In The News

Sean Randolph September 2, 2010
As the US tech industry saw rapid growth during the 1990s, immigrating students and workers from Asia heeded innovation’s call. Engineers and programmers from India settled in Silicon Valley and enjoyed immediate success. About one out of six tech startups was launched by immigrants from India. Now some of these tech workers return to India, explains author and trade specialist Sean Randolph....
Dewi Kurniawati August 26, 2010
Indonesia has a secular constitution, but in 2003 gave a nod to the Aceh province adopting partial sharia law, supposedly an attempt to stem recruiting by a rebel movement. This separate set of laws, often targeting the poor and women, discourages tourism and economic development. Hard-line groups intent on gaining power in other provinces press for similar laws. Though scholars still debate what...
Jim Yardley August 23, 2010
India is the second most populous nation in the world, expected to overtake China in the next decade. Analysts study the two neighbor nations for how political systems and population policies contribute to growth or economic wealth: Nations with low fertility rates are generally wealthier, while younger populations are described as more productive. Fertility rates, varying throughout India, are...
Pavin Chachavalpongpun August 18, 2010
Throughout the spring, large groups of Thai citizens banded together for protests, risking arrest and injury. After a harsh crackdown in May, the Abhisit government promised reconciliation. But rather than listen and respond to opponents, the leaders control the reconciliation process and work on consolidating their own power, dawdling over election reform and limiting freedom of expression....
Gethin Chamberlain, Saeed Shah, Sam Jones August 16, 2010
Floods continue to batter Pakistan, where 20 million are already homeless. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urges government leaders to hurry relief to the region to avoid additional fatalities, refugees and chaos. “His warning came amid growing fears of social unrest or even a military takeover after the government's shambolic response to the floods,” notes an article in the Guardian, which...
Eric Randolph July 29, 2010
Enjoying rapid growth, India looks to make use of rich mineral holdings in its eastern states. But the rural poor and tribal people living near these deposits have been deprived of their rights and often oppressed by corrupt officials in cahoots with developers, explains journalist Eric Randolph. About 40 percent of India’s majority rural population lives in poverty but cell phones and...
Jean-Pierre Lehmann July 8, 2010
For two decades, US leaders regarded communist North Vietnam as a threat to freedom and American generals vowed to bomb the regime into submission, before abandoning the fight in 1975. The US pursued an isolation policy, and Vietnam unified, yet wallowed in economic stagnation as it confiscated private property, re-educated opponents and allied with the Soviet Union. As the Soviet Union crumbled...