PlanetNext

Discussions and debates during the one-day workshop – ‘Sovereignty over Paracel and Spratly Archipelagos: Historical and Legal Aspects’ – held in the Quang Ngai province at the end of April and organized by the Pham Van Dong University focused mostly on two topics related to the South China Sea issue: historical and legal aspects over the sovereignty [...]

Quang Ngai – “In South China Sea—East Sea as referred by the Vietnamese–China is unable to present historical evidence of its claim. Its territory was historically limited to Hainan island, thus Chinese used force to illegally occupy rocks, features and islands in the Paracel and Spratly archipelagos”. With these remarks, Prof. Pham Dang Phuoc, Rector [...]

The web is in. The TV and the printed press are out. Shaken by the meteoric rise of a protest movement suddenly turned into a major political force, and mired in the squabble for power among parties with equal shares of the electorate, Italy has become the showcase of a singular socio-political phenomenon, which is [...]

September 4 2012 is a day that North Korean worker Chang Sung Jong will not soon forget. His life has been changed forever, he says, adding that he feels almost “electrified.” The “Wiener Zeitung” was allowed to visit the man who one day, “out of the blue,” received a visit from Kim Jong-un, the revered “supreme leader” of North Korea.

These are the first images from North Korea since war has threatened to break out. While no live rounds have yet been exchanged across the Demilitarized Zone running along the 38th parallel, North and South Korea have formally returned to warring terms after Pyongyang invalidated the armistice treaty and cut the phone hotline between the [...]

Information, it is said, is the currency of knowledge. If this is true, the flood of data available today through the Internet can certainly be labelled as information inflation. Every cyberspace surfer and new media user – exposed daily to a data overload – should be familiar with the phenomenon. Looking for and finding accurate [...]

On the face of it, things are changing in Myanmar. And were change to be gauged by the unprecedented level of freedom enjoyed by the press, the new course on which the South East Asian nation has embarked would seem to be real, although still fraught with uncertainties and dangers. A report released last week [...]

Rivers as lymph vessels, nurturing the Earth, giving life to flora and fauna, shaping wondrous landscapes. Perhaps more than in other parts of the world, in South East Asia they are essential lifelines, transport lanes, harvesting basins, commerce routes, vital and unique ecosystems securing food and energy supplies for local communities and a sizeable part of [...]