Over the past decades, the Philippines used to be benign with its defence strategy over the claims in South China Sea.Domestic turmoil, economic down-turn and southern rebellions kept the country at arm’s length on this key security issue. However, since July 2010, the government under President Benign Aquino III has displayed assertive foreign policy postures in the relations with the U.S. and China ― which has currently moved in an opposite direction. At the last week’s ASEAN summit in Phnom P

Apologies to Ronald Reagan as we mangle his catchphrase, but what the U.S. and other world powers need to do in negotiations with Iran later this week is to “accept, but verify” an Iranian nuclear-fuel program that’s limited to producing low civilian-grade fuel. Only the most reckless gambler would bet on a breakthrough in the talks, due to take place in Istanbul on April 14. Ten years of abject diplomatic failure, distrust and Iranian filibustering have fed a justifiable cynicism. Nor is an ele

The toilet is a magnificent thing. Invented at the turn of the 19th century, the flush version has vastly improved human life. The toilet has been credited with adding a decade to our longevity. The sanitation system to which it is attached was voted the greatest medical advance in 150 years by readers of the British Medical Journal. Unfortunately it is an impractical luxury for about two-thirds of the world’s 7 billion people because it relies on connections to water and sewerage systems that m

Recently in Karachi, I dropped in on a talk by the Pakistani journalist and TV anchor Kamran Khan at a Rotary Club meeting. Describing relations between India and Pakistan at a “crossroads,” Khan exhorted his audience to feel shame about Pakistani involvement in the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in 2008 that killed 164 people and have frozen India- Pakistan relations ever since. Khan lamented the many missed opportunities for a comprehensive agreement between India and Pakistan. Finally, he expres

To be the swing voter, you have to be willing to swing. In the last three weeks, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has shown how it’s done. First he wrote the majority opinion in a landmark 5-4 case establishing a constitutional right to an adequate lawyer in plea-bargaining negotiations. Liberals were enthused. Yet in his tough questioning during the Obamacare arguments, he shook up the conventional wisdom that mandatory coverage would be upheld comfortably. Liberals were not enthused.

The toilet is a magnificent thing. Invented at the turn of the 19th century, the flush version has vastly improved human life. The toilet has been credited with adding a decade to our longevity. The sanitation system to which it is attached was voted the greatest medical advance in 150 years by readers of the British Medical Journal. Unfortunately it is an impractical luxury for about two-thirds of the world’s 7 billion people because it relies on connections to water and sewerage systems that m

Latin American countries are rightfully fed up with fighting Washington’s war on drugs. In the four decades since President Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs, its battles have been fought predominantly in Latin American nations ― leaving behind a trail of death and corruption while failing to achieve any of its goals.After a bloody, decades-long war in Colombia, the epicenter of drug trafficking simply moved north to Mexico. Upon taking office five years ago, Mexican President Felipe Calde

We got our first real glimpse last week of how President Obama and his now-almost-certain Republican rival, Mitt Romney, intend to wage their campaigns in the lead-up to the general election.In a speech last Tuesday, Obama painted Romney as an out-of-touch patrician who doesn’t care much about the troubles of hardworking people low on the income ladder. Romney soon fired back, painting Obama as an out-of-touch liberal who doesn’t care much about the struggles of honest businessmen who want to cr

The California High-Speed Rail Authority has a serious public-relations hurdle: how to sell its proposed Los Angeles-to-San Francisco bullet train without the word “boondoggle” attached. But the rail authority’s latest compromise plan to solve this problem ― with its focus on building the system in a “better, faster, cheaper” manner ― not only doesn’t fix the system’s fundamental flaws, it may plant the seeds of its destruction. In November 2008, California voters ― notorious for approving huge

Oil prices and oil supply unambiguously tie China and the United States together, as both nations are heavy importers of oil. The United States imports about 65 percent of its oil and oil products, while China imports about 56 percent of its needs, which will undoubtedly increase over the next few years.The rising trend in oil prices over the past three years has by no means been a classic recession response and the climbing price of crude oil may undo the U.S.’ fragile economic recovery and wil