Asia

I sat there in the cafe, drinking my too-foamy latte. The beans had been burnt, no surprise there. I added honey to override the crap taste. It was raining, as it was prone to do this time of year. The chill of the early November Autumn was working its way into the air. Just before, […]

The armed conflict between the government forces of the Philippines and the Abu Sayyaf and other Islamist militant groups during the siege of Marawi has drawn the interest of other Muslim-majority countries in the region. The other Muslim nations are looking for signs that extremist activity is on the rise in their own countries Isnilon […]

This is one flight you are glad you were not on! An AirAsia flight suffered what is thought to be an engine failure and it created a very wild ride for passengers with severe shaking of the aircraft. A passenger says an AirAsia X plane was shaking like a “washing machine” when it experienced a […]

This is one flight you are glad you were not on! An AirAsia flight suffered what is thought to be an engine failure and it created a very wild ride for passengers with severe shaking of the aircraft. A passenger says an AirAsia X plane was shaking like a “washing machine” when it experienced a […]

BEIJING — When President Trump withdrew from the ­Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal in January, critics said he was leaving a vacuum at the heart of the Asia-Pacific region, ceding the United States’ role as regional economic leader. On Sunday, China plans to show how it is filling that vacuum. At a major set-piece event in […]

The Chinese have launched the country’s second aircraft carrier, but the first to be manufactured domestically as they grow in power and look to project it more and more in the region. The unnamed carrier should be operational by 2020 and for now, will continue to be outfitted in the port city of Dalian. With […]

Read Part Two HERE Sergeant Major William Bowles said of this time, “In the 1st SFG (Okinawa) my company was assigned Korea as an area of operations. We taught and trained the South Korean units in unconventional warfare, guerrilla warfare, and in weapons employment. We also taught them parachuting and small unit tactics,” (Murphy). In […]

The United States and Russia have a long and illustrious history of competition that is best summed up as “war-adjacent.”  For decades, we competed with one another in battles of influence, economics, and even other nations’ armies, but when we think back to the Cold War, it’s hard not to think of the space race.  […]

As I discussed in my last article on a case of gonorrhea that disrupted an unspecified CIA covert project, the CIA announced in a press release on January 17, 2017, that it had made available online more than 12 million pages of previously declassified CREST documents. CREST stands for “CIA Records Search Tool,” which is a stand-alone database […]

Tensions in the South China Sea have been high in recent years, due in large part to territorial disputes between Asian nations over the ocean waterways in the region.  China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines all have contradictory jurisdictional claims in the area, driven by military posturing and the possibility of massive oil […]

As the U.S. launches Operation Odyssey Lightning against the Islamic State group in Libya, a fourth front in the war against the brutal militant group, U.S. commanders are casting a wary eye on a possible fifth front: the Asia-Pacific. The U.S. is launching strikes in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya, but military leaders and strategists are alarmed by […]

These maps were captured in the waning days of World War II as the U.S. Army took control of Japan. American soldiers confiscated thousands of secret Japanese military maps and the plates used to print them, then shipped them to the United States for safekeeping. The maps covered much of Asia, and they went far […]