Last week, a Thai cosmetics company called Seoul Secret launched a new beauty product, Snowz, and got locally famous Thai actress Cris Horwang to appear in the promotional video.
Lech Walesa, a national hero 26 years ago for his role in ending communist rule in Poland as the leader of Solidarity, has little political power in the country today, but he still has his voice.
There is an old fairground game called Whac-a-Mole. You whack a (fake) mole on the head and drive it down into its hole - and instantly one or more other moles pop up out of other holes.
Independent London journalist Gwynne Dyer surveys the state of the world in 2015 and finds it was a pretty good year for most people in most places.
If the Taliban were not so busy fighting the rival Islamic State jihadis who began operating in Afghanistan early this year, they might now be within reach of overthrowing the Afghan Government that the Western powers left behind when they pulled out most of their troops last year.
‘‘I'm going to try to form a government,'' Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said as the results of the national election came in on Sunday night, ‘‘but it won't be easy.''
Abu Muhammad al-Golani is an Islamist fanatic, a head-chopper (although only in moderation) and the leader of the Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate that is classified by the United States as "terrorist''.
The climate deal almost 200 countries agreed to in Paris at the weekend was far better than most insiders dared to hope even a month ago.
President Barack Obama spoke this week about a mass shooting in the United States for the 17th time in the past seven years.
Most powerful new technologies are double-edged.
Independent journalist Gwynne Dyer, of London, discusses reactions to the Paris attacks.
Salami tactics are useful when dealing with problems that are too big to resolve in one go. Muster all your resources and deal with one aspect of the problem. Come back later, when your resources have grown, and hack off a different piece. Repeat as necessary, until the problem disappears.
As always after a major terrorist attack on the West, the right question to ask after the slaughter in Paris is: What were the strategic aims behind the attack?
No good deed goes unpunished.
It's more than a week since the Russians began their airstrikes in Syria, and the others that have already been bombing there for over a year, the United States and some other Nato countries, are working themselves up into a rage about it.
There is a small but significant industry in the United States that predicts the ''coming war'' with China, and Atlantic Magazine is foremost among reputable American monthlies in giving a home to such speculation.
The sheer dithering cluelessness of European Union leaders faced with an unexpected surge in the number of migrants seeking refugee status in EU countries challenges all our previous definitions of incompetence.
Jeremy ''Jez'' Corbyn and Bernie Sanders are very much alike, and so are their ambitions.
One of my daughters once proposed that my T-shirt should read: ''I don't support war, but war supports me.''
Refugees from the wars of the Middle East are pouring into the European Union at an unprecedented rate.