FAISAL BIN ESSA WRITES — Turning her misfortune into fortune is what Rawan Bin Hussain does. The 22 year-old social media influencer, popular in the Middle East, recently caught pop media attention by catching her boyfriend cheating on video. When Hussain posted the incriminating videos on several of her…
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…
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…
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…
TOM PLATE WRITES – A friend of mine, someone I’ve known for decades – surely my best friend – is a most patriotic American. But unlike what many in China might imagine lurks in America’s secret heart, he’s not rooting for China to sputter, much less collapse. He’s not hoping…
Indonesia, which has long prided itself on being a secular nation, is now seeing a rise in the voices and power of Islamists. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (BTP), the Chinese-Indonesian politician and former governor of Jakarta, was convicted of blasphemy for insulting the Quran when he suggested that practicing Muslims…
TOM PLATE WRITES – Two guys walk into a drinking saloon. Only three in the afternoon and they’re glowering at each other. They settle at the bar, the bartender asks, “What’ll you have?” The Chinese guy says a Maotai, make it a double. The American says an Americano, light on…
During his run as premier under President Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji – a former Shanghai mayor -was the object of respect from Western leaders and was one reason they regarded China’s rise as a sustainable economic and geopolitical force with which they would have to work, like it or not.…
TOM PLATE WRITES — It hit me hard, one of those awful dreams … then groggily, slowly, sweating, then waking in a start. Dreaming something eerie about Taiwan and China – they had been screaming at each other, all the while yelling at me to shut the heck up and…
JENICA ROSE GARCIA WRITES — Every December, the internet excitedly awaits the acclaimed “Moving Pictures” mashup, which strings multiple pieces of footage from disparate movie trailers into a whole new trailer. The creative genius behind “Moving Pictures” is Clark Zhu, who has accumulated millions of fans and has been featured…
TOM PLATE WRITES — Every year about this time, a late, great American columnist would knock out his ‘People I’m Not Talking to This Year’. It was a get-even roll call of big-time baddies and political pompinjays – a crabby crusade whose charm pleased readers and deterred nervous, gimlet-eyed newspaper editors…
SPENCER H. KIM WRITES – George H.W. Bush, the U.S. president from 1989 to early 1993, recently passed away. To most Koreans, he may seem like a character from the distant past, but he had a great impact on the Korea of today. He worked hand in hand with Roh…
TOM PLATE WRITES – Fragile ceasefires are not the sharpest knife in diplomacy’s kitchen drawer but are several cuts above abandoning a firefight and allowing it to roar on. The tariff war that President Trump ignited on the hefty kindling of China’s self-styled “socialism with Chinese characteristics” has been put…
JABBER ALSABAH WRITES — President Xi Jinping unveiled new regulations for China’s internet freedom at the World Internet Conference from November 7 – 9 in Wuzhen. Yet ironically, this international conference focused on promoting the concept of mutual trust and collective international governance based on openness, rather than restriction. Freedom…
OLIVIA AMEZCUA WRITES — The smog that has been polluting New Delhi for decades has reached a new intensity, according to recent reports, with pollution levels 20 times the World Health Organization’s recommended limit. In fact, the New Delhi Air Quality Index hit an all-time high reading of 999. Last…
