Facebook has dramatically upped the technology ante with a feature enabling users to become live broadcasters, even receiving and responding to feedback in real time.　Despite being a communications marvel, Facebook Live also poses all sorts of problems. The impact is sure to be significant, but to what extent the impact is negative remains to be seen.　Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s founder, knows he’s on to something big, and it’s probable that Facebook’s rivals will seek to emulate the f

April 28, 2016

Most foreign visitors stepping into Junction Square in Myanmar‘s biggest city Yangon are in for a shock.　The medium-sized mall is packed with imported items and boasts an ice cream parlor as well as air conditioning and a gleaming tiled floor. It looks much like any big community mall in Bangkok.　Compare that with a mall in Shenzhen, China. The one I visited about five years ago shocked me with goods placed haphazardly in a poorly ventilated dusty interior.　Given that Myanmar only opened its doo

April 28, 2016

If in the early hours of a Saturday morning there’s a traffic jam in your neighborhood, it won’t be because it’s the opening day of the county fair. These days, it’s more likely to be Donald Trump. In Waterbury, Connecticut, this weekend, three days before the state primary, people began lining up at 4 a.m.; the doors opened at 7 for a rally scheduled for 10. The adults being led to the overflow room were as disappointed as the children finding out that that they’d been awoken early for politics

April 28, 2016

The many campaigns that have been waged over the past decade to get American children to avoid unhealthy foods have not been fruitless. The national childhood obesity rate has stopped rising. Yet neither is it falling. What kids need is not just a better diet, but also a better media diet.　The U.S. childhood obesity rate stands firm at 17 percent. And many overweight children and adolescents in the U.S. are growing even heavier. The number who are severely obese -- with a body mass index of 35 o

April 27, 2016

China’s adventurism in the South China Sea has prompted a change in Australian policymaking that merits wide international attention. In making maintenance of a “rules-based global order” a core strategic priority, Australia’s new Defense White Paper adopts language not often found at the heart of national defense charters. It is all the more surprising coming from a conservative government that is usually keen to follow the United States down any path it takes.Australia wanted a readily defensi

April 27, 2016

The military commander of the breakaway Armenian republic of Karabakh predicted in an interview Monday that a fragile cease-fire could collapse within days. By that night, Azerbaijani shelling had killed two Armenian soldiers in a northern border town, amid accusations by each side that the other had violated the truce. The “frozen conflict” here, stalemated for 22 years, exploded on April 2, when Azeroi forces attacked across the 200-kilometer front line. The Azeri seized ground for the first t

April 27, 2016

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the two most disliked candidates ever to run for president of the United States.　I don‘t mean perhaps. I mean really. And if they win their party nominations, it will only get worse.　She’s widely considered to be a liar, and a bad one. He‘s considered to be vulgar and crude. She’s the American political establishment‘s Madame Iron Pantsuits pretending to be a progressive, with that Wall Street cash and packs of hot sauce in her purse if she’s on black radio a

April 26, 2016

Here are three things to know about the nonaggression pact between Ted Cruz and John Kasich, who have now vowed to work together to defeat Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. Kasich will cede the opposition to Trump in Indiana to Cruz, while Cruz will give Kasich a chance to win in New Mexico and Oregon.　-- Even though this deal is unlikely to change the eventual allocation of delegates by much, a small swing could have a huge effect. As noted by NBC’s Mark Murray, at least

April 26, 2016

Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert will face the music on Wednesday. Can U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin name that tune in zero-to-six months?　That’s the sentencing range a probation officer recommended after Hastert pleaded guilty to one count of illegally structuring bank withdrawals. Durkin could reject that finding, though, and impose a sentence of up to five years in prison. He has plenty of reasons to do so.　Federal prosecutors say Hastert withdrew $952,000 -- $9,000 at a time,

April 26, 2016

Europe’s latest fight against Google will surely be long, messy and kind to lawyers. But it seems unlikely to do much for competition, innovation or the consumers who benefit from both.　In an antitrust case brought on Wednesday, the European Commission alleges that Google uses its Android operating system to unfairly privilege its own products on mobile phones. The new suit, which could result in a fine of more than $7 billion, joins a pending case filed almost six years ago about Google’s domin

April 25, 2016

If Volkswagen was hoping its $10 billion buyback settlement with U.S. officials would bring some closure to months of hand-wringing over diesel emissions, its timing couldn’t have been worse. A flood of news over the past week showed that what was once a single company‘s scandal has grown into a global regulatory crisis. As world leaders gathered in New York to sign the Paris climate accord on Friday, a cloud of doubt settled over one of the most hotly debated areas of environmental regulation.　

April 25, 2016