Headlines

Trump plans grand spectacle for potentially tense Xi talks

WASHINGTON, Sept 23 - US President Donald Trump welcomes Chinese President Xi Jinping to Washington on Wednesday for a three-day visit where the superpowers' tensions over trade, technology and Tehran will play out against a backdrop of pomp and ceremony.

Asia

Judge Cambodia’s scam crackdown fairly on the evidence

September 22, 2026 Letter to the Editor: Cambodia’s campaign against online scams Mu Sochua’s September 22 op-ed, “Cambodia’s anti-scam summit can’t whitewash its own record,” does not reflect Cambodia’s current efforts to combat online scams. Cambodia does not claim to have

Asia

Why China’s Silicon Valley won’t need American degrees

For nearly a century, American global power has rested on a three-legged tripod: unmatched military firepower, the ubiquitous sovereignty of the US dollar and the intellectual dominance of its higher-education system. While aircraft carriers project hard power and Wall Street

Asia

New Zealand Parliament adjourns before November election

WELLINGTON, Sept 23 - New Zealand's Parliament wrapped up its final sitting on Wednesday before a Nov 7 election, with party leaders using the closing debate to press their competing cases to voters ahead of what is expected to be a close poll.

Asia

Pakistan’s new Chengdu trade route shows CPEC can work

Earlier this month, more than 80 metric tons of dried chilies from Pakistan arrived at the Chengdu International Railway Port. Packed into eight containers, the cargo entered China through Qinzhou Port in Guangxi, then moved inland to Chengdu via a sea-rail intermodal service

Asia

Time to recognize the Houthis as Yemen’s real government

The Trump administration came perilously close to launching another bombing campaign against Yemen this weekend. According to a September 20 New York Times report, US commanders had approved their targets, American troops were loading bombs onto warplanes, and an attack on

Asia

Trump, nukes, AI and civilizational suicide

As human beings we have always been sitting ducks to extinction’s cosmic whims. We are a few astronomical units away from a life-ending meteor or comet strike, the kind that wiped out the dinosaurs after they were their own animal kingdom for a couple of hundred million years.

Asia