The return of Silvio Berlusconi to the Italian political stage sends an unmistakable message to Europe’s leaders: They will have to be a lot more ambitious if they want to hold their currency union together. In parliamentary elections this week, Italian voters handed Berlusconi just enough power to make forming a stable government extremely difficult. In doing so, voters soundly rejected the technocratic policies of outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti, whose efforts to raise taxes, cut pensions

The government and the left-leaning Korean Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union are on a collision course over the union’s charter that accepts dismissed teachers as members. The Ministry of Employment and Labor recently told the union that it would be outlawed unless it amended the charter, which runs afoul of labor law.The Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act states that an organization will not be regarded as a trade union if it allows those who are not workers to join it.The tea

One keyword in President Park Geun-hye’s inaugural address on Monday was “cultural renaissance.” She presented “a flourishing culture” as one of the three goals she would pursue during her five-year term. The other two were economic rejuvenation and increasing people’s happiness.Park devoted a considerable part of her speech to culture, a topic that her predecessors had almost ignored in their inaugural addresses. Together with “economy” and “happiness,” “culture” was one of the most frequently

WASHINGTON ― Some of us can recall the helpless feeling of being in a vehicle driven by someone who is intoxicated. If you’re like me, you don’t want to cause a scene unless the driving is really erratic. But there comes a moment when you need to say: Stop the car. You’re going to hurt someone. Hand over the keys. We have a political system that is the equivalent of a drunk driver. The primary culprits are the House Republicans. They are so intoxicated with their own ideology that they are ready

Italy’s parliamentary election could not have gone worse for the country or the euro area. It is now possible that in the coming months the currency zone’s third-largest economy will need a bailout from international creditors, at a time when Italy will have no government in place to ask for, or negotiate, a rescue. In case you had any doubts, the euro-area crisis is back. As has so often been the case in Italy, the political gridlock has come in the Senate. Neither Pier Luigi Bersani’s center-l

North Korea’s third nuclear test and its threats to conduct more tests this year have ratcheted up tensions in Northeast Asia, with global repercussions. As Pyongyang seems to be inching closer to possessing the ability to deliver nuclear-tipped intercontinental missiles, a brewing crisis for the global efforts against WMD proliferation and nuclear terrorism threatens regional and global balance of power. A time of crisis such as this calls for prudent and skillful crisis management. The leaders

Syria is fast becoming the new Somalia ― a nation whose central government wields little control over the bulk of the country while feuding sects and gangs fight each other as well as the thoroughly discredited president, Bashar al-Assad.Meanwhile, just as in Somalia, vast numbers of Syrians are suffering and dying.The United Nations says more than 70,000 Syrians have been killed since the conflict began almost two years ago. At least 2 million people are now homeless, in many cases because thei

U.S. President Barack Obama is seeking to resurrect an idea that he set aside during his first term: Raise the minimum wage to help lift working families out of poverty. The proposal, which would take the minimum to $9 an hour from the current $7.25, is far from ideal. Still, it’s the right thing to do. A better way to keep people working and out of poverty would be to expand the earned income tax credit, a program that makes direct payments to low-wage workers through the income-tax system. The

When standing outside a Costco, a Homeplus or a Lotte department store on a Sunday afternoon in South Korea, one can watch car after car pass by with a bevy of bemused drivers looking askance at the closed doors. There is always the same look of wonder on their faces that in South Korea, which is ostensibly a capitalist nation, the government interferes so directly in the ordinary workings of business. You would think South Koreans would be used to it by now; after all, the government has been i

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 Chung-hee, the dictator who ruled the nation for 18 years until his assassination in 1979. The second is Lee Myung-bak, her predecessor who spent the last five years in the Blue House, Korea’s presidential residence, and a fellow member of her New Frontier Party. Park must deal with their shortcomings in revers

North Korea’s third nuclear test on Feb. 12 underscores the fact that little has changed surrounding one of Asia’s most worrisome flashpoints. For the past 20 years, North Korea has conducted a string of missile and nuclear tests. Each time, the tests have been roundly condemned by members of the global community, but apart from two agreements (in 1994 and 2007) to halt Pyongyang’s advance towards a nuclear-tipped missile, the country continues its long march to deploying such a weapon. Put diff

With South Korea’s growing affluence, the Korean people are now more concerned with public etiquette and aiding others than ever before. For instance, people honk less frequently than before on the streets, stand in line for the subway and buses in an orderly fashion, and behave politely in everyday life. Koreans have even begun to help less developed countries through various programs administered by the Korea International Cooperation Agency, recognizing the favors their country once received

One issue that promises to come to the fore during the parliamentary hearings of ministerial nominees that start on Wednesday is “jeon-gwan-ye-u,” a time-old practice in the legal community whereby retired judges and public prosecutors who start a legal practice receive special treatment from their incumbent former colleagues.In recent years, the unwholesome practice has spread to officialdom. These days, retired high-ranking government officials expect and receive preferential treatment from th

Five years ago, President Lee Myung-bak unveiled his “747 plan,” declaring that he would achieve 7 percent annual economic growth during his term to boost the nation’s per capita GDP to $40,000 and make Korea the world’s seventh largest economy.What Lee has actually achieved over the past five years falls far short of these goals. The economy has grown a mere 2.9 percent on average; the nation’s per capita GDP barely reached $22,700 in 2012; and Korea’s economy was the world’s 15th largest last

“Cheat, cheat, never beat.” Remember that catchy, foreboding maxim drilled into us as kids?It’s comforting to believe cheaters never win and winners never cheat. Unfortunately, there’s ample evidence that cheating is rampant in almost every sphere of American life. And for every reported story of cheaters getting busted ― be they professional athletes who use banned substances or those who illegally manipulate markets for profit ― you can bet there’s at least one case of somebody who escaped det

PARIS ― In the early phases of the financial crisis, it was fashionable to argue that the United States’ system of regulation needed a fundamental structural overhaul. Differences of opinion between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had obstructed effective oversight of investment banks and derivatives trading (only the U.S. believes that it makes sense to regulate securities and derivatives separately).Indeed, the plethora of separa

Quiz question: Of the last seven U.S. presidents, which one issued, by a large margin, the most executive orders per year? Answer: Jimmy Carter. Gerald Ford is second, Ronald Reagan is third, Bill Clinton is fourth, and George H.W. Bush is fifth. George W. Bush and Barack Obama bring up the rear and are essentially tied. The numbers are revealing, because executive orders are the most formal steps that presidents can take to make policy on their own, and yet no one would rank Carter as the most

President Obama devoted only one sentence to U.S. nuclear weapons in his recent State of the Union speech, which was filled with a long list of proposals for his second term. While he has a lot on his plate for the next four years, the time has come for a major overhaul of U.S. nuclear weapons policy.The Cold War ended more than 20 years ago, but the United States still maintains some 5,000 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, with roughly 2,000 of these deployed on missiles or bombers. These weapons

Negotiators from the world’s major powers sit down with Iran this week for more talks on its nuclear program, just weeks after North Korea tested another nuclear weapon. If the connection between these two events isn’t obvious, it should be: North Korea’s nuclear saga is a cautionary tale for anyone attempting to bargain with the Islamic Republic. Back in the 1980s, when suspicions were first raised about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, the country’s leadership was keen to distract attention wi

If I had to choose a single word to describe the dominant attitude in Russian society, it would be “mistrust.” The meteor, or possibly small asteroid, that exploded over the Ural Mountains city of Chelyabinsk on Feb. 15 illustrated this as few other events could. The world saw the meteor thanks to the dashboard cameras that are so common in Russian cars. U.S. publications from the New Yorker to Wired delighted in writing about the dash cam phenomenon, unheard of in the U.S. or Europe. Russians u