After two years working at a St. Louis Wendy’s, Alisha Snider still cannot afford basics like rent, food, clothes and daycare for her three daughters. The 26-year-old earns only $7.50 an hour and works just 20 hours a week. So how does Alisha make ends meet? She puts her kids in a taxpayer-funded daycare program and uses $398 a month in food stamps to feed them.New research we published Tuesday shows Alisha is far from alone. It might come as a surprise that most Americans on public assistance p

Viewpoints Oct. 23, 2013

Anybody who has ever encountered the college admissions process knows that there’s no such thing as an even playing field. Most schools will admit that upfront. “Like all colleges,” Harvard College notes on its own admissions website, “we seek to admit the most interesting, able, and diverse class possible.”In other words, schools often try to balance out an incoming class with students who not only have good grades or high test scores but have had unusual life experiences as well as those they

Viewpoints Oct. 22, 2013

As with so many other industries ― medical tourism, electric cars, phablets ― Asia is widely considered to be the future of the Internet. There is, however, one very big “if”: If only the continent’s governments can get over their tendencies toward overregulation and censorship.Almost half the world’s Web users live in the region. Asia boasts some of the world’s fastest broadband speeds, as well as the fastest rate of growth in mobile broadband. Its share of the global e-commerce market stands a

Viewpoints Oct. 22, 2013

Oct. 24 is Food Day, a time to reflect on the foods we ― and our kids ― eat.There are 17.9 million food insecure households, 3.9 million of whom have children. Yet, more than one-third of U.S. children and adolescents are overweight or obese. Ironically, food insecurity often contributes to obesity.So does lack of proper education about food and nutrition. On average, U.S. students get less than four hours of food education per year. Millions of kids aren’t learning about the importance of fresh

Viewpoints Oct. 22, 2013

NEW DELHI ― Recent incidents on the Line of Control ― the frontier between India and Pakistan in the state of Jammu and Kashmir ― have again raised fundamental questions about the nuclear-armed neighbors’ fraught relationship. Early this month, India’s army foiled an attempted incursion by a group of 30 to 40 militants from Pakistani territory, leading Indian critics to decry official peace overtures. Indeed, barely two weeks before the latest incident, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met w

Viewpoints Oct. 22, 2013

The Korean tourism industry is beginning to feel the impact of China’s new tourism law that went into effect Oct. 1. The law is designed to protect outbound Chinese tourists from unscrupulous tour operators. Specifically, it bans travel agencies from selling tour products that look like a bargain as prices are unreasonably low, but are actually a rip-off as they force tourists to go shopping for long hours simply to help local tour operators get kickbacks from shops. The law had an immediate imp

Editorial Oct. 21, 2013

The Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union faces delegalization as its members have voted against the government’s order to amend its constitution that allows dismissed teachers to be members. About 60,000 of its 75,000 members participated in the vote held for three days last week, with some 70 percent choosing to defy the government, even if it would mean their union being deprived of its hard-won legal status. A month ago, the Ministry of Employment and Labor issued an ultimatum demandi

Editorial Oct. 21, 2013

World leaders have long recognized the value of empowering women, for their sake and to help achieve such long-term social goals as eradicating poverty, educating children, combating disease and protecting the environment. But how much progress toward gender equality is being made?This is a question that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged to answer ― by 2015, the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking United Nations conference on gender issues in Beijing.It’s a great idea to m

Viewpoints Oct. 21, 2013

MUNICH ― The wrangling about raising the U.S. government’s borrowing limit ― now thankfully over, at least for a few months ― underscores the hazards posed by excessive state indebtedness. Governments nowadays are essentially running gigantic redistribution machines that steer funds from taxpayers to transfer recipients and other beneficiaries of public expenditure. The latter permanently ask for more, while the former zealously try to defend their purse.In the end, the solution to this “redistr

Viewpoints Oct. 21, 2013

As our politicians in Washington stopped devouring each other for just a few days, I decided to reach out to an expert.A man who studies extinction, and is wise in the ways of aggressive and docile species that eat meat.Jonathan Pruitt, biologist, is an assistant professor of behavioral ecology at the University of Pittsburgh. He doesn’t study politicians, per se. He studies eight-legged creatures, some poisonous, with hair on their backs and mouths that open sideways: Spiders.There are about 42

Viewpoints Oct. 21, 2013