Is “Knowing Buddha” ― a group of Thai Buddhists who are relentlessly tackling what they see as a disrespectful act against the image of Buddha ― the new face of Thai Buddhism?The year-old group has been battling manufacturers of all sorts of products around the world that exploit the image of the Buddha to make money. The goods range from skateboards, lampstands, armchairs and underwear to bars named after the historical Buddha such as the Buddha Bar in Paris and Buddha Tattoo.While I sympathize

When I mentioned my bout with breast cancer to a new acquaintance, his first question was, “Are you married?”It was an unusual reaction ― a more common query is whether I have kids. Later he told me that his daughter-in-law had been diagnosed with breast cancer while still in graduate school and that she and his son had moved in with him. He understood better than most people that being married makes it easier to cope with cancer.The very next day the Journal of Clinical Oncology released a stud

For the last three years, the Anglo-American and south European news media have presented German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the scourge of the recession. But on Sept. 22, she won an overwhelming victory in Germany’s parliamentary elections. Her Christian Democratic Union obtained 41.5 percent of the votes cast, its best result since 1990, five seats short of a majority in the Bundestag.Her success should give us pause to reconsider what has happened in Europe since the global financial crisis e

Spending a couple of days at West Point, especially coming from Washington, is uplifting.The majesty of the setting high above the Hudson River ― where George Washington set up his headquarters in 1779 ― inspires. Compelling, too, is the character of the cadets at the U.S. Military Academy.Whether they are asking vigorous questions in social science class or displaying the precision of the Long Gray line on parade, the cadets inhabit a world imbued with the auras of Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas Ma

Democrats are about to try, and almost certainly fail, to secure paid parental and family leave for most American workers. That could still be an achievement, if it starts a conversation about how to provide American workers with the flexibility they need to manage family needs.California and New Jersey, the two states with paid family leave programs, have shown how it can benefit not only mothers and children but also employers. In California, which has offered paid parental leave since 2004, m

China’s eagerly anticipated “hard landing” hasn’t happened yet, and recent indicators make me wonder (not for the first time) if it ever will. In the past two months, the Chinese economy has actually shown signs of accelerating.Constant pessimism in financial markets about the country’s prospects is only partly guided by economic analysis. There’s also the faith-based view that growth as rapid as China’s simply can’t go on ― and that a non-democratic country really shouldn’t expect to prosper. M

A new set of projections released last week by Medicare’s actuaries has drawn much attention, in part because it suggests the deceleration in the growth of health costs we’ve seen over the past few years is ephemeral. The actuaries attribute the slowdown to the “lingering effects of the economic downturn and sluggish recovery” and to increases in cost sharing.Both of these explanations have serious shortcomings ― and that, in turn, suggests something larger is in fact at work.The assertion that

Hong Kong is dead. Economic roadkill on China’s way to world domination. Starting this weekend, a free-trade zone opening in Shanghai will supplant the former British colony as the gateway to the world’s most dynamic economy. That’s the chatter in the city of 7 million people, where some business leaders fear becoming China’s Chicago, long ago eclipsed by New York as a financial and cultural center. Shanghai’s new free-trade zone, opening for business Sept. 29 on 11 square miles of land, will of

NEWPORT BEACH ― Politicians and economists now join investors in a ritual that typically takes place on the first Friday of each month and has important consequences for global markets: anticipating, internalizing, and reacting to the monthly employment report released by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Over the last few years, the report has evolved in a significant way ― not only providing an assessment of the economy’s past and current state, but, increasingly, containing