Author: ANC News Desk

The square in front of Taipei Station is a popular gathering place for migrant workers on their days off. Credit: Shutterstock Taiwan is often discussed in the contemporary international community through its democratic resilience in the face of Beijing’s authoritarian pressure. In Europe, where many countries have transitioned from authoritarian rule to democracy, Taiwan’s experience […]

Credit: Depositphotos In January, the Tokyo District Court found that a tort had been committed and ordered the North Korean government to pay compensation over the repatriation project that sent ethnic Koreans in Japan to North Korea from the 1960s to the ‘80s.  The case was brought by four plaintiffs who moved to North Korea […]

U.S President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at Zhongnanhai, Beijing, China, May 15, 2026. Credit: Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok This is the concluding installment of a four-part series on “The First Airtight Empire.” Part I documented the two slogan substitutions through which Beijing rewrote its history and prewrote its […]

Credit: Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett The ghost of China haunts every conversation about India. When U.S. Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau visited New Delhi earlier this year, he stated it directly: “We are not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago…” Now, as Secretary […]

Traditional wooden fishing boats in the sea in West Sumatra, Indonesia. Credit: Shutterstock For years, Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing has been treated primarily as an environmental and economic threat. Governments framed it as a problem of depleted fish stocks, lost state revenue, and maritime resource theft. Yet a far more dangerous transformation is […]

Credit: Depositphotos One year has passed since the four-day May 2025 crisis between India and Pakistan that ended following a U.S.-brokered ceasefire. The conflict, termed as “Marka-e-Haq” by Pakistan and “Operation Sindoor” by India, has accelerated a structural transformation in the South Asian warfare. The crisis demonstrated that future confrontations between the two nuclear armed […]

A roadside market in North Korea. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/ Uwe Brodrecht China’s early economic reforms, led by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, are frequently cited as the main basis for comparison when it comes to North Korea’s economic improvement measures implemented by Kim Jong Il and later continued by Kim Jong Un. However, despite […]

Credit: Photo by Natalia Gusakova on Unsplash Kazakhstan’s commercial banks are increasingly offering attractive super-applications with convenient functions that go beyond traditional financial services for the country’s 21 million citizens  With the help of a bank application, Kazakhstan’s citizens buy necessary goods, find required specialists, and even receive government services.  For security purposes, super-applications have […]

Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Jakub Hałun One of my favorite childhood memories is visiting the Plain of Jars with my grandmother, Noy. I come from a long line of artisans who crafted textiles and molded gold into jewelry in southern Laos. Grandma Noy weaved Lao sinhs and traded with other talented loomers.  She often took […]

Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of Korea Seoul is reportedly preparing to announce a roadmap for its nuclear-powered submarine program, turning what was once a long-running strategic aspiration into a more immediate policy question. Naval nuclear propulsion raises non-proliferation questions about fuel, safeguards, and nuclear latency. But treating Seoul’s […]