China, US spar over South China Sea at Laos talks
The top diplomats of China and the US sparred on Saturday over the South China Sea, where Beijing is locked in a territorial dispute with US treaty ally the Philippines.…
New CPEC playbook
Amidst global economic uncertainty, developing nations are striving to minimise long-term economic setbacks and foster recovery. To break free from the low-income trap and achieve sustained prosperity, these countries are…
Dollar bullets
Trump is halting bloody bullet wars, only to ignite bloody trade wars. Meanwhile, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the United States…
Bitcoin II
El Salvador made history on September 7, 2001, by becoming the world’s first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. This groundbreaking move has had several notable impacts. Bitcoin has…
Energy-hungry Singapore eyes deserts, forest for renewables
With huge data centres set to drive up already outsized energy demand, the tiny city-state of Singapore is looking to Australia’s deserts and Malaysia’s rainforests for clean power. This week…
Deadly diplomacy
NO one who lived anywhere in the world through the 1970s could ignore Henry Kissinger as he bestrode the world like a colossus, not so much as the peacemaker he pretended to…
Heinz A. Kissinger
HEINZ Kissinger sloughed many skins in his 100-year-long life. He shed Heinz to become Henry, his German ancestry to become an American, his original faith Judaism to become a faux…
War on leaks
LAST month, Daniel Ellsberg, announced that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and given just a few months to live. At 91, he decided against any treatment and said…
Never say die
HENRY Kissinger, often viewed as a war criminal, marked his 100th birthday last Saturday amid the usual accolades of the high and mighty, alongside a few barbs from others with…
Did reason fail or‘men of reason’?
The age of reason, rationality, and science, a gift of the European Renaissance, seems under attack from critics who argue that the modern world has not lived up to mankind’s…
