The ground-breaking K-Pop band BTS is set to release its new record Map of the Soul: Persona on April 12— a day before the band’s SNL Performance and a month before their World Tour: Love Yourself: Speak Yourself. Persona will mark the end of the Love Yourself trilogy, which included…
EMILY CAPOUYA WRITES– This year, the Bali Spirit Festival was to take place March 29- April 5 (2020) in Ubud, the uplands of Bali, Indonesia in stunning lush green rice fields with a river flowing down below. Every year at this time, crowds of people come all around the world…
NICOLE ALAVERDIAN WRITES– China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is all but green– environmentally speaking, of course. The BRI initiative, through trade, investment, and infrastructure with some 65 plus countries, may garner immense monetary green for the countries involved but also leads to severe global environmental damage, according to a…
PATRICK POLESHUK WRITES- If the recent Trump-Kim summit has told us anything about North Korea’s relationship with the U.S, it is that the two leaders appear to be on separate wavelengths. The summit’s location in Hanoi, Vietnam, while comfortable and convenient for both Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un, was not…
FROM AXIOS – President Trump’s former director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn let his feelings about the president’s tariff battle with China be known in an interview on Freakonomics Radio released Wednesday night. “When you put tariffs on goods that people in the United States consume every day,…
NAWAF Al-SABAH WRITES– Rahaf Al-Qunun captured international attention at the beginning of the year as she sought to escape her allegedly abusive family. Rahaf, who is Arabian, barricaded herself in a Bangkok airport hotel room to prevent Thai authorities from deporting her. She had been detained at the Bangkok airport…
SARAH Al-MUWAD WRITES– Is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the fifth largest country in Asia, actually working towards female empowerment? And is this to advance the kingdom’s international reputation, which has recently taken a huge hit? The answer is yes. On February 23, history was made when the Kingdom of…
‘(This article contains spoilers) YUXIN ZHOU WRITES — On February 5th, the Chinese sci-fi movie “ The Wandering Earth” was released worldwide. Directed by Frank Gwo, the film is a significant landmark in Chinese cinema, with record-breaking box office success, stunning visual effects, and unique storytelling in the epic science…
TOM PLATE WRITES – When President Donald J. Trump abruptly folded his diplomatic tent in Hanoi and flew back to Washington without a de-nuclearization/sanctions-relief deal with North Korea, the temperature in the Vietnamese capital had been pleasantly upper-70s (F). But on landing, the American capital seemed much, much colder in…
MINGYI LI WRITES– Last November, one of the auto industry’s most famous executives was arrested and sent to jail. Now, the CEO of Nissan and Mitsubishi, Carlos Ghosn, awaits his fate with his company. Will it bail out its savior, or remain ethical by letting him serve his full term?…
“You can’t keep living for other people, you know. No one is going to win like that.” Hana defies every norm: as a full-time student studying math, and the daughter of an immigrant, she is also a daughter caring for her ill mother, a part-time worker at her family’s Korean…
KOREA TIMES’ KIM HYUN-BIN WRITES – Public calls are growing for the closure of an entertainment media outlet for violating entertainers’ privacy rights. The negative sentiment toward Dispatch, notorious for revealing celebrity dating stories by constantly following them, came after the tabloid broke the news that popular boy band EXO’s…
KHON KAEN, THAILAND — When business started to sag a year ago at the shoe factory where she and her husband work, Nui Kalathai began to borrow money from relatives in her village in Khon Kaen, one of the largest provinces in Thailand’s northeastern plateau. She has been careful to…
KISHORE MAHBUBANI WRITES — Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s finance chief, is under house arrest in Vancouver. The US is trying to extradite her over fraud allegations related to sanctions against Iran © Bloomberg It is clear that the US government has made a strategic decision to go after Huawei, the…
CONOR FAIRTLOUGH WRITES — You’ve probably never seen the Japanese animation “Kimi no Nawa” (Your Name), but if you are a film critic, chances are you haven’t stopped hearing about it. The 2016 feature, directed by Makoto Shinkai, is not only currently the highest grossing anime and Japanese film, but…
PAULA MARKOW WRITES — Whether you are religious or not – you will be convinced by the end of this article that there truly is something greater than all of us: an all-knowing force. Except this force does not judge how we spend eternity, but rather, how we spend our…
