In The News

New York Times: Improve a Billion Lives With Eyeglasses

Andrew Jacobs May 10, 2018
HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other deadly diseases are at the forefront of global health crises. This had allowed certain widespread health issues to be overlooked. Poor vision and lack of access to eyeglasses, while not necessarily fatal, afflicts more than a billion people worldwide. Eye exams and eyeglasses can be very expensive, while the resources allotted to improving vision care in...

Times of India: The Wuhan Puzzle

Nayan Chanda May 7, 2018
China and India, the world’s two most populous nations, are rivals for trade and regional influence. A two-day summit between Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi may have been a quest for cooperation and Nayan Chanda, writing for the Times of India, refers to a Mao Zedong theory on setting priorities: “In his famous work ‘On Contradiction,’ Mao stated successful policy depends on identifying the...

Inside Story: Domestic Disharmony for China and India

Kerry Brown and Marya Shakil April 27, 2018
Before aspiring to global leadership roles, China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi must demonstrate capability for handling domestic challenges. “Xi and Modi may operate in very different contexts, one in charge of the world’s largest Communist Party–controlled state, the other running the world’s largest democracy,” explain Kerry Brown and Marya Shakil for Inside Story. “But both can be...

Asian Age: EU to Ban Palm Oil in Biodiesel

Sudheer Mopperthy April 16, 2018
Palm oil transformed from an alternative energy that could reduce carbon emissions to an eco-nightmare and mass burning of rainforest habitat to make room for more plantations: “One of the biggest issues raised was that using palm oil for biodiesel is an inefficient use of agricultural land,” notes Sudheer Mopperthy for the Asian Age. Likewise the European Union went form a pledge that 10 percent...

Wall Street Journal: Myanmar Court Holds Journalists Investigating Rohingya

Jon Emont April 11, 2018
Government leaders who engage in shameful behavior strive to limit press freedoms. A Myanmar court is holding two Reuter journalists for reporting on the Rohingya crisis. The minority Muslim group has no citizen rights in the Buddhist nation and the military burned villages and forced as many as 700,000 people to relocate to Bangladesh. “Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had been investigating alleged...

Jakarta Post: Water Privatization in Jakarta

April 3, 2018
Water privatization, in theory, is supposed to steady supplies and costs of the limited resource. But water is essential for survival and is regarded as a basic public service. Government handing control to companies seeking profits leads to problems including emphasis on increased costs, reduced maintenance, and emphasis on developers’ goals, according to Food & Water Watch. Courts in...

Diplomat: China-India Chess Match in the Maldives

Sunaina Kumar and Angela Stanzel March 16, 2018
The Maldives have been in a state of emergency since February 6 with an arrest order for a former president and Supreme Court chief justice. “The crisis may appear to be an internal power struggle between the Supreme Court and the government of the South Asian island country, but it has wider geopolitical ramifications, and has spiraled into a power struggle between India and China,” report...