In The News

Startling His Neighbors, Australian Leader Favors First Strikes

John Shaw December 2, 2002
Close on the heels of President George W.Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive attack to deter terrorist strike against the US, a close ally, Australia has adopted the same principle. In a television interview Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he would be willing to strike at terrorists in another country if there were evidence of a plan to attack Australia. . He said that it was necessary...

China’s Deadly Cover-Up

Nicholas D. Kristof November 29, 2002
Around one million people are infected with HIV in Henan Province in central China. Unlike other parts of China, where AIDS spread through drug use and prostitution ever since China opened its doors to the outside world, Henan's peasants received the virus by selling blood through government-monitored programs that pooled the blood, extracted plasma, and reinjected the blood back into the...

Bin Laden Material Found at Alleged Bali Mastermind's House

November 25, 2002
The interrogation of the prime suspect of the Bali blast in October and forensic evidence have raised the tantalizing possibility that the attack was a suicide bombing. If this turns out to be true this would be the first suicide attack by a Muslim in Indonesia, perhaps in Southeast Asia. While suicide attacks by Tamil Tiger guerillas in Sri Lanka has been a common phenomenon and in recent years...

Police Say Bali Mastermind Was a Cool Killer

November 22, 2002
Imam Samudra, who Indonesian authorities say was the mastermind behind the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, can be seen as a product of the dark side of globalization. A star student in high school, police describe him as an "architectural computer expert" and an engineer. In addition to his computer skills, he is also believed to have spent some time in Malaysia and completed terrorist...

Thais Urged to Spearhead Vaccine Drive

Arthit Khwankhom November 21, 2002
Global health concerns rank high on the agendas of many governments. Many of the tropical diseases prevalent in developing countries, however, are under-researched by large pharmaceutical companies because there are few profits to be made from producing drugs for people in poor regions. But in Southeast Asia, not all are despairing over the lack of interest by large pharmaceutical companies....

Crazy in the 'Hood

Thomas L. Friedman November 20, 2002
The power of weapons of mass destruction means their possession concerns not only the immediate neighbor but the neighborhood. How to deal with a country like North Korea, which appears to have developed nuclear weapons, is thus not only a worry to South Korea. But the killing power that North Korea packs vis-à-vis its southern neighbor makes US decision-making more complicated. As Thomas...

US, Singapore on Brink of Sealing Free-Trade Pact

November 19, 2002
American and Singaporean negotiators spent most of last night negotiating the final terms of the first American-Asian free-trade agreement, which, if all goes smoothly, could be signed as early as next year. The two sides agreed on all but one major issue (that of capital transfers in-and-out of Singapore). Singapore’s geopolitical importance, with its modern technology and peaceful political and...