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Oil tankers unload imported crude oil at the at the crude oil terminal of in Qingdao port, in China’s eastern Shandong province on July 16, 2026.

Why oil importers are learning to live with longer trade routes

Energy trade routes that optimize distance and costs may no longer be suitable for the fractured and fractious modern world, especially for major importers.

12 hours ago

What a record‑shattering El Niño means for the world’s weather

This year's El Nino is forecast to be the strongest ever, compounding the effects of climate change, and it may just catalyze the world into finally abandoning fossil fuels. ...

13 hours ago

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From Vladivostok to Gunungkidul: Indonesia must export skills, not just workers

If Indonesia wants its global diplomacy to truly pay off, it must stop sending cheap labor into the shadows and start exporting certified talent the world will actually invest in. ...

14 hours ago

The Latest

An ice cream vendor looks at banners showing candidates for the 2024 presidential and regional legislative elections on Feb. 3 in Surabaya, East Java.

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Making the legislative threshold adaptive and democratic

We must stop treating the parliamentary threshold as an arbitrary political horse trade and replace static cutoffs with an adaptive, evidence-based mechanism that protects voter representation.

2 days ago

Stateless outcasts: A Rohingya man carries Myanmar's national flag on Aug. 25, 2026 during a Genocide Remembrance Day rally at a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, to mark the ninth anniversary of their mass exodus following a military crackdown.

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Myanmar crisis testing the promise of universal jurisdiction

Universal jurisdiction can open the courtroom doors to Myanmar’s survivors, but without cross-border political will, investigative muscle and survivor-centered networks, a growing docket of foreign cases will never amount to real accountability.

2 days ago

A Papuan mother carries her sleeping child on her back on Jan. 25, 2018, at a temporary hospital handling measles and malnutrition patients in Agats, the capital of Asmat district in Indonesia's easternmost Papua province. Some 800 children have been sickened by a measles-and-malnutrition outbreak in Indonesia's remote Papua province, officials said Jan. 25, with as many as 100 people, mostly toddlers, feared to have been killed in the outbreak. AFP/ Bay Ismoyo

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Rural cooperatives shatter the dream of inclusive development

A single top-down mandate is draining Indonesia’s village coffers for state cooperatives, gutting the local budgets that keep maternal clinics running, malnourished children fed and grassroots democracy alive.

2 days ago

A farmer plows a field with a tractor in Kawhmu township on the outskirts of Yangon on May 25, 2026.

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In food crises, emergency agricultural assistance can help turn the tide

Timely agricultural assistance can prevent manageable shocks from becoming entrenched humanitarian emergencies.

2 days ago

Community health workers weigh a toddler during a regular mother-and-child checkup at an integrated health post (Posyandu) in South Celep district, Sidoarjo, East Java, on Oct. 12, 2023.

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How village-led parenting offers a new hope to communities

In the face of climate shocks and systemic neglect, rural Indonesian communities are rewriting the rules of parental care from the ground up.

2 days ago

People scout for usable materials from debris on Sept. 1 after flash floods at Trishuli Center in Nepal's Nuwakot district. The huge wave of freezing water and debris, sparked by a glacial collapse on the China-Nepal border, killed at least 939 people and left nearly 4,500 missing, with Kathmandu warning reconstruction costs could run into the “billions of dollars“.

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Early warning of disasters key as it can save lives

From 19th-century Himalayan telegraphs to real-time satellite ocean grids, history proves that disasters are inevitable—but mass casualties are not, provided we heed the warning in time.

2 days ago

Indonesian, Australian, Singaporean and United States military personnel attend the opening ceremony of the Super Garuda Shield 2023 joint military exercise in Situbondo, East Java on Aug. 31, 2023.

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Rowing between two reefs: Why Indonesia won't pick a side

Drilling with the Pentagon in the west while exercising with Beijing in the east isn’t Indonesia playing a double game, it’s a masterclass in surviving between two superpowers without answering to either.

3 days ago

United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh attend a plenary session on Aug. 31, 2026, as finance ministers and central bank governors from G20 countries meet in North Carolina, the US.

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American Götterdämmerung

The Trump administration’s mounting blunders are hastening the transition to a post-American world order.

3 days ago

Haze from forest fires in Kalimantan, Indonesia blankets Papar district, in Sabah, Malaysia.

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Malaysia must not breathe Indonesia’s governance failure

Southeast Asia's skies aren't choking simply on bad weather; they’re choking on decades of Jakarta’s governance failure.

3 days ago

Bride Lhiane Galang (center) walks down the aisle at the St. John the Baptist Parish church during her wedding ceremony in a flooded church in Hagonoy town, Bulacan, the Philippines, on Sept. 1, 2026.

The river does not forget

Nature remains unpredictable and largely indifferent to human attempts to intervene in its course.

3 days ago

A customer picks a bottled beverage from a refrigerated display on July 5, 2024, at a supermarket in South Tangerang, Banten.

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Breaking into, navigating ASEAN’s consumer market

Winning in ASEAN takes more than deep pockets and borrowed playbooks—it demands the rare operational discipline to dismantle corporate dogma and adapt faster than the market.

3 days ago

Guests visit the Marunda Flow Center during its launch ceremony at KBN Marunda Industrial Estate in North Jakarta, on May 13, 2025. Supply chain specialist APL Logistics operates the 32,000 square meters distribution facility.

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Industrial estates need a new measure of success

Indonesia must stop selling cheap land and labor—and start building high-performing, sustainable industrial ecosystems that modern global investors actually want.

3 days ago

United States President Donald Trump (right) speaks to President Prabowo Subianto (left) on Feb. 19, 2026, during the signing ceremony for the US-Indonesia Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) in Washington, DC.

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‘The Odyssey’: Tricksters, Trojan horses and homecomings

From Hollywood mythmaking to modern populist politics, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey holds up a sobering mirror to figures like Donald Trump and Prabowo Subianto, exposing how disruptive "tricksters" use Trojan horse tactics to hollow out democracy from within.

4 days ago

Newly appointed Bank Indonesia (BI) Governor Destry Damayanti gestures during the 4th plenary session of the House of Representatives on Sept. 1, 2026, flanked by her new senior deputy governor Aida S. Budiman (left) and deputy governor Solikin M. Juhro at the Senayan Legislative Complex in Central Jakarta.

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Thousands of miles apart: Two governors, one North Star problem

From Jackson Hole to Jakarta, the Fed's Kevin Warsh and BI's Destry Damayanti face twin battles over the most fragile asset in central banking: credibility.

4 days ago

Humanoid robots controlled by a remote control by Unitree Robotics take part in a fight on July 18 during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China.

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Donald Trump and Xi Jinping should align on AI

When potential outcomes are systemic and irreversible, preparation must precede certainty.

4 days ago

A man climbs a flagpole (left) as he attempts to raise a Free Aceh Movement (GAM) flag alongside the Red and White national flag on Aug. 15, 2026, during a rally to mark the 21st anniversary of the Helsinki Agreement outside the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque in Banda Aceh, Aceh.

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Growth, income disparities and national cohesion

By redirecting local fiscal lifelines to fund national flagship projects, the government risks deepening the income gap and fracturing national unity into a tale of two economies.

4 days ago

Smoke drifts from an oil refinery on May 5, 2026, from a Syncrude joint venture site in Alberta's Wood Buffalo, Canada.

The Americas’ oil bonanza will outlast the Iran conflict

Oil production in the Americas has become a viable alternative since the outbreak of the war. The shift is one of the most striking changes in the global energy landscape in decades.

4 days ago

Graves are seen after the commemoration ceremony of the cessation of World War II in Asia at the Menteng Pulo Dutch war cemetery in Jakarta on Aug. 15, 2024.

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Nurturing a culture to protect humanity in wartime

Black-and-white laws cannot stop wartime atrocities; true restraint begins only when the principles of humanity are etched into the soldier’s conscience long before the first shot is fired.

4 days ago

United States Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent takes questions from reporters on Aug. 24, 2026, during a press conference in Washington, DC.

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Are the walls closing in on Bessent?

Far from suggesting financial Armageddon, the US treasury secretary’s futile efforts to keep a lid on Treasury yields suggest that once again, the dollar is America’s currency but everyone else’s problem.

5 days ago

Police in firefighting gear extinguish a peatland fire at Tambang in Kampar, Riau, on Aug. 25, 2026.

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Fight the fires, flour power and 40 centimeters

While Indonesia dreams up airborne flour bombs to fight forest fires, its peatlands are quietly sinking out of existence—governed by an ignored 40-centimeter water rule that no aerial stunt can fix.

5 days ago

United States President Donald Trump (right) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meet on Feb. 28, 2019, during the second US-North Korea summit at the Sofitel Legend Metropole hotel in Hanoi.

Checkpoints for Kim-Trump summit

An "IMPACT Plus" analysis of speculation about another Kim-Trump summit indicates three gaps compared to 2018 that Seoul could move to bridge, creating the conditions for another meeting regardless of pessimistic prospects at present.

5 days ago

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The collapse of trust in facts: Making sense of verification on the internet

As AI and crowdsourced systems take on the job of fact checking, they promise speed but struggle to deliver trust and explainability. Until they can do all three, human verification still has a vital role to play.

5 days ago

President Prabowo Subianto (right) greets House of Representatives Speaker Puan Maharani (left) before delivering a speech on the macroeconomic framework to lawmakers at the Senayan Legislative Complex in Central Jakarta on May 20, 2026.

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From rivals to allies: Prabowo’s othello strategy

Prabowo’s political architecture strategy is to embrace former political adversaries within a single, inclusive framework, a “big tent” coalition.

5 days ago

A group of people visit the facilities of the DayOne data center at Nongsa Digital Park (NDP) in Batam, the Riau Islands, on July 20, 2026.

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AI boom: Can Indonesia move from market to maker?

Indonesia has the scale to drive AI demand, but without an urgent policy pivot into tech manufacturing and infrastructure, it risks becoming just a lucrative consumer market while its neighbors capture the real value.

6 days ago

University of Indonesia (UI) students take part in a protest against wasteful state budget spending, President Prabowo Subianto's flagship programs and expanded military roles in civilian affairs in Central Jakarta, on Aug. 18, 2026.

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The anti-fascist playbook: How we can reclaim our democracy

From weaponized algorithms to creeping militarism, an urgent blueprint for exposing authoritarian power and defending civic freedom before it is too late.

6 days ago

A passenger of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius makes the heart hands sign on May 11, 2026, as he leaves aboard a military bus from the port of Granadilla de Abona on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Spain.

Vietnam’s hantavirus warning for Southeast Asia

Taking action to prevent zoonotic disease spillover is better than reacting to an outbreak, especially in countries where people live and work closely with wildlife, such as Vietnam and Indonesia.

6 days ago

Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles (left) shares a light moment with Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi on Aug. 18, 2026, during a joint news conference at Parliament House in Canberra.

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Sparring and engaging, Asia's new normal

As traditional US alliances shift and Beijing flexes its muscle, regional powers must master the delicate art of sparring with China without triggering an outright conflict.

6 days ago

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Tue, September 8, 2026

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