The pressure is on. Four years ago, I picked Barack Obama to win 353 electoral votes and, twice, I correctly tabbed George W. Bush as a winner, including a 2000 forecast he’d beat Al Gore by four electoral votes. Here is a preview of the road to Nov. 6:January: Texas Rep. Ron Paul edges Mitt Romney in Iowa caucuses, and fast-closing Texas Gov. Rick Perry nips Newt Gingrich for third. Romney rebounds to beat Paul in New Hampshire, but Perry edges former Massachusetts governor in South Carolina, d

Barack Obama probably will have to pull out a familiar card next year: the luck of the draw. In winning the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, the president defeated political heavyweights, starting with Hillary Clinton. His other triumphs were facilitated by lots of luck. In his 2004 race for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, the candidacies of both his chief primary opponent and initial Republican rival collapsed when divorce papers were disclosed during the campaign; one was accused of vi

Rarely in U.S. history has the end of a war been marked with less fanfare than the withdrawal of the last troops from Iraq in time for Christmas. Indeed, you could almost be forgiven for failing to notice it at all, so arbitrary does the timing seem. U.S. interests in Iraq will be no different in the first week of 2012 than they are now. Iraq’s government remains shaky, and the dangers of instability and civil war remain. About 16,000 Americans are still there, too, including an unspecified numb

The government has selected two candidate sites for nuclear power plants ― Yeongdeok County of North Gyeongsang Province and Samcheok City of Gangwon Province. The two locations, both on the eastern coast, would be finalized by late next year, if they pass on-site inspections and environmental surveys.The government said each site, if finalized, would have four APR1400 reactors, the latest 1.4 million kilowatt model Korea has exported to the United Arab Emirates. Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co

Following the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, a debate has flared up on whether his successor would push for economic reform and opening to better feed the nation’s starving 24 million people.On one side are skeptics who suggest that Kim Jong-un, the third son and heir of the deceased leader, won’t be able to change the course of the economy because his power base is still shaky.Yet a larger number of experts predict that the twenty-something new leader would seek to open the economy w

If Christian pilgrims traveling to Bethlehem for Christmas this week happened to witness violence, for the first time militant Jews, not Palestinians, were most likely to be the perpetrators.Now that a far right-wing government has governed Israel for almost three years, settlers feel emboldened so that Jewish extremists are wreaking havoc and mayhem. West Bank Palestinians, meanwhile, are standing by quietly, largely minding their own business ― even as these settler-marauders repeatedly attack

Last week, Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels were auctioned for an astonishing $116 million, easily a record for a single collection. Taylor’s talent for amassing jewelry was equaled only by her ability to accumulate husbands. There were eight marriages in all, two of them to Richard Burton, who bought her a 33-carat diamond ring that was auctioned for $8.8 million.By coincidence, the same day’s newspaper had another story about marriage, this one less spectacular but more far-reaching. The news was a f

Europe is as full of bad ideas as it is of bad debts. Conventional wisdom says that sovereign defaults mean the end of the euro: If Greece defaults it has to leave the single currency; German taxpayers have to bail out southern governments to save the union. This is nonsense. U.S. states and local governments have defaulted on dollar debts, just as companies default. A currency is simply a unit of value, as meters are units of length. If the Greeks had skimped on the olive oil in a liter bottle,

As instructed at school at an early age, South Koreans used to regard eventual unification with North Korea as a matter of course. They were taught a song whose lyrics said in part: “What we desire even in our dreams is unification.”But the envisioned unification has lost much of its appeal, as evidenced by a survey conducted by a Seoul National University think tank in July. Moreover, the number of unification advocates is declining at a sizable rate.The poll by the research institute of 1,200

Chung Bong-ju, a former opposition lawmaker who has gained fame as one of the four hosts of a podcast talk show, is set to be sent to prison because the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision on Thursday. He had been sentenced by the lower court to one year in prison for making a false statement that President Lee Myung-bak was involved in a stock price manipulation scam.The ruling also deprived Chung of his right to election to public office for the next 10 years, making it impossible for