Khin Yu Waddy Myint is manager at Pyrex Trading and Distribution, a Burmese pharmaceutical company that employs 250 people across the country. Part of her job is to source and import medicines from India and Australia, a task she concedes she doesn’t know enough about. “It is the first time for me to learn many […]
After the Queen’s visit to the Foreign Office this week, Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that the southern part of the British Antarctic Territory will now be known, at least on British maps, as “Queen Elizabeth Land”. Within hours of this announcement, made in acknowledgement of Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee and her service to the […]
Few people are happier to see 2012 end than Hu Jintao, Yoshihiko Noda or Lee Myung Bak. It was a rocky year for the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea, who leave office with legacies in tatters. Gripes about President Hu doing little about China’s biggest challenges outnumbered the accolades. Noda’s premiership ended as ingloriously as those of the […]
The signs are unmistakable. Once again, the West is preparing to escalate military intervention in the Arab and Muslim world. This time the target is Syria. Since the US presidential election, the warnings have multiplied. First, in a breathtaking reprise of the falsehood that paved the way for the invasion of Iraq, US and British […]
The India–Israel friendship has been flying very well under the radar for years, arguably to the benefit of both sides. But Israel now wants a public acknowledgement of the bond. It would like India to invite President Shimon Peres for a visit to put a seal on the relationship and take it to a higher […]
In the United States, it’s the Kennedys and Bushs; in South Korea, it’s the Parks. On December 19, South Korea elected Park Geun-Hye as president — but she’s not just the country’s first female head of state, she’s heir to a controversial political legacy. Her father, Park Chung-hee, was South Korea’s dictator in the 1960s […]
We’ve been saying it for years: This coming year represents the moment of truth on Iran. Except that this year, it’s for real: 2013 represents the moment of truth on Iran. The year the Iranians pass the point of no return in their drive to the bomb. Or the year, one way or another, they […]
The leading demographic accounts of contemporary slavery project a global slave population of between 20 million and 30 million people. Most of these people are in sedentary forms of slavery, such as hereditary collateral-debt bondage. But about 20 percent have been unwittingly trafficked though the promise of opportunity by predators through varying combinations of deception […]
SOUTH KOREA has elected Park Geun-hye, a 60-year-old conservative, as president for the coming five years. The candidate is from the same party, the Saenuri party, as the incumbent, Lee Myung-bak. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the dictator who set South Korea on the path of break-neck development, seizing power in 1961 and […]
INDIA TODAY STANDS as the world’s largest democratic state, a nation of over a billion people that stitches together countless ethnic groups, castes, and languages. Indian officials long have boasted of their nation’s deep and founding commitment to democracy, a public emphasis that has only grown stronger as China and India increasingly become global competitors. You […]
looking beyond borders 