Search Results for: Australia

Mining company faces fresh bribery allegations in Congo

     

An alleged international bribery scandal enveloping a listed Australian mining company has dramatically widened, with new evidence suggesting the firm may have bribed Congo‘s Mines and Geology Minister as well… Read more »

How to counter autocrats’ soft power

     

A new global “soft power” ranking recently reported that the democratic states of North America and Western Europe were the most successful at achieving their diplomatic objectives “through attraction and… Read more »

‘Rebalancing’ to Asia falters in Laos?

     

Neither ‘Asian values’ nor any other form of regional exceptionalism can be invoked to justify authoritarian rule, President Barack Obama said in Laos today. “[D]emocracy can flourish in Asia because… Read more »

In the VORTEX of Countering Extremist Ideology

     

In a new strategic initiative to counter violent extremism, renowned Muslim theologians have joined world-class scholars to produce academically rigorous applied research on “the ideology of religious hatred, supremacy and… Read more »

Putin bans 25th anniversary tribute to Soviet coup’s defeat

     

Russia has banned a 25th-­anniversary tribute to the thousands who helped defeat an attempted coup by communist hardliners trying to topple Mikhail Gorbachev, The Times reports: Critics said the order… Read more »

China’s future: Xi’s ‘great rejuvenation’ is radical and risky

     

“China is simply not turning out as many had expected and have worked so long and hard to realize — a liberal China,” notes David Shambaugh, a professor of political… Read more »

Democracy in Asia the ‘unspoken issue’ in TPP agenda

     

  The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a national security imperative that is likely to enhance prospects for advancing democracy in Asia, analysts suggest. After World War II, the U.S., having learned… Read more »

As anti-corruption summit meets, Ukraine moves to keep kleptocracy intact

     

  Ukrainian lawmakers on Thursday appointed a close ally of President Petro Poroshenko with no legal background as general prosecutor, a position seen by the West as crucial for Kiev’s… Read more »

Philippines at risk of succumbing to dictatorship?

     

  Anti-establishment firebrand Rodrigo Duterte secured a huge win in the Philippine presidential elections, according to a poll monitor on Tuesday (May 10), after an incendiary campaign dominated by his… Read more »