All over the world, democracy is in retreat. In 2020, the Democracy Index, published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) since 2006, fell to its lowest-ever global level.

India said Sunday that its troops, along with their Chinese counterparts, had completed a pullback from a disputed part of their Himalayan border after months of heightened tensions.The nuclear-armed neighbours fought a border war in 1962 and have long accused each other of seeking to cross their frontier - which has never been properly agreed - in India's Ladakh region, just opposite Tibet.The latest flare-up turned deadly in mid-June last year when 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a b

Joe Biden's inauguration on 20 January, signifies that the United States (US) now has a different direction for policy as during the Trump administration.

Cambodia's government moved to exert near-total control over the country's online life Wednesday, setting up a national internet gateway which activists say will stifle freedom of expression and block content via a China-style firewall.Cambodia has seen a rapid increase in internet use in recent years, and Premier Hun Sen's government - which dissolved the main opposition party in 2017 - has intensified a crackdown on online dissent.A government spokesman dismissed concerns ove

In the post-Cold War era, the formation and the creation of regional groups like ASEAN and the European Union (EU) bears the promise of promoting not only regional bargaining economic power but as alternative mechanisms and structures in facilitating and consolidating regional peace, security, and stability within the territorial boundaries of these regional groupings and beyond. Regional blocs like ASEAN were established in an attempt to facilitate and promote regional collective pe

The world should be prepared for the coronavirus to continue to circulate long-term despite the roll-out of vaccines, the head of the European Union’s (EU) European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) health agency, Andrea Ammon, said on Friday."We should be prepared that it will remain with us," the head of the Stockholm-based health agency said in an interview with AFP."It seems more likely that it would stay.

Chinese investors have allocated more than US$2 trillion to overseas investment and construction in the past decade and a half.

United States (US) President Joe Biden revealed Thursday that his first phone call with Xi Jinping lasted a marathon two hours, during which he challenged his Chinese counterpart on human rights, trade and regional muscle-flexing.But an increasingly assertive Xi pushed back, according to Chinese state media, telling Biden that issues such as Beijing's crushing of opposition in Hong Kong and saber-rattling on Taiwan are China's "internal affairs.""Last night, I was in

It is probably premature to offer an assessment of the COVID-19 pandemic’s possible consequences, not least because there may well be many more twists and turns to come. And once we defeat the coronavirus, some of the pandemic-induced changes to our lives might turn out to have been temporary.

In December 1862, in the throes of the American Civil War, which pitted the norms of slavery against the norms of freedom, United States (US) President Abraham Lincoln presented his emancipation plan to Congress. “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present,” he declared. “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.