Rodrigo Duterte has now been president of the Philippines for a little over 12 weeks. In that short time, he’s already managed to bad-mouth international leaders, encourage vigilante death squads, and scare foreign investors away from the country. The Philippines looks to be in for a long six-year term.
Last month, Japan’s defense ministry requested a record budget of about $51 billion for fiscal 2017. At the top of its security worries: China’s maritime aggression.
Of all the potential flashpoints in the contested South China Sea, none is more nervously watched today than Scarborough Shoal, a large coral atoll with a reef-rimmed lagoon. It encompasses 58 sq mi (150 sq km) and lies less than 150 miles (241 km) from the Philippines’ coast.
When the US military abandoned its long-held bases in the Philippines in the early 1990s, it wasn’t because it wanted to. It was because the Philippines, as a sovereign nation, kicked it out. Filipino leadership decided the bases were unwelcome vestiges of the Philippines’ time as a US colony, which lasted for most of the first half of the 20th century.
It isn’t often the president of the United States is called a derogatory term by his counterpart from a friendly nation—and cancels a meeting as a result. But that’s just what happened (paywall) after Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte deployed a derogatory slur against Barack Obama.
After comic actor Gene Wilder died on Aug. 28 from complications of Alzheimers disease, his millions of fans are reminiscing about his impressive career, which included roles in over 20 movies, among them The Producers and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
Being a star in the NFL does not protect you from being a black man in the United States. With more instances of police brutality against African-American men coming to light in recent years—and officers often going unpunished—more NFL players are speaking up about social issues.
If you cherish the freedom of the open country road, Singapore is probably not for you. Apart from being tiny, the tightly controlled city-state has one of the most highly managed driving environments in the world. But if you’re in the business of self-driving taxis, it’s not a bad place to be.
It took three years of planning—and lots of melting ice—but the Crystal Serenity cruise ship has finally begun a pioneering journey that will take it through the Arctic region’s Northwest Passage. The trip is expected to conclude in New York on Sept. 12, having begun last weekend in Alaska, but the pristine region north of Canada is the real destination.
Entertainment events celebrating the life of Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot would not go down well in most cities. Yet in Sydney and Melbourne, concerts planned for early next month will celebrate the life of Mao Zedong—a ruler many consider one of the worst mass-murderers in history.
For all the complexities of the territorial struggle between China and its neighbors in the South China Sea, there’s a growing recognition that part of the problem is simply the name of the place.
Japan will be the next country to host the Summer Olympics. If its performance at the closing ceremony at Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro was any indication, it’s going to put on quite a show.
Shortly after Joko Widodo became the president of Indonesia in 2014, he set about attacking illegal fishing in the nation’s vast waters. Conducted mostly by foreign trawlers, he noted, it cost Indonesia about $20 billion a year in lost revenue. His “shock therapy” solution: Blow up foreign trawlers caught trespassing in Indonesian waters, and publicize the dramatic explosions.
When White House staffers Joe Mahshie and Brian Mosteller tied the knot yesterday (Aug. 1), US vice president Joe Biden officiated, at their request. The small wedding ceremony took place in the vice presidential residence at the US Naval Observatory, and Biden tweeted about the event.
Typhoon Nida is barreling through the South China Sea, after dumping over 300 millimeters of rain on the Philippines over the weekend. As Hong Kong braces for landfall sometime tonight (Aug. 1), some controversial, much-less-populated landmasses may already be feeling the brunt of the storm.
It’s one thing to have your comments from an interview taken out of context. It’s another to have them taken out of context and then run over and over again in a big video above Times Square in New York City.
On July 14, Taiwan’s ex-president Ma Ying-jeou held up a bottle of water during a press conference to prove a key point—that 400-meter-wide Itu Aba, the largest feature in the contested Spratly archipelago, is clearly not a rock. The water, sourced from the feature Taiwan calls Taiping Dao (Island), is proof that it is actually an island, he said.
Verizon Communications has announced it is buying Yahoo’s core businesses for $4.83 billion—a steep price to pay for internet assets that are considered “worthless” by Wall Street.
For all the militarization and territorial squabbling in the South China Sea, there is at least one good reason for the nations involved to work together: fish larvae.
China appears to have timed military activities in the South China Sea to take place in the days both before and after a ruling that largely invalidated its sweeping claims to the strategic waterway.
This week the Philippines is celebrating an international tribunal’s ruling on the South China Sea that went even better than expected. The 500-page award generally invalidated China’s sweeping territorial claims in the strategic waterway, and held that China unlawfully bullied the Philippines while acting on them.
Yesterday an international tribunal ruled decisively against the sweeping territorial claims that China has made in the South China Sea. Though the Philippines was the main victor, having filed the case in early 2013, other nations in the region may also benefit from the ruling.
A long-awaited international tribunal ruling issued today (July 12) dealt a heavy blow to China’s sweeping territorial claims in the South China Sea. The ruling paints a picture of an environmentally destructive, dangerously aggressive government that has no legal jurisdiction for its actions.
The term “Brexit” has inspired a popular new term in the Philippines: “Chexit.”
