June, 2016

• 4 June

  Syrian army thrusts into IS bastion

  

    Beirut / AFP Russian-backed Syrian troops pushed into the IS group’s bastion province Raqa on Saturday, threatening to catch the extremists in a pincer movement as US-backed Kurdish-led fighters advance from the north. The lightning advance from the southwest with Russian air support brought the army to within 40 kilometres of the Euphrates Valley town of Tabqa, site of ...

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• 4 June

  Philippine troops seize IS camp

    Butig / AFP Philippine troops captured an militant training camp after a 10-day battle, officials said, as part of operations to clear insurgents from a remote jungle region. The offensive against the Maute group, one of several Filipino Muslim armed organisations which have pledged allegiance to the IS, left four soldiers dead and 15 others wounded, a Philippine military ...

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• 4 June

  Paris floods abate as Seine recedes

  

    Paris / AFP The rain-swollen River Seine in Paris receded for the first time in a week after nearing its highest level in three decades, triggering a scramble to save artworks in riverside museums. The Seine stood at 6.06 metres above normal levels at 8:00am, down from a high of 6.10 metres overnight, the environment ministry’s Vigicrues flood watch ...

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• 4 June

  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 ...

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• 4 June

  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 ...

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• 4 June

  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 ...

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• 4 June

  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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• 4 June

  FTAs: Economic integration or economic spheres of influence?

  

  In the past few years the rhetorical back and forth between China and the United States over economic institutional governance has intensified. Along with concerns over the governance of multilateral development banks and the role of China’s currency in the International Monetary Fund, free trade agreements (FTA) have become part of a war of words over the future of the ...

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• 4 June

  Windmills, world trade and the environment

  

    Michael Froman When the winds of change blow, a Chinese proverb says, some people build walls and others build windmills. Given the tremendous environmental challenges the world faces, it’s not enough just to build windmills. We need to develop a range of innovative environmental technologies, and we need to break down barriers to trading them worldwide. Global trade in ...

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• 4 June

  Europe isn’t ready for the sharing economy

  Sharing economy platforms such as Uber and Airbnb have been struggling as some European countries attempt to regulate and make sense of their business. The European Union has finally come up with some guiding principles for its members, mildly telling them that the “collaborative economy,” as the bureaucrats call it, is generally a good thing that shouldn’t be banned. The ...

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