|
(Bloomberg) -- China should put the brakes on its lending in the South Pacific to avoid lumping economically vulnerable nations with unsustainable debt, according to a report released by an Australian think tank."The sheer scale of China's lending and its lack of strong institutional mechanisms to protect the debt sustainability of borrowing countries poses clear risks," the Lowy Institute said in a report released Monday. "China cannot remain a major lender in the Pacific at the same scale as in the past without fueling significant" dangers, it said.According to Lowy, six South Pacific governments are debtors to China: Cook Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu. Between 2011 and 2018, China made official loan commitments to the region totaling about $6 billion, or about 21% of regional GDP.As China spreads its influence beyond the South China Sea to the South Pacific -- a region comprised of island nations traditionally under U.S. hegemony and on Australia's doorstep -- officials in Washington and Canberra are increasingly concerned Beijing may use debt through infrastructure loans as leverage to establish military bases in the region.Opaque LendingLast November, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence criticized President Xi Jinping's Belt-and-Road Initiative, which Morgan Stanley has said may total $1.3 trillion by 2027 -- dwarfing the funds the U.S. and allies have mobilized. Pence said the U.S. doesn't "drown our partners in a sea of debt" or "offer a constricting belt or a one-way road."While the Lowy report said there was no evidence to suggest China was engaging in deliberate "debt-trap diplomacy" in the South Pacific, it urged Beijing to adjust "the scale, natur
|
|
 Donald Trump's multiple abuses of office are more serious than those even of Richard Nixon, and Democrats must trigger their effort to impeach him before the end of the year, a former top Republican administration lawyer has claimed.Richard Painter, who served as an ethics lawyer to the administration of George W Bush but who quit the party after it moved sharply to the right, claims Mr Trump's offences are unique even when considered against the many misdeeds of his predecessors.
|
|
America is still a "Christian nation," if the term simply means a majority of the population will claim the label when a pollster calls. But, as a new Pew Research report unsparingly explains, the decline of Christianity in the United States "continues at a rapid pace." A bare 65 percent of Americans now say they're Christians, down from 78 percent as recently as 2007. The deconverted are mostly moving away from religion altogether, and the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated -- the "nones" -- have swelled from 16 to 26 percent over the same period. If this rate of change continues, the U.S. will be majority non-Christian by about 2035, with the nones representing well over one third of the population.Smaller details from the study are equally striking. Protestantism lost its narrow claim to an outright majority of Americans' souls around 2012. While older generations remain at least two-thirds Christian, millennials have an even 49-49 split of Christians vs. nones (40 percent) and those of other faiths (9 percent). Religious service attendance rates haven't dramatically declined in the last decade, but they will soon if generational trends hold.As even the strictest practitioners of laicite must concede, major religious shifts like this will have equally major political effects -- but we are in somewhat uncharted territory as to what those effects may be. In broad strokes, this decline keeps the U.S. trailing Western Europe's religious and political evolution: the end of Christianity as a default faith and a move toward left/right politics that can be roughly characterized as socialism against nationalist populism. Yet Europe can hardly provide a clear window to our future, not least because many European states have both multi-party pa
|
|
Hong Kong police fired tear gas at protesters throwing petrol bombs on Sunday as thousands staged an illegal march through the Kowloon district that will test the strength of the pro-democracy campaign after four months of unrest. Police inside the Tsim Sha Tsui police station fired volleys of tear gas and used a loudspeaker to called on protesters in the street below to disperse. Hardcore black-clad protesters threw petrol bombs at the station's iron gate and inside the compound.
|
RELATED ARTICLES | | |
|
 Attorney general's recent address at Notre Dame is a ‘dog whistle' to conservatives who have aligned themselves with TrumpWilliam Barr, US attorney general, speaks to students at the University of Notre Dame law school on 11 October. Photograph: Robert Franklin/Associated PressProminent liberal Catholics have warned the US attorney general's devout Catholic faith poses a threat to the separation of church and state, after William Barr delivered a fiery speech on religious freedom in which he warned that "militant secularists" were behind a "campaign to destroy the traditional moral order".The speech last Friday at the University of Notre Dame law school, in which Barr discussed his conservative faith and revealed how it affects his decision-making as the nation's chief law-enforcement officer, has set off a fierce debate among Catholic intellectuals from across the political spectrum, as well as among Catholics inside the justice department.C Colt Anderson, a Roman Catholic theologian and professor of religion at Jesuit-run Fordham University, said in an interview that he was unaware until this week that Barr was a fellow Catholic. Now, after reading the speech, Anderson believes the attorney general, in revealing his devotion to an especially conservative branch of Catholicism, is a "threat to American democracy".He described the speech as a "dog whistle" to ultra-conservative Catholics who, he says, have aligned themselves to Donald Trump in a
|
|
 BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GettyPresident Trump has boasted he's "getting a lot of praise" for his abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops out of northern Syria, abandoning the Kurds—America's longstanding allies—to Turkey's incursion. On the home front, the controversial move has been met with criticism on both sides of the political aisle, but the reaction in Moscow was far from mixed. As Trump uncorked chaos in the Middle East, champagne tops were likely popping at the Kremlin."Putin won the lottery! Russia's unexpected triumph in the Middle East," raved Mikhail Rostovsky in his article for the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets. "Those who were convinced of Trump's uselessness for Russia ought to think again...What Washington got out of this strange move is completely unclear. To the contrary, what Moscow gained from this is self-evident...Trump's mistake in Syria is the unexpected ‘lottery win' that further strengthened Moscow's position in the Middle East and undermined America's prestige as a rational political player and a reliable partner." Maksim Yusin, the editor of international politics at the leading Russian business daily Kommersant, was amazed by the ongoing stream of inexplicable actions by the American president that benefit the Kremlin. "All of this benefits the Russian Federation," Yusin marveled. "You know, I've been watching Trump's behavior lately and get seditious thoughts: maybe he really is a Russian agent? He is laboring so hard to strengthen the international image o
|
|
 A forgotten tale of the cold war.
|
|
Director won't adhere to China's censors with recut version
|
|
As promised, Mike Posner has officially completed his nearly 3,000-mile walk across America.
On Friday (Oct. 18), the "I Took a Pill in Ibiza...
|
|
 This week's question comes from Web Producer Baraka Kaseko:
Read more...
|
|
 Not even 24 hours after we reported that Studio Ghibli's library of legendary anime classics might never be available on American streaming platforms (presumably due to North American distributor GKids' fondness for DVD sales), HBO Max has stepped in and made us all look like fools. As announced today in a press…
Read more...
|
|
"When we are away from home, in new and strange places, we get to know ourselves better," Abdallah, the son of a rich merchant, thinks as he gazes out an airplane window. It's a sentiment that will resonate with many readers who immerse themselves in the rich, dense landscape of Jokha Alharthi's Celestial Bodies, newly…
|
|
 Our resident VOD expert tells you what's new to rent and/or own this week via various Digital HD providers such as cable Movies On Demand, FandangoNOW, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play and, of course, Netflix.
Cable Movies On Demand: Same-day-as-disc releases, older titles and pretheatrical
Bohemian Rhapsody (Oscar-nominated biographical drama about Freddie Mercury and Queen; Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joseph Mazzello, Aiden Gillen, Mike Myers; rated PG-13)
Anna and the Apocalypse (comedy-horror-musical; Ella Hunt, Malcolm Cumming, Sarah Swire, Christopher Leveaux, Marli Siu, Ben Wiggins; rated R)
Nobody's Fool (comedy-drama; Tiffany Haddish, Tika Sumpter, Omari Hardwick, Mehcad Brooks, Whoopi Goldberg; rated R)
One Million American...
Read More
|
RELATED ARTICLES | | |
|
Gabrielle Union knows the value of a sturdy support system. But she also knows that not everyone has one.
She made this point at Monday night's 11th Annual Night of Opportunity Gala held in New York City for The Opportunity Network, a nonprofit that works with students from historically and systematically underrepresented communities achieve their college and career goals.
Union, 45, was an honoree at the event, and in her acceptance speech, she spoke about expanding the idea of what a support system can be. She explained that she learned the hard way that "your people" are not always who you thought they would be. She referenced the time she was raped as a sophomore in college.
"When I was raped at gunpoint, one of the most lonely and debilitating experiences of my life, I had to redefine what it meant to be a part of a community because my ‘people' didn't have a ton of experience with rape survivors," the Being Mary Jane star and producer said to Cipriani's packed but silent dining room. "So I had to expand my idea of what and who my people were. I needed a different kind of support. I needed different opportunities, opportunities to heal and then the ability to want to continue living."
The summer before starting her sophomore year of college at UCLA, the actress was raped at gunpoint by a stranger in the Payless store where she worked.
RELATED VIDEO: Gabrielle Union's Heartbreaking Struggle with Infertility: ‘I've Had 8 or 9 Miscarriages'
But that wasn't the first time she realized she needed "different" opportunities.
"When I was at UCLA, a lot of the kids I was at school with, their parents got them internships and their parents had jobs lined up for them or they took over the family business," she explained to PEOPLE. "I don'
|
|
Private Label