Opinion

  Hiroshima stands as an obnoxious reminder of atrocities of a nuclear war. It keeps warning us that such an apocalypse should never be repeated. With Barack Obama’s trip to Hiroshima this month — the first by a sitting US President — hopes are raised the visit would renew push for global nuclear disarmament in light of horror Hiroshima still …

  Jonathan Bernstein Good for Donald Trump for getting an early start on his presidential transition team. Though Chris Christie may not be ideal for this particular job, it is a vital task, especially since Trump’s challenges will be unusually difficult, should he actually win the election. This is in part because, as Politico reported on Monday before the Christie …

This spring, millions of Americans have learned to dread going to the airport. An unfortunate combination of surging passenger volumes and declining numbers of screeners have led to security lines that can average over an hour in length. Thousands of passengers are missing flights daily. Meanwhile, airports and airlines across the U.S. are struggling to contain passenger anger. In desperation …

  The plight of the middle class is one of the hottest topics in the U.S. presidential campaign. Candidates compete to offer plans for the revival of the dependable middle, the foundation of society. The polarization isn’t only occurring in the U.S., though. In Germany, with its far more socialist income redistribution model, the middle class also is endangered. In …

  Budgets can be austere things, as Australia’s was – or tried to be — in 2014. They can also be optimistic, about delivering surpluses or in this government’s case “jobs and growth.” Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his Treasurer Scott Morrison have delivered an optimistic budget. Or at least they delivered it optimistically, with Turnbull waxing lyrically if …

  Catherine Putz SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Ahead of the planned May 12 inauguration of the CASA-1000 project, the World Bank, one of the project’s main financiers, published a Q&A to try and provide answers to sustained criticisms of the project. The $1.17 billion CASA-1000 project aims to supply electricity from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to Afghanistan and Pakistan via a …

While speaking with a Chinese journalist recently about the American presidential election, he asked me what the best way was to translate Donald Trump’s election slogan, “Make America Great Again!” The two of us discussed several Chinese wordings that might be a suitable translation of this saying, and I suddenly realized this slogan is actually the exact same as Chinese …

  Philippines president-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s pledge to restructure power in favour of the disadvantaged regions in the country looks quite ambitious, as he would need cooperation of political and business classes to realise this noble dream. The president-elect’s new plan to negotiate with China over disputed China South Sea, represents a departure from the Philippines’ traditional politics and will not …

  Cal Wong China is preparing to invest RMB 77 billion ($11.9 billion) into domestic aviation infrastructure, with a particular focus on airports in rural areas, said the country’s civil aviation regulator at a State Council executive meeting last week. The announcement suggests this will be a multi-pronged initiative. One of the aims is to build more airports in remote …

  Central Asia has no shortage of critical, politically fraught, logistically challenging, and financially important energy projects. There’s the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan India gas pipeline (TAPI) and the Central Asia South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project (CASA-1000), both of which have been discussed in depth here at Crossroads Asia and feature in an excellent recent podcast from RFE/RL. But there’s another …