Section: The Jakarta Post (Indonesia)
South China Sea in 2015: Fears of war
Is war over the festering South China Sea (SCS) maritime dispute between China and the Southeast Asian claimants of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam inevitable in 2015?China’s rising assertiveness, the firmness of claimants like the Philippines and Vietnam and the big powers’ interest in the region, have led to...
Russian FM pledges cooperation with West to combat terror
Moscow is continuing to cooperate with the West on fighting terrorism despite tensions over Ukraine, Russia’s foreign minister said Wednesday. Sergey Lavrov said that in particular Russian security agencies have maintained contacts with their counterparts in France, where five Russian citizens from the predominantly Muslim region of...
US ‘wants to dominate the world’: Russia
Russia on Wednesday responded disparagingly to President Barack Obama’s annual State of the Union address, claiming it showed that the United States wanted to dominate world affairs. “Americans have set a course for confrontation,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters. “Obama’s address yesterday...
Survey finds US more attractive place to invest than China
Amid growing concerns over the global economy, the United States has overtaken China as the number one investment destination among chief executives around the world, a survey found Tuesday.That’s the first time the U.S. has topped the list since accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, or PwC, first started asking the...
Putin says Russia will build new weapons but avoid arms race
President Vladimir Putin says Russia will develop new weapons that will ensure its security without entering a costly arms race with the West.Putin said Tuesday after touring a shooting range outside Moscow that some of the weapons he saw there looked like they came straight from a science fiction movie.He says Russia’s military...
Krakatau Steel to build $390m hot rolled coil factory
Steel giant PT Krakatau Steel (KRAS) plans to build a new hot rolled coil manufacturing facility in the Cilegon industrial estate, Banten, worth US$390 million (Rp 4.92 trillion).According to Widodo Setia Dharmaji, the company’s director for technology and business development, the factory will have a capacity of 1.5 million tons of hot...
Russian envoy criticizes West over sanctions
The Russian Ambassador to Indonesia, Mikhail Y. Galuzin, has criticized Western governments for the ongoing sanctions imposed on his country over the conflict in Ukraine, decrying them as “illegal” and contradictory to the rules of international trade.Galuzin accused the West of hypocrisy as the sanctions contradicted the principle of free-market...
EU won’t ease Russia sanctions as Ukraine conflict rages
The European Union foreign ministers are ruling out any immediate easing of sanctions against Russia as fighting rages in eastern Ukraine, despite concerns about the economic consequences. Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said Monday that since the fighting around the Donetsk airport in eastern Ukraine had intensified, “this is no time...
France attacks, Iraq conflict to dominate Davos meet
The deadly Islamist attacks in France and conflicts in Iraq and Ukraine are set to dominate discussions at this week’s gathering of the world’s political and economic elite in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. French President Francois Hollande, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be among the...
Obama to seek tax increases on wealthy to help middle class
President Barack Obama will call for increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans then using the revenue to fund new tax credits and other cost-saving measures for the middle class in his first address before a Republican-led Congress.The president’s proposals are likely to be cheered by the Democratic Party’s liberal base, but the...
