I ate dog just once, and it was an accident. A Chinese scrap metal dealer with whom I’m friendly invited me to a fancy hot pot restaurant in Chongqing. As the waitress delivered bowl after bowl of dunkable vegetables and raw meats for cooking at our table, I pointed to one and asked: “What’s this?” My friend’s answer, in heavily accented English, sounded like “duck.” It tasted like a meaty hair ball.As the magnitude of my mistake sank in, I thought of Yulin, the southern Chinese town infamous fo

June 26, 2016

This was never supposed to happen. Three years ago, when U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron promised his country a referendum on remaining a member of the European Union, he was sure of victory. The country had other ideas. On Thursday Britain voted to quit.It’s a momentous choice -- and not in a good way. The immediate risk to Britain’s economy is grave, because the vote creates enormous uncertainty. This is likely to persist for months, until it becomes clear what kind of new trading rules will

June 24, 2016

The U.K. has voted for the “most expensive divorce proceeding in the history of the world,” in the words of U.S. billionaire Wilbur Ross, with BBC projections showing voters backed “Leave” by 52 percent to 48 percent. The challenge facing both Britain and its newly ditched European partners now is to ensure that the separation doesn’t deteriorate into acrimony and revenge.　The EU should regard the referendum result as a wake-up call. Discontent with how the bloc operates isn’t restricted to Brit

June 24, 2016

The middle classes that quake at the thought of gore and fascist hordes seem incorrigibly sanguine about a possible nuclear confrontation in South Asia with both India and Pakistan vying to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group.It is always baffling, isn’t it, to see the yawning difference in our responses in South Asia to a gathering communal threat, for instance, as opposed to the catastrophic prospect of nuclear annihilation? Only recently, Pakistan toggled between public outcry and terrified whis

June 23, 2016

Lack of knowledge on environmental issues is blamed for lenient verdicts given by Indonesian courts to those deemed responsible for the destruction.Enforcement of the law against those who commit environmental crimes in Indonesia has proved to fail as a deterrent. A series of trials of corporations held responsible for devastating and widespread forest and land fires last year ended in an anticlimax, sending the worrying message that burning forests is permissible.The recent acquittal of Frans K

June 23, 2016

 On Monday, eight days after 49 people were gunned down in an Orlando nightclub by a terrorist claiming allegiance to the Islamic State group, the U.S. Senate voted down four different gun control proposals, two from each party.Democrats saw the Republican proposals as too weak. Republicans saw the Democratic proposals as too tough.So nothing happened. There was no agreement on a way to keep people who are on the country’s terrorist watch list from buying guns capable of slaughtering dozens in m

June 23, 2016

There’s no sense sugarcoating it: Philadelphia is one of the fattest big cities in the fattest country in the developed world. To its credit, it has been trying to shed the pounds -- back in 2001, its then-mayor enlisted the city’s basketball team in challenging residents to lose 76 tons in 76 days -- but very little has worked. That’s why Philadelphia’s decision to tax sugary drinks is so promising.　About one-third of Americans adults are obese, and obesity is a primary cause of diabetes, heart

June 22, 2016

The Korean guerrillas who operated along the east and west coasts under the U.N. Command during the Korean War had previously been anti-communists in the North Korean regime. With the intervention of the Chinese forces, to reclaim their homeland in North Korea, they evacuated to islands near Pyongan and Hwanghae provinces and continued their armed resistance with the support from the U.S. Army. The anti-communist guerrilla resistance in the Korean War began in the early stages of North Korea’s i

June 22, 2016

Last week’s decision by MSCI not to include Chinese shares in its primary emerging-markets stock index has been viewed — widely and rightly — as a blow to China’s hopes of internationalizing its financial sector. There’s worse news, though: Even the progress China has made thus far is in danger of going into reverse. MSCI’s choice is a sharp contrast to the one made by the International Monetary Fund last December, when it promised to begin including the Chinese yuan in its basket of “special dr

June 22, 2016

It was simply great to have spent the last two weeks in Korea, my wife Jakyung and I splitting our time between her native Seoul and the beauty of the PyeongChang region. In the many years that I have been coming to Seoul, primarily for work, I have always found the combination of industriousness and warmth of the Korean people to be infectious. Yet I had a profound sense of happiness to return to New York City at the end of this trip, for the reason that many New Yorkers would have laughed at s

June 21, 2016

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which carry the Zika virus, are kind of like dogs. OK, the analogy isn’t perfect. Dogs don’t fly, and they don’t suck blood, and they don’t lay eggs. But like our canine pals, Aedes aegypti started out wild and got domesticated.With dogs, it took thousands of years. With these mosquitoes, the time frame has been much shorter. We humans happily joined in the process that changed wolves into dogs. With Aedes aegypti, we’ve been not-so-innocent and increasingly unhappy bys

June 21, 2016

Even before our two-party system coughed up the most disliked presidential nominees in modern polling history, Canada had firmly established itself as America’s favorite backup plan. Air Canada is already goofing on our quadrennial -- “How do I move to Canada?” Google searches with a new ad campaign called “Test Drive Canada,” in which Americans are encouraged to “Make it a long weekend! Take a look around. Try your hand with the metric system.” As the Quebecois might say, “ouaf ouaf.”But would-

June 21, 2016

You know we love you over there and we know that you love us and thank you.However, we don’t really like the language in the headlines saying Brexit “looms” -- it sounds so ominous and a bad thing.Brexit is a good thing and nothing to be worried about.Would you be kind enough to use another word apart from “looms.” Something like “coming up” -- the thesaurus probably knows better than me.We so don’t want people to get the wrong impression of us leaving.We are looking forward to working with the

June 20, 2016