GAZA CITY ― In the wake of revolutionary change in the Middle East, the forces of political Islam have scored one electoral victory after another. As the West grapples with the rapid rise of moderate Islamists in Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt, the issue of Hamas’s role in the Palestinian territories looms large. The signing of a new unity deal between Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular Fatah party earlier this month has heightened an unprecedented struggle within Hamas over it

Imagine if you could hear directly, albeit anonymously, from the normally secretive bankers and traders who manufactured and sold the trillions of dollars in toxic debt securities that pushed the world’s financial system to the brink of disaster in 2008. Would they defend themselves and their actions, or show a degree of remorse for what they caused and have not been held accountable for? Well, you can find the answer to that question in “Conversations With Wall Street,” a compact ― and largely

Should the U.S. be willing to sacrifice Los Angeles for Taipei? It’s horrendous to contemplate, but it’s the kind of question that underlies a simmering debate over U.S. policy toward Taiwan. As China’s economic and military power grows, and Taiwan’s long-term future remains unclear, that debate deserves a wider airing. The tension, and the stakes, will only increase as the Obama administration undertakes its much-trumpeted “pivot” to Asia. Taiwan didn’t surface as a big issue in Chinese Vice Pr

JOHANNESBURG ― The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria marks its 10th anniversary this year against a backdrop of growing protests against global inequality. World attention has been trained on the Occupy movement, which has challenged the “1 percent” of the global population that exercises disproportionate influence on economic and social policy. But this week, many activists from the developing world ― the greatest beneficiaries of the Global Fund ― will be focused on efforts

After a recent trip to the Middle East, President Lee Myung-bak has repeatedly urged Korean companies to grab new business opportunities in the region, saying it is in the midst of an oil boom reminiscent of the 1970s and ‘80s. He has also encouraged young people looking for a job to lift up their gaze and look beyond the small domestic market.Lee, formerly president of Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co., has recently visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the three key

Turning a deaf ear to public outcry, lawmakers from the ruling and main opposition parties collaborated on Monday to pass an array of self-serving bills, while leaving many others related to important issues on the back burner.Among the bills they pushed through was the one that proposed to increase the number of National Assembly seats from the current 299 to 300. By passing the widely condemned legislation, lawmakers have confirmed again that their impudence knows no bounds.The bill increases

Recently three new lawyers in South Korea accepted positions with the South Korean government. While this by itself is not remarkable, what is remarkable is that these lawyers accepted positions at a lower entry level than any lawyer had previously accepted. These lawyers will enter at grade six on a scale that starts with grade nine and rises to grade one. Many lawyers were shocked by this as lawyers have always entered into government service at a minimum of grade five; a grade that practicall

If Europe’s new plan for Greece succeeds, nobody will be more surprised than the politicians who designed it. At best, the arrangement is a holding action, one that fails yet again to deal with the much larger confidence crisis facing the euro area. The deal announced on Tuesday starts with private lenders. Their representatives agreed to accept even bigger losses on Greek government bonds than previously discussed. The bonds’ face value will be cut by 53.5 percent, and they’ll pay a low interes

PARIS ― And the next French President will be … the Socialist Party’s candidate Franois Hollande. A month ago, any prediction uttered with such certainty would have sounded imprudent, if not foolish. Uncertainty prevailed. Four candidates dominated the competition, and no one would have dared to predict which two will make it to the second-round run-off. Indeed, the race looked more open than ever in recent memory.Suddenly, something happened ― not an event in itself (though it started with Holl

Korean firms in electronics and shipbuilding industries are the first class in the world, while Korean financial service firms can only dream about becoming JPMorgans and Goldman Sachses someday. What does the future hold for Korean financial services industry? Conventional wisdom says either Hong Kong or Shanghai will become the regional financial capital in the Asia-Pacific century. As unlikely as it was for Samsung back in the 1980s to dominate Sony someday, one may envision an unlikely dark

NEW DELHI ― From the armed coup that recently ousted the Maldives’ first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, to the Pakistani Supreme Court’s current effort to undermine a toothless but elected government by indicting Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on contempt charges, South Asia’s democratic advances appear to be shifting into reverse. Nasheed’s forced resignation at gunpoint has made the Maldives the third country in the region, after Nepal and Sri Lanka, where a democratic t

A weak labor market, like the one we’ve experienced since the financial crisis in 2008, imposes enormous stress on people. Given the added anxiety created by a weak economy, you might think life expectancy would decline. Oddly, though, during recessions, exactly the opposite tends to happen: Life expectancy rises. It’s happening again now. The age-adjusted death rate in the U.S. declined by 2 percent from 2007 to 2010, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Preven

If Europe’s new plan for Greece succeeds, nobody will be more surprised than the politicians who designed it. At best, the arrangement is a holding action, one that fails yet again to deal with the much larger confidence crisis facing the euro area. The deal announced on Tuesday starts with private lenders. Their representatives agreed to accept even bigger losses on Greek government bonds than previously discussed. The bonds’ face value will be cut by 53.5 percent, and they’ll pay a low interes

Haphazard and ill-conceived government policies lead to a waste of taxpayers’ money and give rise to unnecessary problems. For an example, one need not look further than the government’s child care policy.Starting next month, the government will provide a subsidy to all families with a child under 24 months old, regardless of their income, if they enroll them at a day care center. Previously, the subsidy was offered to families in the bottom 70 percent of the income scale.As expected, applicatio

Political parties are moving again to increase the number of lawmakers in the Assembly. The ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Democratic United Party, which have been bickering over redrawing electoral districts, have patched up their differences by increasing the number of seats from the current 299 to 300.Rep. Joo Sung-young of the ruling party said on Sunday that the two parties have resolved the rezoning puzzle by embracing a proposal presented by the National Election Commission.

Anything as big and as promising as shale gas is bound to be complicated. This energy source has much to recommend it. To begin with, the U.S. has a lot of it, enough to meet current natural gas consumption for 35 years. The increase in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the technique used to tap natural gas from shale, brought down the fuel’s price by 32 percent last year, to less than $3 per million Btu. Expanding the practice ― to New York State, for example, which now has a moratorium on it

WASHINGTON ― At the end of a week when more brave reporters died chronicling President Bashar al-Assad’s slaughter of more than 6,000 of his countrymen, you hear more calls for sending weapons to the embattled opposition militia known as the “Free Syrian Army.” More weapons undoubtedly will flow to the opposition, one way or another, but they’re not going to bring about a democratic Syria. The moral case for arming the rebels may be strong, but it doesn’t overcome the practical problem: The batt

PARIS ― The United States is widely recognized as possessing the deepest, most liquid, and most efficient capital markets in the world. America’s financial system supports efficient capital allocation, economic development, and job creation.These and similar phrases have been common currency among American legislators, regulators, and financial firms for decades. Even in the wake of the financial crisis that erupted in 2008, they trip off the word processors of a hundred submissions challenging

Recently, a prudent group of scholars made a compelling case for starting a movement named “Occupy Populism in Korea,” which aims to investigate the fundamental causes and impacts of populism deeply rooted in Korean political circles. At present, Korea is apparently overrun by populism: welfare populism, free populism, half-tuition-fee populism, good or bad populism, right-wing or left-wing populism, anticorporation populism, etc. Literally, populism is well defined by M. Canovan as “an appeal t

LAHORE/NEW DELHI ― A subtle shift may be occurring in one of the world’s longest-standing and most intractable conflicts ― the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Increasingly, it seems, Pakistanis are questioning what the Kashmir dispute has done to their own state and society.When Pakistan was carved out of India by the departing British in the 1947 Partition, the 562 “princely states” (regions nominally ruled by assorted potentates, but owing allegiance to the British Raj) were r