The discovery last month of a case of mad-cow disease in California could be taken as good news. The cow in question was found at a rendering plant, where spent animals are sent for processing into leather, soap, cosmetics and pet food. Tests detected the illness before slaughter. There was never any chance that meat from the cow would enter the human food chain. Cattle futures prices, which initially plunged, are higher now than before the announcement. Agriculture officials say the animal was

May 13, 2012

India and Korea are two flourishing democracies in the modern world. There is much in common, although not very obvious, in the social and cultural spectrum. In the past, Indian culture, especially Buddhism, inspired Korean society in a big way. However, today things are different. Korea has leapfrogged economically, as well as socially, way ahead of India, while India is struggling. A role reversal has taken place and today it is Korea that can inspire India in many ways.What Korea has achieved

May 13, 2012

Political upheaval in Europe reached a new apex over the weekend when French voters threw out their incumbent president and Greeks gave the heave-ho to the ruling parliamentary coalition. The results suggest that a new consensus is emerging in Europe in favor of more economic stimulus, but they also call into question the continent’s ability to agree on a plan to keep its fiscal problems from spreading uncontrollably.European leaders had agreed to a series of pacts that would rescue Greece and o

May 13, 2012

On May 2, the South Korean National Assembly passed a law introducing a national carbon trading scheme by 2015. This is a truly significant moment not only in terms of Korea’s national efforts to tackle climate change, but also because it underlines the emergence of a nascent Asian-Pacific carbon emissions trading hub with the potential to be a tipping point in the global fight against climate change.So why is Korea’s move so important when the country is responsible for fewer than 2 percent of

May 13, 2012

European elections over the last few days dealt a stunning blow to austerity, one of most profoundly mistaken economic policies propounded in modern times.The French voted President Nicolas Sarkozy out of office. In Greek parliamentary elections, anti-austerity parties triumphed. The same held true for local elections in Britain and elsewhere.For several years now, German politicians and technocrats, primarily, have directed their profligate southern European neighbors to impose brutal austerity

May 11, 2012

The Democratic Party of Japan decided Tuesday to lift the suspension of former DPJ President Ichiro Ozawa’s party membership. The move followed last month’s court decision that found Ozawa not guilty of falsely reporting political funds handled by his political funds management body, Rikuzan-kai.In February 2011, after Ozawa had been indicted on charges of violating the Political Funds Control Law, the then party leadership “suspended his party membership until a court ruling on his case becomes

May 11, 2012

The case of the blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng could well have trapped China and the United States in a test of strength from which neither side would have found it easy to back down. A prolonged confrontation might have ensued if the incident had happened at a time when China was not as self-confident and America habitually acted out of a sense of all-knowing might. The way the impasse was resolved is a development to be thankful for, as it might be something of a full-dress preview of

May 11, 2012

The killing of Vice Mayor Abel Martinez of Mambusao, Capiz in central Philippines may have unofficially but bloodily opened the 2013 election season, violence being a trademark of Philippine elections. No less than Interior Secretary Jesse M. Robredo has warned that he expects political killings to rise in the months leading to the midterm elections, following the assassination of Martinez. But Philippine National Police (PNP) spokesperson Senior Supt. Generoso Cerbo Jr. has cautioned against li

May 11, 2012

Reinventing NATO By Karl-Heinz Kamp ROME -- This month, NATO will hold its next summit in Chicago. Unlike European Union summits, which take place almost monthly, NATO’s are infrequent. This helps to explain the inflated rhetoric that surrounds them: the November 2010 summit in Lisbon, for example, was described as nothing less than “the most important in NATO’s history.” Will the Chicago summit prove to be an exception to this rule?For a while, that seemed likely, with the meeting initially bil

May 11, 2012

In the battle between humans and infectious bacteria, humans have had the advantage, at least since antibiotics were introduced into our arsenal 70 or so years ago. Now, however, our weapons appear to be turning against us as germs have found ways to outfox antibiotics. Consider a germ-altering gene known as NDM-1. As reporters Jason Gale and Adi Narayan explain in an article in the June issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine, this bit of DNA is showing up in dozens of bacteria strains, from E. col

May 10, 2012

The most famous speech in American history begins this way: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Lincoln’s eloquence at Gettysburg was lyrical but not historically accurate. For no such thing as a “new nation” had been proposed in 1776; only a temporary union of sovereign states, declaring their independence from Britain, then presumably going their separat

May 10, 2012

It would be a mistake to interpret the election of France’s socialist presidential challenger, Francois Hollande, as portending a seismic shift for Europe’s second- largest economy. All indications are that Hollande doesn’t owe his victory to any passion among the electorate for a sweeping left-leaning platform. The defeated incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, is merely the latest leader felled by Europe’s economic crisis and the lassitude of its citizens. His flamboyant, hyperkinetic persona had grown

May 9, 2012