Biletzki, a longtime peace activist in Israel and a visiting fellow at MIT's center, is sharply critical of what she views as US tolerance of Israeli settlements in Palestinian areas as the primary obstacle to progress.

Harvard's School of Public Health is mounting a powerhouse conference this week on the worsening global problem of breast cancer.

Dr. Julio Frenk, who took up his post as dean of the school in January, previously served as Mexico's health minister and as a senior World Health Organization executive. Frenk's wife, Felicia Knaul, is a Harvard-trained global health economist and a breast cancer survivor who is the principal organizer of the conference.

Knaul's personal experiences with the disease prompted her to examine the increasing prevalence of breast cancer in the Third World -- and she has produced acclaimed research showing that breast cancer has overtaken cervical cancer as a threat to women in Mexico, and probably in other developing countries. She also has created a foundation in Mexico to improve awareness of the disease and the need for early detection. I wrote an article in the Globe in April about her life and work.

Frenk told me at the time that he hoped to encourage even greater focus at the School of Public Health on how Harvard can foster action programs as well as research into health-based obstacles to growth in poor countries. The symposium, from Tuesday through Thursday, is clearly a major expression of that commitment. The conference events are open to the Harvard community but registration is required and space is limited, and some of the sessions are already full. Here is the agenda and contact information is here.

The conference will be opened on Tuesday by Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust. Speakers include Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning Harvard economist who has studied global development constraints; Lawrence Shulman, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Geeta Rao Gupta, President, International Center for Research on Women; Marina A. Njelekela, Chairperson, Medical Women´s Association of Tanzania; Alejandro Mohar, Director, National Cancer Institute of Mexico; Peter Piot, Director, Institute for Global Health, Imperial College London and former Executive Director, UNAIDs; and, John Seffrin, CEO, American Cancer Society.

She has been called the bravest woman in Afghanistan. She was kicked out of the country's Parliament for criticizing it. She has survived four assassination attempts. She is perhaps the most outspoken critic of the power that warlords still hold over the Afghan government. And she says Afghanistan does not need American or other foreign troops to solve her country's problems.

People in the Boston area will be able to hear Malalai Joya speak about her life and her views at several events this week coinciding with the publication of her brand new book, "A Woman Among Warlords."

Joya appears at a public forum at MIT on Thursday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m., Oct. 30, in building 10, room 250, 77 Massachusetts Avenue. She will be at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard Kennedy School on Friday, October 30 at 2:30 p.m. And she will speak at Emerson College on Friday at 7 p.m., in the Bordy Auditorium. Finally, she will speak on Saturday, Oct. 31, at 2 p.m. in Dorchester at 91 Lyndhurst Street.

Shelagh Foreman, of Massachusetts Peace Action, notes that Joya is a former teacher "who set up secret schools for girls, an orphanage and free clinic in her impoverished home province of Farah during the Taliban era. She ran for parliament in 2005 to protect her schools and won, becoming the youngest person elected to Afghanistan's new Parliament at the age of 27. In
2007, she was suspended from Parliament for her persistent criticism of warlords and drug barons and their overwhelming presence in the Parliament."

Mass Peace Action has long opposed the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lately has stepped up its opposition to increasing the number of US troops in Afghanistan, as President Obama is now under pressure to do. The group is part of United For Justice and Peace, the coalition of anti-war groups in the greater Boston area, which has details of Joya's events on its web site.

Joya is just beginning a nationwide tour to discuss her book. She will appear at the National Press Club in Washington on Monday, and will be in California later next week.

The Harvard University Mexican Association today kicks off its Mexico Week with the first of an impressive list of Mexican speakers from the worlds of politics, culture and business.

The events are open to the public, and a full program is available at the association's web site. Most events are at the TSAI Auditorium or the Belfer Case Study Room, at 1730 Cambridge Street, in Cambridge.

The week begins and ends with addresses by governors of two important states. At 6 p.m. today, Emilio González Márquez, governor of Jalisco state and former mayor of Guadalajara, will offer "a federalist perspective on Mexico." He is a member of the National Action Party, which has held the presidency since Vicente Fox's victory in 2000.

There's a different event at 6 p.m. each evening. On Tuesday, Rodrigo Sigal Sefchovich, general director of the Mexican Center for Music and Sonic Arts, will offer a cultural perspective. On Wednesday, Mexico's consul general in Boston, Fernando Estrada, and Jaime Bueno, Director of the Office of International Affairs of the State of Coahuila will speak on cross-border challenges. On Thursday, a business perspective comes from Claudio X. González, chairman of Kimberly-Clark Mexico and a nationally respected business executive.

And on Friday, the governor of the southernmost state of Chiapas, Juan Sabines, will round out the week. Sabines is from the Party of the Democratic Revolution and a former mayor of the state capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

Brandeis University says it will host a forum next month with South African Judge Richard Goldstone, the author of a fiercely controversial United Nations fact-finding report that accused Israeli forces as well as Palestinian fighters of committing war crimes in Gaza.

In what is sure to be a heated debate, Goldstone will discuss his report for the first time with a senior Israeli political figure. Dore Gold, the former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, will respond to Goldstone in the forum, and then both will take questions from the audience.

Goldstone's appearance is certain to generate discussion within Boston's Jewish community, given Brandeis' role as the premier Jewish university in the country, and Israel's angry rejection of the report as deeply biased against Israel and flawed in its mandate and execution. The United States has joined Israel in dismissing the report, which was submitted last month to the UN Human Rights Council and was endorsed by that council last week.

The dispute over the report has become so heated that it threatens to disrupt attempts to revive peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Under US pressure, the Palestinian government at first agreed not to press for the UN Security Council to take up the report, but after a domestic outcry, reversed its stance. Some Palestinian analysts, in turn, have accused Israel of trying to exploit the controversy to fend off growing US demands for concessions.

The UN report covers the three weeks of the Israeli incursion into Gaza in December and January, which Israel said was necessary to halt fighters from the Hamas faction in Gaza from firing rockets into civilian areas. More than 1,000 Palestinians were killed in air strikes and ground operations before the Israelis pulled back. Israel argued that Hamas fighters hid behind civilians, itself a war crime, making civilian casualties unavoidable.

The fact-finding report focused most of its criticism on Israel, saying the battle plan ensured that civilians would be targeted and that civilian infrastructure was deliberately attacked. The report also said Palestinian armed groups had caused terror by launching thousands of rockets at civilians in Israel since 2001.

The Goldstone-Gold forum on November 5 is being co-hosted by the university's International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life, and by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies.

Goldstone, a South African Jew, is a prominent jurist who has taken part in numerous international tribunals as a prosecutor. Professor Daniel Terris, the director of the ethics center, said he has worked closely with Goldstone for a decade in his role as a member of the center's advisory board, and "he has a longstanding reputation for integrity and courage."

Professor Ilan Troen, who heads the Schusterman Center, said in an interview, "what we're in for is learned, direct and honest drama. I don't know that we'll resolve anything, but we can certainly clarify, and that's what universities do."

Several leaders of Boston-area Jewish organizations said that while they were highly critical of the Goldstone report, they respected the university's role as a venue for for airing different views and fostering debate.

Rob Leikind, head of the American Jewish Committee' Boston office, said, "It's pretty clear at this point that the Goldstone report has been co-opted by nations and groups that are committed to delegitimizing the state of Israel. That said, it is an appropriate role for a college or university to present people involved in controversial issues, particularly when they are making an effort to get well-informed responses from people with a different point of view."

Nancy Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, the umbrella group for Jewish organizations, said, "I think the report is just an outrage. It's a one-sided report from a group that was out to get Israel... He's coming into the lion's den in some respects. He knows this is of concern to the Jewish community. I actually applaud Brandeis."

Nadav Tamir, the Israeli consul general in New England, said, "it's the job of universities to have debates, I have nothing against that. But I'm very worried about the report.... The message of the report is you cannot defend yourself because your enemies are using human shields and we don't want you to harm them. So they are giving absolute immunity to Hamas to fire rockets against Israel."

Brandeis did not provide details on the time or venue for the forum on Nov. 5.

Gold served as an adviser on foreign policy to prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon. He is president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and has three degrees from Columbia University, including a doctorate.

Whether you're a believer or an atheist, you can't escape your ethical duty to do something for those in need around the world. The issue is not whether but how to help.

That's the premise being discussed on Thursday in Cambridge by a leading bioethicist (and atheist), Princeton Professor Peter Singer, and the head of the international aid agency, World Vision, Richard Stearns.

The two will hold a panel discussion from 4:00–5:30 p.m. at First Parish Church, 3 Church Street (corner of Mass Ave and Church St), in Cambridge. The free event is being sponsored by the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The moderator will be the center's executive director, Aviva Argote.

The forum's title is daunting: "Finding Common Ground: Perspectives on Ethics and Extreme Poverty from an Atheist and a Christian." The announcement says Singer and Stearns will "discuss what ethics, morality and God expect of us in an age of hunger, AIDS and extreme poverty."

They are each authors of recent books. The Hauser Center says Singer "argues in The Life You Can Save that the industrialized world’s response to poverty is ethically indefensible and that living an ethical life must involve giving one’s resources to the cause of fighting poverty," while Stearns "argues in The Hole in Our Gospel that living a Christian life involves living out one’s faith by taking action to care for the poor and fight the systemic causes of poverty."

Not much wiggle room there for those looking for a way to opt out.

Few American diplomats have played as central a role in the Middle East and South Asia as Ryan Crocker. So he will be poised to share some up-close insights when he speaks at a public forum today at the Kennedy School of Government.

Crocker's 4 p.m. address, in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, is sponsored by the Kennedy school's Institute of Politics, and will be moderated by Professor Graham Allison, who heads the school's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Crocker was US ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, during the surge led by General David Petraeus and the shift by Iraqi Sunnis to turn against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Before that, he was US ambassador To Pakistan for three crucial years, from 2004 to 2007.

See the IOP's web site for more details.

The Japan Society of Boston continues its celebration of the 50th anniversary of Boston's sister-city relationship with Kyoto -- by sharing the secrets of the fabulously ornate women's hair styles made famous in woodblock prints from the 17th and 18th centuries.

Peter Grilli, president of the Boston society, advises that Keiichi Hanada, Kyoto's most celebrated contemporary hair stylist, will give a free talk and demonstration of the classic coiffures at 6:30 this evening at the society's center at the Showa Boston Institute, 420 Pond St., Boston.

Hanada also will offer the demonstration at Symphony Hall after the Boston Symphony Orchestra performance on Friday evening.

For more details on this and other anniversary events, visit the Japan Society of Boston web site.

Boston International, an organization of young professionals and students interested in global affairs, and MIT's Center for International Studies are co-hosting an evening forum on the continuing conflict in the Darfur region in Sudan.

And they will augment the panel discussion with a powerful exhibit of photographs from Darfur that interpret the suffering there visually.

The panel, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Oct., 15, at MIT's Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, will feature Robert Rotberg, director of the Belfer Center’s Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; Susannah Sirkin, Deputy Director, Physicians for Human Rights; and Marcus Bleasdale, a photojournalist and member of the DARFUR/DARFUR team.

DARFUR/DARFUR is the name of the traveling exhibition of digitally projected images about Darfur conveying both the rich culture and the depth of horrors of the humanitarian crisis there. The exhibit is a product of Art Works Projects and curated by Leslie Thomas, the founding director of Art Works Projects.

The photographers include: former U.S. Marine Brian Steidle and photojournalists Lynsey Addario, Mark Brecke, Helene Caux, Ron Haviv, Paolo Pellegrin, James Nachtwey, Ryan Spencer Reed, and Michal Safdie, edited by Matthew Jacob and accompanied by Sudanese inspired music.

Few relationships are as important for the United States as that with Pakistan, and few are as strained and tense.

A conference being held on Saturday, Oct. 17, at Harvard aims to help understand and improve that relationship. The event is being organized by the Harvard Extension International Relations Club (HEIRC) in collaboration with the Harvard International Relations Council (IRC). The speakers will include some of the most prominent experts on Pakistan and US-Pakistani relations in the United States.

The event is open to the public, but registration is required. Tickets cost $20, including lunch and parking. The event, from 9:15 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., is being held at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, at the Harvard Medical School, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur in Boston. For more details see the conference web site.

Among the speakers and panelists are Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States and previously a professor at Boston University; Congressman John F. Tierney, chairman of the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee in the House of Representatives; Hassan Abbas, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a former Pakistani government official.

Okay, so I'm not a sportswriter, and the baseball playoffs will be played entirely in the United States. But hey, it is nominally the World Series, and the Boston Red Sox may be in it, so I can claim a vague peg for a Worldly Boston blog post. And what's a blog for if not for occasional digressions and venting?

The World Series this year is guaranteed to drag into November. The flaw in this schedule is worse than the risk of frost-bitten night games. It's that the rhythm of the baseball season has been compromised.

In 1978, after the Sox and Yankees finished the season tied for first on Sunday, Oct. 1, the one-game playoff was the very next day -- on Monday afternoon. I remember the buzzing intensity of those hours (and the slanting late sun in Lou Piniella's eyes). We won't dwell on the outcome. Suffice to say the Yankees won the World Series in six games that year -- on October 17.

For those who haven't focused yet on the playoffs calendar, Game Four of the World Series is scheduled for Nov. 1, ensuring at least one November game. And Game Seven, if needed, is scheduled for Thursday Nov. 5. Only once before have games been played in November, and that was in 2001, when the post-season was delayed by a national security emergency.

This year, we will be drowning in bad jokes about playing baseball in basketball season (the Boston Celtics open their regular season Oct. 27 against Cleveland), and the chances of playing baseball until Thanksgiving if there are enough November rainouts.

Sure, the regular season ended late, on Oct. 4, thanks to the pre-season World Baseball Classic (the real World Series?). But this year's one-game playoff between Detroit and Minnesota comes not on Monday, as it did in 1978, but on Tuesday. And the start of the division series for the Red Sox could come as late as Thursday night -- if the Yankees opt to start their series on Wednesday. The Sunday-to-Thursday wait will feel more like a quick NFL turnaround.

This snail's pace is foreign to the spirit of baseball. It dulls the sense of anticipation that these series used to instill in us. It doesn't help that the five-game division series all have two days off built in. And then it may get a lot worse. The National League championship series starts on Thursday Oct. 15, and the AL opens the next day. If they both last only four games, they could end by Tuesday, Oct. 20.

Then, in that worst case, there could be an eight-day gap between the end of the two league series and the first game of the World Series, on Wednesday, Oct. 28.

That's longer than a normal pro football weekly interlude! Who will still be paying attention? And yes, there's a Halloween Game, on Saturday, Oct. 31.

Of course I am fully aware that television dictates. TBS and Fox call the shots. And they want prime time. They at least agreed to bring forward the starting times of most games, from the absurd 8:37 p.m. of recent years to 7:57 p.m. They finally got it that people were asleep in their armchairs -- or already in bed -- for many late finishes. That obviously contributed to the fading audience interest. Last year's ratings for the Phillies-Rays World Series reached record lows.

But surely TV networks also must get it that the falling audience interest in recent post-seasons has plenty to do with abandoning the near-daily rhythm of the games that keeps us absorbed all season long? Surely viewership would rise if the end of one playoff series determined the start of the next one, with the shortest possible break? It would generate far more buzz among fans if the whole exercise felt a lot less rigid and deliberate (read slow).

Let's get that old-time rhythm back into baseball.

The number of immigrants living in Massachusetts increased slightly in 2008, Globe immigration reporter Maria Sacchetti writes on today's front page. While the national proportion of foreign-born residents fell by 0.26 percent, it rose in Massachusetts by 2.54 percent.

(In passing, let me note that it's eternally disheartening to read some of the vitriolic, mean-spirited and anonymous on-line comments triggered by almost any article on immigrants, including one that simply reports the findings of a government census study and tries to explain a trend.)

For those who want to look at the raw data and draw their own conclusions, here's a link to the key Massachusetts page of the US Census Bureau 2008 American Community Survey. This page provides the core data and quite a bit more to chew on in thinking about the Massachusetts immigrant population and other demographic issues.

Among the findings:

--The immigrants living in Massachusetts come from all over the world, and most have been here a number of years. Of the state's 6,497,967 residents at the time of the 2008 survey, 937,000, or 14 percent, were foreign born. Of those, 68 percent have been here since before 2000, and 32 percent, or 301,000, arrived in 2000 or later.

In identifying their region of origin:
--35 percent of the foreign-born residents said they were born in Latin America
--28 percent were from Asia
--25 percent were from Europe
--8 percent were from Africa

Asked to identify their ancestry, Bay Staters showed themselves to be from an equally vast array of home countries. At the top of the list:
--Irish -- 1.53 million, or 23.5 percent.
--Italian -- 907,000, or 14 percent
--English -- 745,000, or 11.5 percent

There's no ancestry category for Hispanics, but another page from the survey, on the state's demographics, shows how people identified themselves by race, and that indicates the proportion of people of Hispanic descent in Massachusetts..

White -- 82.5 percent
Black or African American -- 6.7 percent
Asian -- 5 percent
Hispanic -- 8.6 percent

On language, the survey notes on its very useful 'narrative' page: "Among people at least five years old living in Massachusetts in 2008, 21 percent spoke a language other than English at home. Of those speaking a language other than English at home, 35 percent spoke Spanish and 65 percent spoke some other language; 41 percent reported that they did not speak English "very well.""

For those wondering how the Obama Administration is faring with its initiative to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis is offering a seasoned perspective at midday on Thursday, Oct. 8.

David Makovsky, the Ziegler Distinguished Fellow and director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, will discuss his new book, co-authored with long-time American diplomat and Mideast troubleshooter Dennis Ross.

The brown bag seminar is from 12:15 - 1:45 pm in the Heller Building, Room 163. For more information, see the Crown Center for Middle East Studies web site.

Makovsky, who was born in St. Louis, worked as an editor and diplomatic journalist for major Israeli publications, including the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, traveling to Syria and elsewhere in the Arab world in the 1990s. Since then he has written numerous scholarly articles assessing the stalemated peace process, and US policy.

The Crown Center says of his new book with Ross: "Why has the United States consistently failed to achieve its strategic goals in the Middle East? According to Dennis Ross and David Makovsky, two of America's leading experts on the region, it is because we have been laboring under false assumptions, or mythologies, about the nature and motivation of Middle East countries and their leaders. In 'Myths, Illusions, and Peace,' the authors debunk these damaging fallacies, held by both the right and the left, and present a concise and far-reaching set of principles that will help America set an effective course of action in the region."

British soprano Charlotte de Rothschild has a passion for classical Japanese songs. She has recorded a CD titled "A Japanese Journey: Nihon no Tabiji," and recently created and performed in a 90-minute television documentary by the Japanese NHK network called "Rothschild Passions."

De Rothschild will offer a free concert of her favorite Japanese songs in Boston on Monday evening. She will perform at 6:30 p.m. at the Rainbow Hall, Showa Boston Institute, at 420 Pond St., the home of the Japan Society of Boston.

The society says de Rothschild, a celebrated oratorio singer and recitalist, will sing a selection of her favorite songs by renowned Japanese composers Kohsaku Yamada, Hidemaro Konoe, and others.

The society notes: "Another of her recordings is Family Connections, presenting English, French and German music associated with her distinguished family over the last three centuries. She will be accompanied in this recital by Danielle Perrett, a virtuoso harpist who has played all over the world."

De Rothschild, a member of the famed British banking family, is a global performer but has a special following in Japan. She studied at the Mozart University in Salzburg, Austria, and at the Royal College of Music in London.

Douglas Foy, the longtime environmental campaigner and former Massachusetts cabinet secretary, is being awarded an honorary “Officer of the Order of the British Empire.”

UPDATE: The British consulate in Boston said today that Britain’s Ambassador to the United States, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, will confer the honor on behalf of Queen Elizabeth, but the date and location are still being worked out. The event had been scheduled for this Wednesday, but the consulate says it had to be postponed for logistical reasons.

The award recognizes Foy’s “achievements as an advocate and entrepreneur in the practice of environmentally sustainable enterprises” as well as his years of volunteer work helping select winners of the British Marshall scholarships.

For 25 years, Foy was president of the Conservation Law Foundation, a New England-wide organization of scientists and lawyers who work to protect the environment. He served under Governor Mitt Romney for three years as a “supersecretary” in charge of development, coordinating the work of several agencies including environment, transportation and housing. He resigned in 2006, and now works with Serrafix, a Boston-based energy-efficiency firm.

The British government said Foy was being honored in part for his many years as chairman of the regional selection committee for the Marshall Scholarship. That prestigious program, funded by the British government, awards 40 scholarships a year to American students to study in the United Kingdom for two years. The scholarship was created after World War II to honor American contributions to rebuilding Europe, not least through the Marshall Plan.

The rank of officer of the Order of the British Empire is one of five levels of honorary awards to foreign nationals. The rank is just below the level of honorary knighthood, which was awarded earlier this year to Senator Edward Kennedy, a few months before his death.

Foy, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School and a former Olympic rower, has received a number of honors for his environmental work, including the President’s Environmental and Conservation Challenge Award in 1992 and the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service in 2006.

Few modern leaders know as much about nation-building -- and even fewer have paid such a high personal price in the process -- as East Timor's president, Jose Ramos-Horta.

Horta will speak at a free public lecture on Tuesday afternoon at MIT about the challenges of nation-building. The talk is being hosted by MIT's Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship in advance of its second annual conference on Friday. The talk is being held at Building 10, Room 250 at 2:30 p.m., with seating to start at 2:15 p.m.

Ramos-Horta agitated as a student for East Timor's independence from Portugal, the colonial power. Just days before Indonesia invaded East Timor and annexed it in 1975, he went into exile as a 25-year-old cabinet minister for East Timor to argue its case at the United Nations Security Council. For years he pleaded East Timor's cause, and in 1996 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, along with Bishop Ximenes Belo.

After East Timor finally won independence from Indonesia in 2002 following decades of bloodshed and negotiations Ramos-Horta served as foreign minister in the newly elected government as foreign minister, which continued to weather unrest. He was elected president in April 2007, and was badly wounded in an assassination attempt in February 2008.

At the age of 59, Ramos-Horta will carry a lifetime of democratic activism to the MIT forum, even as his country continues its struggle for political stability and economic development from the ranks of the poorest nations in Asia.

Professor Graham Allison of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government earns full marks for prescience about Iran's covert nuclear site.

As long ago as 2006, he was warning in an article for a Yale on-line publication that the West's focus should not only be on Iran's known nuclear operations but on potential covert sites as well. Allison said Iran was much more likely to be carrying out work relevant for nuclear weapons capacity at a location beyond the reach of the monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency than under their noses.

Today, President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France announced at a summit in Pittsburgh that Iran had informed the IAEA this week of a previously undisclosed nuclear site, about 100 miles southwest of Tehran. The underground site is said to be a second nuclear enrichment facility, with about 3,000 centrifuges installed but not yet operational. Iran's primary enrichment site, which is well-known to the IAEA and monitored by its inspectors, is at Natanz, south of Tehran. Another known nuclear research site is at Isfahan, farther south. Iran insists that its nuclear program is purely peaceful, aimed at producing nuclear energy.

News reports today say US intelligence has known of Iran's secret site for several years. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, responded that Iran was under no obligation to disclose all its nuclear facilities, an interpretation that other nations immediately challenged. As Obama put it, "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow."

Allison, the former dean of the Kennedy School and an expert on nuclear weapons policy and nuclear terrorism, was assistant secretary of defense early in the Clinton Administration, focusing on nuclear issues and US relations with the forrmer Soviet Union. He now heads the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School.

His 2006 column for YaleGlobal online, entitled "How Good is American Intelligence on Iran?", pointed to the risk of covert programs beyond the monitors' reach.

"The dog that hasn’t barked is Iran’s covert programs for acquiring nuclear weapons," Allison wrote. He cited four “known unknowns,” to use former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's language, that "lie at the heart of judgments about the threat posed by Iran." The first of those: "Is success in Iran’s overt effort a necessary condition for success in its covert programs? President Bush and his European colleagues operate on the assumption that it is. Otherwise their operational objective – a moratorium on research activities at Isfahan and Natanz – would be beside the point."

Allison said that focusing too heavily on Natanz and Isfahan risked giving Iran the impression that it could move ahead elsewhere with impunity.

In a follow-up column in June this year for the Washington Post, Allison was more colorful. He said Iran had moved far along in its development of nuclear technology. "The brute fact is that Iran has crossed a threshold that is painful to acknowledge but impossible to ignore: It has lost its nuclear virginity."

Even more vividly, Allison suggested that the obsessive focus on Natanz and other known sites was akin to "the drunk looking for his car keys under the lamppost, even though he knows he dropped them a hundred yards away, because that is where the light is."

UPDATE:

The Bhopal survivors' fundraising event I described last week took place in Cambridge on Friday evening. The organizers report that about 185 people attended, and the event raised $2,900 for the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.

Here's the original post:

The Boston Coalition for Justice in Bhopal, a group supporting the campaign for justice for victims of the chemical disaster in India 25 years ago that claimed thousands of lives, is holding a commemorative event at MIT on Friday evening.

The fundraiser is called Bhopal-Natyam: A Dance Tribute to Human Resilience," and is being held in the Little Kresge Auditorium at MIT from 6-9 p.m. Tickets are $10 to $15.

The world's worst chemical disaster occurred in December 1984 in Bhopal, India, at a Union Carbide Corp. plant. Tons of toxic methyl isocyanate gas poured from the plant when water entered a tank and caused a deadly reaction. The state government at the time reported that about 3,800 people were killed immediately and thousands more affected. Other estimates say tens of thousands died, and thousands more suffered long-term effects. The company paid a $470 million settlement in 1989, and maintains that the accident resulted from sabotage, but other experts dispute that assertion.

Residents of Bhopal have continued to press for more aid for victims, more environmental action at the site, and criminal action against those responsible.

To mark the 25th anniversary, the Boston Coalition for Justice in Bhopal is bringing six leading dance schools from the Boston area to display Indian classical dance-forms. The story of Bhopal will also be depicted in a dance form. Proceeds will go to the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.

The Boston campaign says 23,000 people have died as a result of the disaster, "and many continue to die or suffer from illnesses caused by exposure and water contamination due to the toxic waste left behind." It says, "Indian authorities have failed to bring Union Carbide to account. Moreover, despite the repeated promises to clean up the toxic wastes, they remain, poisoning the water, the land, and spreading its tentacles every passing day."