In The News

How May We Put it Down?

M. J. Akbar June 16, 2003
As the US garners global support for its post-war influence in Iraq, is India willing to lend a fighting hand? As India contemplates sending its soldiers to fight alongside American and British troops, M.J. Akbar, editor of The Asian Age, strongly discourages such a commitment. In order to understand the nature of the US-led war in Iraq, Akbar thinks it necessary to look back at nineteenth- and...

Push for Rights of Singapore Women's Foreign-born

Chuang Peck Ming June 12, 2003
The proactive, modern women of Singapore are still shackled by obsolete policies, says the government-supported 'Remaking Singapore Committee'. Women and their children are subject to a vast array of double-standards that, they say, are born in the delivery-room and go on to thrive in society. These policies perpetuate the perception that women from Singapore are lesser citizens than...

Fossil Find May Back 'Out of Africa' Theory

Guy Gugliotta June 12, 2003
Scientists now have more evidence to support the claim that modern humans arose from one common ancestor in Africa. The recent discovery of the remains of two adults and a child from 160,000 years ago in northeast Ethiopia closes "a temporal and geographical gap" in the route on which human ancestors moved north out of Africa, to the Middle East and other regions of the world. Other...

A Primer for Cross-Strait Relations

Chen Hurng-yu June 11, 2003
If Taiwan ever wants to improve cross-strait relations and free itself of interference from Beijing, it will need to depart from the 1971 framework and change its foreign policy, says Chen Hurng-yu, professor of history at Taiwan's National Chengchi University. The overlapping claims of Taipei and Beijing to sovereignty over China – a dispute that has continued since the UN denied Taiwan’s...

Asia Takes Starring Role

Kenny Stantara June 11, 2003
Hollywood has recently begun to take notice of South East Asian stars and movies, introducing actresses such as Fann Wong to American cinema and expanding the repertoire of Asian films released in the United States. Southeast Asia’s time in the US limelight is largely due to the influence of major Hollywood names, including actor Tom Cruise and director Francis Ford Coppola, who have ensured...

What's Really Holding Islamic Nations Back

J. Bradford Delong June 9, 2003
Ever since the September 11 attacks, questions about the backwardness of Islamic countries have acquired a new urgency. In this article, economist J. Bradford Delong tries to answer what factors may have contributed to the bad economies of the Islamic world. He first cites the case history of the Industrial Revolution – how the Revolution touched almost all parts of the world but the Islamic...

The New Global Food Fight

Kathleen McAfee June 6, 2003
Genetically modified (GM) food offered as aid by the US is not simply manna from the heavens for people in famine-stricken countries, says Yale scholar Kathleen McAfee. African nations have refused GM food aid from the US not just because they fear losing access to the European Union market, where imported GM foods are subject to substantial restrictions. They also worry about environmental...