The toilet is a magnificent thing. Invented at the turn of the 19th century, the flush version has vastly improved human life. The toilet has been credited with adding a decade to our longevity. The sanitation system to which it is attached was voted the greatest medical advance in 150 years by readers of the British Medical Journal. Unfortunately it is an impractical luxury for about two-thirds of the world’s 7 billion people because it relies on connections to water and sewerage systems that m

April 11, 2012

Recently in Karachi, I dropped in on a talk by the Pakistani journalist and TV anchor Kamran Khan at a Rotary Club meeting. Describing relations between India and Pakistan at a “crossroads,” Khan exhorted his audience to feel shame about Pakistani involvement in the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in 2008 that killed 164 people and have frozen India- Pakistan relations ever since. Khan lamented the many missed opportunities for a comprehensive agreement between India and Pakistan. Finally, he expres

April 11, 2012

To be the swing voter, you have to be willing to swing. In the last three weeks, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has shown how it’s done. First he wrote the majority opinion in a landmark 5-4 case establishing a constitutional right to an adequate lawyer in plea-bargaining negotiations. Liberals were enthused. Yet in his tough questioning during the Obamacare arguments, he shook up the conventional wisdom that mandatory coverage would be upheld comfortably. Liberals were not enthused.

April 11, 2012

The toilet is a magnificent thing. Invented at the turn of the 19th century, the flush version has vastly improved human life. The toilet has been credited with adding a decade to our longevity. The sanitation system to which it is attached was voted the greatest medical advance in 150 years by readers of the British Medical Journal. Unfortunately it is an impractical luxury for about two-thirds of the world’s 7 billion people because it relies on connections to water and sewerage systems that m

April 11, 2012

Latin American countries are rightfully fed up with fighting Washington’s war on drugs. In the four decades since President Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs, its battles have been fought predominantly in Latin American nations ― leaving behind a trail of death and corruption while failing to achieve any of its goals.After a bloody, decades-long war in Colombia, the epicenter of drug trafficking simply moved north to Mexico. Upon taking office five years ago, Mexican President Felipe Calde

April 10, 2012

We got our first real glimpse last week of how President Obama and his now-almost-certain Republican rival, Mitt Romney, intend to wage their campaigns in the lead-up to the general election.In a speech last Tuesday, Obama painted Romney as an out-of-touch patrician who doesn’t care much about the troubles of hardworking people low on the income ladder. Romney soon fired back, painting Obama as an out-of-touch liberal who doesn’t care much about the struggles of honest businessmen who want to cr

April 10, 2012

The California High-Speed Rail Authority has a serious public-relations hurdle: how to sell its proposed Los Angeles-to-San Francisco bullet train without the word “boondoggle” attached. But the rail authority’s latest compromise plan to solve this problem ― with its focus on building the system in a “better, faster, cheaper” manner ― not only doesn’t fix the system’s fundamental flaws, it may plant the seeds of its destruction. In November 2008, California voters ― notorious for approving huge

April 10, 2012

Oil prices and oil supply unambiguously tie China and the United States together, as both nations are heavy importers of oil. The United States imports about 65 percent of its oil and oil products, while China imports about 56 percent of its needs, which will undoubtedly increase over the next few years.The rising trend in oil prices over the past three years has by no means been a classic recession response and the climbing price of crude oil may undo the U.S.’ fragile economic recovery and wil

April 9, 2012

How can Japan secure and develop human resources who will work in the nuclear power field? This task needs to be jointly tackled by the government and the private sector.The number of students wishing to study nuclear power has declined since the crisis started last year at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. In addition, many young people have become reluctant to take jobs in nuclear-related industries.The seriousness of the Fukushima accident certainly

April 9, 2012

The 20th Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, just ended with both good and bad news. On the positive side, recent developments in Myanmar clearly gave ASEAN something of which it can be proud. In the past, especially during the convening of an ASEAN summit, the grouping was always presented with a major embarrassment when questions were raised by the international community regarding the lack of tangible progress in ASEAN’s attempt to encour

April 9, 2012

Pakistan is undergoing three transitions simultaneously. How they unfold matters not only for Pakistan, but also for much of the Muslim world, particularly as the Arab Spring forces change upon governments across the wider Middle East.Most Muslim countries were governed for decades by autocrats who had either emerged directly from the armed forces, or had strong “khaki” support. That was the case in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and, of course, Pakistan.The Arab Spring drained away whatever spurio

April 9, 2012

U.S. President Barack Obama’s nomination of Jim Yong Kim for the presidency of the World Bank has been well received -- and rightly so, especially given some of the other names that were bandied about. In Kim, a public-health professor who is now president of Dartmouth University and previously led the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department, the United States has put forward a good candidate. But the candidate’s nationality, and the nominating country -- whether small and poor or large

April 9, 2012

Oil prices and oil supply unambiguously tie China and the United States together, as both nations are heavy importers of oil. The United States imports about 65 percent of its oil and oil products, while China imports about 56 percent of its needs, which will undoubtedly increase over the next few years.The rising trend in oil prices over the past three years has by no means been a classic recession response and the climbing price of crude oil may undo the U.S.‘ fragile economic recovery and wil

April 9, 2012