Browsing: Opinions

Across Southeast Asia, the haze has returned with a familiar cruelty. Malaysia has closed schools as air quality deteriorated, Singapore has experienced dangerous levels of air pollution, and even parts of the Philippines have been affected, underscoring how far the smoke has travelled. In Indonesia, meanwhile, forest and peatland fires, a major source of the region’s haze, have threatened…

In the months leading up to the disastrous 2006 election, President George W Bush fired his press secretary, Scott McClellan, and withdrew the Supreme Court nomination of his close confidante, Harriet Miers.

Cuba is once again in the United States’s crosshairs. Washington’s operation in Venezuela at the start of the year is largely seen to have paved the way for a similar undertaking on the Caribbean island. Recent media reports have revealed US military activity nearby while US officials have repeatedly said they want “Cuba to be…

Since the start of the war, there have been several negotiation initiatives between the United States and Iran. Only one – the memorandum of understanding signed in Islamabad on June 18 – was concluded, but it collapsed within days.

As the growth of artificial intelligence accelerates, it is already posing significant challenges to society. Companies have started laying off workers whose jobs AI models can now perform. The expansion of data centres has spiked energy consumption and increased the carbon footprint. AI agents are being used by malicious actors to automate the spread of…

“It’s painful when President [Donald] Trump chooses one side, not our side,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday. The United States president’s much-discussed diesel deal with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, has become anotherackers

On October 8, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim received Myanmar’s President Min Aung Hlaing in Putrajaya with a guard of honour and an official luncheon, in the military chief’s first visit since the 2021 coup. Nine days earlier, Malaysia sent 1,476 Myanmar nationals back by sea in the first phase of a plan to return 5,000…

Over the weekend, thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of India’s chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, faced mass detentions and a heavy police crackdown in New Delhi. The demonstrations, which have brought together youth activists and opposition parties, centre on the removal of more than 130 million names from India’s electoral rolls, raising profound questions…

Americans can rest easy – for the moment, at least. The fine folks at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have thwarted a major national security threat.

Nature is humanity’s life-support system, but it is being depleted at an alarming rate, leaving our world increasingly vulnerable. From deadly heatwaves and raging wildfires to catastrophic floods and prolonged droughts, the effects of environmental change have been impossible to ignore this year. With El Nino forecast to intensify, the risks to people, nature and…