News
ASEAN deadlocked on South China Sea after Cambodia blocks statement
Southeast Asian nations failed to find common ground on maritime disputes in the South China Sea on July 24 after Cambodia stuck to its demand the group make no reference to an international court ruling against Beijing in a statement, diplomats said. ASEAN is now facing ...
It’s time for development banks to start listening
The aid community often ignores the wishes of the very people it’s supposed to be helping. The world needs a more bottom-up approach to development. Almost a year ago, the United Nations set the Sustainable Development Goals, an ambitious blueprint for governments and financiers to ...
Flood of doubts: sceptical public questions Three Gorges Dam’s capacity to stop disasters
Project was touted as a tool to prevent floods but those claims have been watered down and new threats are eroding confidence – and riverbanks. The floods have wreaked havoc in the east, leaving 237 people dead and another 93 missing. That is on top of ...
The business of achieving the sustainable development goals
By 2030, poverty and hunger should be history, every human being should have access to clean energy, and the impacts of climate change should be reduced. These are just three of the 17 promises the global community made last September when it adopted the Sustainable Development ...
Maid in Singapore
The dream of opening a business back in Myanmar is what brought Moe Moe to Singapore two years ago. What she did not know is that it would be nine months before she received her first salary. For the first nine months everything went to the ...
ASEAN and the logic of collective action
The ten member states of ASEAN aspire to “One Vision, One Identity, One Community.” Their foreign ministers meeting in Laos this July demonstrated again how far the distance is between goal and reality. Like the European Union, the regional organization of Southeast Asia is pulled ...
China sets aside $30 million for weather modification program
China has allocated $29.76 million to spend on its weather modification program as part of efforts to combat drought and reduce the impact of natural disasters, the finance ministry said on 14 July, as state media reported flooding this year caused at least 237 deaths. The ...
SE Asia stocks higher on Wall Street rally, stimulus hopes
Southeast Asian stocks closed higher on 12 July as risk appetite improved after an overnight rally on Wall Street and as a new round of monetary easing from Japan raised expectations of more stimulus from global policy makers. In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered a new ...
China’s last wild river carries conflicting environmental hopes
Three great rivers rush through parallel canyons in the mountains of southwest China on their way to the coastal plains of Asia. At least 10 dams have been built on two of them, the Mekong and the Yangtze. The third remains wild: the remote, raging ...
China calls for calm After Brexit, seeks ‘stable and united’ EU
China called for a calm response to the U.K.’s unprecedented Brexit vote, saying a “stable and united European Union was in the interest of all parties.”“The decision of leaving the EU has an impact on everything, and we believe all related parties must calm down ...
