World

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed Tuesday to enforce "strong" sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and stated their opposition to nuclear threats by Moscow. During roughly 25-minute phone talks, Kishida and Macron shared the view that Russia's use of force to unilaterally change the status quo clearly violates international law and threatens the global order. They agreed to coordinate closely in their response to the crisis, the Foreign Ministry said. "I stressed (during the talks) that globally united and resolute action is necessary to protect the foundation of the international order," Kishida told reporters at his office after the phone conversation. The Russian aggression has triggered a chorus of criticism from countries that ...

With China currently the only country capable of unseating America as the leading global power, many in Washington may wish that U.S. President Richard Nixon had never made his historic trip to China 50 years ago this month. In their revisionist narrative, it was Nixon’s meeting with Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong and the policy of engagement it initiated that helped make China an economic superpower and a geopolitical threat to America. For these critics, the Nixon visit, far from being a stroke of diplomatic genius, was one of history’s greatest strategic blunders. But such revisionist arguments discount the substantial benefits the United States gained from Nixon’s gambit and the decades of U.S.-China engagement that followed. Although China did not directly assist the U...

Several observers have expressed disappointment at Asia’s “weak” response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including by ASEAN, India and Indonesia. My old friend and astute observer of regional affairs, Brad Glosserman, added his voice in these pages recently. He noted that in the U.N. General Assembly’s overwhelming condemnation of Russia, many Asian countries — Bangladesh, China, India, Laos, Mongolia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam — chose to abstain. Let me stipulate upfront that Russia’s actions are illegal, immoral and possibly amount to war crimes. That will be of little consolation if Ukraine is reduced to ashes with tens of thousands killed or the world is incinerated in a nuclear war. Deleterious consequences for Australia, India and Japan include U.S. and European distraction fr...

The origin story of Twinkl has a familiar ring to it: A couple with a vision, toiling away in their spare bedroom with dreams of taking a killer product to market. Fast-forward 12 years, and the educational resources platform has unspooled from its initial customer base in England to now serve 200 countries worldwide — with Japan as one of its focal markets in Asia. Twinkl was founded upon a self-explanatory motto: “We help those who teach.” Its resources cover a wide range of disciplines, from English and computing to art and physical education. And while much of its content has been built around the British education system, many of those resources can double-up as English-language study materials. Alongside more ad hoc English study tools, such as phonics and alphabet practice, resour...

Here is an artists' rendering of a Marvel Fusion power plant and facility. Marvel Fusion Nuclear fusion is the energy that powers stars. If it can be recreated on Earth, it has the potential to provide nearly limitless energy with zero carbon emissions — and unlike nuclear fission, which powers nuclear plants today, fusion does not leave behind long-lasting radioactive nuclear waste. The technology has been seemingly just out of reach for decades now, but the reward is so high that billions of dollars are still flowing into the space. On Wednesday, the Biden White House unveiled a vision for spurring fusion investment, noting that commercial fusion "has the potential to revolutionize the energy industry." Marvel Fusion, founded in 2019, is one of the many start-ups taking a bet on commerc...

This week an increasing number of prominent businesses have announced partial or full halts to business operations in Russia. The businesses include McDonald's, Apple, Netflix, Shell, Visa, MasterCard and Disney among others. This self-restraint is meant to put pressure on Russia and its very unpopular invasion of Ukraine by inflicting economic damage on Russia, President Vladimir Putin and his supporters. The results have been notable. The economic fallout is causing Russia's economy to contract and it's a currency to devalue. Systematically, Russia is being cut off from the outside world. Whether these business pull-outs, alongside the removal of numerous Russian banks from the SWIFT system, the banning of Russian airlines flying over Europe, the confiscation of oligarchs’ so-called s...

While Japan and China mark the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties this year, military tensions between the two countries are rising at a time when both are becoming more economically interdependent. Such a situation is making it difficult for the two nations to manage bilateral relations comprehensively, making their future uncertain. The main factor behind the increasing military tensions between them is Beijing’s military expansion that has been ongoing for more than three decades. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has had a monopoly on power in the country for more than 70 years, has invested a huge amount of money since the 1990s in the massive overhaul of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), expanding its activities to the East China Sea, the South China...

Credit Suisse bank, still reeling from losing billions of dollars last year, faced a fresh challenge Sunday amid allegations from an international investigation that it had handled dirty money for decades. A cross-border media investigation claims Switzerland's second-largest bank had held tens of billions of dollars of ill-gotten funds, based on a massive data leak by an insider. Credit Suisse rejected the "allegations and insinuations" in a statement the same day, saying that many of the issues raised were historical — some dating back as far as the 1940s. The investigation, coordinated by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), unites 47 different media outlets worldwide including France's Le Monde and The Guardian in the U.K. This latest project, dubbed "Swiss...

SHANGHAI: China's central bank kept some of its policy rates unchanged in a liquidity operation on Tuesday (Mar 15), dashing expectations for a cut, although investors believe policymakers may resume monetary easing soon to prop up the cooling economy. The surprise decision comes a day before the US Federal Reserve is expected to deliver its first interest rate hike in three years and analysts say Beijing may want to avoid widening policy divergence for the time being. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) said it would keep the rate on 200 billion yuan (US$31.44 billion) worth of one-year medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans to some financial institutions unchanged at 2.85 per cent from the previous operation. The operation resulted in a net injection of 100 billion yuan in fresh funds...

WASHINGTON: The Biden administration has formally determined that violence committed against the Rohingya minority by Myanmar's military amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity, US officials told Reuters, a move that advocates say should bolster efforts to hold the junta that now runs Myanmar accountable. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will announce the decision on Monday (Mar 21) at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, US officials said, which currently features an exhibit on the plight of the Rohingya. It comes nearly 14 months after he took office and pledged to conduct a new review of the violence. Myanmar's armed forces launched a military operation in 2017 that forced at least 730,000 of the mainly Muslim Rohingya from their homes and into neighbouring Banglad...