Two issues that featured in Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s discussions in Washington last week were of compelling interest to Asia. How he presented to President Barack Obama his view of the territorial dispute with China and how his host reacted was to indicate whether the disputants had more room for maneuver than appeared.Linked to this was how strongly the two men made of the Japan-U.S. security relationship and its relevance to the current situation. It goes without saying that China’

There are many problems with law and order in Nepali society, but long hair and earrings are surely not one of them. The Nepal Police’s arrests on Tuesday of more than 700 youths for wearing their hair long and having earrings and studs, is a ridiculous example of an inefficient police force trying to win the sympathy of a gullible population that stereotypes everybody who doesn’t dress and behave like them as criminals. The arrest of the youth is an attack on individual freedom and liberty, and

The return of Silvio Berlusconi to the Italian political stage sends an unmistakable message to Europe’s leaders: They will have to be a lot more ambitious if they want to hold their currency union together. In parliamentary elections this week, Italian voters handed Berlusconi just enough power to make forming a stable government extremely difficult. In doing so, voters soundly rejected the technocratic policies of outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti, whose efforts to raise taxes, cut pensions

Italy’s parliamentary election could not have gone worse for the country or the euro area. It is now possible that in the coming months the currency zone’s third-largest economy will need a bailout from international creditors, at a time when Italy will have no government in place to ask for, or negotiate, a rescue. In case you had any doubts, the euro-area crisis is back. As has so often been the case in Italy, the political gridlock has come in the Senate. Neither Pier Luigi Bersani’s center-l

Syria is fast becoming the new Somalia ― a nation whose central government wields little control over the bulk of the country while feuding sects and gangs fight each other as well as the thoroughly discredited president, Bashar al-Assad.Meanwhile, just as in Somalia, vast numbers of Syrians are suffering and dying.The United Nations says more than 70,000 Syrians have been killed since the conflict began almost two years ago. At least 2 million people are now homeless, in many cases because thei

U.S. President Barack Obama is seeking to resurrect an idea that he set aside during his first term: Raise the minimum wage to help lift working families out of poverty. The proposal, which would take the minimum to $9 an hour from the current $7.25, is far from ideal. Still, it’s the right thing to do. A better way to keep people working and out of poverty would be to expand the earned income tax credit, a program that makes direct payments to low-wage workers through the income-tax system. The

The life of Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s just-inaugurated first female president, has so far been bookended by two larger-than-life men of debatable success. The first is her father, Park Chung-hee, the dictator who ruled the nation for 18 years until his assassination in 1979. The second is Lee Myung-bak, her predecessor who spent the last five years in the Blue House, Korea’s presidential residence, and a fellow member of her New Frontier Party. Park must deal with their shortcomings in revers

North Korea’s third nuclear test on Feb. 12 underscores the fact that little has changed surrounding one of Asia’s most worrisome flashpoints. For the past 20 years, North Korea has conducted a string of missile and nuclear tests. Each time, the tests have been roundly condemned by members of the global community, but apart from two agreements (in 1994 and 2007) to halt Pyongyang’s advance towards a nuclear-tipped missile, the country continues its long march to deploying such a weapon. Put diff

“Cheat, cheat, never beat.” Remember that catchy, foreboding maxim drilled into us as kids?It’s comforting to believe cheaters never win and winners never cheat. Unfortunately, there’s ample evidence that cheating is rampant in almost every sphere of American life. And for every reported story of cheaters getting busted ― be they professional athletes who use banned substances or those who illegally manipulate markets for profit ― you can bet there’s at least one case of somebody who escaped det