President Barack Obama, now facing the consequences of automatic spending cuts and the complications they raise for his broader domestic agenda, is taking the most specific steps of his administration in an attempt to ensure the election of a Democratic-controlled Congress in two years. ...
It’s a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chugoku no gunkan (中国の軍艦, Chinese warships) in the Higashi Shina Kai (東シナ海, East China Sea) challenged Japan’s Kaijo Jieitai (海上自衛隊, Maritime Self Defense Forces, MSDF) patrols in a manner deemed kyōiteki (脅威的, threatening). And on Feb. ...
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Manchester United's Shinji Kagawa is back with a bang, becoming the first Asian player to score a hat trick in the English Premier League.
U.S. conservatives continue a healthy debate over how they can reconnect with voters and channel their ideals and goals into policies relevant for the 21st century. But a specter haunts ...
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 ...
In one of Moscow’s central subway stations — Arbatskaya — the escalator leading up to the city exit ends in a spacious vestibule. On the front wall, a classic frame ...
A report just released by the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan states that there were 2,754 civilian deaths and 4,805 ...
Leon Panetta's failure to accommodate a rapidly changing world will be his most important, and disappointing, legacy as U.S. secretary ...
As China catches up with the West in technology and relies increasingly on cyberspace for business and security, it may seek a cyberspace detente.
Unlike China, which has shown clear signs of economic stabilization since mid-2012, India has been slow to recover amid delay of necessary reforms.
Is Afghanistan in store for an Iraq-style "soft partition," with protracted strife eventually creating a "hard partition," after U.S. military forces go home.
It is hard to identify a correlation between regulatory structure and state success in heading off or responding to the financial crisis triggered in 2008.
If the recent circus performance of G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors is a preview, their September summit threatens to be a waste.
Misconceptions abound about how 117 cardinals, gathering from across the globe inside the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, will elect a new pope next month.
“Your dearest wish is for our state structure and ideological system never to change, to remain as they are for centuries. But history is not like that. Every system either finds away to develop or else collapses.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote that in 1974, in ...
Peace between Israelis and Palestinians will not be achieved overnight, but it is only through a massive effort involving the citizenry that reconciliation and cooperation can occur between both peoples.
The world's center of economic gravity may have shifted to Asia, but it'll take more than China to eat Westerners' lunch. A coherent bloc is not there.
British welfare reform advocates want to replace the current array of benefits with a single system of tax credits. This won't happen soon, however.
Chinese development of Pakistan's Gwadar port and other facilities around India into viable strategic outposts would limit India's options significantly.
Singaporeans are raring to do something extraordinary: protest. That might not seem like a big deal with the Arab Spring uprisings; Chinese journalists taking to the streets; and thousands of typically docile Japanese rallying against government policies. But tropical Singapore is the land of ...
