News

As the organisation’s anniversary nears, borders around the world are closing again
When trade ministers gathered in the Moroccan city of Marrakech 30 years ago this month to sign the agreement creating the World Trade Organization (WTO), the mood was celebratory. The Berlin Wall had come down only recently, communism had collapsed, and there was optimistic talk of how the body would prise open new markets and act as the arbiter when disputes broke out between countries.
The atmosphere today is much darker than it was in April 1994. Any enthusiasm for groundbreaking trade liberalisation deals disappeared decades ago and has been replaced by covert – and often overt – protectionism.

Brexiters’ Asia hopes have foundered amid economic woes and hardline nationalism; it’s time to look at markets in our own backyard
The world has changed since, post-Brexit, “Global Britain” set itself to “pivot” from sclerotic Europe towards booming Asia. Always a fanciful idea that disregarded Asian realities, it has now become farcical. Neither China nor India are proving the easy pickings on which “buccaneering” Britain could ride to economic success, denied through being tied to the “corpse” of an EU economy allegedly shackled by regulation and tax. Brexiter ambitions are turning to ashes.
Instead, there is China, run by an ever more openly dictatorial and militarily ambitious communist government. Its economy is plagued by politically inspired production targets: everything from building flats to EV batteries outstripping any likely demand. There is growing youth unemployment and a once fevered, now overblown, property market retrenching to such an extent it threatens the viability of the vastly over-extended banking system.

Almost a month ago, 73-year-old Xinmin Liang was attacked unprovoked while trying to fish on the Eastbank Esplanade.

Almost a month ago, 73-year-old Xinmin Liang was attacked unprovoked while trying to fish on the Eastbank Esplanade.

Community leaders including Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt met with 18 organizations from the Asian American community on Saturday to discuss s ...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that upcoming U.S.-China talks will tackle a top Biden administration complaint that Beijing’s trade practices put American companies and workers at ...

While the US flounders in a conflict it did not foresee, emerging powers see a chance for new voices to join the top table
Not long ago a picture circulated from inside Gaza showing smoke billowing from the explosion of a US-supplied bomb, and discernible in the background was the outline of eight black parachutes dropping US aid in precisely the same neighbourhood. It was suggested that the picture would make an ideal cover for any book about the confused world disorder that the six-month war in Gaza have spawned – a disorder that as yet has no dominant player, value system or functioning institutions.
The great powers compete, coexist or confront one another across the region but none, least of all at the UN, is able to impose its version of order any longer. “Forget talk of unipolarity or multipolarity,” the journalist Gregg Carlstrom recently wrote in Foreign Affairs. “The Middle East is nonpolar. No one is in charge.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that upcoming U.S.-China talks will tackle a top Biden administration complaint that Beijing’s trade practices put American companies and workers at ...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Saturday that upcoming U.S.-China talks will tackle a top Biden administration compl ...

Meta's AI image generator, Imagine, has been accused of racial bias.The tool was unable to produce pictures of an Asian man with a white woman.The apparent bias is surprising as Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO ...

Meta's AI image generator is accused of racial bias, despite the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, being married to an East Asian woman.

‘I kept praying and praying’, says rescued woman as search for four people missing from hiking trail set to resume following Wednesday’s quake
Rescuers in Taiwan planned to bring in heavy equipment on Saturday to try to recover two bodies buried on a hiking trail, while more than 600 people remained stranded in various locations, three days after the island’s strongest earthquake in 25 years.Four people remain missing on the same Shakadang Trail in Taroko national park, famed for its rugged mountainous terrain. Search and recovery work was set to resume after being called off on Friday afternoon because of aftershocks.At least 12 people were killed by the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck on Wednesday morning off Taiwan’s east coast, and 10 others were still missing.
More than 600 people – including about 450 at a hotel in the Taroko park – remained stranded, cut off by rockslides and other damage in different areas. However, many were known to be safe as rescuers deployed helicopters, drones and smaller teams with dogs to reach them.