
Exclusive: U.S. sees new Chinese activity around South China Sea shoal


Going stateless to maximize profits, multinational companies are vying with governments for power. Who is winning?
FP
By Parag Khanna
Top 25 by David Francis
Illustration by Edel Rodriguez

At first glance, the story of Accenture reads like the archetype of the American dream. One of the world’s biggest consulting companies, which commands tens of billions of dollars in annual revenues, was born in the 1950s as a small division of accounting firm Arthur Andersen. Its first major project was advising General Electric to install a computer at a Kentucky facility in order to automate payment processing. Several decades of growth followed, and by 1989, the division was successful enough to become its own organization: Andersen Consulting.
English: Getting Energy Prices Right : From Principle to Practice

Chương I: Tóm tắt cho các nhà hoạch định chính sách
Các loại thuế năng lượng có thể mang lại lợi ích đáng kể về môi trường và doanh thu và là một thành phần quan trọng của hệ thống tài chính quốc gia. Mặc dù nguyên tắc cũng được thành lập về việccác khoản thuế này cần phản ánh vấn đề nóng lên toàn cầu, ô nhiễm không khí, tắc nghẽn gia thông, và những tác động xấu đến môi trường khác của việc sử dụng năng lượng, rất ít các nghiên cứu và báo cáo trước trước đây cung cấp các hướng dẫn để các nước có thể đưa nguyên tắc này vào thực tế.
Lakshmi Puri is UN Assistant-Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director UN Women

– Can you imagine an entire day without access to your mobile phone, laptop, or even to the internet? In our rapidly changing world, could you function without having technology at your fingertips?
Unfathomable for most of us, but across the world—especially for many in developing countries–using and accessing technology is not readily available, and certainly not a privileged choice. This is particularly true for women and girls.
Anupama Sen* Rabindra Nepal** Tooraj Jamasb*** & Tooraj Jamasb
February 2016
After more than two decades of attempts at electricity sector reform, there is a strong case for assessing empirical evidence on its outcomes, particularly for developing countries. Electricity reform programmes , implemented through the ‘standard’ or ‘textbook’ model, have their foundations in standard microeconomic theory and are based on the rationale that restructuring towards greater competition can lead to higher efficiency, maximise economic welfare, and transfer surplus to consumers. In practice, this has not always been the case, even in the OECD economies which pioneered the standard model.

Students “might tend to think that conservatism is not an intellectual tradition because they don’t see any professors who hold to it,” Carson Holloway, a professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha, said. (Photo: David Trotman-Wilkins/KRT/Newscom)
Professors in higher education have become notably more liberal during the past 25 years, according to a recent study, and academics predict that the trend isn’t likely to slow any time soon.
eastasiaforum_ The scale of the disaster was massive: a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the most powerful to hit Japan in recorded history, which triggered a 40-metre-high tsunami that took out the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Over 20,000 perished, an evacuation zone carved out around Fukushima Daiichi will remain uninhabitable for tens of thousands of years, and 100,000 people from the evacuation zone and surrounding areas are still living as nuclear refugees.
Co-authored by Sarah Zoen, Senior Advisor, Private Sector Department at Oxfam America.
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Photo by Rene Schwietzke (CC BY 2.0)
huffingtonpost – Numerous companies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights practitioners have conducted human rights impact assessments in recent years. For instance, in 2012 Kuoni partnered with TwentyFifty Limited and Tourism Concern to assess its human rights impacts in Kenya. More recently, NomoGaia piloted a tool for evaluating the human rights implications of the Disi Water Conveyance Project in Jordan.
Research reports and studies

ODI – The world is facing a hidden crisis in childcare. That crisis is leaving millions of children without the support they need, with damaging consequences for their future. It is also having severe impacts on three generations of women – on mothers, grandmothers and daughters.There is an urgent need to solve the global care crisis to improve the lives of both women and children and to grow economies.

FEB 25, 2016
On February 24, a tanker carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) left the Sabine Pass LNG terminal off the coast of Louisiana. The first LNG cargo from Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Sabine Pass LNG Project is a significant milestone for the U.S. energy industry, marking the dawn of shale-based LNG exports by the United States. What other implications does the Sabine Pass export have for the United States? Does the shipment foretell the economic viability of U.S. LNG projects or the competitiveness of U.S. LNG exports? This Critical Question illustrates the significance of the Sabine Pass LNG shipment and considers the opportunities and challenges for the U.S LNG export business in the period of low energy prices.

Editor’s note: It was 1954, and the surrounded French garrison was facing defeat in what would become known as the First Indochina War. What happened next has been a source of controversy for decades. The author of a 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning book on Vietnam gives his view, drawing on the array of materials that have slowly emerged.
thebulletin – It is one of the most tantalizing questions of the long and bloody struggle for Vietnam: Did US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in the spring of 1954 offer French foreign minister Georges Bidault two atomic bombs for use against Viet Minh positions near the beleaguered French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in remote northwestern Vietnam? For decades historians have investigated the matter, with no consensus emerging. But what does the evidence actually say? The time is right for a fresh look.
HANOI – Saturday, March 05, 2016 13:11
thanhniennews – Air pollution in Hanoi is worsening and has reached dangerous levels this week, according to official data.
Many locals are worried that the capital city is becoming another Beijing while environment officials said the situation is bad, but not that bad.
The Real-time Air Quality Index on aqicn.org on recent days ranked the pollution in Hanoi as “unhealthy” and “very unhealthy,” which means outdoor exertion should be limited for everyone.

The events of this month have reminded Americans that Asia is a region of both great opportunity and significant risk. In just the first two weeks of the year, North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test, China began flying aircraft to airfields constructed on disputed features in the South China Sea, and Taiwan’s opposition candidate surged towards a victory in elections that will likely draw fire from Beijing.

Vietnamese deputies stand up and sing the national anthem at the opening of the summer session of the National Assembly in Hanoi, May 20, 2015.
RFA _ More self-nominated candidates, including those not associated with the Vietnamese Communist Party, are expected to run for seats in the upcoming parliamentary elections than in past elections, despite control of the candidate selection process by the ruling Communist Party.
This is the first installment of our Restoration Global Tour blog series. The series examines restoration success stories in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe and North America. Tune in over the coming months for additional installments, or check out our Restoration Diagnostic for more information.

WRI – A history of deforestation has made Asian nations like Vietnam, China and South Korea especially vulnerable to coastal storms, floods and sandstorms. Yet just as these nations have experienced similar crises, they’re also all pursuing a solution—restoring degraded landscapes.