Articles in English

Natural gas is in many ways the ideal fuel. It is abundant, affordable, clean-burning and extremely versatile. It can heat homes and offices, generate electricity from highly-efficient power plants, be used as a feedstock to manufacture…

■ “HISTORY, n. An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.” This is the definition given by Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary. It is a…

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the five central Asian republics Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kirgizstan have (re-) emerged as independent states. The task of building new state institutions and a functioning…

The latest quarrel between India’s main political parties – the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC) – was triggered by a tweet by Jeremy Corbyn. The British Labour Party leader tweeted that a team of…

Aspenia Online: Can you think of historical precedents, or parallels, in which a country builds a barrier (and maintains it for three decades) in order mostly to keep its own people in, rather than some external threat out? The North Korean…