Asia is seen as a pivotal region for US foreign policy, as demonstrated by US President Barack Obama's travels to India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea. Despite setbacks for Obama's party in mid-term elections, he continues to win high public-approval ratings in many Asian nations,...
Watch your step: Obama is popular in Asia, but needs to act fast in a region of growing self-confidence
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama's visit to Japan for a summit of APEC leaders and South Korea for a G-20 meeting comes at a time when...
Investors, sensing opportunity in climbing food prices, made record profits in the commodities markets, including wheat, corn, rice and palm oil. “Commodity speculation spread long ago from standard products like oil and gold to anything edible and available for trade on the Chicago Futures...
Click here for the original article on Spiegel Online.
The South Korean film industry is taking on Hollywood in a heated conflict over the number of foreign films that can be shown every year in South Korea. Filmmakers in South Korea are up in arms in response to what they consider inappropriate pressure to open the South Korean market to Hollywood...
Click here for the original article on The Standard's website.
The world now has three nations with high proportions of elderly people – Germany, Italy and Japan. Joining that group before 2030: China, Netherlands, France, Sweden, Portugal, Slovenia, Croatia, Hong Kong, Korea, the US, the UK, New Zealand and other nations. “The ‘unprecedented pace’ of...
Click here for the article in Financial Times.
Seven years after 9/11, views on the Islamist threat remain polarized and both are flawed, argues journalist and author Sadanand Dhume: The right overplays the danger to Europe and the United States, while the left underestimates its impact on Muslim-majority countries. Ironically, the very...
Power and faith: Indonesian Muslims pray at a mosque. Outside Islamists wage war on liberalism
WASHINGTON: In the years since 9/11 two broad narratives have emerged in the West to explain the nature of the so-...
The internet revolutionized politics, trade and social interactions. Blogs contribute so much to that revolution, and in 2007 author, philosopher, neuroscientist and geostrategist Nayef Al-Rodhan referred to them as the “fifth estate.” The designation of “estate” for media is often “contested...
Power and peril: Bangladesh-born American blogger Avijit Roy paid with his life for the influence he exercised (top); US whistleblower Edward Snowden unleashed a firestorm
OXFORD: The internet and global interconnectivity, while often taken for...
Since 1997's economic crisis in East Asia, many countries in the region have struggled to cope not only with economic problems but also pressing security issues. Surin Pitsuwan, former foreign minister of Thailand, writes here that Asia's security problems are deeply intertwined with its...
AS EAST Asia emerges from the rubble of the devastating financial crisis of the late 1990s, many social and economic structural problems are still hidden behind the facade of bullish stock markets, real estate rebound and export growth....
Intellectual property rights experts and farmer's rights activists in Thailand are up in arms over their government's proposed native-resources protection bill. The bill, designed to protect the country's native animal and plant species, has been drafted to help Thailand comply with...
Academics and lawyers yesterday called on the House of Representatives to set up a joint committee with the Senate to revise the native-resources protection bill.
They argue that the bill - approved by the...
