China’s State Council document released on Thursday to further check housing prices reflects the central government’s determination to deflate the property market bubble and stabilize or even lower real estate prices that have been rising for the past few years. Despite the series of measures the government took last year to rein in housing prices, statistics show that the number of houses sold an

The suspension of all bullet train service Jan. 17 on JR East’s five shinkansen lines ― Tohoku, Akita, Yamagata, Joetsu and Nagano shinkansen lines ― reminds railways and any organization, for that matter, of the importance of sharing important information among personnel concerned and designing a computer system that can flexibly cope with changing situations. At 8:23 a.m. on that day, a screen o

For years, many Middle Easterners have operated on the premise that things could continue as in the past. Arab autocrats assumed they could rule forever, and many Israelis thought they could occupy forever.President George W. Bush tried to explode the status quo by imposing democracy on Iraq from above, but we’ve seen where that led.As of this month, we are entering a new era ― for Arabs and Israe

During the 2008 financial crisis, the federal government reacted in a frantic, ad-hoc fashion, tapping taxpayers for bailouts galore, running roughshod over the rights of bondholders and catching the American people unaware and unprepared. In contrast, we still have time to prepare for the looming crisis threatening to engulf California, Illinois, New York and other state governments.The new Congr

The tale of the Stuxnet worm is one of those seemingly good-news stories that grows more worrisome over time.Security experts first became aware of the mysterious Stuxnet malware last summer, but it wasn’t until months later that they agreed on its likely target: Iran’s secretive nuclear weapons program. The worm hid itself benignly in personal computers, spreading (often through USB drives) until

There’s a move afoot to give the states the authority to repeal measures enacted by Congress and signed by the president. It’s a bad idea. It’s also dishonorable.The measure, led by Republican Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah and taking the form of a proposed amendment to the Constitution, would allow the dis-enactment of “any provision of law or regulation” upon the vote of two-thirds of the state legisla

LUXEMBOURG ― Much dedication and energy are currently being devoted to institutionalizing a crisis-management mechanism for the euro area. This is a good and important goal. But a far more significant challenge ― largely covered in the accompanying debate ― is the need for crisis prevention.At the European Union’s pre-Christmas summit, European heads of state and government agreed in principle to

WASHINGTON ― Just like children forced to take castor oil hated the experience, millions of Americans loathed the intrusive body-scan and pat-down security measures imposed at U.S. airports last fall.Surprisingly, though, the revulsion period was briefer than first assumed as travelers realized the added security rules may, after all, be good for them.The real question is, of course, how much safe

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is apparently trying to burnish his credentials in the race for the GOP presidential nomination by encouraging states to default on their debts. Gingrich is the leading cheerleader for the idea of letting states declare bankruptcy to evade problems with unfunded public employee pensions and other benefits for future retirees. Those problems are real, but letting

President Barack Obama had been readying himself for Tuesday night’s State of the Union address since the Nov. 2 election, the electorate’s repudiation of big government and big spending. Obama had to respond to what he admitted was a “shellacking.” So he agreed to extend President George W. Bush’s tax cuts, recruited centrist Democrat William Daley of Chicago as his chief of staff and, on Friday,