Once you get a look at the evil smirk captured by the mug shot of Jared Lee Loughner, it’s hard to believe that mere heated political rhetoric was the decisive factor in his allegedly pulling the trigger over and over and over again.But that doesn’t mean there’s no link between politics and violence, or even, to some degree, mental illness.A psychologist will tell you that plenty of factors may pu

WASHINGTON ― But what should we do about the mentally ill who walk among us, stumbling toward what may be violent confrontations with authority? That question was asked by dozens of readers after a column last week about our inability to stop an obviously unstable Jared Lee Loughner on his way to the rampage in Tucson. The anguished e-mails were a reminder that milder versions of the Tucson traged

After years of warning that an Iranian atomic bomb is right around the corner, Israeli officials now say Iran is at least four years away from deploying a nuclear weapon, maybe more. And Obama administration officials agree, although they shy away from endorsing a specific time frame. “We’ve gained some breathing space,” a senior U.S. official told me last week. “The good news is that we have slow

Across much of the world, including most every Middle Eastern state, citizens and some national leaders are cheering the fall of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s longtime dictator. They are voicing the fervent hope that Tunisia’s revolution will be the first of many dominoes to fall. My advice: Be careful what you wish for.Arab commentators and others, tapping a wellspring of popular d

TILBURG, the Netherlands ― Two years ago, the leaders of the world’s central banks were considered heroes for their efforts in preventing financial crisis from turning into Great Depression II. Today, however, central banks are being sharply criticized, and their independence is coming under severe pressure in many countries, particularly in the eurozone, as Mario Draghi, the head of the Bank of I

As far as stealth fighters are concerned, the Chinese prototype J-20 is perhaps too eye-attracting. On Dec. 22, 2010, photos of a taxiing test at the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute of the fifth-generation twin-engine fighter aircraft emerged on the Internet and triggered a firestorm in the international media. On Jan. 11, hours before U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates met with Chinese Preside

Last year saw good momentum in China’s strengthening ties with other Asian countries, as indicated by the frequent high-level exchanges and the expansion of two-way economic and trade links. The high-level exchanges greatly boosted bilateral political trust, while China remained the largest export market for Asian countries ― its imports from the rest of the region totaling $446.5 billion, up 41.1

President Hu Jintao’s state visit to the United States starting from Jan. 18 comes 14 months after President Barack Obama’s November 2009 visit to China. The intervening period has seen many problems in U.S.-China relations, despite progress on some fronts. President Hu’s visit will, therefore, be especially important for recalibrating the tone and direction of U.S.-China ties. The U.S.-China join

Three days before the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a courageous Pakistani politician was shot dead by one of his guards.The circumstances of the two shootings, of course, were very different. Salman Taseer had infuriated conservative Muslims by criticizing his country’s apostasy law, which prescribes death for insulting Islam. Much of Pakistan’s media made excuses for the killer,

An experts’ report on the future of the nation’s health insurance system offered an extremely grim outlook ― a 16 trillion won ($14 billion) annual deficit by 2020 even if salaried workers steadily increase their insurance premium payments. The long-term estimate by the Health Insurance Policy Institute under the National Health Insurance Corp. sounded like an answer to the opposition Democratic P

Children cry watching the TV news as a dozen piglets and their mother are shown being dumped into a hole in a farm in a foot and mouth disease-infected area. Internet users are saddened to read the diary of a young man in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, who had to kill and bury 121 cattle because a truck that visited his farm the day before was found to have earlier stayed in a confirmed FMD-infected pla

Reading my recent column, “Seven enigmas of Korea to Westerners,” Ogan Gurel, a medical doctor who had been affiliated with Harvard and Columbia until recently joining Samsung, sent me feedback in which he insightfully compared the Korean enigmas with American culture. As for the first enigma concerning candlelight vigils, Dr. Gurel writes: “There were no candlelight vigils when Ronald Reagan died

The downfall and flight of Tunisian President Ben Ali last week sent a warning to autocratic rulers in the Middle East and elsewhere. Kim Jong-il in faraway North Korea is a certain candidate for dethroning by popular revolt and signs of the regime’s desperation can be seen during the first weeks of the New Year.After making pleas to South Korea for the resumption of dialogue almost every other da

Two old women whom the international media had called “former comfort women for the Japanese imperial army” died last week, ending their long hard lives. The deaths of Kim Seon-yi at a hospital in Ulsan on Thursday and Im Jeong-ja in Masan on the same day left 76 women of similar experiences alive. Kim was 83 and Im was 89.Last year, which marked a century since Japan’s annexation of the Joseon Ki

NEW DELHI ― Everything is going right these days for India, except for one big problem: They’re living next to a Pakistan that is coming apart politically, and Indian leaders insist with a tone of resignation that there’s nothing they can do about it. Starting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, top Indian officials know that their booming democracy is endangered by the growing chaos across the bo

NEW YORK ― The outlook for the global economy in 2011 is, partly, for a persistence of the trends established in 2010. These are: an anemic, below-trend, U-shaped recovery in advanced economies, as firms and households continue to repair their balance sheets; a stronger, V-shaped recovery in emerging-market countries, owing to stronger macroeconomic, financial, and policy fundamentals. That adds u

The time is ripe for Japan and South Korea to enhance the quality of their security cooperation, without confining it to the field of defence exchanges.Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa and his South Korean counterpart Kim Kwan-jin agreed in their meeting on Jan. 10 in Seoul that the two countries would work more closely, given a series of military provocations by North Korea and other destabilisi

PARIS ― Robert Gates’ official visit to Beijing, probably the last before he leaves the office of U.S. secretary of defense, was a frustrating affair, distinguished by China’s reiteration of its warnings that Washington must not sell arms to Taiwan, a demand that the United States has never accepted.The Chinese enlivened Gate’s visit with a display of their new J-20 fighter, which is claimed to be

LOS ANGELES ― Revelations in former President George W. Bush’s recently published memoirs show that he declined an Israeli request to destroy Syria’s secret nuclear reactor in the spring of 2007. While the revelation may appear merely to be a historical footnote, more profoundly it raises new uncertainty about whether Israel now thinks that it can rely on the United States to apply military force

Korea was designated an “aging society” in 2000, the year in which those aged 65 or older accounted for more than 7 percent of its total population for the first time. The demographic group, which grew to 10.7 percent in 2009, is projected to break though the 14 percent mark in 2018, pushing Korea into an “aged society.”The transition from an aging society to an aged society, which is accelerating