Questions about Donald Trump’s mental fitness to serve as president keep mounting. A historically unprecedented number of mental health professionals have mobilized to express concern about the dangers of the mental instability we see in Trump, coupled with the power of the presidency. Through the National Coalition of Concerned Mental Health Experts, we called for a full neuropsychiatric examination and a capacity to serve evaluation.　When Trump presented for his annual physical exam last week,

Last Sunday’s sinking of an Iranian oil tanker 180 miles off the coast of Shanghai certainly looks like an environmental disaster. Depending on how many of the ship’s 1 million barrels of condensate were released into the ocean and not burned off, the accident could end up being one of the biggest oil spills in half a century. The irony? Even that wouldn’t represent the biggest disaster to befall the area.　The fact is, thanks to massive overfishing in China’s territorial waters, there isn’t much

The many critics of Freedom House can finally gloat: The think tank has turned its well-calibrated guns on the US in its 2018 report on “Freedom in the World”:　“The past year brought further, faster erosion of America’s own democratic standards than at any other time in memory, damaging its international credibility as a champion of good governance and human rights.”　America’s “core institutions,” the think tank continues, “were attacked by an administration that rejects established norms of eth

The Global Partnership for Education, a worthy and capable initiative to promote education in 65 low-income countries, is having what the jargon of development assistance calls a “replenishment round,” meaning that it is asking donor governments to refill its coffers. Yet the fact that the GPE is begging for mere crumbs -- a mere $1 billion per year -- exposes the charade of Western governments’ commitment to the global Education for All agenda.The United States and the European Union have never

Can an international deal ever really be final? President Donald Trump seems to think the answer is no, given his penchant for withdrawing from agreements made under President Barack Obama -- the Paris climate change accords, the Trans-Pacific Partnership on trade and (maybe) the Iranian nuclear deal.　But what about international agreements that actually declare themselves to be irreversible? That’s the case with the 2015 Japan-South Korea deal that was aimed at ending once and for all the confl

Last Sunday’s sinking of an Iranian oil tanker 180 miles off the coast of Shanghai certainly looks like an environmental disaster. Depending on how many of the ship’s 1 million barrels of condensate were released into the ocean and not burned off, the accident could end up being one of the biggest oil spills in half a century. The irony? Even that wouldn’t represent the biggest disaster to befall the area.　The fact is, thanks to massive overfishing in China’s territorial waters, there isn’t much

“Does this concern you at all?” asks a tart email message from a Trump supporter who wonders why the mainstream media doesn’t take a closer look at allegations that the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election has been tainted by bias.　It’s a fair question. President Trump has made very serious charges, tweeting in December that the FBI’s “reputation is in Tatters -- worst in History!” And Republicans in Congress have claimed that the bureau was manipulated by

Few people outside Germany are familiar with the caricature of themselves that many Germans hold in their minds. Far from the aggressive bully of 20th-century war propaganda, the perfectionist engineer of Madison Avenue car advertisements, or the rule-following know-it-all of the silver screen, the German many picture today is a sleepy-headed character clad in nightgown and cap. Sometimes clutching a candle, this German cuts a naive, forlorn figure, bewildered by the surrounding world.This figur

Every day Americans use -- and almost immediately discard -- up to half a billion plastic beverage straws. At least, that’s the figure widely used by environmental activists to explain why people should embrace going straw-less.　It’s not clear where that number came from, but it seems credible considering how many takeout sodas, frappuccinos, smoothies, cold-press juices, boba teas and other beverages Americans buy every day, most of which are accompanied by a complimentary plastic straw. Lately