The latest poll by the Pew Research Center reveals that Americans place a higher degree of personal importance on religion than residents of other wealthy countries. The survey of 44 countries, part of The Pew Global Attitudes Project, also found that residents of Asia, Latin America, and Africa...
Religion is much more important to Americans than to people living in other wealthy nations. Fully six-in-ten Americans say religion plays a very important role in their lives compared with just 33% of those surveyed in Great Britain and even...
The Mekong, one of the world’s major rivers, starting in Tibet and flowing through south China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, provides sustenance through irrigation and fishing to those living in its basin. But it also provides hydroelectric power through dams, three of which were...
China's Xiaowan dam, the world's tallest, poses a huge challenge to the Mekong river basin countries
SINGAPORE: Back in 1986, when China began building the first of a series of dams on the Mekong River, hardly anyone in the downstream countries of...
The free-market principles that drive global trade of goods, services and ideas often run counter to notions of institutional regulation. According to David Rothkopf, author and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, this void in global governance has facilitated the...
Rich and powerful: Global elite gather at the World Economic Forum's
annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort Davos
WASHINGTON, DC: Like nature, power also abhors a vacuum. On the global stage this has meant that...
As the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) opened up to more and more immigrants to satisfy their domestic labor needs, many have started thinking about the implications for such sizable immigration. Martin Wolf, columnist for the Financial Times, says that the choice for more immigration...
Immigration is set to be among the most – if not the most – controversial topics of the 21st century. If our aim were to maximise global economic output, we would abolish restrictions on the movement of people. But...
Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, is inherently cautious in his choice of words. In the weeks leading to the Iraq war, Annan refrained from outright criticism of the grounds for invasion, and only recently did he warn of the dangerous precedents established by preemptive action. But in a recent...
The declaration of the United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, on the Iraq war was shocking in its simplicity. He described it for the first time as "illegal". No caveats. No equivocation. None of the ambiguity...
For all the furor about the US’ proposed tariff on Chinese car tires, the end result is more likely to be a whimper, according to trade specialist Edward Gresser of the Democratic Leadership Council in Washington. It is unlikely that this tariff will set off the next trade war, igniting a global...
WASHINGTON: Sometimes a small pebble, dislodged from a mountainside, turns out to be the trigger of an avalanche that leaves the environment vastly changed. Most of the time it doesn’t. Instead the pebble lands, bounces once or twice, kicks up a...
By mastering the process of reverse engineering, the Indian pharmaceutical industry has successfully produced generic drugs at low prices – crucial for providing affordable treatment to those in need. The government's impending adoption of Trips (Trade Related Intellectual Property in...
THE Indian pharmaceutical industry finds itself at a cusp. Depending on how the government approaches the necessary amendment to the Indian Patents Act, the fast-growing sector could find itself stalled or poised for a...
The United States under the Trump administration has targeted China as a trade and security threat, and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un takes advantage of the rising tensions to court three presidents: Moon Jae-in of South Korea, Xi Jinping of China and Donald Trump of the United States. China, resisting...
Catbird’s seat: Kim Jong-un, left, meets with Xi Jinping over North Korea’s rising strategic value amid rising tensions with the United States; US Vice President Mike Pence’s suggests that a new Cold War may be underway
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA: US-...
