[Shayera Dark] Selling Africa’s good news stories

Anywhere in the world, freelance journalism is an extreme career choice. The job requires withstanding pitch rejections, ignored queries, stolen story ideas, and delayed payments. It means reconciling oneself with the economic precarity that comes with having little or no leverage in pay negotiations. But for African freelance journalists, covering the continent presents its own set of unique challenges.In Nigeria, for example, most media companies need diligent editors, seldom publish incisive

Jan. 13, 2019

[Leonid Bershidsky] Macron’s ‘yellow vest’ response makes Putin look soft

French President Emmanuel Macron’s handouts to “yellow vest” protesters have damped the demonstrators’ fervor somewhat but failed to stop the regular eruptions of violence, so now Macron and his government have decided to wield a heavier stick. The new rules being proposed ought to raise some eyebrows: They’re tougher than the norms Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime uses to suppress political opposition.　The shift from a conciliatory tone toward law and order began with Macron’s New Year

Jan. 13, 2019

[Jon Wiener] 2019 will be worst year of Trump’s life

Some presidents have really bad years.　For Nixon, it was 1974 -- the Watergate year, which ended with his resignation. For Clinton, it was 1998 -- the Monica year, which culminated with an impeachment trial in the Senate in 1999. He won that vote easily and came out more popular than before.　It’s a good guess that Donald Trump’s really bad year will be 2019. And it’s not yet clear whether he’ll survive, like Clinton, or be forced out of office, like Nixon.　Nixon’s worst year resulted from crimes

Jan. 10, 2019

[Letter to the Editor] Please do us a favor, by not going to the Hwacheon Sancheoneo (Mountain Trout) Ice festival.

If your idea of a good holiday is taking part in the mass killing of fish, brought in from farms to be crammed like sardines into a river -- blocked and sealed solely for this purpose -- awaiting thousands of people to lower their hooks through holes bored by electric drills into an artificially frozen surface, then perhaps you want to look away. If not, you might want to reconsider your plans, just in case you had in mind the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival in Gangwon Province among your poten

Jan. 10, 2019

[David Fickling] Belt and Road is more chaos than conspiracy

Is China’s Belt and Road Initiative a bold infrastructure vision, or a slush fund? The question is becoming more pressing.　Chinese officials offered to help bail out state-owned 1Malaysia Development, kill off investigations into alleged corruption at the fund, and spy on journalists looking into it in exchange for stakes in Belt-and-Road railway and pipeline projects in Malaysia, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. If proven, that would offer the clearest link yet between the 1MDB scandal

Jan. 10, 2019

[J. Bradford DeLong] What will cause next US recession?

Over the past 40 years, the US economy has experienced four recessions. Among the four, only the extended downturn of 1979-1982 had a conventional cause. The US Federal Reserve thought that inflation was too high, so it hit the economy on the head with the brick of interest rate hikes. As a result, workers moderated their demands for wage increases and firms cut back on planned price increases.The other three recessions were each caused by derangements in financial markets. After the savings-and

Jan. 9, 2019

[Virginia Heffernan] Women take US Congress, misogynists lash out

Just over a year ago, a writer named Kristen Roupenian published a short story in the New Yorker called “Cat Person.” It chronicled a brief, mediocre romance. At first, it was hard to say what made the story newsworthy.　Still, just as #MeToo was taking off, “Cat Person” became history’s first viral short story. Something in Roupenian’s tale of Robert and Margot’s relationship -- testy, opportunistic -- felt familiar. And then there was the word mild Robert uses at their breakup, when he finally

Jan. 9, 2019

[Eli Lake] America isn’t abandoning fight against Iran

One of the most common arguments against President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from Syria is that it will strengthen Iran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was to leave Tuesday for a weeklong tour of the Middle East, makes an interesting case for why that isn’t so.　Trump himself gave his critics ammunition at a cabinet meeting last week, when he observed that Iran already “can do what they want” in Syria. But his comment was merely descriptive, not a prediction of what will

Jan. 9, 2019

[Bloomberg] Let China get to yes on trade

The damage caused by US President Donald Trump’s trade fight with China has spread farther and faster than many expected. Factories in China and the US have seen orders slump. American farmers are hurting. A collapse in Chinese demand for iPhones knocked nearly $75 billion off Apple’s market cap in a single day. Slower growth just prompted China’s central bank to ease monetary policy, and, despite last week’s encouraging news on US jobs, the Fed is having second thoughts about its plan to normal

Jan. 8, 2019

[Noah Feldman] Trump’s long shutdown could destabilize world

US President Donald Trump in a meeting with congressional Democrats on Friday said he was prepared for the partial government shutdown to continue for months -- or even years -- if he doesn’t get the money he wants for a wall along the Mexican border. It’s not hard to see how that prediction comes true. Both sides have framed the issue such that a victory for one side on funding a border wall entails defeat for the other. Neither side has much incentive to compromise.　Suppose Trump is right. The

Jan. 8, 2019

[Joseph E. Stiglitz] From ‘yellow vests’ to Green New Deal

It’s old news that large segments of society have become deeply unhappy with what they see as “the establishment,” especially the political class. The “yellow vest” protests in France, triggered by President Emmanuel Macron’s move to hike fuel taxes in the name of combating climate change, are but the latest example of the scale of this alienation.There are good reasons for today’s disgruntlement: four decades of promises by political leaders of both the center left and center right -- espousing

Jan. 8, 2019

[Peter Lewin] Reducing deficit would solve Trump’s China trade imbalance problem

In light of US President Donald Trump’s current trade policy, it is perhaps worthwhile to review some common-sense principles about international trade.　The most basic and important principle is that countries do not trade, only individuals trade. The US does not trade with China. Rather, some individuals residing in America buy valuable goods and services from individuals residing in China. These are imports from China. At the same time other individuals residing in America sell valuable goods

Jan. 7, 2019