China-backed Dara Sakor project in Cambodia rings alarm bells in Washington
Along pristine Cambodian beaches, past parades of elephants in its largest national park, sits an area half the size of Singapore that is raising alarm bells among military strategists in the U.S. and beyond. Dara Sakor, a $3.8 billion China-backed investment zone encompassing 20 percent ...
Benin leaps into 21st century with new national map, its first since 1957
The last time that cartographers mapped Benin, Elvis Presley had just released "Jailhouse Rock," the Soviets had launched Sputnik — and the country was still a colony named French Dahomey. Things in the West African state have sure changed since 1957, and the old maps ...
Jared Kushner's $50 billion 'peace to prosperity' plan faces broad Arab rejection
U.S. President Donald Trump's economic vision as part of the wider plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been met with contempt, repudiation and exasperation in the Arab world, even as some in the Persian Gulf called for it to be given a chance. The ...
Deadly collapse of Chinese-owned building in Cambodia raises questions over hasty development
Rescue workers on Sunday picked through the rubble of a collapsed Chinese-owned building in a Cambodian beach town in a desperate search for survivors, after the construction site accident killed at least 17 people. One person was pulled alive from the flattened seven-story building late ...
Entrepreneur Tony Verb is on a mission to promote technology that can help make cities greener and smarter in China's Greater Bay Area, now being shaped as a low-carbon megalopolis. Hong Kong-based Verb, co-founder of the investment firm GreaterBay Ventures & Advisors, plans to back ...
Japan to provide 1.3 million vaccines to kids in developing countries as part of U.N. SDG targets
The government said Friday it will provide vaccines to around 1.3 million children in developing countries in line with U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, which address such issues as poverty, inequality, climate and peace. The update to Tokyo's action plan for achieving the U.N. goals by ...
Papua New Guinea's new prime minister has an ambitious — cynics would say far-fetched — objective of turning one of the world's poorest countries into the "richest black nation" on Earth in just a decade. If national economies were like soccer teams, Papua New Guinea ...
Advocates fighting child labor come together in Tokyo ahead of Osaka G20 summit
Empowering workers, installing social protection programs and monitoring organizations to implement those programs are key points to reducing 152 million children engaged in child labor worldwide — more than half of whom work in hazardous conditions that put their health and development at risk. That ...
Dreams of economic revival after Mahathir's return fade in Malaysia
A year ago, Malaysian land surveyor Muhammad Nur Aliff had high hopes that a shock election victory by 93-year-old Mahathir Mohamad could be the catalyst for reform and revival in a country hobbled by sky-high public debt and corruption. But polls show that such optimism ...
Ex-ministers blast Jair Bolsonaro for dismantling Brazil's environmental protections
Eight former Brazilian environment ministers blasted new right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro and his administration in a letter on Wednesday, saying it is dismantling the country's environmental protections. The former officials criticized the government's decision to strip the environment ministry's authority over forestry and water agency ...
China must “graduate from” the Asian Development Bank’s easy money if it continues to tempt emerging economies with unaffordable loans, the finance minister says at the ADB’s conference in Fiji.
Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted some 5,000 delegates from across the globe at a Belt and Road Forum in Beijing last week to discuss his signature infrastructure project, which began in 2013 to rebuild ancient trading routes across Eurasia. This year's gathering eschewed the ...
