Kasab, the world came to call him, “the butcher”: butcher not because he shot dead 55 women, men and children, Hindu and Muslim at short range with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, but because it denoted his underprivileged southern Punjab caste. For millions of Indians, the man caught on closed circuit television cameras as he walked […]
When oil prices spiraled much higher in global markets between 2003 and 2008, the governments of several oil-producing nations — including Algeria, Bolivia, China, Ecuador, Russia and Venezuela — responded by expropriating local assets of independent oil companies that had contracted to operate in their territories, or by imposing large windfall taxes on their oil […]
This month, a curious thing happened in the annals of diplomacy. A country offered up a peace plan to put an end to a seemingly endless civil war in Syria. This country was not one of the usual foreign policy suspects — it was not the United States, it was not in Europe, and it wasn’t Syria’s […]
UNTIL the late 1950s America produced all the coal, oil and natural gas that its citizens could burn. But as they grew rich and bought cars as big as whales, America began to suck in fuel from beyond its shores. It now accounts for nearly a fifth of world energy consumption. China may be the […]
International attention on Sri Lanka has focused recently on a devastating report from the United Nations reviewing its own failure to protect civilians during the humanitarian catastrophe of the final months of the island nation’s civil war in 2009. Yet as many in the international community have been looking back, a new, quieter crisis is […]
Default became a dirty word in the United Arab Emirates after 2009, when Dubai World requested a six-month delay on payments on US$26 billion in debt. So much so that when UAE energy company Dana Gas this month missed repayment on a US$920 million Islamic bond, local press hesitated to label it as a default. […]
China, Japan and South Korea started talks on a free-trade agreement vital to an Asia-wide deal in a move to forge closer economic ties even as they spar over disputed islands. The countries, representing three of Asia’s four biggest economies, will hold the first round of talks early next year, according to Xinhua, China’s official […]
Not too long ago it would have been unthinkable: the sight of a U.S. president standing next to Aung San Suu Kyi, the woman many believe should be — and might yet become — the president of her long-suffering country, Myanmar (also known as Burma). When Barack Obama was first elected to the White House […]
It won’t be mistaken for a Nixon-goes-to-China kind of moment. But President Barack Obama’s visit to Myanmar on Monday sometimes felt like a return to an earlier era of presidential diplomacy – and his aides were determined to make sure that no one missed its historic significance. The trip was carefully choreographed to highlight what the White […]
Xi Jinping, the new head of China’s ruling Communist Party, told his fellow leaders that unless they address corruption social unrest may rise and it could lead to the demise of the party. “The preponderance of facts tell us that the more severe the corruption problem becomes, it will ultimately lead the party and the nation […]
