Yale University ran up the white flag this week in its battle to keep seniors Peter Xu and Harry Yu from creating an easier-to-use and more informative version of its online course catalog. The school’s real battle, however, was against technological change ― and so defeat was inevitable.Xu and Yu, who are twins, invented an ingenious way to combine the catalog with course evaluations. The popular site soon had more than 1,800 student users. Yale tried to shut it down, partly on intellectual pro

Rather than add my voice to the chorus pointing out how much damage ongoing protests are doing to Thailand’s economy, I’m tempted to skip ahead and write its obituary. Cause of death: suicide.What else is there to say about the semi-permanent state of emergency and political gridlock in Bangkok? Sooner or later, foreign companies are going to start voting with their feet, as Kyoichi Tanada, president of Toyota Motor Corp.’s Thai unit, warned this week. Tourists fearing canceled flights and the o

Previews of Amy Chua’s forthcoming book, “The Triple Package” (co-written with husband Jed Rubenfeld), detonated a social media uproar among Asian-Americans. Many were infuriated by the New York Post’s report that Chua, the self-styled Tiger Mom, was identifying eight superior “cultural” groups in the United States: Jewish, Indian, Chinese, Iranian, Lebanese, Nigerian, Cuban and Mormon. For Asian-Americans, the problem is about another Chua production that seems to perpetuate the “model minority

NEWPORT BEACH, California ― It is not often that one can confidently claim that a single remedy could make billions of people around the world significantly better off; do so in a durable and mutually supportive manner; and thus improve the well-being of both current and future generations. Yet that is the case today.The remedy I have in mind, of course, is faster economic growth ― the one thing that can raise living standards, reduce excessive inequalities, improve job prospects, alleviate trad

PARIS ― What’s the point of intervening in a foreign country under the guise of humanitarianism, or sending aid, if you’re just going to end up importing its citizens en masse anyway? Isn’t the whole idea to shape up the place so that its people can safely remain there?The Obama administration is in such an apparent rush to import thousands of refugees from the Syrian crisis ― which will probably go down in history as the conflict featuring the highest number of different Islamist groups fightin

The smallest elections often have the biggest repercussions. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe might want to ponder that as he considers what went wrong in Nago, Okinawa (population 62,000).Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party failed to dislodge incumbent Mayor Susumu Inamine in Sunday’s contest, putting Japan-U.S. relations at risk. Inamine has pledged to block the relocation of a U.S. air base to his district, something that Abe had assured Washington was a done deal. Apparently not.The question no

Dear Thai people. It’s me, Democracy, again. It’s been a long time since I last wrote you but let’s cut to the chase. Your demand ― for me to either respect your vote or respect your tax ― is a bit too much. Can I just stand to the side for a while? I’m not playing hard to get, just being realistic.You guys definitely have divided opinions about me. Don’t think of me as rude, but can you please sort out your in-house trouble first? Contrary to what many think, I’m no magic pill. In other words,

China’s food security is being challenged by a mix of factors, including rising demand, rapid urbanization, scarce natural resources and agricultural labor, and greater risk of food safety and environmental problems. To address food security concerns, China had resolved to meet the bulk of its grain demand domestically. But this policy is now being revisited, suggesting a considerable increase in the already rising food imports. The No. 1 Central Document released on Sunday reiterated the import

Individually, the concrete steps President Obama announced Friday toward reforming the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs were modest. Taken together, though, they signal the end of an era of unfettered escalation in U.S. intelligence-gathering.Since its establishment in 1952, the NSA’s history has been one of almost nonstop expansion. But for most of that time, the agency still faced limits on what kind of information it could gather and in the legal strictures that governed its p