Nearly seven decades after it won independence, India is riddled with corruption and ruled by thugs. It’s time to grant independence to India’s 29 states. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) greets school children after he addressed the nation from New...
By Lukas Jansen Ayu is a 13-year-old girl from a village in Indonesia, one of five children in a family that cultivates tobacco and other crops. All of the children help with the tobacco crop. Ayu says she vomits every year while harvesting tobacco. “My stomach...
It’s but a 20-minute stop on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The airport and feed mill are deserted. But Barabinsk is my hometown and always will be. Abandoned Barabinsk Airport (Photo by Daria Kuznetsova) “A small town in the center of Siberia”. That’s the...
By Paul Eckert An obscure international maritime arbitration panel in the Netherlands will deliver a ruling on July 12 on a testy dispute between China and the Philippines over remote islets in the South China Sea. The United States is not a party to the case in the...
It upended China’s history. But the 50th anniversary of the launch of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution was shrouded in silence. Visitors in front of portraits of Mao Zedong at a souvenir store in Shaoshan, China, 28 April 2016. (EPA/How Hwee Young) It was...
Four decades after the end of a failed U.S. war in Vietnam, President Obama has halted an arms embargo that was one of the conflict’s last remnants. Forty-one years after the end of a failed U.S. war in Vietnam, President Barack Obama has halted an arms embargo...
By Kelvin Green II The leader of Taiwan’s political party that favors independence from China made history today when she took office as the island’s first woman president. China is hoping the history-making stops there. Unlike the Kuomintang party, which...
A lawsuit against torture advances as a U.S. judge rules that two government contractors can be sued for brutal interrogation tactics used in Washington’s “war against terror.” A protester against torture dressed as a Guantanamo Bay prisoner, London,...
By Anne-Sophie van Wingerden Arriving at Beijing’s airport last summer, I glanced at the flight monitors. Taiwan was not listed among domestic destinations. Nor was it alongside international capitals. Taiwan exists in limbo, neither part of mainland China to...
Mountains of garbage encircling Beijing tell the story of a country whose infrastructure has not kept pace with its growing economy or population. River in Shunyi, Beijing, that led me to my first dump At a construction site in Shunyi Refuse behind a gated community...