Twice in his career, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has faced crowds in the hundreds of thousands calling for him to step aside. The first time was in 2004, when he attempted to steal the presidential elections. The second was this weekend, after he decided not to sign a trade agreement with the European Union.As a cause of popular unrest, “not signing a trade agreement” does not quite rank with “stealing an election.” That Ukrainians protested both is an indication not only of their desp

Don’t look now, but auditions for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination are already under way in Washington. And the flavor of the moment is ― governors.First came Chris Christie, the pugnacious governor of New Jersey, who won reelection by a landslide last month and almost immediately headed to the nation’s capital for a burst of speeches and television appearances.Days later, a less pyrotechnic (but equally combative) chief executive arrived to do the Washington media rounds: Scott Walke

With characteristic concern for coolness over commercial viability, Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos unveiled a new kind of delivery vehicle Sunday night. It’s called an octocopter, and it will fly all by itself, attuned to GPS coordinates, dropping off goods at customers’ doorsteps for same-day delivery.Or at least that’s what Bezos, a consummate PR man, told a wide-eyed Charlie Rose on “60 Minutes.” The octocopter unveiling was masterful publicity, properly hyped and well tim

Technology and revolutionary changes in energy, banking and manufacturing will force a sunset on Western dominance.Several speakers at the Second World Emerging Industries Summit in this central China city on the Yangtze River shared that forecast recently with business, government and university officials from nearly two dozen countries. “Technology creates new possibilities,” said Dominique de Villepin, former prime minister of France.Global dominance will shift to such countries as China, Ind

Here’s some holiday cheer: 120 million American families no longer have to file income tax returns; the top individual rate is lowered by 20 percent; the top corporate rate is cut by more than half; the government gets the same amount of revenue; and the tax system is slightly more progressive.OK, it’s not a free lunch. It would be accompanied by a 12.9 percent value-added levy, which critics like to call a national sales tax.This is the brainchild of Michael Graetz, a Columbia University law pr

Two years ago, Doreen Flynn of Lewiston, Maine, won her case against the U.S. government, successfully arguing that bone-marrow donors should be able to receive compensation.Flynn, a mother of three girls who are afflicted with a rare, hereditary blood disease called Fanconi’s anemia, has a strong interest in bone-marrow transplantation. At the time of the court ruling, her oldest daughter, Jordan, 14, had already received a transplant, and one of the younger twins, Jorja, was expected to need o

From reading the New York Times, you might think that religious conservatives had started a culture war over whether company health-insurance plans should cover contraception. What’s at issue in two cases the Supreme Court has just agreed to hear, the Times editorializes, is “the assertion by private businesses and their owners of an unprecedented right to impose the owners’ religious views on workers who do not share them.”That way of looking at the issue will be persuasive if your memory does

In poor and middle-income countries, a lethal malady once prominent mainly in affluent parts of the globe is raising its ugly head. Cancer incidence rates are increasing at double that of the rest of the world.Especially alarming are the fatality data. As Jason Gale reports in the December issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine, while developing countries account for about half of new cancer cases, they have about 70 percent of cancer deaths.Lack of access to the latest diagnostic technology and ch

Thanks to ever-improving technology for intercepting phone calls and text messages, it’s getting easier for U.S. companies’ competitors, both foreign and domestic, to engage in corporate espionage through remote wiretapping. Such activity, which has been widespread in India for years, could be thwarted if U.S. wireless carriers would upgrade their network infrastructure and encryption practices.However, the federal authorities who are in a position to require this seem more interested in keeping

If the U.S. is currently ruled by stalemate ― with polarized parties crippling its Founders’ checks and balances ― Germany has too much uniformity and too little contest, which is the lifeblood of democracy.Consider the numbers in last week’s deal creating a new “grand coalition” government. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, who once billed themselves as conservatives, and the Social Democrats, left of center, will control almost 80 percent of the seats in the German parliament. Im