Asias energy trilemma U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recently said that energy was the golden thread connecting all of the U.N.s Millennium Development Goals. The solutions to energy challenges would help alleviate other global problems, from poverty and the ri..
Why US is heading for emotional isolationism LOS ANGELES Foreign policy has suddenly surfaced, like a leviathan sea monster, crawling onto the beach of the U.S. presidential campaign. If I were an incumbent American president seeking re-election, I might be worried.
Ahn, Psy and rise of the outsider Two things happened last week that captured the zeitgeist in Korea. One was the announcement by Ahn Cheol-soo, the software entrepreneur, that he was running for president and the other was rapper Psys Gangnam Style breaking the world record..
Insulting Muslims One of the first scenes in the ridiculous but thoroughly nasty film Innocence of Muslims shows angry Muslims running through the streets smashing things and killing people. So what happens when a clip from the film dubbed into Arabic goes up on..
The 100-Year Starship Never mind the constraints of the miserable present: the shrinking budgets, the lost opportunities, the collapsing morale. Thinking is free, so lets think really big. Lets think about ... building a starship in the year 2112.
Foreign policy mirages UNITED NATIONS The killing of the American Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens, along with three other American diplomats, the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt and the tearing down of the flag replacing the stars and stripes..
Blasphemy in Pakistan It was a welcome change from the usual dreary story: a Christian or a Hindu Pakistani accused of blasphemy on flimsy grounds, tried, and sentenced to prison or found innocent, set free and then murdered by some Muslim fanatic. This time was diff..
Quebec vote and Canadas political uncertainty MONTREAL Political uncertainty shadows Quebec in the aftermath of a contentious provincial election campaign. Now in the wake of the vote, the specter of separatism has re-emerged in the multi-ethnic Canadian province where the political rhetor..
Arctic sea ice and climate: the unknown unknown Its no surprise that we will have a record minimum of ice cover in the Arctic Ocean at the end of this summer melt season. Its already down to around 4 million square kilometers, with at least another week of melting to go, but this is what you..
The New Depression I read The Dollar Crisis by economist Richard Duncan at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008. It was an eerie experience for Duncan had written the book six years before in 2002 and predicted not only the financial meltdown but how..
An autumn abyss? BERLIN In the coming months, several serious regional economic and political crises could combine into one mega-watershed, fueling an intense global upheaval. In the course of the summer, the prospect of a perilous fall has become only more like..
Armstrong and Obama: US manned space program When the first man on the Moon died on Saturday, President Barack Obama tweeted: Neil Armstrong was a hero not just of his time, but of all time. Armstrongs final comment on Obama, on the other hand, was that the presidents policy on manned ..
Catching the bookworm A while ago, a dear friend of mine, a fellow lover of books, sent me a huge box filled with childrens books. She works for a childrens book publisher and included a variety of different books for my daughter, both for now and for when shes old..
Olympian economics LONDON As Olympic mania swept the world in recent weeks, it transported the host country, Great Britain, to a rare display of public exultation. Indeed, the successes of Team GB produced an upsurge of patriotic rejoicing akin to victory in wa..
Koreas 3 key challenges Citigroup recently predicted that South Korea would have the fourth highest GDP per capita in the world by 2050 based on purchasing power parity calculations. Korea with an estimated GDP per capita of $107,752 would be among an Asian gang of four t..
Egypt: clean sweep for the civilians Egyptian President Muhammad Morsis spokesman did not mince words. He said that the retirement of all the senior military commanders in the country represented the completion of the Egyptian revolution. And guess what? The rest of the officer c..
Fate of Africa Good news from Africa: after two decades of bloody anarchy, Somalia is finally on the mend. There is something resembling a government coming into being in Mogadishu, with much help from African Union troops although the countrys most popular ..
