East-West Center in the News

(2012-12-12) "A successful launch puts North Korea closer to the capability to deploy a weaponised missile," said Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii.

"But this would still require fitting a weapon to the missile and ensuring a reasonable degree of accuracy. The North Koreans probably do not yet have a nuclear weapon small enough for a missile to carry."

-- Also appears in: ABS-CBNNEWS, CNBC, CNews, derStandard.at, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Irish Independent, New Europe, phillyburbs.com, Reuters via Yahoo! Maktoob News, The Star, TVNZ

(2012-12-13) The Director of the Pacific Islands development programme at Hawaii’s East West Centre, Gerard Finin, says the law will have positive long-term benefits on the language and ensure people keep speaking it formally.

“It’s always important to anticipate that without support for a language it can wither over time. In my experiences in Palau it’s still widely used, however the levels of sophistication, reading and writing, certainly are aspects of the language that need to be emphasised.”

(2012-12-14) Meanwhile, East-West President Center Charles Morrison said the program is "to provide leadership training for young Pacific Island leaders and to help them become more effective in their future jobs leading their countries."

The program is open to any Pacific Island entity, he said.

Asked about the cooperation with Taiwan, Morrison said the nation has great experience in the region working with many Pacific Island governments and societies.

It is also important for Pacific Island leaders to learn about Taiwan's experience in the areas of economic development, protection of resources and governance, Morrison said.

One of the purposes of the program is to help the participants better understand issues important to the Asia-Pacific region and the rest of the world, he said.

Taiwan can share its experience of relations in the region, including the Taiwan-China issue, he added.

-- Also appears in: Focus Taiwan News Channel

(2012-12-20) A spokesperson for Hawaii’s East-West Centre says the state is in a challenging position as it looks to replace its two long serving senators in Washington.

The Director of External Affairs, Karen Knudsen, says this week’s death of Senator Daniel Inouye who represented Hawaii for 50 years, combined with the retirement of Senator Daniel Akaka, is a real loss of political seniority.

She says she doesn’t think Hawaii will be left out in the cold but it’s unlikely to enjoy the same opportunities it had under the two senators.

“I do think that the country will not forsake Hawaii completely. However, we will not enjoy the same amount of federal funding, federal programmes, coming into the State as we have in the past with Senator Inouye and his position.”

Karen Knudsen says Hawaii will now be represented by two women, Mazie Hirono and the vacancy left by Mr Inouye’s death is due to be filled in the next few days, possibly by Colleen Hanabusa.

(2012-12-25)"The boom in gas and unconventional oil extraction may generate a significant number of new jobs," said Dieter Ernst, an economist with the East-West Center. "It reduces one of the main cost factors for petrochemical products such as plastic, which could accelerate investment in a broad range of domestic industries."

-- Also appears in: Equities.com

(2012-12-26) "Due to the large amount of distance between Pacific islands and their diverse cultures, environments and economies, collaboration and communication about climate knowledge and fragile water resources across the region is essential," said East-West Center environmental researcher Victoria Keener, the project's principal investigator. "There are no existing formal analyses that track the flow, sources, and quality of this information across the Pacific islands region, so this project will help address the blind spot researchers and agencies currently have as to which communities and stakeholders may be not be getting access to key knowledge."

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