High-cost military equipment like fighter jets or missile defense shields won’t stop coordinated terrorist attacks like those in Paris against youth enjoying city life on a Friday night. Intrusive surveillance won’t prevent brothers, roommates or loners contemplating suicide and plotting murder,...
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Billionaires are nervous about growing inequality. The United States is wealthy, yet 40 percent are in debt, living from pay check to pay check. Businesses that rely on ordinary consumers purchasing clothes, home products and more will see stagnation. “If inequality is not addressed, the income gap...
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The numbers of grossly overloaded vessels of all types, carrying desperate migrants from Syria and other conflict zones, are on the rise. More than 20,000 have died in recent years, and more than 200,000 took the dangerous trip across the Mediterranean in 2014 alone. Médecins Sans Frontières, or...
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Military-grade drones are too costly and ineffective for US border patrol, suggests a US inspector general report. “Customs and Border Protection has used drones since 2004 to aid investigations and patrol borders,” reports Jack Nicas for the Wall Street Journal. “The Inspector General report...
Using drones to guard the U.S. border has been more costly and less effective than previously thought, according to a government watchdog report.
The report, released Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, said...
Health tourism flows in two ways: Patients from the United States seek to save on routine procedures, while the wealthy in countries like China pay cash to top medical centers in the United States and Europe for treatment. “The majority of such travelers go on tourist visas, often not stating the...
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The United States is not alone in its pivot toward Asia. The Asia Pacific region is a center of bustling potential and security pitfalls. And China is the center of that region, notes Jean-Pierre Lehmann, international political economist. The United States claims its pivot is not intended to...
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrate $400 billion gas deal
HONG KONG: Only halfway through 2014 and it is clear the year will be remembered for a number of seismic shifts occurring in the Asia Pacific...
Intensifying internal conflict, destabilizing for governance, is underway in varying degrees for many countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, South Sudan, Syria, Thailand and Ukraine. Syria’s conflict is the most brutal with 125,000 dead and 6 million people dislocated amid the use of torture...
Civil wars, those raging and those yet to come, present the largest immediate threat to human societies. Some have similar roots, but there is no overall unifying cause; except, perhaps, a conviction that the conflict is a fight to oblivion. Victory...
Leaders of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund warn that US failure to raise a debt ceiling and make payments on its debt will disrupt a global economic recovery underway since 2009. “Participants at the meetings remained on edge, given the gravity of the threat,” report Annie Lowrey...
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