NEW YORK ― International investment agreements are once again in the news. The United States is trying to impose a strong investment pact within the two big so-called “partnership” agreements, one bridging the Atlantic, the other the Pacific, that are now being negotiated. But there is growing opposition to such moves.South Africa has decided to stop the automatic renewal of investment agreements that it signed in the early post-apartheid period, and has announced that some will be terminated. E

How to explain this paradox?Starting Nov. 1, more than 47 million Americans lost some or all of their food stamp benefits. House Republicans are pushing for further cuts. If the sequester isn’t stopped, everything else poor and working-class Americans depend on will be further squeezed.We’re not talking about a small sliver of America here. Half of all children get food stamps at some point during their childhood. Half of all adults get them sometime between ages 18 and 65. Many employers ― incl

Walking through Beijing’s Tiananmen Square last week, a German family of five surrounded me, all wearing large face masks and sunglasses. They weren’t robbing me, just asking me to take their photo. When I yelled the customary “Say ‘cheese,’” the dad joked: “We are smiling under here.”Only China’s pollution bubble is no laughing matter, and tourists tell the story. Thanks to extreme air pollution, foreign arrivals plunged by roughly 50 percent in the first three-quarters of the year. Beijing cou

During Indonesia’s Suharto years from 1966 to 1998, a joke making the rounds in Jakarta had it that the most important qualification to become president was having past experience as a president.Since the only person with presidential experience was the incumbent Suharto, he was re-elected without challenge at every election during the New Order. No one dared step forward to offer himself as candidate. Political power remained concentrated in the hands of one man for three decades.The sheer leng

WASHINGTON ― As the Obama administration moves into a decisive stage of nuclear negotiations with Iran, officials are considering a two-step process that would begin with a freeze and modest rollback of Iranian enrichment of uranium, matched by a limited easing of U.S.-led economic sanctions on Tehran. Officials hope this first phase would be followed later by a comprehensive agreement that would lift all sanctions in return for a verifiable halt in Iranian nuclear weapons capability. This secon

There are many reasons why potentially-rich Latin American nations are growing at a slower pace than their Asian counterparts but one of the least noticed factors ― and one in need of urgent attention ― is that a Latin American may grow old before being able to enforce a business contract in many countries of the region.A new study by the World Bank and the International Financial Corporation, titled “Doing Business 2014,” provides a ranking of the world’s countries with the most cumbersome liti