Earlier this month, I wrote about a growing confrontation in Kuantan, Malaysia regarding a planned rare earth mining facility to be opened by an Australian corporation. The plant – which would become the world’s largest of its kind and the first rare earth refining operation built outside of China in many years – had been […]
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 riots has been an emotive issue in India. Conviction of Modi is viewed by his critics as the only form in which justice can be accorded to the victims of Gujarat riots. Modi’s supporters cite his performance as an administrator and development of Gujarat (the Muslim […]
Trade Minister Yoshio Hachiro resigned after just eight days in office over a remark he made about radiation contamination at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. While touring the plant and its vicinity nearly six months after the disaster struck Thursday, Hachiro said: “Unfortunately, there was not a soul in sight in the streets of […]
Osama bin Laden: killed and al Qaeda: on the run. That’s the balance sheet — more or less — that the U.S. has to share with the world. Meanwhile, its biggest ally in the War on Terror — Pakistan — has nothing to present except that its own people have been terrorized by militants, with […]
The following interview originally appeared on Dawn.com, Pakistan’s most respected English news source. I am reproducing it here for the interest of our readers. It’s a rare opportunity to come across an American diplomat who understands the South Asian culture and speaks fluent Urdu and Hindi. Former ambassador Teresita C. Schaffer, 66, is one of […]
Japan was alerted to Russian military air drills being conducted “unusually close” to its airspace near the disputed Kuril Islands, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said Thursday. Fujimura said the Russian military had designated an area within Russian airspace as dangerous for aviation northeast of Japan’s Hokkaido island as it continued drills above the Sea […]
An apparel manufacturing facility in Gurgaon Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has just completed a high-profile trip to Bangladesh. Although domestic politics in India prevented the visit from being as fruitful as it could have been, Mr. Singh nonetheless made good progress on issues that have divided the two neighbors for decades. Yet even greater dividends […]
We are now just about a week into the Noda administration and a new foreign policy landscape is beginning to take shape. We have a clearer picture of PM Noda’s stance on Futenma; a commitment not to visit the Yasukuni Shrine; and a better sense of his personal politics, what might be called “moderate nationalism.” And now […]
What is more important: Securing Pakistan’s strategic relationship with the United States or asking what some may call the “tough questions”? The presence of Osama bin Laden in the country’s garrison town of Abbottabad may not have been in the knowledge of the top Pakistani military authorities but it is no coincidence that many other […]
Yoshihiko Noda delivered his first press Friday since becoming Japan’s newest prime minister. He announced the four top priorities of his cabinet, which was sworn in Friday. Noda’s top priority is recovery of the disaster-hit areas of the March 11 quake and tsunami. The government aims to pass a third supplementary budget for reconstruction, expected […]
Online campaigns are viewed as the most democratic medium in contemporary times. There are numerous examples of social media resulting in change and enhancing accountability in countries, towns and villages. As someone who studies the positive impact of social media on civil society interactions, it’s heartening to witness these developments. Various forms on online protests, […]
September was supposed to be the month in which operations began at a rare earth processing facility located in Kuantan, Malaysia, a fast-growing port city situated along the South China Sea. The project, awarded to the Australian-based Lynas Corporation, was originally envisaged as a lofty effort at breaking the Chinese monopoly of the production of […]
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