Kazakhstani voters may revoke their ex-president’s vast privileges
When kassym-zhomart tokayev became president of Kazakhstan in 2019, he promised his people a “listening state”. But even a deaf one would have heard the clamour in January, when Kazakhstanis took to the streets to register their displeasure at rising fuel prices. As the protests spread, the demand morphed into one for broad political change.…
The luxury of Asia’s malls is no substitute for genuine public spaces
The shopping mall was invented, nearly 70 years ago, in America. It was then copied in Europe. Yet Asia has inarguably made the shopping mall its own. Eight of the world’s ten biggest malls are in the region; exclude China and five still remain, all in South-East Asia.Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts…
Six Ways to Expand a Successful Business
Attaining success in a business is difficult but what’s even more complicated is maintaining the success and expanding it further. Stellar management, exceptional customer experience, tracking of cash flow, organized processing, passion, resourcefulness, willingness to improvise and listen to others, strong determination and so much more is required to make a small business successful. Capital…
8 Tips for Managing Stakeholder Expectations
Why Stakeholder Management? As the name suggests, Project Management involves everything that is required to manage a project and drive it towards successful completion of a project in hand. There are several aspects concerning Project Management that one ought to follow if they really want to succeed in their job. However, one of the most…
Should China spend more on infrastructure?
Rarely can so much have been used by so few. During Shanghai’s long lockdown, which mercifully eased this week, the city’s impressive infrastructure stood in splendid isolation from most of the citizens it is meant to serve. The metro (all 831km of it) was eerily quiet. The two airports, which handled 120m passengers in 2019,…
Why the oil price is spiking again
May 31st 2022 (Updated Jun 2nd 2022)In the 1970s Arab states used the “oil weapon” of embargoes to punish Western governments for supporting Israel. On May 30th the heads of the 27 eu member governments agreed to turn the weapon on themselves, as part of a fresh round of sanctions against Russia following its invasion of…
Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war pushed poor families deeper into penury
Reyna was 17 when her boyfriend Gabriel was murdered in front of her. In October 2016 he returned to their home in Bagong Silangan, a crowded slum area in Manila, after a shift working as a rickshaw driver. She said it was a “normal day” until armed men burst in through the front entrance and…
China’s e-sports players are challenging South Korea’s dominance
Some 4,000 fans gathered at the bexco Centre in Busan, a big port city in South Korea, on May 29th. Another 2.2m tuned in online. They were there for the finals of the Mid-Season Invitational, a prestigious e-sports tournament. A dozen teams had been competing over the course of three weeks to show off their…
Men with guns disrupt a plan to link Congo to east Africa
Barely two months after the fanfare that greeted the Democratic Republic of Congo as the seventh member of the East African Community (eac), making it a bloc of 300m people stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, blood is being spilt again in the troubled north-eastern corner of that vast, mineral-rich but chaotic country.…
Somalia’s new president vows to beat back jihadists, then talk to them
When hassan sheikh mohamud entered Villa Somalia as president in 2012, his writ ran little farther than the sandbagged gates of the bullet-pocked, Italian-built, Art Deco palace of the head of state. Though the central government had recently wrested control of most of Mogadishu, the capital, and had recaptured some strategic towns here and there,…