New Hampshire will weed Republican field

The New Hampshire presidential primary vote usually breaks late. This time, not unusually, it will break a few candidates.　Eight weeks before the Feb. 9 primary, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Chris Christie and probably Marco Rubio are in a wide-open contest to be the non-right wing, non-Donald Trump Republican contender. Two or three of them may be dead after the vote. Among Democrats, if Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont, loses to Hillary Clinton in his neighboring state, he’s probably toast. If

Dec. 14, 2015

Obama’s cautious IS strategy may not work

The Republican presidential candidates’ responses to President Barack Obama’s Dec. 6 speech on his strategy to defeat the Islamic State group were uniformly negative.　Donald Trump said, “Is that all there is? We need a new president — fast!” Marco Rubio said the president’s anti-Islamic State coalition is “absurd.” Jeb Bush called his address “weak.” George Pataki called the president’s strategy “pathetic.” Carly Fiorina tweeted: “Vintage Obama: No strategy, no leadership. Politics as usual.” An

Dec. 14, 2015

Rare ray of sunshine at Paris climate summit

Tony Seba, a Stanford University expert on renewable energy, made headlines at last week’s climate-change conference in Paris with an optimistic shrug. 　According to the entrepreneur, thinker and lecturer, the world is fast approaching the “tipping point” at which the world will very soon be forced to use solar energy more than the much-deplored fossil fuels. 　Conspiracy theorists surely welcomed one aspect of his presentation, but his vision offers great hope to all of us. Certainly the dispute

Dec. 14, 2015

‘Airpocalypse’ an opportunity for China, India

Even as negotiators were completing a new global accord on climate change last week, a lung-burning haze choked two major world capitals, infuriating residents and reigniting debate about the costs of headlong development. As China and India rush to clean their cities’ hazardous air, they can take this opportunity to make progress against climate change as well.  　Responding to previous bouts of public anger over air quality in Beijing and Delhi, leaders in both nations have laid down stiffer st

Dec. 14, 2015

[Marc Champion] Europe has plenty of its own Trumps　

Europe has been shocked and outraged by Donald Trump’s call to exclude Muslims from migration to the U.S. A petition to have him banned from the U.K. gained 200,000 signatures, more than enough to force Britain’s parliament to consider a debate on the issue. Yet what Trump had to say should feel outrageously familiar.　Populist bigotry about Muslims has already become mainstream in Europe. Europeans haven’t been outraged enough about that.　Take Marine Le Pen, whose National Front just won 28 perc

Dec. 13, 2015

Putin’s pivot East isn’t also working　

More than a year ago, after the European Union and the U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin’s response resembled a chant by fans of the English soccer team Millwall: “No one likes us, we don’t care.” He appeared confident that he would find others to do business with.　Now Russia has alienated more friends while making little headway in replacing either EU trade and investments or access to the U.S.-dominated credit markets. And there’s no sign that hig

Dec. 13, 2015

Europe’s refugee opportunity

ROME – Europe’s so-called refugee crisis should never have become an emergency. Accommodating 1 million asylum seekers should not be a huge challenge for the European Union -- an area with 500 million citizens that welcomes more than 3 million immigrants every year. Unfortunately, the lack of a coordinated response is transforming a manageable problem into an acute political crisis -- one that, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rightly warned, could destroy the EU.　Most EU member states are

Dec. 13, 2015

Good and bad tidings for Korean workers

Working life for most workers in Korea is punishing, with the nation having among the longest working hours among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries. Only in the last decade did the five-day work week replace the six-day work week. 　Even more burdensome is that nearly all workers are involuntary put into retirement at an early age. Korea is the only OECD country that allows employers to arbitrarily set a mandatory retirement age that applies to all employe

Dec. 13, 2015

[David Ignatius] Trump’s rhetoric will live in infamy

Nobody knows where Donald Trump will stand six months from now in this bizarre Republican presidential campaign. But you can predict with some confidence how his recent anti-Muslim diatribes will look in a decade or two, unless Trump manages to rewrite the Constitution itself. American politics, like most things, is a story of what statisticians describe as the reversion to the mean. Self-proclaimed saviors and other outliers come and go throughout our political history. Occasionally they’re suc

Dec. 11, 2015

[Mahmood Hasan] The Commonwealth needs reforms

The biannual Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting was hosted by Malta from Nov. 27-29, 2015. Surprisingly, the conference did not get much media coverage and passed off unnoticed. The only news that came through was what Queen Elizabeth II did or said during the conference. 　The Heads of Governments of 53 Commonwealth countries deliberated upon the theme, “The Commonwealth — Adding Global Value.” At the end of their serious deliberations, the leaders issued two documents — the 53-paragraph “

Dec. 10, 2015

Blockade fuels black market of oil products

If anything, the acute shortage of essential supplies due to the Indian blockade has created a vibrant black market of petroleum products and other essentials in Nepal. Ever since India imposed a blockade in late September, Nepal Oil Corporation has sold gasoline and diesel to the public only twice. However, the number of private vehicles plying on the streets clearly indicates how black marketeering has created a parallel economy. Likewise, though liquefied petroleum gas cylinders are rarely av

Dec. 10, 2015

Refocus on presidential candidates, not side dishes

The upcoming presidential election in January 2016 may be marked down in history as the dullest elections to date. 　The opposition Democratic Progressive Party will win this year’s elections lying down. The Kuomintang (KMT), the ruling party for the past eight years, has lost all of its will to fight. And the People’s First Party lacks any enthusiasm in its campaigning. 　DPP members have latched onto KMT vice presidential candidate Wang Ju-hsuan’s suspected usage of properties she owned for real

Dec. 10, 2015

Raise safety standards to avoid aviation disasters

The combination of a mechanical fault and pilot miscommunication that lay behind the crash of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 last December represents the worst of two worlds in aviation: technical failure and human error. 　The investigative report, released by Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, notes that the pilots’ inability to deal with a midair technical fault led them to lose control of the aircraft. 　A chilling fact that has emerged is that the rudder system of the jet used for t

Dec. 10, 2015

Forging a balanced response to terrorism

It now appears, as some had predicted from the start, that the husband and wife who carried out the brutal massacre in San Bernardino were motivated at least in part by Islamic extremism. According to the FBI, Tashfeen Malik — who, with her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, killed 14 people and injured 21 more at an office holiday party Wednesday last week — had pledged her allegiance to the Islamic State group on Facebook. 　There’s no indication so far that she or her husband were directed to launch

Dec. 10, 2015

So what if tommy guns are popular?

When a sharply divided Supreme Court created an individual right to bear arms seven years ago, it also made clear that the right would remain subject to “longstanding prohibitions.” On Monday, the court confirmed that some newer prohibitions are allowed as well.　The court’s deference — it refused to review a lower-court decision upholding a local ban on assault weapons — should surprise no one. Arms have always been regulated in the U.S.; that’s why it’s against the law for people to put missile

Dec. 9, 2015