NEW DELHI ― Stoking tensions with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines over islands in the South and East China Seas has not prevented an increasingly assertive China from opening yet another front by staging a military incursion across the disputed, forbidding Himalayan frontier. On the night of April 15, a People’s Liberation Army platoon stealthily intruded near the China-India-Pakistan tri-junction, established a camp 19 kilometers inside Indian-controlled territory, and presented India’s gove

The Boston Marathon bombing has brought out the xenophobes.Often when America suffers some large, inexplicable tragedy, we want to blame “foreigners” and look for ways to fortify ourselves against them. It’s more reassuring to believe that an evil lies outside our borders ― in “them” ― than to face the possibility that it’s randomly among us.And like the communist scare before it, the so-called “war on terror” ― a war without end ― offers a convenient means of targeting the source as a foreign m

Many people have at some point in their lives experienced the curious condition of being unable to tell whether they were awake or still asleep. Some may do so while encountering a talking cat on their way back from an evening of heavy drinking, but such experiences are far more common, one may guess, on a Monday morning while chained to your desk. This perhaps explains our deep fascination with zombie movies; there is always something slightly uplifting about seeing a colleague or a neighbor a

WASHINGTON ― America’s top intelligence official said Thursday there isn’t any evidence so far that the Boston Marathon bombers had help from foreign terrorist networks. “At this point I haven’t seen anything that raises a concern there was a bigger plot, but we’re still investigating,” said James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, in an interview. He was responding to a query about a recent newspaper story citing two Russian militants as possible accomplices. Clapper’s comments are

NEW YORK ― When America absorbed the bombings at the Boston Marathon, what was striking was what did not happen. Twelve years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the country was saddened, but it was also better informed.There was little of the rampant jingoism, get-them-at-all-costs bloodlust, constant speechifying, and flag-waving that followed the 2001 attacks. Perhaps most remarkable was the absence of reflexive Islamophobia and of the willingness to fight any war ― even the wrong war in

When all is said and done, ASEAN needs a missile-like political will for its ambitious plan of economic integration. Simply gathering together, hands locked and dressed in the host’s designed costumes and issuing a joint statement, is no longer sufficient these days. ASEAN has to produce tangible outcomes to demonstrate an ability to achieve stated objectives within a given timeframe, even a flexible one. ASEAN citizens must also have confidence that when the much-awaited ASEAN Community (AC) co