On March 12, the Legislative Yuan for the first time held deliberations over the Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement, after the pact was submitted by the Cabinet more than three months ago. However, the deliberation failed to be processed due to physical altercations and non-stop disputes between ruling party and opposition lawmakers.Many DPP lawmakers on Tuesday night brought their own sleeping bags into the meeting room where the deliberation would be held, and stayed overnight in order t

This is not the first such group to have arrived in this region in recent years. But our neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have always dealt with these migrants harshly, deporting them to face prosecution in China. Beijing is no doubt pleased by this policy, but it damages ASEAN’s reputation.Some 220 Uighurs were found hiding on a rubber plantation in Songkhla province last Thursday. The speculation is that they come from western China’s Xinjiang Uighurs Autonomous Region,

Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced his country’s annexation of Crimea, how should the European Union and the U.S. respond? With tougher sanctions, certainly, and with plans to lessen the West’s economic dependence on Russia ― but also with clearer thinking about Ukraine’s future than has been demonstrated up to now.The sanctions announced so far are too puny. Travel bans and asset freezes can hurt, but only if they are aimed at a sufficient number of sufficiently influential

The Korean National Tourism Organization seems to have no concept of how to market Korea overseas to anyone under the age of 40. Although there are problems with its anaemic print advertising, and with its boring and complicated website, the key embarrassment to the organization has got to be its video advertising.In video after video, the KNTO ― and other related organizations ― has tried to sell a Korea nobody overseas is interested in; or at least, nobody who is young enough to want to travel

If only America’s leaders were more Chinese. That’s the provocative suggestion made in a paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and it’s sure to elicit a smile among Communist Party bigwigs.Before this goes to Beijing’s head, let’s consider how silly this insinuation by economists Yi Wen and Jing Wu really is ― and how China is a much bigger worry for the world economy than the U.S. is.Was the U.S. response to the 2008 financial crisis state of the art? Far from it. Should law

You’ve probably never heard of donor-advised funds, but they are taking over the philanthropic world.It all started as a matter of economics. A million dollars to most of us is a lot of money. But as start-up cash for a philanthropic foundation it’s chump change. A million-dollar foundation can easily cost more to run than it gives away.So an alternative was created by the IRS to give modest philanthropic efforts a cheaper, easier path to existence, bundling them together under an umbrella nonpr

Last week, as the Ides of March approached ― the March 15 anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar, a determined but ultimately fruitless attempt by Roman senators to stop their government from sliding toward dictatorship ― the minds of some ancient historians may turn in a seemingly unlikely direction: toward modern North Korea.The dark and menacing regime of Kim Jong-un seems a long way off from the Augustan “Golden Age” of ancient Rome, an era that produced art and literature still a

There is a grim logic to today’s shotgun referendum in Crimea that leads toward an expansion of Russia’s land grab into eastern and southern Ukraine. Exit polls suggest a massive 93 percent of the region’s voters were in favor of joining Russia, a poll on Crimea’s future that was colored by armed intimidation, a crackdown on opposition media and a nine-day excuse for a campaign. It seems all too likely that Russian President Vladimir Putin, riding a wave of popular support at home for returning

In Washington right now, the debate over how to address inequality ― whether of income or opportunity ― rages almost daily, as scholars, policy wonks and politicians often far-removed from these problems wrangle over whose solution is best and whose affirmatively do harm.And for Robert Woodson these detached academic notions and political food fights are part of the problem.Woodson, a community development leader, founder of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise and product of the civil rights