Imagine being a low-income parent in the District of Columbia. As a parent living below the federal poverty line in one of the country’s most expensive cities, the options available for your child’s education are limited.There are the D.C. Public Schools, which rank 51st in the nation on measures of academic achievement, but first in terms of school violence. And there are D.C. Public Charter Scho

Paul Ryan is John McCain, circa 2000, or Barack Obama in the last presidential election or Bob Strauss and Jim Baker for their entire careers: the darling of the Washington commentariat.The chairman of the House Budget Committee, who released a budget last week that calls for dramatic spending cutbacks to politically sensitive programs such as Medicare, has been called a “rebel with a cause” by th

When rain fell last week, workers at some potable water reservoirs were busy covering their large facilities with vinyl sheets to prevent “radioactive” rainwater from being mixed with the drinking water. Cynics remarked, “Why don’t we cover the whole Han River?” This reveals the great psychological impact Korea had from the natural disaster that hit Japan a month ago. The magnitude-9.0 earthquake

In the best-selling crime novel “Millennium Series” by Swedish journalist-writer Stieg Larsson, the heroine Lisbeth Salander freely breaks into the computers of individuals and organizations for her private investigative work and even makes a fortune by penetrating into the domain of a corrupt media magnate. She is a member of the international hacker community called the “Hacker Republic.”Technol

It will soon be one month since the Great East Japan Earthquake struck the nation on March 11. The prevailing atmosphere in Japan is one of serious and sombre jishuku (self-restraint).Various artistic activities, sports events and even traditional festivals have been canceled or postponed.A great many people died in the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. An even larger number are still missing, an

DUBAI ― The consequences of the Japanese earthquake ― especially the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant ― resonate grimly for observers of the American financial crash that precipitated the Great Recession. Both events provide stark lessons about risks, and about how badly markets and societies can manage them.Of course, in one sense, there is no comparison between the tragedy of

The victory of Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly in Sunday’s runoff election for the Haitian presidency brought his supporters into the streets to celebrate what many called a complete change from the last 25 years of rule. At this point, however, that’s more wishful thinking than reality.Many obstacles stand in the way of President-elect Martelly’s supporters realizing the positive change that they s

Last year, when China broke off military-to-military talks after the Obama administration’s long-expected sale of defensive arms to Taiwan, a high American official asked his Chinese counterpart why China reacted so strongly to something it had accepted in the past. The answer: “Because we were weak then and now we are strong.”On a recent visit to Beijing, I asked a Chinese expert what was behind

These days it seems impossible to write about Detroit in measured terms. Words like “war zone,” “post-apocalyptic” and “ghost town” are often used. Stories portray it as a dystopian landscape of crumbling Gilded Age monuments, abandoned warehouses and overgrown vacant lots.Recent census data confirms that residents are moving out as fast as wildlife is moving in. A sympathetic tone of urban social

Thailand’s Pheu Thai Party’s proposal to give the three southernmost provinces some degree of autonomy sounded like a political campaign platform ― but on closer examination it looks more and more like a cheap ploy to win votes.What’s worse, its proponents are exploiting the sentiment of the Malay Muslims of the deep South, who deserve better.In this heavily centralized country of ours, decentrali

The Filipino public’s consuming interest in the execution of Sally Ordinario-Villanueva, Ramon Credo and Elizabeth Batain was both melodramatic and inevitable. The three drug mules were the first Filipinos to be executed by China, and their personal narratives mirrored the stories and the self-image of millions of Filipinos, as hardy but unfortunate creatures of circumstance. Little wonder, then,

MADRID ― The attack by a Western-led alliance on Muammar Gadhafi’s forces in Libya is driven largely by principled motives. Had it turned its back on the Libyan rebels, the West would have betrayed its very identity.Of course, the same principles are not being applied to save the brutally repressed masses in Yemen or the Shia protesters in Bahrain. It is doubtful whether they will be extended to S

In January, President Lee Myung-bak said there was something fishy about domestic gasoline prices. When international crude prices soared, he said, domestic prices of gasoline seemed to go up correspondingly without delay, but when crude oil costs dropped, retail gasoline prices appeared to fall slowly and by a smaller margin.The president’s comment was a signal that the government would step up p

Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Budget Committee, has proposed the most ambitious tax-and-spending plan that Capitol Hill has seen in years. His budget proposal for fiscal 2012 doesn’t merely seek to pare the enormous federal deficit and bring the national debt under control, which it would do much more aggressively than the plan President Obama offered in February. I

Old business practices die hard. For an example, look no further than the pharmaceutical industry. Some unscrupulous drug producers are unable to quit the bad habit of offering kickbacks to doctors and pharmacists to boost the sales of their products.According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, it has received more than 100 tip-offs about illegal kickbacks since November last year when the rel

Florida pastor Terry Jones certainly deserves a lion’s share of criticism for his symbolic burning of the Quran on March 20, having been warned for months that it was almost certain to provoke violence in the Muslim world. It did, and now 24 people are dead in Afghanistan, including six U.N. workers in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.It is important to note, however, that the reaction of Musli

The two parties are having a heated debate over the Republican plan to slice $61 billion off Uncle Sam’s projected $3.6 trillion budget. If the Republicans get their way, the deficit will fall from 9.5 percent of gross domestic product to 9.1 percent. If they don’t, they’ll probably shut the government for a couple of days. Then they’ll compromise on, say, a $40 billion budget cut, having proved t

NEW YORK ― After Saddam Hussein’s fall, the United States successfully pressed creditors to write off much of Iraq’s external debt. Senior American officials, including Paul Wolfowitz, later president of the World Bank, argued that the Iraqi people should not be saddled with obligations that the dictator contracted in order to enrich himself and oppress his subjects. Citing a long-standing doctrin

NEW YORK ― Al Jazeera correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin is on a victory lap in the United States ― or rather, Al Jazeera is sending him on its own victory lap. After all, Mohyeldin is a modest guy, despite being one of Al Jazeera’s best-known reporters ― and clearly a rising international media star.Al Jazeera has good reason to gloat: it has new cachet in the U.S. after millions of Americans, hungry

ZURICH ― Discussions within the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, which is poised to meet on April 7, are about to get hot. The risk that rising inflation in emerging Asia could spill over into Europe will pit the Bank’s inflation hawks against those in favor of ensuring as fast a return to full employment as possible. But what may cause even greater dissension is a renewed clash of natio