In The News

Can ASEAN Respond to the Chinese Challenge?

Carlyle A. Thayer March 18, 2014
China has twice as much territory and population than the combined 10 member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – not to mention three times the GDP and four times the military spending. China increasingly pushes its weight in the region, most recently by criticizing Malaysian leadership in the search for missing flight MH307. Control of the South China Sea is another area of...

You Can Hunt for Flight 370

Lizzie Crocker March 12, 2014
A Malaysian Airlines jet with 239 persons on board vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. “Using high-resolution satellite images and the eyes of any human that’s willing to help, earth imagery company DigitalGlobe launched a campaign to scan the Gulf of Thailand for survivors,” reports Lizzie Crocker for the Daily Beast, about the company that provides imagery for Google Earth and Apple...

Nepal Forces Mount Everest Climbers to Double as Trash Collectors

Mark Johanson March 7, 2014
Leave no trace is a motto for many hikers – but not for those who attempt the treacherous climb of Mount Everest. “There are empty oxygen cylinders, tent debris, batteries and climbing gear -- not to mention human refuse and the bodies of fallen climbers, whose corpses don’t decompose in the permanently frozen highlands,” reports Mark Johanson for International Business Times, adding that Nepal...

US FDA Chief: If You Want Our Market, Meet Our Standards

March 4, 2014
US regulators seek cooperation on quality control from its supplier of foods and medicines. "If Indian pharmaceutical companies want to sell in the US, they need to comply with our standards, practices and expectations,” said Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, according to a report in the Times of India. She offered the comments during a trip to India and...

Desis Are Rising Up the Technology Ladder

Sujit John February 26, 2014
A high proportion of Indians are in top management of leading technology companies – including Google, Intel, Cisco and Microsoft. Indians are responsible for innovations like Google+, the Pentium chip, the USB and virtualization that made cloud-computing possible. The trend is to be expected: Many Indians obtained work visas and immigrated to the United States and other nations in anticipation...

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

Nayan Chanda February 20, 2014
Subsidies, originally intended as a tool of fairness, often transform into a tool for political power. The subsidies carry costs, both financial as well as with distorted and destabilized markets. Governments struggle to manage budgets, huge stockpiles, wasted resources and even unrest, explains Nayan Chanda, YaleGlobal editor in his column for Businessworld. “History is replete with examples of...

Bangladesh in Al Qaeda’s Crosshairs?

February 19, 2014
An audio clip on a website known as Jihadology, claiming to be from an Al Qaeda leader in hiding, has called on Bangladeshi Muslims to fight secularists and atheists. “Though authenticity of the audio tape remained unconfirmed, this type of message raised concerns among the cross section of people as there was apprehension of further rise of Islamist militancy, radicalisation and terror...