Postsecondary education, regarded as essential in a competitive global job market, is credited for increasing prosperity for individuals and their communities. Greater numbers of students pursue higher education, but rising costs of college force many to rely on loans. Tuition for attending a...
Debt relief? Tuition rates vary around the globe; payment is the responsibility of students and families in countries like the United States, where the average debt for 2016 graduates is $37,000, while students have fewer worries in Finland, one of...
Japan and South Korea are each close with the United States and could be strong allies, after adequate atonement and forgiveness for historical atrocities. But instead the gulf is widening, as indicated by a terse exchange between the two leaders attending the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation...
Regional reordering: Japan's Prime Minister Abe, center in top photo, celebrates with US and Japanese officials plan to reopen US-Japanese Defense Cooperation guidelines - with no heads up for South Korean President Park, who gave Abe a cold...
Household final consumption represents about 70 percent of US gross domestic product, yet “Cheaper fuel and raw materials are boosting manufacturing, making the U.S. more of a competitor to emerging-markets nations and less a reliable consumer of their goods,” reports Simon Kennedy for Bloomberg....
Click here for the article in Bloomberg.
The US-China trade clash centers on intellectual property theft. “An underlying factor is the Chinese government’s rigorous censorship of imported cultural products,” explains Ge Chen, professor of law. The US Constitution protects speech as a check against excessive government power with the First...
Market without freedom: China’s authoritarian government incarcerated Nobel laureate and democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo who died in Chinese custody in 2017; Chinese citizens enjoyed a brief moment of freedom in 1979 when the government allowed...
Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak has resigned after 18 days of mounting nonviolent protests, followed by mass labor strikes, stalling an economy that benefited but only a few. The protests – persistent, self-policed, nonviolent, largely leaderless – orchestrated a homegrown revolution. The Egyptian...
Click here for the article from the Associated Press.
Indonesia has a secular constitution, but in 2003 gave a nod to the Aceh province adopting partial sharia law, supposedly an attempt to stem recruiting by a rebel movement. This separate set of laws, often targeting the poor and women, discourages tourism and economic development. Hard-line groups...
Banda Aceh. Agnes Monica, the famous Indonesian actress and singer, is a given to wearing sexy clothes, whether on stage, TV or advertising billboards. But not here, in the provincial capital of Aceh province. Just across from the 19th-century...
Explorers slowly extended regional trade routes throughout ancient history, and the year 1000 marked the first time that an object could circle the world. Thus, globalization began, argues Valerie Hansen, the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University. This essay is based on her book...
The Year 1000: A small portion of the Qingming Scroll from the Song Dynasty, left, shows vibrant trade in a Chinese community; author Valerie Hansen conducted research in more than 15 nations to explore the earliest days of globalization, including...
The blockbuster "Kill Bill" films exemplify the increasingly global nature of Hollywood, and not solely because of director Quentin Tarantino's heavy incorporation of foreign stylistic elements, writes media scholar Christina Klein. Like a growing number of Hollywood productions,...
"Kill Bill: Vol. 2" is a money-maker for Miramax, but also for the production team that helped produce it outside the US. (Photo: Miramax films)
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.: Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" opened strong...
