Arab springtime may redraw borders

JERUSALEM ― Two things stand out in the Middle East since the Arab Spring began ― one that happened, and one that did not. What happened was that for the first time in modern Arab history, authoritarian regimes and rulers were toppled, or seriously challenged, by popular demonstrations, not ― as in the past ― through military coups.But what did not happen might be as important as what did. While dictators associated with military juntas were challenged overnight, the Arab Spring never came to th

May 1, 2012

U.S. Supreme Court should strike down Arizona’s law

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments over Arizona’s controversial immigration law. Initial reports indicated the justices weren’t buying the Obama administration’s arguments against a provision that requires police officers to check the immigration status of people they think are in the country illegally.We hope that’s not the case. We think that provision and others in the law need to be struck down, and we hope the court upholds the primacy of federal law and agencies in dealing w

May 1, 2012

So long, Newt Gingrich

Never one to eat his words, Newt Gingrich is nonetheless being fed replay after replay of the famous ABC News clip in which he confidently declared, “I’m going to be the nominee.”That was Dec. 1. On Wednesday, the morning after Mitt Romney swept five presidential primaries, Gingrich’s campaign staff signaled that he would soon officially concede the obvious: Romney is the presumptive Republican presidential candidate.That Gingrich lasted this long is a testament to... what, exactly? Monomaniacal

May 1, 2012

How to make poor kids $1 million richer

Anyone with half a brain knows that bolstering the middle class is critical to securing the future of the U.S. It’s a matter of national self-interest. Setting aside the misery of poverty for a minute, the rich need a skilled middle-class workforce to make their businesses successful or they won’t stay rich for long. Skills, of course, require education, which is why it’s nutty that Republican House members want to cut Pell grants and are making unreasonable demands in the debate over preventing

April 30, 2012

How U.S. students can work off their debt

If your child is one of the 1.5 million high school students eagerly awaiting acceptance letters from colleges this month, he or she is probably entertaining dreams of high scholarship, intellectual ferment, new friends, raging keggers. You probably have a few other things on your mind. For starters, you may be thinking that the average annual cost of a four-year institution now exceeds $20,000. Or that outstanding student-loan debt surpasses $1 trillion. Or that defaults are rising, economic gr

April 30, 2012

Western translations distort China’s reality

A lot of people search endlessly for the secret key or a magic formula that would enable them to understand China. Naturally, at some point they will want to know how the Chinese are educated. The Middle Kingdom has many prestigious schools, but let us take a closer look at Peking University, the mother lode of the Chinese “wenming.”Wenming is often translated as “civilization,” but that is misleading. In a recent lecture at Peking University, the renowned linguist Gu Zhengkun explained that “we

April 30, 2012

How to Make Poor Kids $1 Million Richer

Anyone with half a brain knows that bolstering the middle class is critical to securing the future of the U.S. It’s a matter of national self-interest. Setting aside the misery of poverty for a minute, the rich need a skilled middle-class workforce to make their businesses successful or they won’t stay rich for long. Skills, of course, require education, which is why it’s nutty that Republican House members want to cut Pell grants and are making unreasonable demands in the debate over preventing

April 30, 2012

The truth about France’s ‘far-right’ surge

Are the French getting their Tea Party on? That’s what an outsider looking at the country’s first-round presidential voting results might have been led to believe. But, as with many things French, the reality is tres compliquee.The weekend vote knocked out all but the two candidates long expected to square off in the May 6 final: Socialist Francois Hollande (28.6 percent) and incumbent center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy (27.2 percent). This isn’t the story, though. The most striking news is

April 29, 2012

Political futures hinge on Romney’s ‘Veepstakes’

With Mitt Romney all but officially anointed the Republican presidential nominee, the national political narrative now turns to the “Veepstakes”: who Romney will choose for his running mate. From a policy point of view, this is arguably the most important decision Romney will make in his presidential race.The importance of the vice president is not for electoral reasons ― even the most disastrous choices have been found to have a negligible impact on the electorates’ voting decision. Instead, as

April 29, 2012

Eritrea may be world’s most repressive nation

It might seem a daunting challenge to determine which of the world’s repressive nations offers the least-free news media. We have so many to choose from ― Iran, North Korea, Belarus ...But you may be surprised by the unanimity among organizations that study such things, like Reporters Without Borders, a French group. The consensus choice is Eritrea, a tiny nation most people cannot even pinpoint on a map.Eritrea, a desperately poor desert state about the size of Pennsylvania, lives in an ugly ne

April 29, 2012

How to put the IMF’s war chest to good use

Singapore’s decision to pledge $4 billion loan to the International Monetary Fund to help troubled economies must be seen as part of a broader international effort. It is necessary because, as a trading nation, Singapore is critically dependent on the health of the global economy. Should Europe’s crisis deepen, it could also spread far beyond the region. Singapore’s contribution is therefore an investment made in enlightened self-interest. Even if the funds are drawn down, the money will remain

April 29, 2012

Cows, pigs, chickens have drug problem

Much of the beef, pork or chicken we eat contains small amounts of antibiotics. The drugs are fed to animals so they can thrive in the crowded, often-fetid factory farms that dominate U.S. meat and poultry production. But giving animals a steady diet of these medicines has contributed to the increase of antibiotic-resistant bugs that can pose grave risks to humans. This isn’t news to the Food and Drug Administration, which has known since the early 1970s about the misuse of antibiotics in agricu

April 27, 2012

Responding to provocations from Vietnam

Taiwan claims sovereignty over two archipelagoes in the South China Sea. They are the Spratlys and Pratas, with troops being stationed on an island of each archipelago. The Spratly Island where some 100 Coast Guardsmen are deployed is known as Taiping Island, or “Peace Island,” though it isn’t quite peaceful any more.The vernacular China Time Magazine reported in a scoop last Friday that two Vietnamese armed patrol vessels came so close to Taiping on March 22 as to compel the Coast Guard Adminis

April 27, 2012

Tasks for TEPCO head

The government on April 19 picked Kazuhiko Shimokobe, a bankruptcy lawyer with vast experience in corporate restructuring, as chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Co. He headed the decision-making body of the Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund, a public entity that injects funds into TEPCO to help it pay compensation to victims of the accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.So far, Shimokobe has been in a position to make demands on TEPCO concerning its management from outsid

April 27, 2012