Asean, and Thailand in particular, must abandon its impotent policy of appeasement towards Burma

HARD TALK: NBC fiasco shows tenacity of vested interests

There should be no love lost for the seven ill-fated nominees for the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC). Nor should there be any crying over yet another delay in setting up the independent body. Any sympathy for the would-be commissioners, who saw their hopes of becoming the country’s first batch of broadcast regulators dashed, should be weighed against the fact that several of them knew long before the Administrative Court issued its ruling last week that the selection process was flawed right from the start.

Iran’s game of nuclear hide-and-seek

Mohammad ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is pressing the agency’s board of governors to make one last effort to find a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions before sending the case to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions. The board met last Thursday to discuss “new information” discovered by inspectors on the ground.