The pollution that caused mass death of fish and other marine life in Vietnam did not only spark widespread anger nationwide, but was also a rude awakening for its people who began to see vividly lack of transparency when handling public issues in their country. According to a figure given by an official on May 5, the disaster had killed ...
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Curbing our enthusiasm over rising US home prices
Justin Fox Home prices in US went up in March. That was the news last Tuesday from S&P/Case-Shiller; all indications are that April was an up month too, and that this summer’s “selling season” will see continued price increases. Bit by bit, prices are regaining the ground lost during the long collapse from 2006 through early 2012. In some ...
Read More »US hits right note at Shangri-La with principled security network
Speaking on Saturday at this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue – Asia’s premier defense summit – U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter delivered an important address outlining what he called the “principled security network†– a growing set of bilateral, trilateral and multilateral mechanisms in the region focused on preserving key values and promoting greater burden-sharing among all nations. Little of what ...
Read More »Let us count the ways India surpasses China
When Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, speaks to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on June 8, he may find it hard to convince lawmakers of his country’s promise. He shouldn’t: As China, Russia and Brazil slow down, India is barreling ahead. It’s one of the brighter spots among all the emerging markets. True, India’s economic ...
Read More »Big data is still only a little helpful
Leonid Bershidsky “Big data†is one of the tech world’s ubiquitous buzzwords. In the old days, people just called it data, but in Silicon Valley it’s not a thing unless it’s big. It’s not yet obvious, however, that data collected by various internet services is any more useful than those mined in more traditional ways — through surveys, for ...
Read More »Obama’s failed TPP pitch is a missed opportunity in Vietnam
During his trip to Asia recently, US President Barack Obama took the opportunity to tell an audience in Vietnam why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is so important. Since the Vietnamese people may be the greatest beneficiaries of the agreement, this was an excellent venue to praise the power of globalization to bring about shared prosperity to people around the world. But ...
Read More »The IS feeds off Islamophobia
WASHINGTON The West is suffering from what one leading strategist calls an “autoimmune disease†in trying to fight the IS. The self-defense mechanisms championed by Donald Trump and his European neo-populist counterparts have gone into toxic overdrive — weakening the West’s body politic and making the extremism fever far worse. David Kenning, a British counter-radicalization expert, made this provocative argument ...
Read More »Resolving S China Sea row crucial
China’s endeavours to spread its wings over South China Sea is causing tremendous alarm and tension among neighbouring states which view Beijing’s encroachment towards their sovereign regional waters as an outright use of force to commandeer their regional coasts. Given its strategic location, China, the world’s second largest economy, claims large swathes of one of the world’s busiest shipping ...
Read More »How FB is taking artificial intel to crazy new heights
Kevin J. Ryan SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS F acebook already knows a lot about you—just look at the people in your “suggested friends†section or the carefully selected advertisements that seem to correlate pretty nicely with your recent browsing history. But the social network wants to get a whole lot smarter. That’s according to a blog post on Wednesday announcing ...
Read More »Duterte’s defense diplomacy conundrum
As soon as the inaugural festivities are over, President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s administration will begin preparing for one of the most important diplomatic events of his presidency: the 2017 Philippine chairmanship of ASEAN. Not only will the occasion be significant for the country, it will also be milestone for the organization, which will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its founding during ...
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