The admissions officer system is touted as one of the incumbent government’s major achievements in education. It is intended to free students from the grueling test-based college entrance process so that they can develop creativity and build character.Yet the problem is the new student selection method has many loopholes. Under the system, admissions officers of a university assess applicants based not just on their test scores but on other criteria, including their potential, extra-curricular a

Just months ago, few people in or outside Russia had heard of Pussy Riot, a marginal group of feminist performance artists. The country’s opposition movement was a disorganized and apparently spent force. Foreign leaders and global pop stars such as Madonna and Paul McCartney had little to say on the independence of courts in Moscow. That all changed because of the trial that ended Friday with the conviction of three Pussy Riot members, on charges of hooliganism and inciting religious hatred. Th

LONDON ― The trial, conviction, and suspended death sentence of Gu Kailai, the wife of purged Chinese leader Bo Xilai, has called into question not only China’s legal system, but the very unity of the Communist Party leadership.Let us begin with the many questions raised at the trial. For starters, Gu claimed that she killed the British businessman Neil Heywood only to protect her son. But, given Gu’s power as Bo’s wife, she could have had someone like Heywood jailed or expelled from China at th

The U.S. government is justifiably proud of its leadership abroad funding male circumcision as a way to prevent HIV infections. The president’s AIDS relief program boasts of having provided more than 1 million circumcisions in 14 African countries. The record of government support for male circumcision within the U.S., however, is nothing to crow about. More and more states (18 so far) are dropping Medicaid coverage for routine infant male circumcision, contributing to a decline in rates from 79

TOKYO ― Has Japan’s political paralysis finally lifted? The recent agreement, after a long debate, between the government and leading opposition parties to double the consumption tax ― from 5 percent to 8 percent in 2014, and then to 10 percent in 2015 ― suggests that it has. But there is a real risk that the government will mistake this measure for the end of the reform process. In fact, it is ― or should be ― only the beginning.By virtually any measure, official Japanese debt is the highest in

MELBOURNE ― In the Dominican Republic last month, a pregnant teenager suffering from leukemia had her chemotherapy delayed, because doctors feared that the treatment could terminate her pregnancy and therefore violate the nation’s strict anti-abortion law. After consultations between doctors, lawyers, and the girl’s family, chemotherapy eventually was begun, but not before attention had again been focused on the rigidity of many developing countries’ abortion laws.Abortion receives extensive med

WASHINGTON ― The politics of “sequestration” illustrate the talent of congressional Republicans, led by Rep. Paul Ryan for being on both sides of the budget issue: They play a game of “chicken” with federal outlays, demanding a balanced budget without tax increases, and then insist that it’s the Democrats’ fault if there’s a crackup. This fiscal impasse will be a dramatic backdrop for the fall presidential campaign: As Election Day approaches, the clock will be ticking on across-the-board cuts o

TEL AVIV ― The crisis in the Sinai Peninsula seems to have been dwarfed by Sunday’s drama in Cairo. But Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s civilian coup, in which he dismissed General Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the leader of the army’s supreme command, has not diminished the importance of the trouble there.Earlier this month, jihadi terrorists ambushed an Egyptian military base in Sinai, killing 16 Egyptian soldiers. They then hijacked two armored personnel carriers and sped toward the frontier wi

Not everybody likes Madonna. But one reason the controversial Queen of Pop continues to be popular around the world is her compelling embrace of individual freedom.In Moscow on Tuesday, Madonna urged authorities to free the three women in the punk-rock band Pussy Riot, who were arrested for staging a protest in an Orthodox church against Russian President Vladimir Putin.Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, could face up to three years in prison for sto

NEW DELHI ― With America’s presidential election looming, perhaps its most striking aspect from an Indian point of view is that no one in New Delhi is unduly concerned about the outcome. There is now a broad consensus in Indian policymaking circles that, whoever wins, India-United States relations are more or less on the right track.Democrats and Republicans alike have both been responsible for this development. President Barack Obama’s successful visit to India in 2010, and his historic speech

PARIS ― Is there a link between economic power and Olympic medals? Is a form of multipolarity in sports emerging as political multipolarity sets in?In 1992, immediately after the Cold War’s end, the United States and the former Soviet Union’s “Unified Team” won a quarter of the medals in Barcelona. Global bipolarity had not yet vanished. By the 2008 Beijing games, the world had changed significantly. The Soviet-American duopoly had given way to a Sino-American duopoly, which won a combined 20 pe

Republicans complain that the Obama administration is moving to gut the highly popular 1996 federal law that put strict time limits on welfare payments and required recipients to find work. Mitt Romney, on the stump and in a new TV ad, says this is more evidence that the White House is promoting a “culture of dependency.”“That is wrong,” Romney said in Elk Grove Village, Ill., this week. “If I am president, I will put work back in welfare.”What launched all this talk was a July 12 directive from

The tragedy of the commons is how Francis Fukuyama describes the infeasibility of Utopia in his new book, “The Origins of Political Order.” When Garrett Hardin used the phrase as a title for his article in 1968, he actually talked about the dilemma: When everybody owns something, nobody owns it.We Chinese have a similar saying to describe almost the same thing: A monk fetches water in buckets hanging from a bamboo pole on his shoulder; when he is joined by another monk, he shares the burden with

Japan Airlines Co. owes me something as it plans an $8.5 billion initial public offering: a thank you. Not because I’m a frequent flier, but a Japan taxpayer. In the euphoria over the carrier emerging from bankruptcy, aren’t we forgetting the jumbo-jet-sized role of the state? A $4.5 billion government-orchestrated bailout and even bigger subsidies that let it avoid billions of dollars in future tax payments. So next month, when JAL attempts the most ambitious IPO since Facebook Inc., it should

What do you call an ocean that sits atop more than 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 100 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, provides transit for $5.3 trillion worth of shipborne trade every year, and is bordered by a half-dozen nations with competing maritime and territorial claims? If you’re a geographer, the South China Sea. If you’re a geostrategist, however, it’s a powder keg ― and one that has been heating up dangerously over the past year. Defusing it peacefully will be a test not

Today is Liberation Day in South Korea. This is the anniversary of the day that Japan surrendered to the United States at the end of World War II and South Korea once again became a free and independent country. This is also a day on which the president of South Korea often issues pardons to many of those who have run afoul of the law. These pardons have often been controversial because some recipients have been close confidants of the president or powerful members of South Korean society or bot

President Lee Myung-bak’s visit to Dokdo on Friday was a surprise in light of his consistent efforts since inauguration to build future-oriented ties with Japan. The unexpected visit ― the first ever by a Korean president ― is certain to throw the bilateral relationship into a tailspin as Tokyo views it as a breach of an unwritten understanding between the two nations. Yet it is fully understandable given Tokyo’s repeated sovereignty claims to South Korea’s easternmost territory. During Lee’s te

Many of the public agencies that are to relocate from Seoul and its surrounding Gyeonggi Province to other cities have learned no lesson at all from local governments that ruined their finances by pouring money into exorbitant office buildings.Under a balanced regional development scheme, 147 public agencies are required to move out of the capital zone to local “innovation hubs.” Of them, 121 have decided to construct their own office buildings, while 26 have chosen to rent. Of the 121 not renti

Mitt Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, is a self-styled disciple of the late Jack Kemp, the buoyant conservative Republican who played a major role in shaping the political agenda in the last quarter of the 20th century. The relationship was real. Ryan worked for Kemp as a speechwriter and at his research group; Kemp’s granddaughter was an intern in his protg’s congressional office. Like his mentor, Ryan is passionate, exuberant, intellectually stimulating and devoid

By choosing U.S. Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney has added some verve to what had been a tedious presidential contest. Romney deserves credit for his audacity, to borrow a word from his opponent. The question is whether the Republican campaign’s newfound energy will be used more to obfuscate or illuminate. If the latter, voters might find that the two presidential candidates agree more than they would have you believe. The debates over such phony issues as whether Romne