Just before Christmas, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration alerted U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers to keep a sharp eye on ingredients imported from Tianjin, China. The problem, it seemed, is that these could be contaminated with cyanide that escaped after an explosion in August of a hazardous material warehouse. Already, the FDA reported, it had detected the deadly chemical in two shipments from the city.　The FDA deserves credit for shutting down a poison pipeline aimed at America’s medicine

Jan. 4, 2016

Among climate scientists, the consensus is that we must become carbon-neutral by 2050 to avoid catastrophic environmental disruptions. Negotiators at the recent summit in Paris accordingly focused on curbing carbon dioxide emissions.There’s a major problem, however, with a CO2-centric strategy. Because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for a century or more, and because we won’t abandon fossil fuels overnight, neutrality by 2050 simply isn’t good enough to keep the Earth from warming 2 de

Jan. 4, 2016

Among Republicans, it has become politically correct to be politically incorrect. Actually that’s the most politically correct thing that you can possibly be. As soon as you announce that you’re politically incorrect, you’re guaranteed smiles and laughter, and probably thunderous applause. Proudly proclaiming your bravery, you’re pandering to the crowd.　A math-filled new paper, by economists Chia-Hui Chen at Kyoto University and Junichiro Ishida at Osaka University, helps to explain what’s going

Jan. 3, 2016

For Japan, World War II is not resolved history. It is, incredibly, a recurring controversy.Several times in recent decades, Japan’s leaders have expressed remorse and apologized for the nation’s rampage through Asia in the 1930s and ’40s. But to the governments and the surviving civilian victims in South Korea and elsewhere, the words and actions have always come up short.　Japan has issued mea culpas, yes. But also from Japan: Revisionist textbooks in schools, a Tokyo shrine that memorializes c

Jan. 3, 2016

In “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” the French economist Thomas Piketty highlights the striking contrasts in North America and Europe between the Gilded Age that preceded World War I and the decades following World War II. In the first period, economic growth was sluggish, wealth was predominantly inherited, the rich dominated politics, and economic (as well as race and gender) inequality was extreme.　But after the upheaval of WWII, everything changed. Income growth accelerated, wealth was

Jan. 3, 2016

From Turkey to the European Union, the search for alternatives to Russian gas is on. The Syrian fiasco continues to fester and with the downing of a Russian warplane by Ankara, no one can say for certain that peace will come anytime soon to the troubled land. 　Although on the surface, there is acrimony between the State of Israel and Turkey, they do have a common interest at heart — to break Russia’s resurgence as a player in the Middle East. Then of course there is the question of securing alte

Dec. 31, 2015

The Earth has completed another orbit around the Sun. Our planet is doing that at roughly 100,000 kilometers per hour, which is over 20 times faster than the fastest bullet humans have ever produced. (Meanwhile, our solar system is orbiting the center of our galaxy at almost eight times the speed our planet is orbiting the sun. And that pales in comparison with the speed our galaxy is hurtling through space — at over 2 million kilometers per hour.) 　I don’t pretend to know what that means. But i

Dec. 31, 2015

Looking back on 2015, it can be remembered as a year in which conventional wisdom and expectations were inverted on an astounding number of fronts.　The rise of the political outsider: People are so fed up with the establishment that Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has been able to maintain a wide lead by ripping up the traditional Washington playbook. This phenomenon will last as long as people aren’t beholden to the kind of fear that makes them reach for a more conventional se

Dec. 31, 2015

For most of Martin Gurri’s 29 years working for the Central Intelligence Agency’s open-media group (now the Open Source Center), the world was very different from the one we now inhabit. “When I started out in government,” Gurri recalls in an interview, “it was a perfectly reasonable expectation that an analyst could absorb all the meaningful political information coming out in a day from even a very developed country like Britain or France. And, of course, now if you tried to do that your head

Dec. 30, 2015

A studio portrait of eight sibling toddlers went viral in 2011 on Chinese social media. According to news reports at the time, two of the children were born to a wealthy couple in Guangzhou, and the other six were born to surrogates hired by the couple to skirt China’s one-child population-control policies.Chinese social media users, ever sensitive to class divisions, turned the portrait into a viral outrage, stoking the widespread belief that population policies don’t apply to the rich and well

Dec. 30, 2015

If you want to identify a recent low point in the war against the Islamic State, go back to May when the ineffectual Iraqi military cut and ran from Ramadi, a Sunni town just 112 kilometers west of Baghdad. They abandoned their equipment and fled. The Iraqis “showed no will to fight,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said.　With that embarrassing defeat, the U.S. strategy for arming and training Iraqi soldiers to defend their country was left exposed as an apparent failure.　Six months later, rev

Dec. 30, 2015