Headlines

Two Republicans flip votes, blocking Iran war powers resolution

Two Senate Republicans who supported a previous resolution calling for an end to the US war on Iran changed their votes late Wednesday after President Donald Trump publicly and privately berated GOP lawmakers, calling them “losers” who provided “aid and comfort to the enemy.”

Asia

Race to record China’s vanishing Dong minority heritage

The Dong people in China are an Indigenous ethnic group who are known to have lived in the mountainous regions of southwestern China for about 600 years. They don’t have a written language – instead, their cultural knowledge is shared by word of mouth. This means that the

Asia

AI frenzy makes Asia ripe for a ‘chip wreck’

TOKYO – No one complains about holding a winning lottery ticket. By that logic, South Korea has nothing to apologize for — it’s landed, almost by accident, at the center of the AI windfall now being minted in real time. Six months ago, SK Hynix, Samsung and the rest of Korea

Asia

Breaking the algorithm: why AI will never master diplomacy

Today, foreign ministries across the world are drowning in information — news reports, intelligence assessments, social media posts, satellite imagery, economic data, speeches and diplomatic cables. AI can summarize thousands of documents in minutes, track political sentiment

Asia

The political painting that is still on trial in South Korea

In a Seoul courtroom in March this year, a prosecutor read out charges against Jeon Seung-il, a former art student, from an indictment first written in 1989. The language had not changed, nor had the charges. Thirty-seven years later, only the young defendant had grown old. In

Asia

Rubio visits Bahrain seeking Gulf backing for Iran deal

MANAMA, June 25 - U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet with Bahrain officials on Thursday on the final leg of a trip to the Middle East where he has sought to sell the Trump administration's preliminary Iran accord to skeptical Gulf Arab allies.

Asia

Afghanistan’s economy is broken. Blame it on the Taliban

Afghanistan finds itself in a complex and dire economic predicament. Nearly five years after the Taliban returned to power, the South Asian nation continues to struggle with deep-rooted domestic structural challenges that coincide with persistent regional geopolitical

Asia

America’s ironclad bond with Israel is starting to crack

There is a ritual quality to the reassurances that flow from Washington to Jerusalem after every crisis, every ceasefire, every awkward telephone call between an American president and an Israeli prime minister. “The bond is unshakeable.” “Our commitment to Israel’s security is

Asia

EU’s Taliban talks crack the facade of a principled policy

The European Union’s decision to host a Taliban delegation in Brussels on June 23 marked a significant moment in the evolving relationship between Europe and Afghanistan’s de facto rulers. While European officials stressed that the talks were technical and did not imply

Asia