In announcing that she would soon be a new mother, Marissa Mayer, the new chief executive officer of Yahoo! Inc., made one thing perfectly clear: She wouldn’t be taking maternity leave. More precisely, Mayer said she would grab just a few weeks away from the office and would work at home the whole time. Many been-there-done-that moms scoffed. Just wait until she experiences the labor, the every-two-hours feedings and the moments of intense joy in between, she’ll change her mind. This would not b

To hear the media report it, President Obama is proposing a tax increase on wealthy Americans. That’s misleading at best. He’s proposing that everyone ― including the rich ― receive a continuation of the Bush tax cuts on the first $250,000 of their incomes. (If they’re filing singly, the first $200,000.) Any dollars they earn in excess of $250,000 will be taxed at the old Clinton-era rates.Get it? Everyone is treated exactly the same. Everyone gets a one-year extension of the Bush tax cut on the

Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Erlinda Basilio did well to explain ― in print ― “[w]hy there’s no ASEAN joint communique” that came out of last week’s big regional meeting at Phnom Penh. Until I read her essay yesterday, all I had read about was China’s going to town with its “success” at ASEAN, portraying the Philippines as an isolated state pathetically abandoned by its fellow ASEAN countries, all of them bowing before China’s might and meekly going along with the regional bully.Basilio exp

South Korea is competitively successful and produces excellent students. Families who move to America, even temporarily, find that their children do very well in school. Korean children achieve easily in mathematics, refine their English quickly, and win honors within two to three years in subjects such as science, history, foreign languages, and of course, English! Given the success of Korean students, is there anything to be learned from America? Is there anything Korean families and corporati

CAMBRIDGE ― The world’s advanced economies remain divided over whether to strengthen budget balances in the short term or to use fiscal policy to promote recovery. Those worried about the short-run contractionary effects on the economy call the first option “austerity”; those concerned about long-term sustainability and moral hazard call it “discipline.”Either way, the debate is akin to asking whether it is better for a driver to turn left or right; depending on where the car is, either choice m

Presidential aspirants keep pouring out costly welfare pledges without taking into account the nation’s slowing economic growth and a growing sense of crisis among domestic corporations.Park Geun-hye, the leading candidate of the ruling Saenuri Party, and her rivals in the main opposition Democratic United Party have promised to offer free education to high school students. Park’s plan called for phasing in free education for 1.42 million high school students over four years starting in 2014. Sh

Pressure is building on the prosecution to investigate growing suspicions of illegal fundraising by aides to President Lee Myung-bak during the 2007 presidential race.Opening a probe into presidential campaign finance must be something the prosecution wants to avoid as much as possible as it could involve the incumbent president.But it is its duty to launch an investigation as circumstantial evidence strongly suggests Lee’s campaign raised funds illegally. If the prosecution shies away from taki

You have to love the chutzpah at HSBC Holdings Plc. At the very moment it’s asking the courts to remove a ragged band of Occupy Wall Street protesters encamped under its Hong Kong headquarters, the largest European bank is also reminding the world why many people are so angry at bankers. The subject of the anti-Wall Street crusade isn’t much to behold: A few dozen 20-somethings living in tents, lounging on shabby sofas, strumming guitars and handing out pamphlets. Their notoriety is all about lo

Mohammed Morsi has been Egypt’s president for less than a month, and already senior clerics in his country and around the Islamic world are loudly calling for the demolition of the pyramids, Egypt’s most important tourist attraction and among the Seven Wonders of the World.Saudi Sheik Ali bin Said al-Rabi’i called them heinous “symbols of paganism.” In recent days, similar calls have been echoing through Egypt and the region, including one from a Bahraini sheik who urged Morsi to “destroy the py

If U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wants to leave a positive legacy in our region, she must make sure that her constant presence, smile and speeches do not further divide ASEAN and cause discord with other major powers and among countries. Clinton has just made another tour of the region as her tenure in office nears completion. She is not going to take up any post in the next U.S. administration. Whatever she has done in Asia, especially in Southeast Asia, will be gauged carefully from

The symptoms are many, and they are all pointing towards a worrying diagnosis: Asian economies, led by China and India, are rapidly losing steam.Corporate bosses are worried about slowing Asian demand, some of which is already reflected in lackluster company earnings.Meanwhile, Europe continues to cast a shadow on global business sentiment. The recession in the eurozone could yet worsen, and that might make Asian exporters scramble for sales, especially if a much-awaited recovery in global elect

PARIS ― The Japanese and the British may seem very different, but a closer look reveals something akin to a parallel destiny for these two island peoples. With their old imperial ambitions and widespread distaste for the great continents from which the narrowest of seas divide them, both the British and the Japanese are vulnerable to the siren song of isolationism. Unfortunately, both now appear to be succumbing to that dangerous temptation.Perhaps geography is destiny. As islanders, Britons and

The recent release of yet another superhero film ― Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises” (2012) ― raises the question of why, and in what sense, these figures still speak to us today. From Superman to Spider-Man, what they all seem to share is an exemplary sense of morality: they are above all moral heroes, unique individuals willing to put their lives at risk to do the right thing at the right time. But if one is not in possession of superpowers and a fancy suit, how does one ever know th

UTRECHT ― Gloria Taylor, a Canadian, has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Over a period of a few years, her muscles will weaken until she can no longer walk, use her hands, chew, swallow, speak, and ultimately, breathe. Then she will die. Taylor does not want to go through all of that. She wants to die at a time of her own choosing.Suicide is not a crime in Canada, so, as Taylor put it: “I simply cannot understand why the law holds that the able-bodied who

Among the chaotic and hectic environment at Apple due to the passing of Steve Jobs, people must try to look past their brand loyalty (to Apple) to fully understand that Samsung isn’t copying Apple’s designs. Does the Galaxy Tab 10 inch tablet intentionally resemble the iPad? Probably. Does the Galaxy Tab create confusion in the market place so that buyers are deceived into thinking the Galaxy Tab is the iPad? No. Fortunately for Samsung, international law regarding copyright infringement (of des

The U.S. presidential campaign seems to have time-traveled back to 1992, when independent candidate Ross Perot thought he heard the “giant sucking sound” of American jobs moving to Mexico. Perot lost his presidential bid, along with the argument against globalization. The winner, Bill Clinton, went on to sign the North American Free Trade Agreement. The resulting U.S. job losses, primarily in manufacturing, were offset by gains elsewhere, according to numerous studies. Two decades of bipartisan

The lesson from recent economic data and policy moves in Asia is this: Hubris still has its costs. In recent years, Asia believed its own press a little too much. The way it steered around the financial crisis of 2008, the dizzying stock gains, the migration of bankers from New York to Hong Kong and the region’s mergers-and-acquisitions binge were all interpreted as immutable signs of Asia’s economic arrival. Decoupling-from-the-West euphoria flooded emerging markets in general. The BRIC economi

The alarm is sounding for the Korean economy as the continuing eurozone debt crisis has begun to spill over to China, the engine of global economic growth and the largest market for Korean exports.Last week, China announced that its economy grew 7.6 percent in the second quarter of this year, a sharp decline from 9.5 percent a year earlier. The growth figure was the lowest since the world’s second-largest economy grew 6.6 percent in the first quarter of 2009 at the height of the global financial

A serious power struggle appears to be under way in Pyongyang as Ri Young-ho, the North’s top military official, has been removed from all his posts in a most unusual way.Ri was viewed as one of the guardians that the deceased North Korean leader Kim Jong-il picked to ensure a smooth power transfer to his heir and youngest son, Kim Jong-un.But he was stripped of all his posts in the Workers’ Party, according to a brief dispatch of the North’s Korean Central News Agency on Monday. He was a member

Looking ahead to the Olympics this month, Adam Gopnik cleverly writes in The New Yorker that “Americans become passionate about athletes we have never heard of participating in games we do not follow trying to please judges we cannot see according to rules we do not know.”Gopnik sees this fascination bred by nationalism. But within American culture, we should also be attuned to the narratives of individual excellence that dominate coverage of the Olympics. These narratives extol the virtue of si