Russian President Vladimir Putin greets Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Oct. 22, 2024, during a welcoming ceremony for participants of the BRICS summit in Kazan.

India-Russia: A time-tested partnership building trust

Russia has moved significantly closer to China, sometimes uncomfortably so, while the United States has tried to consolidate Europe under a NATO-centered response to Moscow.

4 months ago

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China’s one trillion trade surplus: Turning tariffs into gain

Europe now relies heavily on Chinese components to support its energy transition, while Southeast Asia depends on Chinese machinery and intermediate goods to fuel rapid industrial upgrading. ...

4 months ago

Academia

Warm oceans seem to be turning even ‘weak’ cyclones deadly

Cyclones Ditwah and Senyar show we must prepare for storms that are weak in wind but extreme in rain. ...

4 months ago

The Latest

Local residents walk on logs used as a temporary bridge following a deadly flash flood on Dec. 7 in Batang Toru, South Tapanuli, North Sumatra.

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Have we not learned our lessons?

In places where communities had been trained to respond to early warnings, the difference is striking: lives and properties were spared because people knew what to do.

4 months ago

A spat affects tourism: Members of a Chinese tour group cross a road in the Ginza shopping district on Monday in Tokyo. Japanese tourism and retail shares dived on Monday, Nov. 17, after China warned its citizens to avoid the tourist hot spot in a spat over Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments on Taiwan.

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Why the US will never abandon Taiwan

Abandoning Taiwan would undermine US interests, alienate allies, embolden China and unravel the Indo-Pacific balance.

4 months ago

An electronic display board shows the daily movement of the Nikkei Stock Average on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Thursday in Tokyo.

Academia

Asia's stocks ride a reform wave, but rough seas lie ahead

The region's flagship index has jumped more than 25 percent this year as a wave of governance reforms and fresh domestic money has started to chip away at a decade-long valuation gap with the United States.

4 months ago

A man tries glasses with AI on July 29 during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) at the Shanghai World Expo and Convention Center in Shanghai, China.

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AI is not the risk. Our habits are

A nation’s relationship with technology is forged in childhood, where habits of curiosity, perseverance and independent reasoning are either nurtured or suppressed.

4 months ago

Words reading “Artificial intelligence AI“, miniature of robot and toy hand are pictured in this illustration created on Dec. 14, 2023.

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Beyond the code: The geopolitical triad of AI

AI has become the center of a new world order, and we have entered the AI Triad, which consists of the politicization, securitization and weaponization of technology.

4 months ago

A man with a hoe walks down a street filled with mud and littered with roadside debris on Dec. 6, 2025, after a flash flood hit Aceh Tamiang regency, Aceh.

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The Sumatra disaster will increase our fiscal risk

The Sumatra flooding and landslides necessitate a review of the risk factors noted in next year's state budget, as natural disasters pose massive economic losses both locally and nationally.

4 months ago

A man walks over a pile of logs and debris next to a damaged home on Dec. 5, 2025, in Geudumbak village, Langkahan district, North Aceh, after a flash flood on Nov. 26 swept them into areas along the Arakundo River Basin.

Academia

Deforestation turns cyclonic storms into likely recurring tragedies

Extreme rain wasn’t the only cause of Sumatra’s deadly floods. Years of forest loss, eroded soils and weakened watersheds turned a storm into a tragedy, one that could repeat.

4 months ago

A printed circuit board is displayed on Sept. 16, 2022, at the Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute (TSRI) at Hsinchu Science Park in the northwestern Taiwanese city of Hsinchu.

Academia

How Asia’s semiconductor powerhouse fits into ASEAN’s strategic future

As tensions rise between Tokyo and Beijing, ASEAN and Taiwan must balance economic integration with the political realities imposed by China’s growing assertiveness across Asia.

4 months ago

Environment Minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq (left), Norwegian Ambassador to Indonesia Rut Kruger Giverin (second left) and Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni (second right) attend the launch of the fourth phase of a Result-Based Contribution funding cooperation on Dec. 10, 2024, in Jakarta.

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Indonesia and Norway: Cementing middle power cooperation in a turbulent time

A constructive collaboration between Indonesia and Norway on many issues in the global arena could serve as a distinctive model of cooperation among middle powers.

4 months ago

State-owned oil and has holding company Pertamina’s landing craft tank (LCT) ship sets sail on Oct. 14 for Palu, Central Sulawesi from Balikpapan in East Kalimantan. The ship arrived in Palu to transport liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

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Indonesia’s missing maritime holding: Turning seafaring identity into industrial power

For a nation that calls itself the world’s largest archipelago, Indonesia has never built the industrial architecture needed to transform its maritime identity into maritime power.

4 months ago

Volunteers ready packages of relief aid for flood-affected areas on [DATE], at the Sidoarjo Disaster Mitigation Agency in East Java.

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Every hour counts: Mobilizing national capacity for disaster response

The President must declare the Sumatra floods and landslides a national disaster so the state can mobilize its vast emergency response apparatus and afterward, learn crucial lessons from this incident for future policies and actions.

4 months ago

This aerial photo, taken on April 16, shows a nickel mining site at the edge of a forested area where the Hongana Manyawa indigenous tribe regularly patrols to monitor mining activity in East Halmahera, North Maluku.

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The critical-minerals race is putting the planet at risk

Reducing material consumption, especially in developed countries, remains the most effective way to protect vital ecosystems and prevent the long-term harms that extraction inevitably causes.

4 months ago

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When Indonesia's development leads to destruction

The country still has time to choose between pursuing the current extractive course to benefit the few or changing course toward equitable development to benefit the many, but the clock is ticking.

4 months ago

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Why Malaysia must reform its Islamic home financing

Islamic home financing in Malaysia needs urgent form, as in its current iteration, it is failing too many buyers when projects stall or collapse.

4 months ago

Officials install a banner on the fence of an administrative building on June 30, 2024, as part of an anti-online gambling campaign in Bogor, West Java.

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Building a financially healthy Indonesia

Setting up a national council for financial health, as the President has announced, is the first step in improving financial well-being for all Indonesians, whose experiences will also inform efforts toward ensuring financial health as a global challenge.

4 months ago

Members of a search and rescue team use a rubber dinghy on Nov. 25, 2025, to evacuate residents from a flooded neighborhood in Padang, West Sumatra.

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Disasters, women and the people we choose not to see

Indonesia needs to reform its disaster management system so it is designed with vulnerable groups at the center, or we will continue to see the same established cycle of response with each disaster that strikes.

4 months ago

Debut delivery: President Prabowo Subianto makes a gesture of greeting to members of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) on Aug. 15, 2025, as he mounts the stage to delivers his first State of the Nation Address at the Senayan Legislative Complex in Central Jakarta.

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The fifth amendment: A path back to the people?

In the previous four constitutional amendments, many articles were written in haste, compromises were born of fear and decisions were made in backrooms shielded from public scrutiny.

4 months ago

This photo taken on July 30, 2025, shows abandoned and partially submerged houses due to land loss from climate change at Bedono village in Demak, Central Java.

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Why global environmental coordination matters now

Planetary threats require planetary governance.

4 months ago

Remote connection: Asmat tribespeople try a smartphone on June 1, 2023, in the rural district of Agats in Asmat regency, South Papua.

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Indonesia needs a stronger legal backbone for its subsea cables

Indonesia is crisscrossed by global data routes yet lacks a unified mechanism to govern what happens beneath its own seas.

4 months ago

Riva Siahaan, the president director of PT Pertamina Patra Niaga, the commercial arm of state-owned oil and gas giant Pertamina, is detained on Feb. 25 after being named a suspect in a corruption case by the Attorney General's Office (AGO) in Jakarta.

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Why rules of corporate reputation are still ignored in Indonesia

Reputation now sits at the heart of how the public understands corporate power and responsibility.

4 months ago

An aerial photo shows damage left by a flash flood on Dec. 2 in Rigeb, Blangkejeren, Gayo Lues regency, Aceh.

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Self-inflicted wound: When ignorance sells the forest

The floods are the bill we are paying for decades of cultivated ignorance.

4 months ago

Traditional Russian wooden nesting dolls, Matryoshka dolls, depicting world leaders and celebrities are displayed for sale on Feb. 13 at a gift shop on tourist-oriented Arbat street in downtown Moscow.

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Seeing global change without the Western lens

Simultaneous disruptions offer a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the deep transformation of global institutions and ideas.

4 months ago

A villager affected by flash floods walks amongst a pile of log debris on Dec. 2, 2025, in Tukka village, Central Tapanuli regency, North Sumatra. The death toll from floods and landslides that have struck Indonesia's Sumatra island since late November has risen to 712, the National Disaster Management Agency said on Dec. 2.

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Sumatra’s floods are not just nature’s fury, Indonesia must act together

To prevent similar disasters in the future, regular audits of plantation, mining, and logging permits, especially in upstream watersheds, are needed to ensure that land-use decisions support ecological protection.

4 months ago

A participant takes the 2025 Computer-Based Written Exam for the National Selection-Based Test (UTBK-SNBT) at Diponegoro University (UNDIP), Tembalang, Semarang, Central Java, on April 30, 2025.

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Beyond the theories: What Indonesian classrooms need

Indonesia possesses the capacity not merely to catch up with the West, but to forge its own distinctive path forward.

4 months ago

Villagers use a makeshift cable car to cross the river on Dec. 2, 2025, after the bridge was destroyed by a flash flood in Bireuen, Aceh.

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Governments need to prepare for more frequent large floods

Governments and experts need to consider both the frequency and size of floods to better prepare for future ones.

4 months ago

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When sovereignty turns into a service

How much control can a state truly exercise over its digital space when the core architecture of the internet is owned and operated by foreign private corporations?

4 months ago

Rescue teams work in a search and rescueoperation in an area hit by deadly landslides following heavy rains in Sibalanga, North Tapanuli, North Sumatra, on Nov. 29, 2025.

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Sumatra disasters reveal our climate policy failures

These disasters underscore that Indonesia’s ecological, political and institutional systems are no longer adequate for the climate realities of today.

4 months ago

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