By Jane Macartney President Xi Jinping is arguably the most powerful Chinese leader since Chairman Mao and certainly the first to foster a similar personality cult. He must have relished burnishing his image last week by riding through London with the Queen in a...
At school I studied child labor in its worst forms. In Myanmar, I see it’s not easy to separate right from wrong. But foreign investors must take heed. (Photo by Irena Grizelj) It’s different in real life. At graduate school I had studied child labor in its...
Irena Grizelj recently discovered Myanmar and was impressed not so much by how quickly it is modernizing but by an ancient tradition that thrives even as the Southeast Asian nation opens up to the rest of the world. Irena sent us a series of photographs of Burmese...
Recently we published an article on the Rugby World Cup, and a hungry reader asked for more information. We listen to our readers — here’s chapter and verse on one of the world’s major sporting events. For more “decoders” explaining big...
This article is part of a News-Decoder series of “decoders” that explain crucial background to big issues. For more decoders, click here. By Pauline Bock Waves of migrants and refugees are threatening one of Europe’s bedrock achievements — the...
By Nelson Graves Here at News-Decoder we take stock on Fridays and look ahead to the next week’s news themes. It’s a way of making sense of developments that in the digital age can go by in a flash and confuse more than illuminate. Here’s a note I...
By Colin McIntyre At a time when the European Union’s borders are under siege from thousands of refugees and immigrants fleeing war, persecution and poverty, the prospect of enlarging the 28-nation bloc would seem a distant dream. Yet negotiations continue with a view...
By John Mehaffey An Olympic quiz question, which usually surprises sports followers, is to name the current rugby union gold medalists. The answer is the United States, victors over France at the 1924 Paris Games. Rugby was dropped from the Olympics after the Paris...
China has drawn scorn for its efforts to propping up share prices. But President Xi Jinping may yet end up being the reformer China and the world need. A shadow of a man at the People’s Bank of China in Beijing, 11 August 2015. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) The Chinese...
Global markets have been in turmoil in recent days, with the prices of company shares and foreign exchange rates fluctuating wildly. Betty Wong, who covered Wall Street markets for years, takes a look at the herd mentality that can jolt markets around the world. By...