Myanmar is in breach of a global convention banning chemical weapons and may have a stockpile left over from the 1980s, the United States (US) said on Monday.The Southeast Asian nation may still have weapons at a "historic" facility where mustard gas was produced, a senior State Department official told the annual meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).Myanmar officially joined the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which bans the production, stor

Vietnam is struggling to curb fraud in exports destined for America, custom officials said Thursday, as manufacturers seek to dodge punishing tariffs due to the US-China trade spat by illegally using "Made in Vietnam" labels.Exporters have started shifting production from China to Vietnam to avoid steep tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods.The move has also prompted concerns on a rise in manufacturers illegally claimi

The unveiling of the United States’ (US) Blue Dot Network raises several questions about the country’s commitment to ASEAN after signs of fading interest in the region.Seen as a counterbalance to China’s extensive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Blue Dot Network aims to promote sustainable infrastructure development in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.

North Korea has launched a visceral diatribe against United States (US) Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, calling the former vice-president a "rabid dog" – while also borrowing the terminology of Donald Trump.Pyongyang is renowned for its vitriol, but the verbal deluge was unusually ferocious even by its own standards.Biden "had the temerity to dare slander the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK", the North's official KCNA news agency said late T

The fall of the Berlin Wall on the night of 8 November, 1989 dramatically and suddenly accelerated the collapse of communism in Europe. The end of travel restrictions between East and West Germany dealt a death blow to the closed society of the Soviet Union. By the same token, it marked a high point for the rise of open societies.I had become involved in what I call my political philanthropy a decade earlier.

It is a tradition for ASEAN’s 10 members to take turns chairing the regional bloc in alphabetical order, and come 1 January, 2020, Vietnam will formally take over from Thailand fully aware of the responsibilities it will have to shoulder.Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha proudly handed a gavel, the symbol of ASEAN’s leadership, to a smiling Vietnamese Prime Minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc at the closing of the 35th ASEAN Summit in Bangkok on Monday – and the pressure is now on one of Asia’s fa

An offer by the United States (US) to host a Pacific rim summit in America in 2020 after Chile abruptly cancelled this year’s event was “not a good idea”, Malaysia’s foreign minister said Thursday.The sharp retort comes days after most southeast Asian leaders snubbed a meeting with US officials in Thailand when President Donald Trump failed to show.The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit had been scheduled for November 16-17 in Chile, but President Sebastian Pinera pulled out of h

The United States (US) on Monday accused China of intimidation in the South China Sea as it put forward its strongest language yet rejecting Beijing’s claims in the strategic, dispute-rife waters.The Pacific powers traded tit-for-tat barbs over the South China Sea at a regional summit in Bangkok, with Beijing accusing the US of ratcheting up tensions in the waters, a key global shipping route.Beijing lays claim to huge swathes of the sea, where it is accused of building military inst

The Malaysian financier at the heart of the massive 1MDB graft scandal has struck a settlement to forfeit assets worth US$700 million including a Beverly Hills hotel and a private jet, the US Justice Department said Wednesday.Jho Low will relinquish the assets under the largest ever US civil forfeiture, intended to recover cash allegedly stolen in the 1MDB scandal which helped topple Malaysia's corruption-plagued former regime."A staggering amount of money embezzled from 1MDB at the

Despite rising trade tensions and geopolitical risks, half of ASEAN’s member states are among the top drivers of global growth.The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlook released last week painted a bleak future for the global economy which is in a “synchronised slowdown” and is anticipated to grow 3.0 percent this year – the weakest since the 2008 global financial crisis. It is also a 0.3 percentage point downgrade from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook in April a