Back in 2013, the Chinese government laid out a policy agenda that promised real reforms to an economy laden with debt and distorted by the influence of the country’s large state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector.

The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement released earlier this week that it has notified ASEAN countries that it had completed the legal procedures to amend the First Protocol of the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership (AJCEP). The original partnership took effect in 2008 and was Japan’s first multilateral trade agreement. The first protocol was signed by Japan in February 2019 and in March and April of the same year by the ASEAN member states.

The United States (US) finds itself confronting several daunting challenges simultaneously. There is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already claimed nearly 120,000 lives and shows little sign of abating in large swaths of the country.

Western societies are currently gripped by the ominous idea that we are entering a new cold war, this time between the United States (US) and China. This narrative started coming to the fore as a result of the Sino-American trade dispute, and now the COVID-19 crisis has given it the final nudge to centre stage.

In a matter of months, the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the world almost beyond recognition. And yet the international cooperation that is so essential to confront a shared threat has been nowhere to be found.

Hong Kong is on a knife’s edge. Once one of Asia’s freest and most open cities, it now faces the spectre of a new China-imposed security law that would curtail its people’s liberties and create a climate of fear. The law is in flagrant breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which is registered at the United Nations (UN), and would open the way for widespread human-rights violations.

The COVID-19 pandemic threatens the health of millions worldwide, and it has pitched the remainder of the academic year into chaos and uncertainty since there is much we do not know about this disease. No one can say how serious the coronavirus’s effects will be or how long the pandemic will last, which makes it hard to predict the outcomes. One thing that sets the coronavirus crisis apart from those that affected higher education in the past is the uncertainty.

Last month, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that the company would allow its employees, currently working from home in accordance with social-distancing protocols, to stay there for good. Several other big businesses – from Facebook to the French automaker PSA – have followed suit with plans to keep far more employees at home after the COVID-19 crisis ends. Will the office be yet another casualty of the pandemic?In a sense, the death of the office has been a long time coming.

Chinese diplomats have long had a reputation as well-trained, colourless, and cautious professionals who pursue their missions doggedly without attracting much unfavourable attention. But a new crop of younger diplomats is ditching established diplomatic norms in favour of aggressively promoting China’s self-serving COVID-19 narrative.

It has been three years now since the tragic “Marawi Siege”, but until now, terrorist attacks continue to permeate the Philippines making it hard for the government to secure its citizens from those who persistently seek to attack the lives and the way of life of every Filipino. The Marawi Siege just like the tragic events of 11 September (9/11), the Bali bombings, and the home-grown terrorists’ attacks in London, is the quintessence of the country’s long struggle against terrorism.