PARIS ― When Ben Affleck’s “Argo” ― a film based on the true-life, CIA-assisted Canadian operation to rescue American diplomats during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 ― won the Oscar for Best Picture, all I could think about was how badly Iran blew a prime opportunity to keep quiet for once.Iranian Culture Minister Mohammad Hosseini is so incensed with the portrayal of his country in “Argo” that the government is financing a film in response. Look, Canadians took issue with some “Argo” distor

As details continue to emerge about the killing of Reeva Steenkamp by the Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius, one fact appears to be certain: The man known as the “Blade Runner” did fire four bullets through a bathroom door in his South African home, killing his girlfriend. Thus, it might appear that this will be an open-and-shut case when Pistorius goes before a judge in a trial that will inevitably become a media spectacle in South Africa and beyond on the scale of the O.J. Simpson trial. But as m

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

The government and the left-leaning Korean Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union are on a collision course over the union’s charter that accepts dismissed teachers as members. The Ministry of Employment and Labor recently told the union that it would be outlawed unless it amended the charter, which runs afoul of labor law.The Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act states that an organization will not be regarded as a trade union if it allows those who are not workers to join it.The tea

One keyword in President Park Geun-hye’s inaugural address on Monday was “cultural renaissance.” She presented “a flourishing culture” as one of the three goals she would pursue during her five-year term. The other two were economic rejuvenation and increasing people’s happiness.Park devoted a considerable part of her speech to culture, a topic that her predecessors had almost ignored in their inaugural addresses. Together with “economy” and “happiness,” “culture” was one of the most frequently

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