BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, may be dead wrong about the urgent need for the proposed $700 billion that the former professor and his buddy, U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, have been peddling to ...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Rather than curse the current financial darkness, let us try to light candles. Without blowing our credibility entirely, let us see if we can illuminate the brighter side of this global meltdown. Here is a trio of pluses to try ...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — This is a tale of two high-profile political candidates who don’t simply happen to be women. They are political women up for very big jobs. This is also a story of two very different political cultures. Let’s start with Japan, ...

CALIF. — These days, when a Japanese prime minister resigns, the temptation is to say just two things. One is “ho,” and the other is “hum.” Since the early 1990s, more Japanese politicians have crawled up to the heights of — and then been ...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — There are nonreductionist ways of looking at modern women. One is to view them as Warrior Queens. These women do not deny their biology or ignore its potentials but equip themselves to play ball with the big boys on a ...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — In the obsessive media heat of these youth-oriented Beijing Olympics, a once-famous Chinese political figure has died at the ripe young age of 87, and goes to the grave almost internationally unnoticed. He was Hua Guofeng. Upon the death of ...

LOS ANGELES — A true winner came to Los Angeles earlier this month. He is Chinese, but he has had nothing to do with the Beijing Olympics. He is very important, though, because in his hands lie one of the keys to peace in ...

There’s one huge under-appreciated plus about the Summer Olympics Games in China. They will bring an important part of Asia into the American living room day after day and night after night. America’s relationship with the vast area of the world we call Asia ...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — An over-used cliche in the American language is that some man or woman is or was “larger than life.” As with most cliches, this one can render a measure of value by capturing the aura of an unusual individual. That ...

LOS ANGELES — A measure of self-delusion can be healthy if it deters the outbreak of another round of perhaps even more dangerous and destructive self-delusion. This scenario was on display the other night at a presentation at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, ...

LOS ANGELES — The overweight citizen has been taking a pounding of late. But it may be that the issue is being blown out of all proportion. For starters, both Japan and the United States have been in the news on the issue of ...

LOS ANGELES — We in the West are always grateful and utterly relieved when East Asians manage to take significant steps away from the risk of serious conflict. The fact is that we in the United States are more than capable of blundering into ...